Free will and moral responsibility Free will and moral responsibility have always been one of the basic and fundamental elements of philosophy. It is undeniable that there is a connection between free will and moral responsibility. Different philosophers over the centuries have seen this connection in similar and different ways. The first connection between free will and moral responsibility can be seen from Aristotle and Epictetus through their view of the voluntary and involuntary. It can therefore be seen in a different Frankfurt vision in which a person is only free if he is free to have the will he wants. Aristotle believes that people seek pleasure while avoiding pain. Consider the voluntary as something that would lead to pleasure while the involuntary as something that would lead to pain. A voluntary action would be an action that originates from the person. When a person acts voluntarily, he is acting according to his own desires. An example of this would be when a person sees someone in difficulty and then voluntarily goes to help them. On the other hand, an involuntary action would not originate from within the person but from an external force. Aristotle argues that all involuntary actions are forced actions and, because they are forced, they are also unpleasant, like anything else a person is forced to do. An example of an involuntary action would be when a person hands money to a thief because the thief points a gun at the person's head. Aristotle also considers an involuntary action to be an action performed by a person out of ignorance. Although the ignorant action would also originate from the person and not from an external force, it would cause an end that was neither desired nor foreseen. ... middle of paper ...... for taking the drug even though the consenting addict has no control over his will. AS can be seen from the opinions of these three different philosophers, free will and moral responsibility are undeniably linked. It is how the two are connected that can be discussed as shown. Whether the connection is between our voluntary and involuntary actions as the two philosophers Aristotle and Epictetus argue or whether the connection between the two applies only if we are free to have the will we want to have as Frankfurt argues. Even then there are some situations in each of those philosophical views where exceptions may arise whereby not everything is so black and white, demonstrating that there is no true definition of the connection, but instead leaving the connection between free will and moral responsibility up to 'interpretation of the person trying to define it.