Elizabeth Anscombe has called the part of the Tractatus dealing with the relation between the will and the world “obviously wrong.” To understand and assess this view, I look at what Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, and Anscombe say about the will. She is right to reject the view of the will that she calls wrong, but it is possible that Wittgenstein intends his readers to reject it too. Recent work by Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen, Eli Friedlander, Modesto Gómez-Alonso, and Michael Kremer helps us to see this, and to understand Wittgenstein’s views on ethics as well. The will, conceived as something distinct from our actions in the world, is indeed a chimaera, as Anscombe argues. Will belongs to what we do. And it is not, as such, something that we can or should reject. If we are to reject anything in this neighbourhood, it is idle wishing that the world would change.

This chapter deals with Fichte’s distinction between “formal” freedom and “material” freedom, on which hardly any interpretive consensus has been reached. The chapter argues that formal freedom is characteristic of the unconditioned, spontaneous activity of the I as such, that is, of the “pure I”: it underlies and makes possible both the freedom of conscious reflection and the freedom of practical willing and acting, including the freedom to determine not only the means toward one’s ends but also these ends themselves. The latter constitutes full material freedom. However, these two senses admit of different degrees, and Fichte himself is committed to the view that reaching full material freedom depends on a process of ongoing cultivation. In this process, the chapter argues, one achieves concrete material freedom of choice only by reflecting upon one’s own underlying formal freedom as an I.