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What did Aristotle do?

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• The Embryo Project Encyclopedia - Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
• National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Aristotle (384–322 bc): philosopher and scientist of ancient Greece
• University of Washington - Introduction to Aristotle
• Great Thinkers - Aristotle
• Humanities LibreTexts - Biography of Aristotle
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Biography of Aristotle
• University of California Museum of Paleontology - Biography of Aristotle
• World History Encyclopedia - Aristotle
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Biography of Aristotle
• The Ethics Centre - Aristotle, the Ancient Greek Philosopher
• Aristotle - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Aristotle - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
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Aristotle was one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived and the first genuine scientist in history. He made pioneering contributions to all fields of philosophy and science, he invented the field of formal logic , and he identified the various scientific disciplines and explored their relationships to each other. Aristotle was also a teacher and founded his own school in Athens, known as the Lyceum .

After his father died about 367 BCE, Aristotle journeyed to Athens, where he joined the Academy of Plato. He left the Academy upon Plato’s death about 348, traveling to the northwestern coast of present-day Turkey . He lived there and on the island of Lésbos until 343 or 342, when King Philip II of Macedonia summoned him to the Macedonian capital, Pella , to act as tutor to Philip’s young teenage son, Alexander, which he did for two or three years. Aristotle presumably lived somewhere in Macedonia until his (second) arrival in Athens in 335. In 323 hostility toward Macedonians in Athens prompted Aristotle to flee to the island of Euboea, where he died the following year.

Aristotle’s most famous teacher was Plato (c. 428–c. 348 BCE), who himself had been a student of Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE). Socrates, Plato , and Aristotle, whose lifetimes spanned a period of only about 150 years, remain among the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy. Aristotle’s most famous student was Philip II’s son Alexander, later to be known as Alexander the Great , a military genius who eventually conquered the entire Greek world as well as North Africa and the Middle East . Aristotle’s most important philosophical student was probably Theophrastus , who became head of the Lyceum about 323.

Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises and other works covering all areas of philosophy and science . Of those, none survives in finished form. The approximately 30 works through which his thought was conveyed to later centuries consist of lecture notes (by Aristotle or his students) and draft manuscripts edited by ancient scholars, notably Andronicus of Rhodes , the last head of the Lyceum , who arranged, edited, and published Aristotle’s extant works in Rome about 60 BCE. The naturally abbreviated style of these writings makes them difficult to read, even for philosophers.

Aristotle’s thought was original, profound, wide-ranging, and systematic. It eventually became the intellectual framework of Western Scholasticism , the system of philosophical assumptions and problems characteristic of philosophy in western Europe during the Middle Ages . In the 13th century St. Thomas Aquinas undertook to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and science with Christian dogma, and through him the theology and intellectual worldview of the Roman Catholic Church became Aristotelian. Since the mid-20th century, Aristotle’s ethics has inspired the field of virtue theory, an approach to ethics that emphasizes human well-being and the development of character. Aristotle’s thought also constitutes an important current in other fields of contemporary philosophy, especially metaphysics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of science.

Aristotle (born 384 bce , Stagira, Chalcidice , Greece—died 322, Chalcis , Euboea) was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Classical antiquity and Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy . Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance , the Reformation , and the Enlightenment , Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western thinking .

Aristotle’s intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts, including biology , botany , chemistry , ethics , history , logic , metaphysics , rhetoric , philosophy of mind , philosophy of science , physics , poetics, political theory, psychology , and zoology . He was the founder of formal logic , devising for it a finished system that for centuries was regarded as the sum of the discipline; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and theoretical, in which some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century. But he is, of course, most outstanding as a philosopher. His writings in ethics and political theory as well as in metaphysics and the philosophy of science continue to be studied, and his work remains a powerful current in contemporary philosophical debate.

This article deals with Aristotle’s life and thought. For the later development of Aristotelian philosophy , see Aristotelianism . For treatment of Aristotelianism in the full context of Western philosophy, see philosophy, Western .

Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece . His father, Nicomachus, was the physician of Amyntas III (reigned c. 393–c. 370 bce ), king of Macedonia and grandfather of Alexander the Great (reigned 336–323 bce ). After his father’s death in 367, Aristotle migrated to Athens , where he joined the Academy of Plato (c. 428–c. 348 bce ). He remained there for 20 years as Plato’s pupil and colleague.

Many of Plato’s later dialogues date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotle’s contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy. Some of Aristotle’s writings also belong to this period, though mostly they survive only in fragments. Like his master, Aristotle wrote initially in dialogue form, and his early ideas show a strong Platonic influence. His dialogue Eudemus , for example, reflects the Platonic view of the soul as imprisoned in the body and as capable of a happier life only when the body has been left behind. According to Aristotle, the dead are more blessed and happier than the living, and to die is to return to one’s real home.

Another youthful work, the Protrepticus (“Exhortation”), has been reconstructed by modern scholars from quotations in various works from late antiquity. Everyone must do philosophy, Aristotle claims, because even arguing against the practice of philosophy is itself a form of philosophizing. The best form of philosophy is the contemplation of the universe of nature; it is for this purpose that God made human beings and gave them a godlike intellect. All else—strength, beauty, power, and honour—is worthless.

It is possible that two of Aristotle’s surviving works on logic and disputation, the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations , belong to this early period. The former demonstrates how to construct arguments for a position one has already decided to adopt; the latter shows how to detect weaknesses in the arguments of others. Although neither work amounts to a systematic treatise on formal logic, Aristotle can justly say, at the end of the Sophistical Refutations , that he has invented the discipline of logic—nothing at all existed when he started.

During Aristotle’s residence at the Academy, King Philip II of Macedonia (reigned 359–336 bce ) waged war on a number of Greek city-state s. The Athenians defended their independence only half-heartedly, and, after a series of humiliating concessions , they allowed Philip to become, by 338, master of the Greek world. It cannot have been an easy time to be a Macedonian resident in Athens.

Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial. Aristotle always acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato, and his teaching is more often a modification than a repudiation of Plato’s doctrines. Already, however, Aristotle was beginning to distance himself from Plato’s theory of Forms, or Ideas ( eidos ; see form ). (The word Form , when used to refer to Forms as Plato conceived them, is often capitalized in the scholarly literature; when used to refer to forms as Aristotle conceived them, it is conventionally lowercased.) Plato had held that, in addition to particular things, there exists a suprasensible realm of Forms, which are immutable and everlasting. This realm, he maintained, makes particular things intelligible by accounting for their common natures: a thing is a horse, for example, by virtue of the fact that it shares in, or imitates, the Form of “Horse.” In a lost work, On Ideas , Aristotle maintains that the arguments of Plato’s central dialogues establish only that there are, in addition to particulars, certain common objects of the sciences. In his surviving works as well, Aristotle often takes issue with the theory of Forms, sometimes politely and sometimes contemptuously. In his Metaphysics he argues that the theory fails to solve the problems it was meant to address. It does not confer intelligibility on particulars, because immutable and everlasting Forms cannot explain how particulars come into existence and undergo change. All the theory does, according to Aristotle, is introduce new entities equal in number to the entities to be explained—as if one could solve a problem by doubling it. ( See below Form .)

When Plato died about 348, his nephew Speusippus became head of the Academy, and Aristotle left Athens. He migrated to Assus , a city on the northwestern coast of Anatolia (in present-day Turkey), where Hermias , a graduate of the Academy, was ruler. Aristotle became a close friend of Hermias and eventually married his ward Pythias. Aristotle helped Hermias to negotiate an alliance with Macedonia, which angered the Persian king, who had Hermias treacherously arrested and put to death about 341. Aristotle saluted Hermias’s memory in “ Ode to Virtue,” his only surviving poem.

While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos , Aristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and marine biology . This work was summarized in a book later known, misleadingly, as The History of Animals , to which Aristotle added two short treatises , On the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals . Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent. He—or one of his research assistants—must have been gifted with remarkably acute eyesight, since some of the features of insects that he accurately reports were not again observed until the invention of the microscope in the 17th century.

The scope of Aristotle’s scientific research is astonishing. Much of it is concerned with the classification of animals into genus and species; more than 500 species figure in his treatises, many of them described in detail. The myriad items of information about the anatomy, diet, habitat, modes of copulation, and reproductive systems of mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects are a melange of minute investigation and vestiges of superstition. In some cases his unlikely stories about rare species of fish were proved accurate many centuries later. In other places he states clearly and fairly a biological problem that took millennia to solve, such as the nature of embryonic development.

Despite an admixture of the fabulous, Aristotle’s biological works must be regarded as a stupendous achievement. His inquiries were conducted in a genuinely scientific spirit, and he was always ready to confess ignorance where evidence was insufficient. Whenever there is a conflict between theory and observation, one must trust observation, he insisted, and theories are to be trusted only if their results conform with the observed phenomena.

In 343 or 342 Aristotle was summoned by Philip II to the Macedonian capital at Pella to act as tutor to Philip’s 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great. Little is known of the content of Aristotle’s instruction; although the Rhetoric to Alexander was included in the Aristotelian corpus for centuries, it is now commonly regarded as a forgery. By 326 Alexander had made himself master of an empire that stretched from the Danube to the Indus and included Libya and Egypt. Ancient sources report that during his campaigns Alexander arranged for biological specimens to be sent to his tutor from all parts of Greece and Asia Minor .

Essay on Aristotle

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100 Words Essay on Aristotle

Aristotle: the philosopher.

Aristotle was a famous Greek philosopher and scientist born in 384 BC. He studied under Plato and later taught Alexander the Great. His work covers many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Aristotle’s writings greatly influenced Western philosophy.

Contributions to Science

Aristotle’s ethics.

In ethics, Aristotle proposed the concept of “virtue ethics”. He believed that moral virtue is about finding a moderate path between extremes. This idea continues to be influential in modern ethical thought.

250 Words Essay on Aristotle

Aristotle: the epitome of western philosophy.

Aristotle, a Greek philosopher born in 384 BC, is often hailed as the cornerstone of Western philosophy. A student of Plato, and tutor to Alexander the Great, Aristotle’s influence transcends time, permeating various spheres of human knowledge.

Contributions to Philosophy

Aristotle and science.

In the realm of science, Aristotle’s impact is profound. His scientific method, involving observation and logical deduction, was a precursor to the modern scientific method. He made significant strides in biology, classifying organisms and dissecting animals to understand their anatomy.

Ethics, according to Aristotle, is the pursuit of “eudaimonia,” often translated as happiness or flourishing. He proposed the “Golden Mean,” a path of moderation between excess and deficiency, as the key to virtuous living.

Aristotle’s legacy is enduring. His philosophies have shaped Western thought, influencing fields as diverse as politics, rhetoric, and even drama. The Aristotelian tradition continues to be a vital part of contemporary philosophical discourse.

In conclusion, Aristotle’s life and work represent a monumental contribution to human knowledge. His ideas continue to influence our understanding of the world, making him a timeless figure in the annals of philosophy.

500 Words Essay on Aristotle

Introduction to aristotle.

Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, stands as one of the most influential figures in Western intellectual history. Born in 384 BC, Aristotle was a student of Plato and later became the tutor of Alexander the Great. His contributions span numerous fields, including logic, metaphysics, ethics, political theory, and the natural sciences.

Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Logic and epistemology.

Aristotle’s contributions to logic and epistemology were groundbreaking. He developed a system of logic known as syllogistic logic, which involves deducing conclusions from two related premises. This system became the foundation for Western logical thought until the 19th century. In terms of epistemology, Aristotle proposed that all knowledge begins with sensory experience, laying the groundwork for empirical science.

Ethics and Virtue

In ethics, Aristotle proposed the concept of eudaimonia, often translated as “flourishing” or “the good life.” He argued that the ultimate goal of human life is to achieve eudaimonia through virtuous action and rational activity. Virtue, for Aristotle, is a mean between extremes and is acquired through habituation.

Politics and Society

Impact and legacy.

In conclusion, Aristotle is a monumental figure in Western intellectual history. His contributions to various fields continue to influence contemporary thought, testifying to the enduring power of his philosophy. His approach to understanding the world around us, grounded in empirical observation and logical reasoning, remains a cornerstone of Western intellectual tradition.

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Aristotle: A Complete Overview of His Life, Work, and Philosophy

Aristotle is one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western philosophy. But how much do you really know about this ancient philosopher?

As Plato’s student and Alexander the Great’s teacher, Aristotle left a lasting impact on Western philosophy. He has shaped today’s perceptions of philosophy with his teachings on ethics and logic and thoughts on politics and metaphysics. His philosophy has been both scrutinized and venerated for years, thereby establishing him as an essential personality in Western philosophy.

From discussing topics like ethics to exploring concepts like metaphysics and politics, Aristotle’s writings had a profound influence that endures to this day. Let’s explore Aristotle’s life, his teachings, and their legacy!

Who Was The Great Philosopher Aristotle?

Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) was a renowned ancient Greek philosopher who greatly influenced the world of philosophy, science, and logic. He is considered one of the most influential figures in the history of Western thought.

His works have been pivotal in developing metaphysics , ethics, politics, biology, and aesthetics. In addition, he famously wrote about topics such as natural philosophy, logic, and rhetoric which were studied extensively by many later philosophers.

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Aristotle was born in 384 BC in a doctor’s family, which is likely why his future works would also focus on physiology and anatomy. At 15, he became an orphan, and his uncle, who took the boy under his guardianship, told him about the already famous teacher at that time— Plato in Athens.

At 18, Aristotle independently reached Athens and entered the academy of Plato, whose admirer he had already been for three years. Due to his talent and success in scientific activity, Aristotle was given a teaching position in the academy.

In 347 BC, after the death of Plato, Aristotle moved to the city of Assos. Five years later, the Macedonian King Philip invited the philosopher to educate his son Alexander .

In 339 BC, Philip died, and the heir no longer needed lessons, so Aristotle returned to Athens, now a popular and well-known scholar, largely due to his connection to the royal court.

Contribution-wise, Aristotle played an important role in developing both zoology and anatomy via various research methods. He gained recognition for his exceptional contributions to fields like zoology by creating an animal classification system that factored in both physical traits and habits.

In addition to receiving credit for having revolutionized military tactics at that moment in history, another tremendous feat achieved by Aristotle was passing on this knowledge to Alexander The Great . His contribution to military strategy has been commended through time, resulting in his recognition as a brilliant strategist.

Aristotle’s Writings & Works

Aristotle is highly esteemed for his significant contributions across a vast range of human knowledge fields. His numerous written works have profoundly impacted philosophy, science, mathematics, and more.

Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics is a significant work where he presents his theory on the appropriate way to live life. It explores the concept of virtues and their contribution to leading a satisfying life.

Another prominent example is Aristotle’s Politics . In this groundbreaking work, the author explains his political views, including the state’s role, what citizenship should be, and different types of government systems. He claims that the ideal state should be based on a constitution that respects the needs and desires of its citizens.

Another famous work by Aristotle is his Poetics . This piece is considered to be the first work on literary criticism, interpreting and analyzing the genre and structure of Greek literature. It has influenced the study of literature, film, and other art forms. Aristotle discussed the effects of plot, character, and tragedy on audiences to better understand how these devices can be used effectively.

Aristotle is also widely known for his works in the natural sciences. One of the most popular ones is the Metaphysics . This work deals with the fundamental issues of reality, including the study of existence, causality, and substance.

Relatedly, another one of his famous works is named Physics . It laid out his views on motion, time, space, and other important concepts later built upon in the scientific revolution.

Aristotle’s numerous works have made a lasting impact on history by providing valuable insights and knowledge to humanity. They have helped us gain a better understanding of our world, and continue to be discussed in academic and non-academic contexts alike.

Aristotle Was A Student Of Plato

One important fact already stated is that Aristotle was a student of Plato and is widely considered his most illustrious student.

Plato (c. 428 – c. 348 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who was one of the preeminent minds in Western philosophy, laying down foundations for many areas such as epistemology, metaphysics, and political theory through his numerous dialogues and other works.

While studying at the Academy based in ancient Athens, Aristotle grew intellectually under mentorship from its founder – Plato—hence cementing its status as one of antiquity’s foremost places of advanced studies.

Some of Aristotle’s most prominent works, like Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics , discussed various topics, including metaphysics, ethics, or morality, as well as communication through the spoken word—known as rhetoric .

The combination of Aristotle’s education under Plato and his own personal research made him a key figure in philosophy due to his logical yet creative approach to arguments and reasoning. His writing has been fundamental in the formation of traditional thought up until modern times, making him one of the most influential thinkers ever known.

Aristotle’s Style Of Teaching

Aristotle’s pedagogy emphasized using the Socratic method for stimulating dialogue, ideas generation, opinion sharing, and conclusion building. The method focused on dialogues between the teacher and student to generate new ideas, express opinions and reach conclusions.

This was done by starting with a given problem or premise and then questioning it, with each student considering alternate solutions or alternative interpretations.

For example, when teaching, Aristotle might ask his students: “If we assume that all men are mortal, what does this imply about our understanding of Socrates?” Then, through further questioning, he would lead his students to conclude that Socrates is mortal.

In this way, the Socratic method allowed for deeper learning through active participation and discourse from both the teacher and the students.

By prioritizing logic over traditional sources of information like doctrine or custom when arriving at conclusions, Aristotle effectively shaped subsequent philosophical movements.

This influence would even stretch centuries into the future, with figures like Cicero and Augustine citing his work, which is still taught in schools and universities today.

Teaching Alexander The Great

When Alexander the Great was a teenager, his father, Philip II, turned to the famous philosopher of the time, Aristotle, with a request to become his son’s teacher. Aristotle agreed to be Alexander’s teacher on one condition: if Philip restored his hometown of Stagira, which had been destroyed by the Macedonian king.

In that short time (343-340 BC), when the great thinker was Alexander’s teacher, he managed to instill in him a love for philosophy, art, and poetry, which acted as a catalyst in shaping the personality of a young man.

But the Homeric epic Iliad especially influenced Alexander. With the help of this work about the Trojan War, the philosopher found a good means for educating military prowess in his ward. This book accompanied Alexander throughout his short life.

Aristotle taught in the classroom about the duties of rulers and the art of government. He tried to develop the ability to perceive various factors, analyze them, and then make a decision. In addition, he enriched the young ruler with scientific knowledge in the lessons of physics, biology, mathematics, medicine, and geography.

The philosopher was preparing the future ruler so that he would become a full-fledged individual.

Aristotle Gave Us Scientific Reasoning

Aristotle was a pioneering figure in the development of scientific reasoning . By combining his deep knowledge of philosophy, biology, and physics—he laid out the foundations for modern science by advocating for empirical observation, testing, and experimentation to draw meaningful conclusions.

While other philosophers tended towards deriving explanations from religious beliefs or authoritative sources, he stood out due to the emphasis on his analytical abilities tempered with insights into causation.

For instance, Aristotle postulated about natural phenomena, including the behavior of falling objects and species distribution in nature, which later became foundational concepts of classical physics.

To document animal behavior and analyze anatomy, Aristotle produced a multitude of writings on biology for future generations to learn from.

By careful observation, he deduced that every living organism was made up of equivalent elemental constituents. This served as a prefatory notion behind present-day notions concerning evolution and genetics .

Aristotle’s methodical approach to understanding nature left an indelible mark on human thinking. Scientific reasoning has since revolutionized how we understand and interact with our environment; from advances in medicine to space exploration, but Aristotle’s approach to problem-solving has had a lasting legacy.

Aristotle Laid The Foundation For A System Of Logic

Aristotle’s most invaluable and lasting contribution to the world of knowledge was undoubtedly his development of syllogistic logic . He coined the term “ logic ,” emphasizing logical relations between terms in reasonable conclusions. His approach to understanding philosophy and our conception of reality endeavored to explain how we think and develop ideas.

Aristotle’s landmark work, Prior Analytics , put forth syllogism as his chief logical contribution. Syllogisms are modes of reasoning that involve specific assumptions or premises from which a conclusion can be drawn. This logic system marked the starting point for much of our current understanding of argumentation processes.

Moreover, Aristotle presented rules for appropriate reasoning, such as the law of non-contradiction, which expresses that two conflicting statements cannot simultaneously be true. This principle is still recognized as true today in many disciplines, including mathematics and science.

From its inception, Aristotle’s work on logic has been a driving force throughout the ages. Its pervasive impact can be seen in our modern-day understanding of philosophy and knowledge.

His contributions inform us about how we think and enable us to make more rational decisions concerning ourselves and our environment. Truly, his legacy will remain with us for generations to come!

Aristotle Established The Principle Of Inductive Reasoning

Establishing the principle of inductive reasoning is one of Aristotle’s credited accomplishments. Inductive reasoning involves drawing general conclusions from specific observations and experiences. Generalizing fetched evidence helps us draw closer-to-truth conclusions, even if they’re not completely certain.

Aristotle first proposed the concept of induction in his book Prior Analytics . Initially described by Aristotle, induction involves collecting factual data and formulating hypotheses accordingly before reconciling them with further empirical research. Modern logic and systematic research owe much to this groundbreaking theory.

Starting from concrete observations up to developing more theoretical concepts is how inductive logic works differently than deductive logic, which goes straight from theory to specifics. This approach has been incredibly valuable in advancing scientific inquiry by eliminating false premises from the discussion.

Aristotle was a pioneer in many aspects of philosophy. Still, his establishment of the principle of inductive reasoning stands as one of his most significant contributions to our understanding of how knowledge is best acquired and evaluated.

Aristotle Was A Biologist Even Before There Was Biology

Before the formal practice of biology existed, Aristotle showed a remarkable talent for observing and classifying living things. Combining keen observations with philosophy, Aristotle established himself as an early maker of modern-day biological knowledge before it became more established and formalized.

Aristotle is rightly considered the creator of biology as a science. Several of his works are devoted to the problems of biology: The History of Animals , On the Parts of Animals , On the Origin of Animals , On the Movement of Animals , and a small essay, On the Walking of Animals .

In addition to these special works, which treat questions of zoology, the first two books of On the Soul are also devoted to the problem of life and the living.

In works devoted to the study of wildlife, the “empirical component” is especially striking: the philosopher relies both on his observations and on the vast experience gleaned from the practice of contemporary agriculture, fishing, etc.

Judging by his writings, Aristotle collected information about animals primarily from fishermen, shepherds, beekeepers, pig breeders, and veterinarians.

It should be noted that the philosopher shared some of the prejudices of his time, believing, for example, that males are warmer than females and the right side of the body of animals is warmer than the left.

In humans, he believed, the left side of the body is colder than in other living beings, so the heart is shifted to the left to balance the temperature of both sides of the body.

Aristotle’s pioneering work in biology and his insistence on empirical observation exemplify the power of scientific inquiry. Thanks to his observatory approach toward life sciences, many biologists have—a couple of millennia later—decoded nature’s clandestine ways.

Aristotle “Invented” the Field of Economics

The economic views of Aristotle are not separated from his philosophical teachings. They are woven into the general theme of reasoning about the foundations of ethics and politics (and, more broadly, how people and the state should be managed).

In his treatises, one can see the desire to single out and understand certain categories and connections that later became the subject of political economy as a science.

For example, in Aristotle’s time, the basis of wealth and the main source of its increase were slaves. Aristotle called slaves “the first object of possession,” so he advised that care must be taken to acquire good slaves who can work long and hard.

Barter trade’s evolution into large-scale commerce through history was also a subject matter Aristotle examined extensively. He tried with great persistence to understand the laws of exchange.

Aristotle’s focus was on comprehending how barter trade transformed into large-scale operations through historical analysis. Large-scale trade facilitated and contributed to state formation.

Aristotle approved of the type of management that pursued the goal of acquiring goods for the home and the state, calling it “economy.” The economy is associated with the production of products necessary for life. The activities of commercial and usurious capital, aimed at enrichment, he characterized as unnatural, calling it “ chrematistics .”

Chrematistics is focused on making a profit and primarily aims at the accumulation of wealth. Aristotle argues that trading in commodities is not part of chrematistics because it only involves exchanging objects necessary for buyers and sellers.

Therefore, the original form of commodity profit was barter, but with its expansion, money necessarily arises. With the invention of money, barter must inevitably develop into commodity trade. The latter turned into chrematistics, the art of making money.

Arguing in this way, Aristotle concludes that chrematistics is built on money since money is the beginning and end of any exchange.

Therefore, Aristotle tried to determine the nature of these two phenomena (economics and chrematistics) to determine their historical place. On this path, he was the first to distinguish between money as a simple means of enrichment and money that has become capital.

Aristotle’s Views On Death And The Afterlife

Aristotle, who considered the ability to think about death an indispensable condition for active happiness and a wonderful life, did not try to embellish the bitter truth. On the contrary, he believed death was the worst thing because this was the limit.

The philosopher knew that many of his readers believed in an afterlife . We can find hints that his ethics were compatible with a belief in the so’s immortality in a dialogue designed to console those mourning the heroic death of a Cypriot named Evdem, who did not belong to philosophical circles.

But Aristotle, like most of today’s atheists and agnostics, certainly considered death final and irrevocable. Immortality can be desired, he says in Nicomachean Ethics , but it is not given to a person to consciously choose it.

Aristotle believed life and death are not opposites but two parts of a natural process. He theorized that when a person dies, their soul leaves their body and enters either the celestial realm or Hades —depending on whether they had lived virtuously or unvirtuously during their lifetime.

The souls in the celestial realm would enjoy an eternal existence full of happiness, wisdom, and moral fulfillment. At the same time, those who lived a more unvirtuous life would be doomed to an eternity of instability and suffering within Hades.

Aristotle also thought that certain spiritual objects, such as friendship, love , knowledge, and beauty, could exist beyond physical death. Furthermore, he believed that these non-physical forms were immutable and could, therefore, never perish.

Aristotle’s Views On Justice / Equality

Aristotle also expressed his views on justice in Nicomachean Ethics . For him, justice is the equalization of one’s own interest with the interests of others. The task of justice is to serve society, and if the law is violated, it is a crime.

According to the philosopher, actions consistent with justice and contrary to it can be of two types: they can affect one person or the whole society. A person who commits adultery and inflicts beatings is doing injustice to one particular person, and a person who evades military service is doing injustice to society.

For Aristotle, justice is a principle that regulates relations between people regarding the distribution of social values. The ancient Greek philosopher points out the differences between justice and injustice.

He believed that justice is retribution to everyone for his merits. Injustice is arbitrariness that violates human rights. Objective decisions are fair. It is unfair to transfer one’s own responsibilities to others and receive benefits at the expense of others.

Aristotle distinguishes two types of justice—comparative and distributive. Comparative justice implies a comparison of actions between people, and distributive justice focuses on the equitable distribution of social resources to all members of society.

Aristotle’s views on justice are not dissimilar from those of modern society, as he believed that law should be based on equality and applied to all people without discrimination. He also argued that justice should work for the benefit of all it affects.

Aristotle’s Views On Politics

Aristotle plunged into politics with the same passion with which he studied nature and ethics. Aristotle considered man a “political animal” ( zoon politikon ), which acquires its true essence only in community with other people. In his opinion, a person must live in a political society to be complete and happy.

According to Aristotle, the ideal state should be neither too big nor too small so that citizens can personally participate in political life and follow justice. Furthermore, Aristotle taught that the best way of life and government is the golden mean between extremes.

Thus, an ideal state is a place where the interests of different social strata are balanced, and no one group dominates the others.

Aristotle did a great job of studying the history and experience of different forms of government to understand what kind of government best promotes the common good. In his Politics , he analyzes over 150 city-states and their constitutions.

Aristotle argued that a good state should provide education for all its citizens since educated people can better serve their state and live in harmony with laws and morals. For the philosopher, politics was an art and science to secure a just common good.

Aristotle’s Views On Slavery

Aristotle’s singular approach toward envisaging enslavement as a crucial piece of historical community sets him apart. He viewed slavery as a necessary phenomenon in the social structure. That said, his viewpoint was detailed and layered, though unacceptable by today’s ethical standards.

According to the thinker, there exist segments of the human population that are predestined by nature towards servitude. In his opinion, slaves had physical abilities but could not manage their lives or make decisions. So, those born as slaves required leadership from the wise.

One of Aristotle’s beliefs was that slavery actually proved advantageous for both masters and slaves alike. He believed that slavery was advantageous for slave owners and slaves alike because, he argued, masters provided protection and provision to their slaves in exchange for their labor and services.

Aristotle also acknowledged that slaves could be “improved” through the upbringing they received from their masters. In his view, the masters are responsible for teaching the slaves virtues and discipline.

Part of a slave’s improvement process involved learning from their master how to live virtuously, leading them to become more independent individuals with greater responsibilities towards society.

Aristotle’s Views On Women

Aristotle’s views on women became influential in the further development of philosophy and thoughts of future thinkers until the end of the Middle Ages. In his treatise on state Politics , Aristotle defined women as the subordinate sex to men.

As stipulated by Aristotle, according to his beliefs expressed within Politics —when males maintained dominance over politics—females were considered higher class individuals when compared with slaves.

Among the notable features of women were: expansiveness, compassion, and naivety, which also hindered them in political life.

However, in writing Rhetoric , Aristotle put women’s happiness on the same level of importance as men’s because he believed it is impossible to achieve general happiness in society if some segments of the population remained dissatisfied.

Aristotle believed that men and women possess differing levels of intelligence and physiological distinctions. Some recent studies have shown that memory strength may vary between genders, though the reasons for this are unclear.

Besides, the thinker said that fair-skinned women, but not black-skinned women, can climax during sex. Aristotle believed women were more passionate than men despite having weaker intellects.

Overall, even though it might not seem that way, Aristotle’s views on women were somewhat progressive for his time. Aristotle’s outlook on female empowerment and rights was somewhat liberal for its period; nevertheless, it remained insufficiently evolved compared with present-day perspectives.

Aristotle’s Views On Homosexuality

With a discussion of homosexuality in the Nichomachean Ethics , Aristotle was one of the first early Ancient Philosophers who shared their thoughts on this topic.

He proposed that one’s ability and character should outweigh their sex when it comes to making friends. Aristotle asserted that a gentleman should not feel attracted to someone of the same sex if their relationship is solely based on physical pleasure, which would go against nature’s purpose for human sexuality.

Homosexual behavior might cause a man to act against his nature, thus leading him toward moral wickedness.

While generally expressing disapproval of such relationships, the author also recognized their potential benefits in boosting a person’s physical and emotional wellness whenever the relationship is based on genuine mutual affection.

Despite holding these relatively open attitudes towards homosexuality compared to other ancient thinkers, it’s clear that Aristotle still viewed it as primarily something harmful or unnatural. This reflects the prevailing attitudes towards LGBT+ people during his lifetime. Nevertheless, contemporary societal standards classify these views as obsolete and morally questionable.

So, Who Was The Great Philosopher Aristotle?

As a renowned philosopher and polymath from ancient Greece, Aristotle’s contributions have influenced fields including politics, logic, science, mathematics, and philosophy.

Aside from his groundbreaking contributions in these fields, he authored several works on various subjects like ethics, politics, morality, etc., which many scholars continue to study today.

Looking at reality and considering the philosophical disputes prevalent during his time formed Aristotle’s foundation for philosophy. Throughout the Middle Ages, Aristotle’s perspective towards topics such as homosexuality, slavery, and women has been considered influential for later scientific thought.

That being said, most people now regard Aristotle’s beliefs about slavery, homosexuality, and women as archaic.

The level of admiration directed towards Aristotle persists even today because of his extraordinary intelligence and the breadth of his work. He managed to organize and deepen the lessons of his ancestors and lay them out into a large number of works that, fortunately, remain available to us to this day.

Therefore, Aristotle made a far-reaching arrangement of theories, covering all areas of human thought and interest, from what would later become the topics of social sciences and governmental issues to physical science and rationality.

What Was Aristotle’s Opinion on Metaphysics?

By Viktoriya Sus MA Philosophy Viktoriya is a writer from L’viv, Ukraine. She has knowledge about the main thinkers. In her free time, she loves to read books on philosophy and analyze whether ancient philosophical thought is relevant today. Besides writing, she loves traveling, learning new languages, and visiting museums.

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The term “free will” has emerged over the past two millennia as the canonical designator for a significant kind of control over one’s actions. Questions concerning the nature and existence of this kind of control (e.g., does it require and do we have the freedom to do otherwise or the power of self-determination?), and what its true significance is (is it necessary for moral responsibility or human dignity?) have been taken up in every period of Western philosophy and by many of the most important philosophical figures, such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant. (We cannot undertake here a review of related discussions in other philosophical traditions. For a start, the reader may consult Marchal and Wenzel 2017 and Chakrabarti 2017 for overviews of thought on free will, broadly construed, in Chinese and Indian philosophical traditions, respectively.) In this way, it should be clear that disputes about free will ineluctably involve disputes about metaphysics and ethics. In ferreting out the kind of control at stake in free will, we are forced to consider questions about (among others) causation, laws of nature, time, substance, ontological reduction vs emergence, the relationship of causal and reasons-based explanations, the nature of motivation and more generally of human persons. In assessing the significance of free will, we are forced to consider questions about (among others) rightness and wrongness, good and evil, virtue and vice, blame and praise, reward and punishment, and desert. The topic of free will also gives rise to purely empirical questions that are beginning to be explored in the human sciences: do we have it, and to what degree?

Here is an overview of what follows. In Section 1 , we acquaint the reader with some central historical contributions to our understanding of free will. (As nearly every major and minor figure had something to say about it, we cannot begin to cover them all.) As with contributions to many other foundational topics, these ideas are not of ‘merely historical interest’: present-day philosophers continue to find themselves drawn back to certain thinkers as they freshly engage their contemporaries. In Section 2 , we map the complex architecture of the contemporary discussion of the nature of free will by dividing it into five subtopics: its relation to moral responsibility; the proper analysis of the freedom to do otherwise; a powerful, recent argument that the freedom to do otherwise (at least in one important sense) is not necessary for moral responsibility; ‘compatibilist’ accounts of sourcehood or self-determination; and ‘incompatibilist’ or ‘libertarian’ accounts of source and self-determination. In Section 3 , we consider arguments from experience, a priori reflection, and various scientific findings and theories for and against the thesis that human beings have free will, along with the related question of whether it is reasonable to believe that we have it. Finally, in Section 4 , we survey the long-debated questions involving free will that arise in classical theistic metaphysics.

1.1 Ancient and Medieval Period

1.2 modern period and twentieth century, 2.1 free will and moral responsibility, 2.2 the freedom to do otherwise, 2.3 freedom to do otherwise vs. sourcehood accounts, 2.4 compatibilist accounts of sourcehood, 2.5 libertarian accounts of sourcehood, 3.1 arguments against the reality of free will, 3.2 arguments for the reality of free will, 4.1 free will and god’s power, knowledge, and goodness, 4.2 god’s freedom, other internet resources, related entries, 1. major historical contributions.

One finds scholarly debate on the ‘origin’ of the notion of free will in Western philosophy. (See, e.g., Dihle (1982) and, in response Frede (2011), with Dihle finding it in St. Augustine (354–430 CE) and Frede in the Stoic Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135 CE).) But this debate presupposes a fairly particular and highly conceptualized concept of free will, with Dihle’s later ‘origin’ reflecting his having a yet more particular concept in view than Frede. If, instead, we look more generally for philosophical reflection on choice-directed control over one’s own actions, then we find significant discussion in Plato and Aristotle (cf. Irwin 1992). Indeed, on this matter, as with so many other major philosophical issues, Plato and Aristotle give importantly different emphases that inform much subsequent thought.

In Book IV of The Republic , Plato posits rational, spirited, and appetitive aspects to the human soul. The wise person strives for inner ‘justice’, a condition in which each part of the soul plays its proper role—reason as the guide, the spirited nature as the ally of reason, exhorting oneself to do what reason deems proper, and the passions as subjugated to the determinations of reason. In the absence of justice, the individual is enslaved to the passions. Hence, freedom for Plato is a kind of self-mastery, attained by developing the virtues of wisdom, courage, and temperance, resulting in one’s liberation from the tyranny of base desires and acquisition of a more accurate understanding and resolute pursuit of the Good (Hecht 2014).

While Aristotle shares with Plato a concern for cultivating virtues, he gives greater theoretical attention to the role of choice in initiating individual actions which, over time, result in habits, for good or ill. In Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle says that, unlike nonrational agents, we have the power to do or not to do, and much of what we do is voluntary, such that its origin is ‘in us’ and we are ‘aware of the particular circumstances of the action’. Furthermore, mature humans make choices after deliberating about different available means to our ends, drawing on rational principles of action. Choose consistently well (poorly), and a virtuous (vicious) character will form over time, and it is in our power to be either virtuous or vicious.

A question that Aristotle seems to recognize, while not satisfactorily answering, is whether the choice an individual makes on any given occasion is wholly determined by his internal state—perception of his circumstances and his relevant beliefs, desires, and general character dispositions (wherever on the continuum between virtue and vice he may be)—and external circumstances. He says that “the man is the father of his actions as of children”—that is, a person’s character shapes how she acts. One might worry that this seems to entail that the person could not have done otherwise—at the moment of choice, she has no control over what her present character is—and so she is not responsible for choosing as she does. Aristotle responds by contending that her present character is partly a result of previous choices she made. While this claim is plausible enough, it seems to ‘pass the buck’, since ‘the man is the father’ of those earlier choices and actions, too.

We note just a few contributions of the subsequent centuries of the Hellenistic era. (See Bobzien 1998.) This period was dominated by debates between Epicureans, Stoics, and the Academic Skeptics, and as it concerned freedom of the will, the debate centered on the place of determinism or of fate in governing human actions and lives. The Stoics and the Epicureans believed that all ordinary things, human souls included, are corporeal and governed by natural laws or principles. Stoics believed that all human choice and behavior was causally determined, but held that this was compatible with our actions being ‘up to us’. Chrysippus ably defended this position by contending that your actions are ‘up to you’ when they come about ‘through you’—when the determining factors of your action are not external circumstances compelling you to act as you do but are instead your own choices grounded in your perception of the options before you. Hence, for moral responsibility, the issue is not whether one’s choices are determined (they are) but in what manner they are determined. Epicurus and his followers had a more mechanistic conception of bodily action than the Stoics. They held that all things (human soul included) are constituted by atoms, whose law-governed behavior fixes the behavior of everything made of such atoms. But they rejected determinism by supposing that atoms, though law-governed, are susceptible to slight ‘swerves’ or departures from the usual paths. Epicurus has often been understood as seeking to ground the freedom of human willings in such indeterministic swerves, but this is a matter of controversy. If this understanding of his aim is correct, how he thought that this scheme might work in detail is not known. (What little we know about his views in this matter stem chiefly from the account given in his follower Lucretius’s six-book poem, On the Nature of Things . See Bobzien 2000 for discussion.)

A final notable figure of this period was Alexander of Aphrodisias , the most important Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle. In his On Fate , Alexander sharply criticizes the positions of the Stoics. He goes on to resolve the ambiguity in Aristotle on the question of the determining nature of character on individual choices by maintaining that, given all such shaping factors, it remains open to the person when she acts freely to do or not to do what she in fact does. Many scholars see Alexander as the first unambiguously ‘libertarian’ theorist of the will (for more information about such theories see section 2 below).

Augustine (354–430) is the central bridge between the ancient and medieval eras of philosophy. His mature thinking about the will was influenced by his early encounter with late classical Neoplatonist thought, which is then transformed by the theological views he embraces in his adult Christian conversion, famously recounted in his Confessions . In that work and in the earlier On the Free Choice of the Will , Augustine struggles to draw together into a coherent whole the doctrines that creaturely misuse of freedom, not God, is the source of evil in the world and that the human will has been corrupted through the ‘fall’ from grace of the earliest human beings, necessitating a salvation that is attained entirely through the actions of God, even as it requires, constitutively, an individual’s willed response of faith. The details of Augustine’s positive account remain a matter of controversy. He clearly affirms that the will is by its nature a self-determining power—no powers external to it determine its choice—and that this feature is the basis of its freedom. But he does not explicitly rule out the will’s being internally determined by psychological factors, as Chrysippus held, and Augustine had theological reasons that might favor (as well as others that would oppose) the thesis that all things are determined in some manner by God. Scholars divide on whether Augustine was a libertarian or instead a kind of compatibilist with respect to metaphysical freedom. (Macdonald 1999 and Stump 2006 argue the former, Baker 2003 and Couenhoven 2007 the latter.) It is clear, however, that Augustine thought that we are powerfully shaped by wrongly-ordered desires that can make it impossible for us to wholeheartedly will ends contrary to those desires, for a sustained period of time. This condition entails an absence of something more valuable, ‘true freedom’, in which our wills are aligned with the Good, a freedom that can be attained only by a transformative operation of divine grace. This latter, psychological conception of freedom of will clearly echoes Plato’s notion of the soul’s (possible) inner justice.

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) attempted to synthesize major strands of Aristotle’s systematic philosophy with Christian theology, and so Aquinas begins his complex discussion of human action and choice by agreeing with Aristotle that creatures such as ourselves who are endowed with both intellect and will are hardwired to will certain general ends ordered to the most general goal of goodness. Will is rational desire: we cannot move towards that which does not appear to us at the time to be good. Freedom enters the picture when we consider various means to these ends and move ourselves to activity in pursuit of certain of them. Our will is free in that it is not fixed by nature on any particular means, and they generally do not appear to us either as unqualifiedly good or as uniquely satisfying the end we wish to fulfill. Furthermore, what appears to us to be good can vary widely—even, over time, intra-personally. So much is consistent with saying that in a given total circumstance (including one’s present beliefs and desires), one is necessitated to will as one does. For this reason, some commentators have taken Aquinas to be a kind of compatibilist concerning freedom and causal or theological determinism. In his most extended defense of the thesis that the will is not ‘compelled’ ( DM 6), Aquinas notes three ways that the will might reject an option it sees as attractive: (i) it finds another option more attractive, (ii) it comes to think of some circumstance rendering an alternative more favorable “by some chance circumstance, external or internal”, and (iii) the person is momentarily disposed to find an alternative attractive by virtue of a non-innate state that is subject to the will (e.g., being angry vs being at peace). The first consideration is clearly consistent with compatibilism. The second at best points to a kind of contingency that is not grounded in the activity of the will itself. And one wanting to read Aquinas as a libertarian might worry that his third consideration just passes the buck: even if we do sometimes have an ability to directly modify perception-coloring states such as moods, Aquinas’s account of will as rational desire seems to indicate that we will do so only if it seems to us on balance to be good to do so. Those who read Aquinas as a libertarian point to the following further remark in this text: “Will itself can interfere with the process [of some cause’s moving the will] either by refusing to consider what attracts it to will or by considering its opposite: namely, that there is a bad side to what is being proposed…” (Reply to 15; see also DV 24.2). For discussion, see MacDonald (1998), Stump (2003, ch. 9) and especially Hoffman & Michon (2017), which offers the most comprehensive analysis of relevant texts to date.

John Duns Scotus (1265/66–1308) was the stoutest defender in the medieval era of a strongly libertarian conception of the will, maintaining on introspective grounds that will by its very nature is such that “nothing other than the will is the total cause” of its activity ( QAM ). Indeed, he held the unusual view that not only up to but at the very instant that one is willing X , it is possible for one to will Y or at least not to will X . (He articulates this view through the puzzling claim that a single instant of time comprises two ‘instants of nature’, at the first but not the second of which alternative possibilities are preserved.) In opposition to Aquinas and other medieval Aristotelians, Scotus maintained that a precondition of our freedom is that there are two fundamentally distinct ways things can seem good to us: as practically advantageous to us or as according with justice. Contrary to some popular accounts, however, Scotus allowed that the scope of available alternatives for a person will be more or less constricted. He grants that we are not capable of willing something in which we see no good whatsoever, nor of positively repudiating something which appears to us as unqualifiedly good. However, in accordance with his uncompromising position that nothing can be the total cause of the will other than itself, he held that where something does appear to us as unqualifiedly good (perfectly suited both to our advantage and justice)—viz., in the ‘beatific vision’ of God in the afterlife—we still can refrain from willing it. For discussion, see John Duns Scotus, §5.2 .

The problem of free will was an important topic in the modern period, with all the major figures wading into it (Descartes 1641 [1988], 1644 [1988]; Hobbes 1654 [1999], 1656 [1999]; Spinoza 1677 [1992]; Malebranche 1684 [1993]; Leibniz 1686 [1991]; Locke 1690 [1975]; Hume 1740 [1978], 1748 [1975]; Edwards 1754 [1957]; Kant 1781 [1998], 1785 [1998], 1788 [2015]; Reid 1788 [1969]). After less sustained attention in the 19th Century (most notable were Schopenhauer 1841 [1999] and Nietzsche 1886 [1966]), it was widely discussed again among early twentieth century philosophers (Moore 1912; Hobart 1934; Schlick 1939; Nowell-Smith 1948, 1954; Campbell 1951; Ayer 1954; Smart 1961). The centrality of the problem of free will to the various projects of early modern philosophers can be traced to two widely, though not universally, shared assumptions. The first is that without belief in free will, there would be little reason for us to act morally. More carefully, it was widely assumed that belief in an afterlife in which a just God rewards and punishes us according to our right or wrong use of free will was key to motivating us to be moral (Russell 2008, chs. 16–17). Life before death affords us many examples in which vice is better rewarded than virtue and so without knowledge of a final judgment in the afterlife, we would have little reason to pursue virtue and justice when they depart from self-interest. And without free will there can be no final judgement.

The second widely shared assumption is that free will seems difficult to reconcile with what we know about the world. While this assumption is shared by the majority of early modern philosophers, what specifically it is about the world that seems to conflict with freedom differs from philosopher to philosopher. For some, the worry is primarily theological. How can we make sense of contingency and freedom in a world determined by a God who must choose the best possible world to create? For some, the worry was primarily metaphysical. The principle of sufficient reason—roughly, the idea that every event must have a reason or cause—was a cornerstone of Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s metaphysics. How does contingency and freedom fit into such a world? For some, the worry was primarily scientific (Descartes). Given that a proper understanding of the physical world is one in which all physical objects are governed by deterministic laws of nature, how does contingency and freedom fit into such a world? Of course, for some, all three worries were in play in their work (this is true especially of Leibniz).

Despite many disagreements about how best to solve these worries, there were three claims that were widely, although not universally, agreed upon. The first was that free will has two aspects: the freedom to do otherwise and the power of self-determination. The second is that an adequate account of free will must entail that free agents are morally responsible agents and/or fit subjects for punishment. Ideas about moral responsibility were often a yard stick by which analyses of free will were measured, with critics objecting to an analysis of free will by arguing that agents who satisfied the analysis would not, intuitively, be morally responsible for their actions. The third is that compatibilism—the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism—is true. (Spinoza, Reid, and Kant are the clear exceptions to this, though some also see Descartes as an incompatibilist [Ragland 2006].)

Since a detailed discussion of these philosophers’ accounts of free will would take us too far afield, we want instead to focus on isolating a two-step strategy for defending compatibilism that emerges in the early modern period and continued to exert considerable force into the early twentieth century (and perhaps is still at work today). Advocates of this two-step strategy have come to be known as “classical compatibilists”. The first step was to argue that the contrary of freedom is not determinism but external constraint on doing what one wants to do. For example, Hobbes contends that liberty is “the absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical quality of the agent” (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 38; cf. Hume 1748 [1975] VIII.1; Edwards 1754 [1957]; Ayer 1954). This idea led many compatibilists, especially the more empiricist-inclined, to develop desire- or preference-based analyses of both the freedom to do otherwise and self-determination. An agent has the freedom to do otherwise than \(\phi\) just in case if she preferred or willed to do otherwise, she would have done otherwise (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 16; Locke 1690 [1975]) II.xx.8; Hume 1748 [1975] VIII.1; Moore 1912; Ayer 1954). The freedom to do otherwise does not require that you are able to act contrary to your strongest motivation but simply that your action be dependent on your strongest motivation in the sense that had you desired something else more strongly, then you would have pursued that alternative end. (We will discuss this analysis in more detail below in section 2.2.) Similarly, an agent self-determines her \(\phi\)-ing just in case \(\phi\) is caused by her strongest desires or preferences at the time of action (Hobbes 1654 [1999]; Locke 1690 [1975]; Edwards 1754 [1957]). (We will discuss this analysis in more detail below in section 2.4.) Given these analyses, determinism seems innocuous to freedom.

The second step was to argue that any attempt to analyze free will in a way that putatively captures a deeper or more robust sense of freedom leads to intractable conundrums. The most important examples of this attempt to capture a deeper sense of freedom in the modern period are Immanuel Kant (1781 [1998], 1785 [1998], 1788 [2015]) and Thomas Reid (1788 [1969]) and in the early twentieth century C. A. Campbell (1951). These philosophers argued that the above compatibilist analyses of the freedom to do otherwise and self-determination are, at best, insufficient for free will, and, at worst, incompatible with it. With respect to the classical compatibilist analysis of the freedom to do otherwise, these critics argued that the freedom to do otherwise requires not just that an agent could have acted differently if he had willed differently, but also that he could have willed differently. Free will requires more than free action. With respect to classical compatibilists’ analysis of self-determination, they argued that self-determination requires that the agent—rather than his desires, preferences, or any other mental state—cause his free choices and actions. Reid explains:

I consider the determination of the will as an effect. This effect must have a cause which had the power to produce it; and the cause must be either the person himself, whose will it is, or some other being…. If the person was the cause of that determination of his own will, he was free in that action, and it is justly imputed to him, whether it be good or bad. But, if another being was the cause of this determination, either producing it immediately, or by means and instruments under his direction, then the determination is the act and deed of that being, and is solely imputed to him. (1788 [1969] IV.i, 265)

Classical compatibilists argued that both claims are incoherent. While it is intelligible to ask whether a man willed to do what he did, it is incoherent to ask whether a man willed to will what he did:

For to ask whether a man is at liberty to will either motion or rest, speaking or silence, which he pleases, is to ask whether a man can will what he wills , or be pleased with what he is pleased with? A question which, I think, needs no answer; and they who make a question of it must suppose one will to determine the acts of another, and another to determine that, and so on in infinitum . (Locke 1690 [1975] II.xx.25; cf. Hobbes 1656 [1999], 72)

In response to libertarians’ claim that self-determination requires that the agent, rather than his motives, cause his actions, it was objected that this removes the agent from the natural causal order, which is clearly unintelligible for human animals (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 38). It is important to recognize that an implication of the second step of the strategy is that free will is not only compatible with determinism but actually requires determinism (cf. Hume 1748 [1975] VIII). This was a widely shared assumption among compatibilists up through the mid-twentieth century.

Spinoza’s Ethics (1677 [1992]) is an important departure from the above dialectic. He endorses a strong form of necessitarianism in which everything is categorically necessary as opposed to the conditional necessity embraced by most compatibilists, and he contends that there is no room in such a world for divine or creaturely free will. Thus, Spinoza is a free will skeptic. Interestingly, Spinoza is also keen to deny that the nonexistence of free will has the dire implications often assumed. As noted above, many in the modern period saw belief in free will and an afterlife in which God rewards the just and punishes the wicked as necessary to motivate us to act morally. According to Spinoza, so far from this being necessary to motivate us to be moral, it actually distorts our pursuit of morality. True moral living, Spinoza thinks, sees virtue as its own reward (Part V, Prop. 42). Moreover, while free will is a chimera, humans are still capable of freedom or self-determination. Such self-determination, which admits of degrees on Spinoza’s view, arises when our emotions are determined by true ideas about the nature of reality. The emotional lives of the free persons are ones in which “we desire nothing but that which must be, nor, in an absolute sense, can we find contentment in anything but truth. And so in so far as we rightly understand these matters, the endeavor of the better part of us is in harmony with the order of the whole of Nature” (Part IV, Appendix). Spinoza is an important forerunner to the many free will skeptics in the twentieth century, a position that continues to attract strong support (see Strawson 1986; Double 1992; Smilansky 2000; Pereboom 2001, 2014; Levy 2011; Waller 2011; Caruso 2012; Vilhauer 2012. For further discussion see the entry skepticism about moral responsibility ).

It is worth observing that in many of these disputes about the nature of free will there is an underlying dispute about the nature of moral responsibility. This is seen clearly in Hobbes (1654 [1999]) and early twentieth century philosophers’ defenses of compatibilism. Underlying the belief that free will is incompatible with determinism is the thought that no one would be morally responsible for any actions in a deterministic world in the sense that no one would deserve blame or punishment. Hobbes responded to this charge in part by endorsing broadly consequentialist justifications of blame and punishment: we are justified in blaming or punishing because these practices deter future harmful actions and/or contribute to reforming the offender (1654 [1999], 24–25; cf. Schlick 1939; Nowell-Smith 1948; Smart 1961). While many, perhaps even most, compatibilists have come to reject this consequentialist approach to moral responsibility in the wake of P. F. Strawson’s 1962 landmark essay ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (though see Vargas (2013) and McGeer (2014) for contemporary defenses of compatibilism that appeal to forward-looking considerations) there is still a general lesson to be learned: disputes about free will are often a function of underlying disputes about the nature and value of moral responsibility.

2. The Nature of Free Will

As should be clear from this short discussion of the history of the idea of free will, free will has traditionally been conceived of as a kind of power to control one’s choices and actions. When an agent exercises free will over her choices and actions, her choices and actions are up to her . But up to her in what sense? As should be clear from our historical survey, two common (and compatible) answers are: (i) up to her in the sense that she is able to choose otherwise, or at minimum that she is able not to choose or act as she does, and (ii) up to her in the sense that she is the source of her action. However, there is widespread controversy both over whether each of these conditions is required for free will and if so, how to understand the kind or sense of freedom to do otherwise or sourcehood that is required. While some seek to resolve these controversies in part by careful articulation of our experiences of deliberation, choice, and action (Nozick 1981, ch. 4; van Inwagen 1983, ch. 1), many seek to resolve these controversies by appealing to the nature of moral responsibility. The idea is that the kind of control or sense of up-to-meness involved in free will is the kind of control or sense of up-to-meness relevant to moral responsibility (Double 1992, 12; Ekstrom 2000, 7–8; Smilansky 2000, 16; Widerker and McKenna 2003, 2; Vargas 2007, 128; Nelkin 2011, 151–52; Levy 2011, 1; Pereboom 2014, 1–2). Indeed, some go so far as to define ‘free will’ as ‘the strongest control condition—whatever that turns out to be—necessary for moral responsibility’ (Wolf 1990, 3–4; Fischer 1994, 3; Mele 2006, 17). Given this connection, we can determine whether the freedom to do otherwise and the power of self-determination are constitutive of free will and, if so, in what sense, by considering what it takes to be a morally responsible agent. On these latter characterizations of free will, understanding free will is inextricably linked to, and perhaps even derivative from, understanding moral responsibility. And even those who demur from this claim regarding conceptual priority typically see a close link between these two ideas. Consequently, to appreciate the current debates surrounding the nature of free will, we need to say something about the nature of moral responsibility.

It is now widely accepted that there are different species of moral responsibility. It is common (though not uncontroversial) to distinguish moral responsibility as answerability from moral responsibility as attributability from moral responsibility as accountability (Watson 1996; Fischer and Tognazzini 2011; Shoemaker 2011. See Smith (2012) for a critique of this taxonomy). These different species of moral responsibility differ along three dimensions: (i) the kind of responses licensed toward the responsible agent, (ii) the nature of the licensing relation, and (iii) the necessary and sufficient conditions for licensing the relevant kind of responses toward the agent. For example, some argue that when an agent is morally responsible in the attributability sense, certain judgments about the agent—such as judgments concerning the virtues and vices of the agent—are fitting , and that the fittingness of such judgments does not depend on whether the agent in question possessed the freedom to do otherwise (cf. Watson 1996).

While keeping this controversy about the nature of moral responsibility firmly in mind (see the entry on moral responsibility for a more detailed discussion of these issues), we think it is fair to say that the most commonly assumed understanding of moral responsibility in the historical and contemporary discussion of the problem of free will is moral responsibility as accountability in something like the following sense:

An agent \(S\) is morally accountable for performing an action \(\phi\) \(=_{df.}\) \(S\) deserves praise if \(\phi\) goes beyond what can be reasonably expected of \(S\) and \(S\) deserves blame if \(\phi\) is morally wrong.

The central notions in this definition are praise , blame , and desert . The majority of contemporary philosophers have followed Strawson (1962) in contending that praising and blaming an agent consist in experiencing (or at least being disposed to experience (cf. Wallace 1994, 70–71)) reactive attitudes or emotions directed toward the agent, such as gratitude, approbation, and pride in the case of praise, and resentment, indignation, and guilt in the case of blame. (See Sher (2006) and Scanlon (2008) for important dissents from this trend. See the entry on blame for a more detailed discussion.) These emotions, in turn, dispose us to act in a variety of ways. For example, blame disposes us to respond with some kind of hostility toward the blameworthy agent, such as verbal rebuke or partial withdrawal of good will. But while these kinds of dispositions are essential to our blaming someone, their manifestation is not: it is possible to blame someone with very little change in attitudes or actions toward the agent. Blaming someone might be immediately followed by forgiveness as an end of the matter.

By ‘desert’, we have in mind what Derk Pereboom has called basic desert :

The desert at issue here is basic in the sense that the agent would deserve to be blamed or praised just because she has performed the action, given an understanding of its moral status, and not, for example, merely by virtue of consequentialist or contractualist considerations. (2014, 2)

As we understand desert, if an agent deserves blame, then we have a strong pro tanto reason to blame him simply in virtue of his being accountable for doing wrong. Importantly, these reasons can be outweighed by other considerations. While an agent may deserve blame, it might, all things considered, be best to forgive him unconditionally instead.

When an agent is morally responsible for doing something wrong, he is blame worthy : he deserves hard treatment marked by resentment and indignation and the actions these emotions dispose us toward, such as censure, rebuke, and ostracism. However, it would seem unfair to treat agents in these ways unless their actions were up to them . Thus, we arrive at the core connection between free will and moral responsibility: agents deserve praise or blame only if their actions are up to them—only if they have free will. Consequently, we can assess analyses of free will by their implications for judgments of moral responsibility. We note that some might reject the claim that free will is necessary for moral responsibility (e.g., Frankfurt 1971; Stump 1988), but even for these theorists an adequate analysis of free will must specify a sufficient condition for the kind of control at play in moral responsibility.

In what follows, we focus our attention on the two most commonly cited features of free will: the freedom to do otherwise and sourcehood. While some seem to think that free will consists exclusively in either the freedom to do otherwise (van Inwagen 2008) or in sourcehood (Zagzebski 2000), many philosophers hold that free will involves both conditions—though philosophers often emphasize one condition over the other depending on their dialectical situation or argumentative purposes (cf. Watson 1987). In what follows, we will describe the most common characterizations of these two conditions.

For most newcomers to the problem of free will, it will seem obvious that an action is up to an agent only if she had the freedom to do otherwise. But what does this freedom come to? The freedom to do otherwise is clearly a modal property of agents, but it is controversial just what species of modality is at stake. It must be more than mere possibility : to have the freedom to do otherwise consists in more than the mere possibility of something else’s happening. A more plausible and widely endorsed understanding claims the relevant modality is ability or power (Locke 1690 [1975], II.xx; Reid 1788 [1969], II.i–ii; D. Locke 1973; Clarke 2009; Vihvelin 2013). But abilities themselves seem to come in different varieties (Lewis 1976; Horgan 1979; van Inwagen 1983, ch. 1; Mele 2003; Clarke 2009; Vihvelin 2013, ch. 1; Franklin 2015; Cyr and Swenson 2019; Hofmann 2022; Whittle 2022), so a claim that an agent has ‘the ability to do otherwise’ is potentially ambiguous or indeterminate; in philosophical discussion, the sense of ability appealed to needs to be spelled out. A satisfactory account of the freedom to do otherwise owes us both an account of the kind of ability in terms of which the freedom to do otherwise is analyzed, and an argument for why this kind of ability (as opposed to some other species) is the one constitutive of the freedom to do otherwise. As we will see, philosophers sometimes leave this second debt unpaid.

The contemporary literature takes its cue from classical compatibilism’s recognized failure to deliver a satisfactory analysis of the freedom to do otherwise. As we saw above, classical compatibilists (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 1656 [1999]; Locke 1690 [1975]; Hume 1740 [1978], 1748 [1975]; Edwards 1754 [1957]; Moore 1912; Schlick 1939; Ayer 1954) sought to analyze the freedom to do otherwise in terms of a simple conditional analysis of ability:

Simple Conditional Analysis: An agent \(S\) has the ability to do otherwise if and only if, were \(S\) to choose to do otherwise, then \(S\) would do otherwise.

Part of the attraction of this analysis is that it obviously reconciles the freedom to do otherwise with determinism. While the truth of determinism entails that one’s action is inevitable given the past and laws of nature, there is nothing about determinism that implies that if one had chosen otherwise, then one would not do otherwise.

There are two problems with the Simple Conditional Analysis . The first is that it is, at best, an analysis of free action, not free will (cf. Reid 1788 [1969]; Chisholm 1966; 1976, ch. 2; Lehrer 1968, 1976). It only tells us when an agent has the ability to do otherwise, not when an agent has the ability to choose to do otherwise. One might be tempted to think that there is an easy fix along the following lines:

Simple Conditional Analysis*: An agent \(S\) has the ability to choose otherwise if and only if, were \(S\) to desire or prefer to choose otherwise, then \(S\) would choose otherwise.

The problem is that we often fail to choose to do things we want to choose, even when it appears that we had the ability to choose otherwise (one might think the same problem attends the original analysis). Suppose that, in deciding how to spend my evening, I have a desire to choose to read and a desire to choose to watch a movie. Suppose that I choose to read. By all appearances, I had the ability to choose to watch a movie. And yet, according to the Simple Conditional Analysis* , I lack this freedom, since the conditional ‘if I were to desire to choose to watch a movie, then I would choose to watch a movie’ is false. I do desire to choose to watch a movie and yet I do not choose to watch a movie. It is unclear how to remedy this problem. On the one hand, we might refine the antecedent by replacing ‘desire’ with ‘strongest desire’ (cf. Hobbes 1654 [1999], 1656 [1999]; Edwards 1754 [1957]). The problem is that this assumes, implausibly, that we always choose what we most strongly desire (for criticisms of this view see Reid 1788 [1969]; Campbell 1951; Wallace 1999; Holton 2009). On the other hand, we might refine the consequent by replacing ‘would choose to do otherwise’ with either ‘would probably choose to do otherwise’ or ‘might choose to do otherwise’. But each of these proposals is also problematic. If ‘probably’ means ‘more likely than not’, then this revised conditional still seems too strong: it seems possible to have the ability to choose otherwise even when one’s so choosing is unlikely. If we opt for ‘might’, then the relevant sense of modality needs to be spelled out.

Even if there are fixes to these problems, there is a yet deeper problem with these analyses. There are some agents who clearly lack the freedom to do otherwise and yet satisfy the conditional at the heart of these analyses. That is, although these agents lack the freedom to do otherwise, it is, for example, true of them that if they chose otherwise, they would do otherwise. Picking up on an argument developed by Keith Lehrer (1968; cf. Campbell 1951; Broad 1952; Chisholm 1966), consider an agoraphobic, Luke, who, when faced with the prospect of entering an open space, is subject not merely to an irresistible desire to refrain from intentionally going outside, but an irresistible desire to refrain from even choosing to go outside. Given Luke’s psychology, there is no possible world in which he suffers from his agoraphobia and chooses to go outside. It may well nevertheless be true that if Luke chose to go outside, then he would have gone outside. After all, any possible world in which he chooses to go outside will be a world in which he no longer suffers (to the same degree) from his agoraphobia, and thus we have no reason to doubt that in those worlds he would go outside as a result of his choosing to go outside. The same kind of counterexample applies with equal force to the conditional ‘if \(S\) desired to choose otherwise, then \(S\) would choose otherwise’.

While simple conditional analyses admirably make clear the species of ability to which they appeal, they fail to show that this species of ability is constitutive of the freedom to do otherwise. Agents need a stronger ability to do otherwise than characterized by such simple conditionals. Some argue that the fundamental source of the above problems is the conditional nature of these analyses (Campbell 1951; Austin 1961; Chisholm 1966; Lehrer 1976; van Inwagen 1983, ch. 4). The sense of ability relevant to the freedom to do otherwise is the ‘all-in sense’—that is, holding everything fixed up to the time of the decision or action—and this sense, so it is argued, can only be captured by a categorical analysis of the ability to do otherwise:

Categorical Analysis: An agent \(S\) has the ability to choose or do otherwise than \(\phi\) at time \(t\) if and only if it was possible, holding fixed everything up to \(t\), that \(S\) choose or do otherwise than \(\phi\) at \(t\).

This analysis gets the right verdict in Luke’s case. He lacks the ability to do otherwise than refrain from choosing to go outside, according to this analysis, because there is no possible world in which he suffers from his agoraphobia and yet chooses to go outside. Unlike the above conditional analyses, the Categorical Analysis requires that we hold fixed Luke’s agoraphobia when considering alternative possibilities.

If the Categorical Analysis is correct, then free will is incompatible with determinism. According to the thesis of determinism, all deterministic possible worlds with the same pasts and laws of nature have the same futures (Lewis 1979; van Inwagen 1983, 3). Suppose John is in deterministic world \(W\) and refrains from raising his hand at time \(t\). Since \(W\) is deterministic, it follows that any possible world \(W^*\) that has the same past and laws up to \(t\) must have the same future, including John’s refraining from raising his hand at \(t\). Therefore, John lacked the ability, and thus freedom, to raise his hand.

This argument, carefully articulated in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Carl Ginet (1966, 1990) and Peter van Inwagen (1975, 1983) and refined in important ways by John Martin Fischer (1994), has come to be known as the Consequence Argument. van Inwagen offers the following informal statement of the argument:

If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born [i.e., we do not have the ability to change the past], and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are [i.e., we do not have the ability to break the laws of nature]. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us. (van Inwagen 1983, 16; cf. Fischer 1994, ch. 1)

Like the Simple Conditional Analysis , a virtue of the Categorical Analysis is that it spells out clearly the kind of ability appealed to in its analysis of the freedom to do otherwise, but like the Simple Conditional Analysis , critics have argued that the sense of ability it captures is not the sense at the heart of free will. The objection here, though, is not that the analysis is too permissive or weak, but rather that it is too restrictive or strong.

While there have been numerous different replies along these lines (e.g., Lehrer 1980; Slote 1982; Watson 1986. See the entry on arguments for incompatibilism for a more extensive discussion of and bibliography for the Consequence Argument), the most influential of these objections is due to David Lewis (1981). Lewis contended that van Inwagen’s argument equivocated on ‘is able to break a law of nature’. We can distinguish two senses of ‘is able to break a law of nature’:

(Weak Thesis) I am able to do something such that, if I did it, a law of nature would be broken.

(Strong Thesis) I am able to do something such that, if I did it, it would constitute a law of nature’s being broken or would cause a law of nature to be broken.

If we are committed to the Categorical Analysis , then those desiring to defend compatibilism seem to be committed to the sense of ability in ‘is able to break a law of nature’ along the lines of the strong thesis. Lewis agrees with van Inwagen that it is “incredible” to think humans have such an ability (Lewis 1981, 113), but maintains that compatibilists need only appeal to the ability to break a law of nature in the weak sense. While it is absurd to think that humans are able to do something that is a violation of a law of nature or causes a law of nature to be broken, there is nothing incredible, so Lewis claimed, in thinking that humans are able to do something such that if they did it, a law of nature would be broken. In essence, Lewis is arguing that incompatibilists like van Inwagen have failed to adequately motivate the restrictiveness of the Categorical Analysis .

Some incompatibilists have responded to Lewis by contending that even the weak ability is incredible (van Inwagen 2004). But there is a different and often overlooked problem for Lewis: the weak ability seems to be too weak. Returning to the case of John’s refraining from raising his hand, Lewis maintains that the following three propositions are consistent:

One might think that (ii) and (iii) are incompatible with (i). Consider again Luke, our agoraphobic. Suppose that his agoraphobia affects him in such a way that he will only intentionally go outside if he chooses to go outside, and yet his agoraphobia makes it impossible for him to make this choice. In this case, a necessary condition for Luke’s intentionally going outside is his choosing to go outside. Moreover, Luke is not able to choose or cause himself to choose to go outside. Intuitively, this would seem to imply that Luke lacks the freedom to go outside. But this implication does not follow for Lewis. From the fact that Luke is able to go outside only if he chooses to go outside and the fact that Luke is not able to choose to go outside, it does not follow , on Lewis’s account, that Luke lacks the ability to go outside. Consequently, Lewis’s account fails to explain why Luke lacks the ability to go outside (cf. Speak 2011). (For other important criticisms of Lewis, see Ginet [1990, ch. 5] and Fischer [1994, ch. 4].)

While Lewis may be right that the Categorical Analysis is too restrictive, his argument, all by itself, doesn’t seem to establish this. His argument is successful only if (a) he can provide an alternative analysis of ability that entails that Luke’s agoraphobia robs him of the ability to go outside and (b) does not entail that determinism robs John of the ability to raise his hand (cf. Pendergraft 2010). Lewis must point out a principled difference between these two cases. As should be clear from the above, the Simple Conditional Analysis is of no help. However, some recent work by Michael Smith (2003), Kadri Vihvelin (2004; 2013), and Michael Fara (2008) have attempted to fill this gap. What unites these theorists—whom Clarke (2009) has called the ‘new dispositionalists’—is their attempt to appeal to recent advances in the metaphysics of dispositions to arrive at a revised conditional analysis of the freedom to do otherwise. The most perspicuous of these accounts is offered by Vihvelin (2004), who argues that an agent’s having the ability to do otherwise is solely a function of the agent’s intrinsic properties. (It is important to note that Vihvelin [2013] has come to reject the view that free will consists exclusively in the kind of ability analyzed below.) Building on Lewis’s work on the metaphysics of dispositions, she arrives at the following analysis of ability:

Revised Conditional Analysis of Ability : \(S\) has the ability at time \(t\) to do \(X\) iff, for some intrinsic property or set of properties \(B\) that \(S\) has at \(t\), for some time \(t'\) after \(t\), if \(S\) chose (decided, intended, or tried) at \(t\) to do \(X\), and \(S\) were to retain \(B\) until \(t'\), \(S\)’s choosing (deciding, intending, or trying) to do \(X\) and \(S\)’s having \(B\) would jointly be an \(S\)-complete cause of \(S\)’s doing \(X\). (Vihvelin 2004, 438)

Lewis defines an ‘\(S\)-complete cause’ as “a cause complete insofar as havings of properties intrinsic to [\(S\)] are concerned, though perhaps omitting some events extrinsic to [\(S\)]” (cf. Lewis 1997, 156). In other words, an \(S\)-complete cause of \(S\)’s doing \(\phi\) requires that \(S\) possess all the intrinsic properties relevant to \(S\)’s causing \(S\)’s doing \(\phi\). This analysis appears to afford Vihvelin the basis for a principled difference between agoraphobics and merely determined agents. We must hold fixed an agent’s phobias since they are intrinsic properties of agents, but we need not hold fixed the laws of nature because these are not intrinsic properties of agents. (It should be noted that the assumption that intrinsic properties are wholly separable from the laws of nature is disputed by ‘dispositional essentialists.’ See the entry on metaphysics of causation .) Vihvelin’s analysis appears to be restrictive enough to exclude phobics from having the freedom to do otherwise, but permissive enough to allow that some agents in deterministic worlds have the freedom to do otherwise.

But appearances can be deceiving. The new dispositionalist claims have received some serious criticism, with the majority of the criticisms maintaining that these analyses are still too permissive (Clarke 2009; Whittle 2010; Franklin 2011b). For example, Randolph Clarke argues that Vihvelin’s analysis fails to overcome the original problem with the Simple Conditional Analysis . He writes, “A phobic agent might, on some occasion, be unable to choose to A and unable to A without so choosing, while retaining all that she would need to implement such a choice, should she make it. Despite lacking the ability to choose to A , the agent might have some set of intrinsic properties B such that, if she chose to A and retained B , then her choosing to A and her having B would jointly be an agent-complete cause of her A -ing” (Clarke 2009, p. 329).

The Categorical Analysis , and thus incompatibilism about free will and determinism, remains an attractive option for many philosophers precisely because it seems that compatibilists have yet to furnish an analysis of the freedom to do otherwise that implies that phobics clearly lack the ability to choose or do otherwise that is relevant to moral responsibility and yet some merely determined agents have this ability.

Some have tried to avoid these lingering problems for compatibilists by arguing that the freedom to do otherwise is not required for free will or moral responsibility. What matters for an agent’s freedom and responsibility, so it is argued, is the source of her action—how her action was brought about. The most prominent strategy for defending this move appeals to ‘Frankfurt-style cases’. In a ground-breaking article, Harry Frankfurt (1969) presented a series of thought experiments intended to show that it is possible that agents are morally responsible for their actions and yet they lack the ability to do otherwise. While Frankfurt (1971) took this to show that moral responsibility and free will come apart—free will requires the ability to do otherwise but moral responsibility does not—if we define ‘free will’ as ‘the strongest control condition required for moral responsibility’ (cf. Wolf 1990, 3–4; Fischer 1994, 3; Mele 2006, 17), then if Frankfurt-style cases show that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise, then they also show that free will does not require the ability to do otherwise. Let us consider this challenge in more detail.

Here is a representative Frankfurt-style case:

Imagine, if you will, that Black is a quite nifty (and even generally nice) neurosurgeon. But in performing an operation on Jones to remove a brain tumor, Black inserts a mechanism into Jones’s brain which enables Black to monitor and control Jones’s activities. Jones, meanwhile, knows nothing of this. Black exercises this control through a sophisticated computer which he has programmed so that, among other things, it monitors Jones’s voting behavior. If Jones were to show any inclination to vote for Bush, then the computer, through the mechanism in Jones’s brain, intervenes to ensure that he actually decides to vote for Clinton and does so vote. But if Jones decides on his own to vote for Clinton, the computer does nothing but continue to monitor—without affecting—the goings-on in Jones’s head. (Fischer 2006, 38)

Fischer goes on to suppose that Jones “decides to vote for Clinton on his own”, without any interference from Black, and maintains that in such a case Jones is morally responsible for his decision. Fischer draws two interrelated conclusions from this case. The first, negative conclusion, is that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility. Jones is unable to refrain from deciding to vote for Clinton, and yet, so long as Jones decides to vote for Clinton on his own, his decision is free and one for which he is morally responsible. The second, positive conclusion, is that freedom and responsibility are functions of the actual sequence . What matters for an agent’s freedom and moral responsibility is not what might have happened, but how his action was actually brought about. What matters is not whether the agent had the ability to do otherwise, but whether he was the source of his actions.

The success of Frankfurt-style cases is hotly contested. An early and far-reaching criticism is due to David Widerker (1995), Carl Ginet (1996), and Robert Kane (1996, 142–43). According to this criticism, proponents of Frankfurt-style cases face a dilemma: either these cases assume that the connection between the indicator (in our case, the absence of Jones’s showing any inclination to decide to vote for Bush) and the agent’s decision (here, Jones’s deciding to vote for Clinton) is deterministic or not. If the connection is deterministic, then Frankfurt-style cases cannot be expected to convince incompatibilists that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility and/or free will, since Jones’s action will be deterministically brought about by factors beyond his control, leading incompatibilists to conclude that Jones is not morally responsible for his decision. But if the connection is nondeterministic, then it is possible even in the absence of showing any inclination to decide to vote for Bush, that Jones decides to vote for Bush, and so he retains the ability to do otherwise. Either way Frankfurt-style cases fail to show that Jones is both morally responsible for his decision and yet is unable to do otherwise.

While some have argued that even Frankfurt-style cases that assume determinism are effective (see, e.g., Fischer 1999, 2010, 2013 and Haji and McKenna 2004 and for criticisms of this approach, see Goetz 2005, Palmer 2005, 2014, Widerker and Goetz 2013, and Cohen 2017), the majority of proponents of Frankfurt-style cases have attempted to revise these cases so that they are explicitly nondeterministic and yet still show that the agent was morally responsible even though he lacked the ability to do otherwise—or, at least that he lacked any ability to do otherwise that could be relevant to grounding the agent’s moral responsibility (see, e.g., Mele and Robb 1998, 2003, Pereboom 2001, 2014, McKenna 2003, Hunt 2005, and for criticisms of these cases see Ginet 2002, Timpe 2006, Widerker 2006, Franklin 2011c, Moya 2011, Palmer 2011, 2013, Robinson 2014, Capes 2016, Capes and Swenson 2017, and Elzein 2017).

Supposing that Frankfurt-style cases are successful, what exactly do they show? In our view, they show neither that free will and moral responsibility do not require an ability to do otherwise in any sense nor that compatibilism is true. Frankfurt-style cases are of clear help to the compatibilists’ position (though see Speak 2007 for a dissenting opinion). The Consequence Argument raises a powerful challenge to the cogency of compatibilism. But if Frankfurt-style cases are successful, agents can act freely in the sense relevant to moral responsibility while lacking the ability to do otherwise in the all-in sense. This allows compatibilists to concede that the all-in ability to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism, and yet insist that it is irrelevant to the question of the compatibility of determinism with moral responsibility (and perhaps even free will, depending on how we define this) (cf. Fischer 1987, 1994. For a challenge to the move from not strictly necessary to irrelevant, see O’Connor [2000, 20–22] and in reply, Fischer [2006, 152–56].). But, of course, showing that an argument for the falsity of compatibilism is irrelevant does not show that compatibilism is true. Indeed, many incompatibilists maintain that Frankfurt-style cases are successful and defend incompatibilism not via the Consequence Argument, but by way of arguments that attempt to show that agents in deterministic worlds cannot be the ‘source’ of their actions in the way that moral responsibility requires (Stump 1999; Zagzebski 2000; Pereboom 2001, 2014). Thus, if successful, Frankfurt-style cases would be at best the first step in defending compatibilism. The second step must offer an analysis of the kind of sourcehood constitutive of free will that entails that free will is compatible with determinism (cf. Fischer 1982).

Furthermore, while proponents of Frankfurt-style cases often maintain that these cases show that no ability to do otherwise is necessary for moral responsibility (“I have employed the Frankfurt-type example to argue that this sense of control [i.e. the one required for moral responsibility] need not involve any alternative possibilities” [Fischer 2006, p. 40; emphasis ours]), we believe that this conclusion overreaches. At best, Frankfurt-style cases show that the ability to do otherwise in the all-in sense —in the sense defined by the Categorical Analysis —is not necessary for free will or moral responsibility (cf. Franklin 2015). To appreciate this, let us assume that in the above Frankfurt-style case Jones lacks the ability to do otherwise in the all-in sense: there is no possible world in which we hold fixed the past and laws and yet Jones does otherwise, since all such worlds include Black and his preparations for preventing Jones from doing otherwise should Jones show any inclination. Even if this is all true, it should take only a little reflection to recognize that in this case Jones is able to do otherwise in certain weaker senses we might attach to that phrase, and compatibilists in fact still think that the ability to do otherwise in some such senses is necessary for free will and moral responsibility. Consequently, even though Frankfurt-style cases have, as a matter of fact, moved many compatibilists away from emphasizing ability to do otherwise to emphasizing sourcehood, we suggest that this move is best seen as a weakening of the ability-to-do-otherwise condition on moral responsibility (but see Cyr 2017 and Kittle 2019 for criticisms of this claim). (A potentially important exception to this claim is Sartorio [2016], who appealing to some controversial ideas in the metaphysics of causation appears to argue that no sense of the ability to do otherwise is necessary for control in the sense at stake for moral responsibility, but instead what matters is whether the agent is the cause of the action. We simply note that Sartorio’s account of causation is a modal one [see especially Sartorio (2016, 94–95, 132–37)] and thus it is far from clear that her account of freedom and responsibility is really an exception.)

In this section, we will assume that Frankfurt-style cases are successful in order to consider two prominent compatibilist attempts to construct analyses of the sourcehood condition (though see the entry on compatibilism for a more systematic survey of compatibilist theories of free will). The first, and perhaps most popular, compatibilist model is a reasons-responsiveness model. According to this model, an agent’s action \(\phi\) is free just in case the agent or manner in which the action is brought about is responsive to the reasons available to the agent at the time of action. While compatibilists develop this kind of account in different ways, the most detailed proposal is due to John Martin Fischer (1994, 2006, 2010, 2012; Fischer and Ravizza 1998. For similar compatibilist treatments of reasons-responsiveness, see Wolf 1990, Wallace 1994, Haji 1998, Nelkin 2011, McKenna 2013, Vargas 2013, Sartorio 2016). Fischer and Ravizza argue that an agent’s action is free and one for which he is morally responsible only if the mechanism that issued in the action is moderately reasons-responsive (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, ch. 3). By ‘mechanism’, Fischer and Ravizza simply mean “the way the action was brought about” (38). One mechanism they often discuss is practical deliberation. For example, in the case of Jones discussed above, his decision to vote for Clinton on his own was brought about by the process of practical deliberation. What must be true of this process, this mechanism, for it to be moderately reasons-responsive? Fischer and Ravizza maintain that moderate reasons-responsiveness consists in two conditions: reasons-receptivity and reasons-reactivity. A mechanism’s reasons-receptivity depends on the agent’s cognitive capacities, such as being capable of understanding moral reasons and the implications of their actions (69–73). The second condition is more important for us in the present context. A mechanism’s reasons-reactivity depends on how the mechanism would react given different reasons for action. Fischer and Ravizza argue that the kind of reasons-reactivity at stake is weak reasons-reactivity, where this merely requires that there is some possible world in which the laws of nature remain the same, the same mechanism operates, there is a sufficient reason to do otherwise, and the mechanism brings about the alternative action in response to this sufficient reason (73–76). On this analysis, while Jones, due to the activity of Black, lacks the ‘all-in’ sense of the ability to do otherwise, he is nevertheless morally responsible for deciding to vote for Clinton because his action finds its source in Jones’s practical deliberation that is moderately reasons-responsive.

Fischer and Ravizza’s theory of freedom and responsibility has shifted the focus of much recent debate to questions of sourcehood. Moreover, one might argue that this theory is a clear improvement over classical compatibilism with respect to handling cases of phobia. By focusing on mechanisms, Fischer and Ravizza can argue that our agoraphobic Luke is not morally responsible for deciding to refrain from going outside because the mechanism that issues in this action—namely his agoraphobia—is not moderately reasons-responsive. There is no world with the same laws of nature as our own, this mechanism operates, and yet it reacts to a sufficient reason to go outside. No matter what reasons there are for Luke to go outside, when acting on this mechanism, he will always refrain from going outside (cf. Fischer 1987, 74).

Before turning to our second compatibilist model, it is worth noting that it would be a mistake to think that Fischer and Ravizza’s account is a sourcehood account to the exclusion of the ability to do otherwise in any sense. As we have just seen, Fischer and Ravizza place clear modal requirements on mechanisms that issue in actions with respect to which agents are free and morally responsible. Indeed, this should be clear from the very idea of reasons-responsiveness. Whether one is responsive depends not merely on how one does respond, but also on how one would respond. Thus, any account that makes reasons-responsiveness an essential condition of free will is an account that makes the ability to do otherwise, in some sense, necessary for free will (Fischer [2018] concedes this point, though, as noted above, the reader should consider Sartorio [2016] as a potential counterexample to this claim).

The second main compatibilist model of sourcehood is an identification model. Accounts of sourcehood of this kind lay stress on self-determination or autonomy: to be the source of her action the agent must self-determine her action. Like the contemporary discussion of the ability to do otherwise, the contemporary discussion of the power of self-determination begins with the failure of classical compatibilism to produce an acceptable definition. According to classical compatibilists, self-determination simply consists in the agent’s action being determined by her strongest motive. On the assumption that some compulsive agents’ compulsions operate by generating irresistible desires to act in certain ways, the classical compatibilist analysis of self-determination implies that these compulsive actions are self-determined. While Hobbes seems willing to accept this implication (1656 [1999], 78), most contemporary compatibilists concede that this result is unacceptable.

Beginning with the work of Harry Frankfurt (1971) and Gary Watson (1975), many compatibilists have developed identification accounts of self-determination that attempt to draw a distinction between an agent’s desires or motives that are internal to the agent and those that are external. The idea is that while agents are not (or at least may not be) identical to any motivations (or bundle of motivations), they are identified with a subset of their motivations, rendering these motivations internal to the agent in such a way that any actions brought about by these motivations are self -determined. The identification relation is not an identity relation, but something weaker (cf. Bratman 2000, 39n12). What the precise nature of the identification relation is and to which attitudes an agent stands in this relation is hotly disputed. Lippert-Rasmussen (2003) helpfully divides identification accounts into two main types. The first are “authority” accounts, according to which agents are identified with attitudes that are authorized to speak for them (368). The second are authenticity accounts, according to which agents are identified with attitudes that reveal who they truly are (368). (But see Shoemaker 2015 for an ecumenical account of identification that blends these two accounts.) Proposed attitudes to which agents are said to stand in the identification relation include higher-order desires (Frankfurt 1971), cares or loves (Frankfurt 1993, 1994; Shoemaker 2003; Jaworska 2007; Sripada 2016), self-governing policies (Bratman 2000), the desire to make sense of oneself (Velleman 1992, 2009), and perceptions (or judgments) of the good (or best) (Watson 1975; Stump 1988; Ekstrom 1993; Mitchell-Yellin 2015).

The distinction between internal and external motivations allows identification theorists to enrich classical compatibilists’ understanding of constraint, while remaining compatibilists about free will and determinism. According to classical compatibilists, the only kind of constraint is external (e.g., broken cars and broken legs), but addictions and phobias seem just as threatening to free will. Identification theorists have the resources to concede that some constraints are internal. For example, they can argue that our agoraphobic Luke is not free in refraining from going outside even though this decision was caused by his strongest desires because he is not identified with his strongest desires. On compatibilist identification accounts, what matters for self-determination is not whether our actions are determined or undetermined, but whether they are brought about by motives with which the agent is identified: exercises of the power of self-determination consists in an agent’s actions being brought about, in part, by an agent’s motives with which she is identified. (It is important to note that while we have distinguished reasons-responsive accounts from identification accounts, there is nothing preventing one from combing both elements in a complete analysis of free will.)

Even if these reasons-responsive and identification compatibilist accounts of sourcehood might successfully side-step the Consequence Argument, they must come to grips with a second incompatibilist argument: the Manipulation Argument. The general problem raised by this line of argument is that whatever proposed compatibilist conditions for an agent \(S\)’s being free with respect to, and morally responsible for, some action \(\phi\), it will seem that agents can be manipulated into satisfying these conditions with respect to \(\phi\) and, yet, precisely because they are manipulated into satisfying these conditions, their freedom and responsibility seem undermined. The two most influential forms of the Manipulation Argument are Pereboom’s Four-case Argument (2001, ch. 4; 2014, ch. 4) and Mele’s Zygote Argument (2006, ch. 7. See Todd 2010, 2012 for developments of Mele’s argument). As the structure of Mele’s version is simpler, we will focus on it.

Imagine a goddess Diana who creates a zygote \(Z\) in Mary in some deterministic world. Suppose that Diana creates \(Z\) as she does because she wants Jones to be murdered thirty years later. From her knowledge of the laws of nature in her world and her knowledge of the state of the world just prior to her creating \(Z\), she knows that a zygote with precisely \(Z\)’s constitution located in Mary will develop into an agent Ernie who, thirty years later, will murder Jones as a result of his moderately reasons-responsive mechanism and on the basis of motivations with which he is identified (whatever those might be). Suppose Diana succeeds in her plan and Ernie murders Jones as a result of her manipulation.

Many judge that Ernie is not morally responsible for murdering Jones even though he satisfies both the reasons-responsive and identification criteria. There are two possible lines of reply open to compatibilists. On the soft-line reply, compatibilists attempt to show that there is a relevant difference between manipulated agents such as Ernie and agents who satisfy their account (McKenna 2008, 470). For example, Fischer and Ravizza propose a second condition on sourcehood: in addition to a mechanism’s being moderately reasons-responsive, an agent is morally responsible for the output of such a mechanism only if the agent has come to take responsibility for the mechanism, where an agent has taken responsibility for a mechanism \(M\) just in case (i) she believes that she is an agent when acting from \(M\), (ii) she believes that she is an apt target for blame and praise for acting from \(M\), and (iii) her beliefs specified in (i) and (ii) are “based, in an appropriate way, on [her] evidence” (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 238). The problem with this reply is that we can easily imagine Diana creating Ernie so that his murdering Jones is a result not only of a moderately reasons-responsive mechanism, but also a mechanism for which he has taken responsibility. On the hard-line reply, compatibilists concede that, despite initial appearances, the manipulated agent is free and morally responsible and attempt to ameliorate the seeming counterintuitiveness of this concession (McKenna 2008, 470–71). Here compatibilists might point out that the idea of being manipulated is worrisome only so long as the manipulators are interfering with an agent’s development. But if the manipulators simply create a person, and then allow that person’s life to unfold without any further inference, the manipulators’ activity is no threat to freedom (McKenna 2008; Fischer 2011; Sartorio 2016, ch. 5). (For other responses to the Manipulation Argument, see Kearns 2012; Sripada 2012; McKenna 2014.)

Despite these compatibilist replies, to some the idea that the entirety of a free agent’s life can be determined, and in this way controlled, by another agent will seem incredible. Some take the lesson of the Manipulation Argument to be that no compatibilist account of sourcehood or self-determination is satisfactory. True sourcehood—the kind of sourcehood that can actually ground an agent’s freedom and responsibility—requires, so it is argued, that one’s action not be causally determined by factors beyond one’s control.

Libertarians, while united in endorsing this negative condition on sourcehood, are deeply divided concerning which further positive conditions may be required. It is important to note that while libertarians are united in insisting that compatibilist accounts of sourcehood are insufficient, they are not committed to thinking that the conditions of freedom spelled out in terms either of reasons-responsiveness or of identification are not necessary. For example, Stump (1988, 1996, 2010) builds a sophisticated libertarian model of free will out of resources originally developed within Frankfurt’s identification model (see also Ekstrom 1993, 2000; Franklin 2014) and nearly all libertarians agree that exercises of free will require agents to be reasons-responsive (e.g., Kane 1996; Clarke 2003, chs. 8–9; Franklin 2018, ch. 2). Moreover, while this section focuses on libertarian accounts of sourcehood, we remind readers that most (if not all) libertarians think that the freedom to do otherwise is also necessary for free will and moral responsibility.

There are three main libertarian options for understanding sourcehood or self-determination: non-causal libertarianism (Ginet 1990, 2008; McCann 1998; Lowe 2008; Goetz 2009; Pink 2017; Palmer 2021), event-causal libertarianism (Wiggins 1973; Kane 1996, 1999, 2011, 2016; Mele 1995, chs. 11–12; 2006, chs. 4–5; 2017; Ekstrom 2000, 2019; Clarke 2003, chs. 2–6; Franklin 2018), and agent-causal libertarianism (Reid 1788 [1969]; Chisholm 1966, 1976; Taylor 1966; O’Connor 2000; Clarke 1993; 1996; 2003, chs. 8–10; Griffith 2010; Steward 2012). Non-causal libertarians contend that exercises of the power of self-determination need not (or perhaps even cannot) be caused or causally structured. According to this view, we control our volition or choice simply in virtue of its being ours—its occurring in us. We do not exert a special kind of causality in bringing it about; instead, it is an intrinsically active event, intrinsically something we do . While there may be causal influences upon our choice, there need not be, and any such causal influence is wholly irrelevant to understanding why it occurs. Reasons provide an autonomous, non-causal form of explanation. Provided our choice is not wholly determined by prior factors, it is free and under our control simply in virtue of being ours. Non-causal views have failed to garner wide support among libertarians since, for many, self- determination seems to be an essentially causal notion (cf. Mele 2000 and Clarke 2003, ch. 2). This dispute hinges on the necessary conditions on the concept of causal power, and relatedly on whether power simpliciter admits causal and non-causal variants. For discussion, see O’Connor (2021).

Most libertarians endorse an event-causal or agent-causal account of sourcehood. Both these accounts maintain that exercises of the power of self-determination consist partly in the agent’s bringing about her choice or action, but they disagree on how to analyze an agent’s bringing about her choice . While event-causal libertarianism admits of different species, at the heart of this view is the idea that self-determining an action requires, at minimum, that the agent cause the action and that an agent’s causing his action is wholly reducible to mental states and other events involving the agent nondeviantly causing his action. Consider an agent’s raising his hand. According to the event-causal model at its most basic level, an agent’s raising his hand consists in the agent’s causing his hand to rise and his causing his hand to rise consists in apt mental states and events involving the agent—such as the agent’s desire to ask a question and his belief that he can ask a question by raising his hand— nondeviantly causing his hand to rise. (The nondeviance clause is required since it seems possible that an event be brought about by one’s desires and beliefs and yet not be self-determined, or even an action for that matter, due to the unusual causal path leading from the desires and beliefs to action. Imagine a would-be accomplice of an assassin believes that his dropping his cigarette is the signal for the assassin to shoot his intended victim and he desires to drop his cigarette and yet this belief and desire so unnerve him that he accidentally drops his cigarette. While the event of dropping the cigarette is caused by a relevant desire and belief it does not seem to be self-determined and perhaps is not even an action [cf. Davidson 1973].) To fully spell out this account, event-causal libertarians must specify which mental states and events are apt (cf. Brand 1979)—which mental states and events are the springs of self-determined actions—and what nondeviance consists in (cf. Bishop 1989). (We note that this has proven very difficult, enough so that some take the problem to spell doom for event-causal theories of action. Such philosophers [e.g., Taylor 1966 and Sehon 2005] take agential power to be conceptually and/or ontologically primitive and understand reasons explanations of action in irreducibly teleological terms. See Stout 2010 for a brisk survey of discussions of this topic.) For ease, in what follows we will assume that apt mental states are an agent’s reasons that favor the action.

Event-causal libertarians, of course, contend that self-determination requires more than nondeviant causation by agents’ reasons: for it is possible that agents’ actions in deterministic worlds are nondeviantly caused by apt mental states and events. Self-determination requires nondeterministic causation, in a nondeviant way, by an agent’s reasons. While historically many have thought that nondeterministic causation is impossible (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 1656 [1999]; Hume 1740 [1978], 1748 [1975]), with the advent of quantum physics and, from a very different direction, an influential essay by G.E.M. Anscombe (1971), it is now widely assumed that nondeterministic (or probabilistic) causation is possible. There are two importantly different ways to understand nondeterministic causation: as the causation of probability or as the probability of causation. Under the causation of probability model, a nondeterministic cause \(C\) causes (or causally contributes to) the objective probability of the outcome’s occurring rather than the outcome itself. On this account, \(S\)’s reasons do not cause his decision but there being a certain antecedent objective probability of its occurring, and the decision itself is uncaused. On the competing probability of causation model, a nondeterministic cause \(C\) causes the outcome of a nondeterministic process. Given that \(C\) is a nondeterministic cause of the outcome, it was possible given the exact same past and laws of nature that \(C\) not cause the outcome (perhaps because it was possible that some other event cause some other outcome)—the probability of this causal transaction’s occurring was less than \(1\). Given that event-causal libertarians maintain that self-determined actions, and thus free actions, must be caused, they are committed to the probability of causation model of nondeterministic causation (cf. Franklin 2018, 25–26). (We note that Balaguer [2010] is skeptical of the above distinction, and it is thus unclear whether he should best be classified as a non-causal or event-causal libertarian, though see Balaguer [2014] for evidence that it is best to treat him as a non-causalist.) Consequently, according to event-causal libertarians, when an agent \(S\) self-determines his choice \(\phi\), then \(S\)’s reasons \(r_1\) nondeterministically cause (in a nondeviant way) \(\phi\), and it was possible, given the past and laws, that \(r_1\) not have caused \(\phi\), but rather some of \(S\)’s other reasons \(r_2\) nondeterministically caused (in a nondeviant way) a different action \(\psi\).

Agent-causal libertarians contend that the event-causal picture fails to capture self-determination, for it fails to accord the agent with a power to settle what she does. Pereboom offers a forceful statement of this worry:

On an event-causal libertarian picture, the relevant causal conditions antecedent to the decision, i.e., the occurrence of certain agent-involving events, do not settle whether the decision will occur, but only render the occurrence of the decision about \(50\%\) probable. In fact, because no occurrence of antecedent events settles whether the decision will occur, and only antecedent events are causally relevant, nothing settles whether the decision will occur. (Pereboom 2014, 32; cf. Watson 1987, 1996; Clarke 2003 [ch. 8], 2011; Griffith 2010; Shabo 2011, 2013; Steward 2012 [ch. 3]; and Schlosser 2014); and for critical assessment, see Clarke 2019.

On the event-causal picture, the agent’s causal contribution to her actions is exhausted by the causal contribution of her reasons, and yet her reasons leave open which decisions she will make, and this seems insufficient for self-determination.

But what more must be added? Agent-causal libertarians maintain that self-determination requires that the agent herself play a causal role over and above the causal role played by her reasons. Some agent-causal libertarians deny that an agent’s reasons play any direct causal role in bringing about an agent’s self-determined actions (Chisholm 1966; O’Connor 2000, ch. 5), whereas others allow or even require that self-determined actions be caused in part by the agent’s reasons (Clarke 2003, ch. 9; Steward 2012, ch. 3). But all agent-causal libertarians insist that exercises of the power of self-determination do not reduce to nondeterministic causation by apt mental states: agent-causation does not reduce to event-causation.

Agent-causal libertarianism seems to capture an aspect of self-determination that neither the above compatibilists accounts nor event-causal libertarian accounts capture. (Some compatibilists even accept this and try to incorporate agent-causation into a compatibilist understanding of free will. See Markosian 1999, 2012; Nelkin 2011.) These accounts reduce the causal role of the self to states and events to which the agent is not identical (even if he is identified with them). But how can self -determination of my actions wholly reduce to determination of my actions by things other than the self? Richard Taylor nicely expresses this intuition: “If I believe that something not identical to myself was the cause of my behavior—some event wholly external to myself, for instance, or even one internal to myself, such as a nerve impulse, volition, or whatnot—then I cannot regard the behavior as being an act of mine, unless I further believed that I was the cause of that external or internal event” (1974, 55; cf. Franklin 2016).

Despite its powerful intuitive pull for some, many have argued that agent-causal libertarianism is obscure or even incoherent. The stock objection used to be that the very idea of agent-causation—causation by agents that is not reducible to causation by mental states and events involving the agent—is incoherent, but this objection has become less common due to pioneering work by Chisholm (1966, 1976), Taylor (1974), O’Connor (2000, 2011), Clarke (2003), and Steward 2012, ch. 8). More common objections now concern, first, how to understand the relationship between agent-causation and an agent’s reasons (or motivations in general), and, second, the empirical adequacy of agent-causal libertarianism. With respect to the first worry, it is widely assumed that the only (or at least best) way to understand reasons-explanation and motivational influence is within a causal account of reasons, where reasons cause our actions (Davidson 1963; Mele 1992). If agent-causal libertarians accept that self-determined actions, in addition to being agent-caused, must also be caused by agents’ reasons that favored those actions, then agent-causal libertarians need to explain how to integrate these causes (for a detailed attempt to do just this, see Clarke 2003, ch. 8). Given that these two causes seem distinct, is it not possible that the agent cause his decision to \(\phi\) and yet the agent’s reasons simultaneously cause an incompatible decision to \(\psi\)? If agent-causal libertarians side-step this difficult question by denying that reasons cause action, then they must explain how reasons can explain and motivate action without causing it; and this has turned out to be no easy task. (For more general attempts to understand reasons-explanation and motivation within a non-causal framework see Schueler 1995, 2003; Sehon 2005). For further discussion see the entry on incompatibilist (nondeterministic) theories of free will .

Finally, we note that some recent philosophers have questioned the presumed difference between event- and agent-causation by arguing that all causation is object or substance causation. They argue that the dominant tendency to understand ‘garden variety’ causal transactions in the world as relations between events is an unfortunate legacy of David Hume’s rejection of substance and causation as basic metaphysical categories. On the competing metaphysical picture of the world, the event or state of an object’s having some property such as mass is its having a causal power, which in suitable circumstances it exercises to bring about a characteristic effect. Applied to human agents in an account of free will, the account suggests a picture on which an agent’s having desires, beliefs, and intentions are rational powers to will particular courses of action, and where the agent’s willing is not determined in any one direction, she wills freely. An advantage for the agent-causalist who embraces this broader metaphysics is ‘ideological’ parsimony. For different developments and defenses of this approach, see Lowe (2008), Swinburne (2013), and O’Connor (2021); and for reason to doubt that a substance-causal metaphysics helps to allay skepticism concerning free will, see Clarke and Reed (2015).

3. Do We Have Free Will?

Most philosophers theorizing about free will take themselves to be attempting to analyze a near-universal power of mature human beings. But as we’ve noted above, there have been free will skeptics in both ancient and (especially) modern times. (Israel 2001 highlights a number of such skeptics in the early modern period.) In this section, we summarize the main lines of argument both for and against the reality of human freedom of will.

There are both a priori and empirical arguments against free will (See the entry on skepticism about moral responsibility ). Several of these start with an argument that free will is incompatible with causal determinism, which we will not rehearse here. Instead, we focus on arguments that human beings lack free will, against the background assumption that freedom and causal determinism are incompatible.

The most radical a priori argument is that free will is not merely contingently absent but is impossible. Nietzsche 1886 [1966] argues to this effect, and more recently it has been argued by Galen Strawson (1986, ch. 2; 1994, 2002). Strawson associates free will with being ‘ultimately morally responsible’ for one’s actions. He argues that, because how one acts is a result of, or explained by, “how one is, mentally speaking” (\(M\)), for one to be responsible for that choice one must be responsible for \(M\). To be responsible for \(M\), one must have chosen to be \(M\) itself—and that not blindly, but deliberately, in accordance with some reasons \(r_1\). But for that choice to be a responsible one, one must have chosen to be such as to be moved by \(r_1\), requiring some further reasons \(r_2\) for such a choice. And so on, ad infinitum . Free choice requires an impossible infinite regress of choices to be the way one is in making choices.

There have been numerous replies to Strawson’s argument. Mele (1995, 221ff.) argues that Strawson misconstrues the locus of freedom and responsibility. Freedom is principally a feature of our actions, and only derivatively of our characters from which such actions spring. The task of the theorist is to show how one is in rational, reflective control of the choices one makes, consistent with there being no freedom-negating conditions. While this seems right, when considering those theories that make one’s free control to reside directly in the causal efficacy of one’s reasons (such as compatibilist reasons-responsive accounts or event-causal libertarianism), it is not beside the point to reflect on how one came to be that way in the first place and to worry that such reflection should lead one to conclude that true responsibility (and hence freedom) is undermined, since a complete distal source of any action may be found external to the agent. Clarke (2003, 170–76) argues that an effective reply may be made by indeterminists, and, in particular, by nondeterministic agent-causal theorists. Such theorists contend that (i) aspects of ‘how one is, mentally speaking’, fully explain an agent’s choice without causally determining it and (ii) the agent himself causes the choice that is made (so that the agent’s antecedent state, while grounding an explanation of the action, is not the complete causal source of it). Since the agent’s exercise of this power is causally undetermined, it is not true that there is a sufficient ‘ultimate’ source of it external to the agent. Finally, Mele (2006, 129–34, and 2017, 212–16) and O’Connor (2009b) suggest that freedom and moral responsibility come in degrees and grow over time, reflecting the fact that ‘how one is, mentally speaking’ is increasingly shaped by one’s own past choices. Furthermore, some choices for a given individual may reflect more freedom and responsibility than others, which may be the kernel of truth behind Strawson’s sweeping argument. (For discussion of the ways that nature, nurture, and contingent circumstances shape our behavior and raise deep issues concerning the extent of our freedom and responsibility, see Levy 2011 and Russell 2017, chs. 10–12.)

A second family of arguments against free will contend that, in one way or another, nondeterministic theories of freedom entail either that agents lack control over their choices or that the choices cannot be adequately explained. These arguments are variously called the ‘Mind’, ‘Rollback’, or ‘Luck’ argument, with the latter admitting of several versions. (For statements of such arguments, see van Inwagen 1983, ch. 4; 2000; Haji 2001; Mele 2006; Shabo 2011, 2013, 2020; Coffman 2015). We note that some philosophers advance such arguments not as parts of a general case against free will, but merely as showing the inadequacy of specific accounts of free will [see, e.g., Griffith 2010].) They each describe imagined cases—individual cases, or comparison of intra- or inter-world duplicate antecedent conditions followed by diverging outcomes—designed to elicit the judgment that the occurrence of a choice that had remained unsettled given all prior causal factors can only be a ‘matter of chance’, ‘random’, or ‘a matter of luck’. Such terms have been imported from other contexts and have come to function as quasi-technical, unanalyzed concepts in these debates, and it is perhaps more helpful to avoid such proxies and to conduct the debates directly in terms of the metaphysical notion of control and epistemic notion of explanation. Where the arguments question whether an undetermined agent can exercise appropriate control over the choice he makes, proponents of nondeterministic theories often reply that control is not exercised prior to, but at the time of the choice—in the very act of bringing it about (see, e.g., Clarke 2005 and O’Connor 2007). Where the arguments question whether undetermined choices can be adequately explained, the reply often consists in identifying a form of explanation other than the form demanded by the critic—a ‘noncontrastive’ explanation, perhaps, rather than a ‘contrastive’ explanation, or a species of contrastive explanation consistent with indeterminism (see, e.g., Kane 1999; Clarke, 2003, ch. 8; and Franklin 2011a; 2018, ch. 5).

We now consider empirical arguments against human freedom. Some of these stem from the physical sciences (while making assumptions concerning the way physical phenomena fix psychological phenomena) and others from neuroscience and psychology.

It used to be common for philosophers to argue that there is empirical reason to believe that the world in general is causally determined, and since human beings are parts of the world, they are too. Many took this to be strongly confirmed by the spectacular success of Isaac Newton’s framework for understanding the universe as governed everywhere by fairly simple, exceptionless laws of motion. But the quantum revolution of the early twentieth century has made that ‘clockwork universe’ image at least doubtful at the level of basic physics. While quantum mechanics has proven spectacularly successful as a framework for making precise and accurate predictions of certain observable phenomena, its implications for the causal structure of reality is still not well understood, and there are competing indeterministic and deterministic interpretations. See the entry on quantum mechanics for detailed discussion.) It is possible that indeterminacy on the small-scale, supposing it to be genuine, ‘cancels out’ at the macroscopic scale of birds and buildings and people, so that behavior at this scale is virtually deterministic. But this idea, once common, is now being challenged empirically, even at the level of basic biology. Furthermore, the social, biological, and medical sciences, too, are rife with merely statistical generalizations. Plainly, the jury is out on all these inter-theoretic questions. But that is just a way to say that current science does not decisively support the idea that everything we do is pre-determined by the past, and ultimately by the distant past, wholly out of our control. For discussion, see Balaguer (2009), Koch (2009), Roskies (2014), Ellis (2016).

Maybe, then, we are subject to myriad causal influences, but the sum total of these influences doesn’t determine what we do, they only make it more or less likely that we’ll do this or that. Now some of the a priori no-free-will arguments above center on nondeterministic theories according to which there are objective antecedent probabilities associated with each possible choice outcome. Why objective probabilities of this kind might present special problems beyond those posed by the absence of determinism has been insufficiently explored to date. (For brief discussion, see Vicens 2016 and O’Connor 2016.) But one philosopher who argues that there is reason to hold that our actions, if undetermined, are governed by objective probabilities and that this fact calls into question whether we act freely is Derk Pereboom (2001, ch. 3; 2014, ch. 3). Pereboom notes that our best physical theories indicate that statistical laws govern isolated, small-scale physical events, and he infers from the thesis that human beings are wholly physically composed that such statistical laws will also govern all the physical components of human actions. Finally, Pereboom maintains that agent-causal libertarianism offers the correct analysis of free will. He then invites us to imagine that the antecedent probability of some physical component of an action occurring is \(0.32\). If the action is free while not violating the statistical law, then, in a scenario with a large enough number of instances, this action would have to be freely chosen close to \(32\) percent of the time. This leads to the problem of “wild coincidences”:

if the occurrence of these physical components were settled by the choices of agent-causes, then their actually being chosen close to 32 percent of the time would amount to a coincidence no less wild than the coincidence of possible actions whose physical components have an antecedent probability of about 0.99 being chosen, over large enough number of instances, close to 99 percent of the time. The proposal that agent-caused free choices do not diverge from what the statistical laws predict for the physical components of our actions would run so sharply counter to what we would expect as to make it incredible. (2014, 67)

Clarke (2010) questions the implicit assumption that free agent-causal choices should be expected not to conform to physical statistical laws, while O’Connor (2009a) challenges the more general assumption that freedom requires that agent-causal choices not be governed by statistical laws of any kind, as they plausibly would be if the relevant psychological states/powers are strongly emergent from physical states of the human brain. Finally, Runyan 2018 argues that Pereboom’s case rests on an implausible empirical assumption concerning the evolution of objective probabilities concerning types of behavior over time.

Pereboom’s empirical basis for free will skepticism is very general. Others see support for free will skepticism from specific findings and theories in the human sciences. They point to evidence that we can be unconsciously influenced in the choices we make by a range of factors, including ones that are not motivationally relevant; that we can come to believe that we chose to initiate a behavior that in fact was artificially induced; that people subject to certain neurological disorders will sometimes engage in purposive behavior while sincerely believing that they are not directing them. Finally, a great deal of attention has been given to the work of neuroscientist Benjamin Libet (2002). Libet conducted some simple experiments that seemed to reveal the existence of ‘preparatory’ brain activity (the ‘readiness potential’) shortly before a subject engages in an ostensibly spontaneous action. (Libet interpreted this activity as the brain’s ‘deciding’ what to do before we are consciously settled on a course of action.) Wegner (2002) surveys all of these findings (some of which are due to his own work as a social psychologist) and argues on their basis that the experience of conscious willing is ‘an illusion’. For criticism of such arguments, see Mele (2009); Nahmias (2014); Mudrik et al. (2022); and several contributions to Maoz and Sinnott-Armstrong (2022). Libet’s interpretation of the readiness potential has come in for severe criticism. After extensive subsequent study, neuroscientists are uncertain what it signifies. For thorough review of the evidence, see Schurger et al. (2021).

While Pereboom and others point to these empirical considerations in defense of free will skepticism, other philosophers see them as reasons to favor a more modest free will agnosticism (Kearns 2015) or to promote revisionism about the ‘folk idea of free will’ (Vargas 2013; Nichols 2015).

If one is a compatibilist, then a case for the reality of free will requires evidence for our being effective agents who for the most part are aware of what we do and why we are doing it. If one is an incompatibilist, then the case requires in addition evidence for causal indeterminism, occurring in the right locations in the process leading from deliberation to action. Many think that we already have third-personal ‘neutral’ scientific evidence for much of human behavior’s satisfying modest compatibilist requirements, such as Fischer and Ravizza’s reasons-responsiveness account. However, given the immaturity of social science and the controversy over whether psychological states ‘reduce’ in some sense to underlying physical states (and what this might entail for the reality of mental causation), this claim is doubtful. A more promising case for our satisfying (at least) compatibilist requirements on freedom is that effective agency is presupposed by all scientific inquiry and so cannot rationally be doubted (which fact is overlooked by some of the more extreme ‘willusionists’ such as Wegner).

However, effective intervention in the world (in scientific practice and elsewhere) does not (obviously) require that our behavior be causally undetermined, so the ‘freedom is rationally presupposed’ argument cannot be launched for such an understanding of freedom. Instead, incompatibilists usually give one of the following two bases for rational belief in freedom (both of which can be given by compatibilists, too).

First, philosophers have long claimed that we have introspective evidence of freedom in our experience of action, or perhaps of consciously attended or deliberated action. Augustine and Scotus, discussed earlier, are two examples among many. In recent years, philosophers have been more carefully scrutinizing the experience of agency and a debate has emerged concerning its contents, and in particular whether it supports an indeterministic theory of human free action. For discussion, see Deery et al. (2013), Guillon (2014), Horgan (2015), and Bayne (2017).

Second, philosophers (e.g., Reid 1788 [1969], Swinburne 2013) sometimes claim that our belief in the reality of free will is epistemically basic, or reasonable without requiring independent evidential support. Most philosophers hold that some beliefs have that status, on pain of our having no justified beliefs whatever. It is controversial, however, just which beliefs do because it is controversial which criteria a belief must satisfy to qualify for that privileged status. It is perhaps necessary that a basic belief be ‘instinctive’ (unreflectively held) for all or most human beings; that it be embedded in regular experience; and that it be central to our understanding of an important aspect of the world. Our belief in free will seems to meet these criteria, but whether they are sufficient is debated. (O’Connor 2019 proposes that free will belief is epistemically basic but defeasible.) Other philosophers defend a variation on this stance, maintaining instead that belief in the reality of moral responsibility is epistemically basic, and that since moral responsibility entails free will, or so it is claimed, we may infer the reality of free will (see, e.g., van Inwagen 1983, 206–13).

4. Theological Wrinkles

A large portion of Western philosophical work on free will has been written within an overarching theological framework, according to which God is the ultimate source, sustainer, and end of all else. Some of these thinkers draw the conclusion that God must be a sufficient, wholly determining cause for everything that happens; all of them suppose that every creaturely act necessarily depends on the explanatorily prior, cooperative activity of God. It is also commonly presumed by philosophical theists that human beings are free and responsible (on pain of attributing evil in the world to God alone, and so impugning His perfect goodness). Hence, those who believe that God is omni-determining typically are compatibilists with respect to freedom and (in this case) theological determinism. Edwards (1754 [1957]) is a good example. But those who suppose that God’s sustaining activity (and special activity of conferring grace) is only a necessary condition on the outcome of human free choices need to tell a more subtle story, on which omnipotent God’s cooperative activity can be (explanatorily) prior to a human choice and yet the outcome of that choice be settled only by the choice itself. For important medieval discussions—the apex of philosophical reflection on theological concerns—see the relevant portions of Al-Ghazali IP , Aquinas BW and Scotus QAM . Three positions (given in order of logical strength) on God’s activity vis-à-vis creaturely activity were variously defended by thinkers of this area: mere conservationism, concurrentism, and occasionalism. These positions turn on subtle distinctions, which have recently been explored by Freddoso (1988), Kvanvig and McCann (1991), Koons (2002), Grant (2016 and 2019), and Judisch (2016).

Many suppose that there is a challenge to human freedom stemming not only from God’s perfect power but also from his perfect knowledge. A standard argument for the incompatibility of free will and causal determinism has a close theological analogue. Recall van Inwagen’s influential formulation of the ‘Consequence Argument’:

If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us. (van Inwagen 1983, 16)

And now consider an argument that turns on God’s comprehensive and infallible knowledge of the future:

If infallible divine foreknowledge is true, then our acts are the (logical) consequences of God’s beliefs in the remote past. (Since God cannot get things wrong, his believing that something will be so entails that it will be so.) But it is not up to us what beliefs God had before we were born, and neither is it up to us that God’s beliefs are necessarily true. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us.

An excellent discussion of these arguments in tandem and attempts to point to relevant disanalogies between causal determinism and infallible foreknowledge may be found in the introduction to Fischer (1989). See also the entry on foreknowledge and free will.

Another issue concerns how knowledge of God, the ultimate Good, would impact human freedom. Many philosophical theologians, especially the medieval Aristotelians, were drawn to the idea that human beings cannot but will that which they take to be an unqualified good. (As noted above, Duns Scotus is an exception to this consensus, as were Ockham and Suarez subsequently, but their dissent is limited.) Hence, if there is an afterlife, in which humans ‘see God face to face,’ they will inevitably be drawn to Him. Following Pascal, Murray (1993, 2002) argues that a good God would choose to make His existence and character less than certain for human beings, for the sake of preserving their freedom. (He will do so, the argument goes, at least for a period of time in which human beings participate in their own character formation.) If it is a good for human beings that they freely choose to respond in love to God and to act in obedience to His will, then God must maintain an ‘epistemic distance’ from them lest they be overwhelmed by His goodness or power and respond out of necessity, rather than freedom. (See also the other essays in Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002.)

If it is true that God withholds our ability to be certain of his existence for the sake of our freedom, then it is natural to conclude that humans will lack freedom in heaven. And it is anyways common to traditional Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologies to maintain that humans cannot sin in heaven. Even so, traditional Christian theology at least maintains that human persons in heaven are free. What sort of freedom is in view here, and how does it relate to mundane freedom? Two good recent discussions of these questions are Pawl and Timpe (2009) and Tamburro (2017).

Finally, there is the question of the freedom of God himself. Perfect goodness is an essential, not acquired, attribute of God. God cannot lie or be in any way immoral in His dealings with His creatures (appearances notwithstanding). Unless we take the minority position on which this is a trivial claim, since whatever God does definitionally counts as good, this appears to be a significant, inner constraint on God’s freedom. Did we not contemplate immediately above that human freedom would be curtailed by our having an unmistakable awareness of what is in fact the Good? And yet is it not passing strange to suppose that God should be less than perfectly free?

One suggested solution to this puzzle takes as its point of departure the distinction noted in section 2.3 between the ability to do otherwise and sourcehood, proposing that the core metaphysical feature of freedom is being the ultimate source, or originator, of one’s choices. For human beings or any created persons who owe their existence to factors outside themselves, the only way their acts of will could find their ultimate origin in themselves is for such acts not to be determined by their character and circumstances. For if all my willings were wholly determined, then if we were to trace my causal history back far enough, we would ultimately arrive at external factors that gave rise to me, with my particular genetic dispositions. My motives at the time would not be the ultimate source of my willings, only the most proximate ones. Only by there being less than deterministic connections between external influences and choices, then, is it be possible for me to be an ultimate source of my activity, concerning which I may truly say, “the buck stops here.”

As is generally the case, things are different on this point in the case of God. As Anselm observed, even if God’s character absolutely precludes His performing certain actions in certain contexts, this will not imply that some external factor is in any way a partial origin of His willings and refrainings from willing. Indeed, this would not be so even if he were determined by character to will everything which He wills. God’s nature owes its existence to nothing. Thus, God would be the sole and ultimate source of His will even if He couldn’t will otherwise.

Well, then, might God have willed otherwise in any respect? The majority view in the history of philosophical theology is that He indeed could have. He might have chosen not to create anything at all. And given that He did create, He might have created any number of alternatives to what we observe. But there have been noteworthy thinkers who argued the contrary position, along with others who clearly felt the pull of the contrary position even while resisting it. The most famous such thinker is Leibniz (1710 [1985]), who argued that God, being both perfectly good and perfectly powerful, cannot fail to will the best possible world. Leibniz insisted that this is consistent with saying that God is able to will otherwise, although his defense of this last claim is notoriously difficult to make out satisfactorily. Many read Leibniz, malgré lui , as one whose basic commitments imply that God could not have willed other than He does in any respect.

One might challenge Leibniz’s reasoning on this point by questioning the assumption that there is a uniquely best possible Creation (an option noted by Adams 1987, though he challenges instead Leibniz’s conclusion based on it). One way this could be is if there is no well-ordering of worlds: some pairs of worlds are sufficiently different in kind that they are incommensurate with each other (neither is better than the other, nor are they equal) and no world is better than either of them. Another way this could be is if there is no upper limit on goodness of worlds: for every possible world God might have created, there are others (infinitely many, in fact) which are better. If such is the case, one might argue, it is reasonable for God to arbitrarily choose which world to create from among those worlds exceeding some threshold value of overall goodness.

However, William Rowe (2004) has countered that the thesis that there is no upper limit on goodness of worlds has a very different consequence: it shows that there could not be a morally perfect Creator! For suppose our world has an on-balance moral value of \(n\) and that God chose to create it despite being aware of possibilities having values higher than \(n\) that He was able to create. It seems we can now imagine a morally better Creator: one having the same options who chooses to create a better world. For critical replies to Rowe, see Almeida (2008, ch. 1), Kray (2010), and Zimmerman (2018).

Finally, Norman Kretzmann (1997, 220–25) has argued in the context of Aquinas’s theological system that there is strong pressure to say that God must have created something or other, though it may well have been open to Him to create any of a number of contingent orders. The reason is that there is no plausible account of how an absolutely perfect God might have a resistible motivation—one consideration among other, competing considerations—for creating something rather than nothing. (It obviously cannot have to do with any sort of utility, for example.) The best general understanding of God’s being motivated to create at all—one which in places Aquinas himself comes very close to endorsing—is to see it as reflecting the fact that God’s very being, which is goodness, necessarily diffuses itself. Perfect goodness will naturally communicate itself outwardly; God who is perfect goodness will naturally create, generating a dependent reality that imperfectly reflects that goodness. Wainwright (1996) discusses a somewhat similar line of thought in the Puritan thinker Jonathan Edwards. Alexander Pruss (2016), however, raises substantial grounds for doubt concerning this line of thought; O’Connor (2022) offers a rejoinder.

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• Libet, Benjamin, 2002. “Do We Have Free Will?” in Oxford Handbook of Free Will , Robert Kane (ed.), 1st edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 551–64.
• Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper, 2003. “Identification and Responsibility,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 6: 349–76.
• Locke, Don, 1973. “Natural Powers and Human Abilities,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 74: 171–87.
• Locke, John, 1690 [1975]. An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding , Peter H. Nidditch (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lowe, E. J., 2008. Personal Agency: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• MacDonald, Scott, 1998. “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Will,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie , 2: 309–28.
• –––, 1999. “Primal Sin,” in Gareth B. Matthews (ed.), The Augustinian Tradition , Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 110–139.
• Malebranche, Nicolas, 1684 [1993]. Treatise on Ethics , C. Walton (trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Maoz, Uri and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (eds.), 2022. Free Will: Philosophers and Neuroscientists in Conversation , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Marchal, Kai and Christian Helmut Wenzel, 2017. “Chinese Perspectives on Free Will,” in The Routledge Companion to Free Will , Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith, and Neil Levy (eds.), New York: Routledge, 374–88.
• Markosian, Ned, 1999. “A Compatibilist Version of the Theory of Agent Causation,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 80: 257–77.
• –––, 2012. “Agent Causation as the Solution to all the Compatibilist’s Problems,” Philosophical Studies , 157: 383–98.
• McCann, Hugh, 1998. The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedom , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• McGeer, Victoria, 2014. “P. F. Strawson’s Consequentialism,” in Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility , 2: 64–92.
• McKenna, Michael, 2003. “Robustness, Control, and the Demand for Morally Significant Alternatives: Frankfurt Examples with Oodles and Oodles of Alternatives,” in Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities , David Widerker and Michael McKenna (eds.), Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 201–18.
• –––, 2008. “A Hard-Line Reply to Pereboom’s Four-Case Manipulation Argument,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 77: 142–59.
• –––, 2012. Conversation & Responsibility , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2013. “Reasons-Responsiveness, Agents, and Mechanisms,” in Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility , 1: 151–83.
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• Mele, Alfred R., 1992. Springs of Action , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1995. Autonomous Agents , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2000. “Goal-directed Action: Teleological Explanations, Causal Theories, and Deviance,” Philosophical Perspectives , 14: 279–300.
• –––, 2003. “Agents’ Abilities,” Noûs , 37: 447–70.
• –––, 2006. Free Will and Luck , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2009. Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2017. Aspects of Agency: Decisions, Abilities, Explanations, and Free Will , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Mele, Alfred R. and David Robb, 1998. “Rescuing Frankfurt-style Scenarios,” Philosophical Review , 107: 97–112.
• –––, 2003. “Bbs, Magnets and Seesaws: The Metaphysics of Frankfurt-style Cases,” in Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities , David Widerker and Michael McKenna (eds.), Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 127–38.
• Mitchell-Yellin, Benjamin, 2015. “The Platonic Model: Statement, Clarification and Defense,” Philosophical Explorations , 18: 378–92.
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• Moya, Carlos, 2011. “On the Very Idea of a Robust Alternative,” Critica , 43: 3–26.
• Mudrik, Liad, Inbal Gur Arie, Yoni Amir, Yarden Shir, Pamela Hieronymi, Uri Maoz, Timothy O’Connor, Aaron Schurger, Manuel Vargas, Tillmann Vierkant, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Adina Roskies, 2022. “Free Will Without Consciousness?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 26 (7): 555–566.
• Murray, Michael, 1993. “Coercion and the Hiddenness of God,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 30: 27–38.
• –––, 2002. “Deus Absconditus,” in Divine Hiddenness: New Essays , Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul Moser (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 62–82.
• Nahmias, Eddy, 2014. “Is Free Will an Illusion? Confronting Challenges from the Modern Mind Sciences,” in Moral Psychology (Volume 4: Free Will and Moral Responsibility), Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1–25.
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• Pawl, Timothy and Kevin Timpe. “Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven,” Faith and Philosophy , 26: 398–419.
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• Pereboom, Derk, 2001. Living Without Free Will , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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• Plato (CW/1997). Complete Works , John Cooper (ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
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• Rowe, William, 1995. “Two Concepts of Freedom,” in Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will , Timothy O’Connor (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 151–71.
• –––, 2004. Can God Be Free? , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Runyan, Jason, 2018. “Agent-causal Libertarianism, Statistical Neural Laws and Wild Coincidences,” Synthese , 195 (10): 4563–4580.
• Russell, Paul, 2010. The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion , New York: Oxford University Press.
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• Schurger, Aaron, Pengbo Hu, Joanna Pak, and Adina Roskies, 2021. “What Is the Readiness Potential?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 25 (7): 558–570.
• Sehon, Scott R., 2005. Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency, and Explanation , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Shabo, Seth, 2011. “Why Free Will Remains a Mystery,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 92: 105–25.
• –––, 2013. “Free Will and Mystery: Looking Past the Mind Argument,” Philosophical Studies , 162: 291–307.
• –––, 2020. “The Two-Stage Luck Objection,” Noûs , 54 (1): 3–23.
• Sher, George, 2006. In Praise of Blame , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Shoemaker, David, 2003. “Caring, Identification, and Agency,” Ethics , 114: 88–118.
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• Slote, Michael, 1982. “Selective Necessity and the Free-Will Problem,” Journal of Philosophy , 79: 5–24.
• Smart, J. J. C., 1961. “Free-will, Praise and Blame,” Mind , 70: 291–306.
• Smilansky, Saul, 2000. Free Will and Illusion , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Smith, Angela M., 2012. “Attributability, Answerability, and Accountability: In Defense of a Unified Account,” Ethics , 122: 575–89.
• Smith, Michael, 2003. “Rational Capacities,” in Weakness of Will and Varieties of Practical Irrationality , Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, 17–38.
• Speak, Daniel, 2007. “The Impertinence of Frankfurt-Style Argument,” Philosophical Quarterly , 57: 76–95.
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• Spinoza, Baruch, 1677 [1992]. The Ethics and Selected Letters , Seymour Feldman (ed.), Samuel Shirley (trans.), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
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• Steward, Helen, 2012. A Metaphysics for Freedom , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Stout, Rowland, 2010. “Deviant Causal Chains,” in A Companion to the Philosophy of Action , Timothy O’Connor and Constantine Sandis (eds.), Oxford: Blackwell, 159–65.
• Strawson, Galen, 1986. Freedom and Belief , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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• Strawson, P. F., 1962. “Freedom and Resentment,” Proceedings of the British Academy , 48: 187–211.
• Stump, Eleonore, 1988. “Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, and Frankfurt’s Concept of Free Will,” Journal of Philosophy , 85: 395–420.
• –––, 1996. “Persons: Identification and Freedom,” Philosophical Topics , 24: 183–214.
• –––, 1999. “Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: The Flicker of Freedom,” Journal of Ethics , 3: 299–324.
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• Swinburne, Richard, 2013. Mind, Brain, and Free Will , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Tamburro, Richard, 2017. “The Possibility and Scope of Significant Heavenly Freedom,” in Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays About Heaven , Ryan Byerly and Eric Silverman (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 308–28.
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• Timpe, Kevin, 2006. “A Critique of Frankfurt-libertarianism,” Philosophia , 34: 189–202.
• Todd, Patrick, 2010. “A New Approach to Manipulation Arguments,” Philosophical Studies , 152: 127–33.
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website , edited by Ted Honderich (University College London)
• Bibliography on Free Will , at philpapers.org.

action | agency | blame | causation: the metaphysics of | compatibilism | determinism: causal | fatalism | freedom: divine | free will: divine foreknowledge and | incompatibilism: (nondeterministic) theories of free will | incompatibilism: arguments for | moral responsibility | quantum mechanics | skepticism: about moral responsibility

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Essay Samples on Aristotle

Aristotle's interpretation of sophocles' oedipus: character analysis.

Sophocles' Oedipus is one of the most notable unfortunate heroes throughout the entire existence of drama. His weird destiny drives him to heartbreaking ruin that leaves both the peruser and the crowd feeling sincerely influenced. As indicated by the meaning of the Greek thinker, Aristotle,...

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Determining The Certainty With Aristotle And Descartes' Works

In this essay I will try to explore what the is reality and certainty and at the same time we will doubt everything that comes our way and we will also try to figure out what reality is alongside Descartes and his skepticism. On this...

Aristotle's Contribution to the Field of Education

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Aristotle Doctrine of Mean: Teachings About the Importance of Balance

To live a good life, it is important to have everything in balance, which is the concept of “All things in Moderation”. Aristotle used the Doctrine of Mean to explain the course of action. Aristotle’s argued that virtues are the mean between two vices, one...

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How Ethical Theories Can Be Applied to Business

The ethical business decision making theories of Aristotle, Kant, and JS Mills can aid in framing complex business decisions. From Aristotle’s virtuous “Golden Mean” theory to Kant’s “Categorical Imperative” to JS Mill’s utilitarianism approach, these three ethical decision-making models, virtuous, deontological, and utilitarian, can be...

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Main Elements of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle was a philosopher who lived from 384-322 B.C.E. He was a student of Plato as well as the teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle thought differently than the other philosophers of his time. 2500 years ago, he wrote Nichomachean Ethics, which was named after...

Early Astronomers: Ptolemy, Aristotle, Copernicus, and Galileo 

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The Influence of the Works of Aristotle, Socrates and Plato

“Philosophy can make people sick”, Aristotle said this in the Nicomachean ethics and of course, has been taken out of context by people for generations. Could this statement mean that people actually get sick and tired of philosophy or philosophy actually makes people sick? E.G....

Comparison of Francis Bacon's and Aristotle's Ways of Science

Francis Bacon's way of science, unlike Aristotle, is arguing rationally by using logic. He believed that natural philosophers should help improve the comfort and wellbeing of humanity through advances in technology. He believed that manipulating nature meant by deriving useful arts also know as “techne”.In...

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Nicomachean Ethics: Guiding People to the Better Way of Living

Every single human action goes for some end that we think about good. Most exercises are a way to a better quality. The most noteworthy human good, at that point, is that movement that is an end in itself. That good is bliss. When we...

My Views on the Topic of Nicomachean Ethics

Desire is a want or something people believe they need, it can cloud their judgment and make them think that their only true happiness will come from their desire. Instead of happiness, eudaimonia is a better word to describe the ultimate desire as happiness is...

Aristotle's Principles in Nicomachean Ethics

Nicomachean Ethics is recognized as Aristotle’s best work regarding ethics. It is assumed to be named after either his son or his father. This is because they are both named Nicomachus. However, the fact that his son was too young while Aristotle came up with...

Why You Should Participate in Nicomachean Ethics Program

In the vast scope of great philosophical works from the Western intellectual tradition, there is one that stands out for its relevance, influence, and introspection. Aristotle introduces the general principles virtue ethics in his work Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotelian ethics concern moral decisions related to how...

Metaphysics Around God in Aristotle's Works

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Neoplatonism and Metaphysics In Plotinus's Works

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Virtue is a characteristic in which every being should strive for. After reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Confucius’ Analects, I believe virtue is both a state of mind and actions that reflect a high moral value; you are respectful and mindful of all actions and...

Aristotle's Antigone Tragic Hero in Modern Fiction

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Aristotle’s Theories Of Happines And Friendship

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The Greek Philosophers And Their Philosophies

Socrates (469-399 B.C.) was the son of a sculptor, Sophroniscus, and grew up an Athenian citizen. He was reported to be gifted with words and was sometimes accused of what Plato later accused Sophists, that is, using rhetorical devices to “make the weaker argument the...

Aristotle's Ideas Of Achieving Happiness

Aristotle’s view point in regard to virtue ethics examines what virtues a person needs to live a flourishing life. I am going to argue that virtue ethics best comports with the messiness of actual life. The ethical concepts and theories involved in virtue ethics have...

Best topics on Aristotle

1. Aristotle’s Interpretation of Sophocles’ Oedipus: Character Analysis

2. Determining The Certainty With Aristotle And Descartes’ Works

3. Aristotle’s Contribution to the Field of Education

4. Aristotle Doctrine of Mean: Teachings About the Importance of Balance

5. How Ethical Theories Can Be Applied to Business

6. Main Elements of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

7. Early Astronomers: Ptolemy, Aristotle, Copernicus, and Galileo 

8. The Influence of the Works of Aristotle, Socrates and Plato

9. Comparison of Francis Bacon’s and Aristotle’s Ways of Science

10. Nicomachean Ethics: Guiding People to the Better Way of Living

11. My Views on the Topic of Nicomachean Ethics

12. Aristotle’s Principles in Nicomachean Ethics

13. Why You Should Participate in Nicomachean Ethics Program

14. Metaphysics Around God in Aristotle’s Works

15. Neoplatonism and Metaphysics In Plotinus’s Works

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145 Aristotle Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best aristotle topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on aristotle, 💡 most interesting aristotle topics to write about, ❓ questions about aristotle.

• Plato and Aristotle on Literature Compare & Contrast Essay The controversy over the effects of literature has made the great philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, to differ in their perceptions of the literature impacts on the society.
• Aristotle vs. Socrates: The Main Difference in the Concept of Virtue One of the main principles on which the ethical school is based is the notion of virtue as the representation of the moral perfectness of a man.
• Philosophy: Plato’s Republic Versus Aristotle’s Politics Plato as well turns off the partition amid the private and the public and he contends for common kids and wives for the guardians in a bid to create a society amongst the rulers of […]
• “Man is a Political Animal” by Aristotle This is based on the fact that the philosophical ideas expressed by these scholars have proven to be greatly important in offering guidance to various facets of life-like cultural, social, political, and economic endeavors In […]
• Compare and Contrast: Plato and Aristotle Essay Aristotle was a “the son of a renowned physician from Thrace” and he began his philosophy studies at the Plato’s academy.
• Plato and Aristotle’s Views of Virtue in Respect to Education Arguably, Plato and Aristotle’s views of education differ in that Aristotle considers education as a ‘virtue by itself’ that every person must obtain in order to have ‘happiness and goodness in life’, while Plato advocates […]
• Plato vs. Aristotle: Political Philosophy Compare and Contrast Essay Plato went further to associate all the parts of the soul to parts of the body with reason connected to the head, will connected to the heart and appetite connected to the abdomen and sensory […]
• Aristotle as the First Political Scientist Although it is possible to consider Aristotle as the first political scientist with references to the aspects of discussing political science in the context of the political philosophy, a lot of researchers also determine the […]
• Aristotle’s Views on Women Before the Greek physicians and philosophers of the Classical Age took up the question of the nature of women, the Greeks had serious attitudes toward women as revealed in their literature.
• Plato on Death: Comparison With Aristotle Afterlife – Essay on Life After Death Philosophy On the other hand, religion has maintained that the soul is immortal and survives the death of the body. Plato argued that the soul is immortal and therefore survives the death of the body.
• Application of Aristotle’s Golden Mean The doctrine of the golden mean is a request for a realistic moral axiom. The word “virtue” is used in some cases to denote a personal quality and, in others, as a generalized indicator of […]
• Tragic Hero in Aristotle’s “Poetics” According to Aristotle, the tragic error is the main manifestation of a tragic hero and it sets out the basis of his fate.
• Conflict Between Aristotle and Copernicus Copernicus continued his research and developed a new model of the universe which contradicted Aristotle’s paradigm since the Earth was not the centre, but one of the planets moving around the Sun.
• Aristotle’s and Plato’s Views on Rhetoric One of the points that Plato expresses in this philosophical work is that rhetoric should be viewed primarily as the “artificer of persuasion”. This is one of the similarities that can be distinguished.
• Philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Marx The philosophical dilemma is how to do it, because in the overwhelming majority of cases, a human being is driven by the desire.
• Aristotle, His Life and Philosophical Ideas Later on at the age of eighteen, he moved to Athens to study and this became his home for the next twenty years, after which he moved to Asia after the death of Plato where […]
• Epistemologies of Plato and Aristotle It is also worth mentioning the Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato explains the relationship between people and the world of the Forms.
• Othello: A Tragic Hero Through the Prism of Aristotle’s Definition According to him, the prerequisite of a tragedy revolves around the plot of the play. Othello, who is the main character, is a perfect example of a tragic hero.
• Plato and Aristotle: Criticisms of Democracy To speak of it in our present time, there are only a few people who are given the power of ‘sound judgement about what is right and what is wrong’ and should have the power […]
• Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and Aristotle’s “High-Minded Man” The concept of a High-Minded man is close to Aristotle’s understanding of success and the contribution of different virtues to an individual’s happiness.
• The Soul Ideas by Aristotle Their organization is such that the top in the rank consists of all properties of the one at the bottom. The rational soul’s ability to reason that is not in the other types of souls.
• Comparison of Plato’s and Aristotle’s Approaches to the Nature of Reality In contrast to Plato, Aristotle asserted that the senses were necessary for accurately determining reality and that they could not be used to deceive a person. Aristotle and Plato both considered that thoughts were superior […]
• Aristotle’s Virtue Theory vs. Buddha’s Middle Path The purpose of this paper is to review each of the two theories and develop a comparison between them. This term is in contrast to the paths of extremities described by eternalism and annihilationism that […]
• Impact on the Development of Natural Science a Aristotle’s Book “Physics” From Aristotle’s perspective, to know the purpose of nature is the most essential task of a philosopher and his strategies should be subjected to this task.
• Philosophy: Aristotle on Moral Virtue Both virtue and vice build one’s character and therefore can contribute to the view of happiness. Therefore, character education leads to happiness that is equal to the amount of wisdom and virtue.
• Morality and Politics: Aristotle and Machiavelli For a government to be effective, there must be a set of morals and virtues in place to ensure the people are happy.
• Significance of Emotions in Aristotle’s Philosophy Additionally, the philosopher distinguishes two moralities, each with its interpretation of the cognitive role of emotions: a civic morality of judicial process in the Nicomachean Ethics and a contemplative ethics of theoretical study in Politics.
• Aristotle’s and Freud’s Motivational Theories The efficient cause is the trigger that causes a person to behave in a certain way. These biological instincts are the source of mental or psychic energy that makes human behavior and that it is […]
• Aristotle Philosophical Perspective To understand the connection established by Aristotle between a good life and a rational one, it is first necessary to discuss the concept of good used in the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Syllogism and Enthymeme in Aristotle’s Rhetoric One of the implications of syllogism to audiences is in regards to the possibility of creating offensive conclusions from an argument’s statements.
• Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle However, the fact that there are many actions that people engage in, Aristotle argues that their ends are countless. Aristotle concludes that happiness is the key principle that causes people to practice virtues such as […]
• Aristotle’s Concept of Happiness Aristotle’s concept of happiness is an expression of virtue that is similar to the flow state, happiness is a combination of the baseline level where basic needs are fulfilled and a broader area managed by […]
• Greek Philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle It is argued that the origin of philosophy as a discipline owes its origin to the contribution of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.”Socrates’ contribution to the love of wisdom was manifested by the belief that philosophy […]
• Confucius, Plato, and Aristotle: Views on Society In the video, it is highlighted that both Plato and Confucius shared a commitment to reason and the value of the state.
• Ancient Philosophy. Aristotle and Seneca on Anger Though there are conditions when anger is beneficial and useful, such as the feeling of anger that inspires the soldiers to fight abandoning hesitation and fear, Aristotle believes that the emotion of anger is constantly […]
• Plato and Aristotle Thoughts on Politics Aristotle emphasized that the lawgiver and the politician occupied the constitution and the state wholly and defined a citizen as one who had the right to deliberate or participate in the matters of the judicial […]
• According to Aristotle, Is the Good Citizen the Same as the Good Human Being?? Why or Why Not?? Anticipating differentiation of human rights and the rights of citizen, issued in the corresponding Declaration of the period of the French revolution of the end of XVIII century, Aristotle is interested by a question – […]
• Aristotle’s Ideologies Application in Practices The ideologies of philosophers have influenced the world and changed the perception and attitudes of people toward various issues. The peculiarity and popularity of Aristotle’s philosophy of life makes it easy for it to be […]
• Argument Between Philosophy Aristotle and Philosophy Locke Aristotle considers human beings to possess the understanding of these differences and apply them in their writings as well as conversations.
• Aristotle’s Notion of Time and Motion It is also pertinent that the concept of Time is comprehended in relation to the concept of Motion. In an analysis of the nature of Time, it is most relevant to remember that Aristotle was […]
• Aristotle on Practical vs. Theoretical Knowledge The second argument that should be discussed in Aristotle’s view of the idea of pleasure as the way to meet the key function of a person.
• Observation and Theory in Aristotle’s Scientific Practice Aristotle focuses on the distinction between the unobservable and observables, the content and structure of observation reports, and the epistemic importance of observational evidence for the theories he aims to access.
• Ethical Decision-Making: Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life In that way, the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, as well as Magna Moralia make up the central elements of Aristotle’s wise decision-making. The Nicomachean Ethics work emphasizes the role of achieving one main aim in […]
• Aristotle’s Philosophy and Views on Ethics In contrast, Aristotle believed that the purpose of ethics lies beyond the knowledge of what is good or evil, but rather focuses on the application and practice of the theory.
• Epicurus and Aristotle Philosophical Views on Emotions The two philosophers studied emotions to determine some of the common causes of this mental state, and the events that take place in the mind before one becomes emotional.
• Nature of Motion According To Lucretius and Aristotle Galileo utilized a number of scientific techniques to prove to the church that the earth was not the center of the universe.
• Aristotle’s Ethical Theory The weakness of philosophical theories is that they are mere intellectual theories void actions or activities, which require habitual practice as a process of achieving moral virtues.
• Aristotle’s Understanding of Happiness If happiness is “wholeness”, then for a person to become happy, it is necessary to become “whole”. Thus, all a person has to do to become whole is lower goods.
• “Nicomachean Ethics” and “Politics” by Aristotle In his works, Aristotle enunciates that the meaning of being a good citizen is relative to the institution that one is a citizen of.
• “The Rhetoric & Poetics of Aristotle” Book This is necessary to feed more meaning to the language used and contributes to the ability of rhetoric in interpersonal communication. Human interaction is a continuous communication and going back and forth in the rhetoric […]
• Aristotle’s Views on Intellect and Soul However, Aristotle insisted that parts of the intellect may operate independent of the soul, in opposition to theorists such as Xenocrates and Plato.
• Aristotle’s View on the Concept of Logic Thus, it was shown that logic is not just a specific doctrine of specific things or terms, but the science of the laws of syllogisms, such as modus ponens or modus tollens, expressed in variables. […]
• The Concept of Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics The essence of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is that virtue lies in between two extremes, none of which is virtuous on its own.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Works and Their Effects The first insight from these philosophical writings that shifted my viewpoint about this field was the distinctive role of the end goal and action in Plato’s and Aristotle’s works.
• The Bell Experience From Aristotle’s Perspective First, it is important for an idea to make sense in the minds of the audience. The idea of playing in the subway made sense to both Bell and the people.
• Aristotle’s View of Ethics and Happiness Aristotle guarantees that to find the human great, we should recognize the capacity of an individual. He set forth the thought that joy is a delight in magnificence and great.
• Exegetical Paper on Aristotle: Meaning of Happiness It is in the balance, according to Aristotle, that the completeness of the human personality lies, and only through balance can a person find true self-satisfaction.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Concepts of Political Theory In The Republic by Plato and The Politics by Aristotle, two unique originations of the state, equity, and political investment introduce themselves.
• Philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle Logic as understood by Socrates was to some extent influenced by the Pythagoreans since he practiced the dialectic methods in investigating the objectivity and authority of the different propositions.
• Aristotle’s Ethical Theory and Nursing Therefore, the actions of an individual determine his happiness and the aspect of what is ethically good. This theory is directly related to the nursing professional code of ethics as indicated in the provisions of […]
• Aristotle’s Account of Pleasure Since Aristotle is trying to discern the goal of human life, he is inclined to think that pleasure is not a chief good.
• Aristotle’s and Socrates’ Account of Virtue This is manifested in their teachings where Aristotle speaks of virtue as finding a balance between two extremes while Socrates says that virtue is the desire for one to do well in one’s life.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Views on Oedipus People in the Oedipus play lived in the dark of the unknown meaning of the riddle; until Oedipus answered the riddle.
• Plato, Aristotle and Socrates: Knowledge and Government It appears that Socrates believed in an intellectual aristocracy, where those who had more education and had proven themselves in sophistry the “Socratic method” of exchange and analysis of ideas as a path to all […]
• Aristotle’s Influence on History of Rhetoric: Treatise Rhetoric and the Concept of the Rhetorical Triangle Aristotle has written works in a number of subjects, such as ethics, poetry, politics, music, biology, physics, etc, but among these, his contributions into rhetoric are the most valuable; within this field, Aristotle is known […]
• The Theme of Slavery in Aristotle’s “Politics” He notes that the fundamental part of an association is the household that is comprised of three different kinds of relationships: master to slave, husband to wife, and parents to their children.
• Aristotle, Selections From The Politics. Book I The growth of the movement towards the formation of states is, however, a gradual one; it is continuous, from the sixteenth century to our day, and while, throughout this period, and in almost every country […]
• Aristotle’s – The Ethics of Virtue Ethics is not a theory of discipline since our inquiry as to what is good for human beings is not just gathering knowledge, but to be able to achieve a unique state of fulfillment in […]
• Political Science: Aristotle’s View on Human Nature A citizen, for Aristotle, is an individual who has the capacity and the right to engage in the governance of a “polies”.
• Plato’s, Aristotle’s, Petrarch’s Views on Education To begin with, Plato believed that acquisition of knowledge was the way to being virtuous in life but he tended to differ with philosophers like Aristotle stating that education to be acquired from the natural […]
• Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics Analysis When faced with the option of an apple of a muffin, a good person would choose the apple, because the part of the soul that desired the muffin would be controlled by self-control, the part […]
• Aristotle: Natural Changes and His Theory of Form The form of an object is the arrangement of the comprising components making up the object in focus. This is the counterpart of the subjects of predication in the Categories.
• Aristotle and His Definition of Happiness The best taste a person can have in his life is happiness because of success. But in my point of view, happiness is the main feeling that comes from the success of any useful act […]
• Aristotle’s “Knowing How” and Plato’s “Knowing That” The goal of Aristotle is knowledge in action and real knowing, which merge in the higher stratum of existence – the active mind.
• Happiness in “Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle The philosopher compares the life of gratification to that of slaves; the people who prefer this type of happiness are “vulgar,” live the same life as “grazing animals,” and only think about pleasure.
• Outlining Aristotle’s Ethics and Metaphysics As for one to be accorded the status of a professional he has to practice the skills required in that profession.
• Drama Elements Developed by Aristotle The sixth is a spectacle which is the visuals in the drama that include props, set, and actor’s costumes. An example of a tragic hero is King Macbeth in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth.
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Theories of Human Nature Chapter five of Kupperman’s book “Theories of human nature” looks at great philosophers, namely Plato’s and Aristotle’s points of view in trying to define humanity. The writer tries to illustrate the complexity of defining a […]
• Plato’s and Aristotle’s Philosophical Differences According to Plato, the functioning of every human being is closely linked to the entire society. Therefore, the major difference here is that for Plato, the function of every individual is to improve the entire […]
• Being as Being: Aristotle vs. Aquinas The philosophical concept of being as being is concerned with the notion of existence, more specifically, that of the thing in and of itself.
• Philosophy: Free Will of Aristotle and Lucretius The philosopher says that every action having place under the influence of the external force is not a free will, which comes from the inner desire and motivation of an individual. Moreover, the movie is […]
• Art and Media Censorship: Plato, Aristotle, and David Hume The philosopher defines God and the creator’s responsibilities in the text of the Republic: The creator is real and the opposite of evil.
• Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in Historical View Nicomachean Ethics is one of the most significant works of the prominent ancient philosopher, dedicated to the analysis of the moral purposes and virtues of a man.
• Book V in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics The central discussion of the document revolves around justice to provide a scrutinized analysis of money and exchange. This is because the fair exchange of things is the reciprocity of proportion and not equality.
• Classical Leadership Style and Aristotle’s Perspective He supported the ideas of Plato that the philosopher king has to be given a chance to exercise power while the soldiers were to provide the much-needed support by ensuring the citizens followed the law.
• If Aristotle Ran General Motors: Moral Perspective In the current paper, the author will extrapolate on what Morris is saying and analyze the impacts of the arguments on the workplace.
• Isocrates and Aristotle Views on Rhetorical Devices I find it hard to believe that such an accomplished rhetor as yourself, would doubt that the main rules and principles of rhetorical persuasion are universally applicable, and that it is specified by the mean […]
• Aristotle’s Ethics Conception and Workplace Relations Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is one of the ethical writings that have spurred understanding of ethics of work place relations. A critical discussion in the Nicomachean Ethics provided by Aristotle is the argument and conversation over […]
• Aristotle on Civic Relationships It takes account of the happiness is an end and not a means. It is a way of thinking with the set intention in mind; deliberation determines the end and not the means.
• Aristotle’s Notion of Civic Relationships According to Aristotle, it is impossible to provide a complete account of conditions that lead to the attainment of the highest level of happiness or public good.
• Aristotle’s and Modern Views on the Masses of Citizens It is also important to add that these values are only declared in many countries while the power is still in hands of the rich.
• Aristotle and Plato: How Do They Differ? Generally, Aristotle’s philosophy differs with that of Plato because the latter’s is too shallow to establish definitions or sensibly create standards.
• Views on Writing Style by Plato, Aristotle and Dante In the end of a dialogue or a debate, the truth is supposed to emerge from the clash of the two opinions, and the defeated one is morally obliged to accept the force of a […]
• Aristotle’s Ideas on Civic Relationships Keeping law and order is thus essential in addition to evading things that are considered to be against the prospects of the society so as to be just, a virtue encouraged by Aristotle.
• What is Aristotle’s View on Trade? Aristotle argues that the art of exchanging goods or services in the pretext of trade is not good. Aristotle asserts that household management is necessary and honorable and therefore, families should never engage in retail […]
• Aristotle’s Definition of Virtue In particular, he writes that virtue is “a state that decides, consisting in a mean, relative to us, which is defined by reference to a reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference […]
• Aristotle With a Bust of Homer Rembrandt A careful study of the hair, the beards and the dress of Homer reveals that this is a painting of that era.
• Can Aristotle’s Theory of Happiness Be Achieved by Applying Friedman’s Ideas of Corporate Social Responsibilities? According to Aristotle, politics is the master of all arts since it is concerned with the end in itself. This is a central argument to the ideas of Aristotle and underscores his idea that politics […]
• Essence of Happiness of Indira’s Life According to Plato’s and Aristotle’s Views on Education She finds her inspiration in the languages and other subjects and, obviously, the girl knows that education is the best solution of solving a number of problems and difficulties that she may face during the […]
• Aristotle on Human Nature, State, and Slavery This should be done with restraint and caution in order not to compromise the validity of modern studies and to avoid bias, as evident in the studies of some historical philosophers in their quoting of […]
• Aristotle’s Ethics and Metaphysics He overlooks other important factors such as the act of feeling them in the most appropriate time, with special reference to the right objects, to the right individuals, with the right intention, and in the […]
• Ancient Political Theory: Plato and Aristotle Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s the Republic in Politics II focused on political regimes and cities by stating in general that it would be a dangerous activity to leave the governance of a city to a […]
• Aristotle vs. Scientific Cannons They had a hypothesis, given their argument, that the heavier the object, the faster it would move towards the center of the universe. That is, there was a degree of regularity given a similarity in […]
• Aristotle’s Ideas on Civic Relationships: Happiness, the Virtues, Deliberation, Justice, and Friendship On building trust at work, employers are required to give minimum supervision to the employees in an effort to make the latter feel a sense of belonging and responsibility.
• Aristotle’s Fundamentals of Public Relationship The paper reviews the traits of the best working places and compares the ideas with those offered by Aristotle. In fact, through training, the employees are able to develop virtues that enhance interactions, and the […]
• How Aristotle Views Happiness Aristotle notes that “the attainment of the good for one man alone is, to be sure, a source of satisfaction; yet to secure it for a nation and for states is nobler and more divine”.
• Aristotle and Modern Work Relationships This is not the case in the contemporary work place where a myriad of factors contribute to the happiness of the employees.
• Sophocle and Aristotle For an individual to achieve the qualities of a tragic hero, his or her actions must be consistent. The qualities of a tragic hero are similar to the qualities exhibited by Oedipus.
• Aristotle and Relationship at Work: Outline The first level appeals to a part of the human soul that focuses on reason while the second part appeals to the part of the human soul that follows reason.
• Aristotle’s Philosophical Theories Aristotle argued that the understanding of nature could only be accomplished through the analysis of the aspects of nature as the first step in understanding the target object, and then processing the mental reaction of […]
• How Do Aristotle’s Ideas Show Him to Be an Ancient Philosopher?
• What Does Aristotle Identify as the Ultimate Human Good?
• How Closely Does Hamlet Match Aristotle’s Definition of a Tragic Hero?
• What Was Aristotle’s Thought on Friendship?
• How Did Aristotle Understand Bravery?
• What Would Aristotle Have Thought About a State Lottery?
• How Does Aristotle Address the Issue of Individual Rights?
• What Did Aristotle Mean by the Final Cause?
• How Are Ethics and Politics Related to Aristotle’s Philosophy?
• Did Aristotle Value Politics Less Than Materialism and Feelings?
• How Does Aristotle Define Happiness?
• Does Aristotle’s Function Argument Offer a Convincing Account of the Human Good?
• How Does Aristotle’s Ideas on Justice Influence the American Judicial System?
• Does Sophocles’ Antigone Fit Aristotle’s Definition of a Tragic Heroine?
• How Does Aristotle’s View of Politics Differ From That of Plato’s?
• Why Does Aristotle Believe That Morality Leads to Happiness?
• How Would Aristotle Respond to Utilitarianism?
• How Do Aristotle and Machiavelli Use the Middle Class and the Masses to Achieve Stable Political Organizations?
• Was Aristotle the First Physicist?
• How Does Aristotle Define the Good Life?
• What Did Aristotle Contribute to the Discipline of Logic?
• How Does Aristotle Oppose Platos Attack on Poetry?
• What Does Aristotle Define as Virtue?
• How Does Aristotle Understand the Human Being Through Virtue Ethics?
• What Were Aristotle’s Main Ideas?
• How Does Aristotle’s Anthropic Hylomorphism Relate to His Logical Hylomorphism?
• What Would Aristotle Think of Hannibal Lecter?
• How Does Aristotle Systematically Arrive at Eudemonia via a Concept of Function?
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Aristotle - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

Aristotle, another prominent ancient Greek philosopher, contributed significantly to various fields, including science, ethics, and politics. Essays might explore Aristotle’s philosophic ideas, his method of inquiry, and his views on topics like virtue, ethics, and the ideal state. Additionally, the essay could delve into his lasting influence on subsequent philosophical, scientific, and political thought and his critiques. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about Aristotle you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Eudaimonia Happiness and Virtue on Aristotle

Aristotle was the ancestor of the concept of eudaimonia. The word "Eudaimonia refer to the type of life one thinks best, most worthwhile, or most desirable. It is generally referred to hedonic happiness. It is the belief that one is getting the important things one wants, as well as certain pleasant affects [1]. It is about pleasure, having fun and enjoying yourself. Aristotle argues that most people agree that living well and doing well is all about happiness [2]. Furthermore, […]

Kant and Aristotle on Happiness

Human happiness has been a topic of discussion for thousands of years. The discussion focuses on how to reach true happiness, and the relevance of happiness to decision making. Over time, philosophers have mulled over human happiness, with Aristotle and Kant taking opposing stances. Aristotle believes happiness is the goal of human activity. Kant argues that the purpose of human activity is to uphold universal law without taking happiness into consideration. Acting out of respect for duty leads to a […]

The Tragic Hero Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is an appropriate illustration of a tragedy as defined by Aristotle in his Poetics. Willy Loman is the protagonist in Miller’s famous play and has attributes that qualify him as a tragic hero. The Aristotelian tragedy entails the fall of a high esteem person such as a king or ruler as a result of their weakness also known as a tragic flaw. The tragic hero according to Aristotle is brought down by an error […]

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Aristotle Vs. Plato

Throughout life, one will encounter many different people some with similar views and others with contrasting perspectives on reality. This topic and discussion on life and reality continues to rise debate since ancient times. Some of history's most influential philosophers that attempt to describe life and reality are Aristotle and Plato. A student may choose to accept the teachings of a mentor or reject, question, and modify what is taught. Aristotle was a student of Plato's and chose to reject […]

The Purpose of the Aristotle Function Argument

According to Aristotle, humans ought to aim for a flourishing life which a good human would have and in order to determine human goodness, we need to understand the function of humans. Aristotle believes that rational activity and rationally guided cognition is the human function. Rationality is essentially acting in ways that are in accordance with reasons and to do that is by fulfilling the virtues that are correspond with the characteristic function. Aristotle uses the function of an object […]

Alexander the Great, a Great General but not so Great of and Administrator

Many have argued that Alexander III of Macedon (356 BC-323 BC) commonly known as Alexander the Great, that the collapse of his empire was caused primarily by his death, however the primary cause of collapse of his empire was his failure to lead and administer the state. For it is this which is the most notable result of Alexander's life and work; for all his military prowess, he was one of the world's greatest failures""and that failure spelt misery and […]

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

There is perhaps no pursuit more quintessential to human existence than that of happiness and a meaningful life. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle examines the many facets of life that bring virtue and contentment. He queries what it means to be good, just, and ethical. These questions are as relevant now as they were then. Seeking one's purpose in life will always be a key element of human nature. Aristotle begins his musings by explaining that happiness is the motivation for […]

The Differences between the Principles of Plato Aristotle

Plato and Aristotle are without a doubt two of the world's greatest philosophers. Plato, a Greek philosopher and a student of Socrates, was born around 424-423 BC in Athens to a wealthy Athenian family and his death was around 347-348 BC. Following in the footsteps of Socrates, Plato wrote his works as dialogues. His notable works include Apology, Symposium and Republic. His notable ideas were Idealist in nature, in that he believed in order and harmony, goodness and selflessness, everlasting […]

Ancient Greek Contributions to Western Civilization

Greece has made invaluable contributions to worldwide civilization.  Greece has vastly influenced, Western Civilization, culture, and even our way of thought.    It has been written that Greece is the birthplace of western civilization. One of Greece's invaluable influences of Western Civilization is the arts.  The ancient Greeks were well-known for their temples, art work, and sculptures.  In fact, Greece introduced sculpturing into architecture, as evidenced in their columns, be it what is still used today, Dorian, Ionic and Corinthian design […]

A very Famous Philosopher Aristotle

Aristotle was a very famous philosopher that worked with many others. He had a successful life teaching, thinking, and studying. As a successful person, he gave wisdom and knowledge to society that was passed on and still used today. Aristotle was born on 384 BC at Stagira, Chalcidice to the parents of Nicomachus and Phaestis of the Macedonian Royal Family. He lived in Stagira most of his life. In 367 BC, he went to Platonic Academy, which was founded by […]

Existence of God: Arguments of Descartes and Aristotle

The knowledge of God and his existence has been presented in many philosophical works through time, starting with Plato and his dialogues, to Leibniz and more. Though many philosophers have acknowledged the existence and knowledge of God, their definition of God differs and as a consequence of their explanation and interpretation of the nature of God. The nature of God can be derived from how the philosophers define their knowledge of God's existence. Looking at Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz, […]

Development of Science in 17th and 18th Century

Science is defined as intellectual and practical actives that involve systematic organization of knowledge obtained through observations and experiment. 17th and 18th centuries are periods where we see human being conducting thorough scientific research which has seen been tested and proven real. It is also through these sessions that technological changes were significantly observed ranging from Revolution of Ideas, a discovery of new machines, widespread of scientific knowledge through learning institutions, improvement in speed work and Institutionalization of well discussed […]

Aristotle’s Ethics

In this essay we will be looking at Aristotle's Ethics most importantly book v of his Nichomachean Ethics, which is concern with Justice. As a virtue theorist Aristotle believes that the best form of life is to cultivate virtue. There are different virtues and the way Aristotle defines virtue as the means between excess and efficiency. Aristotle begins by giving us varieties of justice, " All men mean by justice that kind of state which makes people disposed to do […]

Oedipus the King and Aristotle

In Aristotle's' Poetics, a perfect tragedy is described as being complex story whose themes and actions should imitate real life. For the story to be considered a tragedy, the hero must be virtuous and possess nobility of character. Their greatness however, should not insinuate they are perfect instead, they should possess real flaws which should help the audience related to the hero. One of the main factors for a perfect tragedy is the reversal of situation. The hero should be […]

Aristotle about a Perfect Happiness

As a consequence of having an active component of happiness is the possibility of differentiating and valuing it. Accordingly, the highest and most precious happiness can be obtained by those activities which "are desirable in themselves from which nothing is sought beyond the activity." For Aristotle, examples of such activity are the virtuous actions because "to do noble and good deeds is a thing desirable for its own sake." The philosopher goes further in his distinguishing the hierarchy of happiness, […]

Aristotle’s Function Argument

Aristotle believes that if one wants to live well, one should organize their life by reference to the very best thing that humans can obtain in action?”something he calls "the human good. He portrays that a good life should point towards eudaimonia, which may also be interpreted as happiness. However, unlike our modern understanding of happiness as a mental state, eudaimonia carries more weight in regard to living a full and wealthy life. Due to this we may better interpret […]

The Tragedy of MacBeth

A tragedy is a literary work depicting serious events in which the main character, often high-ranking and dignified, comes to an unhappy end. Going off of this description, Macbeth aligns nearly perfectly. His snowballing misfortunes and fatal end meet the requirements of a modern tragic hero, but does he check off the exact boxes created by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle when creating a true tragic hero? Shakespeare's lead character Macbeth is as Aristotle requires to be a tragic hero; […]

The Understanding of Politics by Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes

Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes, two philosophers from different time period, were very famous about the way they were approaching differently their ideologies about politics. Both of them had different points of view about the political communities, the power of the state and the role that every human being have in the society. To talk about politics as Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes said, in the first place you need to have human being. Aristotle considers the human being as "political animals. […]

Aristotle Politics: the Relationship between Personal Ethics and Public Politics

Within every state, the typical goal of every citizen is to have an efficient system of government that gives priority to its citizens regardless of their position or class within the community. Individuals who owe allegiance to a given state may show diversity, but the core of their focus is working towards having a better life and improving the state of their community. In Politics by Aristotle, one of the most prominant themes is the relationship between personal ethics and […]

Virtue on Aristotle

As mentioned above, Eudaimonia is defined as a supreme good, which becomes the ultimate goal of everyone pursues. What is the ultimate goal? It is the final purpose and will not be the way to achieve other purposes. For example, we can say that earning money is the purpose of working. So how about the purpose of making money? Some will say that making money is to obtain a better life. However, Eudaimonia is different. People do not pursue it […]

Great Aristotle in Western History

Aristotle was one of the most important intellectual figures in Western history. He founded formal logic and conceived it for a finished system known as the sum of discipline for hundreds of years. Born 384 B.C.E. in Stagira, Greece, he was an ancient Greek philosopher / scientist, also known as the teacher of Alexander the Great. He is known for many things, but the main reason his work is still recognized as a powerful current in contemporary philosophy is because […]

Summary of Shakuntala: Oedipus Rex

Finding Poetics in History The common saying about war, depression, political events, and history is that it repeats itself. In theatre history, Aristotle’s Poetics does this too. The Poetics, only 114 pages, is a common thread that is sewn through the evolution of theatre from 335 BCE to present day. Aristotle’s Poetics is a crucial document that has been formative in the path influencing the decisions of some of the earliest thespians. Aristotle’s impact on history is large and the […]

Socrates and Aristotle

Everyone views democracy differently; some people think it’s not the best way to run a government and others feel that it’s the only way. Both Socrates and Aristotle have strong views on democracy. In Book Six of The Republic Plato describes a conversation between Socrates and another character called Adeimantus. Socrates compares democracy to a ship. He asks him if they were going on trip by sea who would he want in charge; the shipowner who is bigger and stronger […]

Varieties of Knowledge in Plato and Aristotle

Have you ever wondered how someone depicts the truth from a lie? Or maybe even wondered how do we know what we know? Two philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, sought out to help us understand the why we do what we do and how do we know what we know. Both philosophers’ debate in the knowledge at birth, the mechanism to find the truth, and concepts of reality. Despite Aristotle being taught by Plato they had different theories and views. Plato's […]

Aristotle Quiz: Distinguishing Change from Movement

According to Aristotle, while the house changing from non-being to being was discrete, the change in the quality of its elements was continuous and spanned a period of time. Aristotle argues that a change from being to non-being and vice versa, referred to simply as a change, is different from a change in the quality of an entity or its components, referred to as a movement (226b. 19-22). Further, he says that the "actuality, or natural form, of a buildable's […]

The Pursuit of Happiness: Aristotle’s Philosophical Perspective as Indicated

As indicated by aristotle he happens to be the establishing fathers of Happiness, He expresses that satisfaction all relies upon ourselves more than any other person. It is a condition of human life and an objective in itself. Euphoria depends upon ourselves." More than some other individual, Aristotle values fulfillment as a central purpose behind human life and a target in itself. As needs he devotes more space to the subject of delight than any researcher before the propelled time. […]

Concept of St. Augustine Christianity Philosophy

St. Augustine was an important figure in history for philosophy and had many contributions throughout his career that made other important philosophers question themselves and him. We get to know St. Augustine as he tells his audience about his life and his ideas by his work while he was alive. He had written many famous books that still have an impact on today’s generation and blended philosophy and theology together. Augustine was able to accomplish many things throughout his hardships […]

The Aspects of Ancient Classical Literature

This paper is about exploring the aspects of ancient classical literature that have somehow influenced the modern world or the aspects existed in ancient classical literature which are still existing in our lives one way or another. The most important aspect we have taken from ancient Greek culture is democracy. Democracy was the widely discussed topic in the ancient classical literature. Although, in modern form of democracy is different then that existed, but we can say that the ideology of […]

A Legal Construct of Government the Constitution

Anarchy. Self-government. Aristocracy. Tyranny. Democracy. In every society there lie a social contract amongst peoples on how to conduct themselves and daily business, or rather, the rule-of-the-land. This social contract is declared and enforced by both legal authorities (i.e. government) as well as through the participation of its citizens. This paradigm has come to be known as 'law’. So if 'law’ is the construct of societal-cooperation within a particular society, what is it that which conducts governmental powers, interaction, and […]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Care

Through Instagram Direct Messages, I was pestering my cousin brother for an exchange of books (him, obviously being the one with a greater and better library of books), which is when I became aware of the existence of the novel with no simple story, named “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig. It does not cease to amuse me how its inception in my mind was from a virtual world, and with my brother’s grace, when […]

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Aristotle’s Physics A Collection of Essays

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The Physics is one of Aristotle's masterpieces - a work of extraordinary intellectual power which has had a profound influence on the development of metaphysics and the philosophy of science, as well as on the development of physics itself. This collection of ten new essays by leading Aristotelian scholars examines a wide range of issues in the Physics and related works, including method, causation and explanation, chance, teleology, the infinite, the nature of time, the critique of atomism, the role of mathematics in Aristotle's physics, and the concept of self-motion. The essays offer fresh approaches to Aristotle's work in these areas, and important new interpretations of his thought. The book also contains an extensive bibliography.

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Essays on Aristotle

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Essays on Aristotle

We have 19 free papers on aristotle for you, essay examples, essay topics, pathos, ethos, and logos essay.

Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle is his approach of speaking to different types of audiences and speeches. The three different proofs Aristotle identified was logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos is a type of approach in a speech in which the speaker uses logic and verified facts to appeal to their audience. Whenever someone speaks, facts are important because no one…

Aristotle’s Rhetorical Triangle: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

1. Explain Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle. Please explain each of its three parts fully in your own words. Then pick one of the three parts that you think is the most important, and then argue in a short answer why you think it is the most important of the three. (Ethos, Pathos, Logos) Ethos is a…

Aristotlebravery Essay (713 words)

In this essay I will be describing the virtue of bravery. I will first define whatAristotle thinks virtue is, explain the virtue of bravery, and then finally reflect this virtueon my personal experience in the Shaw neighborhood. Aristotle breaks down virtue into four aspects which are: a state that decides inmean, consisting in a mean,…

Greek Philosophers: Aristotle Essay

Aristotle (b.384 – d. 322 BC), was a Greek philosopher, logician, and scientist. Along with his teacher Plato, Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory. Aristotles writing reflects his time, background and beliefs. Aristotle was born at Stagira, in Macedonia. His…

Aristotle’s Concept of Teleology Essay

Aristotle’s Concept of TeleologyIn his Physics, Aristotle examines the theories and ideas regardingnature of his predecessors and then, based upon his own ideas, theories andexperiments, argues against what he believes are incorrect conclusions. Oneidea that Aristotle argues specifically is teleology. Teleology is the ideathat natural phenomena are determined not only by mechanical causes but by…

Eassy on aristotle Essay (711 words)

Ancient Political ThoughtThroughout the Republic it becomes obvious that Plato believes that the best city-state has the highest level of sharing and unity while in thePolitics, Aristotle believes that too much unity can deunify a city-state. The “unity” argument is a prime example of Platos way of thinking aboutthe nature of a community, and Aristotles…

Aristotle Essay

Let us again return to the good we are seeking, and ask what it canbe. It seems different in different actions and arts; it is differentin medicine, in strategy, and in the other arts likewise. What thenis the good of each’surely that for whose sake everything else isdone. In medicine this is health, in strategy…

The beliefs of Plato and Aristotle can be both val Essay

id and invalid in many differentways. This is true for many ancient philosophers. Their ideas can often be hard totouch upon due to changes in things such as time, society, technology and evenknowledge. I believe that neither Plato nor Aristotle has complete grasp on theirphilosophy of life, for as much as the two contradict one…

Eudaimonia Aristotle Essay (598 words)

?In Contrast to Plato Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed that sensory perceptions in the human soul are reflections ofobjects, and thoughts in consciousness are based on what we have already seen. He believed that humanshave the innate power of reason, and the innate faculty of organizing things into categories and classes,but no innate ideas. No Innate…

Buddha Vs Aristotle Essay Paper

Born in the year of 384 B. C. Aristotle was seen as conventional for histime, for he regarded slavery as a natural course of nature and believed thatcertain people were born to be slaves due to the fact that their soul lacked therational part that should rule in a human being; However in certaincircumstances it…

Check a number of top-notch topics on Aristotle written by our professionals

The Philosophy of Logic by Aristotle

The Views of Plato and Aristotle on Human Nature

The Plato and Isocrates Influence on The Aristotle’s Rhetorical Thought

Moderation and Niccolo Machiavelli’s Continuation of The Virtues: The Virtues of Aristotle Represented

Goodness in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Plato’s The Republic

Critical Analysis of Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Responsibility Presented in Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle’s Contribution to Neuroscience Advancements

Aristotle love a Virtuous Life

Analysis of Aristotle’s Idea of Polis as The Greatest Form of Human Association

A Critical Analysis of Aristotle’s Theory of Causation

A Comparative Study of Apollo and Ville Valo

384 BC, Stagira, Chalcidice

322 BC (aged 61–62), Euboea, Macedonian Empire

Platonic Academy

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Aristotle Essays

Harmony and virtue: a comparative exploration of lao tzu and aristotle on action and inaction, philosophy essay, aristotle: challenging aristotle’s pessimism on friendship in nicomachean ethics, why anger is a virtue, aristotle’s nicomachean ethics on friendship, the importance of character in moral decision-making: an evaluation of aristotle’s perspective, nicomachean ethics by aristotle, the theme of life affirmation in theatre performance, how to achieve eudaimonia according to aristotle, aristotle’s view of nature of the highest human good, ideas of aristotle on equity, cultural identity and social responsibility, aristotle’s nicomachean ethics, analysis of simon sinek’s 2009 ted talk “how great leaders inspire action”, approaches to truth and art, ethical decisions in a dilemma situation, popular essay topics.

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Essays on Aristotle

Dr Tamar Gendler’s lecture on virtue and habit provides an Aristotelian perspective on character formation. The lecture makes a connection between philosophical perspectives on virtues, and the normative and descriptive laws that guide people’s habits. Dr Gendler suggests that character is formed by connecting normative laws with descriptive laws –...

Thesis: Plato and Aristotle had differing political views. Essentially, Plato acknowledges that the ideal government which is set up as well as run by a philosopher king while Aristotle asserts that the population should be able to rule themselves where every man acts best and is able to live happily....

According to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, a being/thing refers to a form, which relates to the structure or pattern of a being or thing, and what makes something an individual thing is the 'matter.' In other words, Aristotle argues that everything in the world (a thing or a being) is a formed...

Words: 1235

In ancient Greek philosophy, the two philosophers, Plato and Aristotle are prominent proponents of various philosophical schools of thought. Despite Aristotle being highly influenced by his teacher Plato, the two exhibit immense similarities and differences in their articulation of various issues about politics, morality, philosophy and science among others. Evidently,...

The word philosophy comes from the Greek name Philosophia which factually means “love of wisdom”; it meant the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and comprised all areas of speculative thought, including the arts, sciences, and religion. Aristotle (384-322 B.CE.) was among the greatest philosopher; Plato was another great...

Words: 2074

MAJOR INFLUENCES OF PLATO’S AND ARISTOTLES’S METAPHYSICS ON LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN RELIGION AND THEIR INFLUENCE IN RELIGION TODAY Introduction The word philosophy comes from the Greek name philosophia which factually means “love of wisdom” it means the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and comprised all areas of speculative thought, including...

Words: 2240

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Over the years there has not been a consensus by political researchers and philosophers on the idea of Aristotle on politics due to differences such as his belief in the inferiority of women and his acceptance of slavery. However, his views on the relationship between the citizens and that of...

Happiness is every man’s desire and as such, human beings are constantly trying to define what happiness is and how it can be achieved. Aristotle and Epicurus are two philosophers who developed theories on happiness and although they both believe that our actions are aimed at achieving happiness, they have...

Various Perspectives on a Good Life There are various perspectives that can be adopted while describing the aspect of good life. Some people claim that having a good life is being successful in life pursuits such as career and having a good family. Others describe good life as having the peace...

1. Aquinas tries to reconcile Christianity with Greek philosophy.  How does he try to do this, and do you believe he is successful?  Why or why not?   Thomas Aquinas has long been recognized or reconciliation Christianity and Greek philosophy. Typically, he is believed to have provided justification...

Words: 1312

Oedipus is a play orchestrated by Sophocles, which exemplifies Aristotle's definition of a tragic hero. Aristotle states that a tragic hero is, on the contrary, a respected figure in the society but his destruction is inevitable, "tragedy is an imitation of action of high importance, acted by means of pity...

Words: 1675

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Aristotle Essay Examples

With reference to the history of psychology in this essay is discussed why most psychologists consider 1879 to be the year when psychology began as an independent discipline. Moreover, there is an explanation of some reasons why this year should not be considered as the...

Logical Positivism and Science: Examining Their Relationship

For many years philosophers have debated on the nature of science, its uses, how it should be conducted, and influence on society, however, the first to do so were the Ancient Greeks. In what is science essay this topic will be considered.  Aristotle and Plato...

The History of Mathematics: from Ancient Times to Modern Era

In a conventional classroom Introduction into a mathematical concept begins with reflection of prior knowledge of the concept. In this history of mathematics essay I will be examining the development of math. Origins and roots pertaining to a concept can rarely be found in a...

The Development of Camera from the Era of Aristotle to the 21st Century

The camera captures images of a certain moment of reality, and is stored as a film or a binary file stored on a digital device, Different storage types for digital devices, such as compact disc, hard disk drive, or flash memory. Modern cameras can capture...

Nicomachean Ethics – the Most Effective Historical and Philosophical Work of Ethics

Nicomachean Ethics is recognized as Aristotle’s best work regarding ethics. It is assumed to be named after either his son or his father. This is because they are both named Nicomachus. However, the fact that his son was too young while Aristotle came up with...

Impact of Natural Law on Canadian Law

The ideas of natural law were originated by Aristotle who argues that everything in life has a purpose and goal. Aristotle’s ideas of natural law were developed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Natural laws start with basic principles, people can be aware...

Aristotle's Rejection of Pleasure in Nicomachean Ethics

In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, a series of different ideas contributing to morals and ethics that relate to the ultimate good of human life were discussed. Aristotle breaks the idea of happiness into three major components, pleasure, wealth, and honor. Having said that, the idea of...

Integrative Analysis of Aristotle’s Views on Psychology and Theology

Aristotle was the greatest scientist and theorist in the earliest world. He started the education of proper logic, made every segment of psychology rich and made many contributions to science. Many ideas presented by Aristotle are currently out-dated but the important thing about the individual...

A Letter of Application by Aristotle

My name is Aristotle. I am writing this letter in purpose to apply for a position of Philosophy Instructor at Rogers State University. The reason I apply for this position is that I want to use the knowledge from my learning process to work in...

Othello – a Tragic Hero

Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher distinguished a tragic hero as a protagonist with valiant stature but ultimately who faces his downfall due to a tragic flaw in character or error in judgement. According to Aristotle’s definition, Othello can be perceived as a tragic hero. Othello...

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