Against the Free Will Thesis, Nietzsche argues that a free agent (that is, one sufficiently free to be morally responsible) would have to be causa sui (i.e., self-caused, or the cause of itself); but since we are not causa sui, no one can be a free agent.
Nietzsche takes for granted — not implausibly — that our moral and religious traditions are incompatibilist at their core: causally determined wills are not free wills.
Nietzsche offers two kinds of arguments to show that we are not causa sui: that it is logically impossible to be causa sui; and that human beings are not self-caused in a sense sufficient to underwrite ascriptions of moral responsibility.
Nietzsche takes for granted — not implausibly — that our moral and religious traditions are incompatibilist at their core: causally determined wills are not free wills.
Nietzsche offers two kinds of arguments to show that we are not causa sui: that it is logically impossible to be causa sui; and that human beings are not self-caused in a sense sufficient to underwrite ascriptions of moral responsibility.
…the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and…to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness. (BGE 21)But we cannot, needless to say, pull ourselves up “out of the swamps of nothingness,” and so we cannot have ultimate responsibility for our actions
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