Why We Are Authors of Our Own Lives – And Sometimes Deserve to Suffer

Slicing through the free will debate

The Fate of the ancients is nothing other than the conscious certainty that all events are bound firmly together by the chain of causality and thus occur with strict necessity, so that the future is already totally fixed and precisely determined, and can no more be altered than the past can.

Schopenhauer

People care about free will for two key reasons: accountability and agency.

If we’re free, then we can be authors of our lives. Every act becomes a candidate for praise and blame. Depending on who we are and what we do, we deserve reward or punishment.

If we’re unfree, the story of our life is driven by external forces. We’re puppets dangling by threads. When we’re good, we don’t deserve praise. When we’re bad, we don’t deserve punishment. No one deserves anything. 

Now, we may exhibit one kind of freedom, but not another. For example, young children and animals may be agents, but, because of their lack of moral development, are not accountable for their actions.

So much of the modern philosophical debate consists in rehashing whether or not the ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom. We should slice through this academic debate entirely. Even in a determined world, we can be accountable agents. But before I show this, I should motivate the idea that we’re unfree – picture the knot before cutting it.

In a determined universe, events must unfold the way they do. Given the state of things and the laws of nature, every feeling, thought, and decision is determined to pass. If Hercules was determined to attack his own family, then that was written into the universe before he ever came to be.

In such a world, many philosophers have said that we are not responsible for our actions. When Hera causes Hercules to go mad and mistake his family for his enemies, he’s not responsible for what he does. His decisions are caused by someone else. But in a determined universe, we are all pulled along by the Gods. Our actions are the result of our character – and our character is the result of events that happened before we ever existed. Because of this we do not write our own story and cannot be accountable for what we do.

If we’re unfree, the very idea of responsibility becomes a tool. We praise people because it contributes to good behavior and blame them only when it leads to better outcomes. But no one really deserves praise or blame. Think of humans like machines – we don’t blame a malfunctioning computer. We fix it.

But this move is a mistake. Nietzsche says whether a will is free or unfree doesn’t matter, what matters is whether it is strong or weak. That’s not how I’d put it. But he slices through the debate correctly.

As soon as someone starts to deliberate about this kind of thing, weighing up the relative values of externals and making a decision on that basis, he’s not far off being one of those people who are unaware of his own role.

Epictetus, Discourses 1.12

Let’s consider agency first.

Someone is an agent when they cause their thoughts and choices, rather than let others think or choose for them. For the Stoics, we’re essentially decision-making creatures. The world presents us with impressions and then we decide how to respond to them. These decisions form our character. 

Someone lacks agency when they let outside forces dictate how to act. They shrink from the smallest obstacles. They bow to every social norm. More subtly, their thinking is full of other people’s thoughts, instead of their own. The nonagent reacts to the world and is driven by things outside of themselves.

In contrast, people with agency are authors of their own lives. They respond to the external world with a blend of imitation and singularity. When they make a decision, they follow through. After all, the decision emanates from them – and they do not change just because the scenery does.

Of course, one can always search for past causes of someone’s character. Whether it is in nature or nurture, if you’re a determinist, there are preceding reasons someone is the way they are. But this sort of thing does not matter here. We can recognize, even in a determined world, that some people possess more agency than others. Some people go through life awake, others sleepwalk through it. We all have periods of our life – of our days even – where we are more or less agentic.

You can see Marcus Aurelius urging himself to be more of an author of his life here:

No longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements.

Meditations 2.2

I think we can all relate to this impulse.

There’s a more mystical point around here. People with the greatest agency often mix extreme self-possession and a sense of inevitable destiny. They must do what they do. The “great men of destiny” discover just as much as they create.

This complication doesn’t remove the possibility of agency in a determined world, but it does, to some degree, challenge my conception of it. Perhaps the most agentic people submit their will to limits or find themselves aligned with the way things must be in a way most mortal puppets do not; whether that is the logos, Gods, or pure fate. 

A person is free if he lives as he wants, if he’s not subject to constraint, impediment, or compulsion, if his inclinations are unobstructed, if his desires are never disappointed, and his aversions effectively prevent the occurrence of things he wants to avoid.

Epictetus, Discourses 4.1

But what of accountability? Just because someone is an author of their life doesn’t mean we should hold them morally responsible for all of it.

It pays to consider two different kinds of cases.

Suppose you’re deciding whether to distribute benefits to someone of good or bad character. To make it concrete, consider your favorite historical hero and most hated villain. Who would you reward? I submit that when the case is equal in all other respects, it is better to reward the hero. The world is not made better by giving people of poor moral constitution more pleasure, fame, or wealth – even if everything else remains the same.

Suppose you’re deciding to grant a sadist more intense pleasure when they act with vice. Should you do it? No. There’s nothing good in pleasure felt because one is committing evil. 

These judgments are correct, even if no one is “free.” The distribution of good and evil should not be random. Not all pleasures are good (and not all pains are bad).

The explanation for these judgments about desert is that character determines what is good or bad for us. A good character brings about praise, a bad one, blame. For those of us who haven’t achieved the good, we’re accountable for making progress. All the metaphysical speculation about whether we are “ultimately free” is irrelevant.

This view also explains why, in Seneca’s Hercules Furens, Hercules does not deserve to be punished for killing his own family. In the myth, he is caused to go mad by the vengeful Hera. The fact that he did terrible things in the grips of insanity says nothing about his character. At that moment, he could not control his own decisions.

We only deserve praise or blame to the extent that our deeds reveal our character. Hercules’ tragedy says more about Hera than it does about Hercules.

So, we have a view of accountability in a determined world here. How we apply it is another matter. It’s not always easy to judge people’s character. The intensity of reward or punishment people deserve is an entirely different matter. How we hold people responsible is, to some degree, contingent on circumstance and culture. 

Nonetheless, we should resist the view that says no one deserves anything because we are unfree. To do that is to begin to erase morality altogether.

Seneca provides the start of an answer, one that applies equally well to praise:

Neither ought we to show an indiscriminate and general, nor yet an exclusive clemency; for to pardon everyone is as great cruelty as to pardon none; we must take a middle course; but as it is difficult to find the true mean, let us be careful, if we depart from it, to do so upon the side of humanity.

De Clementia 1.2