Freedom

FREEDOM. - In general it is the independence that man claims for his actions, whether in relation to the forces of nature (rational liberty in the broad sense), or in relation to society (social and political liberty), or in relation to God (theological or religious liberty). In this sense the problem of liberty expresses the most original core of human consciousness and the most intimate reason for its spiritual development, and as such it has been denied only by atomistic and Enlightenment materialism and by scientific positivism, which do not admit an ontological superiority of man over nature: with this these doctrines, like Marxist dialectical materialism, must renounce philosophy itself, which is absorbed into the "science of nature" (Engels). Liberty is therefore at one and the same time revelatory and constitutive of the essence of philosophy, and at the same time it forms its most arduous task, inasmuch as liberty posits and presupposes the threefold orientation of human consciousness toward the being of the world, toward man in himself, and toward God, and finally inasmuch as it presupposes a definitive perspective or decision of man's being regarding his destiny.

The conviction of the existence of liberty is "attested" by the development of human institutions and civilizations, in which man has variously shaped his life; by the existence of social laws, which presuppose "individual responsibility" together with the possibility of fulfilling it in the face of what is presented as "duty"; by the very consciousness of personal liberty that each person has in reflecting on his own acts. The liberty that is attested in this way is "phenomenological liberty" and constitutes the starting point of theoretical foundation: this must take into account, in its procedure, both the "subject" of liberty, which is man and more particularly the will, and the "object" of that same will. This metaphysical situation of liberty can be indicated in Thomist elaboration according to a "double dialectic": first, in the tension of subject-object in general of liberty itself, and then in the tension on the part of the subject, a secondary cause, in relation to the first Principle (human will-God); within the subject itself, between intellect and will; and in the tension within the sphere of the object itself (infinite Good-particular goods). It was only with Christianity, which clarified in a definitive way the transcendence of God, the personality of the individual man, and the necessity of individual salvation and redemption in order to correspond to divine Grace, that the problem of liberty could be delineated in all its moments. The Thomist conception brings to unity the elements scattered in Greek thought and the attempts of the patristic age and of early Scholasticism. The metaphysical situation of liberty in the more mature doctrine of St. Thomas can be reduced to the following points: a) Relations between intellect and will. - The will (v.) is the rational appetite or inclination, and therefore presupposes the act of the intellect that presents the object to it: hence it must be said that "quantum ad determinationem (seu specificationem) actus qui est ex parte obiecti, intellectus movet voluntatem, sicut praesentans ei obiectum suum" (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 9, a. 1). Aristotle had specified this foundation of practical intellectualism, writing: ἐν τε λογιστικῷ γὰρ ἡ βούλησις γίνεται (De anima, III, 9, 432 b 5). But the will is the faculty that realizes the whole man insofar as it has as its object the "end" (the good and happiness), which is the first principle of all action; therefore in turn the will moves the intellect itself: "Voluntas movet intellectum quantum ad exercitium actus, quia et ipsum verum quod est perfectio intellectus continetur sub universali bono ut quoddam bonum particulare" (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 9, a. 1 ad 3). There is therefore a dynamic transcendence of the will over the intellect that breaks the circle of the intellectualist immanence of βούλησις: "Omnis actus voluntatis procedit ab aliquo actu intellectus: aliquis tamen actus voluntatis est prior quam aliquis actus intellectus; voluntas enim tendit in finalem actum intellectus qui est beatitudo" (ibid., q. 4, a. 4 ad 2a).

b) Relations between will and object. - As regards entering into action and moving the other powers (including the intellect), the will is always free, even when it is a question of God or of happiness itself: "Quantum ad exercitium actus voluntas a nullo obiecto de necessitate movetur" (ibid., q. 10, a. 2). But once the object has been presented and qualified, the will is free only with respect to particular goods, no longer with respect to the universal good, happiness (beatitudo), which is the ultimate and specifying end of the will itself (will as "nature"). Man can refrain from thinking directly of happiness, but if he does think of it he must necessarily love it: "Finis ultimus ex necessitate movet voluntatem quia est bonum perfectum" (ibid., q. 10, a. 2). On the other hand, every other good not necessarily connected with happiness, since it presents itself as a partial and relative good, is not necessarily willed (ibid.). It is true that the will will always and infallibly (and necessarily, say the Thomists) follow the last practical judgment (practico-practicum) of the intellect, but that this or that judgment be the last is the exclusive work of the will itself.

c) Relations between will and God. - The will in its own order, as a faculty that has as its object the end and happiness and moves all the other powers and the intellect itself, moves itself: "Quia voluntas domina est sui actus et in ipsa est velle et non velle; quod non esset si non haberet in potestate movere seipsam ad volendum" (ibid., q. 9, a. 3, sed contra). The will, as a finite principle that passes from potency to act, must first of all actualize itself in the tendency toward the end in order to be able to choose the means by itself; but it cannot actualize itself by itself, being, in the first moment as a creature, in potency to the end itself; therefore it must be said that in the first act the will is moved to the end by God himself: "Unde necesse est ponere quod in primum motum voluntatis voluntas producat ex instinctu alicuius superioris moventis ut Aristoteles concludit" (ibid., q. 9, a. 9; cf. Aristotle, Eth. Eud., VII, 14, 1248 a 24 ff.; ἄλλον δὲ ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὕλῳ θεός, καὶ πᾶν ἐκείνῳ, κινεῖ γὰρ πῶς πάντα τὰ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον). In the subsequent exercise of its liberty, in which the will moves itself, the will as a secondary cause is always moved by God, the first cause; both because the will belongs to the spiritual soul, which is created directly by God and therefore must also be directly moved by God, and because the object of the will is the universal good or perfect happiness, which is God himself (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 9, a. 6).

It can therefore be concluded that the will is always free "quoad exercitium actus", even with respect to the universal good and to God himself, because on earth they are known (and therefore present to consciousness) in an abstract or mediated way. The will is not free "quoad specificationem obiecti" with respect to its formal object, the universal good, which defines it and puts it in a condition to move itself; and the same is to be said of the means necessary to the end, once the end has been chosen (ibid., q. 9, a. 2 ad 3). Freedom, therefore, is not the supreme and fundamental activity of the spiritual life: in God the divine life is necessary, and only creation ad extra is free; the blessed who see the divine essence do not have the freedom not to see it, because otherwise they would no longer be in possession of beatitude; the will in general cannot fail to love the good that is proposed as such. Thus freedom has the task of actuating the person for his ultimate end. On the metaphysical structure of freedom, Thomism rejects not only determinism (v.) but also absolute indeterminism, inasmuch as in general God moves the will by applying it to the singular act (ibid., 1a, q. 105, a. 5), and the will, once it has chosen and the intellect has made its ultimate practical judgment, must follow this judgment and is no longer indifferent: only by modifying that same judgment can it change its choice. The other Catholic schools, especially Molinism (v.) and its derivatives, do not accept this rigorous metaphysical formulation and prefer the psychological and generic one of man's independence in the act of choice. Modern psychology of spiritualist inspiration has defended a "consciousness of freedom" (N. Ach, J. Lindworski, T. V. Moore, J. Geyser), but it is not easy to say whether it has grasped freedom in its genuine metaphysical meaning, and thus it seems that the psychological argument cannot stand in isolation (cf. De malo, q. 6, a. unico ad 18: "Potentia voluntatis ad opposita se habens cognoscitur a nobis, non quidem per hoc quod actus oppositi sint simul; sed quia successive sibi invicem succedunt ab eodem principio"; it is therefore a complex experience that presupposes at least a process of comparison of the various acts).

The problem of freedom is clarified only gradually in Western thought and presents itself in a definitive way only in Christian philosophy, as the responsibility of the individual before God for the choice of eternal life.

Greek thought always admitted a nucleus of individual responsibility and therefore of freedom, as far back as the Homeric poems, and then in the lyric poetry of Pindar and especially with Sophocles, who is called the "poet of character" (cf. especially the Antigone): Greek tragedy, even in Aeschylus, is not completely fatalistic, otherwise every ethical value would have been impossible and Aristotle could not have elaborated his doctrine of προαίρεσις, which develops the ἐγώσιον (the simply voluntary) as a property of the human being (Eth. Nic., III, 4-5, 1111 b 6 ff.). Even the Stoics, accused of fatalism, did not entirely exclude προαίρεσις, which figures alongside the necessitating principles of the cosmos (ἐνάγιον, εὐαφάγιον, αὐτάματον, τύχη; cf. Plutarch, Epit., I, 29; H. Diels, Dox. Gr., 2nd ed., Berlin 1929, p. 326 a 7. Freedom among the Stoics is defended by: M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa, I, Göttingen 1948, p. 104 ff.). There remains nevertheless the fact that the treatise Περὶ Εὐαφάγιον by Alexander of Aphrodisias (cf. ed. I. Bruns, in Suppl. Arist., II, II, Berlin 1892) is entirely a polemic against Stoic fatalism. On the other hand it is true that the Stoics preserve and develop the doctrine of "virtue both intellectual and moral", as Philo says (Leg. All., I, 17; ed. L. Cohn-P. Wendland, I, Berlin 1896, p. 75, 13 ff.). A demand for freedom appears in Epicurus himself, who with the introduction of the clinamen of the atoms seeks to escape the rigid determinism of Democritus and affirms that "it is better to believe in the gods than to be slaves of the fate of the natural philosophers" (Ep. ad Menoec., 134; ed. C. Diano, Epicuri Ethica, Florence 1946, p. 10). These contradictions constitute the deepest unease of the Greek soul in its effort to clarify the essence of man. Patristic and medieval philosophy proceeds gradually to the theoretical foundation of freedom by using the scattered elements of classical philosophy, and in it the explicit term liberum arbitrium appears. Nemesius and St. John Damascene, for example, follow Aristotle by preference, inasmuch as they found freedom on rationality, as St. Thomas will later do (cf. B. Switalski, Die Psychologie des Nemesius, Münster in W. 1900, p. 138 ff.; for St. John Damascene: De fide orth., II, 27; PG 94, 962). In the Augustinian current, beginning with St. Anselm, the definition attributed to St. Augustine has currency: "Libertas arbitrii est posse peccare vel non peccare" (Dialogus de libero arbitrio: PL 158, 489, which depends on St. Augustine, De corr. et gr., 1: PL 44, 917). The third definition that has credit in the Middle Ages is that of Boethius, again of Aristotelian derivation: "Liberum arbitrium est liberum de voluntate iudicium" (cf. In lib. Arist. de interpr., III, near the beginning: PL 64, 492). The most serious philosophical error concerning freedom in medieval thought comes from Averroism (v.), inclined to the determinism of the intellect over the will and of the influence of the stars over individual passions: with regard to the position of Siger of Brabant, however, the most recent studies tend to bring him closer to the Thomist position (Lottin, Van Steenberghen). In the Renaissance the problem of freedom is at the center of the new conception of man, and in it one encounters the difficulties in which the Alexandrists and Averroists were struggling both with respect to the exegesis of the Aristotelian text and with respect to the faith. The most distinguished document is the work of P. Pomponazzi, De fato, libero arbitrio et praedestinatione (ed. Basel 1567, p. 320 ff. The work was completed on 5 Nov. 1520). In modern philosophy freedom expresses the very activity of consciousness in its opposition to the necessity of physical causality; for Kant, in the nature of phenomena the rigid necessity of the principle of cause dominates, to which the "transcendental freedom" is opposed, which lies at the foundation of the noumenon of the sphere of the spirit and therefore constitutes the transcendental possibility of practical reason, a position to which Fichte adheres, developing it. Hegel declares himself against "purely formal" freedom as against the "freedom of arbitrary choice" (Willkühr), inasmuch as the former keeps the subjective and the objective side separate, and the latter is the freedom of "doing what one wants" (Rechtsphilosophie, 15; Ital. trans., Bari 1913, p. 35 ff.). The Kantian formal freedom has been taken up by the "philosophy of values"; while existentialism intends to vindicate freedom in its one genuine sense as the activity of the single person: except that in atheistic existentialism freedom returns to subjective arbitrariness, which resolves itself into a "useless passion" (J.-P. Sartre, L'être et le néant, Paris 1943, p. 708). In the more recent physics of the "quanta" the possibility is left open of an authentic freedom of human action understood not "as an imperfection of our cognitive faculties nor as a breach in causal determinism", but which rests on the fact that the will precedes the intellect "without letting itself be totally influenced by it" (M. Planck, Vom Wesen der Willensfreiheit, in Vorträge und Erinnerungen, Stuttgart 1949, p. 309 ff.; cf. also: id., Kausalgesetz und Willensfreiheit, ibid. 1923, p. 139 ff.). The originality of human freedom is to be a new principle in the world, the author of history, which can modify within certain limits the very course of nature, but which above all constitutes the true possibility of man's transcendence in the direction of the Absolute and as an openness toward the faith and the grace that must save him.

DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

Christian ethics has as its foundation the responsibility that each person has for his own actions and therefore presupposes individual freedom: in a pantheistic or averroistic conception of a single freedom that ends up coinciding with the necessity of nature, "hic homo non erit dominus sui actus, nec aliquis eius actus erit laudabilis vel vituperabilis; quod est divellere principia moralis philosophiae" (St. Thomas, De unitate intellectus, § 81; ed. Keeler, Rome 1936, p. 51). The ecclesiastical magisterium had to affirm the existence of freedom especially in settling the controversies on the problem of Grace. One reads in the Council of Quierzy (year 853) against Gottschalk and the predestinarians: can. 1. Deus omnipotens [hominem] sine peccato rectum cum libero arbitrio condidit... (Denz-U, n. 316). And among the errors of Baius are found the following propositions:

39. Quod voluntarie fit, etiamsi necessario fiat, libere tamen fit

40. In omnibus suis actibus peccator servit dominanti cupiditati... (ibid., nn. 1039-40). Against A. Bonethy it was declared that freedom can be demonstrated by reason with full certainty (ibid., n. 1650).

Thomas und Scotus, Freiburg in Br. 1937. For the exposition of Kant and Fichte, v. H. Cohen, Kants Begründung der Ethik, Berlin 1877, ch. 5, p. 93 ff.; id., Ethik des reinen Willens, 3rd ed., ibid. 1921, especially ch. 6, p. 287 ff.; W. Windelband, Über Willensfreiheit, Tübingen 1904; A. Messer, Das Problem der Willensfreiheit, Göttingen 1911. For the psychological problem: J. Lindowski, Der Wille, 3rd ed., Leipzig 1923; id., Willensschule, Paderborn 1927; id., Das Seelenleben des Menschen, Bonn 1934, p. 30 ff.; A. Willwell, Seele und Geist, Freiburg in Br. 1938, p. 149 ff.; A. Gemelli - G. Zunini, Introduzione alla psicologia, Milan 1947, p. 242 ff. General exposition: F. Paulsen, System der Ethik, I. Stuttgart-Berlin 1906, p. 455 ff.; L. Brunsvig, Nature et liberté, Paris 1921; A. Striel, Das Problem der Willensfreiheit, Vienna 1927; G. Geyser, Das Gesetz der Ursache, Munich 1932, p. 81 ff. Excellent for the discussion and the modern bibl.: P. Martinetti, La l., Milan 1928; A. Wenzl, Philosophie der Freiheit, Munich-Pasing 1947; N. Hartmann, Ethik, 3rd ed., Berlin 1949, especially part 3, p. 621 ff. Concilio F. abro