Free Will vs. Determinism to Define His

Free will vs. Determinism To define his evolving notions of Original Sin in Christian theology, Augustine solidified in the doctrine Christianity a notion of the radical freedom of the human will -- what made human beings wonderfully distinct from animals, he argued, was the human ability to freely choose good or evil in action.

Augustine's approach to the "free choice of the will" assumed that "humans had a will" and a good will was "a will by which we seek to live a good and upright life and to attain unto perfect wisdom" which, of course, assumes that humans have the ability to choose the opposite. Jean Paul Sartre also argued for a radical freedom of the will, but argued that this freedom was often awful, rather than awe inspiring, good or bad.

Sartre's notion of the will's freedom was derived from atheism, of human being's aloneness in the world. Humans were forced to define their own morality rather than having it defined for them by nature or pure need. "The doctor would like to believe, he would like to hide out the stark reality: that he is alone, without gain, without a past, with an intelligence which is clouded, a body which is disintegrating.

For this reason, he has carefully built up, furnished, and peddled his nightmare compensation: he says he is making progress," bur really this is an illusion, says Sartre, in Nausea. (96-97) Whether one arbitrarily chooses the body or mind to focus on does not matter, one can chose what one likes, and both are equally amoral. In contrast to these advocates of freedom of the nature of willed impulses, however, Freud saw all human beings trapped in a determinist bond of the innate drives of sexuality.

These impulses could be creative, but ultimately were predetermined because of the structure of one's unconscious and environment, which was beyond one's control. For instance, the creation of the Oedipus myth holds power, not because of the individual freedom of the artist Sophocles but "only because it might have been our own, because the oracle laid upon us before our birth the very curse which rested upon him.

It may be that we were all destined to direct our first sexual impulses toward our mothers, and our first impulses of hatred and violence toward our fathers; our dreams convince us that we were. King Oedipus, who slew his father Laius and wedded his mother Jocasta, is nothing more or less than a wish fulfillment the fulfillment of the wish of our childhood.

But we, more fortunate than he, in so far as we have not become psychoneurotics, have since our childhood succeeded in withdrawing our sexual impulses from our mothers, and in forgetting our jealousy of our fathers.

We recoil from the person for whom this primitive wish of our childhood has been fulfilled with all the force of the repression which these wishes have undergone in our minds since childhood." (Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, quoted from Elpenor Greek World Website) We are all Oedipus, suggests Freud, trapped by the psyche like it was the fate believed in by the ancient Greeks. Because psychology focuses on the general, rather than specific free choices, the worldview even in non-Freudian analysis tends to be deterministic.

This is seen in Skinner's thesis of the ability of all organisms, from human to animal, to be conditioned -- denying the Christian stress upon the difference between animal and human. "Reinforcement is the key element in Skinner's S-R theory. A reinforcer is anything that strengthens the desired response. It could be verbal praise, a good grade or a feeling of increased accomplishment or satisfaction.

The theory also covers negative reinforcers -- any stimulus that results in the increased frequency of a response when it is withdrawn (different from adversive stimuli -- punishment -- which result in reduced responses)." (Operant Conditioning, 2004) Adam's free choice to take the apple from Eve in Augustine's Eden becomes a logical response, in Skinner's thought, to a positive stimulis. Marx's economic and materialist, as opposed to theological, philosophical, or psychological reading of history strikes a balance between freedom and determinism.

Economic conditions are predetermined, such as scarcity, and the conflict of the classes this produces causes the "devaluation of the human world" as it "grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things. Labor not only produces commodities; it also produces itself.