Freedom and Personality

Philosophy ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 14 (55) ◽  
pp. 259-280
Author(s):  
A. E. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Practical Situation ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Speculative Hypothesis

Is it possible to say anything on the well-worn theme of human freedom or unfreedom which has not been ahready better said by someone else before us? It may be doubted; yet it is always worth while to see whether we cannot at least set what is perhaps already familiar to us in a fresh light and so come to a clearer comprehension of our own meaning. This, at any rate, is all that will be attempted in these pages; I have spoken in an earlier essay of the “practical situation” in which we find ourselves whenever we have to make a decision as involving indetermination, and my purpose is simply to make it plainer to myself, and so incidentally perhaps to a reader, what I mean by such an expression. I shall start, then, by adopting what we may perhaps agree to call a phenomenological attitude to the subject; that is, I will try to describe the facts in a way which anyone who recalls occasions when he has been driven to take a decision will recognize as faithful to his experience, without imparting into the description any element of explanatory speculative hypothesis. The description is meant to be one which will be admitted to be true to the “appearances,” independently of any theory about the “freedom of the will”—to describe correctly that which it is the object of all such theories to explain.

Augustine on will, freedom, and foreknowledge: De libero arbitrio, III, 1–3

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-332
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER HUGHES
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
The Third ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

AbstractTowards the beginning of the third book of De libero arbitrio, Augustine defends the compatibility of human freedom and divine foreknowledge. His defence appears to involve the idea that the will is essentially free. I discuss and evaluate Augustine's reasons for thinking that the will is essentially free, and the way that Augustine moves from the essential freedom of the will to the compatibility of human freedom and divine foreknowledge.

Jonathan Edwards and the “American Difference”: Pragmatic Reflections on the “Sense of the Heart”

1987 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Theological Method ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Logical Necessity ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

Early in Freedom of the Will Jonathan Edwards formulates a description of logical necessity that has important implications for the way we understand both his philosophical and theological method. He describes the principal forms of necessary meaning, delineating three modes of necessity: philosophical, moral and natural. Of these, the first is most important, for it indicates that, at the highest level, meaning is determined according to the structure of a proposition. Edwards states that “philosophical necessity is nothing different from certainty,” and the form of certainty, he tells us, “[is] nothing else than the full and fixed connection between the things signified by the subject and predicate of a proposition.”

Mental Faculties, the Moral Law, and Human Motivation

2021 ◽  
pp. 38-60
Author(s):  
Mark Timmons
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Human Motivation ◽  
Practical Principle ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals

This chapter addresses the following topics pertaining to Section II of the general introduction to The Metaphysics of Morals: 1. Kant’s conception of the faculty of desire and its relation to the faculties of feeling and cognition; 2. The significance of Kant’s distinction between will and choice in relation to human freedom of the will; 3. The distinction between maxims and imperatives as two fundamental types of practical principle; and 4. Kant’s conception of both nonmoral and moral motivation—the latter fundamental for understanding Kant’s theory of virtue. The chapter establishes Kant’s background ideas on these ideas and faculties and also addresses aspects of his theory of action.

Calvin, Bernard and the Freedom of the Will

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Brümmer
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Libertarian View

In his Institutes 2.2.5 Calvin declares that he ‘willingly accepts’ the distinction between freedom from necessity, from sin and from misery originally developed by St Bernard. It is remarkable that a determinist like Calvin seems here to accept a libertarian view of human freedom. In this paper I set out Bernard's doctrine of the three kinds of freedom and show that all its basic elements can in fact be found in Calvin's argument in chapters 2 and 3 of the Institutes part II. Towards the end of chapter 3, however, Calvin's doctrine of ‘perseverance’ makes him revert to a deterministic view of the divine-human relationship. I show that the considerations which prompt Calvin to this can be adequately met on the basis of Bernard's libertarian concept of human freedom.

Notes on Mental Defect in Criminals

1917 ◽  
Vol 63 (260) ◽  
pp. 16-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Donkin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Deficiency ◽  
The Other ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Appropriate Treatment ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Criminal Conduct ◽  
Mental Defect

I. In pursuance of the intention, signified in my “Notes on the Mental Deficiency Act” in the Journal for July, 1916, to consider, as practically as may be, the subject of mental defect as a factor in the production of crime, I find it desirable to make some introductory remarks concerning the recently increasing literature of what is known as “Criminology.” This term may be properly applied to investigations undertaken with a view to giving such an account of criminal conduct and criminal men as may assist in the formation of practical measures towards the prevention of the one and the appropriate treatment of the other. Most of the more modern discussions on crime and criminals have either directly or indirectly been occasioned by the efforts of persons concerned in some way with prison administration, or otherwise specially conversant with convicted criminals, who strive to discover just principles on which to base their practice. But the growing bulk of doctrine and debate on the causation of crime, the genesis and treatment of the criminal, the meaning of “responsibility,” and even the State's “right” to “punish” offenders at all, consists to a great extent of definitely formulated theories largely based on preconceived assumptions regardless of fact, and often mutually contradictory. This occasions much difficulty to those who aim at any clear understanding of the subject; and the difficulty is increased by the frequently indefinite and equivocal use of the words “crime,” “criminal,” and “punishment,” which denote the very subjects of discussion. Thus the handling of the whole matter becomes widely diffused, leaving no firm ground on which to rest any useful conclusion. Sundry kinds of topics, sociological, ethical, psychological, and biological, become involved in the dispute, and the student may even be landed and left in the midst of such perennial controversies as those about the “freedom of the will,” and the nature, and even existence, of the relation between mind and matter.

Higher Necessity

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg U. Noller ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will

The aim of this paper is to analyze Schelling’s compatibilist account of freedom of the will particularly in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809). I shall argue that against Kant’s transcendental compatibilism Schelling proposes a “volitional compatibilism,” according to which the free will emerges out of nature and is not identical to practical reason as Kant claims. Finally, I will relate Schelling’s volitional compatibilism to more recent accounts of free will in order to better understand what he means by his concept of a “higher necessity.”

Without the Power to Drink or Contract

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48
Author(s):  
Warren Swain
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Current Position ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
Over Time

Intoxication as a ground to set aside a contract is not something that has proved to be easy for the law to regulate. This is perhaps not very surprising. Intoxication is a temporary condition of varying degrees of magnitude. Its presence does however raise questions of contractual autonomy and individual responsibility. Alcohol consumption is a common social activity and perceptions of intoxication and especially alcoholism have changed over time. Roman law is surprisingly quiet on the subject. In modern times the rules about intoxicated contracting in Scottish and English law is very similar. Rather more interestingly the law in these two jurisdictions has reached the current position in slightly different ways. This history can be traced through English Equity, the works of the Scottish Institutional writers, the rise of the Will Theory, and all leavened with a dose of judicial pragmatism.

Grace and Freedom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Will ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
The Church

Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or “Calvinist” theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with a focus on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, and his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his contemporaries affirmed that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insisted on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of libertarian freedom or compatibilism. In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of various Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and on several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called second scholasticism. His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the Continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.

The Mystery of Freedom

2020 ◽  
pp. 192-206
Author(s):  
Pilar López de Santa María
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Different Parts

Freedom is the focus of the first of the writings included in The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. The attention that Schopenhauer devotes to the subject does not stop here, however, since freedom appears recurrently in different parts of his system. It is linked to his theory of knowledge, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the denial of the will. This chapter follows that track and examines the presence in different contexts of Schopenhauerian thought of a freedom that is so undeniable as unexplainable. In this way will be shown Schopenhauer’s transition from the freedom of the voluntas to the freedom of noluntas [non-willing] and the state of great liberation that occurs because the will frees itself from itself. It is a transition that begins and ends at the same point: mystery

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