The Problem Of Freedom And Necessity In Human Action

This book, first published in 1987, is about the classic free will problem, construed in terms of the implications of moral responsibility. The principal thesis is that the core issue is metaphysical: can scientific laws postulate objectively necessary connections between an action and its causal antecedents? The author concludes they cannot, and that, therefore, free will and determinism can be reconciled.

Christophe Bouton’s Time and Freedom addresses the problem of the relationship between time and freedom as a matter of practical philosophy, examining how the individual lives time and how her freedom is effective in time. Bouton first charts the history of modern philosophy’s reengagement with the Aristotelian debate about future contingents, beginning with Leibniz. While Kant, Husserl, and their followers would engage time through theories of knowledge, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Kierkegaard, and (later), Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas applied a phenomenological and existential methodology to time, but faced a problem of the temporality of human freedom. Bouton’s is the first major work of its kind since Bergson’s Time and Free Will (1889), and Bouton’s “mystery of the future,” in which the individual has freedom within the shifting bounds dictated by time, charts a new direction.

Spinoza was one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment, but his often obscure metaphysics makes it difficult to understand the ultimate message of his philosophy. Although he regarded freedom as the fundamental goal of his ethics and politics, his theory of freedom has not received sustained, comprehensive treatment. Spinoza holds that we attain freedom by governing ourselves according to practical principles, which express many of our deepest moral commitments. Matthew J. Kisner focuses on this theory and presents an alternative picture of the ethical project driving Spinoza's philosophical system. His study of the neglected practical philosophy provides an accessible and concrete picture of what it means to live as Spinoza's ethics envisioned.

This study seeks to present the theory of freedom as found in one line of the Marxist tradition, that which begins with Marx and Engels and continues through Lenin to contemporary Soviet philosophy. Although the primary goal is simply to describe how freedom is con ceived by the thinkers of this tradition, an attempt is also made to ascertain whether or not their views are strongly deterministic, as has often been presumed by Western commentators. is in order regarding the scope of the term 'contemporary A remark Soviet philosophy'. The Soviet stage in Marxist philosophy stretche. s back to the 1917 revolution. However, for the purposes of this study only works published after 1947 were examined, and the vast majority of them date from the 1960's. Apart from the fact that most works of previous periods were not available, bibliographical indications, such as the titles of the articles in Pod znamenem marksizma, did not suggest that the theory of freedom was then a major concern. In fact, even 1947 there was little development of this theme until the upsurge after of works in philosophical anthropology during the last decade. On the other hand, it is not being suggested that the conception of freedom found in recent writings is representative of earlier Soviet philosophy, during the Stalinist 'dead' period or earlier. Only further research could establish that. This work was presented as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, under the direction of Professor J. M.