Concept

Libertarianism (metaphysics)

Overview

Metaphysical libertarianism is the philosophical view that free will exists, that it is incompatible with determinism, and therefore that determinism is false. In the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, libertarianism is one of the main positions related to the problems of free will and determinism. In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position which argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe. Libertarianism states that since agents have free will, determinism must be false.

One of the first clear formulations of libertarianism is found in John Duns Scotus. In a theological context, metaphysical libertarianism was notably defended by Jesuit authors like Luis de Molina and Francisco Suárez against the rather compatibilist Thomism of Domingo Báñez. Other important metaphysical libertarians in the early modern period were René Descartes, George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Reid.

Roderick Chisholm was a prominent defender of libertarianism in the 20th century and contemporary libertarians include Robert Kane, Geert Keil, Peter van Inwagen and Robert Nozick.

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

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Now, if no other determining principle can serve as a law for the will except that universal legislative form, such a will must be conceived as quite independent of the natural law of phenomena in their mutual relation, namely, the law of causality; such independence is called freedom in the strictest, that is, in the transcendental, sense; consequently, a will which can have its law in nothing but the mere…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
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The will, regarded as the faculty of desire, is (in this view) one of the many natural causes in the world, viz. that cause which acts in accordance with concepts. All that is represented as possible (or necessary) by means of a will is called practically possible (or necessary); as distinguished from the physical possibility or necessity of an effect, whose cause is not determined to causality by concepts (but in…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
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Philosophers must do more; they must first get reason's license for them; and to the professional philosophic mind the operation of procuring the license is usually a thing of much more pith and moment than any particular beliefs to which the license may give the rights of access. Suppose, for example, that a philosopher believes in what is called free-will. That a common man alongside of him should also share that…
William James, A Pluralistic Universe
States what Libertarianism is; the author is tied to Libertarianism in the knowledge graph.
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Philosophers who discussed Libertarianism (metaphysics)

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Free will

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