Publisher's Synopsis
What does it mean that something happens caused by me acting, in a causally constituted world? We understand ourselves as active agents, as cause of what we do. But we cannot help but assume that people and their actions are part of the natural order of causes and effects, and in this they are no different from the rest of nature. The causal sequences of events run, it seems, through persons, into them from without and out of them from within in the form of actions. But doesn't this entail that the "I", of which we believe that it determines what we do, evaporates? What then do authorship, freedom, responsibility mean? - In his essay, Peter Stemmer confronts these questions, which have a fundamental impact on our self-understanding.
