QuestionsAre we free?Free yet determined, like the water in a river
Are we free?Free without absolute free will

Free yet determined, like the water in a river

Thomas Hobbes 1588 · 1679Without a state, life would be solitary, brutish and short.
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What it claims

One and the same action can be both free and necessary: liberty and necessity are consistent.

Why

Being free means not being prevented from doing what we will; that the willing itself has causes changes nothing.

In short

"Free yet determined, like the water in a river" is an argument by Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, ch. 21) on the question "Are we free?" (answer: free without absolute free will). Its claim: One and the same action can be both free and necessary: liberty and necessity are consistent. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 3 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Leviathan, ch. 21
Valid

If everything I will has a cause, am I still free? Hobbes answers yes, without hesitation. Being free is not escaping causes: it is not being hindered from doing what one wills. The water flowing down a river bed is both free and driven by necessity.

P1Being free means meeting no external impediment: a free man is one who is not hindered from doing what he has a will to do.
P2Every act of the will, every desire, every inclination has a cause, which itself has a cause, in a continuous chain: our volitions are necessary.
P3There are willed actions that nothing external hinders: the man who throws his goods into the sea for fear of sinking does it willingly, and could refuse if he would.
Therefore one and the same action can be both free and necessary: liberty and necessity are consistent.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
The argument is valid with no hidden premise, and each of the three premises is essential. So everything turns on P1, the definition of liberty. If being free only means "not being hindered", the conclusion is almost obvious. His opponents say precisely that this definition is too thin: the real question is not whether I can do what I will, but whether I could have willed otherwise. Hobbes answers in advance that talk of a "free will" misuses words: only a man, a body that moves, can be free or hindered, not a will.
Analogy. A river flows down the valley. Nothing holds it back: it is free to flow. And yet it cannot flow anywhere but downhill: it follows the slope by necessity. For Hobbes, our voluntary actions are exactly like that water.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

J
John Bramhall, English bishop 1645 · attacks premise 1

True liberty is not the absence of external impediment, which animals and even water have: it is the power to choose between two possibilities. If everything is necessary, laws, counsel, praise, blame, rewards and punishments become vain.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Hobbes did reply, but that text is not yet in our corpus.
The debate goes on (our summary) The two men debated in Paris in 1645, then in print until 1658. Hobbes answered in Of Liberty and Necessity (written around 1646, published in 1654 without his consent) and in The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance (1656), not yet in our corpus. His general idea: laws, praise and punishment do not become vain, since they are themselves causes that shape wills. Bramhall holds that punishing a man for an act he could not avoid remains unjust.
Kant 1788 · attacks premise 1

A liberty that consists only in acting without outside constraint, while everything is determined in advance, is hardly better than that of a turnspit which, once wound up, performs its motions by itself. Without a freedom independent of natural causes, there is no moral responsibility left.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1788, after the author's death (1679).
The debate goes on (our summary) A compatibilist answers that Kant's "strong" freedom cannot be observed or even clearly conceived, and that responsibility only requires that the act come from our will. That is Hume's position and, in another form, Spinoza's; Schopenhauer sides with Hobbes about acts, but places freedom in character.
Objection anticipated by Hobbes attacks premise 3

Someone who throws his goods into the sea out of fear, or pays his debt for fear of prison, does not act freely: he is forced.

Hobbes replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Hobbes
Fear and liberty are consistent. He does it very willingly and could refuse if he would: so it is the action of someone free. Likewise, whatever people do for fear of the law, they had the liberty to omit.