The Concept of Free Will in John Fowles's Fiction: A Study of The Collector, The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman

Abstract

In fiction, the concept of "free will" has always been important. The question of: are human beings predestined, or are they free to choose to do things is at the core of the human quest of freedom, self-knowledge, authenticity and compatibility. John Robert Fowles is one of the contemporary novelists, who is concerned with the issue of free will in his fiction. Fowles entered New College, Oxford, where he was influenced by the French Existentialism_ the most fashionable philosophical movement at that time. Through the writings of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Heraclites and their philosophies about conformity and the will of the individual, Fowles developed his belief in existential free will, which he defines as "the revolt of the individual against all those systems of thought, theories of psychology, and social and political pressures that attempt to rob him from his individuality." (Aristos 122) The best-known fact about existentialism is that it is concerned with human freedom. According to its central doctrine, man has no essence which could determine what he shall do. He is free to choose to become anything, since it is only what he freely chooses to do which determines what he is. Considering Sartre's version of the existentialist concept of freedom, there is no difference between the being of man and his being free and as freedom constitutes the very essence of man, he must be free. Being free fundamentally means having a choice of oneself, of becoming a certain kind of person rather than another. And how one's act depends on an original project of what we have chosen to be as persons. But one can choose to be a different sort of person and herein lies man's original freedom on which the capacity called free will depends.