Having spent some time thinking about medieval approaches to the freewill problem – the apparent contradiction between God’s foreknowledge and our freedom – Rabbi Herzl Hefter introduced me to the work of the Chassidic Rebbe, R. Mordechai Yosef Leiner, otherwise known as the Izbicer. In this blog, I want to present what I take to be the Izbicer’s ‘solution’ to the free will problem. All of this has been worked out for me, essentially, by R. Hefter. The only contribution I’ve made, if any, is to repackage the central ideas utilising a collection of philosophical tools that I borrow from Gareth Evans and Kendal Walton.[1]
