The Low Road

Abstract

In this chapter, I address the last constraint, asymmetric pressure. How is it that your inclination can put asymmetric pressure on your will? I argue that this is a deep and general problem, one that familiar theories of strength and weakness of will tend to elide. What, in principle, could pressure a free will? My Kantian claim is that the only thing that can pressure a free will is the burden of freedom itself. Inclinations, as such, cannot pressure the will. But if their nature is as I have described, they provide us with the opportunity to flee our freedom, by providing us with an animal mind to flee into. Instead of humanizing our incentive, we dehumanize ourselves. Similarly, I argue, we can be weak in relation to our social environment. Social scripts do not pressure us directly, but they give us the opportunity to flee into automaticity.