Philosophy Paper: Libertarianism (About Free Will)

Philosophy Paper: Libertarianism (About Free Will)
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Philosophy Paper: Libertarianism (About Free Will)
Part 1: Exegesis
Libertarianism is derived from a Latin name “libertas” to mean “freedom” and is a collection of political movements and philosophies, which hold the ideology of liberty as the main principle. Proponents of libertarianism maximize the political autonomy and freedom, stress on the freedom of choice, individual judgement, and voluntary association. Libertarians believe in prosperity, justice, tolerance, responsibility, peace, and cooperation. They believe that liberty is the main political value of modern civilization, which gives form and substance to other social values of life. Libertarianism is a form of liberalism or a political philosophy conceptualized by John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson. The political philosophy seeks to justify and define the government’s legitimate powers in terms of God-given or natural individual rights such as the rights to life freedom of association and speech, private property, freedom of worship, equality under the law, government by consent, and moral autonomy or the ability to pursue good life or conception of happiness. Libertarians believe that the main responsibility of the government is to protect individual rights and that the government power needs to be constrained to allow individual rights and freedom of action. This implies that individuals need to be free to behave and dispose their property, as they desire as long as their actions do not infringe the equal rights of others. However, this brings an argument of free will and if humans ever act freely, although it might seem to be obvious that they do.
An ordinary human action of raising up a hand at a meeting in order to attract the attention of the speaker can be considered a free will. Another example is a student in a lecture who has the free will to raise up his/her hand to answer a question asked by a lecturer. However, an event is always caused by some cause that can account for its occurrence. For instance, if one feels pain, then there must be a reason for that pain. If nothing causes the pain, then there would not be pain at all. Similarly, a change of weather, a loud noise, and an individual’s action are always caused by an entity; otherwise, they will not occur without a cause. This reasoning questions if at all any actions are due to free will, and Thomas Nagel’s work explains this problem and makes a conclusion that the feeling of free will is illusionary (Nagel, n.d). A good example is one choosing between a peach and a chocolate cake iced with cream. The chocolate cake looks appealing, but it is nevertheless fattening. Since it looks good, one would proceed and take the cake instead of a peach. However, after some days, one realizes an increase in weight after getting on the scale or checking on the mirror. The obvious statement that comes after this discovery is that they wished they could not have taken that chocolate cake. After the consequences, one will regret that they wished they had taken the peach instead. However, peaches were also available in the restaurant and they had the choice o...