獲選者的抉擇：論《星際大戰》與自由意志

Abstract

《星際大戰》系列電影由諸多靈感而生，卻也帶出更多的啟發。在正義對抗邪惡的面紗下，「自由意志」和「選擇」的議題不僅僅存在於那遙遠銀河系，也存在於我們的生命當中。人類究竟有沒有自由意志來做出自己的選擇呢？這個如肉中刺的問題已存在了好幾世紀。試圖對此問題做出迴響，本文將以《星際大戰》中的「獲選者」安納金•天行者的一生及其抉擇作為論述主軸，並以沙特在《存在主義與人文主義》中對選擇和自由的觀點作為論述起點。縱然沙特主張人類擁有絕對的自由來做出選擇，並因而毅然決然反對神與決定論，自由意志的問題仍未被充分適切地解決。如自由意志辯論—人類歷史上最長最激烈的辯論之一—所顯示的，自由意志直至現在仍是個問題，且極可能在近期的未來中也不會有結論出現。因此，本文將介紹與討論在這活生生辯論中的四個主要觀點：相容論、不相容論、自由論、及決定論。在難以否認決定論和自由意志很可能不存在的情況下，我們或許會問：「那麼我為什麼要存在？」沙特聲稱即使神不存在，生命仍是有意義的；但若自由意志不存在，生命是否還能具有意義呢？我們要如何在沒有自由意志的生命中找到意義呢？或許安納金•天行者的故事可以給予這些問題一些啟發。

The Star Wars saga is a series created from various inspirations and creates more in return. Beneath the good-versus-evil veil, the problem of free will and choice is an issue in the galaxy far, far away, as well as in our daily life. Do human beings have free will to make choices? That’s a question like a splinter in the mind for centuries. Attempting to provide some thoughts to the question, this thesis takes the life and choices of Anakin Skywalker—the “Chosen One” in Star Wars—as the central line of discussion and starts from Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas of choice and freedom in his Existentialism and Humanism. While Sartre contends that human beings have absolute freedom in his choices and thus refuted God and determinism resolutely, the problem of free will is not solved amply and aptly. As the free will debate—one of the longest and fieriest debates in the human history—shows, free will is still a problem and probably won’t come to an end in the near future. Accordingly, four major views in this living debate—Compatibilism, Incompatibilism, Libertarianism, and Hard Determinism—would be introduced and discussed in this thesis. Seeing that determinism is hard to refute and that free will probably doesn’t exist, we may want to ask, “Then why do I exist?” Sartre claims life is meaningful without God, but can life also be meaningful without free will? How can we find meanings in a life without free will? Mayhap the story of Anakin Skywalker can shed some light on these questions.