{"id":19145,"date":"2023-04-27T11:05:29","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T10:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=19145"},"modified":"2026-06-01T19:08:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T18:08:42","slug":"a-conversation-about-the-will-between-roberto-assagioli-and-renzo-giacomini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/a-conversation-about-the-will-between-roberto-assagioli-and-renzo-giacomini\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation About the Will between Roberto Assagioli and Renzo Giacomini"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Either the will is free, or it doesn’t exist at all. Assagioli’s conversation on free will in psychosynthesis draws a sharp line between genuine volition and unconscious determination.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"what<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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By Roberto Assagioli<\/strong> in conversation with Renzo Giacomini
18 January 1972
Taken from a Typed Transcript of R. Giacomini
Doc. #23518, Assagioli Archive, Florence
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [1]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editorial Note<\/strong>
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth S\u00f8rensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered.
An editorial note by Kenneth S\u00f8rensen has been inserted into the text pointing to a companion article that explores Assagioli’s understanding of free will in further depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abstract<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In this conversation, Roberto Assagioli and Renzo Giacomini explore the nature of the will across multiple levels of reality. Assagioli argues that will in its essence is transcendent and free, and that freedom is its defining quality – where freedom is absent, what remains is only a pseudo-volitional act, not genuine will. The dialogue engages Freudian conceptions of unconscious motivation, Giacomini’s metaphysical framing of cosmic will, and questions of karma and reincarnation, with Assagioli carefully distinguishing his existential humanistic standpoint from these adjacent angles without excluding any of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Assagioli<\/strong>: First I will give a general epistemological[2]<\/a> outline. What are the tools of knowledge? \u2014 the mind, in its function as a coordinator and interpreter of sense impressions that come from the so-called external world (now let\u2019s call it that: \u201cthe so-called external world,\u201d without elaborating); then the rational mind (one can call it the abstract, or philosophical mind) that elaborates concepts, theories, doctrines; but then \u2014 in my opinion, and that of many others (I am in good company) \u2014 there is also intuition. Now intuition is super-rational, not anti-rational per se<\/em>, and however much it may contradict certain theories or certain materialistic doctrines, it is not against reason per se<\/em>, only it operates in a higher, meta-rational sphere. Corresponding to this are \u201clevels of reality:\u201d I [affirm as a] premise, to avoid misunderstanding, that I consider that reality is one (a unitary conception), and also that energy is essentially one. However, within this essential and substantial unity, there are distinctions (but distinction does not mean separation, does not mean contrast, does not mean . . . ) \u2014 distinctions that could be called, in a way that is perhaps not rigorously exact but useful for understanding, \u201cdifferent levels of reality;\u201d and for each level of reality there are corresponding laws, functions, and mechanisms; this already happens in [the disciplines of] physics and chemistry. Certain laws which are valid at a certain level of reality, i.e. at a certain dimension, are no longer valid at another.[3]<\/a> Thus Avogadro’s laws, the laws governing atomic combinations, are valid at that level, but at the subatomic level they are no longer valid.  This does not mean that they are false<\/em>; it means that they operate relative to that certain level of reality and that they function \u2014 I would say, they are <\/em>functional \u2014 that is, they correspond to data and they coordinate data: they allow us to predict and use those data at one level, but they are no longer valid at another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now what happens in the field of chemistry happens on a much larger scale for all other orders of reality, distinct but not separate within the bosom of the universal supreme reality. So the laws of logic and, I would say, rationality are valid at a certain level: in fact they work and they allow us to know [things] and to predict [phenomena]. So pragmatically they are valid at a certain level, but they are no longer valid at a super-rational level, where everything is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the point and the difficulty is to keep things distinct \u2014 distinct, I repeat \u2014 but not to separate these various levels. What can be easily done in chemistry is not done in philosophy and science in general. Science (ordinary, academic science) wants to bring certain of its concepts, certain of its laws, into a field that is not its domain; and so [also] philosophy, with some of its concepts, intends to bring \u201crationality\u201d into a field that is not its domain; that is, the field of spirituality and intuition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming to the will, one must distinguish the will in its essence from the will in its manifestation; and in other words, we generally always distinguish transcendence from immanence. That is to say, the supreme reality and the spirit are in themselves transcendent to every limited manifestation which is concrete in time and space: they are extra-temporal and extra-spatial. However, from the moment they enter into immanence, that is, into becoming, into the flow of manifestation, then at the various levels they become, so to speak, subject to the laws of the corresponding level.<\/p>\n\n\n