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Free Will

As an advanced introduction to the challenging topic of free will, this book is

designed for upper-level undergraduates interested in a comprehensive first stop
into the field’s issues and debates. It is written by two of the leading participants
in those debates—a compatibilist on the issue of free will and determinism
(Michael McKenna) and an incompatibilist (Derk Pereboom). These two authors
achieve an admirable objectivity and clarity while still illuminating the field’s
complexity and key advances. Each chapter is structured to work as one week’s
primary reading in a course on free will, while more advanced courses can dip
into the annotated further readings, suggested at the end of each chapter. A com-
prehensive bibliography and a detailed author index are included at the back of
the book.

Michael McKenna is the Keith Lehrer Chair and Professor of Philosophy in the
Department of Philosophy and the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the
University of Arizona. He is the author of Conversation and Responsibility
(2012) and numerous articles on the topics of free will and moral responsibility.

Derk Pereboom is Stanford H. Taylor ’50 Chair and Susan Linn Sage Professor
in the Philosophy Department at Cornell University. He is the author of Living
without Free Will (2001), Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism
(2011), Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (2014), and articles on free will
and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, and the history of modern
philosophy.
Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy
Series editor: Paul K Moser, Loyola University of
Chicago

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introductory course in philosophy. Each book introduces a core general subject
in contemporary philosophy and offers students an accessible but substantial
transition from introductory to higher-level college work in that subject. The
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expounds the problems and positions introduced. An orientating chapter briefly
introduces its topic and reminds readers of any crucial material they need to have
retained from a typical introductory course. Considerable attention is given to
explaining the central philosophical problems of a subject and the main com-
peting solutions and arguments for those solutions. The primary aim is to
educate students in the main problems, positions, and arguments of con-
temporary philosophy rather than to convince students of a single position.

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4th Edition 2nd Edition
Michael J. Loux and Thomas M. Crisp John Christman
Free Will
A Contemporary Introduction

Michael McKenna and Derk Pereboom

First published 2016
by Routledge
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McKenna, Michael, 1963– author. | Pereboom, Derk,
1957– author.
Title: Free will: a contemporary introduction/Michael McKenna
and Derk Pereboom.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge
contemporary introductions to philosophy | Includes
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Identifiers: LCCN 2015044024| ISBN 9780415996860 (hbk) |
ISBN 9780415996877 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315621548 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Free will and determinism.
Classification: LCC BJ1461.M3885 2016 | DDC 123/.5–dc23
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We dedicate this book to our most memorable undergraduate professors.
John R. Phillips II
Alvin Plantinga
Nicholas Wolterstorff
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Determinism 6

1.1. Free Will 6
1.2. The Will in Free Will 9
1.3. Moral Responsibility 11
1.4. Determinism 16
1.5. Metaphysical, Physical, and Nomic Impossibility 19
1.6. Indeterminism, Mechanism, and Naturalism 23
Suggestions for Further Reading 24

2 The Free Will Problem 29

2.1. Compatibilism and Incompatibilism 30
2.2. Motivating the Problem: The Appeal of Free Will and
Determinism 33
2.3. Free Will Problems 37
2.4. Situating Compatibilism and Incompatibilism 43
Suggestions for Further Reading 45

3 Classical Compatibilism and Classical Incompatibilism 49

3.1. The Case for Classical Compatibilism 50
3.2. The Dispute over the Analysis of “Could Have Done
Otherwise” 56
3.3. The Case for Classical Incompatibilism 62
3.4. Classical Incompatibilism and Agent Causation 64
3.5. Reflections on the Classical Debate 66
Suggestions for Further Reading 68
viii Contents

4 The Debate over the Consequence Argument 72

4.1. Reflecting on the Classical Controversy over the Ability to
Do Otherwise 73
4.2. A Formulation of the Consequence Argument 75
4.3. Strategies for Resisting the Consequence Argument 79
4.4. The Consequence Argument: A More Precise Formulation 85
4.5. Questioning Rule β and Seeking an Improved Version 88
4.6. Assessments 90
Appendix I: What is a Modal Proposition? 91
Appendix II: Ginet’s Challenge to Compatibilist-Friendly
Semantics for Ability 93
Suggestions for Further Reading 97

5 Alternative Possibilities and Frankfurt Cases 102

5.1. Compatibilist and Incompatibilist Source Views 105
5.2. The Flicker of Freedom Defense 106
5.3. The Dilemma Defense 108
5.4. The Timing Defense 116
5.5. General Abilities to Do Otherwise 120
5.6. Final Words 121
Suggestions for Further Reading 122

6 Strawsonian Compatibilism 124

6.1. Strawson’s Audience: Optimists, Pessimists, and Skeptics 126
6.2. Strawson’s Assumptions about Moral Psychology 129
6.3. Strawson’s Theory of Moral Responsibility 130
6.4. Strawson’s Arguments for Compatibilism 132
6.5. Assessing Strawson’s Arguments for Compatibilism 135
6.6. Reflecting on Strawsonian Compatibilism 141
Suggestions for Further Reading 143

7 Three Source Incompatibilist Arguments 146

7.1. The Emergence of Source Theories 146
7.2. The Ultimacy Argument for Incompatibilism 149
7.3. The Direct Argument for Incompatibilism 154
7.4. The Manipulation Argument for Incompatibilism 162
7.5. Closing Remarks on Arguments for Source
Incompatibilism 172
Suggestions for Further Reading 173

8 Contemporary Compatibilism: Seven Recent Views 178

8.1. The Dispute between Historical and Nonhistorical
Compatibilists 178
8.2. The Influences of Strawson on the Justification of our
Blaming Practices 180
 Contents ix

8.3. The Proliferation of Senses of Moral Responsibility 181

8.4. Dennett’s Multiple-Viewpoints Compatibilism 182
8.5. Wolf ’s Reason View and Nelkin’s Rational Abilities
View 185
8.6. Mele’s Action-Theory Theory 189
8.7. Scanlon’s Contractualist Compatibilism 192
8.8. Wallace’s Fairness-Based Compatibilism 196
8.9. Russell’s Strawsonian-Inspired Critical Compatibilism 199
8.10. Bok’s Practical-Standpoint Compatibilism 202
8.11. A Continuum Ranging from Normative to Metaphysical
Approaches 204
Suggestions for Further Reading 204

9 Contemporary Compatibilism: Mesh Theories,

Reasons-Responsive Theories, and Leeway Theories 207
9.1. Mesh Theories: An Initial Characterization 207
9.2. Frankfurt’s Hierarchical Mesh Theory 208
9.3. Three Challenges to Frankfurt’s Hierarchical Theory 210
9.4. Watson’s Structural Mesh Theory 214
9.5. Bratman’s Planning Theory 215
9.6. Reasons-Responsive Theories: An Initial
Characterization 216
9.7. Fischer and Ravizza’s Reasons-Responsive Theory 217
9.8. Three Challenges to Fischer and Ravizza’s Theory 219
9.9. McKenna’s and Sartorio’s Agent-Based
Reasons-Responsive Source Theories 223
9.10. Contemporary Leeway Theories 224
9.11. Vihvelin’s New Dispositionalism 225
Suggestions for Further Reading 228

10 Contemporary Incompatibilism: Libertarianism 232

10.1. Three Kinds of Libertarianism 232
10.2. Two Event-Causal Libertarian Accounts 233
10.3. Luck Objections to Event-Causal Libertarianism 236
10.4. Applying the Objections 239
10.5. Adding in Higher-Order States 242
10.6. Agent-Causal Libertarianism 243
10.7. Agent-Causal Libertarianism and Luck Objections 244
10.8. Agent Causation and Rationality 246
10.9. Contrastive Explanations and an Expanding
Agent-Causal Power 249
10.10. Is Agent-Causation Reconcilable with the Physical
Laws? 251
10.11. Is Libertarian Agent Causation Required for Agency? 252
10.12. Non-Causal Theories 255
x Contents

10.13. The Cost of Rejecting Libertarianism 259

Suggestions for Further Reading 260

11 Contemporary Incompatibilism: Skeptical Views 262

11.1. Spinoza, the First Hard Determinist 263
11.2. A Contemporary Hard Determinist 264
11.3. No-Free-Will-Either-Way Theories 265
11.4. A Neuroscientific Case against Free Will 267
11.5. Derk Pereboom’s Argument for Free Will Skepticism 269
11.6. Neil Levy’s Argument for Free Will Skepticism 273
11.7. Tamler Sommers’ Metaskepticism 274
11.8. Living without Free Will 276
11.9. Final Words 284
Suggestions for Further Reading 284

12 Revisionism and Some Remaining Issues 286

12.1. Manuel Vargas’s Revisionism 286
12.2. Responsibility for Omissions 293
12.3. Deliberation and Free Will 296
12.4. Experimental Philosophy and Free Will 298
12.5. Religion and Free Will 301
12.6. Conclusion 304
Suggestions for Further Reading 304

Bibliography 307
Index of authors cited 327
Preface

This book, Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction, is intended as an advanced

introduction to the philosophical topic of free will. Our primary aim is to teach,
and to do so at a fairly demanding level. While our target audience will be
advanced undergraduates taking courses at the highest level suitable for under-
graduate work, we also mean for the book to remain accessible to those less famil-
iar with issues in philosophy. To do so, we shall at points take extra care to explain
terms, arguments, and other background assumptions with which more advanced
readers are already familiar. In any event, our goal is to bring readers to a point
where they are able to arrive at, minimally, a graduate level understanding of this
topic. We mean to invite the newcomer to philosophy to come along. But we will
not purchase clarity with simplicity. The philosophical topic of free will is a chal-
lenging topic, and we mean for this book to be a challenging one as well. We want
our readers to learn, and we want them to do so at an advanced level. For these
reasons, we also intend for this book to be of use to graduate students in philo-
sophy and related areas, and professional philosophers not steeped in the free will
literature who are looking for a comprehensive overview of the field. Thus one
will find other subsections or appendices which we will note are more suitable for
a very advanced audience. In essence, we shall present the free will issue in a way
that is as inclusive as possible in the hope that we can serve many audiences. But
the targeted “sweet spot” for this book is the capable, advanced undergraduate
seeking a treatment of the free will topic that, upon completion, would prepare that
student to take with confidence classes on free will at the graduate level.
Because of our efforts to be as inclusive as possible, we invite the reader to
use our book in ways that best suit her. Some readers will be especially aided by
endnotes, appendices, or side bars explaining somewhat technical matters (such
as what a “modal operator” is). Others quite familiar with various advanced phil-
osophical concepts will have no need of such details and should just pass over
them. Yet a different group of readers—for example, those seeking only an
initial, simple introduction to free will—are also advised to pass over some of
these more complex details. If we succeed in doing what we mean to do, this
book should repay upon multiple readings of it.
We will do our best in the pages to follow not to advance our own views but
instead try to be as fair and even-handed as possible, seeking as objective and
xii Preface

dispassionate an assessment of various disputes as we can. Of course, this is an

ideal, one that is probably not really ever fully attainable. Still, we will try. As it
happens, we are philosophical opponents in the free will dispute. One of us,
Michael McKenna, is a compatibilist about the relationship between free will
and determinism. The other, Derk Pereboom, is an incompatibilist about this
relationship. We thus disagree about many different issues, although there are
numerous others where we are united. We hope that our collaborative effort in
these pages will help foster a balanced, clear, and fair assessment of the field.
But we remain aware that we might very well at points fall shy of this. Every
experienced teacher of philosophy, and teachers of many other areas of study as
well, are all too familiar with learning after years of teaching that her efforts to
remain fair and unbiased in teaching her students were not completely success-
ful. She discovers hidden assumptions that blinded her to the force of other posi-
tions and ideas that would best serve her students. No doubt, some will probably
find places where they believe we have fallen prey to this blindness. But impar-
tiality is an ideal toward which we at least mean to aim. In our effort to do so, at
various points, readers will find us noting how and where other philosophers
would disagree with us. And, for the most part, rather than argue with them, we
mark their good reasons for their difference of opinion, note our own, and leave
it as an open question for the reader to settle for herself.
We have no interest in writing a book that offers the final word or the defini-
tive assessment of the range of topics related to free will. We rather mean for it
to be a place to begin, or instead, for those already familiar with the free will
topic, a place to consider one perspective on the lay of the land. We hope this
book inspires the reading of many more books and articles on free will. Its goal
is not to foreclose the need for more inquiry but instead to instigate more
inquiry—and so for readers at various levels of experience and ability.
For instructors interested in using this book in their classes, we have struc-
tured the chapters so that each can handily be treated as the topic of a single
week’s seminar session. More advanced seminars can be supplemented each
week with more advanced readings. Less advanced seminars can be adjusted
likewise. We have included a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the
book. But we shall close each chapter with suggestions for further readings,
offering brief annotated remarks about them. If an instructor is interested, she
can draw from these suggestions to build her syllabus.
Michael McKenna
Derk Pereboom
Acknowledgments

This book, originally a single-author project, began many years ago as a draft
built from teaching notes from my time at Ithaca College. It later evolved and
was used for both undergraduates and graduates at Florida State University.
Once I arrived at the University of Arizona, I used it in an earlier form to teach
an undergraduate class. I would like to thank my many colleagues and students
at Ithaca College, Florida State University, and the University of Arizona for
their helpful comments and suggestions. Of special note are my colleagues from
Ithaca College, Stephen Schwartz, Craig Duncan, Carol Kates, Robert Klee,
Rick Kaufman, and Richard Creel; my colleagues from FSU, Al Mele, Randy
Clarke, Joshua Gert, Stephen Kearns, and Seth Shabo; and my colleagues from
U of A, Carolina Sartorio, Terry Horgan, Jenann Ismael, Keith Lehrer, Shaun
Nichols, Stew Cohen, and David Schmidtz. I owe special thanks to four philoso-
phers who taught me how to understand the free will debate, John Fischer, Carl
Ginet, Paul Russell, and, most notably, George Thomas, my graduate professor
and dissertation supervisor from the University of Virginia. I have also profited
over the years from a wonderful group of friends who work on free will and
related topics, especially Nomy Arpaly, Mark Balaguer, Bernie Berofsky,
Gunnar Björnsson, Joe Campbell, Ish Haji, Bob Kane, Eddie Nahmias, Dana
Nelkin, Tim O’Connor, Derk Pereboom, George Sher, David Shoemaker, Angie
Smith, Tamler Sommers, Patrick Todd, Manuel Vargas, Gary Watson, and
Michael Zimmerman. Finally, I would like to thank my co-author for agreeing to
come on board in 2013. With a considerable amount of revising and the addition
of several new chapters, Derk helped make this book far more balanced and
thorough. He also made completing it an especially good time and a great learn-
ing experience.
I am grateful to Peter Ohlin and Oxford University Press for permission to
reprint sections of “Contemporary Compatibilism: Mesh Theories and Reasons-
Responsive Theories,” in R. Kane, ed., 2011, Oxford Handbook of Free Will,
2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press): 175–98. This material is used in
Chapter 9. I am also indebted to the John Templeton Foundation for financial
support used to travel to Cornell University to work with Derk Pereboom in July
of 2015.
Michael McKenna
xiv Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my many colleagues and students at the University of

Vermont, Yale University, Cornell University, and the Central European Univer-
sity in Budapest for their valuable contributions. Of special note are my col-
leagues from the University of Vermont, David Christensen, Arthur Kuflik,
George Sher, Louis deRosset, Bill Mann, Seth Shabo, and Don Loeb, and my
colleague at Cornell, Carl Ginet. I would also like to thank all of the members of
the free will community for discussion and interaction over the years—and let
me note, specifically, John Fischer, Dana Nelkin, Lynne Baker, Michael
McKenna, Randy Clarke, Al Mele, David Widerker, Bob Kane, Gunnar Björns-
son, Tim O’Connor, Carolina Sartorio, Ish Haji, Joe Campbell, Manuel Vargas,
Shaun Nichols, Josh Knobe, Mario De Caro, Tamler Sommers, Eddie Nahmias,
Justin Coates, Patrick Todd, and my graduate students at Cornell, in particular
Jona Vance, Sean Stapleton, Patrick Mayer, and Austin Duggan. Finally, I would
like to thank my co-author for inviting me to come on board in 2013. Working
on this book with Michael was very pleasant and a great learning experience.
Derk Pereboom
Introduction

To get us under way, consider this case, much discussed by philosophers who
write on the topic of free will and the related topic of moral responsibility:
Robert Alton Harris was executed in San Quentin Prison in 1992 for the 1978
murder of two teenage boys, John Mayeski and Michael Baker. Harris and his
brother Daniel came upon Mayeski and Baker while the two 16-year-old boys
were eating their lunch in a parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. The Harris
brothers were looking to steal a car for use in a bank robbery. When they saw
the boys in their car, the brothers forced them at gunpoint to drive to a remote
area. There Robert Harris convinced the two boys he would return their car and
share some of the money from the robbery. The boys agreed. As they were
walking away, Harris shot them from behind, something that was completely
unexpected by his brother Daniel. Here is LA Times Miles Corwin’s 1982 report
of the event, at times quoting Daniel Harris:

As the two boys walked away, [Robert Alton] Harris slowly raised the
Luger and shot Mayeski in the back, Daniel said. Mayeski yelled, “Oh
God,” and slumped to the ground. Harris chased Baker down a hill into a
little valley and shot him four times.
Mayeski was still alive when Harris climbed back up the hill, Daniel
said. Harris walked over to the boy, knelt down, put the Luger to his head,
and fired.
“God, everything started to spin,” Daniel said. “It was like slow motion.
I saw the gun, and then his head explode like a balloon, . . . I just started
running and running . . . But I heard Robert and turned around.”
“He was swinging the rifle and pistol in the air and laughing. God, that
laugh made blood and bone freeze in me.”
Harris drove [the] car to a friend’s house, carrying weapons and the bag
[containing] the remainder of the slain youths’ lunch. Then, about 15
minutes after he had killed the two 16-year-old boys, Harris took the food
out of the bag . . . began eating a hamburger. He offered his brother an apple
turnover, and Daniel became nauseated and ran to the bathroom.
“Robert laughed at me,” Daniel said. “He said I was weak; he called me
a sissy and said I didn’t have the stomach for it.”
2 Introduction

Harris was in an almost lighthearted mood. He smiled and told Daniel

that it would be amusing if the two were to pose as police officers and
inform the parents that their sons were killed. Then, for the first time, he
became serious. He thought that somebody might have heard the shots and
that the police could be searching for the bodies. He told Daniel that they
should begin cruising the street near the bodies, and possibly kill some
police in the area.
[Later, as they prepared to rob the bank,] Harris pulled out the Luger,
noticed the blood stains and remnants of flesh in the barrel as a result of the
point-blank shooting, and said, “I really blew that guy’s brains out.” And
then, again, he started to laugh.1

In the LA Times article, Corwin comments upon how even the inmates at San
Quentin prison were planning to celebrate Harris’s execution. Harris, it seems,
was regarded as a terror of a man, even among the most hardened of criminals.
And Corwin details a prior life of crime, which began with torturing animals at a
young age, car theft, and beating a neighbor to death in a dispute, for which
Harris was convicted of manslaughter.
What are we to make of Robert Harris? And what are we to make of our
reactions to him, of our judgments about what he deserves, our feelings of
anger, and (for some of us) our desire that he is made to suffer by being pun-
ished? It is natural in these cases, at least as many people see it, to think of
Harris as more than an insane monster or a wild animal. Our indignation toward
him and our judgments about what we presume he deserves are bound up with
our thinking that somehow it was up to him how he acted. He was in the driv-
er’s seat of his own actions, of his life. He was not forced by his nature or any-
thing else to murder those boys. He could have done otherwise than to murder,
or for that matter, to make the choices he made earlier in life that led him to that
place where doing these terrible things would count for him as a source of
amusement, even delight. He, not someone or something else, was in control
in the murdering, or, earlier on, in control of the torturing of those animals,
and so on. And to the extent that he found himself in a place where it seemed
only a joy to so act, we also want to think—or at least many of us are so
inclined—that he made himself to be that way. He shaped himself to be this
brutal man by his own free choices. To many, this helps to justify our sense of
justice in a legal system that holds people to account. And even if one thinks
the death penalty is never deserved, it remains very compelling to think that
men like Robert Alton Harris deserve to be punished harshly for their crimes in
some way because they freely so acted, freely so chose, freely came to be as
they are.
These presuppositions embedded in the way so many of us think about a case
like Harris’s reveal an important feature of the conceptual framework many
people are committed to in their thinking: Persons are in some important way
free in acting as they do. This is a philosophical thesis, and it is not just some
esoteric one. It is embedded in so much of our way of understanding the world
 Introduction 3

that it is at least preliminarily hard to imagine how we would be able to think of

ourselves or others without relying upon this assumption.
But along with the above presuppositions, there are other presuppositions also
embedded in our everyday thinking that are in tension with those having to do
with human freedom. These have to do with the facts of our lives, with the
causes impinging upon them. To explain, consider again Corwin’s LA Times
article. Corwin does not fix only upon Robert Alton Harris’s terrible deeds. He
also explores his terrible history. As Corwin recounts it, Harris was born prema-
turely when his mother was kicked in the stomach by her jealous husband, who
accused her of infidelity, claiming Harris was not his child. The father twice sex-
ually molested the sisters and beat all of his children, often causing serious
injury. Harris’s mother became an alcoholic, and was arrested several times.
Harris had a learning disability and speech problems, none of which were
addressed, and he lived through school feeling stupid. He was frequently teased
by his classmates. According to his sister, Barbara Harris, even as a young child
his mother would not permit him to touch her. And she recalls one occasion
when his mother bloodied his nose for trying to get close to her. His sister
remembers him crying as a young child when Bambi was shot. He loved
animals. By the age of 14 he was sentenced to a federal youth detention center
for car theft. There he was raped several times and slashed his wrists in
attempted suicide. Released from federal prison at 19, the boy who once cried at
Bambi’s death tortured and killed dogs and cats with mop handles, darts, and
pellet guns. Once, he stabbed a prize pig more than 1,000 times.
Ask yourself now, reader, what you feel about Harris the criminal, now that
you are aware of Harris the child and of his youth leading up to his adult years.
What do you think Harris deserves for his crimes now that you are aware of his
history? If you are like many, you are not sure what to think; you have become
ambivalent (Watson, 1987), toggling between sympathy on the one hand and
antipathy on the other. It is not implausible to explain your ambivalence, if
indeed you are ambivalent, in terms of the thought that the causes shaping
Harris’s life made him into who he was, and that in some way they impaired or
strongly shaped his character and his understanding of the world. His ugly
history determined him to be this man and do these things. This thought, it
seems, is at odds with our thinking that it was after all up to him whether he
murdered those boys. It appears to be at odds with thinking he could have done
other than murder; rather, there is the worry that the ugly history shaping him
and moving through him settled what he would do then so that he really could
not have done any differently. And likewise, it seems that his life was not his
own making. It was made out of hatred and violence, of ridicule, self-loathing,
and rape.
These competing assumptions about human freedom on the one hand and on
the other about the causes shaping our lives are not just at play when we think of
extreme cases like the Harris story. They apply in all sorts of situations and in all
sorts of contexts. They might just as well apply when it comes to our thinking
about our own lives, or about the lives of moral heroes, like Martin Luther King,
4 Introduction

rather than treacherous characters like Robert Alton Harris. Cases like those of
the alcoholic or drug addict struggling to resist their plight can be viewed either
in terms of what a person is free to overcome or instead in terms of the under-
lying physiology driving an addict’s or alcoholic’s cravings and decision-
making.
As is illustrated by reflecting upon the case of Harris, the philosophical con-
troversy regarding the freedom of the will is about the prospects for a distinctive
sort of agency. Put simply, are persons like Harris able to control their own
conduct? Likewise, was Dr. King, or the alcoholic, or any of us for that matter?
Do they possess and act from a sufficiently rich freedom enabling them to shape
themselves and their futures as they prefer and as they judge best? Can they, as
an upshot of this sort of freedom, be morally responsible for their conduct, and
so be justifiably held to account for how they treat themselves and others? And
what must the natural order be like for it to be true that persons do have free will
and thereby act freely? Must they be able to “free” themselves from the influ-
ences of their past to then act freely, or can their freedom still arise from within,
or instead, due to their histories? Or is the presumption of the freedom we
suppose people have really just mistaken and undermined by a more enlightened
understanding of the underlying hidden causes of the human condition?
There are at least four distinct philosophical questions regarding free will:
First, what is free will? What is its nature? Second, why is free will important?
What value, if any, does it bring to human life? Third, is free will compatible
with certain assumptions about the natural world? For instance, is it compatible
with determinism? Is it compatible with indeterminism? Whether determined or
undetermined, is it compatible with our being purely physical beings, part of a
natural order on a continuum with the rest of the animal kingdom? Fourth, do
we possess free will and, sometimes, act freely? As we shall see, these questions
are usually not compartmentalized but are answered together as part of an overall
theory. Nevertheless, it is probably correct to say that contemporary philosophi-
cal discussions of free will have focused primarily on the third question, which
might be called the compatibility question. This book will be no exception to
that general trend. We will structure it around different approaches to answering
that question. It is in light of this question—Is free will compatible with
determinism?—that this topic is often characterized as one of the classical prob-
lems of philosophy, the problem of free will.

Our book is set out as follows:

Chapter 1 is devoted to getting clear on the main concepts in the debate, in
particular the concepts of free will, moral responsibility, and determinism. In
Chapter 2, we turn to explaining the free will problem and to showing that the
debate actually features a range of related problems, not just one. In Chapter 3,
we present the classical free will debate as we find it in the twentieth century
during the heyday of analytic philosophy.
In Chapters 4 through 6 we focus on three developments, all of which
occurred in the 1960s, that resulted in major changes to the way the free will
 Introduction 5

problem is approached. The first, which is the subject of Chapter 4, concerns the
Consequence Argument for incompatibilism, which is designed to show that the
freedom to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism. The second major
development, treated in Chapter 5, features Harry Frankfurt’s argument for the
thesis that the freedom to do otherwise is not the sort of freedom that is required
for persons to be morally responsible for what they do. It is, rather, a different
sort of freedom, one that concerns the source of a person’s agency. The third
development, set out in Chapter 6, concerns P.F. Strawson’s efforts to reconfig-
ure the free will problem by reference to our moral emotions and how our inter-
personal lives reveal our own understanding of human freedom and the
conditions for moral responsibility.
Chapter 7 is dedicated to three arguments for the conclusion that freedom and
responsibility are incompatible with determinism. All three are significant as
influences on the contemporary debate because each aims to establish incompati-
bilism by way of resources that do not concern the freedom to do otherwise.
Attention is rather paid to the sources of human agency in light of the prospect
that determinism affects those sources in a way that precludes freedom and
responsibility.
With Chapters 1 through 7 in place, we turn to an assessment of the major
contemporary positions on free will and moral responsibility. Chapters 8 and 9
address the various proposals for defending compatibilism, which is the view
that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with determinism. Chap-
ters 10 and 11 focus on the different varieties of incompatibilism, which denies
the truth of compatibilism. Chapter 10 is devoted to forms of incompatibilism
that affirm the reality of free will and moral responsibility, known as libertarian-
ism, and Chapter 11 addresses forms of incompatibilism that affirm skepticism
about free will and moral responsibility, including hard determinism and hard
incompatibilism.
Chapter 12 addresses Manuel Vargas’s original proposal, revisionism, which
recommends that we revise our concepts of free will and moral responsibility so
as to remove their incompatibilist implications and that we preserve our practice
of holding responsible. This chapter also concludes the book by addressing a
range of topics we did not cover in detail: responsibility for omissions, the chal-
lenge to rational deliberation from the belief in determinism, experimental philo-
sophy on folk concepts and presuppositions animating the free will debate, and
the theological roots and implications of this debate.

Note
1 This passage is from Miles Corwin, “Icy Killer’s Life Steeped in Violence,” Los
Angeles Times, May 16, 1982. Quoted from Gary Watson’s highly influential article,
“Responsibility and the Limits of Evil” (1987: 269–70).
1 Free Will, Moral Responsibility,
and Determinism

In this first chapter, we will examine the key notions in the free will debate. We
will begin by providing characterizations of free will, moral responsibility, and
determinism. We will as well consider a range of related matters, such as what
the will is, and we will introduce the notions of indeterminism, mechanism, and
naturalism.

1.1. Free Will

As it turns out, settling upon how to use the term “free will” is a controversial
matter. We propose to define the term as follows:

Free will is the unique ability of persons to exercise the strongest sense of
control over their actions necessary for moral responsibility.

A free act, as we use the expression, is an act that issues from an exercise of that
ability. This definition, or something like it, while not universally accepted, is
widely shared (e.g., Haji, 2009: 18; McKenna, 2008d: 187; Mele, 2006b: 17;
Pereboom, 2001: xxii; Timpe, 2008: 11). True, it is just a starting point for theo-
rizing. It leaves unsettled what the relevant sense of control is, and it leaves
unspecified the nature of the moral responsibility at issue. These are topics we
will address in this book. But let’s begin with a few clarifications.
First, why is it common to characterize free will as a kind of control, specifi-
cally in relation to moral responsibility? Plausibly, one of at least two substan-
tive necessary conditions of an agent’s being morally responsible for something
is that it was under her control. If, for instance, you accidentally hit the gear shift
and wrecked the car because you had an unexpected seizure, you are not morally
responsible and blameworthy for hitting the gear shift or for the damage. The
reason is that you were not in control of your body. Moral responsibility very
plausibly requires control over whatever it is that an agent is responsible for.
Second, as Alfred Mele explains (2006b: 27, n18), it is crucial that the control
at issue is the strongest that is necessary for moral responsibility. There are
weaker senses of control that are necessary for moral responsibility. For instance,
it might well be a necessary condition of moral responsibility for what an agent
 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism 7

does that she is able to move her body in accord with her decisions. Imagine, for
instance, that a demon was manipulating your mind, causing the decisions that
result in your bodily motions. You might satisfy one necessary condition for
being morally responsible for what you do, that is, you are able to move your
body in accord with your decisions. But you would not satisfy a stronger con-
dition for being morally responsible because you would not be in control of the
decisions you make. Free will, as we understand it, is the strongest control con-
dition necessary for moral responsibility.
Third, on our proposed definition, exercises of free will are not limited to
morally significant action for which a person is morally responsible. It is just
that the ability identified by free will is the one required when a person is
morally responsible for what she does. But she can exercise this ability in non-
moral contexts as well. Indeed, it is possible for there to exist beings that are not
morally responsible for anything—perhaps wholly amoral beings—who exercise
the kind of control that is necessary for moral responsibility.1 So on our pre-
ferred way of defining free will it is an ability whose exercise need not issue in
something for which the agent is morally responsible.
At the same time, how the term “free will” is defined is itself a matter of some
controversy. While numerous writers understand free will and free action in
essentially the way we have defined it, others do not. It will be instructive to
indicate how others use the term and register points of disagreement. Here we
restrict our attention to two further ways to define the term “free will.”
A number of participants in the debate define free will as having access to
alternative options for action, or, as it’s often put, the ability to do otherwise
from what one actually does (e.g., Clarke, 2003: 3; Ginet, 1990: 90; van
Inwagen, 1983: 8; Vihvelin, 2013). For instance, Carl Ginet writes:

By freedom of will is meant freedom of action. I have freedom of action at a

time if more than one alternative is then open to me. (1990: 90)

Unlike our preferred definition, this way of defining free will is not pinned to
moral responsibility. Peter van Inwagen, who also defines free will in terms of
the ability to do otherwise, explicitly counsels against defining free will in terms
of “whatever sort of freedom is required for moral responsibility” (2008: 329,
n2). On the ability-to-do-otherwise proposal, one can attend to free will just as
well by ignoring moral contexts and reflecting upon whether we are able to pick
up a pencil or refrain from doing so, or choose grapes rather than bananas for a
morning snack.
What are we to make of this terminological difference? One might first note
that it is consistent with our proposal that free will, as the strongest sense of
control required for moral responsibility, will turn out to be the ability to do
otherwise. The difference, however, between Ginet/van Inwagen and us would
be that on our preferred strategy the proposal that free will is, or at least requires,
the ability to do otherwise would amount to a substantive thesis, not a claim that
is true just by how we define the term “free will.” Furthermore, suppose, as
8 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism

many argue, that the ability to do otherwise is not required for moral responsib-
ility but that moral responsibility still requires some sort of control condition. On
our proposal, we call that sort of control “free will.” Ginet, van Inwagen, and
others favoring their terminological approach would need a distinct term.
In our estimation, little rides on this. People can use the term “free will” dif-
ferently, so long as they specify at the outset what they mean by this term. We
believe it best to theorize about free will in terms of a control condition on moral
responsibility. But we grant that reasonable minds can differ. In any event,
regardless of this difference in how we use the term “free will,” philosophers can
still have a substantive—and not merely a terminological—discussion about
what sort of control moral responsibility demands, and about whether it requires
the ability to do otherwise, and whether that ability is compatible or incompati-
ble with determinism, and so on.
Next consider Robert Kane’s (1996) way of defining free will. His idea is that
when we act, we are guided by our ends or purposes. As Kane defines it:

Free will is the power to be the ultimate creator and sustainer of one’s own
ends and purposes. (1996: 4)

Interestingly, in contrast with Ginet’s and van Inwagen’s proposal, Kane rejects
the thesis that we should understand free will simply in terms of the ability to do
otherwise, or the ability to will otherwise. Nevertheless, on his developed view,
being an ultimate creator or sustainer of one’s own ends entails that one is able
to do otherwise. So, for Kane, free will does involve the ability to do otherwise,
but it amounts to a substantive and not merely a definitional matter that free will
requires this ability.
In our opinion, what it is for an agent to be a creator or sustainer of her ends
and purposes—even an ultimate creator or sustainer—can be understood in
stronger and weaker terms. At one end of the spectrum, it might come to mean
no more than what is meant when it is remarked that, once the ball was snapped,
it was ultimately up to the quarterback to make the pass. That sense is consistent
with very modest demands on agency. The other end of the spectrum features a
reading of being an ultimate creator that is so demanding that there may be no
metaphysically possible way for such a condition to be satisfied. The virtue of
defining free will in terms of a condition on moral responsibility is that it is then
possible to gain some independent purchase for measuring how strong or weak
the control or freedom must be. Hence, it might very well be, as Pereboom
argues (2001), that free will does require being an ultimate initiator of one’s free
acts. But this will flow as a substantive thesis from examining the conditions on
moral responsibility.
One way to handle these terminological disputes is just to avoid use of the
term “free will” altogether. Better, it might be thought, to adopt more theoreti-
cally innocent terminology. This is how John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza
(1998) proceed. Rather than offering a definition of free will, they write instead
in terms of control over action. In setting out their view, they distinguish
 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism 9

between different sorts of control over action, one involving the ability to do
otherwise, and another that does not. Once these different notions of control are
specified, they then proceed to ask which sort is required for moral responsib-
ility. We do not object to this manner of proceeding. Note that our proposed def-
inition of free will is relatively friendly to Fischer and Ravizza’s strategy, since
we define free will in terms of one sort of control—the strongest kind required
for moral responsibility. As a general word of caution, when reading the works
of those involved in the debate about free will, it will be helpful to keep in mind
that these authors define free will differently, or instead avoid use of the term
altogether, but that they nevertheless can be understood as involved in a substan-
tive and not merely a verbal debate.2

1.2. The Will in Free Will

A further issue concerns the notion of a will. One would think, just given the
expression “free will” itself, that those who use it assume that there is such a power
or faculty as the will, and when considering whether we have free will, they are
asking whether that power can be regarded as free. But, perhaps surprisingly,
many contemporary philosophers working on this topic reject the notion of a will
as something that exists in its own right. Many philosophers who disagree about
how to define “free will” agree that there is no reason to think that there is more to
claims about free will than merely what is involved in attending to free action.
Recall Ginet’s remark above that by freedom of will is meant freedom of action
(Ginet, 1990: 90). This is a sentiment shared by numerous writers (e.g., Haji, 2009:
18; McKenna, 2008d; Mele, 2006b: 17; van Inwagen, 1983: 8). Why?
Some writers report that they do not know what is meant by those who do
take the term “will” to refer (e.g., Mele, 2006b: 17). Others take its meaning to
be clear but wish to deny commitment to what the term “will” initially appears
to pick out, namely a distinctive mental causal power involved in generating
action (e.g., van Inwagen, 1983: 8). Their worry is that taking the notion of a
will commits one to mental causal powers, which are recruited to account for
various abilities that minds have. If the will were understood as a mental causal
power, it would be a feature of persons that plays the special role of voluntarily
generating actions. We could then ask whether it is free or not, or, to be more
cautious, whether a person is free with respect to how that power is exercised.
David Hume (1748) famously hoped to dispense with the notion of a causal
power, or more precisely a causal power that does not reduce to regularities or
counterfactual dependencies, and many philosophers, particularly in the analytic
tradition in the first half of the twentieth century, adopted this view. Since then,
the notion of an irreducible causal power has been resurrected, and now many
philosophers currently accept mental causal powers of this sort (Boyd, 1980;
Fodor, 1987). Fortunately, this division does not undermine the possibility of a
substantive debate about the main issues at stake in the controversy about free
will and moral responsibility, since those issues need not be formulated in terms
of the will as a causal power. Instead, they can be cast in terms of notions such
10 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism

as intention, choice, decision, desire, and reason, which are common to both
sides of the divide.
Philosophers in the Humean tradition often opt to understand free will just in
terms of acting freely (Ayer, 1954; Schlick, 1939). Others (e.g., Frankfurt, 1971;
Kane, 1996) hold that important distinctions are lost if the discussion is restricted
to freedom of action, and that a distinct notion of free will needs to be invoked.
The general thesis, shared by those who wish to distinguish free will from free
action, is that free action is merely a matter of being unhindered in doing what
one wants, in, for example, moving one’s body as one prefers. Free will, by con-
trast, is a matter of being in control of or free with respect to the intentions,
choices, decisions, reasons, or desires that are the causal antecedents of how one
acts and moves one’s body.
Some philosophers are happy to agree that there is such a thing as the will,
but they nevertheless tend to reduce this notion to mental states such as desires.
Harry Frankfurt (1971), for instance, identifies the will with the desire that is (or
would be if left unhindered) effective in leading an agent to action. To be free
with respect to one’s will, then, is to be free with respect to the desires that lead
to one’s actions. Kane (1996) proposes a more complex account of the will,
which we will not set out in detail here. But the ingredients constituting it are,
for the most part, those involved in one’s forming and sustaining intentions. To
be free with respect to one’s will, in Kane’s view, is essentially to be free with
respect to the intentions, choices, and decisions that issue in one’s actions. For
both Frankfurt and Kane, then, it’s important to invoke the notion of free will in
addition to free action, but free will is then accounted for solely in terms of
familiar sorts of mental states, without reference to an irreducible mental causal
power to voluntarily produce action.
For the most part, the side one takes on the existence of mental causal powers
makes no difference to the core issues in the debate about free will and moral
responsibility. One exception is the issue of agent causation, which, according to
most of its advocates, does require the notion of a causal power. But Kane, for
instance, sets out the case of a businesswoman late for an important professional
meeting who, uncertain about what to do, must decide between stopping to help
a person who has just been assaulted, or instead proceeding on to her meeting
(Kane, 1996: 126). We can raise the important questions about the business-
woman’s freedom without ruling on the issue of the existence of the will as a
causal power. For we can ask about whether in choosing as she does, she satis-
fies the strongest control condition necessary for being morally responsible for
her decision. We can also ask about whether she was able to decide otherwise.
And we can ask about whether she was ultimately settling her ends or purposes
in deciding to render aid instead of heading off to her meeting. Finally, it seems
that, for those who want to preserve talk of the will, as Kane himself does, we
can describe this case as one in which the agent exercises her will in deciding as
she does. But we can also just as easily describe the case as one in which the
agent acts freely by performing the mental act of deciding in one way rather than
the other.
 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism 11

Unless otherwise indicated, we will write in terms of free action and of acting
freely when discussing free will. To address Frankfurt’s and Kane’s concern that
indeed there is something lost in failing to distinguish between free action and
free will, we offer two considerations. First, Frankfurt and Kane are correct that
there is a familiar notion of free action that applies to some non-human animals
and amounts to no more than being able to move one’s body as one wishes, the
way a dog runs free once let off a leash. But since we mean to account for free
will in terms of the strongest sense of control required for moral responsibility,
we can claim that this sort of freedom is not strong enough to do justice to the
sort of free action that we are interested in capturing. Second, when examining
the details of the will as, for instance, Kane (1996) understands it, a key ingredi-
ent—indeed, on his view the key ingredient—is the ability to decide in con-
ditions of uncertainty when one is not sure what to do, or which values should be
endorsed. But on a sufficiently permissive view of what actions are, decisions
are actions—they are mental actions. Then it seems that the difference between
a view like Kane’s and one that denies the existence of the will becomes very
small, especially if we treat freedom of decision as the especially important cases
of free action, those that capture what is most distinctive in exercises of free
will.
As a general point, nearly all philosophers involved in the free will debate
take decisions, especially in morally loaded contexts, to be the most salient and
interesting cases to fix upon when offering a theory of freedom. And the cases
most emphasized involve decisions preceded by conscious deliberation. This is
so regardless of how the philosopher defines the term “free will,” and regardless
of whether she is committed to the existence of the will.3

1.3. Moral Responsibility

We turn next to the topic of moral responsibility. Getting clear on moral respon-
sibility’s nature is important to all those working on the topic of free will, not
just those who favor the definition of free will we endorse. It is an important
question whether and how free will is related to moral responsibility, independ-
ently of one’s terminological commitments. For example, suppose, as van
Inwagen or Ginet would see it, and contrary to our own prescription, free will
should be defined in terms of the ability to do otherwise and without any mention
of the conditions on moral responsibility. It remains an important philosophical
question for them if and how free will is related to moral responsibility. It is for
this reason that they too discuss their views about free will in contexts where
what is at issue is whether someone is morally responsible for how she acts.
So, how are we to understand moral responsibility? To begin, judgments of
moral responsibility should be distinguished from the wider class of ethical or
moral judgments. Morality, broadly construed, encompasses judgments of moral
obligation, moral permission, and moral prohibition; judgments of right and
wrong, of virtue and vice, and of good and bad. Moral responsibility concerns a
person’s responsibility for actions in these categories. It is one thing to settle
12 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism

what, for instance, a person’s moral obligations are. It is another to judge that
she is morally responsible for whether or not she lived up to or failed to comply
with them.4
One of the main controversies in the free will debate concerns the skeptical
thesis that no one has free will and as a result no one is morally responsible—at
least in one key sense (e.g., Pereboom, 2001, 2014). Even if such a skeptical
thesis were established as true, this would not by itself be grounds for a thor-
oughgoing skepticism about morality—a skepticism according to which no one
performs acts that are morally right or wrong, good or bad, virtuous or vicious.
Barring further assumptions, such moral evaluations would not be impugned just
by virtue of establishing that no one is ever morally responsible for anything. It
should, however, be noted that there are further moral theses that, if true, would
yield this result. For instance, suppose morality is a system of categorical imper-
atives expressing agents’ moral duties and demarcating the domain of moral
right and wrong. Assume in addition that a necessary condition of any such
imperative applying to an agent is that she is free to comply with it or instead act
in opposition to what it demands. If it were established that no one is free in that
sense, then morality would apply to no one. It is in this way that free will, moral
responsibility, and morality itself could be tightly linked. But this is a special
and complex proposal, and in general it should not be assumed that morality
itself stands or falls with the prospects for free will and moral responsibility.
But what is it to be morally responsible for something? It is commonplace
in these discussions to note that moral responsibility is only one sort of respons-
ibility. There are other varieties as well, including merely causal responsib-
ility, and more complex and evaluatively loaded notions, such as legal
responsibility. Perhaps we can also speak of aesthetic responsibility, prudential
responsibility, or even athletic responsibility. Mere causal responsibility, which
is not evaluatively loaded, is just a matter of being the cause of something—a
matter of brute fact, so to speak. A lightning bolt can be causally responsible for
something, like a house fire. And a person can be merely causally responsible—
but not morally, legally, or otherwise responsible—for something too, as when a
person innocently flips a light switch causing a short-circuit and then a house
fire. But as far as these other dimensions of responsibility go—moral, legal, aes-
thetic, athletic—what they all share is the potential for evaluation of an agent in
light of an evaluation of her action. For instance, it is because of Matilda’s doing
morally wrong by violating her obligation (an evaluation of her action) that we
can raise a further evaluative question about her in light of her wrongdoing. Was
she responsible for her so acting?
What distinguishes moral responsibility from legal responsibility or any other
variety of responsibility is a matter of the evaluative dimension of an agent’s
actions (moral, rather than legal, aesthetic, prudential, and so on), and then an
assessment of her exercising her agency along that dimension. As far as the
responsibility assessments themselves are concerned, the two fundamental types of
assessment are praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. Naturally, when the issue is
moral responsibility, then the assessments will involve moral praiseworthiness and
 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism 13

moral blameworthiness. As the terms suggest, what an agent’s being morally

praiseworthy or morally blameworthy for something makes apt or fitting, in
standard or paradigm cases, is a response of moral praise or moral blame.5
Even once we have zeroed in on moral responsibility, distinguishing it from
other sorts of responsibility, there is more work to do. Although controversial,
many philosophers have become convinced that there are different species or
senses of moral responsibility (e.g., Pereboom, 2001, 2014; Scanlon, 1998, 2008;
Shoemaker, 2011, 2015; Watson, 1996). These different senses involve distinct
types of judgments of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, and so make apt or
fitting distinct types of praising or blaming responses. Gary Watson (1996), for
instance, has distinguished between moral responsibility in the attributability
sense and moral responsibility in the accountability sense. To be morally
responsible for an action in the attributability sense is for that action to reveal or
express one’s nature or self, what one stands for or who one is. In this way, acts
that are courageous or cowardly, magnanimous or petty, grand or shoddy, are
acts that allow us to attribute to the agent something about her—and these attri-
butions are in various ways means of judging her attributability-praiseworthy or
attributability-blameworthy. In light of these sorts of evaluations, we are often
given reasons to adjust our behavior and tailor our expectations toward those so
judged. Those inclined toward shoddy conduct, for instance, are better avoided,
and are best not trusted with the church’s donation box. Despite these qualifica-
tions, a person’s being merely responsible in the attributability sense does not
entail that she is liable to expressions of indignation toward her because of what
she did, or to demands that she rectify her bad conduct, or to being required to
apologize to those she wronged. These are all manifestations of moral responsib-
ility in the accountability sense, the core of which is the legitimacy of holding
someone to account for her actions.6
Some have argued that there are yet further species of moral responsibility
(e.g., Pereboom, 2014; Shoemaker, 2011, 2015). We do not need to enter that
debate at this point (we will do so in our discussion of free will skepticism in
Chapter 11). Given the task at hand of surveying the various positions in the free
will debate, we are specifically interested at this stage in the sense that Watson
identified as accountability. A key feature of moral responsibility in this sense is
its connection with how others in a moral community are thought to be morally
permitted or entitled to treat others in certain, say, blaming way, ways that
involve taking up a blameworthy person’s moral transgressions and demanding
apology, acknowledgment of wrong done, a commitment to rectify the wrong,
compensation or punishment. There appears to be in these forms of treatment the
presumption of a morally justified mode of sanctioning.
A natural, albeit not universally shared, assumption about the means of moral
praising and blaming responses is that they involve manifestations of what are
known as the morally reactive attitudes (Strawson, 1962). These attitudes are
moral emotions that are responses to a morally responsible agent in light of her
actions. Moral anger, in the forms of moral resentment and indignation, is
revealed in a blamer’s treatment of a blameworthy agent, and manifesting such
14 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism

moral anger can function as a way of holding an agent to account. Likewise for a
positive moral emotion like gratitude—it can be a way of holding the agent
accountable by praising her.
Now consider the contention that when a person is morally responsible and
blameworthy, others are warranted or entitled to blame them. One might also
claim that it is appropriate or fitting to blame them. What is the normative basis
for these claims of warrant, entitlement, appropriateness, or fittingness? Some
have argued that the justification for blaming those who are blameworthy, a jus-
tification that would account for the sanctioning element in blaming, should be
based on consequentialist or utilitarian considerations. There are benefits of
various sorts for blaming those who are blameworthy, and these benefits can be
invoked to justify a blaming and punishing practice (e.g., Dennett, 1984; Smart,
1963). Others have considered different normative bases for blaming. One option
is to appeal to considerations of fairness (e.g., Wallace, 1994). The idea is that
those who freely and knowingly do wrong and are thereby blameworthy cannot
claim that blaming responses are unfair.
There are yet further options. But the most widely shared view is that the
grounds for claims of warrant, entitlement, appropriateness, or fittingness are
exhausted in the notion of fundamental or basic desert. A person who is blame-
worthy deserves blame on this view just because she has acted wrongly (e.g.,
Feinberg, 1970; Pereboom, 2001, 2014). And the desert at issue is basic because
it is not justified by considerations of utility or any other further norm at all
(even arguably fairness). It is simply good or right, because deserved, to blame
and perhaps in some cases punish one who is blameworthy for her wrongdoing.
We note one more refinement in our account of moral responsibility. These
claims of warrant, etc., no matter how developed, whether in terms of utility,
fairness, or basic desert, are best understood as offering justifications for a pro
tanto, that is, a defeasible, reason to blame a person. For example, a blame-
worthy person might deserve to be blamed for some wrongdoing, but one cannot
conclude just from this that it is all-things-considered the morally right thing to
do to blame her. Maybe other moral considerations are overriding. For example,
imagine a person who wronged you by lying to you about a small matter. She
might deserve your blame. But suppose that as chance would have it, after lying
to you, her child is killed in a car accident. Mercy might provide an overriding
reason here not to blame, even if the blame is deserved.
With the preceding discussion of moral responsibility available, we can now
chart the important connections between moral responsibility in the sense we are
interested in and considerations of free will. Because being morally responsible
makes one liable to justified hard treatment when one is blameworthy, there is
something at stake in a person’s being morally responsible in this way.7 This
makes clear why there is a control or a free will requirement on being morally
responsible in the accountability sense. It seems manifestly unfair, or unjust, or
undeserving for someone to be subject, on the basis of what she did, to hard treat-
ment and the angry demands of others blaming her if, in acting as she did, her
action was not in her control, and in this way she was not free in acting as she did.
 Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Determinism 15

Another requirement on being morally accountable is an epistemic one. A

person who is blameworthy must understand or at least be able to understand
that what she is doing is morally wrong (or bad or vicious). Likewise, our excus-
ing practices bear this out. We excuse people who, through no fault of their own,
did not know that the poison was placed in the ketchup jar, or that turning the
light switch on would alert a burglar, and so on.
Now consider the distinction between morally responsible agency and being
morally responsible for something. Morally responsible agency in the account-
ability sense is a matter of status—a matter of being a person of a certain sort,
one who is sufficiently developed or capable that she can be held to account for
her conduct. Young children, the insane, and the severely mentally disabled,
while being persons, are not morally responsible agents in the accountability
sense. They are not candidates for being held to moral account for their conduct.
Free will, as we shall understand it, is an ability that is a requirement for being a
morally responsible agent in the accountability sense.8 Acting freely, insofar as
it is an exercise of the free will ability, is a requirement for being morally
responsible in this sense for what one does.
While naturally we will be interested in various cases in which there is some
dispute as to whether a person acted freely, the larger question informing the
free will debate is not just about whether this act or that act was a free one but
about whether and how there might be agents who act with free will. On a skep-
tical view about the existence of agents with free will, assuming free will is a
necessary condition for moral accountability, no one is a morally responsible
agent in the accountability sense.
Two points are worth noting here. First, it should be clear that if no one had
free will and no one was a morally responsible agent in the accountability sense,
one could not conclude from this alone that there were no persons. Our conception
of what persons are would be revised insofar as we presume that most persons are
or will develop into morally responsible agents in this sense. But free will skepti-
cism would not amount to a wholesale rejection of the thesis that there are persons.
Second, we can now come to see a less commonly registered manner in which the
free will debate is a distinctly metaphysical issue. The commonly registered
assumption is that this debate concerns a metaphysical issue because it attends to
the question of how there might be agents who act with free will given various
constraints about how the natural world is ordered. (This is a topic we will soon
consider in detail.) However, a different way to see the free will debate as a meta-
physical issue is in terms of the metaphysics of personhood. Persons are regarded
as distinct sorts of beings within the domain of conscious, minded creatures; and
one especially interesting issue concerns what distinguishes persons from these
other creatures with minds. Questions of free will and moral responsibility are then
themselves questions about, at best, a narrower class of beings—persons who
satisfy both epistemic and control conditions of a sort that constitutes their being
morally responsible agents in the accountability sense. This would mark out a dis-
tinctive class of persons. The free will debate has independent metaphysical
importance insofar as it asks whether and how we can understand such beings.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 94 THE STORY OF MY LIFE arose.* I was sorely perplexed,
and felt discouraged wasting much precious time, especially in
algebra. It is true that I was familiar with all literary braille in
common use in this country — English, American, and New York
Point; but the various signs and symbols in geometry and algebra in
the three systems are very different, and I had used only the English
braille in my algebra. Two days before the examinations, Mr. Vining
sent me a braille copy of one of the old Harvard papers in algebra.
To my dismay I found that it was in the American notation. I sat
down immediately and wrote to Mr. Vining, asking him to explain the
signs. I received another paper and a table of signs by return mail,
and I set to work to learn the notation. But on the night before the
algebra examination, while I was struggling over some very
complicated examples, I could not tell the combinations of bracket,
brace and radical. Both Mr. Keith and I were distressed and full of
forebodings for the morrow; but we went over to the college a little
before the examination began, and had Mr. Vining explain more fully
the American symbols. In geometry my chief difficulty was that I had
always been accustomed to read the propositions in line print, or to
have them spelled into my hand; and somehow, although the
propositions were right before me, I found the braille confusing, and
could not fix clearly in my mind what I was reading. But when I took
up algebra I had a harder time still. The signs, which I had so lately
learned, and which I thought I knew, perplexed me. Besides, I could
*See Miss Keller's letter, page 259.
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 95 not see what I wrote on my
typewriter. I had always done my work in braille or in my head. Mr.
Keith had relied too much on my ability to solve problems mentally,
and had not trained me to write examination papers. Consequently
my work was painfully slow, and I had to read the examples over
and over before I could form any idea of what I was required to do.
Indeed, I am not sure now that I read all the signs correctly. I found
it very hard to keep my wits about me. But I do not blame any one.
The administrative board of Radclifle did not realize how difficult
they were making my examinations, nor did they understand the
peculiar difficulties I had to surmount. But if they unintentionally
placed obstacles in my way, I have the consolation of knowing that I
overcame them all.
 CHAPTER XX The struggle for admission to college was
ended, and I could now enter Radcliffe whenever I pleased. Before I
entered college, however, it was thought best that I should study
another year under Mr. Keith. It was not, therefore, until the fall of
1900 that my dream of going to college was realized. I remember
my first day at Radcliffe. It was a day full of interest for me. I had
looked forward to it for years. A potent force within me, stronger
than the persuasion of my friends, stronger even than the pleadings
of my heart, had impelled me to try my strength by the standards of
those who see and hear. I knew that there were obstacles in the
way; but I was eager to overcome them. I had taken to heart the
words of the wise Roman who said, " To be banished from Rome is
but to live outside of Rome." Debarred from the great highways of
knowledge, I was compelled to make the journey across country by
unfrequented roads — that was all; and I knew that in college there
were many bypaths where I could touch hands with girls who were
thinking, loving and struggling like me. I began my studies with
eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and
light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the
wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another. Its people,
scenery, manners, joys, tragedies should be living, tangible
interpreters of 96
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 97 the real world. The lecture-halls
seemed filled with the spirit of the great and the wise, and I thought
the professors were the embodiment of wisdom. If I have since
learned differently, I am not going to tell anybody. But I soon
discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had
imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young
inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of
common day." Gradually I began to find that there were
disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt and still feel most is
lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I.
We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies
of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the
words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that
until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to
commune with one's thoughts. \, One goes to college to learn, it
seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one
leaves the dearest pleasures— solitude, books and imagination —
outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some
comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future
enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to
hoarding riches against a rainy day. My studies the first year were
French, German, history, English composition and English literature.
In the French course I read some of the works of Corneille, Moliere,
Racine, Alfred de Musset and Sainte-Beuve, and in the German those
of Goethe and Schiller. I reviewed rapidly the whole period of history
from the fall of the Roman Empire to the
 98 THE STORY OF MY LIFE eighteenth century, and in
English literature studied critically Milton's poems and "
Areopagitica." I am frequently asked how I overcome the peculiar
conditions under which I work in college. In the classroom I am of
course practically alone. The professor is as remote as if he were
speaking through a telephone. The lectures are spelled into my hand
as rapidly as possible, and much of the individuality of the lecturer is
lost to me in the effort to keep in the race. The words rush through
my hand like hounds in pursuit of a hare which they often miss. But
in this respect I do not think I am much worse off than the girls who
take notes. If the mind is occupied with the mechanical process of
hearing and putting words on paper at pell-mell speed, I should not
think one could pay much attention to the subject under
consideration or the manner in which it is presented. I cannot make
notes during the lectures, because my hands are busy listening.
Usually I jot down what I can remember of them when I get home. I
write the exercises, daily themes, criticisms and hour-tests, the mid-
year and final examinations, on my typewriter, so that the professors
have no difficulty in rinding out how little I know. When I began the
study of Latin prosody, I devised and explained to my professor a
system of signs indicating the different meters and quantities. I use
the Hammond typewriter. I have tried many machines, and I find the
Hammond is the best adapted to the peculiar needs of my work.
With this machine movable type shuttles can be used, and one can
have several shuttles, each with a different set of characters —
Greek, French, or mathematical, according to the kind of writing
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 99 one wishes to do on the
typewriter. Without it, I doubt if I could go to college. Very few of
the books required in the various courses are printed for the blind,
and I am obliged to have them spelled into my hand. Consequently I
need more time to prepare my lessons than other girls. The manual
part takes longer, and I have perplexities which they have not. There
are days when the close attention I must give to details chafes my
spirit, and the thought that I must spend hours reading a few
chapters, while in the world without other girls are laughing and
singing and dancing, makes me rebellious; but I soon recover my
buoyancy and laugh the discontent out of my heart. For, after all,
every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill
Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I
must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand
still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles. I lose my temper
and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel
encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the
widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I
reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of
my desire. I am not always alone, however, in these struggles. Mr.
William Wade and Mr. E. E. Allen, Principal of the Pennsylvania
Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, get for me many of the
books I need in raised print. Their thoughtfulness has been more of
a help and encouragement to me than they can ever know. Last
year, my second year at Radcliffe, I studied English comoosition, the
Bible as English literature,
 ioo THE STORY OF MY LIFE the governments of America
and Europe, the Odes ot Horace, and Latin comedy. The class in
composition was the pleasant est. It was very lively. The lectures
were always interesting, vivacious, witty; for the instructor, Mr.
Charles Townsend Copeland, more than any one else I have had
until this year, brings before you literature in all its original freshness
and power. For one short hour you are permitted to drink in the
eternal beauty of the old masters without needless interpretation or
exposition. You revel in their fine thoughts. You enjoy with all your
soul the sweet thunder of the Old Testament, forgetting the
existence of Jahweh and Elohim ; and you go home feeling that you
have had ' ' a glimpse of that perfection in which spirit and form
dwell in immortal harmony; truth and beauty bearing a new growth
on the ancient stem of time." This year is the happiest because I am
studying subjects that especially interest me, economics, Elizabethan
literature, Shakespeare under Professor George L. Kittredge, and the
History of Philosophy under Professor Josiah Royce. Through
philosophy one enters with sympathy of comprehension into the
traditions of remote ages and other modes of thought, which
erewhile seemed alien and without reason. But college is not the
universal Athens I thought it was. There one does not meet the
great and the wise face to face ; one does not even feel their living
touch. They are there, it is true; but they seem mummified. We
must extract them from the crannied wall of learning and dissect and
analyze them before we can be sure that we have a Milton or
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 101 an Isaiah, and not merely a
clever imitation. Many scholars forget, it seems to me, that our
enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the
depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding. The trouble is
that very few of their laborious explanations stick in the memory.
The mind drops them as a branch drops its overripe fruit. It is
possible to know a flower, root and stem and all, and all the
processes of growth, and yet to have no appreciation of the flower
fresh bathed in heaven's dew. Again and again I ask impatiently,
"Why concern myself with these explanations and hypotheses?"
They fly hither and thither in my thought like blind birds beating the
air with ineffectual wings. I do not mean to object to a thorough
knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the
interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one
thing: there are as many opinions as there are men. But when a
great scholar like Professor Kittredge interprets what the master
said, it is "as if new sight were given the blind." He brings back
Shakespeare, the poet. There are, however, times when I long to
sweep away half the things I am expected to learn ; for the
overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the
greatest cost. It is impossible, I think, to read in one day four or five
different books in different languages and treating of widely different
subjects, and not lose sight of the very ends for which one reads.
When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written
tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot
of choice bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use. A.t the
present time my mind is so full of hetero
 102 THE STORY OF MY LIFE geneous matter that I almost
despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the
region that was the kingdom of my mind I feel like the proverbial
bull in the china shop. A thousand odds and ends of knowledge
come crashing about my head like hailstones, and when I try to
escape them, theme-goblins and college nixies of all sorts pursue
me, until I wish — oh, may I be forgiven the wicked wish ! — that I
might smash the idols I came to worship. But the examinations are
the chief bugbears of my college life. Although I have faced them
many times and cast them down and made them bite the dust, yet
they rise again and menace me with pale looks, until like Bob Acres I
feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before these
ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic
formulae and indigestible dates — unpalatable diets, until you wish
that books and science and you were buried in the depths of the
sea. At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being
indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to
your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It
happens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most
perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need
your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take
to themselves wings and fly away, The facts you have garnered with
such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch. "Give a brief
account of Huss and his work." Huss ? Who was he and what did he
do ? The name •ooks strangely familiar. You ransack your budget
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 103 of historic facts much as you
would hunt for a bit of silk in a rag-bag. You are sure it is
somewhere in your mind near the top — you saw it there the other
day when you were looking up the beginnings of the Reformation.
But where is it now? You fish out all manner of odds and ends of
knowledge — revolutions, schisms, massacres, systems of
government; but Huss — where is he ? You are amazed at all the
things you know which are not on the examination paper. In
desperation you seize the budget and dump everything out, and
there in a corner is your man, serenely brooding on his own private
thought, unconscious of the catastrophe which he has brought upon
you. Just then the proctor informs you that the time is up. With a
feeling of intense disgust you kick the mass of rubbish into a corner
and go home, your head full of revolutionary schemes to abolish the
divine right of professors to ask questions without the consent of the
questioned. It comes over me that in the last two or three pages of
this chapter I have used figures which will turn the laugh against
me. Ah, here they are — the mixed metaphors mocking and strutting
about before me, pointing to the bull in the china shop assailed by
hailstones and the bugbears with pale looks, an unanalyzed species !
Let them mock on. The words describe so exactly the atmosphere of
jostling, tumbling ideas I live in that I will wink at them for once,
and put on a deliberate air to say that my ideas of college have
changed. While my days at Radcliffe were still in the future, they
were encircled with a halo of romance, which they have lost ; but in
the transition from romantic
 io4 THE STORY OF MY LIFE to actual I have learned many
things I should never have known had I not tried the experiment.
One of them is the precious science of patience, which teaches us
that we should take our education as we would take a walk in the
country, leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of every
sort. Such knowledge floods the soul unseen with a soundless tidal
wave of deepening thought. "Knowledge is power." Rather,
knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge — broad, deep
knowledge — is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from
low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man's
progress is to feel the great heart-throbs of humanity through the
centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward
striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.
 CHAPTER XXI I have thus far sketched the events of my
life, but I have not shown how much I have depended on books not
only for pleasure and for the wisdom they bring to all who read, but
also for that knowledge which comes to others through their eyes
and their ears. Indeed, books have meant so much more in my
education than in that of others, that I shall go back to the time
when I began to read. I read my first connected story in May, 1887,
when I was seven years old, and from that day to this I have
devoured everything in the shape of a printed page that has come
within the reach of my hungry finger tips. As I have said, I did not
study regularly during the early years of my education; nor did I
read according to rule. At first I had only a few books in raised print
— "readers" for beginners, a collection of stories for children, and a
book about the earth called "Our World." I think that was all ; but I
read them over and over, until the words were so worn and pressed
I could scarcely make them out. Sometimes Miss Sullivan read to
me, spelling into my hand little stories and poems that she knew I
should understand; but I preferred reading myself to being read to,
because I liked to read again and again the things that pleased me.
It was during my first visit to Boston that I really began to read in
good earnest. I wa? permitted to 105
 106 THE STORY OF MY LIFE spend a part of each day in
the Institution library, and to wander from bookcase to bookcase,
and take down whatever book my fingers lighted upon. And read I
did, whether I understood one word in ten or two words on a page.
The words themselves fascinated me; but I took no conscious
account of what I read. My mind must, however, have been very
impressionable at that period, for it retained many words and whole
sentences, to the meaning of which I had not the faintest clue; and
afterward, when I began to talk and write, these words and
sentences would flash out quite naturally, so that my friends
wondered at the richness of my vocabulary. I must have read parts
of many books (in those early days I think I never read any one
book through) and a great deal of poetry in this uncomprehending
way, until I discovered "Little Lord Fauntleroy," which was the first
book of any consequence I read understandingly. One day my
teacher found me in a corner of the library pouring over the pages of
"The Scarlet Letter." I was then about eight years old. I remember
she asked me if I liked little Pearl, and explained some of the words
that had puzzled me. Then she told me that she had a beautiful
story about a little boy which she was sure I should like better than "
The Scarlet Letter." The name of the story was "Little Lord
Fauntleroy," and she promised to read it to me the following
summer. But we did not begin the story until August; the first few
weeks of my stay at the seashore were so full of discoveries and
excitement that I forgot the very existence of books. Then my
teacher went to visit some friends in Boston, leaving me for a short
time.
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 207 When she returned almost the
first thing we did fcras to begin the story of " Little Lord Fauntleroy."
I recall distinctly the time and place when we read the first chapters
of the fascinating child's story. It was a warm afternoon in August.
We were sitting together in a hammock which swung from two
solemn pines at a short distance from the house. We had hurried
through the dish-washing after luncheon, in order that we might
have as long an afternoon as possible for the story. As we hastened
through the long grass toward the hammock, the grasshoppers
swarmed about us and fastened themselves on our clothes, and I
remember that my teacher insisted upon picking them all off before
we sat down, which seemed to me an unnecessary waste of time.
The hammock was covered with pine needles, for it had not been
used while my teacher was away. The warm sun shone on the pine
trees and drew out all their fragrance. The air was balmy, with a
tang of the sea in it. Before we began the story Miss Sullivan
explained to me the things that she knew I should not understand,
and as we read on she explained the unfamiliar words. At first there
were many words I did not know, and the reading was constantly
interrupted ; but as soon as I thoroughly comprehended the
situation, I became too eagerly absorbed in the story to notice mere
words, and I am afraid I listened impatiently to the explanations that
Miss Sullivan felt to be necessary. When her fingers were too tired to
spell another word, I had for the first time a keen sense of my
deprivations. I took the book in my hands and tried to feel the
letters with an intensity of longing that I can never forget.
 o8 THE STORY OF MY LIFE Afterward, at my eager request,
Mr. Anagnos had this story embossed, and I read it again and again,
until I almost knew it by heart ; and all through my childhood "Little
Lord Fauntleroy" was my sweet and gentle companion. I have given
these details at the risk of being tedious, because they are in such
vivid contrast with my vague, mutable and confused memories of
earlier reading. From "Little Lord Fauntleroy" I date the beginning of
my true interest in books. During the next two years I read many
books at my home and on my visits to Boston. I cannot remember
what they all were, or in what order I read them ; but I know that
among them were "Greek Heroes," La Fontaine's "Fables,"
Hawthorne's "Wonder Book," "Bible Stories," Lamb's "Tales from
Shakespeare," "A Child's History of England" by Dickens, "The
Arabian Nights," "The Swiss Family Robinson," "The Pilgrim's
Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," "Little Women," and "Heidi," a
beautiful little story which I afterward read in German. I read them
in the intervals between study and play with an ever-deepening
sense of pleasure. I did not study nor analyze them — I did not
know whether they were well written or not; I never thought about
style or authorship. They laid their treasures at my feet, and I
accepted them as we accept the sunshine and the love of our
friends. I loved "Little Women" because it gave me a sense of
kinship with girls and boys who could see and hear. Circumscribed as
my life was in so many ways, I had to look between the covers of
books for news of the world that lay outside my own. I did not care
especiallv for "The Pilgrim's
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 109 Progress," which I think I did
not finish, or for the "Fables." I read La Fontaine's "Fables" first in an
English translation, and enjoyed them only after a half-hearted
fashion. Later I read the book again in French, and I found that, in
spite of the vivid wordpictures, and the wonderful mastery of
language, I liked it no better. I do not know why it is, but stories in
which animals are made to talk and act like human beings have
never appealed to me very strongly. The ludicrous caricatures of the
animals occupy my mind to the exclusion of the moral. Then, again,
La Fontaine seldom, if ever, appeals to our higher moral sense. The
highest chords he strikes are those of reason and self-love. Through
all the fables runs the thought that man's morality springs wholly
from self-love, and that if that selflove is directed and restrained by
reason, happiness must follow. Now, so far as I can judge, self-love
is the root of all evil ; but, of course, I may be wrong, for La
Fontaine had greater opportunities of observing men than I am likely
ever to have. I do not object so much to the cynical and satirical
fables as to those in which momentous truths are taught by
monkeys and foxes. But I love " The Jungle Book" and " Wild
Animals I Have Known." I feel a genuine interest in the animals
themselves, because they are real animals and not caricatures of
men. One sympathizes with their loves and hatreds, laughs over
their comedies, and weeps over their tragedies. And if they point a
moral, it is so subtle that we are not conscious of it. My mind
opened naturally and joyously to a conception of antiquity. Greece,
ancient Greece, exer 
 no THE STORY OF MY LIFE cised a mysterious fascination
over me. In my fancy the pagan gods and goddesses still walked on
earth and talked face to face with men, and in my heart I secretly
built shrines to those I loved best. I knew and loved the whole tribe
of nymphs and heroes and demigods — no, not quite all, for the
cruelty and greed of Medea and Jason were too monstrous to be
forgiven, and I used to wonder why the gods permitted them to do
wrong and then punished them for their wickedness. And the
mystery is still unsolved. I often wonder how God can dumbness
keep While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time. It was
the Iliad that made Greece my paradise. I was familiar with the story
of Troy before I read it in the original, and consequently I had little
difficulty in making the Greek words surrender their treasures after I
had passed the borderland of grammar. Great poetry, whether
written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a
responsive heart. Would that the host of those who make the great
works of the poets odious by their analysis, impositions and
laborious comments might learn this simple truth ! It is not
necessary that one should be able to define every word and give it
its principal parts and its grammatical position in the sentence in
order to understand and appreciate a fine poem. I know my learned
professors have found greater riches in the Iliad than I shall ever
find; but I am not avaricious. I am content that others should be
wiser than I. But with all their wide and comprehensive knowledge,
they cannot measure their enjoyment of that splen 
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE in did epic, nor can I. When I read
the finest passages of the Iliad, I am conscious of a soul-sense that
lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My
physical limitations are forgotten — my world lies upward, the length
and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine ! My
admiration for the ^Eneid is not so great, but it is none the less real.
I read it as much as possible without the help of notes or dictionary,
and I always like to translate the episodes that pleased me
especially. The word-painting of Virgil is wonderful sometimes; but
his gods and men move through the scenes of passion and strife and
pity and love like the graceful figures in an Elizabethan mask,
whereas in the Iliad they give three leaps and go on singing. Virgil is
serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a
beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his
hair. How easy it is to fly on paper wings ! From "Greek Heroes" to
the Iliad was no day's journey, nor was it altogether pleasant. One
could have traveled round the world many times while I trudged my
weary way through the labyrinthine mazes of grammars and
dictionaries, or fell into those dreadful pitfalls called examinations,
set by schools and colleges for the confusion of those who seek after
knowledge. I suppose this sort of Pilgrim's Progress was justified by
the end ; but it seemed interminable to me, in spite of the pleasant
surprises that met me now and then at a turn in the road. I began to
read the Bible long before I could understand it. Now it seems
strange to me that there
 ii2 THE STORY OF MY LIFE should have been a time when
my spirit was deaf to its wondrous harmonies ; but I remember well
a rainy Sunday morning when, having nothing else to do, I begged
my cousin to read me a story out of the Bible. Although she did not
think I should understand, she began to spell into my hand the story
of Joseph and his brothers. Somehow it failed to interest me. The
unusual language and repetition made the story seem unreal and far
away in the land of Canaan, and I fell asleep and wandered off to
the land of Nod, before the brothers came with the coat of many
colours unto the tent of Jacob and told their wicked lie ! I cannot
understand why the stories of the Greeks should have been so full of
charm for me, and those of the Bible so devoid of interest, unless it
was that I had made the acquaintance of several Greeks in Boston
and been inspired by their enthusiasm for the stories of their country
; whereas I had not met a single Hebrew or Egyptian, and therefore
concluded that they were nothing more than barbarians, and the
stories about them were probably all made up, which hypothesis
explained the repetitions and the queer names. Curiously enough, it
never occurred to me to call Greek patronymics " queer. " But how
shall I speak of the glories I have since discovered in the Bible? For
years I have read it with an ever-broadening sense of joy and
inspiration ; and I love it as I love no other book. Still there is much
in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much
that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it
through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge
which I have gained of its history and sources com 
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 313 pensates me for the
unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention. For my part, I
wish, with Mr. Ho wells, that the literature of the past might be
purged of all that is ugly and barbarous in it, although I should
object as much as any one to having these great works weakened or
falsified. There is something impressive, awful, in the simplicity and
terrible directness of the book of Esther. Could there be anything
more dramatic than the scene in which Esther stands before her
wicked lord ? She knows her life is in his hands ; there is no one to
protect her from his wrath. Yet, conquering her woman's fear, she
approaches him, animated by the noblest patriotism, having but one
thought: "If I perish, I perish ; but if I live, my people shall live. "
The story of Ruth, too — how Oriental it is ! Yet how different is the
life of these simple country folks from that of the Persian capital !
Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as
she stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful,
unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and
cruel age. Love like Ruth's, love which can rise above conflicting
creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the
world. The Bible gives me a deep, comforting sense that "things
seen are temporal, and things unseen are eternal. " I do not
remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I
have not loved Shakespeare. I cannot tell exactly when I began
Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare"; but I know that I read them at
first with a child's understanding and a child's wonder. "Macbeth"
seems to have impressed me
 ii4 THE STORY OF MY LIFE most. One reading was
sufficient to stamp every detail of the story upon my memory
forever. For a long time the ghosts and witches pursued me even
into Dreamland. I could see, absolutely see, the dagger and Lady
Macbeth's little white hand — the dreadful stain was as real to me as
to the griefstricken queen. I read " King Lear" soon after " Macbeth,
" and I shall never forget the feeling of horror when I came to the
scene in which Gloster's eyes are put out. Anger seized me, my
fingers refused to move, I sat rigid for one long moment, the blood
throbbing in my temples, and all the hatred that a child can feel
concentrated in my heart. I must have made the acquaintance of
Shylock and Satan about the same time, for the two characters were
long associated in my mind. I remember that I was sorry for them. I
felt vaguely that they could not be good even if thev wished to,
because no one seemed willing to help them or to give them a fair
chance. Even now I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them
utterly. There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the
Judases, and even the Devil, are broken spokes in the great wheel of
good which shall in due time be made whole. It seems strange that
my first reading of Shakespeare should have left me so many
unpleasant memories. The bright, gentle, fanciful plays — the ones I
like best now — appear not to have impressed me at first, perhaps
because they reflected the habitual sunshine and gaiety of a child's
life. But " there is nothing more capricious than the memory of a
child : what it will hold, and what it will lose." I have since read
Shakespeare's plays many times
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 115 and know parts of them by
heart, but I cannot tell which of them I like best. My delight in them
is as varied as my moods. The little songs and the sonnets have a
meaning for me as fresh and wonderful as the dramas. But, with all
my love for Shakespeare, it is often weary work to read all the
meanings into his lines which critics and commentators have given
them. I used to try to remember their interpretations, but they
discouraged and vexed me ; so I made a secret compact with myself
not to try any more. This compact I have only just broken in my
study of Shakespeare under Professor Kittredge. I know there are
many things in Shakespeare, and in the world, that I do not
understand; and I am glad to see veil after veil lift gradually,
revealing new realms of thought and beauty. Next to poetry I love
history. I have read every historical work that I have been able to lay
my hands on, from a catalogue of dry facts and dryer dates to
Green's impartial, picturesque " History of the English People"; from
Freeman's "History of Europe" to Emerton's "Middle Ages." The first
book that gave me any real sense of the value of history was
Swinton's "World's History," which I received on my thirteenth
birthday. Though I believe it is no longer considered valid, yet I have
kept it ever since as one of my treasures. From it I learned how the
races of men spread from land to land and built great cities, how a
few great rulers, earthly Titans, put everything under their feet, and
with a decisive word opened the gates of happiness for millions and
closed them upon millions more; how different nations pioneered in
art and knowledge and broke ground for the mightier growths of
coming
 n6 THE STORY 'OF MY LIFE ages; how civilization
underwent, as it were, the holocaust of a degenerate age, and rose
again, like the Phoenix, among the nobler sons of the North; and
how by liberty, tolerance and education the great and the wise have
opened the way for the salvation of the whole world. In my college
reading I have become somewhat familiar with French and German
literature. The German puts strength before beauty, and truth before
convention, both in life and in literature. There is a vehement,
sledge-hammer vigour about everything that he does. When he
speaks, it is not to impress others, but because his heart would burst
if he did not find an outlet for the thoughts that burn in his soul.
Then, too, there is in German literature a fine reserve which I like;
but its chief glory is the recognition I find in it of the redeeming
potency of woman's self-sacrificing love. This thought pervades all
German literature and is mystically expressed in Goethe's "Faust": All
things transitory But as symbols are sent. Earth's insufficiency Here
grows to event. The indescribable Here it is done. The Woman Soul
leads us upward and on f Of all the French writers that I have read,
I like Moliere and Racine best. There are fine things in Balzac and
passages in Merimee which strike one like a keen blast of sea air.
Alfred de Musset is impossible ! I admire Victor Hugo — I appreciate
his genius, his brilliancy, his romanticism ; though he is not one of
my literary passions. But Hugo and
 THE STORY OF MY LIFE 117 Goethe and Schiller and all
great poets of all great nations are interpreters of eternal things, and
my spirit reverently follows them into the regions where Beauty and
Truth and Goodness are one. I am afraid I have written too much
about my book-friends, and yet I have mentioned only the authors I
love most; and from this fact one might easily suppose that my circle
of friends was very limited and undemocratic, which would be a very
wrong impression. I like many writers for many reasons — Carlyle
for his ruggedness and scorn of shams ; Wordsworth, who teaches
the oneness of man and nature ; I find an exquisite pleasure in the
oddities and surprises of Hood, in Herrick's quaintness and the
palpable scent of lily and rose in his verses; I like Whittier for his
enthusiasms and moral rectitude. I knew him, and the gentle
remembrance of our friendship doubles the pleasure I have in
reading his poems. I love Mark Twain — who does not? The gods,
too, loved him and put into his heart all manner of wisdom; then,
fearing lest he should become a pessimist, they spanned his mind
with a rainbow of love and faith. I like Scott for his freshness, dash
and large honesty. I love all writers whose minds, like Lowell's,
bubble up in the sunshine of optimism — fountains of joy and good
will, with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing
spray of sympathy and pity. In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I
am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from
the sweet, gracious discourse of my bookfriends. They talk to me
without embarrassment 01
 1 18 THE STORY OF MY LIFE awkwardness. The things I
have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously
little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly
charities."
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