A critical overview to the bulk of extant Buddhist theories of free will

Repetti, Rick

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PhilPapers

What Do Buddhists Think about Free Will?

This essay critically reviews the most important highlights of the literature on free will in Buddhist philosophy. The Buddha and most subsequent Buddhist philosophers apparently lacked the free will concept, operating within an impersonal framework orthogonal to the free will discussion. As Western philosophy embraces subpersonal conceptions of mind and action informing Buddhism from its inception, however, Buddhism may enrich the Western discussion of free will. Buddhist scholars have only begun to discuss free will over the past 50 years. Nonetheless because Buddhism lacks the free will concept, its texts underdetermine what may be said about it, and thus interpretations of the implicit role of free will in Buddhist thought diverge.</p

Riccardo Repetti

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https://philpapers.org/archive/REPWDB.pdf

What Do Buddhists Think about Free Will?

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