Luke Morris
4/18/2004
Aquinas on the Will
Saint Thomas Aquinas has a lot to say about God, angels, creation, faith, grace, and the nature of reality. Taking his cue from Aristotle, St. Thomas develops a system that lays out the rational and divine order of the universe, setting reason and faith in their proper relation to metaphysics; and thus he gives man a vision for how to live his life. But what is man? In particular, what is it about man that makes him desire something, and what opens him up to moral judgment when he chooses one thing over another? This, Aquinas answers, is that part of the soul we call the will. The will is man’s appetitive faculty. It is through the will that we desire the good, through the will that we make our choices, through the will that we seek happiness and become morally responsible. This implies that the will is free, in that its choices are unconstrained; but in another sense, the will is unfree, in that it cannot choose but to pursue the good; either way, though, the will forms an integral part of what it is to be a man.
As Aquinas sees it, the soul, the mental and spiritual part of a man, contains two chief powers: the intellect and the will (Kenny 59). The will, though, is not a category of itself, since it arises in man as a subset of the appetitive faculty. In other words, will is a species of the soul, under the genus of appetite (Kretzmann 241). As the intellect is a specifically human power of knowing, the will is a specifically human power of wanting; and since rationality is what distinguishes the human species from other animals, then, the will is the intellective, or rational, appetite (240). Oxford scholar Sir Anthony Kenny describes the will, in Aquinas’s view, as “the power to have wants which only the intellect can frame” (Kenny 59). Through its association with the will, therefore, the intellect is volitional. Since the will is the intellectual appetite, we might describe its function as purely human wanting, the type of desire peculiar to language users (60).
Though will only exists in human subjects, appetite, in some sense, belongs to all existing things. There are three different “kinds” of appetite: the natural appetite, which relates to unconscious and invariable inclinations, such as we might attribute to the movements of inanimate things; the sensitive or animal appetite, which exists in all types of consciousness, and pursues those things its senses apprehend as good or desirable; and, of course, the rational appetite, the will (Copleston 185-86). The natural inclinations, however, are not exactly appetitive, since appetition refers to the soul’s ability to “tend towards objects of awareness” (Kenny 60). The appetitive power is not, in this sense, automatic. Appetite is really of only two kinds, then – the sensitive and the intellective. In animals, appetite follows instinct, and thus the sensitive appetite rules action; if an animal feels fear, it runs, and if it feels hunger, it eats. But in humans, “desire and fear may be the result of experience and inductive reasoning” (Kenny 65). In other words, while the appetite of the senses may incline us to feel a certain way, our acting or not acting upon that felt desire is under the influence of the intellective function of the soul, the will. Man’s sensory appetite is subject to the rule of his reason.
Still, though intellect and reason rule the appetites, the sensory appetite answers also to instinct, inductive generalization, imagination, and sensation. And when the soul’s knowledge and desires clash, a conflict arises between appetite and reason. This shows how man, with strong appetites and weak rational powers, can knowingly do wrong (Kenny 66). Yet of those beings possessing the natural, sensitive, and rational appetites, it is he with the more self-determined nature who is closer to God. Man, whose rational human nature is connected to the body but is not bound by any bodily organ, is closer to God in this way, and therefore he has an inclination that is not externally determined (Gilson 285-86). “The nature of the appetite is closely bound up with the degree of the knowledge from which it springs” (285). So, in spite of (or because of) its having the ability to knowingly sin, the human soul, the soul capable of knowing, willing, and desiring, is a superior form to any other in creation.
So how do the intellect and will rule over the sensory appetite of the soul? The will is the internally determined appetite that allows the agent to determine its own inclination towards an end; but to do this, the agent must know the end, and have some idea of how to attain it (Gilson 287). Hence, the intellect determines the movements of the sensory appetite. The “usefulness” and “harmfulness” of performing a particular act is determined by deliberating on the intellect’s general knowledge of usefulness and harmfulness. In this sense, the appetites are directed by reason, then controlled or moved by will – the sensitive appetites are an inferior force that can only act on the command of the superior. To move an agent to action, therefore, the sensitive appetite must engage the will (292). It is the intellectual appetite, not the senses, that moves towards the common notion of the good, and from which the sensory appetite desires particular goods (Basic Writings 784).
The question now arises as to whether the intellect or the will is the superior faculty of man. Aquinas answers that, as a faculty, intellect is superior to will, since the will only desires various concrete goods, while the intellect provides the soul with a general theory of goodness itself. Thus, the intellect gives the reason why the will should pursue certain goods (Kenny 71). So in an absolute sense, the intellect is a higher power than the will, since its object, the notion of the “appetible good,” is simpler and more absolute than the will’s object, the appetible good itself. As Aquinas says, “The more simple and the more abstract a thing is, the nobler and higher it is in itself” (BW 780). The notion of the good is therefore higher than the concrete good itself, and the intellect, in itself, is thus a higher power than the will. The intellect, then, guides the will in the direction of its choosing. The intellect apprehends universal being and truth, while the will merely desires good in general (Gilson 295); hence the intellect moves the intellective appetite, which then moves the agent to act. In choosing, man must have freedom of the intellective judgment first, before the will can move itself towards a desired object (Kretzmann 247). Choice itself results from intellective deliberating – the will carries out the intellect’s decision (Kretzmann 250). Man, as a self-moving being, requires the intellective faculty as his primary mover.
But while the intellect rules over the will in an absolute sense, the will can be a higher power than the intellect in a relative sense, when its object exists in something higher than the intellect’s object does (BW 781). In other words, the will can tend towards things that are either greater or lesser than the intellect. Some acts of the will, then, are greater than any act of the intellect could be – the love of God, for instance (Kenny 72). Aquinas says that “the love of God is better than the knowledge of God; but, on the contrary, the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the love of them” (BW 781). Before the will can desire an object, it must know that object, and in this sense the intellect drives the will. But at the same time, the operation of the intellect falls under the agent’s voluntary control, in that he can choose what to think about – and in this sense the will drives the intellect (Kenny 73). The presence of intellect in an agent, then, is a sufficient condition for the presence of will. Some connection with the will is necessary in preserving and fulfilling the intellect. The intellective substance of man’s soul must therefore be itself volitional (Kretzmann 243).
We can see here how the intellect and the will work together. One cannot function without the other. The intellect moves the will by its understanding of the good, which is its object, its end. But the will moves the intellect by relating to the universal end – “the good” in general – while the intellect relates only to particular ends, such as the knowledge of truth (BW 782). The intellect understands the good, and the will desires it, in a continuous back-and-forth interplay. “The intellect understands that the will wills, and the will wills the intellect to understand” (783). The two powers have distinct, but interconnecting, functions. To avoid an infinite regress, however, the process must have an absolute beginning – so the intellect precedes the will, for it must understand before the will can act. We may find the distinction in Aristotelian terms: good and evil, the objects of the will, exist in things; truth and error, the objects of the intellect, exist in the mind. Or, as Aquinas writes, “the act of the intellect consists in this – that the likeness of the thing understood is in the one who understands; while the act of the will consists in this – that the will is inclined to the thing itself as existing in itself” (781).
While it seems that the intellective act is logically prior to that of the will, it is nonetheless the will that moves all the other powers of the soul. The will does this by its inclination towards the end. The process begins when the sensitive appetite sets the will in motion; the will then moves towards what the intellect apprehends as good and fitting (Summa Theol. 17 - 69). Yet since the will’s object is the good in general, it sets into motion all the other significant powers of the soul (Gilson 297). So, in a sense, the will sets itself in motion, as well as the other powers, by the influence of its end. By willing the end, it brings itself from potentiality to actuality in willing objects for that end; “it moves itself to willing the objects which are on account of the end because it wills the end” (ST 17 – 71).
We see that the vital component of the power of the will lies in the agent’s intention towards an end. But intention in this sense is an act of reason – one’s intention purposes the moving of a thing towards a known end, and this moving is a mental function, a human act (ST 17 – 121). Intention, by definition, means tending towards another. This tendency belongs first to the agent, the mover, who begins the soul’s movement towards an end. And since the will moves all the other powers of the soul to an end, intention is really an act of the will (113). Of course, one can intend several things at once: a single final end, and many intermediate ends leading up to the final end (117). The will, the power of rational desire, moves towards both the end and the means to achieve it. But volition, the act of willing, only happens for an end, a “goodness for its own sake,” and one only wills means for the sake of the end (55-57). Then the end, the object of the will, determines, as a formal cause, the motion of the agent – which occurs through deliberation. So in that sense, the mind really does move the will (65). If we look at intention from the subject’s point of view, the will moves the soul; if we look at it from the point of view of the object, the intellect moves the will; intention towards the end, therefore, is a principle of both intellect and will.
The will thus must move itself naturally, from within, while the intellect provides the primary source of the object towards which the will tends. But what causes the will to move itself initially? According to Aquinas, if the will is at any time in a state of potentiality, then it cannot be its own efficient cause in bringing itself to act. And the will cannot always be in act, because it must be moved towards action by its object, its final cause, which the intellect perceives and presents to the will – though the will must move the intellect to do so. But no infinite regress of the interplay of will and intellect is possible. There must be some external cause that moves the first act of the will, so that the will may then move itself, along with all the other powers of the soul (Gilson 299-300). Of course, the object of the will moves it from outside, but the object cannot act as efficient cause. The will first moves itself by a process of deliberation, which comes as an effect of some original, exterior efficient cause (ST 17 – 73). This cause is God. God is the first mover of the will and the intellect. He is the ultimate efficient cause of man’s willing, because, through creation, He caused man’s rational soul to exist. For the same reason, God is the ultimate final cause of man’s willing, because the will naturally bears on the universal good (the highest of which is God) as its object (ST 81).
For Aquinas, as for Aristotle, everything in existence tends towards some natural goal; all action is teleological. Even inanimate things have tendencies. This presents the problem of how something inanimate could have a purpose in itself, since it alone can never act as efficient cause (Kenny 61) – the rock falls, it seems, because gravity pulls it down, not because it has the “goal” of hitting the ground. Nevertheless, Aquinas argues, everything exists and acts for a purpose, whether conscious or not. As University of Paris Professor Etienne Gilson writes, “In every thing there is an inclination or propensity to a particular form of behavior” (Gilson 185). This propensity is called “appetite,” and applies to the natural, animal, and rational appetites of various creatures. The notion of a necessary goal, a telos, is vital to Aquinas’s view of the will.
The goal of a human being is his final cause, the root of the agent’s intention. Aquinas holds that, “all human acts must be for the sake of an end” (ST 16 – 5). Indeed, a human act is what it is by reason of its end. The human act proceeds from the will, whose object is the end; the end is the origin and the destination of the act (13). And since a series of efficient or final causes cannot stretch to infinity, there must be an ultimate end, an intention to move the desire, and a first step to begin an action (17). An end in this sense is a good, and the ultimate end is the first good. Any human act begins and ends with the ultimate good, the object of the will; all human action has a starting and an ending point (19).
If the will always moves towards an end, though, does this mean it is constrained by necessity? Aquinas answers that there are several meanings of “necessity,” based on Aristotle’s four causes. In general, “that which must be is necessary” (Basic Writings 777). In particular, though, necessity may impose itself intrinsically or extrinsically, depending on the nature of the agent and the act. Of the intrinsic causes, the material cause is necessarily corruptible, as it is composed of contraries, while the formal cause, by enforming the matter, entails natural and absolute necessity. Of the extrinsic causes of necessity, the agent himself serves as the efficient cause, while the end desired is the final cause (BW 777). Or we can simplify the necessity of an act of will by comparing it to that of the simpler appetite, as Anthony Kenny does: “What is perceived by sense necessarily arouses the sensory appetite, therefore what is grasped by the intellect necessarily brings the intellectual appetite into operation” (Kenny 71).
The will necessarily acts when caused to do so. But is the nature of the act, or the thing willed, likewise subject to necessity? In some sense it is. This is because all choices of the will involve desire for the good, naturally and necessarily. This much is not open to free choice: a man must desire the good (Copleston 186). In other words, “the freedom of our will is essentially a freedom of choice; and choice is essentially concerned with means, not ends . . . Hence the pursuit of an ultimate end is not one of the activities over which human beings are sovereign” (Kenny 67-8). What a being has, by virtue of the needs of its nature, necessarily forms the principle of the rest of its properties and actions. The will, therefore, necessarily wills the good as its first principle (Gilson 293). As St. Thomas says, “Willing is rational appetition, and there is no appetition except for a good, because appetition is nothing other than a certain bent towards a thing that is wanted” (ST 17 – 51).
So what is this good, the end that the will is constrained to pursue? Does Aquinas mean that there is only one particular thing that a man can desire? That would be absurd. However, what he actually is arguing comes across as quite rational: man can desire any number of particular ends, but he can only desire one ultimate end, since only one end can fulfill his whole desire. He desires lesser ends as the means to attaining this ultimate end. The genus of the ultimate end is a final cause for all voluntary actions of the will’s desire towards different species of ends (ST 16 – 21-3). To put it another way, “all a man’s desires are on account of his love for the ultimate end . . . whatever a man desires is because of its evidence of good. If not desired as the perfect good, that is, the ultimate end, then it is desired as tending to that” (23). The will can will the end, in fact, without willing the means at all, but it cannot will the means without willing the end (ST 17 – 59). Etienne Gilson describes it thus: “What confers on the will its proper degree of perfection is the fact that its first and main object is the desirable and good as such; particular beings can become the objects of the will only to the extent of their participating in the universal reason of good” (Gilson 292).
Aquinas obviously does not mean that, since the will necessarily desires the good, we must always choose morally good actions. On the other hand, if all he means is that one’s will necessarily chooses to pursue something positive for the agent – that we “desire the desirable” – then the constraint of necessity on the will seems tautological. It looks like St. Thomas wants more than this, though. His theory rather implies that the will necessarily chooses from the desire to improve and perfect our human nature (Copleston 192). In other words, the ultimate end, the first and final good, is the same for all men: happiness. All particular ends the will seeks serve this universal end. Or, as philosophy historian Frederick Copleston puts it, “In every particular choice the object is chosen because it contributes to or is though of as contributing to the supreme good for man, the possession of which is happiness” (187). But why must the will move towards happiness? What is it about happiness, or eudemonia, or beatitude, that draws man’s will irresistibly towards it? The answer, it seems, is self-evident: that “all desire their complete fulfillment” (ST 16 – 27). The act of the will is determined by the particular object that drives the intellect to think of beatitude. The will cannot therefore will the contrary (Gilson 301). Aquinas himself states, “the will must of necessity adhere to the last end, which is happiness . . . for what befits a thing naturally and immovably must be the root and principle of all else pertaining thereto” (BW 778). The will is bound by natural necessity – it must seek particular goods on the criterion of what is best according to the nature of the agent.
Happiness involves the fulfillment of man’s ultimate desire. The end that one seeks is one he sees to be good “as meeting or fulfilling some need of human nature or as actualizing and perfecting some potentiality of human nature” (Copleston 186). Again, Aquinas adopts an Aristotelian model of causality – human action involves bringing to actuality our natural potency. Objectively speaking, one possesses beatitude when he actualizes his potential as a human being, thereby satisfying his ultimate needs. From the subject’s point of view, on the other hand, happiness involves actively enjoying having that which gives him happiness (187). This attainment depends, of course, on the interplay of intellect and will. A bent, or a tendency, of intellective appetition follows from the form of the object within one’s knowledge. Therefore, “the object to which the will tends is not necessarily good for it . . . it is enough that it is apprehended as good” (ST 17 – 53). The appetite necessarily desires the good of the being, which includes his self-preservation and self-fulfillment. In the case of human self-preservation and self-fulfillment, then, the appetite desires goods that only the intellect can discover. Philosopher Norman Kretzmann explains that “a thing’s goodness is its capacity to elicit appetite, to operate as a final cause. And in a being that has cognition . . . the being’s cognition of something as good for itself . . . will elicit appetite for that, activating the being’s innate inclination and approval of its own preservation and fulfillment” (Kretzmann 242). The appetite seeks the good by virtue of its inclination towards its own being and substance. Among the goods the will desires, “A thing is good of its kind to the extent to which it is in being as a thing of that kind” (241). And since true happiness means actively possessing the ultimate end, man achieves this by connecting with that which has the highest degree of rational being; that is, by knowing and loving God (ST 16 – 29).
Although the will necessarily desires happiness as its ultimate end, it does not will everything it wills of necessity. In fact, some goods to which the will adheres have no necessary connection with happiness; thus, the will does not bend towards them of necessity, as man can still be happy without them (BW 779). Aquinas sets up a parallel here between the intellect and the will: “Just as only necessary truths constrain the intellect, so only necessary goods constrain the will. Truths are necessary by formal necessity . . . goods are necessary by the necessity of the final cause” (Kenny 69). Thus, while we always seek the good in general, we are not bound by necessity to will any particular good. Necessity only binds us to desire those things that we see as good (Copleston 188). No singular good can exhaust the power of the will, since that power extends to the willing of the universal good. Rather, while “whatever follows from necessary truths is itself necessary,” as Kenny writes, “it is not the case that whatever leads to a necessary end is itself necessary” (Kenny 70). So even if man’s will is constrained to seek happiness, it does not follow that we need any particular thing to reach that goal. Though the will’s essence is to desire the universal good, in reality it constantly confronts particular goods that do not satisfy that ultimate desire. These goods, therefore, do not compel the will; the will is free to choose them or not (Gilson 306). The will is directed towards certain extramental goods, such as virtue and scientific knowledge, but “it is directed towards them as answering to some universal description” (Kenny 62).
If the intellect does not see a particular good as suitable, that good will not move the will. In other words, man must intellectually apprehend the thing as good in order to will it. But he cannot just apprehend it as good and suitable in a general way; the good must be suitable when applied to a particular case to move the will. And only beatitude, the highest happiness, fulfills this criterion in all cases (Gilson 300). The fount of beatitude, of course, is God. The intellect, though, does not necessarily know this. The will, therefore, does not of necessity adhere to God, until the intellect apprehends God in His essence and the will is drawn necessarily towards Him (BW 779). Since we cannot see the divine essence, our will necessarily wills beatitude without necessarily willing its source. Except for “the good” in general, then, the will wills nothing particular, not even God, of necessity (Gilson 295).
The will might have several reasons for preferring a certain good to another. For one, an act of reason could show that one object exceeds others in excellence. Or, in accordance with its accidental placement, the intellect could look at one aspect of a good and not another. Finally, the preference might depend on the subject’s disposition. His natural disposition, that which disposes him towards such things as food and shelter, arises from natural necessity. But as far as his contingent disposition goes, his will can choose to act for or against the good towards which he is disposed (Gilson 301-02). The object of the will, in this case, affects the specification of the act – it determines the quality of the act itself. But the will is not subject to any necessity regarding its own performance of the act – it need not will any one thing at all. In other words, “the will is always free to will or not to will any object” (302-03).
Now we get to the most important function of the will – the moral life of man, or his ability to choose. Why does the will change, or move from potentiality to act, in light of a desired object? We have seen above that such a particular desire cannot spring from necessity. Indeed, Aquinas claims that the idea that the human will is changed of necessity is heretical, since it knocks out the foundation of moral responsibility. It is an aberrant notion – if we do not have freedom of the will, we can have no moral praise or blame (Introductory Readings 161). Free choice is implied by the very idea of a rational agent. “If humans were not free in their decisions,” Kenny writes, “there would be no point in advice, encouragement, commands and prohibitions, rewards and punishments” (Kenny 76). Man’s intellective power, then, presupposes the ability to freely choose from deliberation. As Aquinas states, “Man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought . . . and in that man is rational, it is necessary that he have free choice” (BW 787).
Man’s rational acts are voluntary – his rational power guides his free choice. His motion comes entirely from within when he moves towards an end with knowledge of that end. Since voluntary action entails self-motion towards a purpose, and those things that know their ends move themselves, human acts are voluntary acts (ST 17 – 7-9). Humans can act on free choice because, when facing several possibilities, they can evaluate each option practically and judge the reasons for choosing either. This distinguishes men from animals, who act on judgment, but not freely, since they cannot rationally weigh their options. Free decision, then, depends on practical, not theoretical, reason, which demonstrates the contingency (the lack of necessity) of each step towards a final end. The will is a rational appetite that moves from the practical reason (Kenny 76). Reason, by reflection, can command its own acts. It cannot control its perception, but it can command its exercise – that is, it controls its decision on whether or not to commit to what it perceives (ST 17 – 197). As Norman Kretzmann puts it, “only cognitive created things can be free in any sense, and all cognitive created things are free in some sense” (Kretzmann 248). Man’s cognitive ability enables and necessitates his free judgment, over and above the instinctive judgment of animals.
With this connection between the intellect and free choice, there must be some distinction between free choice and the will. According to Aquinas, the will is a faculty, while choice is an action. We are free to choose by nature – freedom is not a disposition. Thus, the faculty of the will is that which makes free decision possible (Kenny 79). Free choice, then, is really an act of will: “as intellect is to reason, so will is to the elective power, which is free choice” (BW 792). Again we have a nice parallel: intellect and reason are parts of the same power, as will and free choice are parts of the same power. Will and free choice, then, are all one power, though “to will” refers to the simple appetite for the final end, which is desired in itself, while “to choose” or “to elect” involves the desire of something for the sake of another – the means to the final end. In the appetite, the end relates to the means as, in the intellect, first principles relate to the conclusion. The intellectual appetite, the combination of will and free choice in man’s soul, gives him the power of election; as in the intellect itself, the understanding accepts things as its first principles, and reason discerns one thing from another in its conclusions (BW 791-92). The act of free choice, as we can see, does not belong fully to either the will or the reason. Instead, “The act of choice is an act elicited by the will . . . under the command or judgment of reason” (Copleston 195). Free will is that part of the will which drives the act of choice. Judging between options is an act of reason, but the freedom to judge is an attribute of will. One wills the end, in wanting something for itself; then one chooses the means for the sake of that end. Willing and choosing are thus parts of the same faculty (Kenny 81). This is not to say that one cannot choose an end – one end may, after all, be chosen as a means to another – but they must be chosen as the intellect sees them leading to the final end of the will: happiness, the one thing not subject to choice (ST 17 – 131).
The power of free decision, then, is the power of the will: “a power to act or not to act and a power through which a being is in control of its actions” (Kretzmann 245). Free choice is the principle of the act of judging freely – it is the power, not the habit, to follow our empirical and intellective knowledge; it does not apply to our natural inclinations (BW 789). In fact, free decision can only be exercised where two or more particulars are present from which to choose, all of which relate to the universal standard (good) by which the intellect can judge (Kretzmann 249). One chooses the means as he sees it useful in reaching the end. As the end, the good, is the object of the appetite, election is an act of the appetitive power, which we designate “free choice.” We define election as the desire for what we can do or get, its object being the means to the final end; election as such is “the proper act of free choice” (BW 790). It consists of both cognitive and appetitive parts. The cognitive aspect of election involves taking counsel and making comparative judgments, while the appetitive aspect accepts the judgment of counsel and moves the will.
A person’s voluntary action comes from an actus elicitus, an inner act of the will – an actualization of his natural potentiality. This inner act is not an event of consciousness itself, but a state of mind, a volition, from which voluntary actions issue (Kenny 84-86). The action starts internally, with some knowledge of the end. This requires allowance for deliberation – man must be able to give reasons for his voluntary actions, which presupposes his possessing self-consciousness. Freedom of choice, again, is based on reason (82-83). But man does not exercise the act of choosing by necessity – that is, it is possible for him to choose or not to choose. He can will or not, and act or not, or he can will and act in one way or another, depending on what the reason apprehends as good. Choice, then, as it regards the means and the lesser ends that serve as means to the final end, is free in the absolute sense of the word (ST 17 – 139).
Exterior coercion therefore does not affect free choice, though it does affect the voluntarism of the act; coerced acts are not voluntary. As Aquinas says, “a thing is called voluntary because it is according to the inclination of the will” (BW 778). While the necessity of need, as self-imposed by the will, is not incompatible with voluntary action, coercion certainly is. “A coerced act is not something which has its origin in any tendency of the coerced agent’s will” (Kenny 67). Yet, again, this does not take away man’s power of free choice. If one is externally forced to do something, that does not mean that he chooses to do it. Aquinas states, “People who do what they do not want to do may not have freedom of action, but they have freedom of choice” (IR 169). Freedom, we see, is more than a lack of constraint – which is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of free action. Freedom means that the will is naturally unconstrained, and voluntary acts follow the will’s inclinations (Gilson 297-98). So how does the will change in its act of choosing the desired object? In one sense, the will brings change in itself, from the exercise of the act: “The will changes itself by means of deliberation; but deliberation is an inquiry which is not demonstrative. It can come out either way; so the will does not change itself of necessity” (IR 163). The distinction between willing and acting, an actus imperati, is the difference between command and execution. We see a metaphor in which the will issues commands, or volitions, for the man to carry out – a logical internal relation. Voluntary action is that commanded by the will (Kenny 87-88).
But free choice, as shown above, is in one sense an act of reason. We are free because we can choose to take one thing and reject another, which entails an understanding of the options involved. As Copleston puts it, “every act of free choice is preceded by a judgment of the reason” (Copleston 194). So free decision begins with deliberation – an act of the reason commanded by an act of the will (Kenny 87). While the end goal of the will, happiness, is not subject to free choice, one’s inclinations, dispositions, habits, and passions are all subject to the judgment of reason; we can decide to accept or reject them. Thus, all the particulars that make up a man’s character are susceptible to his free choice – he is morally responsible for them (BW 788). No characteristic of the individual takes away his freedom of choice. The intellect and will are independent of physical causes, since reason allows us to take certain courses of action regardless of physical inclinations. Therefore, though we can predict natural effects from natural causes, “voluntary effects cannot be predicted from voluntary causes” (Kenny 79). Neither can voluntary events be predicted by natural causes, because such consequent voluntary actions still fall under the sway of reason.
Free choice is in one sense an act of reason, and in another sense an act of will, depending on whether priority is viewed from the subject or from the object. So it probably makes more sense to describe free will as an attribute of both reason and will. Free will deals with human acts, of which man is the master. But if this is the case, man freely chooses only some of his actions, not all of them, since some actions, like breathing, he does not consciously master (Copleston 194). Still, for those actions to which the free will relates, reason and will work together in the act of choice. To begin with, “reason comes before will and directs its activity” (ST 17 – 125). Reason, through apprehension, presents to the will the object of its desire; but the will extends from the soul to the preferred good – thus, choice is an act of the will. If “Free choice is an act of the will resulting from a judgment of reason” (Copleston 196), this implies the ability of the soul to choose otherwise, depending on the result of deliberation. Man differs from animals in that he is the master of his actions. Thus, those actions which are called “human acts” are those under his control, that he, via his free choice, deliberately wills.
In an act of choice, reason moves the will, but the will also moves the reason. Aquinas says that, “among the powers of the soul the will is the prime mover . . . the fact that the reason sets an action in motion by its command derives from the power of the will” (ST 17 – 185). Intellective cognition entails an active will, which entails a control over one’s actions, which entails an intellective judgment or decision on various possible courses of action (Kretzmann 245-46). So, if we look at the action from its object, the change in the will moves from the intellect, as the good the intellect thinks of changes the will’s focus. But if we view the change from the exercise of the activity itself, the change originates in the will, which moves the intellect to think of the object. From the objective standpoint, the object is a “fitting good” that changes the individual will; and if it is good in regard to all the individuals to whom it is applied, it changes the will of necessity – an inborn desire for life, for instance (IR 163-64). The will follows from the form that thought grasps, and the action follows the will. The will, then, is changed by the intellect, after which it drives the action (162). Action that comes from this process is free action. As Copleston says, “the word ‘free’ is properly applied only to acts which proceed from the reason and the will” (Copleston 193).
Free acts, though, are not causeless – they do not come from an arbitrary operation of intellect and will, but from an ordered combination of internal and external, efficient and final causes. The most important principle in the change of the will involves the telos, the final cause: “every free act is done for an end, in accordance with a judgment of the reason” (Copleston 198). This end is the first originating principle of change, as it relates to the exercise of an activity. As Aquinas says, “the object of the intellect is the originating principle in the category of formal cause, since this object is the existent and the true. The object of the will, on the other hand, is the first originating principle in the category of final cause, since the object of the will is the good” (IR 162). The existent truth is the formal cause, the end is the final cause, and the agent himself is an efficient cause of the free action – though he is not the only such cause. God also plays a role, as both the ultimate final cause (in whom true beatitude is found) and as the initial cause who determines the agent to act (Kenny 77-78). The first cause of man’s free action, therefore, is its final cause. The efficient cause of his will’s internal efficacy does not begin unless it is moving towards an end. Whereas non-rational things approach their ends naturally, intelligent beings move themselves towards their end by their own free choice; thus it is proper for rational beings to move themselves (ST 16 – 7-9).
True freedom of the will is positive freedom – it requires that the agent be the source of his own action, a self-mover, not one caused to move by something external. “A being is free in respect of its acting only if it is the cause of its own acting” (Kretzmann 247). The intellect and the will form the internal originating principle of a human being’s action (IR 161). A man’s choosing is its own efficient cause, as well as the initial efficient cause of the rest of his actions. As St. Thomas writes, “Free choice is the cause of its own movement, because by his free choice man moves himself to act” (BW 787). Yet, to avoid an infinite regress of efficient causes, (which is impossible, particularly in the finite life of a single human being), the will must be initially changed towards wanting something by an external, first efficient cause. This first cause, of course, is God. God, from the exercise of the act, initiates change in the will – not of necessity, but contingent upon man’s free choice (IR 164).
Aquinas’s theory of the will, while complex, is fundamentally important to our conception of morality. To have any importance in human life, to be more than a power of random, arbitrary motion, the will must desire something necessarily, an ultimate end, a purpose towards which the will should move. This purpose is happiness. Happiness, eudemonia, beatitude, self-fulfillment, the actualization of human nature, is the ultimate goal of the moral life. To achieve this end, though, the will must be free of constraint to any particular good, until the intellect clearly apprehends the divine essence and draws the will irresistibly towards it. Free choice, a power of the intellect and the will, enables man to live a moral life. If a man is free to do good, he must be free to do evil; otherwise he obtains no moral credit for doing good. If a man acts entirely of necessity, he cannot be held responsible for his action. But if his actions are driven by his will towards particular goods, which his intellect apprehends as partaking in the ultimate good, he can choose from many such goods without the constraint of necessity. Thus, by his power of free choice, man becomes a moral agent, subject to moral responsibility.
Works Cited
Aquinas, St. Thomas. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. I. Ed. Anton C. Regis. Random House, New York 1945.
The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas: Introductory Readings. Ed. Christopher Martin. Routledge, New York 1988.
Summa Theologica, V. 16: Purpose and Happiness. Trans. Thomas Gilby O.P. McGraw-Hill, New York 1970.
Summa Theologica, V. 17: Psychology of Human Acts. Trans. Thomas Gilby O. P. McGraw-Hill, New York 1970.
Copleston, Frederick. Thomas Aquinas. Barnes & Noble Books, New York, 1976.
Gilson, Etienne. The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Trans. Edward Bullough. Ed. Rev. G.A. Elrington. Ayer Company, Salem, New Hampshire 1989.
Kenny, Anthony. Aquinas on Mind. Routledge, New York 1993.
Kretzmann, Norman. The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles II. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1999.