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This thesis asserts that one aspect of The Lord of the Rings which has been previously overlooked is the hierarchical nature of the master/servant relationship, which mirrors in many ways the hierarchical nature of the Catholic church. Through the various master/servant relationships that Tolkien portrays, he reflects not only the ideal of master and servant working together for good, but also the ways in which this intimate relationship can go horribly wrong. Aragorn represents an ideal master, one who is wise and good, and his servants are either rewarded or punished according to their loyalty to him. In the stories of Wormtongue and Saruman, we see how betrayal and seeking to usurp the power of the master leads to the downfall of the servant. Denethor's fall illustrates how a bad servant becomes, in turn, a bad master. The choices of Faramir, Pippin, Beregond, and the servants of Denethor reflect the difficulties a servant has when trying to decide whether or not to continue following a poor master. Merry and Éowyn show us that sometimes grace may intervene in what seems to be a fairly straightforward situation of disobedience. And the story of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, from betrayal to ultimate loyalty, at times reflects the complicated hierarchical relationship between mortals and deity.

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[pt] Neste trabalho, defendo a tese de que o livre arbítrio, entendido como o controle necessário para a responsabilidade moral baseada no mérito, não existe, pois é impossível. A tese é um desenvolvimento da visão de Galen Strawson que baseia a impossibilidade da responsabilidade última na impossibilidade da autodeterminação. Aqui, defendo uma abordagem ao problema que conecta os seguintes temas: livre arbítrio, sorte moral e autocriação, mantendo que o fato necessário da sorte constitutiva é o que torna impossível de satisfazer a condição de fonte última do controle necessário para a responsabilidade moral. Minha estratégia argumentativa é mostrar como as tentativas de satisfazer e de rejeitar essa condição falham. / [en] In this work, I defend the thesis that free will, understood as the control necessary for merit-based moral responsibility, does not exist, for it is impossible. The thesis is a development of Galen Strawson’s view, which bases the impossibility of ultimate responsibility on the impossibility of self-determination. Here, I defend an approach to the problem that connects the following themes: free will, moral luck and self-creation, holding that the necessary fact of constitutive luck is what makes the ultimate sourcehood condition for the control required for moral responsibility impossible to satisfy. My argumentative strategy is to show how attempts both to satisfy and reject this condition fail.

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<p>Kant's ethical theory is often characterized as one in which freedom is identified with obedience to the moral law. In Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, however, free will appears to be characterized as the ability to choose either to obey or disobey the moral law. Hence, an evil act could be freely chosen, whereas according to the usual ethical conception, evil appears to have to be interpreted as a manifestation of lack of freedom. The problem treated in this thesis is whether or not Kant's account of radical evil in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone is compatible with the conception of free will given in the ethics. If the two conceptions are aspects of one developed theory of free will, does the theory hold together; if they are actually two theories of will, what are the implications for Kant's ethics?</p> <p>Chapter I presents the problem and summarizes the two Prefaces to Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, as well as its first essay, "On the Radical Evil in Human Nature." Two conunentators, L.W. Beck and J.R. Silber, view Kant as developing one theory of free will. To show that this is so, they focus on Kant's distinction of will into two parts, Wille and Willkür, as a key to resolving possible contradictions. Their arguments are discussed in Chapter II. Chapter III analyzes the primary sources which Beck and Silber bring to corroborate their versions of the theory, and briefly sets forth the arguments of Emil Fackenheirn, who regards the essay in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone as repudiating the ethics. It concludes on the inconclusive note that the problem may be unresolvable.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Existentialism has come to be seen as championing human freedom. The yearning for freedom does indeed run throughout this tradition together with an anti-metaphysical sentiment which lends itself to the rejection of a determinism which views human beings as mechanisms. But it would be a mistake to think that an existentialist necessarily advocates the doctrine of free will. A distinction must be made between free will and the idea of freedom as it appears in the writings of the major existentialists. Free will is to commonly understood to be a requirement for moral accountability. It is the metaphysics, or what Freidrich Nietzsche would call "the mythology" behind every act of blaming a huinan being. Out of the four major existentialists-Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre-Sartre is the only philosopher who seems to defend this metaphysics. "Existential Freedom," although compatible with the thesis of free will, does not necessitate it. Rather, it invites us to move beyond the guilt ridden ideas of responsibility associated with the moral subject, and embrace a grand responsibility for our future.