Necessity-in-Itself and Necessity-for-Us

“Necessity-in-itself” generally refers to what we call “necessity”, and “necessity-for-us” is freedom. Freedom and necessity are philosophical concepts that reveal the correlation between people’s conscious activities and the objective law. Necessity is the law of the development of objective things, while freedom is the understanding of the objective law and the transformation of the objective world.

The relation between freedom and necessity is the relation between human will and objective regularity. In Anti-Dühring, on the basis of absorbing Hegelian dialectical thoughts on freedom and necessity, Engels introduced practical materialism into the concept of freedom, and made materialist dialectical argumentation on the relationship between freedom and necessity, admitting that objective necessity is the premise of freedom, and freedom is the understanding of necessity; freedom is the use of objective laws and the domination of the world, and the product of historical development. Lenin, based on this logic, discussed the four epistemological premises of the relationship between freedom and necessity in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism by quoting Engels’ point; and Lenin emphasized that dialectical materialism is based on the viewpoint that “matter is primary, and spirit is secondary”. He recognized the inevitability of nature, profoundly revealed the dialectical relationship between the inevitability of nature and human consciousness and will, and pointed out that “objective necessity is primary, and freedom is secondary”. Freedom is the transformation of “necessity-in-itself” into the understood “necessity-for-us”. Practice is the decisive link to realize the transformation from necessity to freedom and make human beings the masters of nature. Lenin’s view pushed Engels’ thought on freedom and necessity to new heights.

Dialectical materialism holds that during human beings’ struggle to transform nature and society, the problem of the relationship between freedom and necessity is inevitable because people’s practical activities have certain goals, and people can use the laws of nature to achieve expected results. People have no freedom before knowing the laws but can only unconsciously and blindly accept them. After they have known the laws of nature and can consciously use them to serve certain purposes, they enjoy freedom to an extent. Therefore, freedom cannot be separated from necessity, and necessity can become freedom—this is the dialectical relationship between freedom and necessity.

Engels pointed out: “Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject”. When people practice to transform the world, to get the outcomes they expect, they must learn the laws of nature, or the objective regularity of subjects, first. However, there is no freedom if people only recognize objective laws but fail to realize expected outcomes by using the laws to transform the world in practice. Therefore, true freedom lies not only in knowing necessity, but also and must in transforming the objective world in practice on the basis of knowing necessity. Only in this way can freedom be truly transformed from necessity. Hegel thus said, “Freedom does not consist in any dreams of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.” Mao Zedong further pointed out: “Freedom is knowledge of necessity and the transformation of the world.” Concerning the relationship between freedom and necessity, it will erred to put the two categories against each other. One view only recognizes necessity and denies freedom, holding that people are completely controlled by necessity, can only be slaves of necessity, and can only be manipulated by fate. This fatalism is an idealist and mechanistic. Another view holds that will decides everything and denies the objective law at all, claiming that freedom has nothing to do with necessity and advocating absolute freedom independent from necessity. People can do whatever they want and create everything freely. This is voluntarism and subjective idealism, i.e., the two viewpoints which contradicts with dialectical materialism.

Dialectical materialism also advocates that freedom is the product of history. In human history, freedom has developed along with the deepening of people’s understanding of objective laws through practice. The history of mankind is a history of continuous development from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.