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Name: Tihomir Slavov Subject:Research and Writing Tutorial Topic: The traditional readings of human freedom in the history

of philosophy

The notion of freedom of the will through the ages: concepts and development Freedom has had many notions through the ages. In this paper Im going to go over some of these notions and what some of the major philosophers in history have to say about them. A common question that arises when talking about freedom is: What is it to act freely? Other questions are Are we free agents, and Can we be morally responsible. Well see how various philosophers throughout history tackle these questions. Determinism is the view that all actions are the result of necessity and that they are pre-determined by what has already passed before.(1) This basically means that were not free and act the way we do not of our own will. Compatibilists on the other hand do not agree with determinist on the subject. They hold that freedom is just a matter of not being hindered or coerced into making a choice. In other words, one is able to choose how to act best for oneself depending on ones circumstances at the time. Various deterministic philosophies have been introduced throughout history and they are: ethical determinism, logical determinism, theological determinism, physical determinism, and psychological determinism. Philosophers in the ancient world like Socrates and Plato associated freedom with necessities.( 2) These necessities were considered part of the natural world and natural to us. The actions we carry out to satisfy those necessities seem to be of our own free will but were actually not. They were part of natural patterns that guide the will to the desire. Once a person was immersed in those patterns it was impossible for him to see what mistake hes actually done. Plato thought these patterns were cause by evil inclinations. He said that men who fall into these patterns have done so only because they lack moral knowledge: knowledge of good and evil. They are ignorant of
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Determinism, a historical survey Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd Edition 2 Free Will: an historical and philosophical introduction Ilham Dilman (1999)

their mistake otherwise they wouldnt remain in these patterns. So such men do no wrong knowingly and are therefore not held responsible for evil actions. In Gorgias, Socrates argues with Callicles on how to achieve freedom. Callicles says that to be free one must indulge unhindered in all his desires and satisfy them. Socrates rebuttals by saying that a person is free when he is whole.( 3) By that he means that a person knows his desire wholeheartedly indulges in them. Otherwise, he says, that indulgence would be a form of slavery. The free man, says Socrates, has self-mastery. He has mastered his desires and doesnt indulge blindly. He has knowledge of good and evil and judges for himself what course of action to take. To achieve self-mastery, according to Socrates, one must have self-control and (the quality of) being moderate. Socrates makes a distinction between two kinds of freedom. The first is the genuine freedom, which comes from self-control, and the other is ingenuine freedom, resulting from any form of indulgence. The genuine freedom can be seen as mastery of the ego and the ingenuine freedom as a slavery of the ego. Aristotle said, the work of man is a working of the soul in accordance with reason. What he meant by this statement was that by using reason in making our choices our lives are given meaning. These choices we make are directed at the means by which our desires are to be satisfied. Aristotle also speaks of courage as mastery of ones fears and desires rather than fearlessness. Failure in self-control will result in ignorance. This ignorance will in turn guide the will to evil actions because it has failed to judge the right course of action. The cases where this failure occurs are: the failure of one to recognize that it applies in the circumstance or it becomes inaccessible. In such cases, according to Aristotle, one fails to act to ones best interest because the desire masks the knowledge. The latter case is when one is asleep or intoxicated. As Christian theology developed so did the idea of God: perfect being on which all existence depends. How does free will play with along with gods foreknowledge? St. Augustine tries to answer that question. For him there was no doubt that human beings have free will. Not only did we have it but it was, according to him, a gift from God. Being free was defined as being the author of ones decisions and as having the capacity to choose between good and evil. It is in our nature to
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Free Will: an historical and philosophical introduction (p.39) Ilham Dilman (1999)

do both good and evil so thats where free will comes into play. Augustine tries to clarify the inconsistency between free will and Gods foreknowledge as an illusion.( 4) It doesnt exist or rather it doesnt exist in our perception of Gods knowledge. Augustine makes the point that Gods foreknowledge is what we freely choose in the end. In the end it is still us who make the choice regardless of who knows or has predicted it. Augustine takes for granted that we have free will but were not always free in our choices. This, he says, happens when were not whole and thus we cannot act wholly behind what we will. When there is no wisdom behind our actions, thus neglecting the eternal, Augustine says, we come to evil. In medieval thinking freedom is associated with the spirit and the body. Only humans were considered to possess free will. In agreement with Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas also thought that God had given man free will. Aquinas made a difference between two kinds of reason that guided the will. The first was the superior reason, which is associated with wisdom and good. The second kind of reason is linked with prudence and evil. Only the people with superior wisdom were considered free. Aquinas then explains that the will moves us to action by embodying our desire therefore we strive to get it. The will guides our actions and our instinct goes on to communicate to us whether to do or not to do something. Judging what actions to take to achieve an end is objective however. Aquinas quotes Aristotle that only that which is its own cause is free. Different people who share the same goal may resort to different means to achieve that same goal when faced with the same circumstance. This liberty, in choosing the means of action, is what Aquinas deems free because it originates in the will of the agent. Without judgment, he adds, there would be no free will. Any coercion or push towards an action, by an outside source, takes away the freedom of that action. In such a case the choice originates from the will of the outside source. The will only aims at desires and the means of satisfying them. That is why he qualifies it as an intellectual appetite. In some cases the intellect may have a right of way in guiding the will. This means that the goal might pull the strings on the will but it still has the liberty of choosing which course of action to take. Aquinas proposes that that the origin of freedom in the will may well come from intellect but it is also shaped by ones goals.
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Free Will: an historical and philosophical introduction (p.82) Ilham Dilman (1999)

Regarding Gods foreknowledge, Aquinas said that if God knows whats going to happen then that does not challenge the will or our freedom of choice. He adds that it is also not really a knowledge of the future. It only seems that way to us because we exist in space and time while God exist only in space. Therefore all knowledge is there, timelessly true. He classified the will a form of appetite because he thought that the will is what moves us to action by virtue of its capacity to embody our desires. These desires are presented to us by our reason and judgment and as long as they stay desires the will will be directed towards them.(5) The father of modern philosophy, Descartes, proposed a split between the mind and the body. He considered the act of the will to be free and to possess authorship, while the execution of the act by the body doesnt. The intention that makes us will ,he thought, we learned when we actually experienced it. We didnt know of it until we actually willed it. Once we have learned of the intention to will we can then actually will to do that something again. When we finally do will to do something we do not perceive our will or initiatives but rather the resistance against the aim of action. The initiative can only be seen with an outside-looking-in perspective, where an outsider would recognize the initiative in the actions while the agent himself couldnt. The connection between mind and body could only be seen in the execution of the actions according to Descartes. Living in the age of science, Descartes was very interested in how much like a machine our body behaved and that it practically worked on its own. It also connected us to the animals for animals just like our bodies function like machines. The mind however is where similarities stop, for we have the power to judge, have opinions or make choices all on the basis or reason. Our initiative to act is itself the activity of the mind says Descartes. The will not only acts free, according to him, but uses judgments to decide what it desires. Judging wrongly leads to failure naturally but that doesnt stop the mind from willing what it wishedeven if it failed to choose the best means of achieving success. Willing something without reason for Descartes was the lowest form of choice one could make for it involves no choice. The will is only free, however, when it is faced with a decision usually between good and evil. The body can be seen as an arrow and the will as the direction the archer faces.
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Free Will: an historical and philosophical introduction (p.105) Ilham Dilman (1999)

Moving on through modern philosophy we pause to see what Kant has to say on the matter. Hume concluded that reason couldnt engage the will directly but just guide it to desire. Well, Kant didnt disagree but thought that the will can be determined by both passion and desire but also reason. When guided by desire and passion the will is subservient and belongs to a kind of slave morality. The will that is guided by reason is independent and autonomous. A person guided by such a will is master of his desires. For him the will to be free it must be unhindered and one must also be free by virtue of reason to act. With the latter I think he means that we, as natural beings and part of a natural world, have the capacity to choose between good and evil actions. Actions of free will which use reason to guide the will have the potential to transcend our natural state of inclination to the natural world (slave morality). This inclination, Kant said, is part of natural cause, which is satisfaction of desire without reason. To transcend that is to master oneself. Hume defined freedom as being able to act of your own motives and being the author of ones own acts. He also argued that causality was a necessity for freedom. The causes he has in mind are the motives themselves. Freedom, he thought, required order or else one would be bound by chaos and randomness and would in turn not be free. If hes not free then that must mean that hes not responsible for his actions. A free being is not bound by the laws of nature but by the laws of reason thought Hume. His freedom inclines on the notion of no inclination while that of Kant on self-determination. A man may act the way hes inclined to but reason endorses that inclination. In this way the man is not acting because of it but rather in harmony with it. In recent times the will has come to be studied by neuroscience. Some experiments on brain activity and initiation of action were carried out and the results seemed rather surprising (SEP). What the conclusion of the experiment seems to show is that the actions we carry out are already in motion before were conscious of doing/thinking them. That means that they do not originate in our conscious and that theres no free will because the actions are already in motion by the time were conscious of them. Though the questions I noted earlier seem to pop up all through history, its a bit strange that we do not yet have a proper notion of what freedom of the will actually is.

Bibliography: 1.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: - Free Will 2.Encyclopedia of Philosophy: - Determinism, a historical survey - Determinism and Freedom 3.Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: - Free Will - Freedom and Liberty 4.Free Will: an historical and philosophical introduction Ilham Dilman / Routledge - 1999

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