In the past quarter-century, there has been a resurgence of interest in traditional philosophical questions about free will. The first of this book's aims is to explore the significance of this recent work, both for the advancement of understanding in one of philosophy's most perennially challenging areas, and for broad contemporary concerns in ethics, politics, science, religion, and humanistic studies.

The book's second goal is to defend a classic "incompatibilist" or "libertarian" conception of free will in ways that are both new to philosophy and that respond to contemporary scientific learning. Incompatibilist or libertarian accounts of freedom are often criticized for being unintelligible or for having no place in the modern scientific picture of the world.

Kane asserts to the contrary that a traditional view of free will (one that insists upon the incompatibility of free will and determinism) can be supported without the usual appeals to obscure or mysterious forms of agency and can be reconciled with recent developments in the sciences - physical, biological, neurological, cognitive, and behavioral.