Relation to oneself· Identity and freedomCommon view
Free will
Axis: Freedom of the will — Are we genuinely free in our choices, or are they determined?
The will has the power to determine itself: faced with an alternative, I could have chosen otherwise. This radical freedom grounds personal responsibility and dignity, even if it can weigh on us like a burden.
Movements 7
Existentialismexplicit
If the human being has no received essence, nothing within or outside them decides in their stead: they are their freedom itself, not because they enjoy a comfortable free will, but because no value, no nature, no order spares them from choosing. Hence the reversal of : to invoke one's passions, milieu or character as an excuse is , for it is my choices that give them their grip. The situation into which one is thrown does not contradict this freedom but is its material: it is the freely assumed project that constitutes an obstacle as an obstacle, against the illusion of being acted on from without.
Being and Nothingness · Existentialism Is a Humanism
Aristotelianismexplicit
Aristotle forges the analysis of the voluntary act: voluntary is that whose principle (arche) lies in the agent who knows the circumstances, as opposed to what is done under constraint or through ignorance. Since the origin of our acts is in us, they are up to us (eph' hemin), and that is why we praise and blame: virtue and vice alike are voluntary. A stance of responsibility, with neither a deterministic system nor a metaphysical free will.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, III, 1-5
Show inferred positions (5)
Epicureanisminferable
Against the rigorous fate of the Stoics, Epicurus introduces the , the spontaneous swerve of atoms that breaks the causal chain and makes room for . It is better to follow the myths about the gods than to be a slave to the of the physicists, for against fate nothing can be done, whereas with the gods hope remains. The position thus leans clearly toward free will.
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, book II, ll. 251-293 · Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 133-134
Cynicisminferable
The Cynic makes freedom (eleutheria) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) the supreme good: through exercise and stripping away, he makes himself independent of desires, of opinion and of the blows of fortune. Diogenes means to be the free man par excellence, master of himself because he needs nothing. A freedom more practical than metaphysical: not a thesis about the will, but the conquest of an unconditioned life.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI
Phenomenologyinferable
Against the naturalism that ranks consciousness among determined processes, phenomenology restores a free subject, an intentional activity that gives meaning to the world and is not reduced to it. Husserl sets the mind against the causality of nature; his heirs, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, radicalize this motif into an embodied, situated freedom. The movement therefore leans clearly toward freedom, against psychophysical determinism.
Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences · Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Pragmatisminferable
William James rejects the determinist block universe, in which the future would already be contained in the past, in favor of an open world where chance, novelty and choice are real. His argument is as moral as it is theoretical: without genuine alternative futures, regret and effort lose their sense. Through its Jamesian lineage, pragmatism leans toward free will and indeterminism, even if its figures qualify the claim.
James, The Dilemma of Determinism · James, The Principles of Psychology
Confucianisminferable
Confucianism divides one's lot between Heaven and humanity: the span of life, wealth and honors fall under the decree (ming) that the sage accepts, but self-cultivation and virtue depend entirely on the will. Moral betterment is always within reach of whoever wills it, which sets the movement on the side of a moral freedom, against a background of accepted outward destiny.
Analects (Lunyu), XII.5 · Mencius, VII A
Philosophers 13
Sartreexplicit
Freedom is not a property man has but the mode of being of consciousness: the for-itself nihilates every situation, which therefore never determines it and takes on meaning only in the light of its project. Even obstacles, even facticity (body, past, situation), are limits only for a freedom that aims at them; condemned man is, because he did not choose to be free and yet cannot but choose.
Being and Nothingness, Part 4, ch. 1 (being and doing: freedom) · Existentialism Is a Humanism (man is condemned to be free)
Descartesexplicit
Descartes makes the will the infinite faculty of the soul, that in which we most resemble God: it is the will, not the limited understanding, that can affirm or deny anything. This freedom of is the most immediate experience we have of ourselves.
Meditations on First Philosophy, IV · The Passions of the Soul, arts. 41 and 152
Beauvoirexplicit
A freedom is never pure spontaneity: it is always exercised from a body, a history and a social place that open or close the range of its possibles. From this situated character Beauvoir derives her break with the of Being and Nothingness, for whom even the slave remains ontologically free: to say so is to confuse freedom with its bare possibility, and to hide that oppression concretely mutilates freedom by sealing off the future and the means to project oneself. Freedom thus remains the primary fact, yet it can be injured from without, which makes oppression intelligible as a wrong and not merely a misfortune.
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), on situated freedom and oppression · The Second Sex (1949), Introduction (the situation of woman)
Kantexplicit
The third antinomy sets a seamless against the demand for a free causality, and both theses seem equally provable. Kant resolves it through the distinction: determinism governs the human being as phenomenon, yet nothing forbids thinking him a cause at the noumenal level. The moral law requires it: "you ought" implies "you can", so freedom is a fact of practical reason. Hence the explicit rejection of (a wretched subterfuge); but since freedom stays noumenal, never observed in the world, the score stops short of the extreme.
Critique of Pure Reason, Third Antinomy · Critique of Practical Reason
Lucretiusexplicit
If atoms did nothing but fall straight down through the void by their own weight, they would never meet, and necessity would chain every cause to another without end: neither the world-making collisions, nor above all that will wrested from the fates which every living thing feels as it surges forward, would be possible. Lucretius therefore posits the , the slight swerve, at an undetermined time and place, by which an atom deviates from its fall, breaking the chain of . His is the text that transmits the argument to us: this grain of at the root of matter grounds, against the physicists' fate, the of which we have inner evidence.
On the Nature of Things, II, 216-293 (the swerve and the will wrested from the fates)
Thomas Aquinasexplicit
Thomas holds a real , which he grounds in the intellect: because the will is moved by the good as reason presents it, and no finite good imposes itself on it absolutely, the human being deliberates and freely chooses among the means. But this freedom is not absolute: the will is necessarily borne toward the good in general, it does not choose itself out of nothing, and above all, without , it cannot orient itself toward its supernatural end. Hence a measured libertarian position, articulating the creature's freedom with divine motion rather than opposing them.
Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 83; Ia-IIae, q. 109-114 (grace)
Millexplicit
Mill holds our volitions to be caused like every phenomenon, in keeping with the principle of universal causation; but he refuses to read this as fate: character itself can be reshaped by our desires and efforts. This doctrine, which he distinguishes from fatalism, is a reconciling causal with an effective moral .
A System of Logic, book VI, ch. 2 (of liberty and necessity)
Show inferred positions (6)
Epicurusinferable
' , in which atoms fall in parallel lines by an unbroken necessity, makes responsibility impossible and reduces man to a puppet: if all is settled in advance, to blame or to deliberate loses its sense. Epicurus answers with the , the slight, uncaused and unpredictable swerve by which an atom deviates from its fall at an undetermined moment: he thereby introduces a grain of into matter itself, at the root of compounds, from which an action can emerge that is not wholly the effect of antecedents. The aim is less metaphysical than practical: to save , for enslavement to the physicists' fate would be worse even than the fear of the gods.
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, II, 251-293 (the swerve) · Letter to Menoeceus, 133-134 (better the myths than slavery to fate)
Camusinferable
Stripped of God and of an eternal future, the absurd man no longer has a destined life to fulfill: this ruin of higher ends sets him free, not with a demonstrated metaphysical freedom, but with the lived freedom of one who expects nothing more from a beyond. His lucid revolt takes up the present and multiplies experiences, without denying that everything around him has its causes: freedom is a way of living the absurd, not a thesis about the will.
The Myth of Sisyphus, Absurd Freedom · The Rebel
Aristotleinferable
The analysis of voluntary action and of (prohairesis) presupposes that the origin of action is in us: we are responsible for our acts, of which we are the origin, which grounds praise, blame and punishment. This defence of self-mastery leans toward , without thematizing modern .
Nicomachean Ethics, III.1-5
Diogenes of Sinopeinferable
Diogenes makes freedom (eleutheria) the supreme good, but shifts it entirely to the practical side: to be free is not to settle a metaphysical question about the will, it is to make oneself independent of desires, opinion and the blows of fortune through stripping away. The question of free will does not occupy him; his freedom is an existential conquest, the self-sufficiency of the sage who needs nothing. The positioning therefore stays cautious and inferred, the corpus offering no explicit thesis on determinism.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 71
Lockeinferable
Locke locates liberty not in the will (the question "is the will free?" is ill-framed) but in the agent's power to suspend the pursuit of a desire so as to examine and deliberate before acting. This capacity to halt and weigh one's desires leans toward , in a careful analysis rather than a clear-cut metaphysics.
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, ch. 21 ("Of Power", liberty and the suspension of desire)
Confuciusinferable
Confucius divides one's lot between what belongs to Heaven and what depends on us: the span of life, wealth and honors hang on the decree (ming) that the sage welcomes without surrendering to it; but to become fully humane (ren) depends on oneself alone. Outer fortune is thus largely determined, while moral perfection remains the ever-possible work of the will.
Analects (Lunyu), XII.5 and VII.29 · Analects, XX.3
Argument
- When I deliberate, I directly undergo a power: holding several possibilities open, then settling.
- This experience is primary: every theory, determinism included, must lean on it merely to be thought and argued.
- To dismiss that immediate testimony in the name of a theory would be to saw off the branch on which the argument itself sits.
Therefore is therefore a primary given, which any theory must respect before denying it.
See the pageArgument
- When I deliberate, I treat several courses of action as open: I weigh reasons precisely because I believe the outcome is not yet settled.
- But holding someone responsible, praising or blaming them, presupposes that they could have than they did.
- Yet we hold that responsibility to be real, in law as in morals; we must therefore grant it its condition, a power to choose otherwise.
Therefore We therefore have , the condition of moral responsibility.
See the pageObjection
- Imagine a neurosurgeon who wants you to make a certain choice. He implants in your brain a device able to force that choice, but set to fire only if you were about to choose otherwise.
- When the moment comes, you make that choice on your own: the device stays inert, it never intervenes.
- Yet you could not have done otherwise, the device would have prevented it. And nonetheless, having acted of your own accord, you are indeed the responsible author of your act.
Therefore So responsibility does not require the power to : the argument that grounded free will on responsibility no longer holds.
See the pageObjection
- Every state of the world follows from the prior state according to laws: the hypothesis, which succeeds everywhere else, from stars to cells.
- But my brain, which deliberates, is a fragment of that world; its states too therefore follow from prior causes.
- The lived moment of "choice" is then merely a link in that chain: felt from within, but already under way before I decide it.
Therefore The feeling of choosing freely is therefore no proof of freedom.
See the pageUnmasking bad faithExerciseInspired by Sartre
held that we are « condemned to be free »: at every moment our choices are our own, even when we pretend otherwise. That flight he called , the lie by which we treat ourselves as a thing in order to decline our share. This exercise teaches you to spot those evasions and to reclaim your decisions as your own, rather than sheltering behind « I had no choice ».
- Through the day, note the phrases by which you decline a choice: « I had no choice », « that's just how I am », « it's stronger than me », « they made me ».
- Take one and look it in the eye: behind the phrase, what did you actually choose, even if only to decide nothing or to let things happen?
- Name what the phrase spared you: an effort, a conflict, the weight of owning what came next.
- Separate what was up to you from what the situation truly imposed: owning your freedom is not claiming what you did not control.
- Recast the decision in the first person, as your act, « I chose to… », and stand by its consequences.
Owning your freedom is not taking on everything or blaming yourself endlessly: one always chooses within a situation one did not choose. The aim is to acknowledge your share, what Sartre calls , not to crush yourself with it or deny real constraints.
- 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 - DescriptiveA self that initiates itself
Is there in us a power able to initiate an action without itself being wholly caused, or is every power to act merely one link in the chain of causes?
the will - DescriptiveNecessity or chance
If our choices are not determined, are they any freer for it, or merely left to chance? Does freedom come down to the absence of a cause?
a choice - DescriptiveDoing as one pleases, or governing oneself?
Is being free to do what one feels like in the moment, or to govern oneself, at the risk that whoever follows their every desire becomes its slave?
the law one gives oneself