Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Responsibility and Character
- 2 Identification and Wholeheartedness
- 3 Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility
- 4 Unfreedom and Responsibility
- 5 Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility
- 6 Determinism and Freedom in Spinoza, Maimonides, and Aristotle: A Retrospective Study
- 7 Emotions, Responsibility, and Character
- Part II Responsibility and Culpability
- Index of Names
6 - Determinism and Freedom in Spinoza, Maimonides, and Aristotle: A Retrospective Study
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Responsibility and Character
- 2 Identification and Wholeheartedness
- 3 Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility
- 4 Unfreedom and Responsibility
- 5 Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility
- 6 Determinism and Freedom in Spinoza, Maimonides, and Aristotle: A Retrospective Study
- 7 Emotions, Responsibility, and Character
- Part II Responsibility and Culpability
- Index of Names
Summary
Determinism is the belief that things must be as they are. Three types of determinism are distinguishable: logical, theological, and causal. Logical determinism rests on the notion that a thing cannot be other than it is without somehow violating the universal rule that each thing must preserve its own identity. For a thing to depart from being as it is interpreted in one sense or another as a departure from its being what it is. Theological determinism is founded on the belief that God makes all things as they are. Causal determinism is the belief that things must be as they are because their causes make them so.
The three determinisms overlap not only because their advocacy may coexist in the same thinker, but because their terms of reference are often interpreted in one another's senses and their claims are often made dependent on one another's assertions. Thus God is treated as a cause or as a cause of causes in most varieties of theological determinism; in some, the work of causes or the fabric of causality is interpreted as an act of God. When the divine is assimilated to fate and fate to the underlying nature of things or character of reality, causal, theological, and logical determinism may coincide. Similarly, when efforts are made to analyze the necessity affirmed in any of the three versions of determinism, causality, via essentialism, can be made a matter of identity; and the metaphysical requirement of identity (that a thing be what it is) is readily interpreted as a requirement of logic.
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- Responsibility, Character, and the EmotionsNew Essays in Moral Psychology, pp. 107 - 164Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988
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