Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy (review)

Abstract

Hume Studies Volume 32, Number 1, April 2006, pp. 187-191 Book Review James A. Harris. Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in EighteenthCentury British Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 264. ISBN 0199268606, cloth, $74. As the title of Harris's book indicates, it provides a survey of the debate about freedom of the will in British philosophy of the eighteenth century (interpreted as the period beginning with the appearance in 1690 of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and ending in 1828 with Dugald Stewart's The Philosophy ofthe Active and Moral Powers of Man). The book contains nine chapters, together with a Postscript which briefly discusses the direction taken by the debate in the later part of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. While the chapters on Locke, Hume and Reid might be considered of particular interest , Harris succeeds admirably in bringing to light the distinctive contributions of other philosophers of the period, including lesser known figures like William King, David Hartley and Abraham Tucker. Harris's discussion is marked throughout by the high degree of scholarship displayed in his mastery of the material and the clarity with which the philosophical issues are expounded and discussed. His book succeeds not only in encouraging a greater degree of familiarity with a historical debate many of whose proponents are unduly neglected, but also in setting this debate in context and making clear its relevance to more recent treatments of the free will problem. Volume 32, Number 1, April 2006 188 Book Review It is possible to distinguish a number of philosophical threads which run throughout Harris's discussion of the philosophers with whom he is concerned. The following are perhaps the most significant: 1) The focus of the disagreement between the libertarian and the necessitarian . 2) The libertarian view that we are conscious of free will as a matter of fact. 3) The distinction between moral and physical necessity. 4) The relevance of the notion of free will to theological issues. We may appreciate something of the breadth and interest of Harris's discussion by seeing how these various themes are reflected in the views of philosophers engaged in the historical debate about free will. So far as 1) is concerned, as Harris makes clear in his Introduction, what is essentially at issue between the libertarian and the necessitarian is not the question of whether or not motives influence the will but, rather, whether they do so in such a way as to eliminate freedom of choice (10). For a necessitarian like Henry Home, Lord Kames, the only alternative to the necessitation of action by motives is action upon which motives have no influence at all. For a libertarian like James Beattie, however, the mind possesses a self-determining power which gives proof of the falsity of necessitarianism. An alternative approach is provided by Reid, who argues that motives stand in the same sort of relation to actions as advice, rather than providing the causes of actions. In the case of compatibilism (as represented, for example, by Hobbes), while experience reveals the necessitation of choice by motive, this is no threat to freedom since liberty is simply a matter of being able to act in accordance with one's choices rather than being free in respect of the choices themselves. 2) is a theme which provides Harris with another useful way of distinguishing the positions ofthe different philosophers to whom he refers. Thus, Harris suggests that Locke's view of freedom as consisting in our ability to weigh desires against each other reflects his concern with the experience of freedom rather than with the nature of the idea itself. Samuel Clarke—whose debate with Antony Collins is described by Harris as setting the terms for the free will debate for the rest of the eighteenth century—claims that our experience of the power of self-motion provides us with evidence for the reality of free will. For Kames, while the immediate efficient cause of action is the will as determined by the strongest motive, we nevertheless have a feeling of liberty which reflects the fact that in weighing motives we may...