Fate and Foreknowledge in Greek Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-72
Author(s):  
Claire Hall
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Logical Problem ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Future Contingent ◽  
The Future ◽  
Human Autonomy

The majority of this chapter focuses on Greek philosophical approaches to fate and foreknowledge. To understand the background of Origen’s thought on these topics, we must distinguish between three distinct types of problem: a) logical problems that concern the possibility of making true statements about the contingent future, b) the problem of how human beings can be held morally responsible for their actions if their actions are fated, and c) the problem of how human beings can choose freely between courses of action if God (or the gods) can have foreknowledge of the future. This chapter shows where and why these conceptions of fate, prophecy, and human autonomy differ, and why these distinctions matter. First, it examines the puzzles set and answered by Aristotle concerning the logical problem of future contingent statements. Then it explores some of the terminological difficulty in talking about ‘free will’ in the Greek context. Next it examines Stoic and Platonist discussions about choice and autonomy, which focus primarily on ethical considerations. Finally, it argues that Origen’s framing of these issues was heavily influenced by his pagan near-contemporary Alexander of Aphrodisias. The chapter ends with a survey of some other early Christian texts on autonomy and moral responsibility that show the Christian context in which Origen was arguing and sets the stage for the argument that Origen deviates significantly from his Christian contemporaries.

Can Libertarians Make Promises?

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 217-241
Author(s):  
Alfred Mele
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Van Inwagen ◽  
Peter Van Inwagen

Libertarians hold that free action and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism and that some human beings occasionally act freely and are morally responsible for some of what they do. Can libertarians who know both that they are right and that they are free make sincere promises? Peter van Inwagen, a libertarian, contends that they cannot—at least when they assume that should they do what they promise to do, they would do it freely. Probably, this strikes many readers as a surprising thesis for a libertarian to hold. In light of van Inwagen's holding it, the title of his essay—‘Free Will Remains a Mystery’—may seem unsurprising.

Once More on the Free Will Defence

1974 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel D. Steuer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Considerable Portion ◽  
Christian Understanding

In responding to the problem that evil poses for belief in the existence of an omnipotent and all good deity, a number of Christian philosophers have followed Augustine in making the free will defence (FWD) the foundation of their theodicies. The FWD seems to be well suited for the important role it has played in Christian religious thought. Not only does it admit the reality of evil in God's world, but it also proposes to free God from moral responsibility for at least a considerable portion of that evil. A few philosophers, e.g. Terence Penelhum, have even argued that ‘… the Christian theist is committed to some form or other of the free will defence …’ because of the Christian understanding of the nature of God and man. Whether or not this is true, the argument that it was not possible for God to create free human beings without permitting some degree of evil in his world (the FWD) has been sufficiently influential that those sceptics who have intended to show that the reality of evil makes theism an intellectually indefensible position have usually felt compelled to treat it. For similar reasons, a number of theistic philosophers have felt obligated to defend the FWD against such sceptical attacks.

scholarly journals Free Will Skepticism and Personhood as a Desert Base

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Vilhauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Substantial Role ◽  
Free Will Skepticism ◽  
Will Theory

In contemporary free will theory, a significant number of philosophers are once again taking seriously the possibility that human beings do not have free will, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. (Free will is understood here as whatever satisfies the control condition of moral responsibility.) Free will theorists commonly assume that giving up the belief that human beings are morally responsible implies giving up all our beliefs about desert. But the consequences of giving up the belief that we are morally responsible are not quite this dramatic. Giving up the belief that we are morally responsible undermines many, and perhaps most, of the desert claims we are pretheoretically inclined to accept. But it does not undermine desert claims based on the sheer fact of personhood. Even in the absence of belief in moral responsibility, personhood-based desert claims require us to respect persons and their rights. So personhood-based desert claims can provide a substantial role for desert in free will skeptics’ ethical theories.

scholarly journals Francisco Suarez on God’s Knowledge of Future Contingent Events

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-151
Author(s):  
Ivan Vladimirovich Lupandin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
The World ◽  
Future Contingent ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Francisco Suarez

The problems of contingency, free will, omniscience and omnipotence of God, possible worlds, posed by the famous representative of the second scholasticism, the Spanish philosopher Francisco Suarez (1548–1617) in his work “On God’s knowledge of future contingent events” are discussed in the historical, philosophical and theological context. Suarez (unlike, for example, Spinoza) recognizes the existence of contingent events in the world, shows that the existence of contingent events does not diminish the omnipotence of God. Suarez, following Thomas Aquinas, shows how it is possible to reconcile the existence of free will, the main source of contingency, with the omniscience of God. As Luis Molina, Suarez recognizes God’s knowledge not only of real, but also of possible future. The originality of Suarez manifests itself in solving the question of how God knows possible future events and, accordingly, possible worlds. Attention is paid to the influence of Suarez’s philosophy on the philosophy of modern times, including Descartes and Leibniz. The reader is also offered a translation of the first chapter of the second part of the essay of the Spanish philosopher and theologian Francisco Suarez “On God’s knowledge of future contingent events”, in which Suarez on the basis of the hermeneutics of the Biblical texts proves the thesis about God’s knowledge of future contingent events, which could have happened, but in reality had not happened and will not happen in the future, disproving the arguments of Catholic theologians Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484–1553) and Jansenius of Ghent (1510–1576), who questioned the assertion that God possesses such knowledge. The translation is provided with comments, an introductory article and a list of references.

Social sciences, prediction in

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eerik Lagerspetz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Methodological Problems

Prediction is important in science for two reasons. First human beings have a practical interest in knowing the future. Therefore, all science is potentially predictive in the sense that its results may be used as a basis for expectations. Second, a test of our beliefs is the truth of the predictions we can derive from them. In the social sciences, however, predictions are often supposed to create specific philosophical and methodological problems, the roots of which are the following: the phenomena studied in the social sciences are so complex and so interrelated that it is practically impossible to formulate law-like generalizations about them; human beings are supposed to possess free will; and the predictions may themselves modify the phenomena predicted.

Open theism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
No Value ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Open Theism ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Future Contingent ◽  
The Future

Open theism is the name for a model of God which emphasizes divine love and responsiveness to creatures. It arises from a family of theologies known as free-will theism which accentuate the divine gift of freedom to humans and hold that God does not micromanage the affairs of the world. The name open theism was coined in the 1990s by a group of philosophers and theologians in order to distinguish it within the free-will theistic family. God is ‘open’ to creatures in that God is affected by what creatures do and God genuinely interacts and enters into dynamic give-and-take relationships with creatures. These reciprocal relationships mean that God has a history which includes changing mental and emotional states. As a consequence, open theists affirm that God is temporal and everlasting rather than atemporal and timeless. Open theists believe that God is omnipotent but chooses not to exercise tight control over creation. Instead, God grants to creatures great latitude to act within boundaries. Because God chooses to elicit our free collaboration in divine plans God takes risks that we will act in ways contrary to the divine intentions. According to open theists the future is ‘open’ as well because it contains multiple possible futures that may or may not come about rather than solely one unalterable future. The future is not a blueprint or script but rather a set of possibilities, and God solicits the cooperation of creatures in order to bring some of these possibilities into existence. Since the future is not determined and humans have genuine free will, God does not know with certainty future contingent actions. Rather, God possesses ‘dynamic omniscience’ in which God has exhaustive knowledge of the past and present and understands what we call ‘the future’ as the possibilities which could occur along with any events God has determined to occur. Divine omniscience is dynamic in that God constantly acquires knowledge of which possible future actions creatures select to actualize. Open theists reject standard accounts of divine foreknowledge because they believe that they are incompatible with human freedom, they are of no value to God in terms of planning and acting in world affairs and they fail to correspond with the biblical portrayal of God.

Ultimate Responsibility and Dumb Luck

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred R. Mele
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ultimate Responsibility ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Universe

My topic lies on conceptual terrain that is quite familiar to philosophers. For others, a bit of background may be in order. In light of what has filtered down from quantum mechanics, few philosophers today believe that the universe is causally deterministic (or “deterministic,” for short). That is, to use Peter van Inwagen's succinct definition of “determinism,” few philosophers believe that “there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.” Even so, partly for obvious historical reasons, philosophers continue to argue about whether free will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism. Compatibilists argue for compatibility, and incompatibilists argue against it. Some incompatibilists maintain that free will and moral responsibility are illusions. But most are libertarians, libertarianism being the conjunction of incompatibilism and the thesis that at least some human beings are possessed of free will and moral responsibility.

Schuldfähigkeit trotz fehlender Willensfreiheit? Eine Analyse der Position Ibn Taymiyyas. Mit einer Übersetzung seiner al-Qaṣīda at-tāʾiyya

Der Islam ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-202
Author(s):  
Farid Suleiman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
European Language ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Eine Analyse ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Ibn Taymiyya ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Sense Of Justice

AbstractIf all things and events, including human actions, are predetermined by God since pre-eternity, then what space is left for human freedom of will, and hence, for moral responsibility? In the beginning of the 14th century, a non-Muslim scholar, probably of Jewish faith, confronted several Muslim scholars from Damascus and Cairo with precisely this question in versified form. Among them is the well-known Ḥanbalī theologian and jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), who is said to have responded instantly with a 184-verse poem (of which 125 verses are extant). This article provides an analysis of Ibn Taymiyya’s stance on the question of how it can be said that God is just in predetermining and judging human actions and compares it to that of Faḫr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī. The article ends with the first full translation of the versified question and Ibn Taymiyya’s response into a European language. Both thinkers depart from similar positions, insofar as both deny human free will. However, while Ibn Taymiyya tries to show that the fact that God will hold human beings accountable for their predetermined actions does not go against our inborn sense of justice, ar-Rāzī adduces that fact as part of his strategy to show that God’s actions cannot be subject to rational moral assessment, as they would otherwise have to be declared as senseless and even harmful.

The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-50
Author(s):  
Susanne Bobzien
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Alexander Of Aphrodisias

This chapter presents evidence that the ‘discovery’ of the problem of causal determinism and freedom of decision in Greek philosophy is the result of a combination and mix-up of Aristotelian and Stoic thought in later antiquity; more precisely, a (mis-)interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of deliberate choice and action in the light of the Stoic theory of determinism and moral responsibility. The (con-)fusion originates with the beginnings of Aristotle scholarship, at the latest in the early second century CE. It undergoes several developments, absorbing Epictetan, Middle Platonist, and Peripatetic ideas; and it leads eventually to a concept of freedom of decision and an exposition of the ‘free-will problem’ in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Fate and in the Mantissa ascribed to him. The notion of a will originates only with early Christians and in later ancient Platonist thought.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document