A Defence of True Liberty from Antecedent and Extrinsecal Necessity
Bramhall's 1655 reply to Hobbes on free will — the Bramhall-Hobbes debate
Tradition: High-Church Anglicanism / scholastic-Aristotelian free-will theology / anti-Hobbist controversy
Bramhall's 1655 reply to Hobbes — defending libertarian free will against Hobbist necessitarianism
Published in 1655 as part of the Bramhall-Hobbes free-will debate (which had begun with the Bramhall-Hobbes private discussion in Paris in 1645, when both were in exile, and Hobbes's subsequent 1654 unauthorised publication of his side of the exchange under the title 'Of Libertie and Necessitie'), 'A Defence of True Liberty from Antecedent and Extrinsecal Necessity, Being an Answer to a Late Book of Mr Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, Intituled, A Treatise of Liberty and Necessity' interleaves Hobbes's text with Bramhall's section-by-section replies. The form is characteristic of seventeenth-century controversial literature: Bramhall reprints Hobbes's text in full, then inserts paragraph-length critical responses after each Hobbesian assertion. Bramhall defends an essentially Arminian-Aristotelian libertarian free will — the will is not necessitated by antecedent causes; moral responsibility requires the agent's genuine capacity to do otherwise; the human will, as a rational appetite, is genuinely self-determining within the constraints of its rational nature. Against Hobbes's deterministic-mechanistic necessitarianism (the will determined by the strongest antecedent motive, motives by antecedent causes, causes by the original chain of causes), Bramhall argues that mechanism cannot account for either deliberation or genuine choice. The exchange is the canonical seventeenth-century English free-will debate; the subsequent rounds (Bramhall's 1658 'Castigations of Mr Hobbes' continuing the exchange) extended it for another three years. The debate has been continuously productive in subsequent free-will literature; both sides articulate positions that remain live in contemporary metaphysics of agency (Frankfurt-style compatibilism descends from Hobbes; libertarian-Aristotelian agency from Bramhall).
Author
Editions cited
- A Defence of True Liberty from Antecedent and Extrinsecal Necessity (Andrew Crook, London, 1655)
- In John Bramhall, Works, ed. A. W. Haddan (Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, Oxford, 1842-45, 5 vols), vol. 4
- Modern edition of the exchange: Vere Chappell (ed.), Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, 1999)
- Critical commentary: Nicholas D. Jackson, Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity (Cambridge, 2007)
School Embodiments
Scholastic-Aristotelian framework against Hobbist mechanism.
"Liberty is a power of the rational soul — it cannot be reduced to absence of impediments." (Defence of True Liberty, §3)
High-Church-Anglican theological framework.
"The Church's doctrine of free will is not the Calvinist denial of it." (Defence of True Liberty, §10)
Natural-law framework for moral responsibility.
"Without liberty, moral responsibility cannot stand." (Defence of True Liberty, §7)
Defining seventeenth-century English defence of libertarian free will.
"True liberty is liberty from antecedent and extrinsecal necessity." (Defence of True Liberty, title-page)
Aristotelian metaphysics of agency.
"The will, as the rational appetite, has its own causal power." (Defence of True Liberty, §4)
Rational-philosophical method against Hobbist mechanism.
"Reason itself requires the freedom of the rational agent." (Defence of True Liberty, §15)
Internal Tensions
The canonical seventeenth-century English free-will controversy — the locus classicus for libertarian vs. necessitarian arguments. Continuously read in subsequent free-will literature; both positions articulated here remain live in contemporary metaphysics of agency.
I. Time
1655. Bramhall was 61, in exile in Antwerp (Bramhall had left England in 1644 after the Civil War broke out and would not return until 1660 — when he became Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland).
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II. Space
Antwerp / London publication. Bramhall and Hobbes had originally conducted the discussion in Paris in 1645 while both were exiled in France during the Civil War; the controversy continued by correspondence and publication.
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III. Matter
Interleaved polemical-philosophical treatise. Form is characteristic of seventeenth-century printed-controversy: each Hobbesian assertion is reproduced and answered.
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IV. Observer
Bramhall as defender of libertarian free will against Hobbist necessitarianism. The observer-bishop is the Caroline-Anglican high-Church philosopher-theologian working out the philosophical implications of the Christian-Aristotelian doctrine of voluntary agency.
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V. Energy
Polemical-philosophical energies of the canonical English free-will debate. The Bramhall-Hobbes exchange is the most sustained seventeenth-century English controversy on the question.
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VI. Information
Hobbes's text plus Bramhall's section-by-section replies. The form preserves both sides of the debate within a single volume — a methodological advantage of seventeenth-century controversial print.
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The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How A Defence of True Liberty from Antecedent and Extrinsecal Necessity resolves each dilemma
31 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 26 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.