attack the position of their opponents and the evidence which they adduce to show that the freedom of the will is no necessary Determinist ethics. postulate for moral action. For thorough-going determinism of the older type the dependence of morality upon freedom did not of necessity prove an obstacle. Hedonistic psychology denied the libertarian hypothesis, but it denied also the absoluteness and intuitive character of moral obligation, and attached no validity to the ordinary interpretation of terms like “ought” and duty. Modern determinists differ from the earlier advocates of their theory in their endeavour to exhibit at least the compatibility of morality with the absence of freedom, if not the enhancement of moral values which, according to some of its advocates, follows upon the acceptance of the deterministic account of conduct.
If a coherent theory capable of giving an explanation of the ordinary facts of morality and not involving too violent a breach Punishment. with the meaning of moral terms in their accepted usage were all that need be required of determinists in order to reconcile the defenders of the moral consciousness to the loss of their belief in the will's freedom, it would follow without question that the determinists have proved their case. Neither the deterrent nor the reformatory theories of punishment (q.v.) necessarily depend upon or carry with them a belief in the freedom of the will. On the contrary, a belief that conduct necessarily results upon the presence of certain motives, and that upon the application of certain incentives, whether of pain or pleasure, upon the presence of certain stimuli whether in the shape of rewards or punishments, actions of a certain character will necessarily ensue, would seem to vindicate the rationality of ordinary penal legislation, if its aim be deterrent or reformatory, to a far greater extent than is possible upon the libertarian hypothesis. Humanitarian moralists, who hesitate to believe in the retributive theory of punishment because, as they think, its aim is not the criminal's future well-being but merely the vindication through pain of an outrage upon the moral law which the criminal need never have committed, might welcome a theory which urges that the sole aim of punishment should be the exercise of an influence determining the criminal's future conduct for his own or the social good.
Moreover, the belief that the justice of punishment depends upon the responsibility of the criminal for his past offences and the admission of the moral consciousness that his previous wrong-doing was freely chosen carries with it, so it is argued, consequences which the libertarian moralist might be willing to accept with reluctance. For whatever may have been the character of the individual in the past, it is possible upon the libertarian view that by the exercise of his freedom he has brought about in himself a complete change of character: he may be now the exact opposite in character of what he was then. Upon what grounds, therefore, shall we discriminate between the justice of punishing him for what he was at a previous period in his life and the injustice of forgiving him because of what he is in the present? While If the deterrent and reformatory theories alone provide a rational end for punishment to aim at then the libertarian hypothesis pushed to its extreme conclusion must make all punishments equally useless. For no punishments can prevent the individual from becoming a person of whatsoever character he chooses or from committing acts of whatsoever moral quality he determines to prefer. A similar line of argument would lead to the conclusion that the conception of the state as an educating, controlling and civilizing agency involves the belief that individual citizens can be influenced and directed by motives which have their origin in external suggestion, i.e. that the determinist theory alone provides a rational basis for state activity of whatever kind.
It might, however, be thought that whatever be the compatibility of theories of punishment or of the activity of the state as a Remorse. moralizing agency with determinism, to reconcile the denial of freedom with a belief in the reality of remorse or penitence will be plainly impossible. Nevertheless there is no tendency on the part of modern determinists to evade the difficulty. They argue with considerable cogency that determinism is very far from affording any ground for believing in the impotence of will. The belief that our actions have been determined in the past carries with it no argument that they will be of a like character in the future. Though in the future as in the past they must be equally determined, yet the forces that will determine their character in the future may be as yet unanalysed and unapparent. No man can exhaust by introspective analysis the hidden elements in his personality. The existence of feelings of remorse and penitence testify to the presence in the individual of motives to good conduct which, if acted upon and allowed full scope and development, may produce a complete change of character. Determinism is not necessarily the logic of despair. Moreover, in a certain sense the very feelings of remorse and penitence which are the chief weapons in the libertarians' armoury testify to the truth of the determinist's' contention. For they are the natural and logical consequence of the acts which the penitent deplores. Such feelings follow the committal of acts of a certain character in a consciousness sufficiently moralized as inevitably as pain in the natural world follows upon the violation of one of nature's laws. And they would lose a great part of their significance if they did not testify to the continued existence in a man's personality of motives and tendencies likely to influence his conduct in the future as they have already influenced it in the past. Nor is it possible to give any rational explanation of the idea of responsibility itself upon indeterminist assumptions. For to hold a person to be a responsible agent is to believe that he possesses a certain fixity and stability of character. Freedom in the sense of complete liberty of choice would seem to lead to the conclusion that free agents are irresponsible, unaccountable. The truth seems to be that throughout the history of the controversy the chief arguments for either side have been provided by the extreme and exaggerated statements to which their opponents have been driven in the presentation of their case. So long as libertarians contend that what alone possesses moral value is unmotived choice, acts of will of which no explanation can be given save the arbitrary hat of individual selves at the moment of decision, it is not difficult for determinists to exhibit the absurdities to which their arguments lead. It can easily be shown that men do as a matter of fact attach moral adjectives to environment, temperamental tendencies, natural endowments, instinctive desires, in a word to all or most of those forces moulding character, from which, according to libertarians, the individual's freedom of choice should be clearly distinguished and separated, and to which it can be and is frequently opposed. While it is not easy to avoid the suspicion that a choice of which nothing can be predicated, which is guided by no motive, influenced by no desire, which is due neither to the natural display of character nor to the influence of environment, is either merely fortuitous or the product of a philosophical theory.
But, as has been already suggested, the libertarian argument by no means necessarily leads to such extreme conclusions. The libertarian is not pledged to the belief that acts which alone exhibit real freedom are isolated acts which depend upon a complete change of character, a change which is in no sense continuous with, and is in no kind of relation to, the series of successive changes which make up an individual's mental and moral history. It is true that a consistent advocate of indeterminism must deny that the will is determined by motives, and must admit that no reason can finally be given for the individual's choice beyond the act of choice itself. For to give a reason for choosing (where “reason” is not merely equivalent to the determinists “cause” or “necessary antecedent”) would simply be to find the explanation of the individual's choice in some previous decision. Moral conduct is conduct which follows upon the choice of ends, and to give a reason for the choice of an end in any particular instance is either to explain the nature of the end chosen and thus to describe the choice (a process which can in no sense show that the act of choice was itself necessitated), or it is to find the ground of the particular decision in its relation to an end already chosen. But whatever be the nature of the end chosen the libertarian is not concerned to deny that it must possess a fixed determinate character. If duty be chosen as opposed to pleasure the opposition between duty and pleasure is a necessary one. The recognition of such a necessary opposition is involved in the determinate act of choice. But the choice itself is neither necessary nor determined. The belief that libertarianism denies the binding force of habit or the gradual development of unchecked tendencies in character depends upon a similar misconception. The continuity of a man's life and purposes would be equally apparent whether he habitually performed the same acts and made the same decisions in virtue of his freedom of choice or as the product of necessary forces moulding his character in accordance with fixed laws. Just as the phenomena of sudden conversion, complete revolutions of character occurring to outward appearance in a momentary space of time, are no valid argument against determinism—they may be due to the sudden emergence of elements in life and character long concealed—so what locks like the orderly and necessary development of a character growing and exhibiting its activity in accordance with fixed laws may in reality be due to innumerable secret struggles and momentous decisions, acts of choice of which only the results are outwardly apparent. The ends which at any moment the individual is free to choose or reject possess a determinate character; their existence or non-existence as possibilities Is also to a very large extent determined for him. No man can choose to become whatsoever he will, for the ends which he can accomplish are restricted in number as well as definite in quality. But the real strength of the libertarian position is to be found in the fact that consciousness is capable of distinguishing ends at all. Whenever, for example, there is an admission on the part of any individual that in any previous act he made the attainment of pleasure his end rather than the performance of duty, there is also a tacit admission that he might have acted otherwise. And the existence of penitence and remorse is not merely a sign of the emergence in consciousness of elements in character nobler than and opposed to those tendencies which once held sway. They are feelings which are incapable of coming into being at all save when coupled with the judgment, “I ought to have acted otherwise because I possessed the power.” The same argument holds good concerning our feelings with regard to the justice or injustice of punishing a criminal if we believe that his will was determined. It may be politic or expedient to inflict pain upon a criminal in order either to effect an alteration in his character or to deter him or others from future performance of
