ABSTRACT
In dealing with the problem of freedom our context is a narrow one. We do not reckon with social and economic forces, groups of men, historic movements. Instead we focus attention on the individual. As we noted above, the problem of freedom has traditionally concerned the way in which action gets started in the individual. When we ask whether a man is free we are not thinking of his success or failure in carrying out a plan, but of his Very adoption of the plan, that is, of his act of choosing or willing to embark upon it. Is man’s choice free or is it determined by some play of external or internal forces ? This question has troubled men both in observing the actions of others and in observing the course of their own lives. Are we pulled on strings, or do we jump in response to some internal mechanism? Or is choice or will a genuine assertion of ourselves ?
