Free Will: And Four English Philosophers (Hobbes, Locke Hume and Mill)

By: Rickaby, Joseph

-In a volume entitled Free Will and Four English Philosophers (Hobbes, Locke. Hume, and Mill), the Rev. Jos. Rickaby, S.J., well-known as an able writer on ethical topics, publishes, with "much castigation and amendment," a series of papers written by him nearly a quarter of a century ago, in which the important subject of free will, still "the hub and center of philosophical speculation," is treated entirely on philosophical grounds, and the doctrine of common sense, which is also the Catholic doctrine, is victoriously defended against some of the most insidious arguments the mind of man has ever devised against free will. The volume is doubly interesting for the reason that the author puts forth and defends a new view as to how free will works, -a question to which the Church has never given an authoritative answer and upon which there is much divergence of opinion and considerable obscurity even among orthodox writers. This view is briefly as follows: "To will at all, our will must be struck by a motive which raises in us what I have called a 'spontaneous complacency.' This complacency is a fact of physical sequence, a necessity, under the circumstances. But it is not yet a volition. It does not become a volition until it is hugged, embraced, enhanced, under advertence, by the conscious self

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 170140561X
• ISBN13: 9781701405615
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"