The Unsolvable Question of Free Will in Milton's Paradise Lost

This article examines the paradox at the heart of John Milton's account of Eve's fall in Paradise Lost . While Milton insists that Eve possessed the rational faculties and free will necessary to resist temptation, genuine freedom requires the possibility of error. This tension raises questions about moral responsibility and the limits of agency. Although Milton asks readers to accept the sufficiency of reason, philosophers and cognitive scientists challenge the notion of an entirely free will, emphasising social conditioning, emotion, memory and unconscious impulses. The article explores where responsibility begins and ends, questioning the boundary between excusable error and culpable moral failure.