A Study on the Peters’s Commentary on the Free-Will Controversy between Hobbes and Bramhall

The purpose of this study is to explore how Peters’s commentary on the free-will controversy between Hobbes and Bramhall can be understood as an educational justification for the moral value of rationality. It investigates the sharp opposition between Hobbes and Bramhall regarding the compatibility of freedom and necessity. Their fundamental disagreement, this study argues, originated from divergent theological perspectives on the principle of free choice. Central to this analysis is Peters’s commentary on Hobbes’s theory of will, which emerged from this debate. Peters interprets Hobbes’s theory as a distinctive synthesis of mechanical causality and Calvinist predestination doctrine, resulting in a strong deterministic view of human action. Peters demonstrates that this theoretical framework inevitably encounters serious difficulties in explaining the possibility of moral responsibility. This study further explores how Peters’s analysis of Hobbes’s theory of will offers important insights for conceptualizing moral education.