ABSTRACT
The seminal discussion of this paradox appeared in the papers cited below by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel.
There are various ways in which our characters and actions are constrained. Whether people have admirable or vicious characters depends a lot on their genetic inheritance; some people are born with friendly and helpful temperaments, others with malicious and selfish ones. Their inclinations and social values depend heavily on their upbringing. People brought up in a criminal sub-culture are likely to see the world differently from those brought up in more auspicious surroundings, and to behave accordingly, yet they did not choose to be born into those circumstances. The situation in which people find themselves determines whether they have opportunities to behave heroically or commit great evils: many of those living in Nazi Germany had opportunities to do good or ill which would not have been available to them elsewhere. Our choices are constrained by causal factors not under our control, and the outcome of our actions is not always predictable. As Williams says, ‘anything that is the product of the will is surrounded and held up and partly formed by things that are not’.
