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     The belief in free will is  quite analogous and perhaps
corollary to the belief in everlasting life.

     The belief in everlasting life is implicit in cogito
ergo sum, The belief in eternal life is explained by the
circumstance that I cannot experience death.  With the
contrary presumption my mind would deny its own existence.

     The experience of sleep is not the experience of death.
When sleep receives me, I experience it only as the surcease
of mental labor.  When sleep discharges me, I experience it
as recovery of the ground of consciousness, as the fading of
oblivion, and as a resurrection to sentient existence.  The
conviction of eternally continuing life is the inescapable
concomitant of living: life cannot design or construct its
own non-being.

     Cogito ergo sum not only identifies my thought as the
ground of my belief in my reality: it also fetters that
thought to my belief in that reality; and it is the necessity
of my belief in my reality which compels me to believe in the
independence, integrity and autonomy of my will.

     Similarly my belief in free will is an assertion of the
integrity of my mind. The denial of free will is incompatible
with my experience of myself. Arguably the assertion of free
will is a necessary expression of subjectivity, of
inwardness, of soul.  It is certainly the most common and
most prevalent expression of subjectivity.

     Cogito ergo sum implies that my being is to be deduced
from my thinking.  Arguably the converse is also true, my
thinking, i.e., my understanding of myself is to be deduced
from, and therefore reflects and expresses my being.  The
autonomy of that being will unavoidably be reflected in my
thinking.  The autonomy of my being presupposes my freedom to
act.  The autonomy of my being presupposes the freedom of my
will, presupposes that I can do what I want.  To be, to
exist, is to exist autonomously.  To exist autonomously is to
have free will.  A non-autonomous, i.e. a heteronomous being
is a contradiction in terms.  To be is to be autonomous.
Therefore the denial of my freedom of action is the denial of
my autonomous existence; and the assertion of my freedom of
action is the assertion of my autonomous existence.

     The lines of conflict between my objective view of
myself and my subjective experience of myself are now clearly
drawn.

     Subjectively I am immortal, i.e. subjectively I cannot
contemplate, cannot intuitively apperceive my death.
Subjectively also, I have freedom of the will. My action
expresses my intention, my action expresses my self. Indeed
my self is realized in my autonomous action.

     Objectively I am mortal, i.e. objectively I cannot but
anticipate death, sooner rather than later. I find no
objective basis for anticipating a life after death.
Objectively, I see that my actions are reflexes, and that
they are predetermined a) by the sort of person that I am,
and b) by the stimuli by which the facets of my environment
goad me to action.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
