Do we have free will? The question is more than just an exercise in 
navel gazing. We inhabit a world full of coercive force. Are we free 
to step outside of the cycle of hedonism and domination? If we are, 
then why is atrocity such an integral part of the fabric of our reality?

In the Binding of Isaac, God tells Abraham to march his son, Isaac, up
 Mt. Moriah and sacrifice him. At the last second an angel appears and 
says, “Abraham, we didn’t mean it. It was a test and you passed.”

Why didn’t Abraham just say, “No. That’s a horrible idea”? I’d like to
 think that’s what I would do if I were in his sandals.

In an article for Scientific American, Jesse Bering considers a study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin that showed that when people are exposed to deterministic messages they are more likely to behave in anti-social ways. That is, when exposed to a message like “you are not responsible for your actions because they are biologically predetermined” participants in the study were more likely to cheat and less likely to aid others within the context of the experiments.

Bering explores the ethical ramifications of this research by way of a time travel thought experiment. You are sent back to 1894 and are standing in front of six year old Adolf Hitler. You have ten minutes before you are zapped back to the future. What do you do? Bering presents three options: kill the boy, deliver a box of historical information to his parents in the hopes that this prevents little Adolf’s rise to power, or do nothing. Think about it for a minute. Setting aside issues destroying the space-time continuum, what do you do?

The point of this thought exercise is not so much about what the right choice is as it is how you rationalize your decision. Do you believe that there is sufficient free will to alter one of the greatest horrors to which humanity has ever borne witness? Can we escape our fate or are we crushed underfoot by history as it marches forward?

The Binding of Isaac would have more moral utility if it was a story about saying no to atrocity. Murdering your child is a terrible act. So too is murdering a young Austrian boy with no comprehension of why he does not deserve to live.

In the study Bering cites, the authors state that “some philosophical analyses may conclude that a fatalistic determinism is compatible with highly ethical behavior, but the present results suggest that many laypersons do not yet appreciate that possibility.”

Admittedly, fatalistic determinism seems to be a counterintuitive worldview for ethical thought, but consider what Sartre wrote in “La Republique du Silence” about the German occupation of France. “We were never more free than during the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to talk. Every day we were insulted to our faces and had to take it in silence. Under one pretext or another, as workers, Jews, or political prisoners, we were deported en masse. Everywhere, on billboards, in the newspapers, on the screen, we encountered the revolting and insipid picture of ourselves that our oppressors wanted us to accept. And, because of all this, we were free. Because the Nazi venom seeped even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest. Because an all-powerful police tried to force us to hold our tongues, every word took on the value of a declaration of principles. Because we were hunted down, every one of our gestures had the weight of a solemn commitment.”

Whether free will exists or not depends upon how you interpret freedom. I believe that there is no such thing as radical freedom. Freedom is meaningless without limitation. It is bound up; limited by an infinite number of factors including biological make up, societal influence, and the laws of physics.

In the cases of Isaac and Adolf it is morally unacceptable to take innocent human life. However, faced with preventing the deaths of some 17 million people or appeasing a fairly wrathful omniscient deity, perhaps we could bend the rules a little?

It is that sort of moral flexibility which leads to ambivalence. In either instance my choosing to take a life would be out of fear and submission. I understand, at least in the case of Abraham, that the traditional interpretation is that it was not fear but rather love for God which motivated him. But when I stand in his place I am terrified.

We are free every day to fight for a community guided by principles of equality and compassion, but make no mistake to take on such a task puts a person in direct opposition to the powers of the world. Were I sent back in time, refusing to kill Adolf would be a purer manifestation of non-violent practice than any sort of armchair non-violence. If I actually found myself face to face with this child could I live 
up to my ideals?

One thing is certain, I’d be free.