Relation to oneself· Identity and freedom
Hard determinism
Axis: Freedom of the will — Are we genuinely free in our choices, or are they determined?
Our choices result from causes beyond our grasp: nature, history, the unconscious. The feeling of freedom comes from our ignorance of what determines us, like a thrown stone believing itself free to fly.
Movements 6
Show inferred positions (6)
Utilitarianisminferable
Human conduct is governed by two springs, pleasure and pain, a broadly deterministic psychology that allows behavior to be predicted and reformed through sanctions. Responsibility here is no uncaused free will but is reinterpreted in compatibilist terms: utilitarianism attends to the causes that move wills rather than to their supposed spontaneity.
Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, I · Mill, A System of Logic, VI
Marxisminferable
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please, under circumstances they have not chosen": human action is real, yet tightly by inherited economic structures. The position leans toward social conditioning without denying all initiative, placing it short of a strict determinism.
Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
Empiricisminferable
Empiricism leans toward compatibilism: freedom is not a will withdrawn from causes, but the power to act according to one's own desires without external constraint. Hume shows that this liberty of action is not only compatible with causal necessity but requires it, for without regular ties between motives and acts there would be neither character nor accountability. The dispute over free will then rests on a confusion of words more than on a genuine mystery.
Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, VIII · Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, II, 21
Taoisminferable
The Taoist sage asserts no autonomous will: he acts by wu-wei, non-action, effacing himself to wed the spontaneous course of things (ziran). To will, to force, to impose a self, is to thwart the Tao and exhaust oneself; true freedom is this effortless accord with natural necessity, closer to an assent to the determined than to a conquering free will.
Laozi, Tao Te Ching, ch. 37 and 63 · Zhuangzi
Vedānta (Advaita)inferable
At the empirical level, the embodied self (jiva) is bound by karma and wrapped in maya: its acts bear their fruits and keep it within the cycle of rebirths, a largely determined order. True freedom is therefore not the self-determination of a will, but liberation (moksha), the recognition that the Self (atman) is identical with Brahman, beyond the causal order of acts.
Shankara, Commentary on the Brahma Sutras · Upanishads (Katha, Mundaka)
Buddhisminferable
Buddhism holds every phenomenon to be dependently arisen: there is no uncaused will of a substantial self, and the sense of being a free author proceeds from ignorance. But far from fatalism, intention (cetana) is the karmic act par excellence, and it can be trained: the path is a real effort to transform one's own conditioning, between determinism and free will.
Samyutta Nikaya, XII · Dhammapada, I
Philosophers 7
Spinozaexplicit
If everything follows from God's nature with the same as a triangle's properties follow from its essence, no act of will can be an exception. The argument also explains the illusion of : like a thrown stone that would believe itself free, we are conscious of our desires but ignorant of the causes that determine them.
Ethics, I, prop. 29 and appendix · Letter 58 to Schuller (the stone that thinks itself free)
Schopenhauerexplicit
The prize essay of 1839 establishes that every act follows necessarily from the innate character and the motives presented: the freedom of indifference is an illusion born of the consciousness of doing 'what I will,' which masks that I do not choose what I will. Yet he preserves, inherited from , the freedom of the intelligible character: the being (esse) is free, the acting (operari) is necessary, and responsibility bears on what we are, not on any isolated act.
On the Freedom of the Will, ch. III
Humeexplicit
Hume proposes a reconciliation (the reconciling project) between liberty and necessity: liberty is not the absence of causes, but the power to act according to the determinations of one's will, free from external constraint. The of human actions is even required for moral responsibility, since it is character that accounts for acts: classical .
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. VIII (of liberty and necessity) · A Treatise of Human Nature, II, part III, sect. 1-2
Marxexplicit
Material conditions determine men's action without making them mere playthings, for men make their own history yet do not make it as they please, under circumstances they have not chosen. This articulation of social and transformative action leans toward determinism without lapsing into fatalism: freedom is the collective mastery of conditions, not abstract .
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) · The German Ideology, I (circumstances make men as much as men make circumstances)
Show inferred positions (3)
Benthaminferable
All human conduct is governed by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain; the legislator can therefore act on behaviour by bearing on motives through sanctions, which add a pain or a pleasure to the balance. This psychology of motives presupposes actions by their causes, the very condition of the penal calculus working, though Bentham does not thematize the metaphysical question of .
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. III and X (motives and their operation)
Senecainferable
Everything is governed by the chain of fate and the necessity of . Freedom does not lie in escaping it but in consenting to it through reason, a Stoic : cosmic necessity leaves the inner freedom of assent intact.
On Providence, V (God himself is bound by the necessity he once laid down) · Natural Questions, II, 35-38 (fate and the order of causes)
The Buddhainferable
Nothing springs from an uncaused will: every phenomenon is dependently arisen (paticca-samuppada), and the self that believes itself a free author is itself an aggregate without substance. Yet the Buddha teaches no fatalism, which he reproaches in Makkhali Gosala: intention (cetana) is the act itself, karmically decisive, and it can be transformed through training. The path therefore requires real effort, between the determinism of conditioning and the illusion of free will.
Samyutta Nikaya, XII (dependent origination) · Anguttara Nikaya (refutation of fatalism)
Argument
- Everywhere we look, we find causes: on inspection, no phenomenon turns out to have no antecedent. The physical world appears , every effect within it having a cause that is itself physical.
- A decision is one event among others, carried by a physical brain woven into that same causal fabric.
- By the , nothing happens without a reason that determines it; to grant the will alone a causeless power would be an exception without justification.
Therefore Our decisions are therefore by their causes, like any other event.
See the pageArgument
- My choices flow from what I am: my character, my desires, the reasons that weigh on me.
- But what I am, I did not posit out of nothing: it comes from my heredity, my history, circumstances I did not choose.
- To be its ultimate author, I would have had to create myself, hence to exist before existing: the regress has no end.
Therefore Since no one is the cause of themselves, no one is the ultimate author of their choices.
See the pageObjection
- The argument assumes every effect is wholly fixed by its causes. Yet quantum physics describes fundamental events that are merely probable, not determined.
- If holds at the finest level, "everything has a cause" no longer means "everything is settled in advance": one and the same cause may leave several outcomes open.
- survives, nothing springs from nothing; but its determinist conclusion no longer follows: the web of causes leaves play.
Therefore So causal closure does not prove strict : the future may not be wholly fixed.
See the pageObjection
- Holding someone responsible, praising or punishing them, presupposes that they could have than they did.
- Likewise, deliberating makes sense only if the outcome is not already settled as one weighs the pros and cons.
- A strict determinism removes both presuppositions at once, and with them part of what structures law and moral life.
- This cost is no refutation, but it weighs: a thesis that dissolves responsibility must pay the price, or show how to save it otherwise.
Therefore A strict determinism therefore strips responsibility of its usual ground.
See the pageActing on your own reasonsExerciseProposed · Compatibilism
For , to be free is not to escape causes but to act on one's own reasons rather than under constraint. Still, one must tell the desires one truly endorses from those that drive us in spite of ourselves, a habit, a pressure, an impulse. This exercise teaches you to recognize when a choice really comes from you, and to realign your action with what you want to want.
- Pick a decision in progress or a recurring behaviour that nags at you: a purchase, a too-sharp reply, a yes you regret.
- Ask where it comes from: from reasons you could defend with a calm mind, or from a constraint, a habit, a pressure you are under?
- Ask the decisive question: this desire that pushes you, do you want to have it? Would you act the same way following your own reasons?
- If it comes from you, own it fully: it is free in the sense that matters, even if it has causes.
- If it is imposed on you, look for one concrete move to take back the reins: defer, set a limit, recover the reason you endorse.
Compatibilism does not promise escape from every cause: the point is not to will yourself without a past or leanings, but to tell acting on your reasons from acting under constraint. The line is not always sharp; when in doubt, ask whether, better informed and free of pressure, you would make the same choice.
Understanding rather than blamingStanceInspired by Spinoza
Not to mock, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.
held that nothing happens without a cause, and that understanding the causes of an act loosens the grip of the anger or resentment it stirs. To hold this stance is, before a wrong, to replace « whose fault is it? » with « what made this possible? »: indignation and guilt, which assume one could have done otherwise, lose their force, and you decide what comes next with a calm mind.
To understand is neither to excuse nor to resign: one can grasp the cause of a wrong and still firmly oppose it. Beware too of fatalism, « everything is determined, so I do nothing »: your reflection and your efforts are themselves among the causes of what follows.
- Descriptive SituationCould I have done otherwise?
A man admits to an offence, but his history and his brain pushed him to it: could he really have acted otherwise, and if not, is he responsible for it?
a choice - Descriptive SituationA cause that excuses
When a specific cause, here a brain tumor, lies at the origin of an act, we hesitate to hold the agent responsible: but does that cause really differ from the thousand others, heredity, history, brain chemistry, that weigh on every one of our choices?
an act - DescriptiveWho decides within me?
Am I transparent to myself when I choose, or do forces I am unaware of decide in my place, under the appearance of a free choice?
the self - DescriptiveThe choice within the order of causes
A choice is an event in the physical world: does it belong to the same chain of causes as everything else, so that it was in principle predictable?
a choice - DescriptiveDeterminism or fatalism?
If everything has a cause, are my efforts in vain, since the outcome would be settled either way, or do they on the contrary count, being themselves causes among others?
my efforts