Abstract

The purpose of this study is to argue for libertarian freedom on the basis of weakness of will as a common possibility for human agents. The phenomenon of weakness of will is widely acknowledged as a human possibility. Few contemporary philosophers, however, are proponents of libertarian freedom. I argue first that the possibility of weakness of will is implied by human agency. I then describe several sets of conditions philosophers have proposed to explain the apparent freedom necessary for weakness of will and show that one proposal seems more adequate than the rest. The proposal I argue for is that the freedom needed for weakness of will is the freedom to act on a resistible desire. Acting on a resistible desire is then defined and defended. I provide two ways of looking at acting on a resistible desire and show why one of these is more promising than the other. In conclusion I show that two contemporary compatibilist approaches to describing freedom conditions fail to work in the context of weakness of will and show that the freedom condition I have proposed works better. On the basis of these results I claim that all compatibilist freedom conditions will fail in similar ways. I claim, then, that libertarian freedom is the freedom necessary for weakness of will