Freedom - Determination and Free Will

Freedom is one of the most important concepts which many philosophers devoted times to study and to find definitions revolving it. One of the theories that has a strong relation to it is named determinism; another aspect that has no less important relation to it is called free will. In the following paragraphs, I will show some of the most interesting statements and thoughts regarding determinism and free will that are written and expressed by famous philosophers such as Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, Leibniz and Susan Wolf. In addition, I will also present my own thoughts about these two matters as whether we can have freedom without free will , and whether we can have freedom with free will?

First of all, I will consider what Augustine says about free will in his excerpt of On Free Choice of the Will. Augustine presents the discussion about free will in form of a dialogue between himself and Evodius, and throughout this dialogue, he argues with Evodius about what meaning of free will that he thinks should be. Evodius ask Augustine:

Evodius: Now explain to me, if you can, why God gave human beings free choice of the will, since if we had not received it, we would not have been able to sin.

Agustine replies: If all of this is true, the question you posed has clearly been answered. If human beings are good things, and they cannot do right unless they so will, then they ought to have a free will, without which they cannot do right. True, they can also use free will to sin, but we should not therefore believe that God gave them free will so that they would be able to sin. The fact that human beings could not live rightly without it was sufficient reason for God to give it. The very fact that anyone who uses free will to sin is devinely punished shows that free will was given to enable human beings to live rightly, for such punishment would be unjust if free will had been given both for living rightly and for sinning. ( Pereboom 20)

Thus, we see that free will by God means that human beings should choose the right things to do and should not do wrong things because if God doesn't give us free will, he cannot punish us if we do wrong things. However, that is a divine concept which is explained clearly by Augustine; for Aquinas, free will is something more humanly and earthly because Aquinas thinks that human beings are prone toward errors and sins as a result of the sin that Eva had committed before the earth had its first couple to live on. In Summa Theologica, Aquinas presents his own thoughts about free will in the same format that he uses to write his Treatise on Law which contains statements of objections and then statements of replies. Aqinas thinks that free will and free choices are the same and that they are the powers of selection:

On the contrary, Damascene says free choice is nothing else than the will.

I answer that, the appetitive powers must be proportionate to the apprehensive powers, as we have said above. Now, as on the part of intellectual apprehension we have intellect and reason, so on the part of the intellectual appetite we have will and free choice, which is nothing else but the power of election... But to reason, properly speaking, is to come from one thing to knowledge of another, and so, properly speaking, we reason about conclusions, which are known from the principles. In like manner, on the part of appetite, to will implies the simple appetite for something, and so the will is said to regard the end, which is desired for itself. But to elect is to desire something for the sake of obtaining something else, and so, properly speaking, it regards the means to end... Therefore it is evident that as intellect is to reason, so will is to the elective power, which is free choice. ( Pereboom 40)

Thus, we see that human beings have power to will or to choose according to Aquinas. Next, Aquinas says that voluntary is in human acts and that voluntary is an act consisting in a rational operation. He writes:

On the contrary, Damascene says that the voluntary is an act consisting in a rational operation. Now such are human acts. Therefore there is something voluntary in human acts.

I answer that, there must needs be something voluntary in human acts. In order to make this clear, we must take note that the principle of some acts is within agent, or in that which is moved; whereas the principles of some movements or acts is outside... (Pereboom 43)

God moves man to act, not only by proposing the appetiable to the senses, or by effecting a change in his body, but also moving the will itself; for every movement both of the will and of nature proceeds from God as the First Mover... (Pereboom 45)

So, we see that when we will to do something, God preserves his part in it; however, to do something wrong is sometimes our own fault because to err is human. Aquinas is the philosophyer who sees the distinction between the will and the intellect as lying in their different relationship with the soul. This brings us to the question how the will is related to the intellect. Aquinas' argument is as follows:

It is in the nature of the will to tend toward the good because the good is desirable, or rather is the object of the will. Insofar as the good is the object of the will, it is the object of the mind in the second sense as distinguished by Aquinas above. (Kaphagawani 16)

Thus, another matter and another term is created regarding freedom and choice; that is Determinism in which Leibniz has difficulty making sense of the possibility of human freedom:

This difficulty is in many ways just a version of the old problem of reconciling God's foreknowledge of future events with human freedom. Leibniz realizes these worries in a discussion of Juda's free act to betray Jesus. Of such human decisions Leibniz wants to argue that God inclines our souls without at all necessiating them. Much of Leibniz's point here is that God has made it the case that human beings choose in accord with what we might term 'the law of practical reason': Human beings always choose the apparent good. So what human beings must do is to be on guard against appearances; we must decide or act only after mature deliberation. But given Leibniz's views about the nature of God's choice of the best, whatever decision Judas makes has 'been assured from all eternity.' (Scott-Kakures 156)

Thus, what we do, there seems to be something inside us that determines us to do so with the power of God according to Leibniz. Moreover, recent philosophers do not think about God as a cause of human actions as ancient philosophers did. One of these philosophers is Dr. Spakovsky. More about determinism, Dr. Spakovsky, in his book which is titled Freedom-Determinism, Indeterminism, writes the following paragraph:

This freedom of choice does not mean that this personal choice has no reason or cause. Every free personal choice has its reason and its cause, but they lie in man himself, in his bio-psychical structure and not outside the man, not in his social and cosmic environment. In other words, the difference between a free and an unfree choice is not that a free choice lies outside the character of determination, outside every law of causation, but in the character of determination. All in the universe is determined, and the term 'indeterminism' indicates only that the realization of the given phenomenon or event was on the ground of a free choice among different existential possibilities, i.e., the existence of the given phenomenon or event was not absolutely necessary but only relatively;... (Spakovsky 1)

Thus, we see that Spakovsky uses the term 'bio-psychical structure' to claim as the place where free personal choice lies in. Another philosopher is Hume who thinks that free will is compatible with determinism. We seem to act freely, that is, to determine our own actions, and hence, to be responsible for them. "However, the scientific view of the natural world is that all events are determined. So if we believe determinism is true in the natural world because there is regularity in the relations of events, then we have every reason to think the determinism is true with human behavior as well, for human behavior is just as regular. Indeed, we could have developed our idea of cause from observing the regularity in human behavior even if we had never observed constant conjunctions of events in the material world." (Scott-Kakures 224).

But in my own opinions, our liberty has external constraints such as hereditary, social, political, physiological factors. For example, we may want to fly to the moon on our own power, but we cannot, or we want to eat many fatty foods but we are too fat or overweight, etc. No matter how hard we try, there are external circumstances that will prevent us from doing so, and some of the constrainsts belong to natural law such as in the above example. Thus, liberty is not incompatible with being determined because we are determined by natural laws to do only what we are inclined to do.

Susan Wolf thinks that there is no compatibility between free will and psychological determinism because "Many people believe that if psychological determinism is true, the condition of freedom can never be satified... They therefore conclude that the condition of freedom requires the absence of psychological determinism. And they think this is what we mean to express when we state the condition of freedom in terms of the requirement that the agent 'could have done otherwise'." (Pereboom 200)

She thinks that if a person who does a right action then according to the phrase "could have done otherwise", he or she could have done a bad action instead, or that if a person who does a wrong action then he or she could have done a good action instead. If it is so, then how can we know whether a person should do a good or a bad action if anything he or she does turns out that she or he can do the other opposite action instead? And that is why she thinks that a person is not causally determined at all. The following paragraphs are written by her:

If an agent performs a morally bad action, on the other hand, then his actions can't be determined in the appropriate way. So if an agent is ever to be responsible for a bad action, it must be the case that his action is not psychological determined at all. According to my view, then, in oder for both moral praise and moral blame to be justified, the thesis of psychological determinism must be false. (Pereboom 210)

There is, admittedly, some difficulty in establishing that an agent who performs a morally bad action satisfies the condition of freedom. It is hard to know whether an agent who did one thing could have done another instead... It should be emphasized that the indetermination with which we are here concerned is indetermination at other levels of explanation... the nature of psychological explanation of our behavior cannot be relevant to the problem of free will.

I have suggested that the explanation for why a responsible agent performs a morally bad action must be, at some level, incomplete. There must be nothing that made the agent perform the action he did, nothing prevented him from performing a morally better one. It should be noted that there may be praiseworthy actions for which the explanations are similarly incomplete. For the idea that an agent who could have performed a morally bad action actually performs a morally good one is no less plausible than the idea that an agent who could have performed a morally good action actually performs a morally bad one. (Pereboom 212)

To answer the questions that I stated in the introduction about whether we can have a free will with having freedom and whether we can have a free will without having freedom, I think the first answer is that we can have a freedom but we cannot have a free will, or that we can have freedom without a free will. The reason is that, for example, in our society, America, polygamy is prohibited; thus, if a man who wants to have a free will as to marry two wives at the same time, he won't be able to do it legally. Hence, depending on the culture and the norms or the rules of a society, freedom is defined by that own culture and society, and there are many different cultures and societies; thus, there are different definitions or conceptions of freedom. And since free will is more inclined towards an individual will, it is probably that one who lives in a particular society can have freedom enacted by that particular society, but cannot have his own free will. In another word, a person can have freedom without free will, or cannot have free will with freedom.

The second answer is that if a person has free wills then of course, he or she will have freedom, and this freedom is an absolute freedom or the kind of freedom that harmonizes with her free wills. Thus, we can generally say that to have free wills is to have freedom, but to have freedom is not to have free wills as I already explained in the above paragraph. And this is, for example, in America, freedom is to do anything but not to legally being married with two people at the same time. And it is definitely that in a society, we can have freedom based on the laws, or the beliefs or the norms of that society only and our own free wills, such as polygamy will be opposite and violate with the freedom that we have. Thus, if we have a free will to marry two people at the same time legally without any restriction of freedom in society, then we have total freedom.

Works Cited

Kaphagawani, Didier. Leibniz of Freedom and Determinism in Relation to Aquinas and Molina. Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1999.

Pereboom, Derek. Free Will. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997.

Scott-Kakures, et al. History of Philosophy. New York: HarperCollins College Outline, HarperCollins Publisher, 1993.

Spakovsky, Anatol. Freedom - Determinism Indeterminism. Netherlands: The Hague Co., 1963.

Locke vs. Hobbes in Civil Government

1a) In Chapter IV of the Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke says that for humans lawlessness is not liberty, that human freedom requires that we follow certain laws and not merely do whatever we please. What is his argument for this?

The first argument for saying that liberty is not lawlessness comes from the ideas about the state of nature that Locke presents in Chapter II of his book, The Second Treatise of Civil Government. In paragraph 6 of that chapter, Locke writes:

But thought this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license... The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions... and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses... so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

Locke means that there is an obligation for each person to preserve not only his or her freedom but also others' freedom. All people should know or legislate this law, but the power to enforce it is up to each being in the state of nature. He writes:

And that all men may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into everyman's hands. (Chapter II, paragraph 7)

Thus, according to Locke, the state of nature has its own laws that he is trying to point out, and by organizing these laws into his Treatise, he also establishes his own laws of which the first law, reparation, states that each person is bound to preserve him or herself not in competition, but in regarding to others' preservation as well. The second law is punishment which is explained in the following paragraph:

And thus, in the state of nature, one man comes by a power over another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of his own will; but only to retribute to him so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to his transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment... And in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the Law of Nature ( Chapter II, paragraph 8)

Obviously, therefore, human lawlessness is not liberty since in the state of nature, Locke believes that human beings are not completely freedom and still know what rights and their responsibilities are

1b) According to Locke, does a "civil society" have the right to take power over (e.g., imprision) those with whom it is justly in a "state of war"?

Yes, according to Locke, a "civil society" have the right to take power over those with whom it is justly in a "state of war" for the following reasons:

First of all, according to Locke, although the state of nature is not a state of war, it also can easily become one whenever someone is threatening the self-preservation of another. Killing may become the result in a fight, and because there is no judge to resolve the disputes in the state of nature, such states of war will exist as long as there are conflicts that are hard to solve if there is no specific laws to differentiate the right and the wrong. Thus, there are definitely wars in the state of nature and wars are inevitable. Because of freedom that each person in the state of nature has as his or her legislative, judicial and executive powers which will result in wars of all against all, Locke thinks that it is necessary to establish a political society as a "civil society" to make people give up their own powers that they have in the state of nature and in turn to make decisions by a majority group. He writes:

Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that law in others, as his persuaded the offence deserves, even death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion requires it. But because no political society can be, nor subsist, without, having in itself the power to preserve the property, and in order thereunto, punish the offences of all those of that society; there, and there only is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that excluded him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it... Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another: but those who have no such common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the state of nature, each being, where there is no other, judge for himself, and executioner; which is , as I have before shewed it, the perfect state of nature. (Chapter 7, paragraph 87)

Thus, when this civil society is established, which is called the common-wealth, everyone must give up his or her own powers to the common-wealth and let them be their representatives with powers to set down the punishment for offenders who they think deserve to be punished:

And this the common-wealth comes by a power to set down what punishment shall belong to the several transgression which they think worthy of it, committed amongst the members of that society, (which is the power of making laws) as well as it has the power to punish any injury done unto any of its members, by anyone that is not of it, (which is the power of war and peace;) and all this for the preservation of the property of all the members of that society, as far as is possible. But though every man who has entered into civil society, and is become a member of nay commonwealth, has thereby quitted his power to punish offences, against the law of nature, in prosecution of his own private judgment, yet with the judgment of offences, which he has given up to the legislative in all cases, where has can appeal to the magistrate, he has given a right to the common-wealth, whenever he shall be called to it; which indeed are his own judgments, they being made by himself, or his representatives. (Chapter 7, paragraph 88)



1c) According to Locke, do humans in a "civil society" have the right to enslave those with whom they are at peace? Can a group of people who attack others for purposes of seizing people or land be considered a "civil society"?

No, according to Locke, a "civil society" doesn't have the right to enslave those with whom they are at peace. Nor can a group of people who attack others for purposes of seizing people or land be considered a "civil society" in the following paragraphs that he writes:


But there is another sort of servants, which by a peculiar name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war, are by the right of nature subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives, and with it, their liberties, and lost their estates; and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part civil society; the chief and whereof is the preservation of property. (Chapter 7, paragraph 85)

And according to Hume, absolute domination of one human over another is also not consistent with "civil society":

If man in the state of nature be so free, a has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to nobody, why will he part with his freedom? Why will he gives up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and controul of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others: for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justive, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure. This makes him willing to quit a condition, which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name property. (An Enqiry, Chapter IX, paragraph 123)


2a) According to Hobbes, is it possible to live according to laws of nature without living in "the original condition of man"?

Yes, according to Hobbes, it is possible to live in compliance with the laws of nature without living in "the original condition of man". We know that the original condition of man includes the state of nature which according to Hobbes, are free and equal Hobbes writes:

The right of nature, which writers commonly call just naturale, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of doing anything which, in his own judgment and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. (Leviathan, Chapter 14, paragraph 1)

Hobbes thinks that human beings desire freedom and want to preserve well their own happiness. But in the state of nature which is also a state of equality, human beings think that themselves have the same rights with other people, and therefore, they think it is reasonable for each of them to do anything that can be proved to be necessary for his or her to preserve themselves well. Hobbes writes: "Moreover, each of us is free in the sense that each has a natural right to 'use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature... " Since in nature, resources are scarce, the state of nature is also considered the state of scarcity. Thus, Hobbes believes that in order to preserve themselves well over these scarce resources, human beings will inevitably fight one another over these resources, and so conflicts and wars will burst out. And the result is that one will fight against another. Since the desire for self-preservation will lead us into conflicts which is a war of all against all, Hobbes describes that life is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short... " To avoid war, Hobbes thinks we need some reasons or laws that command people to live in a more effective way to preserve themselves. And this is the reason why Hobbes create the first law of nature that we need, rules of reason, to dictate the most effective way to avoid war and to seek peace. Hobbes says:

and because the condition of man is a condition of war every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, there is nothing he can make use of that may not be help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body... And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endevour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is: to seek peace and follow it. (Leviathan, Chapter 14, paragraph 4)

But the first law seems not to be clear of what people are expected to do, and therefore can still cause people to fight against people. To be more specific as what people should do to seek peace, Hobbes creates the second law which holds that "a man be willing, when others are so too... as for peace... to lay down his right to all things and be contented with so much libery against other men, as he would allow other men against himself."

In conclusion, to live by the state of nature is to live in war, and to escape war, we must line in compliance with the laws of nature. Therefore, it is possible to live according to the laws of nature without living in the state of nature.

2b) According to Locke, is it possible to live according to laws of nature without living in a "state of nature"?

No, according to Locke, it is not possible to live according to the laws of nature without living in the state of nature for the following reasons: For Locke, the state of nature is not a state of war where all fight against all. He thinks that a state of nature is a state of freedom, but this freedom is not license to everyone, and it must be shared among the citizens. Locke writes in his Treaties that:

But thought this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license: though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare reservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions... Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb or goods of another." (The Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapter 2, paragraph 6)

And this obligation that all persons are expected to continue to preserve their rights in safeguarding other people's rights is used in the laws of nature created by Locke. The first law, reparation, derives from the right of each person his or her self-preservation. The second law, which is about punishment, obligates each peson to preserve all other humankind. Thus, libery is not totally that one can do everything he or she wants to do because people in the state of nature are still under the laws of nature, and these laws secure each person's right to life and property in accordance with others' rights also. Since everyone is aware that living in a state of nature is just living in the laws of nature which reserves everyone's right and punish people for wrong doings, there is not necessary for people to fight against others since their rights are preserved by laws. Thus, a state of nature is not a state of war according to Locke.

In addition, when regarding to property rights, Locke thinks that since under the laws of nature, a right to property is that each person has a property for himself or herself, and that each person is obligated to uphold every other person's right to such a property. Therefore, to have a property in oneself is to have it through one's labor. However, according to Locke, although the state of nature is not necessary a state of war, the fight for properties can bring people to a war between them, and thus it is not completely impossible to have war in the state of nature. Therefore, both Locke and Hobbes agrees toward a method to solve this problem; that is, to establish a political society with a leader so that he can help create the appropriate laws, enforce these laws as well as practice these laws.