Chapter 2:
You Are What You Do
Religious Determinism
• Naturalism maintains that freedom is an allusion
because actions are not free. Actions are nothing
more than the results of brain processes.
• Other contemporary theories are equally
deterministic.
• Freedom as a human capacity is under severe attack
in a number of philosophies and theologies.
Religious Determinism
• Historically some
Christian churches taught
that God’s knowledge and
will have predetermined
the course of the world,
as well as the action of
every human.
Religious Determinism
• What do you think about this?
• What do you think about the
possibility your every action or
omission is decided by God
and not yourself?
Religious Determinism
• Today most Christians
believe in providence,
that is, God’s influence
upon events and actions.
• This belief can only be
maintained if one
believes that God can
achieve the salvation of
the world.
Religious Determinism
• If salvation or damnation is predetermined, is
there any recognition or respect for freedom?
• If freedom does not exist, would there be any
point of trying to be good and moral people?
• Although predetermined, we still would most
likely not know if God has reserved salvation of
damnation for us!
Religious Determinism
• Calvinists (followers of John Calvin, the French
Protestant reformer and theologian)believe that
human freedom and ethics have no place in the
doctrine of predestination.
• The Catholic position disagrees with Calvin.
• Catholic teaching maintains that human
freedom and God’s providence does not conflict.
Religious Determinism
• The Puritan tradition, which is an offshoot of the
Calvinist tradition, believes that sin has corrupted
humans so much co they are born and live their
entire lives deserving eternal damnation – they can
do nothing to save themselves.
• They hold that God loves and elects some and rejects
others. Thus they do not believe that God wants all
people to be saved.
Religious Determinism
• God freely grants salvation to the elect – it is God’s
freedom at the expense of human freedom.
• Puritans do not claim to understand why God
chooses to save some and damn others; to question
God on this would be sacrilegious.
• This is a harsh doctrine and certainly difficult to
interpret.
Religious Determinism
• The Catholic tradition has struggled to maintain
that humans are free precisely because of God’s
providence – salvation is God’s to grant but
God’s love requires and makes possible our
cooperation.
• The Catholic tradition has been the great
defender of human freedom.
Religious Determinism
• St. Augustine (354430) was the first great
theologian who wrote
extensively about the
free will and its
connection with grace.
Social Determinism
• Social Determinism is in many ways like
naturalism. A social determinist believes your
actions can be explained by what you have
undergone at the hands of others.
▫ Your parents / family / friends
▫ Your culture
▫ Your psychological state (including any traumatic
experience)
▫ Your history
Social Determinism
▫ Your social background – this includes:
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Socio-economic status
Race
Gender
Religion
Education
Social Determinism
• Your behaviour is explained by social factors,
not by your decisions.
• If your actions are determined entirely by the
past, how can you be responsible for those
actions?
Social Determinist
• You are not free because you are the product of what
others have done to you.
• To a social determinist, the past, your past,
determines who you are.
• Your behaviour is explained by social factors, not by
your decisions.
• Have you ever had that feeling...where you know
that the events of your past will automatically
determine who you are as a person. And more so,
that your freedom and ability to make a decision will
not play a part at all?
Social Determinism
• A social determinist might argue, “I did this
because I was abused as a child.”
• But if your actions today are determined
entirely by your past, how can you be
responsible for those actions?
• What affect would social determinism have on
the judicial system? Would it be similar to
naturalism?
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• Freud demonstrated that
human behaviour is often
driven by unconscious impulses
based on repressed memories
and desires.
• For a variety of reasons – the
memories were too painful or
shameful – humans repress
these memories and desires
through a sort of memory
censor (blocking it out).
• This censorship does not
remove the memories or desires.
It only represses them out of
consciousness.
Freud Continued
• Until you reconnect with the repression and its
causes, your actions are not free.
• Therefore you can not be held directly
responsible for your actions .
• Freud also recognized that people
can use the emotional power of
repressed memories and desires for
right action by channelling this
energy creatively and less
neurotically. He called this
sublimation.
• Id - unconscious desires
(reproduction, life and
death)
• Ego- conscious part
• Superego- societal expectations via guilt and shame.
• Interesting...after instances of war, soldiers have an
unconscious desire to reproduce so as to ensure the
survival of their species. This is why birth rates
increase after significant periods of change in society.
Freud Continued
• The life and death instinct.
• Instinct (such as sexual instinct), he maintained,
is something that exerts pressure on the minds
causing humans to act to reduce that tension.
• Pleasure results when we reduce this pressure.
Freud Continued
• Life or love instincts (Eros) and the death instinct
(Thanatos).
• The life instinct is found in the various ways that
humans express their desire for life and love for the
other.
• The desire for life conflicts with the desire for death.
• Freud arrived at the notion of the death instinct as a
result of his experience of the first world war.
Freud Continued
• Freud was struck by the aggressive-destructive
tendencies manifested by the horrendous war in
which people slaughtered one another by the
thousands each day.
• He also noted aggression in the way humans deal
with themselves. He was critical of morality, which
he saw as self-aggression.
• He believed that morality was based on coercion. It
demand’s the renunciation of one’s instincts.
Who, then, is the self?
THIS IS WHO YOU ARE:
• You are more than what you have done.
• You are capable of projecting yourself into the
future.
• You can make promises and commitments.
• You can make choices!
Who, then, is the self?
THIS IS WHO YOU ARE:
• You can give your word – you can shape your
future.
• You cannot undo events of the past, but you can
reinterpret them (even painful events).
So...what do you think
In groups of three-four, answer the following
questions on chart paper. Each group will present
their responses with the class.
• What is determinism in your own words?
• What effect does determinism have on human
freedom? Give some examples.
• Would society still need prisons if freedom were an
illusion? Why or why not?
You are what you do
NATURALISM
• Our genes (DNA)
determine who we
are (Nature?)
• We have no free
will
SOCIAL
DETERMINISM
RELIGIOUS
DETERMINISM
• Our environment • God predestined
determines who we us for salvation
are (Nurture?)
(Heaven) or
damnation (Hell)
• We are simply
just puppets
You are what you do
• St. Augustine, who represents the Catholic
church, says a loving God created us to love and
we have the free will to choose our destiny.
• We may sin but the grace of God enables us to
be better than our mistakes.
• In this “model” our futures are not destined by
our past, and not only by genetics or our
environment.