Free Will Pessimism

A short clip of Galen Strawson discussing his master argument against the very possibility of free will and moral responsibility; one which applies whether or not determinism is true. This comes from an episode of the In Our Time podcast a few years back on the topic of free will. For more information and full episodes, go to: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl

Uploaded 09-02-26

"The _causa sui_ is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for 'freedom of the will' in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this _causa sui_ and, with more than Baron Munchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness." -Nietzsche

#philosophy #freewill #determinism #causality #causation #metaphysics



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