ABSTRACT
Synopsis The account that Reid gives of moral liberty is central to his conception of the rational and moral principles of action. He is a libertarian whose theory of liberty is based on a notion of agency. The agent is an efficient cause who exerts an original power of the mind in action. This power is the power to determine whether or not one performs the action. It is not merely the power to do what one wills, it is the power to determine what one wills. The reason liberty is more than the power to do what one wills, though it may imply such power, is that what we will, our volitions, must also be in our power for us to have liberty. We act by means of the will, and a person who lacks the power over the means, lacks power over the end. The most fundamental assumption of this doctrine of moral liberty is that agents are causes. The primary notion of causality, according to Reid, is that of efficient causality exercised by a being having the power and will to produce the effect. A consequence of this conception of causality is the rejection of determinism. Human actions are not caused by antecedent circumstances, they are caused by the agent possessing the power to bring about the effect.
