There
may be no more enduring philosophic problem than that of human free
will. We seem to think that we are ultimately morally responsible
for what we do, and yet by means of excuse we can find reasons where
one might not be responsible. Some of those reasons seem to be so
strong that they are either taken as Gospel or appear to be
metaphysical facts of the universe.
It
might be a fools errand to try to fix a date to
the beginning
of the free will debate, but surely the threads
of the debate can
be found in ancient texts, both religious and philosophic. For
instance, Plato held that the will of a person comes from the
rational portion of the three-part soul, and is properly used to keep
base desires in check.2
Essentially, in this view, as long as reason governed desires, a
person was acting freely.
