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Scripture and Tradition clearly
affirm that human beings have free choice and are morally responsible for
important actions. Indeed, this truth is fundamental to the Gospel, since
Jesus died on the cross for our sins (which are bad free choices offending
God), and we are invited to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. The
Gospel, as both a proclamation and an invitation, makes no sense unless
human beings have free choice. The word “freedom” has several
meanings. Sometimes it refers to physical freedom: the lack of physical
restraints upon physical behavior. At other times freedom refers to
liberty: the lack of constraints placed by an authority upon someone’s
actions, as when an adolescent asks for more freedom. Sometimes the word
refers to political freedom: the ability of a citizen to participate in
political affairs or of a nation to direct its own political affairs. The Catechism of the Catholic
Church is not referring to these types of freedom, but to free choice,
when it succinctly defines freedom as “the power, rooted in reason and
will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform
deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility” (1731). Consider an example. Suppose one
morning Smith resolves to skip lunch that day, for both religious and
health-conscious purposes. That afternoon, taking a walk and passing by a
local pizza parlor, Smith smells the aroma of pizza wafting through the
air. He immediately desires the pizza, his mouth watering. He begins to
deliberate: He could go into the pizza parlor and have some pizza or he
could continue to walk, keeping to his fast or diet. There is something good or
attractive about each alternative. Eating the pizza would bring him great
pleasure, and, he recalls, he might meet his friends or that cute waitress
while waiting for his order. On the other hand, passing up the pizza
parlor on this occasion would be good both religiously and for his health.
In other words, each course of action offers some distinctive good, some
benefit not offered by the other. He cannot do both, so he must make up
his mind: He must decide which course of action to follow. This act of
“making up his mind” is an act of the will. If Smith decides to eat
the pizza, but slips and falls on the way and never gets to the pizza
parlor, he has still willed to do so. And although he does not perform the
physical behavior to carry out his choice, he is still morally responsible
for his choice. To say that such a choice is free
is to say that it is not determined by the events that preceded it. That
is, under the very same conditions, he could have chosen the other option
or not chosen at all. Given everything that happened to him up to the
point just prior to his choice – including everything in his
environment, everything in his heredity, everything in his understanding
and in his character – it was still possible for him to choose the pizza
or to choose to walk away. To say the choice was free is to say that all
of those things together were not enough to bring it about that he should
choose this rather than that or even that he should choose rather than not
choose. How, then, does a person finally
will one thing rather than another? The answer is that in a free choice,
the person by his own act of will directs his will toward this option
rather than toward that one. The free choice is a self-determined act of
will. Determinism • The denial that
there are free choices, in the sense explained above, is called
determinism, while the position that there are free choices is sometimes
called libertarianism (not in the same sense of course in which the word
is used to refer to a particular ideological and political school). Determinism is divided into “hard
determinism” and “soft determinism.” Hard determinism rejects both
free choice and moral responsibility. Soft determinism, also called “compatibilism,”
is the position that while our choices are determined by antecedent
events, we are nevertheless morally responsible for some of them. On this
position, all of our actions are determined, but some are determined by
extrinsic factors, while others are determined only by intrinsic factors.
If an act is determined by an intrinsic factor, namely our character, then
the compatibilists call it free, since it is not coerced (not forced by
something outside the self). This is to say that concretely one could not
help but choose as one did, given one’s character, but since one was not
extrinsically coerced the action was “free.” The position is called
“compatibilism” because it holds that universal determinism is
compatible with freedom and moral responsibility. It was held by various
philosophers and by the Protestant Reformers Martin Luther and John
Calvin. On this view, however, prior to any
actions one has performed, one’s character must have been extrinsically
determined. One would not, then, be morally responsible for any of the
actions or the changes in one’s character that flowed from that initial
character. The libertarian position – the position taught by the Church
– concedes that some of one’s actions may indeed be determined by
one’s character, and so are not directly the result of free choice.
Nevertheless, the libertarian position also holds, first, that character
is, most profoundly, the result of previous free choices, and so for that
reason one is morally responsible for actions that flow from one’s
character; and, second, that some of one’s actions are determined
neither by extrinsic factors nor by one’s character, that these actions
therefore are free, and that one is directly morally responsible for them. While there are philosophical
arguments for free choice, as a matter of fact most thinkers outside the
Judeo-Christian tradition have held a determinist position. In the ancient
tradition in the West, neither Plato nor Aristotle seems to have had a
clear notion of free choice, and both seem to have held a type of soft
determinism. On the other hand, libertarianism is clearly asserted both in
the Old Testament and in the New. In the Council of Trent, the Church,
responding to the denial of free choice by the Protestant Reformers,
definitively taught that by free choice we actively cooperate with God’s
grace (cf. Denzinger-Schönmetzer, 1954). In modern culture, psychologists
often assume that every aberrant behavior can be completely explained by
psychic causes. Sociologists and social critics often assume that social
problems could be completely eradicated by education and technological
advances, forgetting that bad free choices, that is, sins, are at the root
of many of the most serious social problems. Arguments for and Against Free
Choice • There exists no widespread agreement among proponents of free
choice about which arguments for free choice are sound. One approach is to claim that we
are immediately aware that we have free choice. In deliberating, I seem to
be directly aware that I could will this option, but that I could also
will that option, and that it is up to me which to choose. However, this
experience cannot by itself settle the issue. While free choice is at root
a positive ability (the ability to determine for oneself one’s acts of
willing), still, it essentially involves the absence of something, namely,
the absence of any determining conditions of one’s act of choice. But
the absence of something cannot be a direct object of experience.
(However, direct experience does provide some evidence for free choice,
and it places the burden of proof on the determinist.) A second argument can be found in
the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas argued that the will can be
seen to be free in acts of choice because by one’s reason or intellect
one perceives something good in each alternative, but also some defect in
each (at least the defect of not offering what is good in the other
alternative). Since, however, the will is our ability or power to incline
toward an understood good, the only object that would compel the will to
incline toward it would be an object good in every respect. Now, the
blessed in heaven have a direct vision of God, who is pure goodness; their
will cannot reject God, since God is good in every respect, and they have
a clear vision of that goodness. But every other object proposed to the
will is good only in some respect, and is not good in other respects. Even
union with God, for those who do not have a direct vision of God, appears
good in some respects but lacking in other respects, and therefore those
who are still on earth can freely reject union with God or choose
something incompatible with it. Hence, having deliberated and therefore
seen that an object is good in some ways but not good in others, one is
free either to will it or not will it – free to will this object or some
other object or course of action. Perhaps Aquinas did not intend this
argument precisely as a proof that there is a free choice, but, rather, as
an explanation of how and to what extent the will is free (presupposing
the existence of free choice). In any case, the argument does provide
additional weight to the position that there are free choices, since it
shows that the understood object of the will cannot determine the will.
However, the argument does not seem to exclude the possibility of a hidden
cause determining one’s choices. Another approach is to argue that
the denial of free choice is self-defeating. The notion of free choice is
not self-contradictory, and therefore the determinist cannot show that one
is logically compelled to deny it. Rather, the determinist can only argue
that the denial of free choice is the more reasonable position. Thus, in
asserting the determinist position he is appealing to reasonableness; he
is saying, in effect, that we ought to be reasonable. But this appeal to
what we ought to do presupposes that we might or might not be reasonable
and that it is within our power to be reasonable. This, however, is to
suppose that we have free choice. Hence the very denial of free choice
implicitly affirms it, and it is unreasonable to deny free choice. On the basis of all of these
arguments taken together, then, one can surely say that the preponderance
of evidence favors the libertarian position. Against Free Choice • We shall
consider what seem to be the three most important arguments. First, it is often argued that our
intellectual judgment must determine our choice. We deliberate, one option
appears better than the others, and therefore we are determined –
compelled – to choose the option that appears best. The answer is that in some cases no
option is best in every respect or according to every consideration. It is
true that if one option offers as much as the other option, plus some
more, then one must choose it. This sometimes happens: When house-hunting,
for instance, one may see that one house has every good feature that
another one has, plus more. In that situation the second house cannot be
chosen, since it has no distinctive attractiveness. It simply drops out of
consideration. In other situations, though, one
option offers one type of benefit or good, and the other option offers a
different type: eating pizza versus keeping one’s diet; going to law
school versus going to medical school, etc. In such situations neither
option is better in every respect. Rather, each offers a distinct type of
benefit not offered by the other. In those kinds of situations, there is
free choice. A second argument against free
choice is a generalization from situations where unconscious motives seem
determinative. In psychiatry, one often discovers that a person’s
actions were in fact determined by an unconscious motive, for example, the
desire to escape a feared object or to be like some particular person. One
can then generalize. If in several cases one’s choice is determined by
unconscious motives, then perhaps all those choices that seem free are
actually determined by unconscious motives. Thus, people often believe
that the advances in psychology and psychiatry are inimical to belief in
free choice. The argument, however, is
fallacious. It supposes that unconscious motives are incompatible with
free choice. But they are not. Suppose that, without being aware of it,
one is attracted to a person partly because she resembles an aunt of whom
one is fond, and so one’s interest in inviting her to dinner is
motivated, partly at least, by this unconscious circumstance. Still, this
unconscious motive only explains why the option is quite attractive; it
does not at all show that the option is compelling. One need not know why
one is attracted to an option in order to be free to accept it or reject
it. A third objection is that
everything other than God must be caused by God, since God alone is
self-sufficient. Free choices are certainly entities, and therefore they,
too, depend on God, that is, they must be caused to exist by God. But if
God causes one’s free choices, then, so the objection runs, one cannot
be free. In short, God’s causality is incompatible with free choice. This raises very large issues. But
at least the following can be said here. The argument wrongly supposes
that we understand what God’s causality is in itself. For one can know
that one thing is incompatible with another only if one understands the
nature of each and sees their incompatibility. We understand God’s
causality, however, only by analogy with other instances of causality; we
do not understand its intrinsic nature. So, in effect, the argument cannot
really get off the ground. Moreover, God causes the things in
this world to exist. But this causality should not be thought of as if it
were a kind of shoving this way or that. To cause is not the same as to
determine. The situation can perhaps best be thought of this way: God does
not cause a person to will this rather than that, but God causes the whole
reality of someone freely willing this over that. Which Acts Are Free? • As this
discussion has indicated, not every act of will is free. Not even every
act of choice is free. Which acts, then, are free? If the explanation of
free choice set out here is substantially correct, then to have free
choice one must be aware of different courses of action and must see some
distinct sort of benefit in each. The will is not free – in the
sense that one could not here and now will otherwise – in two types of
cases. First, the will is not free to reject God in the beatific vision.
In heaven, sin has lost its attraction. (This does not mean that there is
no freedom in heaven. There is still free choice about issues other than
whether to remain in communion with God or reject that communion –
whether to talk to Paul now or to Peter, and so on.) Second, the will is
not free if one fails to deliberate. This may be the case, for example,
because one is not quite awake or because one is overcome by passion. In
either case, without seeing some distinctive good in the different
options, one’s willing of a course of action is not free; one could not
have willed otherwise. Of course one still might be indirectly morally
responsible for one’s action – responsible, that is, for getting into
the condition in which deliberation was blocked. By free choice we fashion who we
shall be. Human persons are quite unlike rocks and trees and animals,
which simply are what they are and act out, according to their
predetermined nature, what they shall be. Human persons, through free
choice, constitute the kinds of moral persons they shall be. When I choose
one option rather than another, I shape an aspect of myself in the
direction of the option chosen. Free choice is also important for
understanding interpersonal communion. Supposing two rocks could become
one, they could only do so by losing their individuality. However, since
by their free choices persons constitute themselves, if two persons share
in a choice, they really, not just metaphorically, become one, and do so
without losing their individuality. People who commit themselves to pursue
a way of life together really do constitute themselves as one, a point
important for understanding the act of faith and marriage.
See:
Choice; Conscience; Natural Law; Passions; Providence. Suggested
Readings: CCC 1730-1742, 1987-2004. G. Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus,
Vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles, pp. 41-72. G. Grisez and R. Shaw,
Fulfillment in Christ, pp. 12-25. Patrick
Lee Russell
Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright ©
1997, Our Sunday Visitor.
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