Leibniz and Frankfurt on Freedom
The history of the debate on free will is sometimes narrated as follows: first, we have the 'classic compatibilists', starting from Hobbes, through Locke, Hume, and the positivists. At first these fellows square off against libertarians like Bramhall and Reid, who are (so the story goes) deservedly obscure. The debate is terribly unsophisticated: the compatibilists hold that freedom just is the ability to do what you want to do, the absence of any sort of external constraints. The libertarians require some kind of magic 'contra-causal' agent causation they can't explain. They slowly die out as English language philosophy is purified...
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Topic(s):
Augustine
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
David Hume
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Ethics
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Free Will
,
G. W. Leibniz
,
Harry Frankfurt
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Historical Thinkers
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John Bramhall
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John Locke
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Martin Luther
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Metaphysics
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Moral Psychology
,
Peter van Inwagen
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Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Mind
,
Roderick Chisholm
,
Thomas Hobbes
,
Thomas Reid
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