Descriptive
Escaping the causes, or understanding them?
On the axis: Freedom of the will · the order of causes
Is being free to depend on no cause, or to understand what determines us, to the point of acting in accord with that necessity rather than undergoing it?
Philosophers' positions
Major
+0.9
Compatibilism
Justification
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.
A stone receives from an external cause that pushes it a certain quantity of motion... Now conceive that this stone, while it continues to move, thinks and knows that it is striving, as far as it can, to move. This stone, surely, since it is conscious only of its striving, will believe itself entirely free.Letter 58 to Schuller
Ethics, I, prop. 29 and appendix · Letter 58 to Schuller (the stone that thinks itself free)
Anchors: Spinoza