Theme
Free will and fate
16 philosophers, 4 traditions
Are our choices really our own, or are they fixed by fate, by God or by prior causes? Thinkers in China, Greece, the Islamic world and Europe argued over what freedom requires.
“Free will” names a kind of control over what we do. Philosophers have asked whether we have it, whether it requires the power to do otherwise, and whether moral responsibility depends on it. Its rival is fatalism, the view that we are powerless to act otherwise than we in fact act, argued from logic, from the nature of God or from the chain of causes.
In ancient China, Mozi attacked fatalism for making effort seem pointless, while Wang Chong held that each life’s fortunes are set by a destiny that arises naturally, not by Heaven’s decree. The Stoic Epictetus located an inalienable freedom in our power of choice, even in a world ordered by Zeus. Augustine, by contrast, taught that since the Fall the human will cannot choose the good without God’s grace.
For medieval thinkers the problem was God’s power and knowledge. Al-Ghazali held that God is the only true agent, while Gersonides limited God’s foreknowledge to keep the future open, and Hasdai Crescas combined a strict determinism with voluntary choice. In modern Europe Spinoza argued that nothing could have happened otherwise, Kant that moral responsibility needs a freedom beyond nature’s causes, and Sartre that human beings are radically free.
Through time
5th century BCE
Mozi
Fatalism, the teaching that our lot is fixed in advance and effort is useless, is both false and harmful: it undermines the work that brings wealth, a growing population and social order.
3rd century BCE
Chrysippus
Fate is an everlasting, unbreakable order in which each thing follows from another, directed by providence. He still held people responsible for their actions, and is usually read as holding that a determined world and free action are compatible.
1st century BCE
Lucretius
If every movement followed from an earlier one in an unbroken chain, there could be no free will. So atoms must sometimes swerve by the least amount, at no fixed time or place, and this gives the mind room for voluntary action.
1st century CE
Wang Chong
Each person’s fortunes, health and length of life are set by their destiny (ming). But destiny is no decree of a heavenly agent: Heaven gives it spontaneously, as a natural quality arising from the qi a person is made of.
Epictetus
Our volition is by nature unimpeded, so freedom is an inalienable part of being human, even in a world ordered by Zeus. Autonomy does not require that choices have no prior causes; it lies in reason’s power to judge its own judgements and so improve our character.
Drew on Chrysippus
4th century CE
Augustine
Since the Fall, human beings cannot will the good by their own efforts: the will is enslaved to sin until God’s grace sets it free. Against the Pelagians, Augustine held that salvation rests on grace given freely, not on human merit.
5th century CE
Proclus
Divine foreknowledge does not remove human choice, because knowledge takes its character from the knower. The gods know what is contingent without contingency, and what is in time timelessly.
About 400 years later
9th century CE
John Scottus Eriugena
God, who is good, wills everyone to be saved and predestines no one to damnation; since he is outside time, he cannot strictly foreknow or predestine at all. Human nature is rational and so free, and people damn themselves by their own choices.
Drew on Augustine
11th century
al-Ghazali
God creates and determines everything, human actions included, and is the only true agent in the world. Every event follows a plan eternally present in God’s knowledge, though for practical purposes we may speak of God acting through chains of causes.
14th century
Gersonides
Human choice is genuinely open. To keep it so, Gersonides accepted a limit on divine knowledge: God knows that a free choice could go either way, but not which way it will go, since foreknowledge would leave nothing contingent.
Hasdai Crescas
Taking every cause into account, a person could only have chosen as they did; yet the choice is still theirs, made willingly. Crescas held that this strict determinism leaves God’s commandments meaningful.
Drew on and argued against Gersonides
16th century
Desiderius Erasmus
Scripture can be read both for and against free will, and no argument settles the matter, so he deferred to the Church, which affirms it. Denying free will would also leave human conduct without a moral foundation.
17th century
Baruch Spinoza
Everything follows necessarily from God’s nature, so nothing could have been otherwise and there is no will free of causes. Freedom means acting from our own nature and understanding, rather than being driven by outside things and the passions.
Drew on Hasdai Crescas
Nicolas Malebranche
Although God causes everything that happens in nature, we remain free to consent or not to the motives that move us. That freedom is essential to his answer to the problem of evil.
Drew on Augustine
18th century
Immanuel Kant
Blame presupposes that the agent could have done otherwise at the time, so merely acting on inner causes is not freedom enough. The determinism of science governs only appearances, which leaves room for freedom in the self as it is in itself.
20th century
Jean-Paul Sartre
Human beings are radically free, since consciousness is how nothingness enters the world. That freedom is always situated in a body and a set of circumstances, and is realised only in our projects and actions; bad faith is the attempt to evade it.