Agency and Responsibility: Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom

Laura Waddell Ekstrom

Westview Press, 2001 - Philosophy - 264 pages

A companion volume to Free Will: A Philosophical Study, this new anthology collects influential essays on free will, including both well-known contemporary classics and exciting recent work. Agency and Responsibility: Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom is divided into three parts. The essays in the first section address metaphysical issues concerning free will and causal determinism. The second section groups papers presenting a positive account of the nature of free action, including competing compatibilist and incompatibilist analyses. The third section concerns free will and moral responsibility, including theories of moral responsibility and the challenge to an alternative possibilities condition posed by Frankurt-type scenarios. Distinguished by its balance and consistently high quality, the volume presents papers selected for their significance, innovation, and clarity of expression. Contributors include Harry Frankfurt, Peter van Inwagen, David Lewis, Elizabeth Anscombe, John Martin Fischer, Michael Bratman, Roderick Chisholm, Robert Kane, Peter Strawson, and Susan Wolf. The anthology serves as an up-to-date resource for scholars as well as a useful text for courses in ethics, philosophy of religion, or metaphysics. In addition, paired with Free Will: A Philosophical Study, it would form an excellent upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level course in free will, responsibility, motivation, or action theory.

About the author

Laura Waddell Ekstrom is associate professor of philosophy at The College of William and Mary.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Agency and Responsibility: Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom
• Editor: Laura Waddell Ekstrom
• Edition: 2
• Publisher: Westview Press, 2001
• ISBN: 0813366240, 9780813366241
• Length: 264 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / Free Will & Determinism; Philosophy / Metaphysics; Philosophy / Religious