Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology - Analytic ...

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Paul L. Manata © 2011
But libertarians do not need to deny the above. They can heartily affirm that
there are many cases where morally responsible people act and cannot do
otherwise. This doesn’t contradict libertarianism though. For the libertarian
claims that if a person is morally responsible for some action he could not avoid,
then he must be morally responsible for putting himself in that position. Take the
drunk. He may be responsible for killing someone in an auto accident even
though he could not do otherwise at the time and was not in control of his
actions, but this is only because he is morally responsible for putting himself in
that position. Before he decided to drink, he had a choice, and he had an open
future. He could have stayed home; he could have had a 7-­‐Up. If it is claimed that
he was an alcoholic and could not avoid drinking, then this just pushes the
question back to when he made the libertarian free choices that eventually led to
his alcoholism. The idea here is that morally responsible people must be the
ultimate source and originators of their actions or in forming and setting their
wills or character. As J. P. Moreland has put it, “We all seem to be aware of the
fact that we are the absolute originators of our actions,” and that “For
libertarians it is only if agents are the first causes or unmoved movers that agents
have the control necessary for freedom.” 48
5.2 Frankfurt libertarians
At this point there’s some disagreement among libertarians. Some libertarians,
called Frankfurt libertarians, 49 claim that the relevant factor required for moral
responsibility is that the agent be the ultimate source of her actions, whether or
not they have alternative possibilities available to them. They are libertarians
48 J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body & Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis of Ethics
(IVP Academic, 2000), pgs. 132 and 128, respectively.
49 Some influential Frankfurt libertarians are: David Hunt (the philosopher),
Eleonore Stump, Linda Zagzebski, and William Lane Craig.