Are we free? Philosophers give 3 main answers: free will, free without absolute free will and no free will. AskPhilosophy presents 31 arguments, from Chrysippe to Stephen Hawking, reconstructed step by step, logic-checked and verified word for word against their original texts.
The 3 possible answers
Each column is one way of answering the question: what it holds and the philosophers who defend it. Click a column to see only its arguments.
We can truly choose: our decisions are not written in advance.
René Descartes, Kant, Machiavel, Sartre…
Everything has a cause, yet we are free when we act from ourselves, without constraint.
Voltaire, Hobbes, Hume, Chrysippe…
Our choices are determined (by nature, the body, society): the feeling of freedom is an illusion.
Marx, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Schopenhauer…
The arguments
Click an argument to see it step by step, with the objections and replies.
Free will
We can truly choose: our decisions are not written in advance.
12 argumentsThe infinite will: what makes us like God
Only my will has no limit I can conceive, and my clearest inner experience shows me that I act without constraint.
You ought, therefore you can: the moral law reveals our freedom
We are conscious of an unconditional duty, and ought implies can: so we recognise ourselves as free.
Fortune and virtù: half our actions depend on us
Like dikes built before a flood, what we prepare limits the damage fortune can do.
Bad faith: we are free, and we flee that freedom
We can only flee what we know: someone who hides his freedom from himself therefore knows he is free.
Existence precedes essence: we are condemned to be free
Without a God to design man, there is no human nature: man exists first and defines himself afterwards.
A little free will, much grace
If the will were not free at all, punishing would be mad or cruel, like whipping a chained slave; yet God is just.
The swerve: atoms deviate, so the will is free
If atoms only fell and collided, everything would be fixed in advance; a slight swerve breaks the chain.
If everything is necessary, our regrets are absurd: determinism has only bad ways out
To regret a crime is to hold that something else could have happened; if all is fixed, we must give up regret or call the world flawed.
An agent can be the cause of his acts
We are naturally convinced that we cause our own decisions, and nothing has shown that this conviction deceives us.
The free act springs from the whole self, and lived time is not space
Determinism replaces lived time with its picture in space; yet some acts spring from our whole personality, and from it alone.
The last of the human freedoms: choosing one's attitude
Even in the camp, where everything can be taken from a man, there remains the choice of the attitude he takes, and so of what he becomes.
If determinism is true, nothing we do is up to us
If determinism is true, our acts follow from the distant past and the laws of nature, and we can do nothing about those.
Free without absolute free will
Everything has a cause, yet we are free when we act from ourselves, without constraint.
8 argumentsBeing free is being able to do what one wills
Everything has a cause, so my will does too; but I am free whenever I can do what I want.
Free yet determined, like the water in a river
Being free means not being prevented from doing what we will; that the willing itself has causes changes nothing.
Liberty is opposed to constraint, not to necessity
In human actions as in matter, the same motives produce the same conduct: necessity is only an observed regularity.
Everything is fated, but the cylinder rolls by its own shape
An outside push only starts the act: how we respond comes from the nature of our own mind, so it depends on us.
The only freedom worth wanting
The freedom that matters is the natural ability to deliberate and act on reasons, and determinism does not remove it.
Responsible without being able to do otherwise: Frankfurt cases
Jones acts on his own, though Black would have forced the same act: he is responsible without being able to do otherwise.
Being free is having the will you want to have
We can want one desire rather than another: being free is having the will we want to have, even in a determined world.
You may chain my leg, but not my will
My body can be chained, but no one can impose what I judge and what I choose: that freedom stays whole.
No free will
Our choices are determined (by nature, the body, society): the feeling of freedom is an illusion.
11 argumentsSocial existence determines consciousness
To produce, people enter relations they did not choose, and those relations shape their ideas.
Free will as self-causation?
Being free in the strong sense would mean being the cause of oneself, which is contradictory: one would have to exist before existing.
The stone that would think itself free
Every act of will has a cause, and we feel free only because we do not know what causes our desires.
Doing what we will, but not willing what we will
Each act results from an innate character and a motive acting as a cause: we can do what we will, but not will otherwise.
The intellect that would see the whole future
Every effect has a cause, even the will: the present follows from the past, so an intelligence knowing everything could see the future.
Man, a part of nature
Humans are part of nature and obey its laws: their wills have causes, and they are master of nothing they desire.
The brain acts before we decide
The brain activity preparing the movement begins before the moment when the subject reports deciding to move.
To be responsible, one would have to be the cause of oneself
Being responsible for our actions would require having chosen what we are, which would mean creating ourselves, which is impossible.
We are biological machines: free will is a convenient illusion
The brain follows physical laws like the planets: if our acts come from it, where could free will act?
I do not believe in free will: what it changes is indulgence and good humour
If nobody chooses what they will, we can understand others' acts without losing our temper, and not take ourselves too seriously.
The will is a beast of burden: God or Satan rides it
God foresees and wills everything unchangeably, so everything happens necessarily: the will does not choose its master.
Other philosophers' positions arrive as profiles are completed. No position is presented as the winner.