The Freedom of the Will

a) The Meaning of Freedom — b) Kinds of Freedom — c) Human Freedom

a) The Meaning of Freedom

Taken in widest meaning, freedom or liberty is a kind of undeterminedness, an immunity from necessitation or obligation. Obligation is that which determines a thing to be as it is and not otherwise. A thing so obligated or necessitated depends upon the obligating force. Hence the further a thing is removed from such dependency, the greater its degree of freedom. Therefore, the infinite God, who has no dependency on anything else whatever, has absolute and perfect freedom. Creatures, however, are dependent upon the causes which produce and conserve them and make and keep them what they are essentially; they depend also, in some sense, upon the laws and obligations which flow from their own nature. Hence creatures cannot have absolute freedom; but they may have degrees of freedom from various kinds of obligation and necessitation.

b) Kinds of Freedom

Freedom is of several kinds. Three are especially relevant:

Freedom of contradiction is the power of a being to act or not to act — to exercise an operation or to refrain from it. This is sometimes called freedom of exercise.

Freedom of contrariety is the power of a being to do one thing or its contrary — to act in one way or the opposite way.

Freedom of specification is the power to choose among essentially different acts or objects — to choose this or that, among alternatives that are not mere contraries.

c) Human Freedom

Human freedom, or free will (liberum arbitrium — free judgment or free choice), is freedom of exercise (the power to will or not will) and freedom of specification (the power to choose this or that). It is the power of self-determination in deliberate choice.

Four proofs establish the existence of human freedom:

1. Immediate consciousness. We are directly and immediately aware of our freedom in deliberate acts. When we choose, we are conscious that we could have chosen otherwise. This immediate testimony of consciousness is the most fundamental evidence for free will.

2. The fact of deliberation. We deliberate — we weigh alternatives before choosing. But deliberation is meaningless unless the will is genuinely free: if the choice were already determined before deliberation began, deliberation would be a mere charade. The fact that we deliberate is itself evidence that the issue is genuinely open — that we can go either way.

3. The nature of the will’s object. The will is necessitated only by what completely satisfies it — by infinite Good. All finite goods, however great, leave the will undetermined: the intellect can always see some aspect in which they fall short of the complete and unlimited good. Hence, in the presence of any finite good — any particular course of action, any created object — the will retains its freedom to will or to refuse.

4. The absurdities of determinism. Denial of free will leads to impossibilities and absurdities. If the will is not free, there is no such thing as moral responsibility: men cannot be praised or blamed for what they cannot help. There is no such thing as merit or demerit. Law and punishment are meaningless. Education aimed at forming character is a futile gesture. Human dignity — the dignity of a being that freely chooses to do right — is an illusion. The whole fabric of human civilization, with its laws, its ethics, its ideals of virtue and reproach of vice, is built upon the assumption of free will; and if that assumption were false, the entire fabric collapses. The internal coherence of human life as we live it is itself a massive confirmation of free will.

Determinism — the doctrine that the will is not free, that every act is necessarily determined by prior causes — has been maintained in several forms.

Mechanical determinism holds that all human acts are determined by the inexorable laws of matter and motion, as the movements of a machine are determined by its construction and the forces applied to it. But this ignores the essential difference between a human being and a machine, and denies the evidence of consciousness.

Biological determinism holds that human acts are determined by heredity and physiological constitution. But heredity and physiology, while they influence the conditions under which the will operates, do not destroy the will’s power of self-determination; they are factors in the situation which the free will confronts and deals with.

Psychological determinism holds that the strongest motive always and necessarily determines the will. But this begs the question: a motive is “strongest” only if the will has chosen to attend to it and magnify it above the others; the will’s freedom is already at work in the very process of deliberation.

Theological determinism (the position that divine foreknowledge or predestination is incompatible with free will) misunderstands the nature of divine knowledge. God knows our free acts with certitude, but He knows them as free — He knows the free choice that we shall freely make. His knowledge does not compel our acts any more than a spectator’s foreknowledge of the winner of a race (if he could have such foreknowledge) would compel the winner to run as he runs. Divine foreknowledge is knowledge of the free act precisely as free; it does not necessitate what it foresees.

Appendix

The reconciliation of human freedom with divine foreknowledge has perplexed many sincere minds. Let us state the problem clearly and indicate the direction of its solution.

The problem: God knows infallibly and with absolute certainty every act that any creature will ever perform. But if God knows infallibly what I shall do tomorrow, it seems that I cannot do otherwise. And if I cannot do otherwise, my act is not free.

The solution: God’s knowledge is not like human knowledge, which follows upon its objects and is conditioned by them in time. God’s knowledge is eternal — outside of time altogether. God does not fore-know our acts, in the sense of knowing them before they happen, as one might know the result of a race by reading the newspaper report in advance. God knows all things in His one eternal present — He sees our free acts as they are actually performed, in His eternal now. His knowledge no more compels our free acts than the eyes of a spectator compel the movements of the runners he watches.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have studied the meaning of freedom or liberty. We have classified freedom and have seen that human freedom is freedom of exercise and freedom of specification. We have proved human freedom by four arguments: from consciousness, from deliberation, from the nature of the will’s object, and from the absurdity of determinism. We have examined the main forms of determinism and found them inadequate. We have added an appendix on the reconciliation of human freedom with divine foreknowledge.