The Idea of Freedom. Fate and Renewal

Abstract

Contemporary philosophy of freedom seems to ignore the great philosophical debate that has gone along with the history of the idea of freedom and its fundamental crisis in the late medieval voluntarism and in modern determinism, since Hobbes. Voluntarism and modern determinism on opposite sides converge in identifying the idea of freedom with free will. On the contrary, the great philosophical tradition (top of which the author considers Plotin, St. Thomas, Kant, and Fichte) places the basic meaning of freedom respectively in self-possession, self-motivation, autonomy. Without this basic meaning, it is impossible to save free will.