Philosophers typically see the issue of free will and determinism in terms of a debate between two standard positions. Incompatibilism holds that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature. According to compatibilism, people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a path between these traditional positions: We are not free and responsible, she argues, for actions that are governed by desires that we cannot help having. But the wish to form our own desires from nothing is both futile and arbitrary. Some of the forces beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it: they endow us with faculties of reason, perception, and imagination, and provide us with the data by which we come to see and appreciate the world for what it is. The independence we want, Wolf argues, is not independence from the world, but independence from forces that prevent or preclude us from choosing how to live in light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. The freedom we want is a freedom within reason and the world.

Philosophers typically see the issue of free will and determinism in terms of a debate between two standard positions. Incompatibilism holds that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature. According to compatibilism, people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a path between these traditional positions: We are not free and responsible, she argues, for actions that are governed by desires that we cannot help having. But the wish to form our own desires from nothing is both futile and arbitrary. Some of the forces beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it: they endow us with faculties of reason, perception, and imagination, and provide us with the data by which we come to see and appreciate the world for what it is. The independence we want, Wolf argues, is not independence from the world, but independence from forces that prevent or preclude us from choosing how to live in light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. The freedom we want is a freedom within reason and the world.

Moving beyond previous scholarship, he gives us a Locke as much concerned with the effective functioning of government as with the roots of its moral legitimacy."--BOOK JACKET.

Proceeds in a logical fashion to show how, when thinking morally, a man can be both free and rational.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The free will problem is the question of whether we have control over how we act, and what this control involves. We typically do not use these words freedom and will when talking about our control over our actions, but for the last 2,000 years or more, Western philosophers have used these words to discuss this problem. #2 The term freedom has two different meanings: political liberty and action control. While enjoying political liberty is one thing, having control over how you act is another. Action control is not related to any relation to the state, while political liberty is. #3 The term will has been used by philosophers in a variety of ways. It has been used to describe a vital psychological capacity that all normal adult humans possess: the ability to make decisions. Freedom of action may even depend on a freedom of decision-making. But since the 17th century, philosophers have argued that there is no such thing as a freedom of decision-making. #4 Our freedom is a freedom of action, and it is not directly up to us what we want or feel. We can, however, influence what we want or feel through our actions. Our control over our actions extends to give us some control over the actions’ consequences.

Examines individual cases of threats to freedom of speech and the press from leftist and rightist political pressure groups during the McCarthy period, the late sixties, and the early seventies.