Will and Rational Causality

While for both Spinoza and Kant, the 'rational automaton' is paradigmatic for all possessors of Reason, for the latter, but not for the former, it is efficacious, as well. For, for Spinoza, the cause of any behavior is whatever one happens to believe best promotes persistence in being, whether or not that idea is fully rational, whereas, for Kant, Reason functions as an ever present Conscience, thereby exerting influence, stronger or weaker, on all behavior. The challenge for Kant is explain how such Conscience can both have efficacy and yet be independent of antecedent chains of Efficient Causality, the response to which is his establishing the possibility of Efficient, yet 'free', Causality. However, Nietzsche is unimpressed with that effort, diagnosing 'rational conscience' as the internalization of hostile social pressures. Here, in contrast, 'rational conscience' is interpreted as Reason functioning as a Formal Cause in behavior, i. e. as imparting structure to Will, the Material Principle of personal experience. Thus, the cited alternative interpretations are constrained by their respective concepts of Causality--Spinoza, by his commitment to the primacy of Efficient Causality, with Kant recognizing the limits of that commitment, without completely transcending it. On the other hand, Nietzsche does accord primacy to Formal Causality, but in the absence of a recognition of a complementary Material Principle, he can only interpret the interaction of forces, such as that constituting rational conscience, as entailing at least some violence.