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choose the ends for which he might exercise his will and whatever degree of freedom is left to him by his dispositions
It is
Free will and determinism are, however, so interlocked that the total rejection of either involves the other in difficulties If determinism were rejected totally from the field of action and experience, such free human will would be removed from all contact with the natural world which is inexorably involved in a causal order If such an order were absent, action would be meaningless On the other hand, if action were not governed by this order, it would be irrelevant. Action, thus, presupposes a causal order as well as an autonomy which operates through its interstices and utilizes it for its own ends Human experience somehow combines autonomy and heteronomy, spiritual freedom and materialistic determination This apparent contradiction led some powerful schools to deny the very reality of action and changeful experience To be real the spirit must be eternal and changeless and its involvement in change in the form of action and experience could only be illusory Sankhya and Vedanta both accepted this view and represented for the Jainas still other varieties of Akriyāvāda true that both Sankhya and Vedanta accept the reality of action and change at the empirical level and deny it only at the level of eternity, nevertheless, as the Jainas point out, this position, robs human action of moral responsibility since if the spirit is held to be incapable of action by nature it could not be responsible for any results which might arise from such an alien process, nor could it deserve any experiences which might befall it The denial of Kartṛtva and the acceptance of Bhoktį tva, as in Sankhya, is thus contradictory The acceptance of both at the empirical level and the denial of both sub specie aeternitatis, as in Vedanta, creates a gulf which can neither be explained nor bridged If the soul is incapable of any autonomous activities it must for ever remain subject to its beginningless bondage If, on the other hand, bondage itself is not real, liberation would be clearly meaningless The truth is that the phenomenon of action has paradoxical implications Morality requires the agent to be both free and identical whereas reason cannot avoid accepting the universal sway of
