Tradition

Determinism

Overview

philosophical belief that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Determinism is discussed.

I may suppose, however, that the number of purely mechanical or hard determinists among you this evening is small. The determinism to whose seductions you are most exposed is what I have called soft determinism,--the determinism which allows considerations of good and bad to mingle with those of cause and effect in deciding what sort of a universe this may rationally be held to be. The dilemma of this determinism is…
William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
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Of course, the ends that are consonant with man's nature are determined by his nature, so that it may seem we have not really escaped the fatality of "determinism." This is, however, only seemingly so. Because, according to the teleological determinism of Christian theology the ends were fixed independently of the natures that were to fulfill them; just as, according to instrumental indeterminism events were caused…
Benedictus de Spinoza, The Philosophy of Spinoza
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once more by an "agent." The concept "Cause and Effect" is a dangerous one, so long as people believe in something that _causes,_ and a something that is _caused._ _(a)_ Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation. *** _(b)_ When it is understood that the "subject" is nothing that _acts,_ but only a thing of fancy, there is much that follows.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power
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172-175, geometrical representation of process of coming to a decision, 175-178, the fallacies to which it leads determinists and libertarians, 179-183; Real duration and prediction, 183-198: conditions of Paul's prediction of Peter's action (1) being Peter (2) knowing already his final act, 184-189, the three fallacies involved, 190-192, astronomical prediction depends on hypothetical acceleration of movements…
Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will
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It is plain that, if all causality in the world of sense were natural—and natural only—every event would be determined by another according to necessary laws, and that, consequently, phenomena, in so far as they determine the will, must necessitate every action as a natural effect from themselves; and thus all practical freedom would fall to the ground with the transcendental idea. For the latter presupposes that…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
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