At least once a week I get some version of the following email from a student:
“Dear Dr. Simmons,
I am so sorry to bother you but I wanted to see if it would be ok if I came to class an hour late because I have to go to the airport to pick up a friend.
Thanks so much”
The specifics change in each case - maybe they are asking to miss a class because of a sorority function or to turn in an assignment on a different date than when it is due because of an interview for which they are preparing, etc. etc. etc.
I completely acknowledge that in almost every such email or conversation, the student genuinely takes themselves to be showing respect to me by trying to give me a head’s up. Well, sometimes even the best of intentions mask some of the most problematic existential realities.
And, yes, I readily admit that this is one of those times when all of you non-philosophers in the room will roll your eyes in disdain for the way that philosophers make mountains out of mole-hills.
Well, even if we admit that mountains are mountains and mole-hills are mole-hills, our perspective changes things and can make the very small seem very big, and the very big seem insignificant.
So, I beg the pardon of non-philosophers as we think today a bit about something that is so very deeply intertwined with our sense of self, our sense of social order, and our sense of moral evaluation: Free Will.
What does a student email show us about free will? Good question, let’s find out together. Before we dive in, if you have not yet subscribed, please consider doing so.
An Embarrassingly Brief Account of Free Will
What does it mean to have free will?
Well, I think that perhaps the most useful way of thinking about it is that free will exists in those situations where you are confronted with a genuine decision about how to move forward. I find it helpful to think about this in a retrospective frame: Free will is actual in those cases where you could have done otherwise than you did.
For example, I had free will if, when I got married, I could have decided not to. We do not have to be like all the other fish swimming in one direction. We can, as Fleetwood Mac would say, “go your own way.”
In the philosophical literature, free will stands opposed to determinism. So, if you action at a specific time was determined, such that you could not do otherwise than you did (or have no genuine choice about what to do), then you were/are not free (at least in relation to that situation).
Of course there are a wide range of more subtle and nuanced options that lie between these extremes of radical free will and absolute determinism, but for now, let’s just work with this dichotomy as a general framework.
I have been teaching for a long time and I have yet to meet an 18 year-old who thinks that strong determinism is true in their own lives. They are often very convinced of their own freedom and seek, in all sorts of ways, to prove that their agency is unrestrained.
In fact, my own son, who is almost 15, basically rejects determinism in all forms. The one possible exception is that he can put on the determinist had pretty quick when he thinks that his freedom is being robbed from him by his overbearing parents. At such moments, he is quick to declare such deterministic influence to be deeply unjust and blameworthy - a view he expresses with great volume and middle-school slang.
As a side-note, I am perplexed by the fact that helping my son not to make really bad decisions almost always turns me from “dad” into “bruh.” Hmmmmm.
Anyway, the point is that there are very smart folks fall on all sides of the free will/determinism debate and my aim here is not to offer some sort of argument that will satisfy the professionals. It turns out that, even when it comes to eating Snickers bars, professional philosophers are very hard to satisfy.
Instead, whatever the metaphysical case is regarding free will, I want to illuminate the ways that our practices often undermine the very free will we take to be so definitive of our existential condition.
Ok, let’s return to the student email.
Two phrases are key:
The first takes some form of: Do you mind? Is it ok if? I wanted to get your permission to?
The second takes some form of: I have to. I am required to.
Here is the basic thought:
When we seek permission from others for what we already take ourselves to have to do, we doubly erase the free will that should actually be lived into at such moments.
Let’s consider these two phrases in reverse order.
“I have to”
I had a student recently tell me she was just overwhelmed with a bunch of stuff and when I asked her why she gave me a litany of things that she “had to do.”
I listened to her and then simply said, “You don’t have to do any of that. You are choosing all of it.”
Her look of disdain for me in that moment suggested that she was not in the mood to be lectured about philosophical awareness, but, undeterred, I pushed on:
“Could you have chosen not to take the job that is now taking so much of your time?”
”Isn’t it possible that you could drop out of college right now and make all of the assignments for your courses disappear?”
”Couldn’t you just decide that my class is more important than the thing causing you to think you have to miss?”
I know that such comments can come across as dismissive of the actual stress being borne by the student, but here is the thing: Lots of our stress is self-chosen. We could do otherwise, but we choose not to because it is easier to tell ourselves that we actually don’t have any choice in the matter.
Simply put, we seek to minimize the awareness of our freedom by masking it in the guise of necessity.
Notice, then, that the very way that the student framed things suggests that she has no actual free will, but instead is just trying to keep up with the determinist requirements of her historical existence. But, unless we really face up to the fact that we do not have to be where we are, we will likely continue to think that someone/something else is preventing us from being where we want to go. We are “determined” to be here. I mean “I have to . . . “ right?
Sigh.
“Is it Ok?”
In addition to the fact that we often fail to own up to the contingency that facilitate true freedom, we seek out authorities who can give us permission to abdicate the existential throne of our own lived experience. When my students ask me if if is ok if they do this or that, they are really saying: “Please give me permission not to have to own up to my own decisions.”
I actually think that this is a deeply human, all too human, desire. We like to feel like we are free, but we don’t want to own up to the responsibilities that freedom imposes upon us.
When we ask permission to do what we take ourselves to “have to do,” we basically reposition the decision onto the person of whom we are asking permission. This makes sense because none of us probably really enjoy the weight of responsibility. It is much easier just to say “Hey, tell me what I should do here so that I don’t have to worry about it.”
When I was in high school, my dad understood this human need to avoid the responsibility of decision in hard cases. So, he would give me a quarter when I would go out with my friends (this was before cell-phones). He would then tell me that I was free to “blame him” when I didn’t have the courage to make my own decisions.
“Sorry folks, I would absolutely stay and do heroin with you, but my dumb dad told me I had to be home by 9. Curses!”
“OH, shoot, I would soooo love to go drunk cliff-diving at night, but my dad is making me get up early. Blergh.”
The point is that I was choosing not to participate in stupid or immoral behavior, but I was avoiding the consequences of that choice by being able to pawn it off onto my dad’s authority.
For what it is worth, I have a lot of respect for his awareness that it is tough as a teen-ager to navigate the pressure-cooker of peer scorn. He facilitated my freedom by protecting me from the hardest parts of being free. But, such protection can’t last forever.
Response-Ability
Another way of thinking about free will is that we really do have the ability to respond to a particular situation or set of options in different ways. In other words, we are response-able only if we have the ability to respond variously.
Yet, with responsibility comes the burden of potential blame if things go badly.
If only we can cast off this responsibility onto the shoulders of another, then we could have the fun without the cost. Or so we tell ourselves.
In fact, when we lean into authority (is it ok if?) and necessity (I have to), we doubly position obstacles in the way of our own freedom.
In the attempt to get my students to own up to the “good faith” required by freedom, I absolutely refuse to give them permission in ways that minimize the weight of their decision. Doing so would basically amount to stripping them of their moral freedom and their existential value.
Instead I tell them “Freedom is real, but so are the consequences.”
In other words, I tell them that I will not make their decision for them. I will not strip away their freedom. I will not determine their action. I will not allow them off the existential hook. They are implicated and so they must bear that weight.
As the rap group, Gang Starr, asks, “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?”
Of course I mind if you miss my class, but you have the freedom to miss it. But don’t be upset if your grade drops due to poor attendance.
Of course I care if you are consistently going to come in late. But, don’t be upset if your letter of recommendation letter from me is not as strong as it could have been.
We must make the most of what has been made of us. But that requires that we embrace the requirements of realizing that the things that we feel like we “have to do” as actually always chosen.
We can do otherwise.
I think it is personally dangerous to make culturally normative a framework by which it is common to think that free will is expressed by asking people to make your decisions for you.
Moreover, it is socially disastrous to allow people to become trained in this habit of being so passive about the relationship of freedom to consequences.
In very very small ways, I attempt to remind my students that “freedom is real, but so are the consequences.” So, sure, go ahead and miss class if you decide that picking your friend up from the airport is more important to you. But don’t be mad if your grade drops as a result. If you are more motivated by your grade than other considerations, then come to class and don’t get your friend. But don’t be surprised if your friend blames you for their inconvenience.
The point is that either way you go, consequences will follow. As Kierkegaard says, “marry or don’t marry - either way you will regret it.” His point is that good decisions are not consequence-free.
The really sexy thing about free will is that we are affected by the decisions we make. Moreover, and this is important, so are others! Free will is ultimately not just a technical idea used by philosophers to make things overly complicated. It is the backdrop against which our lives matter, our actions are significant, and our beliefs are formed.
Although it is deeply human to want to evade the freedom that constitutes our lives, the recent existentialists and the ancient stoics are both right that freedom is not something that we can ever escape. Even in asking “is it ok” to do what we “have to do,” we tacitly illustrate the fact that we freely decided to try to get someone else to make your choice for you.
So, maybe we can get just a little bit better at letting our words reflect our existential situation.
Writing Better Emails
I love it when I now get emails from my students that say something like this:
“Dear Dr. Simmons,
I will be missing class on Tuesday because I am picking my friend up at the airport and although I know that I don’t have to go get her, it is more important to me that I do so than it is that I be here for the lecture. Yes, freedom is real and so I am willing to accept the consequences of missing class, but being a friend is (at least in this specific case) more worthy of my finitude than being a student.
Not asking for permission, since ultimately it is not yours to give, but just wanted to let you know that this is what I am choosing to do.”
Yessssssssss! That gets it right. Let’s own up to the fact that even if lots of stuff in our lives is beyond our control, we are never absolutely stripped of our existential agency. We can choose otherwise. The question is whether we will not not.
But, don’t ask my permission, only you can decide.
If you are a paid subscriber, let me know those places in your life where you tend to try to avoid your freedom by throwing it onto the shoulders of others. Have you found any little ways to remind yourself that freedom is real, but so are the consequences?
To you all, thanks so much for walking a bit further with me down the trails of life. Please do consider subscribing.
Also, as always, I need your help to expand this philosophical community.
Oh man, this soooo good! As I navigate the seemingly unending requests by my 4 kiddos for permission to do a spectrum activities, I want them to understand and act on the gift and task of their own agency. The phrase, “freedom is real, but so are the consequences,” provides a concise response to help them understand this existential truth and worth! Thanks for the encouragement in the trenches of parenthood! 👍🏻😄
I was blessed to have a father thar raised me to make decisions and do so with the consequences in mind. He might share his thoughts before I decided, tho more in more in my teen years he would challenge me to ask specific questions of him, to learn how to seek wisdom and not simply relying on him to decide. I worked to be this type of parent to my kids. I'm inspired afresh today to be this type of friend, coworker and spiritual mentor. Thanks!