See the Additional Resources for Topics for Critical Thinking and Writing and reading comprehension quizzes for this chapter.
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How Free Is the Will of the Individual within Society?
Thoughts about Free Will
All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.
— SAMUEL JOHNSON
Free will is doing gladly and freely that which one must do.
— CARL G. JUNG
The will is never free — it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car — it can’t steer.
— JOYCE CARY
A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.
— ALDOUS HUXLEY
Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is all striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.
— WILLIAM JAMES
Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.
— GEORG C. LICHTENBERG
We human beings do have some genuine freedom of choice and therefore some effective control over our own destinies. I am not a determinist. But I also believe that the decisive choice is seldom the latest choice in the series. More often than not, it will turn out to be some choice made relatively far back in the past.
— ARNOLD TOYNBEE
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We are responsible human beings, not blind automatons; persons, not puppets. By endowing us with freedom, God relinquished a measure of his own sovereignty and imposed certain limitations upon himself. If his children are free, they must do his will by a voluntary choice.
— MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Life is a card game. You play the hand that is dealt to you.
— PROVERBIAL
We must believe in free will. We have no choice.
— ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
If any one of these passages especially appeals to you, make it the thesis of an essay of about 500 words.
Take two of these passages — perhaps one that you especially like and one that you think is wrong-headed — and write a dialogue of about 500 words in which the two authors converse. They may each try to convince the other, or they may find that to some degree they share views and they may then work out a statement that both can accept. If you do take the position that one writer is on the correct track but the other is utterly mistaken, try to be fair to the view that you think is mistaken. (As an experiment in critical thinking, imagine that you accept it, and make the best case for it that you possibly can.)