Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism

Pushing back against the contemporary myth that freedom from oppressionis freedom of choice, Frank Ruda resuscitates a fundamentallesson from the history of philosophical rationalism: a proper conceptof freedom can arise only from a defense of absolute necessity, utterdeterminism, and predestination.
Abolishing Freedom demonstrates how the greatest philosophers ofthe rationalist tradition and even their theological predecessors—Luther,Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Freud—defended not only freedom but alsodivine predestination and providence. By systematically investigatingthis mostly overlooked and seemingly paradoxical fact, Ruda demonstrateshow real freedom conceptually presupposes the assumptionthat the worst has always already happened, in short, fatalism. In thisbrisk and witty interrogation of freedom, Ruda argues that only rationalistfatalism can cure the contemporary sickness whose paradoxicalname today is freedom.