Classical Compatibilism and Incompatibilism 69On Reid, see:
Rowe, William. 1991. Thomas Reid on Freedom and Morality. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press.
Yaffe, Gideon. 2004. Manifest Activity: Thomas Reid’s Theory of Action. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
On the free will debate in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, see:
Harris, James A. 2008. Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-
Century British Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Notes
1 The preceding grouping of incompatibilists is not altogether satisfying since there is a
sharp divide between those incompatibilists who defended a libertarian theory of free
will and those who instead embraced a hard determinist thesis. Lucretius, Scotus,
Descartes, Berkeley, Reid, Kant, and James were all libertarians, and so were Sartre,
C.A. Campbell, C.D. Broad, Richard Taylor, and Roderick Chisholm. Spinoza,
Holbach, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche were hard determinists, as was Paul Edwards.
Some classify Kant as a compatibilist (e.g., Wood, 1984) because he held that free
will is compatible with empirical determinism.
2 The notion of “doing as one wants” has to be understood so that this classical compat-
ibilist characterization of freedom can be taken as even plausible. To explain, suppose
that what Alfredo now really most wants to do is walk on the beach in Monte Carlo,
although he currently finds himself in upstate New York. If, for instance, a genie gave
him a chance to do anything at this moment, he’d say, “Genie, make it the case that I
am now walking on the beach in Monte Carlo!” But Alfredo is not even near Monte
Carlo. Instead he finds himself in upstate New York, happily strolling along a quiet
wooded trail. Surely he can still be acting freely in strolling, even if, in a certain
respect, he is not doing what he would most want. Does this mean that the classical
compatibilist account is a complete non- starter? No. Surely, there is a sense of doing
what one wants according to which Alfredo is now doing what he wants in strolling
down a trail, even though, in some other sense, he’d rather be walking in the sand in
Monte Carlo.
3 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, Chap. 21: 108.
4 Readers will recall our earlier discussion of the disagreement among contemporary
philosophers as regards the relevance of free will as distinct from free action (see
Section 1.2).
5 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Chapter, xxi, section 14.
6 Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, Chap. 21: 108.
7 This tension between forsaking the concept of free will altogether, and preserving it but
restricting the relevant freedom to a modification of action, is mirrored in later advoc-
ates of classical compatibilism. A.J. Ayer (1954), for instance, in a seminal defense of
classical compatibilism, adopts Hobbes’s approach, embracing the expression “freedom
of will” and simply characterizing the relevant freedom as a modification of action.
Moritz Schlick (1939), on the other hand, appears to be in agreement with Locke.
Schlick maintains that the very notion of free will should be abandoned altogether.