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Allameh Mohammad-Taqi Jafari

Farzaneh Bashardoust

30 Jul 2012 11:24

Reading a page of a book out of thousands and millions of pages is, for us, like looking through a window on brighter side of the world that is constantly calling us, tempting us to set on a journey with the frigate of a book for more and more adventures...

Degrees of Will 

The will has degrees. That is, it could have higher or lower levels. Because the will is under the control and surveillance of the 'self' and this also may have different levels in different human beings. Generally speaking, negligence of the orders of surveillance or dominance of the 'self' has resulted in debates over the issue of fatalism and free will. If we accept the three following principles, we have implicitly accepted the phenomenon of free will: 

1. Surveillance and control of the 'self' over positive and negative poles of a deed (acceptance and continence) 

2. Elements that stop man from doing something. Their motivation is not always a hundred percent so that their removal would also omit surveillance of the self. In most willful actions, we do not wait enough to see whether the goal is a hundred percent achievable. In other words we embark on an action before being sure if we will succeed. 

3. The gradual decrease of motivation and will and its breakability by any internal or external element.

In a word, the self and variations of the mood of the self on the one hand, and a change of motivating elements on the other hand, stop us from discovering or identifying a general law as principle. So, locating a single place for the free will is almost meaningless as three shaping principles that human free will is based on may vary from person to person and therefore may have higher and lower degrees for different individuals at any stage of an action.