Abstract

In a first step, it is stated that for Pareyson the freedom is to be grasped only as the act of the instantaneous beginning and of the absolute self-setting. Unlike the being, understood in the sense of ground, each concrete choice of freedom is opposed to the dynamic, ontologically positive nothingness. Freedom, therefore, appears to be the very original struggle with nothingness, even before the creation of the world. Pareyson shares Schelling’s conviction of the fundamental importance and the ontological rank of freedom, which outstrips the moral and ethical one. But the point of their divergence lies in the determination of the will as a main subject of freedom in each of them. Schelling determines the will as a complex interplay of the two wills, the self-will and the universal will, and additionally their common origin, named of him by means of various, sometimes apparently paradoxical names, such as nonground, purity, love, not last also the unwilling will. For Pareyson, however, the will is essentially one and unique. He seems not to have recognized Schelling’s fundamental twofold respectively threefold structure of will, and in particular the very peculiar unwilling will as the true essence of freedom.