free will

alternative freewill · alternative freewil

1. uncountableVoluntary choice; (the power of) unforced, uncoerced choice.

   (insane/worst/best/amazing) use of free will

   5 more examples

   He did not say it of his own free will, but because his captors coerced him.

   They bound my limbs, depriving me of my free will.

   I say therefore, there is no likelyhood, we should imagine, the beasts doe the very same things by a naturall inclination and forced genuitie, which we doe of our owne freewil and industrie.

   1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

   Good my Lord, / To come thus was I not constrain'd, but did it / On my free-will.

   c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene vi]

   I make a decree, that all they of the people of Israel, and of his priests and Levites, in my realm, which are minded of their own freewill to go up to Jerusalem, go with thee.

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezra 7:13

   Synonyms: agency

2. uncountableChristianityThe ability to choose one's actions and make choices that are not predetermined by predestination, fate, etc.

   You can bind my limbs, but you can never deprive me of my free will.

   3 more examples

   Some people deny that humans have free will, and argue that every thought and action is preordained by God.

   What is free will but the power of volition and action, and of thought and speech, to all appearance as of one's self?

   1869, Emmanuel Swedenborg, translated by R Norman Foster, The True Christian Religion

   The new challenge to free will comes from a different direction: neuroscience's discovery that people's brains are a collection of diversely oriented modules, and that our understanding of our own intentionality is to a great degree a legitimating fiction which one module in the left hemisphere of the brain retroactively imposes over the decisions different modules make.

   2012 January 12, “Free will and politics”, in The Economist