ABSTRACT
What is the explanation of this paradox? How does Bosanquet arrive at it? (1) The 9DBC8W20C8on appears to be that the objects which we set before us, at which we consciously aim, are not always what we really want. They do not really satisfy us. This is a form of words expressing of course a perfectly well-known truth. A man’s nature is constantly driving him on to ends which he imperfectly appreciates and the concrete shapes which these ends take are often quite unsatisfactory. They give illusions of desirability which cheat him on attaining them. None the less, so far as he really chooses them that choice is for the time being his real will, in the true sense of real as that which is not merely supposed to be but is. Moreover, the fact that he so chooses them and makes a mistake in doing so is a real limitation of his will. The illusoriness of the will is precisely as hard a fact, as stubborn a reality, as the persistent background of want and unrest, which is the other side of the matter. The man’s will is in short just what it is with all its limitations and not what it might be if these limitations were removed. It may be suggested, and this is what Bosanquet seems to mean, that logically a man must be taken to will all that his actual will implies. But this is quite fallacious. On the contrary, show me a consequence following from an act of my will, which I have not yet seen, and it is quite possible that I may recoil from it. In any case the act seen with fresh implications is a different act, the will which chooses it a different will. We may reasonably say that the man who has gone through the long process of criticism and judgment described by Bosanquet in the evolution of the real will has become in that process a very different man.
