The social contract
Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls · 1651 onward
Fair rules are the ones free and equal people could agree to.
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Find a school, a thinker, a lesson or a fallacy
16 matches for “free will”
Schools of thought
Lessons
Free Will and Causes
Week 37 · Who are you, and are you free? · Read it and try its questions now
Being free may mean acting on your own reasons, even though your reasons have causes.
Freedom as Not Being Dominated
Week 40 · Justice and power · School: The social contract · Read it and try its questions now
You can be left alone and still unfree, if someone could interfere at will; republican liberty asks who holds that power over you.
The Dizziness of Freedom
Week 37 · Who are you, and are you free? · School: Existentialism · Read it and try its questions now
Kierkegaard describes anxiety as the dizziness that comes when freedom looks at its own possibility.
Freedom Together
Week 15 · Freedom and choice · School: The ethics of ambiguity · Read it and try its questions now
Beauvoir held that freedom is not something we have alone, like a coat.
The Eternal Present
Week 46 · Time and the hard problem · School: Scholasticism · Read it and try its questions now
If God knows what you will do, are you free? Boethius answered that eternity sees all times at once.
The Harm Principle
Week 5 · Treating people well · School: The social contract · Read it and try its questions now
Limit a person’s freedom to prevent harm to others, not because others disapprove.
Why Allow Suffering?
Week 41 · Faith under question · School: The philosophes · Read it and try its questions now
Replies to the problem of evil point to freedom, growth or our limited view, and each faces hard objections.
Laplace’s Demon
Week 37 · Who are you, and are you free? · Read it and try its questions now
Free will seems squeezed from both sides.
Could You Have Done Otherwise?
Week 37 · Who are you, and are you free? · Read it and try its questions now
Strawson, in Freedom and Resentment from 1962, came at the question differently.
Define the Word
Week 1 · Questions worth asking · Read it and try its questions now
“Fair,” “natural,” “safe,” and “free” can each point at several different tests.
Enough
Week 6 · Living simply · School: Epicureanism · Read it and try its questions now
It is the level at which the body is free of pain and the mind is free of alarm: a meal, a friend, a quiet hour.
The Teleporter
Week 37 · Who are you, and are you free? · Read it and try its questions now
He found this freeing.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Week 39 · Hard cases · Read it and try its questions now
Each is told: if you confess and your partner stays silent, you go free and your partner gets ten years.
Why Socrates Stayed
Week 52 · Bringing it home · School: Platonism · Read it and try its questions now
They raised and educated him, they say, and he chose to stay in the city all his life, free to leave or to persuade them to change.
Three Ways of Living
Week 50 · Will and value · School: Existentialism · Read it and try its questions now
Jun has Saturday free.