Abstract

Hume's influential treatment of liberty and necessity has traditionally been understood as a statement of what might be termed the classical compatibilist position. On this view, articulated by empiricists from Hobbes to Schlick, analysis of the concepts of freedom and causal necessity reveals that moral responsibility is consistent with—indeed, requires—the causal determination of voluntary actions. It is not difficult to see why Hume, too, has been counted in this camp: as it appears familiarly in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, "Of Liberty and Necessity" begins by declaring the long-disputed question of free will to be a merely verbal controversy that a few intelligible definitions should put to rest. In this noteworthy and provocative book, Paul Russell rejects the standard interpretation of Hume as a classical compatibilist.