Date of Submission
Spring 2014
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Philosophy
Project Advisor 1
Garry Hagberg
Abstract/Artist's Statement
J. L. Austin asserted, both on his behalf and on behalf of Aristotle, that there exists a connection between freedom and responsibility to the effect that it is not possible to understand how freely an action was until it is clear how responsible the actor was for said action. If we are to accept this assertion, however, we are bound to accept some ideas which are more troublesome in philosophy. Particularly, this is to accept the idea of a freely acting will (as opposed to a constrained one). The way to answer, are we to accept this connection and the ideas that accompany it? is to examine Aristotle’s and Austin’s discussions for evidence of the kind of connection between freedom and responsibility that Austin suggests.
Open Access Agreement
On-Campus only
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Woodhouse-Weil, Dean Sage, "On Responsibility and Freedom: The Descriptive Ethics of Aristotle and J. L. Austin" (2014). Senior Projects Spring 2014. 361.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2014/361
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