420 - How Free Will Actually Works
The Symbolic World
Jonathan Pageau
4.8 • 933 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I explore the question of free will, drawing on the insights of St. Maximus the Confessor. While thinkers like Sam Harris argue that free will is an illusion and always contingent on material circumstances, I show how the Christian understanding reframes freedom—not as arbitrary choice, but as submission to the good. True freedom is not transgression, but moving toward higher and higher goods, where life becomes more natural and effortless.
Original YouTube version: https://youtu.be/burSzHmo4o4
The Symbolic World Enters Paradise
Join me and Deacon Seraphim Rohlin this November in our course on Dante's Paradiso.
-Course length: 5 weeks, 15 hours
-Dates of live classes: Wednesdays, November 5th to December 3rd, 2025
-Time: 2-5 pm Eastern Time
-Cost: 190 USD (Involved patrons can get 10% off)
-Register today: https://www.thesymbolicworld.com/courses/dantes-paradiso
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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the past decade or so, or more than that, |
| 0:03.3 | there's been a lot of discussion about free will, |
| 0:05.9 | about if free will exist. |
| 0:08.7 | We've seen very famous people, of course, |
| 0:10.7 | like Sam Harris and some of the new atheists, |
| 0:13.3 | straight up say that free will does not exist. |
| 0:16.1 | Of course, as Christians, |
| 0:17.4 | we definitely believe that free will exist, |
| 0:20.3 | but what is it that we mean by free will? |
| 0:23.7 | Do we mean the same thing that Sam Harris is talking about? And if so, you know, what are the |
| 0:30.9 | issues with that? Or is there another deeper understanding of free will? And I think there is. |
| 0:37.0 | I think there is. |
| 0:49.9 | This is Jonathan Peugeot. |
| 0:52.1 | Welcome to the symbolic world. |
| 1:09.4 | Hello, everyone. We are finally announcing our Paradiso class. We have done two already. |
| 1:13.5 | We have the inferno. We have the purgatory. And now we are moving to paradise. That is right. Dante himself says Inferno that we prefer hell to paradise. And similarly, |
| 1:22.7 | most of us prefer to read Inferno, but when we come to reading Paradiso, we're very confused. So we're going |
| 1:28.3 | to be actually taking you through that poem line by line like we did with Inferno and Purgatorio, |
| 1:32.3 | and actually looking at how Dante very carefully reconciles some of the contradictory traditions |
| 1:40.9 | about the heavens in the Christian apocalyptic tradition, and does that through the persons of the saints. |
| 1:47.5 | And so this is truly important for us right now with the re-enchantment of the world happening. |
| 1:52.8 | We have to be able to look at those that did it that did it in the most powerful way that were able to reconcile the ancient pagan traditions with Christianity, with his modern understanding, the most powerful way that we're able to reconcile the ancient pagan traditions with Christianity, |
... |
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