Reprint of the original, first published in 1838.

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From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, "brilliant and witty" (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.

This treatise is an echo of Scripture teaching how God’s will and man’s will work in their respective spheres, and with each other working from his text, Matthew 23:37-38. This work is designed to humble the creature in realizing that God’s free grace is that which enables man to believe the Gospel. And it also teaches that man’s free will is actually a slave to his desires. Perkins' covers the will of God looking at both God’s sovereignty and God’s good pleasure in light of Jerusalem’s unwillingness to repent. He also covers the will of man in four important areas: in the garden before the fall, after the fall, in light of and after regeneration, and glorified in heaven. This is not a scan or facsimile and has an active table of contents for electronic versions.

Concerned that evangelicals may soon find no place for sovereignty in their thinking, R. K. McGregor Wright sets out to show what's wrong--biblically, theologically and philosophically--with freewill theory in its ancient form.

The Limits of Free Will presents influential articles by Paul Russell concerning free will and moral responsibility. The problems arising in this field of philosophy, which are deeply rooted in the history of the subject, are also intimately related to a wide range of other fields, such as law and criminology, moral psychology, theology, and, more recently, neuroscience. These articles were written and published over a period of three decades, although most have appeared in the past decade. Among the topics covered: the challenge of skepticism; moral sentiment and moral capacity; necessity and the metaphysics of causation; practical reason; free will and art; fatalism and the limits of agency; moral luck, and our metaphysical attitudes of optimism and pessimism. Some essays are primarily critical in character, presenting critiques and commentary on major works or contributions in the contemporary scene. Others are mainly constructive, aiming to develop and articulate a distinctive account of compatibilism. The general theory advanced by Russell, which he describes as a form of "critical compatibilism", rejects any form of unqualified or radical skepticism; but it also insists that a plausible compatibilism has significant and substantive implications about the limits of agency and argues that this licenses a metaphysical attitude of (modest) pessimism on this topic. While each essay is self-standing, there is nevertheless a core set of themes and issues that unite and link them together. The collection is arranged and organized in a format that enables the reader to appreciate and recognize these links and core themes.