ABSTRACT
The main concern of this chapter and the next is the nature of this relationship. Apart from some existentialists, who notoriously held that human freedom is essentially irrational, everyone agrees that agents who act of their own free will can also act for a reason. And there is a long philosophical tradition which granted an even stronger connection between freedom and reasons. According to that tradition, acting for good reasons is necessarily conducive to human freedom. Descartes, for instance, says at one point that:
In order to be free, there is no need for me to be inclined in both ways; on the contrary, the more I incline in one direction-either because I
clearly understand that reasons of truth and goodness point that way, or because of a divinely produced disposition of my inmost thoughtsthe freer is my choice. Neither divine grace nor natural knowledge ever diminished my freedom; on the contrary, they increase and strengthen it. But the indifference I feel when there is no reason pushing me in one direction rather than another is the lowest grade of freedom; it is evidence not of my perfection of freedom, but rather of a defect in knowledge or a kind of negation. For if I always saw clearly what was true and good, I should never have to deliberate about the right judgment or choice; in that case, although I should be wholly free, it would be impossible for me ever to be in a state of indifference. (Descartes 1641: 57-58)
And Locke argues in a rather similar spirit:
If to break lose from the conduct of Reason, and to want that restraint of Examination and Judgment, which keeps us from chusing or doing the worse, be Liberty, mad Men and Fools are the only Freemen: But yet, I think, no Body would chuse to be mad for the sake of such Liberty, but he that is mad already. (Locke 1689: II, xxi, 50)
Most of early rationalists and empiricists thought that acting for good reasons must be compatible with, and even conducive to, free action. Descartes and Locke (and many other early modern philosophers) claimed-in agreement with an even older tradition-that our deliberative capacity to perceive (good) reasons cannot in any way constrain our freedom of will. And sometimes they seem to claim even more: that our freedom is worthy for us exactly because we can recognize and act upon good reasons. I shall call this thesis-somewhat anachronistically as far as Descartes or Locke are concerned-the autonomy thesis. According to the autonomy thesis, free will is valuable only because it guarantees that agents can act for (good) reasons.
