Abstract
The author examines how the normative account of freedom might be profitably supplemented by a theory of narrative configuration, according to which narrating action is concomitant with the formation of the identity of a character. A normative-narrative conception of freedom would require neither an abandonment of the basic intuitions underlying our practices of moral responsibility nor a commitment to the untenable metaphysics of the causa sui. Freedom, according to this account, is something of an achievement of narrative self-understanding. By recounting our own story, by owning up to our past, by claiming responsibility for past actions, we not only come to better understand ourselves, but in some sense we even reclaim the possibility of becoming—within the narrative of our lives—our own beginning.
To be the subject of a narrative that runs from one’s birth to one’s death is … to be accountable for the actions and experiences which compose a narratable life.
Alasdair MacIntyre
… to be really free we would have to act from a standpoint completely outside of ourselves, choosing everything about ourselves, including all our principles of choice—creating ourselves from nothing, so to speak.
Thomas Nagel
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Notes
- 1.
One well known example of systematically working out the consequence of this metaphysical sense of freedom is found in Kant, where the power of spontaneity, the genuine source of freedom or the principle for the creation of maxims is pushed back into the depths of the noumenal realm, so that our ultimate motives are inscrutable even to us.
- 2.
It probably goes without saying that my paper is primarily addressed to those interested in developing and refining compatibilist accounts of freedom. As such, it assumes, rather than argues for, the untenability of the particular form of libertarian metaphysics which Nietzsche addresses here.
- 3.
Manuel Vargas offers one of the most thorough and systematic treatment of “revisionist” approaches to free will. However, for all its merits, I find his occasional attempts to draw a sharp line between compatibilist and revisionist accounts unconvincing. See, for example, Vargas 2009, pp. 45–62; 2005, pp. 460–475.
- 4.
In other words, the pessimist’s objection is rooted in intuitions that we are indeed stuck with, but the pessimist’s metaphysical commitment fails to make good sense of those intuitions.
- 5.
Akeel Bilgrami has advanced a similar argument, which incorporates internalist and coherentist elements. See Bilgrami 2006, pp. 62–69.
- 6.
Had I more space, I might have said something here about how this normative dimension is unwittingly attested to throughout the history of philosophy—beginning with Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, where particular cases are first assessed in light of our normative reactions (i.e., in light of whether we would be likely to punish a person for behaving in such and such a way) and only afterword supplied with a metaphysical explanation (i.e., having its first principle within the agent, etc.).
- 7.
Ricoeur observes: “On the one hand, we identify ourselves by designating ourselves as the one who speaks, acts, remembers, imputes action to him- or herself, and so on; on the other hand, to identify oneself is to identify with heroes, emblematic characters, models, and teachers …” (Ricoeur 2007, p. 81).
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Graves, A.J. (2018). Narration and the Normative Theory of Freedom. In: Grgić, F., Pećnjak, D. (eds) Free Will & Action. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99295-2_5
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