Are Our Lives Predetermined?

I really liked what Paul-Henri Thiry was saying about how we have little control over our lives because of our basic instincts. It is true that while we have free will to decided over which decisions we are going to make, such as drinking or not drinking the contaminated water as it mentioned in his example but in the end our basic instinct and need for survival is the ultimate motive in our decision making process

I also agreed with what W.T. Stace was saying for the most part. I found it interesting as I have never thought of it this way that if there was no free will and all our decisions were predetermined for us than there would indeed be no need for morality because we would have no need to distinguish between right and wrong because we wouldn’t need to make those kind of decisions. I also thought that it was interesting how philosophers who don’t believe in free will present their argument in their “abstract” philosophical work but they don’t practice what they preach in their ever day lives.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan made a very interesting and my favourtie comment of all three. I think he tried to interpret the best of both worlds by saying that while there is some sort of predetermined path made out by our karma, there is still no definite direction our lives will take and we have different choices presented to us at different times.

My opion is that we have power over our will but not neccesarily over our actions and feelings. We establish how we are going to live our lives through our will and base our rules and beliefs around this will.

Since actions and performances are not wholly in our power and since nothing is really in our power but our will- it is on the will that all the rules and duties of Man are based and established.(Michel de Montaigne, 1572)