Michael: You write, "For all its talk of destiny, Star Wars insists on freedom of choice. That's
its largest lesson." Can you describe what you mean by that? And can you tell us why
you believe in the existence of free will? Cass: Okay, so there's a link between what
we've been discussing, that is the political commitment to republics, and the individual
tale of Star Wars, and I think that's what makes the somewhat cartoonish movies actually
have a deep theme. The idea of authoritarian rule by someone who's a tyrant forcing people
to do stuff is despised in Star Wars, and the idea that every individual kind of every
day has the freedom to go one direction rather than another, that's kind of at the heart
of Star Wars. So it comes up in small ways in scenes that don't seem to be political,
like when Obi Wan says, "You must do what you feel is right, of course," when
Luke says he's not going to join the Rebellion. And when in a bigger moment the Emperor Palpatine-to-be
says to Anakin, "You must make a choice, you must choose," when he himself, that is Palpatine,
is subject to getting killed and Anakin actually saves him. He makes a choice. So Han Solo
makes a choice to come back and save Luke after Leia says,
"He's got to follow his own path. No one can choose it for him."
So that's all over Star Wars and it's in deep tension
with the nominal theme of the movies, which is about destiny and prophecy. So they seem
to be all about, it's been prophesied this and that, and the Emperor's always saying,
"Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen," Yoda really has the last word. He says, "Difficult to see
always in motion is the future." That's connected with the freedom of choice theme. So I think the
movie takes a stand in favor of freedom of choice. I don't have anything particularly
deep to say about freedom of choice myself. I'd say two things. One is that there's a
philosophical account of freedom of choice which says that we have ideals as well as
impulses, and we can live in accordance with our ideals. We can do that, and sometimes
we do, and if we do we're exercising our freedom, rightly understood. I think that's a very
appealing conception of freedom of choice, and it is in Star Wars, people who are exercising
their freedom, they act in accordance with their ideals. The other thing I'd say to the
philosophical skeptics about free will who have some things to say about genes and about
the environment, that human lived experience is impossible to make sense of, really, for
just about anyone without having a kind of minute by minute commitment to freedom of
choice and free will. So there are pretty complicated arguments on this account, but
I will stick with lived experience. Michael: So we can think of freedom properly understood
as the ability or choice to do what you ought rather than a license to do what you want?
Cass: I think that's fair, not as a matter of what governments should be doing. So if
the government says, "We're going to make you do what you or we think it's best to do
rather than your impulses," that would be kind of too Kantian a government. It would
be intruding on people's desire, let's say, for chocolate or for a silly magazine this
afternoon rather than self-improvement. So to allow people in the private domain to make
their own sortings of these things is a very important part of freedom, but at the individual
level, if you are a slave to your impulses and going in directions, it might be drugs,
it might be sloth, it might be any number of the things that are sometimes called sins,
which can be fun for the moment, then to say you're enslaved by your passions, that's fair.
That's a lack of freedom, and one way people express their freedom, and this is a Star
Wars theme, is they say, "My self understanding is that I'm going to be a good citizen, a
good person, I'm going to be responsible," and when people follow those paths which fit
with their own deepest commitments, they're exercising their freedom.