Literary analysis explores how Macbeth demonstrates compatibility between determinism and moral responsibility, suggesting implications for our understanding of human action.
Macbeth is not the ultimate source of his actions (the Three Witches are) and he could not have done otherwise (the witches would not allow it). Yet, he is guilty of his heinous crimes. This puzzling combination of intuitions can only be accommodated if human action is understood along the lines proposed by authors such as Harry Frankfurt. Thus, without ever bringing determinism into the discussion, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth provides an argument for compatibilism. This argument is relevantly similar to a thought experiment, but the conclusion is left for us to draw.
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Raimundo Henriques (2025) studied this question.
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