Man's Freedom

by Paul Weiss. Yale

A complex, provocative ethical treatise by a former student of Whitehead who is now Professor of Philosophy at Yale. Paul Weiss sets out to resolve the age-old issue of determinism and free will, and

maps a position in which the will is at once free (“Man is a maker of himself“) and limited because “to have a capacity to do certain things it is necessary first to exist and to exist as distinct from other things. It is to be limited, ...“ Similarly the author maintains that relativism and absolutism in ethics are compatible. Weiss‘s inquiry ranges deeply into good and evil, social action, “natural law,” sacrifice and love. Most modern philosophers are a good deal tougher reading than, say, Descartes, Hume, or even Kant. Dr. Weiss is no exception.