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Determinism and free will
Determinism and free will
Philosophy free will vs determinism
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“What’s it going to be then, eh?” is the signature question in Anthony Burgess’s novel, A Clockwork Novel that not only resonates with the moral identity of the anti-heroic protagonist, Alex, but also signifies the essential choice between free will that perpetrates evil and deterministic goodness that is forced and unreal. The prison chaplain and the writer F. Alexander voice the most controversial idea in the novel: man becomes ‘a clockwork orange’ when robbed of free will and tuned into a deterministic mechanism.
Burgess points out the necessity of free will to maintain humanity at both the communal and individual level. The novel represents a futuristic dystopian society through its anti-hero Alex and charts the protagonist’s journey from a perpetrator of violence to a partially reformed and matured man in the end. The paper argues both the concept of free will and deterministic goodness from the character analysis of Alex and the society, as reflected in the conduct of government against prisoners and gives an unbiased conclusion in favour of one of the concepts.
From the beginning, the novel depicts a struggle between violent free will and a safe but regulated environment. Alex and his friends, the droogs, violent free will as they disassociate themselves from the government’s clutches. They display the cold-hearted aspect of free will through their actions such as stealing, attacking innocent people and raping women as their free will dictates. Burgess seems to argue that in a society that depends much on safe and predictable behaviour, the action of Alex and the gang is a reaction or a way of expressing themselves against the expected behaviour. Their display of violence is an assertion, a force against individuals...
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...ocess signifying that the choice of goodness and badness cannot be forced on any individual.
The argument presented here has its allegiance towards free will than forced conformation to goodness. Leading life as a ‘clockwork orange’ is as derogatory as committing heinous acts under the pretext of free will. Ethical goodness is necessary to live life in a civilized society as much a control on evil is necessary to keep the same society free of crime but in both contexts, neither can be achieved through force. As mentioned in the beginning, every individual has an inherent nature, either good or bad. An evil person cannot be reformed forcefully. Only when the individual realizes his erroneous ways and wills to reform, a change can happen. If free will can lead to evil, the same free will can propel goodness, without any necessity for forceful interference.
Many people have different views on the moral subject of good and evil or human nature. It is the contention of this paper that humans are born neutral, and if we are raised to be good, we will mature into good human beings. Once the element of evil is introduced into our minds, through socialization and the media, we then have the potential to do bad things. As a person grows up, they are ideally taught to be good and to do good things, but it is possible that the concept of evil can be presented to us. When this happens, we subconsciously choose whether or not to accept this evil. This where the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke become interesting as both men differed in the way they believed human nature to be. Hobbes and Locke both picture a different scene when they express human nature.
There have been many books published solely on philosophy, and many more than that solely written about human nature, but very infrequently will a book be published that weaves these fields together as well as A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. In this Book Burgess speculated on the fact “the significance of maturing by choice is to gain moral values and freedoms.” He achieved this task by pushing his angsty teenaged character, Alex, through situations that challenge the moral values of himself and his friends. In the novel, A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, Alex himself, must choose good over evil in order to gain moral values which will allow him to mature into a “man” in the latter of his two transformations.
A Clockwork Orange can be characterized as a dystopian novella as a result of the world that Burgess created throughout the book. Alex’s world provides a future rendition of London if it were to continue going down the path it was on after World War II, one of a violent youth culture. This especially comes from the fact that his wife was beaten by a few Americans stationed in England during the war. This particular event’s influence on the novella can be seen through the various scenes where Alex and his “droogs” are seen sexually assaulting women. Burgess was also influenced by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. A Clockwork Orange experiences the Pelagian-Augustinian phases of rule found in the aforementioned books, respectively (Morris ). The Pelagian phase can be seen in the beginning of the novel where Alex and his “droogs” are essent...
Firstly, one of the most defining elements of the film is Malcolm McDowell’s voice-over-narration. Like Burgess’ use of the first person narration in the novel, Kubrick uses it here to give the audience a view through the mind of this sadist teenager who we, ironically, are able to identify with. Alex is the embodiment of the future’s youth: a teenage monster, characterized by his vicious t...
To begin, Alex and his group of friends go about the night to wreak havoc and act rebellious. You would thing Alex would have parents who don’t really car about him but that is quite the opposite. He just lies to them and tells them that he has a job and that’s why he is out late. Early in the novel we see right off the bat that he and his friends take hallucinogenic drugs that are placed inside of milkshakes. This along with Beethoven symphony pushes him and his friends to roam the streets terrorizing the elderly, rob convenience stores, and rape women. On one occasion they come across an old man in the streets and they torment him, beating and kicking him until he starts to vomit. On another occasion, the droogs break into a house, raid the pantry, destroy the husband’s literature, and even rape the wife. Soon after, he gets in a fight over dominance in the group with Georgie. Cutting hi...
A totalitarian regime fostered on love is a government dancing atop of its deathbed. Only a relationship between an individual and the party, and a love for its leader can be tolerated by the autocratic society. Bob Dylan explains, “No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky”, depicting the totalitarian and dystopian worlds of George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Steven Spielberg’s movie, Minority Report. In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, war, hatred, and machines are the gears powering the Big Brother. By eliminating freedom and generating fear through constant propaganda, strict laws are emplaced and incessant surveillances dominate the lives of Oceanians. In Minority Report, uses futuristic software, precogs, to prevent crime before it happens. Although there is a chance that the crime may not even take place, the oppressive society does not allow for one to decide, but decide one’s faith for them. Sight will be the great flaw and attribute of all mankind.
Alex will change his way of life and will currently try to live a “normal life.” The clockwork orange is banned in many different venues for many reasons including the use of vulgar language, in detail of rapes and gang fights and this will cause many discrete comments from the people. The novel is also largely focused on the ideas of free will, or how much of our personality and choices are determined inherently rather than learned. The beliefs that are portrayed in the book are un-orthodox and different to the people which in retrospect will cause concern and which will help lead to the banning of the book. Burgess uses a type of writing style that is completely different from most, because his use of a made up language called “nadsat.”
which was meant to be around 1995 to 2000 (a car used in the story
Is it better to be a man choosing wrong than a man who is forced to choose right?
The idea of one being free or not free is greatly debated for the main character, Alex, in A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. Almost anyone, when asked, will say that they believe they are free because they are able to make their own decision and can do what they choose, also known as free will. But to what extent are you truly free? It all comes down to what you consider it means to be free. According to critic Samuel McCracken, there is a definite difference between free will and free choice. He argues that Alex is not deprived of free will, rather than free choice. Samuel McCracken explains that in order to be “brainwashed’ one must be provided with a new set of opinions and values. Throughout the novel, there isn’t a point in which
Many of us like to think that humanity as a whole is progressing to a better future where we will live united and in peace with one another, a time of a more enlightened society. But there are those among us that do not share these beliefs. In A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, the futuristic world is displayed as a world turned upside down and in shambles. This 1962 classic is a frightful depiction of what our society could become and possibly what it already is. Drugs almost seem to be legal and unregulated and subsequently are widely used. The prison system is overcrowded with young punk criminals who are inherently evil with no regard for humanity, or any part of society for that matter. The youth takes over the streets at night and beat anyone they encounter. The elderly sit around in bars and drink the remainder of their lives away. The people have become desensitized to violence, because it is so prevalent in their lives. A Clockwork Orange is a very intriguing story that deals with many social problems, not offering a solution, but pointing out obstacles in the way of the creation of a more perfect society.
As teenagers deviate from the constraining grasp of their parents, they begin to establish their own identity through decisions; however, their development of self-identification is frequently hindered by manipulation of societal institutions such as: justice system, religion, and media. Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, establishes the idea of freewill and how it is suppressed when Alex, the main protagonist, undergoes the manipulative Ludovico's technique, religious lectures, and social norms influenced by media- used to instill pain when Alex's desires violence/music and finding salvation, which is similar to the treatment of criminals in our society; ultimately utilized to mitigate crime, but also suppresses freewill through repercussions, fear, police officials, indelible ads, and the law. Therefore, American citizens are not privileged with the power of choice because the hindering paradox that exists in society: possessing the ability to consciously establish identity is entwined with manipulation, subliminally.
Amidst a population composed of perfectly conditioned automatons, is a picture of a society that is slowly rotting from within. Alex, the Faustian protagonist of A Clockwork Orange, and a sadistic and depraved gang leader, preys on the weak and the innocent. Although perhaps misguided, his conscientiousness of his evil nature indicates his capacity to understand morality and deny its practice. When society attempts to force goodness upon Alex, he becomes the victim. Through his innovative style, manifested by both the use of original language and satirical structure, British author Anthony Burgess presents in his novella A Clockwork Orange, the moral triumph of free will within the controlling hands of a totalitarian society.
Freedom and liberalism are catchwords that appear frequently in both philosophical and political rhetoric. A free man is able to choose his actions and his value system, to express his views and to develop his most authentic character. What this kind of idealistic liberalism seems to forget, however, is that liberty does not mean a better society, better life or humanistic values such as equality and justice. In his novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), Anthony Burgess portrays an ultimately free individual and shows how a society cannot cope with the freedom which it in rhetoric so eagerly seeks to promote.
In this novel Alex shows his freedom of choice between good and evil, which is that, his superiority over the innocent and the weak. In the beginning of the novel he chooses to be evil, he shows us that by committing violence act like stealing, raping, and also murdering an innocent person which he got arrested for and put into prison for about 12 years. The amount violence he commits shows his abuse of power and his decisions toward evil. The violent acts that are described in this novel are very graphical and are intended to shock the reader but they also show that the suppression of others is wrong, because it is destructive to the natural rights of humans. Alex consistently chooses evil and violence to show his freedom of choice, ?Now I was ready for a bit of twenty-to-one . . . then I cracked this veck" pg 7. Alex beats, rapes, and robs the weak and ...