Susan Wolf, “Asymmetrical Freedom”, The Journal of Philosophy 77(3), March 1980, pp. 151–166 — DOI-10.2307/2025667. Reprinted, among other places, in John Martin Fischer (ed.), Moral Responsibility (Cornell University Press, 1986), which I did not verify against a copy.
Key takeaways
Registered from second-hand sources, not a reading of the article. Each point says who reports it.
- The asymmetry. McKenna and Coates’s SEP entry Compatibilism (LIT-291, §4.3, read in NOTE-270) reports that Wolf develops “a surprising asymmetry thesis according to which praiseworthy conduct does not require the freedom to do otherwise but blameworthy behavior does”, citing this article and Freedom Within Reason pp. 79–81. Put in Fischer’s terms, only blame requires regulative control; guidance control suffices for praise.
- Why praise needs no alternative. In the same section’s report: if an agent acts in accord with the True and the Good and is so psychologically determined that she cannot do otherwise, her freedom is not enhanced “simply by adding an ability to act irrationally”. If she acts against it and cannot act in accord with it, “it would be unreasonable to blame her”.
- The answer to determinism. Because blame needs the ability to do otherwise, the view is exposed to the Consequence Argument. The SEP reports that Wolf answers by arguing that physical determination does not entail psychological determination, and that the ability blame needs requires only the falsity of psychological determinism, a thesis she holds has no support. The entry’s gloss: she is a compatibilist about blame and physical determinism and an incompatibilist about blame and psychological determinism.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request, as the origin of what Wolf later called the Reason View. It is moral philosophy with no instruction for machine-learning practice, so no anthology topic holds it.
Unavailable because no lawful copy could be read (see the status note). The
key takeaways are what the record’s SEP reading says the article argues;
they are not a reconstruction of its argument and quote nothing from it.
How it bears on the record’s PAP map. Robb’s SEP entry on the principle of alternative possibilities (LIT-294, NOTE-269) reports that the moral arguments for PAP, from fairness, “ought implies can” and the W-defense, cover blame at most. Wolf’s asymmetry is a position with exactly that shape: PAP holds for blame and fails for praise. Robb’s map treats Frankfurt-style cases as the main attack on PAP; this article rejects PAP for praise on a different ground, the value of acting on good reasons, with no counterfactual intervener. A reading should check whether Wolf’s blame half survives Frankfurt-style cases, which Robb’s entry would predict it must answer.
How it bears on THEORY-040. That account says a condition stated only in the agent’s present psychology is met by a manipulated agent. McKenna and Coates (LIT-291, §4.3) place Wolf “at the same crossroads as is Frankfurt”: her mesh between action and the True and the Good is also open to manipulation. The asymmetry sharpens this. A manipulated agent who is made to act well, and cannot do otherwise, is praiseworthy on Wolf’s view as the SEP reports it; whether one made to act badly is blameworthy turns on whether the manipulation removed the psychological ability to do otherwise. This is my inference from the report, not the article’s claim.
Its successors. Wolf’s “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility”
(LIT-690) states the Reason View’s condition as sanity, and
Freedom Within Reason (LIT-685) develops both. No relation is
declared from this entry: it is unread, and the book’s extends to it is
declared on the book’s side.
Priority for a reading: high. It is 16 pages, and it is the only first-hand source for the asymmetry, which the record’s THEORY candidate on praise and blame would need.
Access when seeded:
- Crossref record (title, author, volume 77, issue 3, first page 151, March 1980; publisher given as the Philosophy Documentation Center).
- Unpaywall: no open-access location.
- PDCnet’s page redirects to a purchase form.
- PhilPapers record WOLAF returned a bot challenge.