Free will, is it an illusion or not? This is probably one of the most famous arguments in philosophy. This is a historical debate in which each philosopher has their own opinions. Many philosophers' opinions are divided when it comes to discussing free will. To begin, free will, as defined by Psychology Today, is the "ability to consciously make decisions that are not determined by the physics and biology of our brain." It is the idea that we can have some choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behavior. »Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay When it comes to free will, one cannot simply leave determinism and predeterminism aside without discussing these terms. Determinism can be defined as “the philosophical idea that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of previous states of affairs” (Philosopher of Information). Predeterminism shares the idea that “all the past as well as the future were determined at the origin of the universe”. Saint Augustine did not deny that Man had free will, but he firmly believed that God had predetermined everything in advance. . Thus, according to Saint Augustine, God has planned how we will live. On the other hand, rationalists like Descartes and Spinoza do not believe that man possesses free will at all. They assume that God controls the entire universe, including our lives, and they believe that God had already predestined each life in advance. To put it simply, the rationalists claimed that man did not have free will and that, according to them, free will was therefore an illusion. Spinoza, in particular, states that “we do not control everything that happens in our body. We also don’t “choose” how we think. Man therefore does not have a free soul. According to Saint Thomas Aquinas Online, a website dedicated to him, states that Saint Aquinas believed that man's will is free. He assumed that Man had free choice, contrary to what rationalists such as Spinoza and Saint Augustine claimed...