The automaton is free not because it is determined from within, but because every time it constitutes the motive of the event that it produces. The automaton is programmed, but the ‘spiritual automaton’ is programmed by motivation for voluntary acts, just as the ‘material automaton’ is programmed by determination for mechanical actions: if things are enveloped in God's understanding, it is such as they are, ‘the free as free, and the blind and mechanical still as mechanical.’
— Gilles Deleuze, The Fold









