{"id":263,"date":"2008-10-25T23:47:20","date_gmt":"2008-10-25T23:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/?p=263"},"modified":"2008-10-26T23:47:56","modified_gmt":"2008-10-26T23:47:56","slug":"on-free-will-and-spontaneity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/2008\/10\/25\/on-free-will-and-spontaneity\/","title":{"rendered":"On free will and spontaneity"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>On free will and spontaneity:<\/p>\n<p>Free will is not given to us merely as a firework to be shot off into the air. There are some men who seem to think their acts are freer in proportion as they are without purpose, as if a rational purpose imposed some kind of limitation upon us. That is like saying that one is richer if he throws money out the window than if he spends it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is seen in icky postmodern art where careful design is scorned. Meaningless paint flung on the canvas gives rationalism the finger, and moralism while it&#8217;s at it.<\/p>\n<p>At first I was going to write that this idea plays a part in the elevation of spontaneity as well: that something is more valueable if it is done with very little forethought &#8211; that a flower picked suddenly on the walk home is better than the one picked in a very premeditated fashion at the florist. Or that praying outloud and making it up as you went along was more spiritual\/powerful\/whatever than writing something down earlier and reading it. But I think this is different than what Merton is talking about here. That is rationalism and systematic reasoning versus intuition and spontanaity. Not free will fireworks versus motivated purpose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On free will and spontaneity: Free will is not given to us merely as a firework to be shot off into the air. There are some men who seem to think their acts are freer in proportion as they are without purpose, as if a rational purpose imposed some kind of limitation upon us. That &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/2008\/10\/25\/on-free-will-and-spontaneity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On free will and spontaneity&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}