Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Truth (De Veritate)

1. Whatever is predicated of something essentially should not be put in its definition obliquely, as animal is not put obliquely in the definition of man. But reason and will are placed in the definition of free choice obliquely, for it is said to be "a capability of will and reason." Free choice is therefore not reason or will but a power other than either.

2. The differences of powers are known from the differences of acts. But to choose, which is the act of free choice, is other than to will, which is the act of the will, as the Philosopher makes clear. Hence free choice is a power other than the will.

3. In the term free choice, choice is expressed in the abstract and freedom in the concrete. Now choice or decision belongs to reason; freedom, to the will. What belongs to reason, then, pertains to free choice essentially; but what belongs to the will pertains to it denominatively and accidentally. Thus free choice seems to be reason rather than will.

4. According to Damascene and Gregory of Nyssa we are free in our choice because we are rational. But we are rational because we have reason. Because we have reason, then, we are free in our choice; and so it seems that free choice is reason.

5. In accordance with the order among habits there is also an order among powers. But the act of faith, which is a habit of reason, is informed by charity, which is a habit of the will. An act of reason is accordingly informed by the will, and not the other way about. Thus, if the act of free choice belongs to one of two powers, the will and reason, to one as eliciting and to the other as informing, it seems that it belongs to reason as eliciting it. And so free choice is essentially reason, and therefore a power other than the will.

To the Contrary:

1'. Damascene says: "Free choice is nothing but the will."

2'. The Philosopher says that choosing is appetence for what has been previously deliberated. But choosing is the act of free choice. Free choice is therefore the appetitive power. But it is not the lower appetite, which is divided into the irascible and the concupiscible; for then brutes would have free choice. It is therefore the higher appetite, and according to the Philosopher this is the will.

REPLY:

Some say that free choice is a third power distinct from will and reason, because they see that the act of free choice, which is to choose, is different both from that of the will by itself and from that of reason. The act of reason consists in mere knowledge. The act of the will is concerned with a good which is an end. But free choice deals with a good which is a means to an end. Just as a good which is a means to an end lies outside the nature of an end, and appetite is outside of knowledge, they say that in a natural order will proceeds from reason, and from these two a third power, free choice, proceeds.

But this cannot consistently stand. The object and that which constitutes the formality under which the object is attained belong to the same power, as color and light belong to sight. Now the whole formality of the appetibility of a means as such is the end. It is consequently impossible that it should belong to distinct powers to tend to the end and to tend to the means. Nor can this difference, that the end is sought absolutely and the means relatively, bring about a distinction of appetitive powers; for the reference of one thing to another is not in appetite of itself but because of something else, namely, reason, whose function it is to refer and compare. This can therefore not be a specific difference constituting a distinct species of appetite.

Whether to choose is an act of reason or of will, however, the Philosopher seems to leave in doubt in the sixth book of the Ethics; but he supposes that it is somehow a function of the two, saying that choice is either an understanding on the part of the appetitive power or an appetite on the part of the intellective. That it is an act of appetite, however, he says in the third book, defining choice as a desire of what has been previously deliberated.

That this is true its very object makes clear. For, just as the pleasurable and the honorable good, which have the formality of an end, are the object of the appetitive power, so too is the useful good, to which choice properly applies.

It is clear also from the name. For free choice, as has been said, is the power by which man can freely judge. Now whatever is said to be the principle of performing an act in a determined way need not be the principle of that act taken without qualification, but it is designated chiefly as the principle of that particular manner of acting. Grammar, for example, when called the science of correct speech, is not taken to be the principle of speech in an unqualified sense, because man can speak even without grammar; but it is taken as the principle of correctness in speech. In the same way the power by which we freely judge is not taken to be that by which we judge without further qualification, for that is the function of reason; but it is taken as the power which accounts for our freedom in judging, and this belongs to the will.

Free choice is therefore the will. The term does not designate the will absolutely, however, but with reference to one of its acts, to choose.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. Free choice does not refer to the will absolutely but in subordination to reason. To signify this, will and reason are put in the definition of free choice obliquely.

2. Although choosing is a different act from willing, that difference cannot bring about a distinction of powers.

3. Though judgment is a function of reason, the freedom of judging belongs immediately to the will.

4. We are called rational not merely from the power of reason, but from the rational soul, of which the will also is a power. In this sense we are said to have free choice inasmuch as we are rational. If rational were taken from the power of reason, however, the passages cited in authority would mean that reason is the primary source of free choice but not the immediate principle of choosing.

5. The will in some sense moves reason by commanding its act; and reason moves the will by proposing to it its object, which is the end. Thus it is that either power can in some way be informed by the other.