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The Thomistic Institute

Is Free Will an Illusion? | Fr. Stephen Brock

The Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8729 Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2022

⏱️ 74 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This lecture was given on September 15, 2022 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Stephen L. Brock is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei (ordained 1992). He is Ordinary Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, where he has taught since 1990. He received a BA from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. In 1999 he was a visiting professor in the School of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America. In 2017 he is a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, collaborating in the Templeton Foundation project “Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning in Life,” directed by Candace Vogler and Jennifer Frey; his collaboration has included teaching a course in the Philosophy Department at the University of Chicago, giving two public lectures, directing a reading group, and leading sessions in a summer seminar for graduate students. Since 2008 he has been an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. He is the author of Action & Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (T&T Clark, 1998); articles on various aspects of Aquinas’s thought; and most recently, The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (Wipf & Stock, 2015).

Transcript

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0:00.0

This talk is brought to you by the Tamistic Institute.

0:03.9

For more talks like this, visit us at tamistic institute.org.

0:11.7

Well, but Temistic Institute asked me to talk on this topic of the, is free will and illusion.

0:17.7

And so I suppose they're expecting me to sort of defend the existence of free will.

0:22.6

And in a sense, I guess that's what I'm going to try to do, but only kind of in an indirect way.

0:28.6

Because I don't really think that the existence of free will needs to be defended directly.

0:36.6

It's kind of too obvious and inescapable. needs to be defended directly.

0:42.3

It's kind of too obvious and inescapable to doubt it in any kind of practical way or any real way.

0:46.3

Every time we just stop and deliberate about what we're going to do,

0:50.3

we're exercising our free will right there.

0:53.3

And even people who argue against it,

0:55.0

it seems to me a lot of times in the very course of their arguments, they seem to assume that we have it, actually,

1:03.0

even when they're arguing against it. Let me give you an example of that, just as a way of introducing the topic.

1:09.0

Has any of you heard of a, he's kind of popular on YouTube and other things,

1:14.5

a man named Sam Harris.

1:17.0

You know that name?

1:18.0

It's pretty popular, right?

1:20.1

He's a good speaker.

1:21.0

He's an author.

1:21.6

He's a speaker.

1:23.7

And he's popular if his book sales are in indication.

1:26.2

He sold a lot of books.

...

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