Determinism, compatibilism and libertarianism

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Determinism, compatibilism and libertarianism

1. According to Darrow's approach to the case, he defends the defendants through the causalities that led them to act in a nefarious way, setting aside the unique responsibility of each being and attributing it to the series of events that intertwine to fulfill a destiny already preconceived for each person. This is how the circumstances of the formation of the two young murderers and the inevitable way in which they find themselves in each other's path, detonated in the murder of Bobby Frank.

Within the debate and Darrow's deterministic vision, he highlights with great eloquence in his defense, the psychic incapacity to choose, he speaks of infinite forces working in favor of cause and effect, leaving aside the randomness and chance that make up free will. According to this, he argues that one should not blame someone for having been born under certain conditions or having had advantages or adversities in his life, since it is not clearly a matter of the person to choose how his life is completely developed, nor the environment that surrounds him. This is why the Leopold and Loeb case, under Darrow's deterministic concept, the defender manages to connect with the imperfect side of the reality of the people present during the trial, exposing the ambivalence of the most intrinsic "decisions" of each being, to those more complex and external, such as the death penalty trial.

2. The act of murder can be considered as a free act from the concept of compatibilism, since it is the subject who makes the decision about the action of committing murder or not, there is no real external cause as Leopold and Loeb were not forced to perform the act.

Therefore, while the circumstances of their childhood, their intellectual capacities and their crossroads can be catalogued as the work of determinism, these factors created the perfect combination for the generation of a scenario governed by compatibilism in which the two young men should choose what to do with their capacities and great affinity for each other; all actions committed after meeting each other are part of their will, even considering the fact that the preconceived destiny put in their way a boy with the perfect qualities to carry out a crime, they had at their disposal a world of possibilities to determine whether such a crime would be committed, as well as the conditions under which it would be carried out.

This means that despite having already incurred in an unlawful act such as kidnapping, the execution of the plan could have been different, even considering allowing the child to remain alive. However, it can be said that the outcome of this homicide is clearly attributable to the ego taking precedence over moral character, in other words, a free act.

3. It must be said that Leopold was in a kind of frenzy caused by his admiration for the renowned writer Nietzsche, which led him to develop supremacist thoughts about the writer's vision and to consider that he could act without moral laws, calling himself and Loeb the "supermen". However, this self-designation was not imposed by anyone else but him; although the young man by the fruit of determinism came to the readings of Nietzsche, he was the interpreter and maker with the acquired knowledge of a murder.

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