Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong.Robert Rowland Smith
About This Quote
The idea that free will is important in making decisions is an essential tenant of modern moral philosophy. This idea is easy to defend, but not so easy to find a clear articulation of. It is crucial to realize, however, that this idea does not mean what it seems to mean. To illustrate, imagine that you are standing on a balance beam.
If everyone else was on the ground, the only way you could fall would be if everyone else stepped off the beam at the same time. Because of this, if you were to step off the beam today - say, because you are tempted by a more convenient option - you would have to wait for everyone else to do the same thing before you could fall off. The "free will" people think they have is actually quite constrained, since it only allows them to step off the beam once all the other people have done so.
Source: Breakfast With Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day
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