Maimonides on Freedom of the Will and Moral Responsibility

Abstract

Until fairly recently, the usual view of Maimonides' position on freedom of the will was that he was a strict libertarian. This is because he appears to assert unequivocally in several places in this Commentary to the Mishna, most notably in Shemonah Perakim 8 and in Mishneh Torah (Teshuva 5), that human choice is undetermined. Alexander Altman and Shlomo Pines challenged this view in recent years by arguing, mostly on the basis of Guide of the Perplexed 2.48, that Maimonides maintained an esoteric view according to which human choice is determined by the natural order, which is itself determined by God.