Susan Wolf on Free Will
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Susan Wolf, in Freedom Within Reason, seeks to shed new light on the age-old philosophical question of free will. The reader's attention may be engaged by the fact that Mick Jagger is quoted on the first page of the book---"I have my freedom, but I don't have much time" (Wolf vii). If that reader expects Wolf's philosophical study of free will to remain on the rock lyric level, he or she will be sorely disappointed. Wolf fulfills all the standards of logical and analytical discourse. On the other hand, in her book she attempts to not only shed new light on free will but to do so in a style which tries to keep the interest of the reader from flagging. As a result, she has fashioned a work which should satisfy both the serious philosopher and the intelligent lay reader who has any interest in the question of free will. Wolf writes that her book is free of any historical survey on the philosophical debate over free will because "I wanted to write an uncluttered book that formulates and addresses problems in the ways I have found to be most natural and beneficial and that will appeal and be accessible to nonspecialists as well as specialists" (Wolf viii). Again, however, if the reader anticipates an A-B-C approach to this primary philosophical question, the book will disappoint. Wolf is a serious philosopher, despite her desire to communicate to "nonspecialists." If the reader can stick with her arguments, step by step, however, he or she will be rewarded with a fresh look a
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is a careful and methodical analyst of the issues of free will, but she keeps her book connected to human and not merely abstract concerns. She believes that she is warranted in maintaining an optimistic view with respect to free will:
To the extent that this book offers answers to these questions, they are answers that will not guarantee that we are . . . free and responsible beings. . . . Nonetheless, the book addresses the metaphysical questions in a spirit that takes pessimism about them to be unwarranted, and in the hope that patience, in philosophy as elsewhere, will have its own proverbial rewards (Wolf 22).
Wolf tries to link as realistically as possible the concepts of individual autonomy and individual responsibility. It is not necessary, she points out, for the individual to be autonomous in order to be responsible to a meaningful degree. Again, she focuses on trying to arrive at a reasonable and realistic definition of human free will. Autonomy is, in fact, "irrelevant" to the question of responsibility (Wolf 66). Wolf is not intent on proving or even suggesting that human beings are autonomous agents acting without restraint in the world. She seeks instead to arrive at a reasonable expectation with respect to re
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Approximate Word count = 1848
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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