Are we free, or are our actions determined by natural causes? The problem thus posed is a metaphysical construct: From late antiquity onwards, the authentic meaning of freedom as a principle of action has been obscured by the invention of free will and the excessive importance given to the concept of the will.
Counterfactual history is a matter of ‘what ifs’. What if the Allies had lost the Second World War? What if there had been no transatlantic slave trade? Two French historians analyse the intellectual merits of this use of the past, long established in the Anglo-American world.
