This chapter aims to address a crucial challenge that might be leveled against the account developed so far: namely that the account appears not only to hold people accountable for outcomes that were out of their control but also, and problematically, to blame them. This chapter argues that while moral responsiblity and blame are often treated as though they are coextensive, it is a mistake to see them that way. Someone can be morally responsible for something without being blameworthy for that thing. But abandoning the idea of blame, at least in our penumbral agency, does not undermine our ability to create meaningful human relationships; nor does it undermine the functioning of many of our social institutions.

This Postscript synthesizes the book’s central claim: that abandoning belief in free will and basic desert moral responsibility does not lead to nihilism or despair, but instead paves the way for a more humane, compassionate, and just society. Rather than seeing ourselves as autonomous agents wholly responsible for our successes and failures, free will skepticism encourages us to recognize the deep causal influences – biological, social, and environmental – that shape human behavior. This recognition invites not fatalism, but moral clarity: a shift from blame to understanding, from retribution to rehabilitation, and from judgment to empathy. The Postscript highlights the real-world implications of this paradigm shift, especially in areas such as criminal justice, where punitive attitudes can be replaced with restorative, forward-looking models that aim to reduce harm and promote healing. It also discusses interpersonal relationships, arguing that viewing others through the lens of compassion and causal understanding can foster forgiveness and reduce moral anger. Ultimately, the Postscript reaffirms the book’s hopeful message: that living without free will allows us to embrace a deeper ethics – one rooted in fairness, humility, and solidarity – and that such a shift can enhance both individual well-being and collective flourishing.

This chapter argues that rejecting belief in free will – far from being nihilistic or socially corrosive – can be morally transformative and psychologically liberating. While many fear that disbelief in free will would undermine personal responsibility, justice, and meaning, the author argues for a position he calls optimistic skepticism, which combines free will skepticism with a hopeful vision of human flourishing. This chapter outlines the case for skepticism about the kind of free will needed for basic desert moral responsibility – the idea that individuals fundamentally deserve blame or praise for their actions. Drawing on philosophy, psychology, and empirical evidence, the chapter critiques both libertarian and compatibilist accounts of free will and defends a position known as hard incompatibilism, which holds that we lack the control in action required for basic desert. The chapter also introduces the moral and practical implications of this view, arguing that abandoning the belief in free will enables more humane approaches to criminal justice, social inequality, and interpersonal relationships.

This chapter extends the implications of free will skepticism into the broader realm of social justice. While critics argue that justice requires belief in free will and basic desert, the author contends that many compelling theories of justice – such as those of John Rawls, David Hume, and Amartya Sen – do not rest on desert-based foundations. The chapter introduces and defends the capabilities approach, developed by Sen and Martha Nussbaum, as a promising framework for promoting justice without reliance on retributive or meritocratic notions. This approach emphasizes enhancing individuals’ real freedoms and opportunities – what they are actually able to do and be – while acknowledging the profound effects of luck, social structures, and unequal starting points. Free will skepticism reinforces the moral urgency of this view by highlighting the arbitrariness of birth and circumstance in shaping life outcomes. Rather than attributing success or failure to personal choice alone, this perspective demands attention to systemic barriers and privileges. By rejecting the myth of the self-made individual, the chapter makes a strong case for redistributive justice, inclusion, and structural reform. Ultimately, it argues that free will skepticism not only coheres with the pursuit of social justice but provides a compelling moral rationale for greater compassion, equity, and solidarity.

This chapter critically examines the widespread assumption that belief in free will is pragmatically beneficial for society. While some researchers argue that disbelief in free will leads to antisocial behavior, reduced moral responsibility, and societal dysfunction, the chapter challenges these claims by highlighting methodological flaws and replication failures in the relevant studies. The author argues that the supposed benefits of belief in free will are overstated and cannot justify maintaining it as a “noble fiction.” The second half of the chapter explores a more troubling consequence: the moral and political costs of believing in free will. Drawing on empirical research from psychology and political science, the author shows that belief in free will correlates with increased punitiveness, reduced empathy, stronger belief in a just world, and greater acceptance of economic inequality. These views coalesce into what the author calls the “just deserts cluster,” which sustains systems of blame and punishment by presuming individuals deserve their lot in life. In contrast, adopting free will skepticism is shown to promote compassion, humility, and social justice by recognizing the role of luck and systemic factors in shaping human behavior. The chapter lays the groundwork for a moral reorientation grounded in realism and empathy.

This chapter explores the relationship between free will and creativity, asking whether genuine creativity – and the praise and blame that often accompany artistic achievement – requires belief in free will. While philosophical discussions of free will have traditionally focused on moral responsibility, the author argues that creativity is another domain where questions of agency, authorship, and desert arise. Drawing on insights from philosophers such as Paul Russell and Robert Kane, the chapter examines the idea that artistic creation involves a unique form of self-expression, one that is often seen as a reflection of the agent’s freedom and self-authorship. Some thinkers argue that creativity demands the ability to be the ultimate originator of one’s work. The author challenges this view, showing that talent development, creative output, and artistic success are all deeply shaped by factors beyond our control – such as genetic endowments, social circumstances, and access to resources. While creative acts can still be meaningful and admirable, the chapter argues that they do not justify basic desert. Instead, creativity is better understood as a flourishing of human potential rather than a ground for moral praise. Free will skepticism, far from diminishing creativity, encourages humility, gratitude, and a more realistic appreciation of the social and biological scaffolding that makes creative achievement possible.

This chapter applies free will skepticism to the realm of criminal justice, challenging the moral legitimacy of retributive punishment. If no one is morally responsible in the basic desert sense, then the practice of punishing wrongdoers because they deserve it is unjustified. The chapter begins by defining punishment and distinguishing legal punishment from other forms. It then presents two arguments – the skeptical and epistemic arguments – for rejecting retributivism. The author proposes an alternative model: the public health-quarantine model, which treats serious criminal behavior not with moral blame but as a threat to be contained for public safety, akin to quarantining carriers of contagious disease. This model is forward-looking, emphasizing rehabilitation, prevention, and social support rather than desert-based harm. It aims to reduce recidivism and address the social determinants of criminal behavior, such as poverty, trauma, and lack of education. The chapter also addresses objections and argues that belief in free will sustains punitive attitudes, obstructing reform. Rejecting such beliefs can foster more humane, effective, and just approaches to crime. In place of retribution, the public health-quarantine model offers a compassionate framework that prioritizes safety, healing, and systemic change.

This chapter critically examines the concept of moral responsibility at the heart of everyday interpersonal and legal practices. While we routinely hold people morally responsible – praising and blaming them as if they genuinely deserve it – the chapter argues that such desert-based judgments are philosophically unjustified. Drawing on a range of philosophical literature, it distinguishes between several types of responsibility, including causal, role, and liability responsibility, and focuses on the central question of basic desert moral responsibility. The chapter defends the view that this kind of responsibility requires a form of free will we do not possess. Building on Derk Pereboom’s work, the chapter proposes a forward-looking, non-desert-based alternative grounded in protection, moral formation, reconciliation, and restoration. It also challenges the widespread assumption that moral responsibility practices are psychologically fixed or evolutionarily hardwired, citing crosscultural and empirical research to support their malleability. By replacing retributive attitudes with constructive, future-oriented responses, the chapter shows how free will skepticism can preserve what matters most in our moral lives – without relying on morally problematic notions of blame, indignation, or deserved suffering.

The commentary on Republic is actually a collection of seventeen essays on various topics in Republic. Proclus addresses Plato’s critique of Homer, the tripartitioning of the soul, the nature of the philosopher and his radical distinction from the so-called lovers of sights and sounds, the structure of the divided line, the difference between the superordinate Good and a Form of the Good that is a genus of types of goods, and the taxonomy of decline from the aristocratic man and the aristocratic state, ultimately to the tyrannical man and the tyrannical state. His longest essay is an analysis and meditation on the myth of Er in Republic x, focusing on the nature of wrongdoing and the moral responsibility of the individual. Each of these topics is set within the framework of the Platonic system, at the apex of which is the Idea of the Good or the One whose causal scope is shown to encompass everything that exists, including matter. Thus, epistemological, psychological, and moral problems found in the dialogue need to adduce not only the Good but also the fundamental principles of the system in order to achieve a satisfactory resolution.

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and other antislavery writings, Harriet Beecher Stowe widened the concept of moral complicity to include “tolerance complicity,” the failure to obey the natural promptings of one’s conscience in the face of slavery’s harms. Delineating this moral malfunction, Stowe sought to awaken in system bystanders and participants the capacity to feel the system’s implications – its complicities and consequences – and respond conscientiously to that feeling. Crucial to this awakening is individuals’ openness to moral shame. For Stowe, moral shame was more than an inward-looking, self-convicting emotion. It was also a crucial affective resource that illuminated the nature and reach of the implicating slave system. Stowe demanded that white northerners and southerners, women as well as men, remain vigilantly alert to moral shame. Out of such an alertness, more direct and public efforts to move the community and uproot the system would follow.

This foundational chapter asks a counter-intuitive question: Must individuals pay taxes somewhere? Can taxpayers be blamed for accepting offers from sovereign states to reduce or even wipe out their personal tax burden? And should anyone be to blame, given the intrinsic and often confirmed value of fiscal autonomy as a central feature of statehood? It is found that – as long as there is no global tax organisation providing global public goods or global redistribution and as long as no state (neither the state of origin nor the state of destination) has a clear prerogative and obligation to tax those individuals – individuals are not morally obliged to submit to meaningful taxation in ‘some’ state.