Libertarianism, Hard Determinism, and Epoché in Indian Buddhism

Abstract: Scholars who wonder how the Buddha would take sides in the traditional debate on the existence of free will generally believe that it is possible to attribute to him a single point of view capable of reconciling apparent inconsistencies that arise from the reading of the scriptural pages that might be related to this issue. The thesis of this article is that the Buddha’s position on the question of free will is in fact far from being univocal. Rather, in each of the three philosophical registers that can be identified in his teachings, different answers to the same question are implicit—in the personalist dimension of the Buddhadharma, a libertarian language is spoken; the reductionist register of the nonself doctrine, on the other hand, necessarily implies a hard determinist position; and finally, in the antimetaphysical context of the middle path, we find a suspension of judgment regarding the determinism/free will dilemma.