“Free will” is to be defined in general as international
action uninhibited, or alternatively as the power so to
act. The idea of will adds nothing to the idea of action,
so long as action is taken in its full and personal sense;
for personal action is such insofar as it is voluntary.
To call it voluntary, or the expression of will, is to
negate a negation about it—to exclude the suggestion
that it is something less than a piece of genuine per-
sonal doing. It is a further point of refinement, to take
up will, the voluntariness of voluntary action, and to
distinguish an exercise of it which is free, from one
which is not; a man may act with conscious intention
to do what he does, and yet not seem to merit the
description of being a free agent. The assertion of free
will has no significance, except in relation to some
constraint it is intended to exclude. The force of the
term has varied, and still does vary, with predominant
interest in various types of constraint; and it is this
variation which makes the history of the notion.
The notion of freedom as such plainly derives from
the distinction between the freeman and the slave. So
long as freedom of will is simply equated with freedom
of status, no point of philosophical interest arises; free-
men are men who do what they like, slaves are men
who do what they are told. But reflection will suggest
that in many things slaves do what they choose, and
in some things freemen are liable to constraint, being
subject (for example) to kings. Nor can kings themselves
do whatever they wish; they must obey the gods, or
suffer the consequences. The development of legal
practice leads to systematic thought on the topic. A
man is not to be held accountable for actions which
were not his own. The slave's action under orders is
his master's. But equally on occasion a freeman might
be coerced to act against his will; whose, then, is the
action, and whose the responsibility?
