Topic
19 readings
Freedom and responsibility
Topic · 19 readings
What can we choose, and what are we answerable for?
A place to begin
Guided course · Module 11 · Lesson 65
Freedom in a situation one did not choose
Beauvoir’s account of situated freedom leads to questions about oppression and support. How can one person open another’s possibilities without directing their life?
Guided course · Module 13 · Lesson 83
Can responsibility survive causal explanation?
Hume, van Inwagen and Fischer disagree about the control that responsibility requires. The lesson separates three ideas their arguments rely on: causal determination, alternative possibilities and responsiveness to reasons.
All readings
19 readings · Title A–Z
Guided course · Module 10 · Lesson 60
Becoming an individual: two challenges to inherited values
Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes de Silentio confronts a faith he cannot explain away, and Nietzsche asks how moral judgments acquired their authority. The lesson preserves their differences over what commitment demands.
Guided course · Module 10 · Lesson 56
Can a moral rule bind everyone?
Kant tests a false promise by universalizing its maxim, and describes autonomy as giving oneself a law. The lesson considers objections to treating universalization as a general decision procedure.
Guided course · Module 10 · Lesson 57
Can freedom have a history?
Hegel argues that freedom needs recognition and shared institutions, and that history advances toward freedom. The lesson examines those arguments and confronts the exclusions in his account of history.
Guided course · Module 13 · Lesson 83
Can responsibility survive causal explanation?
Hume, van Inwagen and Fischer disagree about the control that responsibility requires. The lesson separates three ideas their arguments rely on: causal determination, alternative possibilities and responsiveness to reasons.
Guided course · Module 8 · Lesson 42
Destiny, character and interpretation in Yoruba thought
A recorded Ifá poem and Segun Gbadegesin’s questions about destiny raise a problem about responsibility. How can choice, effort and character matter without making success or misfortune a measure of moral worth?
Guided course · Module 11 · Lesson 65
Freedom in a situation one did not choose
Beauvoir’s account of situated freedom leads to questions about oppression and support. How can one person open another’s possibilities without directing their life?
Guided course · Module 12 · Lesson 70
Freedom, caste and the terms of reform
Ambedkar challenges caste, and Gandhi defends varna as a set of inherited duties. Can equal praise for those duties answer Ambedkar’s demand for freedom?
Guided course · Module 9 · Lesson 53
Freedom, inequality and a common will
Rousseau traces how inequality grows and argues that citizens could remain free as joint authors of the law. A majority’s victory, the lesson warns, is not the same as the general will.
Guided course · Module 10 · Lesson 59
How much can well-being and liberty justify?
Mill argues both for promoting well-being and for protecting liberty. How do the two arguments connect, and what do aggregation, harm and dissent require beyond a majority’s satisfaction?
Guided course · Module 8 · Lesson 45
Human learning and the struggle over authority
Erasmus and Luther disagree about textual authority, human choice and grace. What can a command in scripture establish about the ability to obey it?
Guided course · Module 8 · Lesson 44
Law, relationship and collective responsibility
The Onondaga Nation’s public account describes the duties of representatives, and Kahente Horn-Miller distinguishes consent from agreement. What makes deliberation answerable to the people it serves?
Guided course · Module 9 · Lesson 49
One nature or many substances?
Spinoza argues for one substance, God or Nature, and Leibniz for many monads. For Spinoza, understanding might increase freedom within a necessary order.
Guided course · Module 5 · Lesson 25
Pleasure, virtue and what is up to us
Epicurus teaches how to choose among pleasures; Epictetus separates what is up to us, our judgments, from results that are not. Similar practical advice, the lesson shows, can rest on different views of what makes a life good.
Guided course · Module 6 · Lesson 28
Time, will and the inward turn
Augustine examines a divided will and asks where the time we measure could be. Habit, memory, attention and expectation shape his answers; how far can an inward inquiry explain what it finds?
Guided course · Module 10 · Lesson 58
What does a social system make of a person?
Marx’s accounts of alienation, commodity fetishism and ideology each describe social relations of work and exchange. The lesson distinguishes the three and separates a structural relation from a personal attitude.
Heidegger: being, a shared world and its limits · Lesson 6 of 12
What would it mean to own a life?
For Heidegger, taking over a life involves existential guilt, the call of conscience and resoluteness. The lesson separates owning a commitment from justifying it, and keeps room for dependence, assistance and correction.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 5 of 8
Who acts, and who answers for it?
If agent and action lack intrinsic nature, can anyone answer for what they do? The lesson follows chapter 17 on action and its results and weighs the charge that Madhyamaka is a form of nihilism.
Guided course · Module 9 · Lesson 54
Who was left outside the language of rights?
Wollstonecraft and Cugoano challenge the exclusion of women and of enslaved people from equal liberty. What do their arguments demand of education, ownership and public institutions?
Guided course · Module 9 · Lesson 52
Why should anyone obey a government?
Hobbes and Locke disagree about the grounds and limits of political authority. A shared case tests their accounts of protection, consent, rights and resistance.
Study this in sequence
Heidegger: being, a shared world and its limits
Begin with familiar encounters and follow Heidegger’s questions about being, a finite life, truth, art, dwelling and technology. Examine what the arguments explain, what they leave open and how they fare under political and ethical criticism.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths
Follow Nāgārjuna’s arguments that nothing has an intrinsic nature of its own, from causes and motion to persons, the two truths and the charge that the argument undermines itself. Ask what the arguments leave standing: can things exist, change and matter without such a nature?