Self-determination
Self-determination
a) In political theory the working out by a people or nation of its own problems and destiny, free from interference from without. It is often said that peoples and nations have a right to self-determination, at least under certain conditions
b) In ethics the notion of self-determination is used by self-determimsts to solve the free-will problem. H. Rashdall, e.g., uses the notion of a “causality of a permanent spiritual self” as mediating between the indeterminists on the one hand and the mechanical determinists on the other, his view being that our actions are indeed determined but determined by “the nature or character of the self” and not just mechanically, and that it is in this determination by the self that our moral freedom consists. — W.K.F.