Willensfreiheit als existenzielle Praxis

English version

In pre-modern times the question of free will was mainly seen in the light of eudaimonia, and thereby also as a ‘good’ or ‘rational’ will. The question of free will was unanimously a question of relationship to existentially experienceable values like the ‘Good’ or ‘God’, or respectively, the other as an unique value of itself. Today, in times of individualization and instrumental rationality, we tend to pose the question of free will quite isolated from our values, as a rational and lonely decision. The present paper aims to demonstrate how this restriction of agency might be defining for a rather crucial aspect of the contemporary free will debate: could we have acted differently from how we did act? Strong Naturalism is looking within this context of counterfactual agency at the lonesome subject and thereby tends to reduce it to a psychophysical condition. It is through this perspective that Strong Naturalism confronts us with the confusing alternative between Determinism and Arbitrariness. However, in this way free agency cannot be conceived as such in any meaningful way. Contrarily, if we are looking at the question of free will from an existential perspective we are referred to an intersubjective practice individuals use in particular in the context of ‘promising’ and ‘forgiving’. In the act of promising and forgiving we address the other as a value in and of itself. Such intersubjective encounters open a counterfactual alternative agency in free self-determination, thereby categorically overcoming the confusing Naturalist alternative of Determinism and Arbitrariness.