Nature and Operation of the Will
The will as rational appetency; its nature, existence, object, and acts; the distinction between elicited and commanded acts.
St. Thomas Aquinas calls the will a rational appetency. Like sentient appetition, the will is a tending-faculty; but unlike it, the will follows upon intellectual knowledge rather than sense-knowledge, and its operations are accordingly supra-organic and spiritual. The will always tends towards the good; its formal object is good in general (bonum in communi), and in last analysis the Summum Bonum — the infinite Good which is God. The will's acts are distinguished as elicited (proceeding immediately from the will itself: wishing, willing, intending, consent, choice, use, enjoyment) and commanded (proceeding from the will mediately, as the will commands other faculties: commanded acts of intellect, of the sentient appetite, of the locomotive power, of the hands). Moral evil is chosen under the aspect of good — the will always follows what the practical intellect presents as the good to be done here and now, even when that presentation is perverse.
a) Meaning of Will — b) Existence of the Will — c) Acts of the Will
a) Meaning of Will
St. Thomas Aquinas calls the will a rational appetency. Now, an appetency or appetite is a tendency to follow and possess and enjoy what is good. All things have a connatural tendency towards what is good for their perfection or being, and this is natural appetency. Sentient beings (i.e., animal organisms) have a tendency to follow and achieve what sense-knowledge presents to them as desirable or good, and this is sentient appetition or sentient appetite. Human beings have, in addition, a tendency to follow and achieve what intellectual knowledge presents to them as good and desirable, and this is rational appetency or the will.
The will, therefore, is the rational appetite — the faculty of tending towards what reason (i.e., intellectual knowledge) presents as good. It is an inorganic faculty (like the intellect) because its operations require no bodily organ; it is a faculty of the soul alone. It is an active faculty in the sense that it moves other faculties to their acts; in fact, the will is the chief motive power in the human composite, moving the intellect, the sentient faculties, and the locomotive power to their respective acts.
The object of the will is good — good apprehended by the intellect. More precisely, the formal object of the will is good in general (bonum in communi) — that is, good as such, good in its fullest and most unlimited meaning. Hence the will is satisfied by nothing less than infinite Good; and this is why the human heart is ever restless until it rests in God, the Summum Bonum, the supreme and infinite Good.
How does a morally evil act come to be chosen? The will always tends towards what is presented to it by the practical intellect as good — as the thing to do here and now. In a morally evil choice, the practical intellect presents the evil object under some aspect of apparent good. The drunkard’s intellect presents the immediate pleasure of drinking as the good to be pursued here and now; the unpleasant consequences are kept in the shadows, in the penumbra of inattention. The will follows this biased and perverse practical judgment and chooses what is, in reality, evil. But it chooses it under the aspect of good — as the good to do now. Moral evil is thus always traceable to a perverse practical judgment of the intellect, which the will (abdicating its role of controlling the direction of the intellect’s attention) has allowed or encouraged.
b) Existence of the Will
That man possesses a will is evident from the fact that man deliberates and chooses. We are all immediately conscious of the fact that we weigh alternatives and choose between them; that we can will or refuse; that some of our acts are free acts and others are not. This immediate consciousness is itself the basic proof of the will’s existence.
Further, the existence of the rational appetite follows necessarily from the existence of the intellect. The intellect grasps good in the abstract and in universal. Where there is knowledge of good, there is appetency or tendency towards good. A being that knows good in the abstract and in universal must have an appetency commensurate with its knowledge — an appetency for good in general, for good in universal. This is the rational appetite or will.
c) Acts of the Will
The acts of the will are divided into elicited acts and commanded acts.
Elicited acts are those which proceed immediately and directly from the will itself as their proximate principle. The chief elicited acts of the will are: wishing (velleity — the simple desire for something without deliberate commitment to seeking it); willing (the definite commitment to pursue a good); intending (the act of will by which the end is fixed upon as the goal of action); consenting (the will’s acceptance of the means available for the intended end); choosing (the election of the specific means to be employed); using (the will’s application of the relevant faculties to the execution of the choice); and enjoying (the will’s repose in the possession of the end attained).
Commanded acts are those which proceed from the will mediately — acts which the will commands other faculties to perform. Thus the will commands the intellect to consider a particular question; it commands the sentient appetite to moderate its passion; it commands the locomotive faculty to move the body in a particular direction; it commands the hands to take up a task. These commanded acts belong proximately to the faculties that execute them, but they belong to the will in the sense that the will is their ultimate motive source.
Summary of the Article
In this Article we have studied the nature of the will as rational appetency. We have used the term good in our definition as good in general, namely, that which is appetizable. We have learned that the object of will is the good, and have seen that, in last analysis, the object of will is the Summum Bonum or the supreme and infinite Good. We have explained how moral evil is chosen under the aspect of good by a perverse and blameworthy will. We have made a short proof of the existence of the will in man. Finally, we have listed the elicited and the commanded acts which proceed from the will.