From Free Life No 20, August, 1994

As well as Sean Gabb on free will, see also Antony Flew's reply to this article, plus those of Ben Best, Danny Frederick, and Nicholas Dykes.

In "The Case for Determinism" (Free Life No. 17, January 1993) Sean Gabb asserts that "the will is unfree", a view robustly contested in the next issue (No. 18, May 1993) by Anthony Flew and Kevin McFarlane. However, a number of points were not covered in their replies.

The first is that life for determinists must be very boring. Since the outcome of every race, every game, every investment, every election, every journey, every courtship, every everything, is going to be exactly what it is going to be and nobody can turn it back or change one word of it, the determined life must be like listening to that esteemed winner of the Eurovision Song Contest Che sera, sera over and over again: schmaltz without end.

The life of a determinist must also be very lonely. Programmed from day one, never able to know anything other than what he knows, nor able to confirm its truth by stepping outside the confines of necessity, he is foredoomed from birth to tunnel vision. Locked in his predestined treadmill, he slogs on at his petty pace from day to day, knowing nothing outside the blinkered world which his fate has set for him, able to speak only to himself, for himself, by himself; never able to rejoice in the abstract: in humanity, in life, in the universe, in a future.

The daily existence of a determinist must be, besides, enormously frustrating. He cannot think for himself, he cannot choose for himself. His meals are prescribed by some great dietician in the sky. Every volume he reads is a set book on a predetermined curriculum. Every deck he plays with is stacked. Even his sexual partners are selected by a metaphysical dating agency which never so much as consults him. As to his life's work, this is merely a pre-ordained litany of tasks organised without his knowledge or consent and for which he can neither expect, nor claim, any credit.

It must be depressing beyond words never to know pride or self-esteem, never to aspire, never to take pleasure in congratulation from others, never to be able to accept a reward as deserved or earned. And all this is as it has to be, for everything the determinist thinks, everything he says, everything he writes, everything he does, is all due to forces outside his control. He is a being devoid of merit. He is the ultimate nebbish, a 24-caratless zero, un vrai ˆtre n‚ant. Not for him hubris or hoel: he is Nemo.

It must make him very sad too, that he can never be a libertarian. Libertarianism makes everyone sovereign of his or her own life. But the determinist spends his days blindly obeying the diktats of an historical process, or the ukases of some invisible materialist czar, or the more tawdry fiat of whatever banal environment he happens to have been born into. Not for him the soaring sense of self-majesty which comes from independence. The determinist is the slave of his genes, or his subconscious, or his class, or his culture; a helpless schmoo totally at the mercy of whatever slings and arrows an unknowable fortune decides to throw at him.

It must be terrifying to be held immobile in the grip of such merciless inevitability. What hideous Kismet awaits him in the next hour, the next day, or around the next corner? Because, for the determinist, every disaster is unavoidable, every disease incurable, every enemy invincible. He is driven inexorably through life, condemned from parturition to plod wearily or fearfully in immutable bondage towards an undistinguished destiny, unable even to procrastinate.

For us deluded twits stuck with free will, by contrast, life is full of fascination, zest and excitement. We surmise, we estimate, we guess, we bet, we plan, but since we never know precisely what is going to happen, we live in constant exhilaration, balanced between the trepidation of risk and the exultation of our judgement proving right. Even the weather forecast speaks to us nightly of the uncertainties of the morrow. We go to sleep thrilled with anticipation of another livelong day dominated by "If". We rejoice in the endless doors reason throws open before us. We tease ourselves with the infinity of life's choices. And, in every minute of the vivid pageant of our existence, each one of us glories in the exquisite awareness of being Invictus:

I am the Master of my Fate:

I am the Captain of my Soul.

If I didn't know determinism to be such rank absurdity, I might even feel sorry for determinists! "... solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Dear old Hobbes knew what he was on about.

The truth is, of course - as every Objectivist has known since the early 1960s (and no doubt a host of others before and since) - that all theories of determinism suffer from an insuperable contradiction at their root which, like a loose rod at the top of a flight of stairs, sends every determinist tumbling ignominiously butt over tip before he can even begin his lordly descent from on high. For, according to his own theory, whatever he thinks, writes, or says must itself be determined. Thus, like Dante entering Hell, he abandons, with his first premise, any hope of universality.

I say "he", "him", "his" advisedly. No-one who has chosen to bear children and to rear them could possibly deny free will. Watching new human beings taking charge of their lives is too true a joy ever to be sullied by such a profoundly silly doctrine as determinism.