Voluntarism

The subject matter of Political Obligation is subjective in nature. One of the question that
arises regarding Obligation is whether the obligation given by the individuals are voluntary or
not? The ideology voluntarism argues that the obligation given by individual is voluntary
that is, the individual gives it by their own will.Voluntarism, is the philosophy which holds
that all forms of human association should be voluntary. The goal of a purely voluntary
society must be sought voluntarily. Voluntarists assert that people cannot be coerced into
freedom or voluntarily give it up.
Voluntarism is the theory that God or the ultimate nature of reality is to be conceived as some
form of will (or conation). This theory is contrasted to intellectualism, which gives primacy
to Gods reason. 19th century voluntarism has its origin in Kant, particularly his doctrine of
the primacy of the practical over the pure reason. Intellectually, humans are incapable of
knowing ultimate reality, but this need not and must not interfere with the duty of acting as
though the spiritual character of this reality were certain. Freedom cannot be demonstrated
speculatively, but whenever a person acts under a motive supplied by reason, he is thereby
exhibiting the practical efficiency of reason, and thus showing its reality in a practical sense.
Following Kant, two distinct lines of voluntarism have proceeded which may be called
rational and irrational voluntarism respectively.
For Fichte, the originator of rational voluntarism, the ethical is primary both in the sphere of
conduct and in the sphere of knowledge. The whole nature of consciousness can be
understood only from the point of view of ends which are set up by the self. The actual world,
with all the activity that it has, is only to be understood as material for the activity of the
practical reason, as the means through which the will achieves complete freedom and
complete moral realization. Schopenhauers irrational voluntarism asserts a more radical
opposition between the will and intellect. For him, the will is by its very nature irrational. It
manifests itself in various stages in the world of nature as physical, chemical, magnetic, and
vital force, pre-eminently, however, in the animal kingdom in the form of the will to live,
which means the tendency to assert itself in the struggle for means of existence and for
reproduction of the species. This activity is all of it blind, so far as the individual agent is
concerned, although the power and existence of the will are thereby asserted continually.

I've been reading a bit about feudalism and medieval Europe, and what bothers me about the
philosophy of voluntarism and the concept of self-ownership.
The problem with both is that they don't actually protect human freedom, because they allow
for freedom to be 'voluntarily' given away. After all, if you "own yourself," you can also "sell
yourself," into slavery for example. So, although it sounds like a concept which would protect
freedom at first, voluntarism actually creates an intellectual justification for slavery.
For example, if I were dying of thirst in a desert, and someone came by and offered to give
me water only if I signed a contract becoming their slave for life, it would apparently be
justifiable under a theory of voluntary contracts for that person to enforce that contract,
because it was 'voluntarily' entered in to. That's an unlikely scenario, but this kind of
situation happened all the time in Medieval Europe - someone would be hungry and landless
and enter into a feudal contract with a land-owning lord, or and independent land owners
would voluntarily become a serf of a local lord, becoming a serf and receiving a plot of land
to farm, but they would also often lose many of their rights in the process, for life. Serfs
might have to ask their lords permission to marry, for example, or might be banned from
leaving their plot, and on and on. But, still, it was a voluntary contract, voluntarily entered in
to by both parties.
This same kind of idea seems to underlie the idea that soldiers lose their rights when they
enter the military, because they sign a piece of paper waiving those rights.
The alternative idea is one that I think is far more protective of liberty in the real world more libertarian you might say - and that is the idea of "inalienable rights." Inalienable rights
are rights you can't give away - you don't 'have' them in an ownership sense, but rather they're
an inseperable part of you. Since you don't own them, you can't give them up, and any
attempt to do so is fraud on your part and aggression on the part of the person who would
have you waive them.
Self-ownership is often thought to be compatible, or even beneficial to property rights, but
I'm not sure that this is the case. How can we legitimately own something we did not buy or
create? Granting the principle of self-ownership implies that we can own things we didn't
buy, create or have given to us, since we do not buy ourselves, give ourselves to ourselves or
create ourselves. Self-ownership introduces a case in which we supposedly can own

something which we don't buy, receive or create, and in that way is corrosive to a good theory
of property ownership.
Voluntarism and freedom to contract are sometimes thought of as compatible with anarchism
or even being anarchistic, but I'm not sure this is true either. Enforcement of contracts is a
major wellspring of government. An agency with the power to enforce contracts looks very
much like a government, whether it is publicly or privately provided.
Voluntarism is mostly concerned with process, while the idea of inalienable rights is mainly
concerned with outcome. The later seems preferable to me, because whether we can exercise
a certain right is more important than how our ability to do so came about. Process is
important too, of course, but less important than results.