The Enoch Burke case has raised important legal questions about the limits of civil disobedience and how to handle contempt of court. But it also poses a deeply philosophical question – one that has puzzled great thinkers for more than 2,000 years.

In a ruling in January, ordering Burke back to prison for continuing to trespass on the school from which he has been dismissed, Judge Brian Cregan said: “Mr Burke speaks as though he has no free will and that it was somehow predetermined that he would be turning up at the school the following day [after his release from custody]. But Mr Burke always had a choice.”

Ah, but did he really? To what extent does Burke, or any of us, have free will?

This question is one of the oldest in philosophy. For centuries, it troubled Christian theologians who tried to square human autonomy with the idea that everything is part of God’s plan. In our more secular age, a new threat to free will emerged through science. The more we have learned from biology and psychology, the more it seems we are slaves to a combination of our genes and environmental factors.

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In Burke’s........

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