The Funeral Man Reflections on Repetition, Choice, and Human Freedom

A Stanford scientist, after years of study and investigation, has recently determined that there is no such thing as free will. He is not the first nor will he be the last to make such a pronouncement. As Nietzsche says, the particular charm of free will as a philosophical doctrine is that it can be refuted – and one need not be a neurobiologist to do so. The simple laws of logic and intelligibility say that there cannot be an effect without a cause; something, in other words, cannot come to be without something else that has made such occurrence necessary. Our choices are no different. They are the product of motivations, just as the possible states of water (liquid, solid, gaseous) are the product of temperature. We do not choose which motivations are decisive for us, any more than water molecules choose the seasons or the temperature of the stove top. In other words, we may do what we will, but we cannot will what we will. And therefore, we are no freer than any other phenomena in nature's interminable chain of causation. To insist on free will is to insist on the absurdity of an effect without a cause. And yet, what is more absurd than the claim that we live our lives as inevitably and helplessly as water boils? We know, beyond any serious doubt, that nothing we choose to do is necessary; it is always merely possible. Civilizations, legal systems, every ethical system, and all of our self-esteem are all built upon this most elemental fact. They would not survive without it. The aim of this paper is to wrestle with this eternal paradox of free will three ways: (i) by surveying how various philosophers from Aristotle to Sartre have done the same; (ii) by considering the role of free will in psychoanalysis; and (iii) by examining how this aporia impacts patients in the clinical setting through a consideration of a specific case study.