Books and audiobooks
Reading
Where to go next. Start with the first group if you are new to the subject; the rest follow the site's sections. Books marked 馃帶 are available as audiobooks (checked against Audible UK in November 2026). Shop links are plain search links, not affiliate links.
Start here
- Freedom EvolvesDaniel C. Dennett, 2003 馃帶 audiobook
Dennett's fullest case: the Game of Life, avoidance, and how responsibility evolved. Witty and wide-ranging.
- Free Will: A Very Short IntroductionThomas Pink, 2004
A compact, opinionated tour of the whole debate by a philosopher who rejects compatibilism.
- Just Deserts: Debating Free WillDaniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso, 2021
The clearest head-to-head: Dennett against a free will sceptic, each replying to the other.
- Determined: A Science of Life Without Free WillRobert M. Sapolsky, 2023 馃帶 audiobook
The most readable case against free will, by a biologist who spent his life with baboons.
- Free: Why Science Hasn't Disproved Free WillAlfred R. Mele, 2014 馃帶 audiobook
A short, careful look at what the famous experiments really show.
Dennett
- Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth WantingDaniel C. Dennett, 1984 馃帶 audiobook
Bugbears, sphexishness and the free will worth wanting. Reissued in 2015 with a new preface.
- BrainstormsDaniel C. Dennett, 1978
Early essays, including "On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want".
- Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for ThinkingDaniel C. Dennett, 2013 馃帶 audiobook
His toolkit of thought experiments, with a section on free will.
- I've Been ThinkingDaniel C. Dennett, 2023 馃帶 audiobook
His memoir: Oxford, Tufts and fifty years of arguments.
The allies
- The Importance of What We Care AboutHarry G. Frankfurt, 1988
Both of Frankfurt's classic papers on free will, and much else.
- Freedom and Resentment and Other EssaysP. F. Strawson, 1974
The 1962 lecture that changed the debate.
- Responsibility and ControlJohn Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, 1998
Guidance control and semicompatibilism, worked out in full.
- Four Views on Free WillJohn Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom and Manuel Vargas, 2007
Four positions argued and answered: compatibilism, libertarianism, hard incompatibilism and revisionism.
The long history
- Nicomachean EthicsAristotle 馃帶 audiobook
Book III, chapters 1 to 5: the voluntary, force, ignorance and character.
- On the Nature of ThingsLucretius 馃帶 audiobook
Book II has the swerve. A. E. Stallings's verse translation (Penguin, 2007) is a pleasure to read.
- On the Free Choice of the WillAugustine
The dialogue on evil, foreknowledge and the will; translated by Thomas Williams (Hackett, 1993).
- LeviathanThomas Hobbes, 1651 馃帶 audiobook
Chapter 21: liberty and necessity are consistent.
- EthicsBaruch Spinoza, 1677 馃帶 audiobook
Freedom through understanding; the free person lives by reason.
- An Enquiry Concerning Human UnderstandingDavid Hume, 1748 馃帶 audiobook
Section VIII, "Of Liberty and Necessity": the reconciling project.
- Prize Essay on the Freedom of the WillArthur Schopenhauer, 1839
Can freedom be proved from self-consciousness? No.
- The Will to Believe and Other EssaysWilliam James, 1897 馃帶 audiobook
Includes "The Dilemma of Determinism".
The science
- Mind TimeBenjamin Libet, 2004
Libet's own account of his experiments on the timing of awareness.
- The Illusion of Conscious WillDaniel M. Wegner, 2002
Table-turning, I Spy and the theory of apparent mental causation.
- BehaveRobert M. Sapolsky, 2017 馃帶 audiobook
Why we do what we do, from a second before to millions of years.
The far side
- The Significance of Free WillRobert Kane, 1996
The leading modern libertarian theory: ultimate responsibility and self-forming actions.
- A Contemporary Introduction to Free WillRobert Kane, 2005
A fair-minded textbook on the whole debate.
- An Essay on Free WillPeter van Inwagen, 1983
The consequence argument, and why free will is a mystery.
- Freedom and BeliefGalen Strawson, 1986
The case that ultimate responsibility is impossible; revised edition 2010.
- Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in LifeDerk Pereboom, 2014
Hard incompatibilism, and why life without free will is not so bad.
- Rejecting RetributivismGregg D. Caruso, 2021
The public health-quarantine model of criminal justice.
- Free WillSam Harris, 2012 馃帶 audiobook
A short, forceful case that free will is an illusion.
Clouds, clocks and the multiverse
- Objective KnowledgeKarl Popper, 1972
Includes "Of Clouds and Clocks", the Compton lecture on freedom and plastic control.
- The Fabric of RealityDavid Deutsch, 1997 馃帶 audiobook
The chapter on time: why a single spacetime has no room for counterfactuals, and how the multiverse restores them.
- The Beginning of InfinityDavid Deutsch, 2011 馃帶 audiobook
People as universal explainers, and why high-level explanations are real.