Chapter 9
The Metaphysical Question of Freedom
636. Having spoken about the spontaneous operation of the human will, we must now return to consider its freedom. The first problem is posed by the great metaphysical question: `How can freedom be reconciled with the principle of causality?' The exceptional difficulty of the question, which cannot be gainsaid, must not deter us in any way from affirming the fact of freedom. As we said, freedom is a fact attested by internal observation and by our inmost sense which we cannot and must not deny whatever marvels and wonders it places before us. Indeed, the most extraordinary thing of all would be for it to deceive us. We have constantly proclaimed: `The faith that we must give to facts depends upon their being adequately verified, and is altogether independent of our ability to explain them.' This affirmation is valid for thinkers and non-thinkers, and enables us to maintain rightly that no difficulty brought against the existence of human freedom has the power to diminish our persuasion of its reality. Nevertheless, without prejudice to this persuasion which has its foundation in the verification of the fact, we can lawfully investigate the explanation of the existence of freedom in relationship to the equally necessary and undeniable principle of causality which seems irreconcilable with the principle of freedom.
637. Philosophers have elaborated three principal systems to escape from the maze in which the noblest intellects have been lost.
1st. Some maintained that human freedom depended upon making a choice without a sufficient reason. This is summed up in the common phrase: the will takes the place of reason. This provides a strong defence of freedom, but little protection to causality.
2nd. Others, including Leibniz, maintained firmly that freedom always favoured the side of the prevailing reason. Here, the principle of causality, or at least of reason, is undoubtedly saved, but at the cost of defeat for true bilateral freedom.
3rd. German critical philosophy appeared while philosophy was divided between these two camps, to which it offered itself as arbitrator and conciliator. It said that both parties were right. However, the former had to accept that the principle of causality was necessary and undeniable; the latter, that freedom was only freedom on condition that it was conceived as acting independently of the principle of causality. This school justified its decision by maintaining that all things were divided into two great orders, phenonema and noumena. The first are things in so far as they appear externally to the senses; the second, things in so far as they subsist internally in accordance with what reason posits about their internal subsistence. In the phenomenal order the principle of cause governs and rules everything; this is not the case in the non-apparent noumenal order which is produced for us by reason, and is governed by other laws, one of which is freedom. In other words, German critical philosophy maintains that the defenders of the principle of causality are right because they consider things in the phenomenal order, and that the defenders of freedom are right because they consider things in the noumenal order. But what is the relationship between these two orders? The critical school replies to this anguished question of both sides by saying that the two orders both emanate from the forms, or intimate laws, of the human spirit. This spirit, as feeling, makes up the phenomenal order; as reason, it produces the noumenal order. The two orders depend on the subjective laws of the spirit which must give credence both to exterior nature, to which the spirit itself gives extension through its own activity, and to freedom, to which the spirit attributes activity without any cause.
638. The novelty and obscurity of this language took the contending parties by surprise. But after their first shocked and thoughtful silence, they asked themselves about the final conclusion of this new self-proclaimed authority in the field of philosophy against which it seemed sententious to argue. If both sides were said to be right, it was more likely that both were wrong. In other words, both were being mocked. German critical philosophy maintained that phenomena and noumena, that is, freedom and the principle of cause, were equally the product of the human spirit from which they emanated and from which they demanded credence. There is no longer any absolute, objective truth, but simply credence given to blind, fatal fact. And the new critical philosophy found itself in total darkness. One party to the original dispute had asserted that the principle of causality was something absolute and necessary, independently of the existence of any human spirit. It was true in itself and not relative to human beings who see it as true and necessary, but do not form it as such. All this was now denied, and the principle of causality whose existence had apparently been assured now revealed itself as a lying mockery.
The other party had understood freedom as something real, and human activity as truly independent of any necessitating cause. Freedom, however, now became a mere belief that the spirit could not relinquish because it must believe that what it does is moral. It was no longer necessary to know or to ask if the human spirit were truly free or not; indeed, being free was blatantly in contradiction with the principles of theoretic reason, one of which was causality. Again the reality of freedom has been granted in words, but denied in practice. A blind belief in freedom would be an absurdity in the presence of reason, and was certainly not the freedom under discussion.
Hence the kind of reconciliation offered by German critical philosophy is a travesty. Those who defend causality might go on to show that affirming the principle of cause as valid for one order of things but not another, would result in the destruction of the principle, which cannot be necessary unless it is universal. A single exception would annul all necessity. This is, in fact, the reason why upholders of the principle of causality deny that freedom can determine itself except on the basis of some preponderant reason. It is clear, therefore, that the solution to the problem of freedom offered by the critical school succeeds only in greater philosophical confusion. An apparently ingenious conclusion turns out to be the worst conclusion of all. It honours neither the principle of causality nor freedom, and in place of a public execution, garottes them privately. But what solution can be offered? Which side shall we take?
639. I think we should first examine carefully the nature of the act of freedom, and strip it of everything extraneous. It will be much easier to explain when it is viewed in its purity and simplicity without any adjuncts.
We are dealing, therefore, with that act of choice in which the human being, having a subjective good on one side and an absolute, objective good on the other, chooses one in preference to the other. Both kinds of good, however, when present to the spirit, are capable of arousing the spontaneity of the spirit itself, as we have said. If, therefore, only one of these two kinds of good were present, the spirit would undoubtedly act without contradicting the principle of cause simply because the known, opiniative good is a suitable cause for arousing spontaneity, and spontaneity is a suitable cause for action. This is true for both kinds of good. Whichever kind the will chooses, therefore, its volition always has a cause, or better, a reason. It depends upon the opiniative good present to the spirit, and upon the spontaneity aroused by this good. The act of volition does not lack a suitable reason; the problem lies in knowing how the spirit determines itself to one of the volitions rather than the other.
What happens is this. While the presence of only one of the two kinds of good is suitable for arousing the spontaneity of the human spirit (the good itself and the spontaneity together form a complete cause of the act), the presence of two or more of these kinds of good gives rise to their contemporaneous action in the unity of the spirit where they arouse a new spontaneity different from that aroused by each of the two kinds of good on its own account. This third spontaneity is that of choice; it is the spontaneity that moves the human being to form a choice.
We have to distinguish that which moves a person to make a choice from the act of choice itself. Although the human being is moved spontaneously to choose, this spontaneity does not determine the way in which he must choose. As we said, the spontaneity moving a person towards a choice is different from the act itself of choice which in its most simple state is still made up of choice alone without volition. It is this act of choice which determines one of the possible volitions, and which therefore must precede them all. Just as each power has its own proper act, so the act of that faculty which can choose between possible volitions is uniquely and essentially the act of determining between these volitions. This act, therefore, does not lack a cause: its cause is a special activity of the spirit, aroused to operation by the presence of several different kinds of opiniative good.
640. It may be objected that such an act of choice, which can be made in one of two ways, requires a determining cause. But the objector would show a lack of understanding of our distinction between volition, and the choice that first precedes volition. When we say that this act can be done in one way or another, we are speaking about volition and not about the first choice; an act that can be done in one of two ways is different from the act that determines one way or another. The determining act is superior to both ways; it is that in which the pure choice itself essentially consists; it is a proper, essential act of the faculty of choice just as volition is the proper act of the faculty of volition, and vegetating is the proper act of the vegetating faculty.
Freedom essentially resides in this supremely pure act of choice by which the volition is determined, and as such does not in any way offend the principle of cause. It is in this act, therefore, that is, through the nature itself of this act and through the nature of the faculty to which it appertains, that we behold the spirit as essentially lord, ruler and cause.
641. And this provides for full conciliation between freedom and causality.
But this kind of conciliation, and this way of conceiving freedom, is not new.
We take great comfort from finding ourselves in full agreement on this point
with the ancient traditions of wisdom and we are glad to be able to confirm all
that we have said by appealing to the most trustworthy authorities. First of
all, we find ways of speaking in the Bible, in ecclesiastical writers, amongst
philosophers and even in ordinary language which show that the distinction
between the faculty of determining volitions, and volitions
themselves, is a truth universally recognised and admitted.
Let us begin with the Bible, and consider the phrase used by St. Paul to describe a free human being. He calls him one `having power over his own will',(270) that is, over his own volitions. He expressly distinguishes, therefore, between the will, that is, the principle of the volitions, and the power that the human being has over it. This power of the human will can only be the power that the person has to turn one way or another and therefore to determine one or another of all the possible volitions. Freedom, according to St. Paul, consists in the power that a human being has to bend his will one way or another. This power is anterior to, and the cause of, the act of will.
642. We find a definition of the power of the will, or of free will, in the very early book Recognitiones, attributed to Pope St. Clement where it is called `a certain feeling of the soul which has the energy capable of directing it to those acts which it wishes'.(271) Here we see volition, the act with which the soul wills, clearly distinguished from the principle that determines it to one or other of these acts of will. In the same way, St. Justin calls the faculty of choice between volitions `a force or power to turn oneself one way or another'.(272)
The same truth is shown by the inability of authors to be satisfied in speaking without qualification of the will, or judgment directed by the will. They consistently add that the human being has dominion over this will or judgment directed by the will, or that the judgment directed by the will is free,(273) or something similar, which clearly shows that the faculty of volition is different from the faculty by which we determine ourselves to one or other of the volitions. Freedom truly consists, as we said, in this second faculty. Here we find mastery of self which enables a human being to rule and as it were to possess himself.
643. Some writers have also noted the fleeting nature of the instant in which human beings abandon their hesitation in order to make a decision. Cyril of Alexandria says: `Humankind, which is both its own master, and free and in possession of its own will, moves in an instant to do what it wishes for good or for evil.'(274)
The distinction between determination of the will and volition itself, which is my starting point towards a solution of the metaphysical problem of freedom, is not new, therefore, but constant amongst those who have reflected on the matter, and is moreover supported by common sense.
Notes
(270) 1 Cor 7: [21 (Douai)]
(271) In bk. 3 of Recog. these words are attributed to St. Peter.
(272) `No created thing would be worthy of praise unless it had been given the power of directing itself towards something other than itself' (Oratio ad Gent.).
(273) `The free power of the will' (Ter. De Anima, 21); `In my opinion human beings have been made by God free in their will and in their power to act' (Ter. Adversus Marcionem, bk. 2, 5); `All freedom over the will has been given him in both directions so that he may consistently remain master of himself by spontaneously doing good and avoiding evil' (Ter., ibid., 2, 6); `Freedom of will has been posited in the will of the one who wills' (Arnob. Adv. Gentes, bk. 2); `Although he left us freedom of will to merit goodness' (Hil. in Ps 2); `It is indeed in the power of our free will to take the form a person wishes' (St. Greg. of Nyssa in Cant., Hom. 4); `God constituted human beings masters of their free decision and of their will' (Theodor. Ancyr. Hom. in Natal. Salvat.)); `Freedom of the will remains intact in mortal beings' (Boet. De Cons. Philos., bk. 5, pr. 6).
(274) Contra Julian., bk. 8.