Determinism as the Ground of Freedom of Choice

Free will is usually opposed to determinism, as if free choice required a break in the causal chain. This paper proposes a different approach: we should distinguish the primary experience of freedom from the metaphysical constructions that arise on its basis. Primarily, freedom is given not as the absence of causes, but as the experience of a choice that passes through the subject: through the subject’s motives, criteria, memory, values, and understanding of the situation. In this sense, determinism does not destroy freedom but rather makes it possible, since without a stable structure of reasons, choice would cease to be conscious and to belong to the subject. The problem of free will arises not at the level of the experience of choice itself, but at the level of its subsequent metaphysical interpretation, when from the experience “I chose” one derives the demand to be the absolute source of oneself as the chooser.