Professor Sturmhauser stands in front of his students, looking focused and casually in command—it’s a good disguise. Now he’s pacing back and forth, tossing a pen in the air and saying this: “If you take the measure of your will, what do you think you’ll find? You won’t find a damn thing because there is no such thing as will. It’s nothing but a word. A word we invented that points to a well-fed assumption that we have some control and some choice in our lives.” He shrugs. “It’s not true. We want it to be true, but it’s not. It’s only after we do something that “choice” comes into play, and then, of course, it’s not choice; it’s post-factum rationalization. And when we invoke the notion of free will—we’re doing so merely to flatter ourselves and our miserable existence.” There are no questions this afternoon, and he gathers up his notes and computer and drives home.
He collapses onto his sofa, exhausted. He doesn’t believe everything he says—he’s too tenured, too jaded for that—but he believes a hell of a lot of it, and he passionately believes this: free will is a pink unicorn with bells on its hooves, and choice is a Nemean lion with fairy wings and a bright red nose.
His students—some would call them disciples—take up the cause and discuss this idea amongst themselves—this brutish, unkind, and reductive idea that their choices have really been made for them before they make them—on so many different levels, they say, it would be impossible to deconstruct the framework of the idea. Besides, there’s a neurological truth to it. What it boils down to is: they are not who they think they are. They are nothing but little programmed automatons, obeying the dictates of a preternatural biological imperative: Go on! Live! Go on—live in this way, live in that way. In these circumstances, do this so you can live, and in those circumstances, do that so you can continue to live; and then do this so your offspring will live on after you, and in this way do this, and in that way do that so you can go on. You can live. Go on, then, live! Go on and live!
God! It is depressing. And their professor is a depressing soul, seeing things in this way, and there isn’t a speck of joy in him and not a flicker of humor. Every lecture is bleak and punishing. It takes them down every time. In their discussions, some of them decide not to hand in their term papers but to hand in a sheaf of blank pages with a small note attached: I did not choose not to write this paper. Only the fear of failing the course prevents them from doing so. The professor does not take kindly to whimsy.
Some of his students wonder about his private life. Does their professor, who lives alone—they know that much—does
