46 - Free Will "in the superlative metaphysical sense"
Feb 22, 2022, 07:22 AM
Can we be ultimately responsible for what we do? No one denies that we can be the proximate cause of our actions. I made this episode because I wanted to. But being the proximate cause of an action is compatible with determinism – no determinist in their right mind would deny that I made this episode because I wanted to. So is there a deeper sense of responsibility that can be attributed to human beings? One which absolves God, the world, ancestors, luck, and society of what we choose to do?
This deeper kind of responsibility, which Nietzsche disparagingly called “‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense,” and which is often ascribed to human beings by the religious, arguably requires one to be causa sui – to be the ultimate cause of oneself. Since this is impossible, we can be sure that we do not possess the kind of responsibility that so many seem convinced we have. You can’t be radically self-creating in a way that gets you beyond a compatibilist notion of responsibility.
It’s unclear whether our lack of ultimate responsibility for our actions is a problem for libertarian free will. Do libertarians unanimously impute this degree of responsibility to humans? No – some do, some don’t. Regardless, the attacks on free will “in the superlative metaphysical sense” from Nietzsche and Strawson convincingly show that our responsibility for our actions is quite limited.
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"The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Münchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness."
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 21 (tr. W. Kaufmann)