Freedom, Guilt and Responsibility

No scientific debate has been fought out in public with as much vehemence in recent years as the dispute over free will. The traditional concept of »free will«, which is also the basis of German criminal law and its concept of guilt, presupposes that people can decide and act beyond all psychological and neurobiological determinants. Such a conception of free will is neither conceptually-philosophically nor empirically acceptable. In this book, Gerhard Roth and Michael Pauen develop a new concept of free will. The basis for which is an »enlightened naturalism« that takes pre-scientific phenomena, philosophical concepts and scientific methods equally seriously. This results in an understanding of freedom that focuses on the ability to act in a self-determined manner based on one’s desires and convictions. Roth and Pauen thus escape the difficulties of many traditional conceptions, capture the everyday understanding of freedom of will and at the same time do justice to the findings of neurobiology. Their concept, the authors argue, also makes possible a much more differentiated understanding of guilt and responsibility, which has far-reaching consequences for criminal law and the penal system.