Free will means we are free to commit evil. You've extrapolated from that that we have the
right to commit evil. That's an abominable error, but one which I think you make out of genuine ignorance, more than from ill-willed malice.
From your own preferred dictionary, Merriam-Webster's:
rightnoun
Definition of right
(Entry 2 of 4) 2
: something to which one has a
just claim: such as
a
: the power or privilege to which one is
justly entitled; voting rights / his right to decide
3
: something that one may properly claim as due; knowing the truth is her right
just
adjective
Definition of
just (Entry 1 of 3)
2a(1)
: acting or being in conformity with what is
morally upright or good : righteous a just war
By your own admission, you're not a Traditional Catholic. You attend a diocesan Novus Ordo church, and are being / have been "catechized" by intellectually darkened Modernists for whom mush-minded confusion, imprecise definitions, and ambiguous terminology are their veritable stock-in-trade. So it's understandable that you fail to make - or, it seems, to even grasp - certain absolutely crucial distinctions. But even a secular dictionary like Webster's, as per above, still demonstrates that the essential element of rights is
justice. To choose to belong to an objectively false religion is no more just, no more "in conformity with what is morally upright or good," than is the choice to murder a baby, rob a bank, commit adultery, etc. Thus, there is no "right" to these things, despite our being able to do them because of free will.
I'll leave you with the articles on "Right" and "Free Will" from the original Catholic Encyclopedia (an obviously superior reference for subjects touching on morality than a secular dictionary). My advice to you: Read them. Find your nearest SSPX chapel, talk to a Traditional priest, pray for an increase in humility, and refrain from posting on internet forums for at least a year.
http://newadvent.com/cathen/13055c.htmRight
Right, as a substantive (my right, his right), designates the object of
justice. When a
person declares he has a right to a thing, he means he has a kind of dominion over such thing, which others are
obliged to recognize. Right may therefore be defined as a moral or legal authority to possess, claim, and use a thing as one's own. It is thus essentially distinct from
obligation; in virtue of an
obligation we should, in virtue of a right, we may do or omit something. Again, right is a moral or legal authority, and, as such, is distinct from merely physical superiority or pre-eminence; the thief who steals something without being detected enjoys the physical control of the object, but no right to it; on the contrary, his act is an
injustice, a violation of right, and he is bound to return the
stolen object to its owner. Right is called a moral or legal authority, because it emanates from a law which assigns to one the dominion over the thing and imposes on others the
obligation to respect this dominion. To the right of one
person corresponds an
obligation on the part of others, so that right and
obligation condition each other. If I have the right to demand one hundred dollars from a
person, he is under the
obligation to give them to me; without this
obligation, right would be illusory. One may even say that the right of one
person consists in the fact that, on his account, others are bound to perform or omit something.
The clause, "to possess, claim, and use, anything as one's own", defines more closely the object of right. Justice assigns to each
person his own (
suum cuique). When anyone asserts that a thing is his own, is his private
property, or belongs to him, he means that this object stands in a special relation to him, that it is in the first place destined for his use, and that he can dispose of it according to his will, regardless of others. By a thing is here meant not merely a material object, but everything that can be useful to man, including actions, omissions, etc. The connexion of a certain thing with a certain
person, in virtue of which the
person may declare the thing his own, can originate only on the basis of concrete facts. It is an evident demand of
human reason in general that one may give or leave one's own to anyone; but what constitutes one's own is determined by facts. Many things are physically connected with the human per-son by conception or birth--his limbs, bodily and
mental qualities, health, etc. From the order imposed by the Creator of Nature, we recognize that, from the first moment of his being, his faculties and members are granted a
person primarily for his own use, and so that they may enable him to support himself and develop and fulfil the tasks appointed by the Creator for this life. These things (i.e., his qualities, etc.) are his own from the first moment of his existence, and whoever injures them or deprives him of them violates his right. However, many other things are connected with the human
person, not physically, but only morally. In other words, in virtue of a certain fact, everyone recognizes that certain things are specially destined for the use of one
person, and must be recognized as such by all. Persons who build a house for themselves, make an implement, catch game in the unreserved forest, or fish in the open sea, become the owners of these things in virtue of occupation of their labour; they can claim these things as their own, and no one can forcibly appropriate or injure these things without a violation of their rights. Whoever has lawfully purchased a thing, or been presented with it by another, may regard such thing as his own, since by the purchase or presentation he succeeds to the place of the other
person and possesses his rights. As a right gives rise to a certain connection between
person and
person with respect to a thing, we may distinguish in right four elements: the holder, the object, the title, and the terminus of the right. The holder of the right is the
person who possesses the right, the terminus is the
person who has the
obligation corresponding to the right, the object is the thing to which the right refers, and the title is the fact on the ground of which a
person may regard and claim the thing as his own. Strictly speaking, this fact alone is not the title of the right, which originates, indeed, in the fact, but taken in connection with the principle that one must assign to each his own
property; however, since this principle may be presupposed as self-evident, it is customary to regard the simple fact as the title of the right.
The right of which we have hitherto been speaking is individual right, to which the
obligation of commutative
justice corresponds. Commutative
justice regulates the relations of the members of human
society to one another, and aims at securing that each member renders to his fellow-members what is equally theirs. In addition to this commutative
justice, there is also a legal and distributive
justice; these virtues regulate the relations between the complete
societies (State and Church) and their members. From the propensities and needs of
human nature we recognize the State as resting on a Divine ordinance; only in the State can man support himself and develop according to his nature. But, if the Divine Creator of Nature has willed the existence of the State, He must also will the means
necessary for its maintenance and the attainment of its objects. This will can be found only in the right of the State to demand from its members what is
necessary for the general good. It must be authorized to make
laws to punish violations of such, and in general to arrange everything for the public welfare, while, on their side, the members must be under the
obligation corresponding to this right. The virtue which makes all members of
society contribute what is
necessary for its maintenance is called legal
justice, because the
law has to determine in individual cases what burdens are to be borne by the members. According to
Catholic teaching, the
Church is, like the State, a complete and independent
society, wherefore it also must be justified in demanding from its members whatever is
necessary for its welfare and the attainment of its object. But the members of the State have not only
obligations towards the general body; they have likewise rights. The State is bound to distribute public burdens (e.g. taxation) according to the powers and capability of the members, and is also under the
obligation of distributing public goods (offices and honours) according to the degree of worthiness and services. To these
duties of the general body or its leaders corresponds a right of the members; they can demand that the leaders observe the claims of distributive
justice, and failure to do this on the part of the authorities is a violation of the right of the members.
On the basis of the above notions of right, its object can be more exactly determined. Three species of right and
justice have been distinguished. The object of the right, corresponding to even-handed
justice, has as its object the securing for the members of human
society in their intercourse with one another freedom and independence in the use of their own possessions. For the object of right can only be the good for the attainment of which we recognize right as
necessary, and which it effects of its very nature, and this good is the freedom and independence of every member of
society in the use of his own. If man is to fulfil freely the tasks imposed upon him by
God, he must possess the means
necessary for this purpose, and be at liberty to utilize such independently of others. He must have a sphere of free activity, in which he is secure from the interference of others; this object is attained by the right which protects each in the free use of his own from the encroachments of others. Hence the proverbs: "A willing
person suffers no
injustice" and "No one is compelled to make use of his rights". For the object of the right which corresponds to commutative
justice is the liberty of the possessor of the right in the use of his own, and this right is not attained if each is bound always to make use of and insist upon his rights. The object of the right which corresponds to legal
justice is the good of the community; of this right we may not say that "no one is bound to make use of his right", since the community---or, more correctly, its leaders--must make use of public rights, whenever and wherever the good of the community requires it. Finally, the right corresponding to the object of distributive
justice is the defence of the members against the community or its leaders; they must not be laden with public burdens beyond their powers, and must receive as much of the public goods as becomes the condition of their meritoriousness and services. Although, in accordance with the above, each of the three kinds of rights has its own immediate object, all three tend in common towards one remote object, which, according to
St. Thomas (Cont. Gent., III, xxxiv), is nothing else than to secure that peace be maintained among men by procuring for each the peaceful possession of his own.
Right (or more precisely speaking, the
obligation corresponding to right) is enforceable at least in general--that is, whoever has a right with respect to some other
person is authorized to employ physical force to secure the fulfilment of this
obligation, if the other
person will not
voluntarily fulfil it. This enforceable character of the
obligation arises necessarily from the object of right. As already said, this object is to secure for every member of
society a sphere of free activity and for
society the means
necessary for its development, and the attainment of this object is evidently indispensable for social life; but it would not be sufficiently attained if it were left to each one's discretion whether he should fulfil his
obligations or not. In a large community there are always many who would allow themselves to be guided, not by right or
justice, but by their own selfish inclinations, and would disregard the rights of their fellowmen, if they were not forcibly confined to their proper sphere of right; consequently, the
obligation corresponding to a right must be enforceable in favour of the possessor of the right. But in a regulated community the power of compulsion must be vested in the
public authority, since, if each might employ force against his fellowmen whenever his right was infringed, there would soon arise a general conflict of all against all, and order and safety would be entirely subverted. Only in cases of necessity, where an
unjust attack on one's life or
property has to be warded off and recourse to the authorities is impossible, has the individual the right of meeting
violence with
violence.
While right or the
obligation corresponding to it is enforceable, we must beware of referring the essence of right to this enforcibility or even to the authority to enforce it, as is done by many jurists since the time of
Kant. For enforcibility is only a secondary characteristic of right and does not pertain to all rights; although, for example, under a real monarchy the subjects possess some rights with respect to the ruler, they can usually exercise no compulsion towards him, since he is irresponsible, and is subject to no higher authority which can employ forcible measures against him. Rights are divided, according to the title on which they rest, into natural and positive rights, and the latter are subdivided into Divine and human rights. By natural rights are meant all those which we acquire by our very birth, e.g. the right to live, to integrity of limbs, to freedom, to acquire
property, etc.; all other rights are called acquired rights, although many of them are acquired, independently of any positive law, in virtue of free acts, e.g. the right of the husband and wife in virtue of the marriage contract, the right to ownerless goods through occupation, the right to a house through purchase or hire, etc. On the other hand, other rights may be given by positive law; according as the
law is Divine or human, and the latter civil or
ecclesiastical, we distinguish between Divine or human, civil or
ecclesiastical rights. To civil rights belong citizenship in a state, active or passive franchise, etc.
http://newadvent.com/cathen/06259a.htmFree Will
The question of free will, moral liberty, or the
liberum arbitrium of the
Schoolmen, ranks amongst the three or four most important
philosophical problems of all time. It ramifies into ethics,
theology,
metaphysics, and
psychology. The view adopted in response to it will determine a man's position in regard to the most momentous issues that present themselves to the
human mind. On the one hand, does man possess genuine moral freedom, power of real choice,
true ability to determine the course of his thoughts and volitions, to decide which motives shall prevail within his mind, to modify and mould his own character? Or, on the other, are man's thoughts and volitions, his character and external actions, all merely the inevitable outcome of his circuмstances? Are they all inexorably predetermined in every detail along rigid lines by events of the past, over which he himself has had no sort of control? This is the real import of the free-will problem.
Relation of the question to different branches of philosophy
(1) Ethically, the issue vitally affects the meaning of most of our fundamental moral terms and
ideas. Responsibility, merit,
duty, remorse,
justice, and the like, will have a totally different significance for one who believes that all man's acts are in the last resort completely determined by agencies beyond his power, from that which these terms bear for the man who believes that each human being possessed of reason can by his own free will determine his deliberate volitions and so exercise a real command over his thoughts, his deeds, and the formation of his character.
(2) Theology studies the questions of the
existence,
nature and attributes of God, and His relations with man. The reconciliation of
God's fore-knowledge and universal providential government of the world with the contingency of human action, as well as the harmonizing of the efficacy of
supernatural grace with the free natural power of the creature, has been amongst the most arduous labours of the
theological student from the days of
St. Augustine down to the present time.
(3) Causality, change, movement, the beginning of existence, are notions which lie at the very heart of
metaphysics. The conception of the human will as a free cause involves them all.
(4) Again, the analysis of
voluntary action and the investigation of its peculiar features are the special functions of
Psychology. Indeed, the nature of the process of volition and of all forms of appetitive or conative activity is a topic that has absorbed a constantly increasing space in
psychological literature during the past fifty years.
(5) Finally, the rapid growth of sundry branches of modern
science, such as physics, biology, sociology, and the systematization of moral statistics, has made the
doctrine of free will a topic of the most keen
interest in many departments of more positive
knowledge.
History
Free will in ancient philosophy
The question of free will does not seem to have presented itself very clearly to the early Greek
philosophers. Some historians have held that the Pythagoreans must have allotted a certain degree of moral freedom to man, from their recognition of man's responsibility for
sin with consequent retribution experienced in the course of the transmigration of
souls. The
Eleatics adhered to a
pantheistic monism, in which they emphasized the immutability of one eternal unchangeable principle so as to leave no room for freedom. Democritus also taught that all events occur by necessity, and the Greek
atomists generally, like their modern representatives, advocated a mechanical theory of the
universe, which excluded all contingency. With
Socrates, the moral aspect of all
philosophical problems became prominent, yet his identification of all virtue with
knowledge and his intense personal conviction that it is impossible deliberately to do what one clearly perceives to be wrong, led him to hold that the good, being identical with the
true, imposes itself irresistibly on the will as on the
intellect, when distinctly apprehended. Every man necessarily wills his greatest good, and his actions are merely means to this end. He who commits
evil does so out of
ignorance as to the right means to the
true good.
Plato held in the main the same view. Virtue is the determination of the will by the
knowledge of the good; it is
true freedom. The wicked man is
ignorant and a slave. Sometimes, however,
Plato seems to suppose that the
soul possessed genuine free choice in a previous life, which there decided its future destiny.
Aristotle disagrees with both
Plato and
Socrates, at least in part. He appeals to experience. Men can act against the
knowledge of the
true good; vice is
voluntary. Man is responsible for his actions as the parent of them. Moreover his particular actions, as means to his end, are contingent, a matter of deliberation and subject to choice. The future is not all predictable. Some events depend on chance.
Aristotle was not troubled by the difficulty of prevision on the part of his
God. Still his physical theory of the
universe, the action he allots to the
noûs poietkós, and the irresistible influence exerted by the Prime Mover make the conception of genuine moral freedom in his system very obscure and difficult. The
Stoics adopted a form of materialistic
Pantheism.
God and the world are one. All the world's movements are governed by rigid law. Unvaried
causality unity of design, fatalistic government, prophecy and foreknowledge--all these factors exclude chance and the possibility of free will.
Epicurus, oddly in contrast here with his modern hedonistic followers, advocates free will and modifies the strict
determinism of the
atomists, whose physics he accepts, by ascribing to the atoms a
clinamen, a faculty of random deviation in their movements. His openly professed object, however, in this point as in the rest of his philosophy, is to release men from the fears caused by
belief in irresistible fate.
Free will and the Christian religion
The problem of free will assumed quite a new character with the advent of the
Christian religion. The
doctrine that
God has
created man, has commanded him to
obey the moral law, and has promised to reward or punish him for observance or violation of this
law, made the reality of moral liberty an issue of transcendent importance. Unless man is really free, he cannot be
justly held responsible for his actions, any more than for the date of his birth or the colour of his eyes. All alike are inexorably predetermined for him. Again, the difficulty of the question was augmented still further by the
Christian dogma of the fall of man and his
redemption by grace.
St. Paul, especially in his
Epistle to the Romans, is the great source of the
Catholic theology of grace.
Catholic doctrine
Among the early
Fathers of the Church,
St. Augustine stands pre-eminent in his handling of this subject. He clearly teaches the freedom of the will against the
Manichæeans, but insists against the
Semipelagians on the necessity of grace, as a foundation of merit. He also emphasizes very strongly the absolute rule of
God over men's wills by His
omnipotence and omniscience--through the
infinite store, as it were, of motives which He has had at His disposal from all
eternity, and by the foreknowledge of those to which the will of each human being would freely consent. St. Augustine's teaching formed the basis of much of the later
theology of the
Church on these questions, though other writers have sought to soften the more rigorous portions of his
doctrine. This they did especially in opposition to
heretical authors, who exaggerated these features in the works of the great
African Doctor and attempted to deduce from his principles a form of rigid
predeterminism little differing from fatalism. The teaching of
St. Augustine is developed by
St. Thomas Aquinas both in
theology and
philosophy. Will is rational
appetite. Man necessarily desires beatitude, but he can freely choose between different forms of it. Free will is simply this elective power. Infinite Good is not visible to the
intellect in this life. There are always some drawbacks and deficiencies in every good presented to us. None of them exhausts our
intellectual capacity of conceiving the good. Consequently, in deliberate volition, not one of them completely satiates or irresistibly entices the will. In this capability of the
intellect for conceiving the universal lies the root of our freedom. But
God possesses an
infallible knowledge of man's future actions. How is this prevision possible, if man's future acts are not
necessary?
God does not exist in time. The future and the past are alike ever present to the eternal mind as a man gazing down from a lofty mountain takes in at one momentary glance all the objects which can be apprehended only through a lengthy series of successive experiences by travellers along the winding road beneath, in somewhat similar fashion the
intuitive vision of God apprehends simultaneously what is future to us with all it contains. Further,
God's omnipotent providence exercises a complete and perfect control over all events that happen, or will happen, in the
universe. How is this secured without infringement of man's freedom? Here is the problem which two distinguished
schools in the
Church--both claiming to represent the teaching, or at any rate the
logical development of the teaching of
St. Thomas--attempt to solve in different ways. The
heresies of
Luther and
Calvin brought the issue to a finer point than it had reached in the time of
Aquinas, consequently he had not formally dealt with it in its ultimate shape, and each of the two
schools can cite texts from the works of the
Angelic Doctor in which he appears to incline towards their particular view.
Thomist and Molinist theories
The
Dominican or
Thomist solution, as it is called, teaches in brief that
God premoves each man in all his acts to the line of conduct which he subsequently adopts. It holds that this premotive
decree inclines man's will with absolute
certainty to the side decreed, but that
God adapts this premotion to the nature of the being thus premoved. It argues that as
God possesses
infinite power He can
infallibly premove man--who is by nature a free cause--to choose a particular course freely, whilst He premoves the lower animals in harmony with their natures to adopt particular courses by necessity. Further, this premotive
decree being inevitable though adapted to suit the free nature of man, provides a medium in which
God foresees with
certainty the future free choice of the human being. The premotive
decree is thus prior in order of thought to the Divine cognition of man's future actions.
Theologians and
philosophers of the
Jesuit School, frequently styled
Molinists, though they do not accept the whole of Molina's teaching and generally prefer Francisco Suárez's exposition of the theory, deem the above solution unsatisfactory. It would, they readily admit, provide sufficiently for the
infallibility of the Divine foreknowledge and also for
God's providential control of the world's history; but, in their view, it fails to give at the same time an adequately intelligible account of the freedom of the human will. According to them, the relation of the Divine action to man's will should be conceived rather as of a concurrent than of a premotive character; and they maintain that
God's knowledge of what a free being would choose, if the
necessary conditions were supplied, must be deemed
logically prior to any
decree of concurrence or premotion in respect to that act of choice. Briefly, they make a threefold distinction in
God's knowledge of the
universe based on the nature of the objects known--the Divine
knowledge being in itself of course absolutely simple. Objects or events viewed merely as possible,
God is said to apprehend by simple intelligence
(simplex intelligentia). Events which will happen He knows by vision
(scientia visionis). Intermediate between these are conditionally future events--things which would occur were certain conditions fulfilled.
God's knowledge of this class of contingencies they term
scientia media. For instance Christ affirmed that, if certain
miracles had been wrought in
Tyre and Sidon, the inhabitants would have been converted. The condition was not realized, yet the statement of Christ must have been
true. About all such conditional contingencies propositions may be framed which are either
true or
false--and Infinite Intelligence must
know all
truth. The conditions in many cases will not be realized, so
God must
know them apart from any decrees determining their realization. He knows them therefore, this
school holds,
in seipsis, in themselves as conditionally future events. This
knowledge is the
scientia media, "middle knowledge", intermediate between vision of the actual future and simple understanding of the merely possible. Acting now in the light of this
scientia media with respect to human volitions,
God freely decides according to His own wisdom whether He shall supply the requisite conditions, including His co-operation in the action, or abstain from so doing, and thus render possible or prevent the realization of the event. In other words, the
infinite intelligence of
God sees clearly what would happen in any conceivable circuмstances. He thus knows what the free will of any creature would choose, if supplied with the power of volition or choice and placed in any given circuмstances. He now decrees to supply the needed conditions, including His
corcursus, or to abstain from so doing. He thus holds complete dominion and control over our future free actions, as well as over those of a
necessary character. The
Molinist then claims to safeguard better man's freedom by substituting for the
decree of an inflexible premotion one of concurrence dependent on
God's prior
knowledge of what the free being would choose. If given the power to exert the choice. He argues that he exempts
God more clearly from all responsibility for man's
sins. The claim seems to the present writer well founded; at the same time it is only fair to record on the other side that the
Thomist urges with considerable force that
God's prescience is not so understandable in this, as in his theory. He maintains, too, that
God's exercise of His absolute dominion over all man's acts and man's entire dependence on
God's goodwill are more impressively and more worthily exhibited in the premotion hypothesis. The reader will find an exhaustive treatment of the question in any of the
Scholastic textbooks on the subject.
Free will and the Protestant Reformers
A leading feature in the teaching of the
Reformers of the sixteenth century, especially in the case of
Luther and
Calvin, was the denial of free will. Picking out from the Scriptures, and particularly from
St. Paul, the texts which emphasized the importance and efficacy of grace, the all-ruling
providence of God, His decrees of election or
predestination, and the feebleness of man, they drew the conclusion that the human will, instead of being master of its own acts, is rigidly predetermined in all its choices throughout life. As a consequence, man is
predestined before his birth to eternal punishment or reward in such fashion that he never can have had any real free-power over his own fate. In his controversy with
Erasmus, who defended free will,
Luther frankly stated that free will is a fiction, a name which covers no reality, for it is not in
man's power to think well or ill, since all events occur by necessity. In reply to
Erasmus's "De Libero Arbitrio", he published his own work, "De Servo Arbitrio", glorying in emphasizing man's helplessness and slavery. The
predestination of all future
human acts by
God is so interpreted as to shut out any possibility of freedom. An inflexible internal necessity turns man's will whithersoever
God preordains. With
Calvin,
God's preordination is, if possible, even more fatal to free will. Man can perform no sort of good act unless necessitated to it by
God's grace which it is impossible for him to resist. It is absurd to speak of the human will "co-operating" with
God's grace, for this would imply that man could resist the
grace of God. The
will of God is the very necessity of things. It is objected that in this case
God sometimes imposes impossible commands. Both
Calvin and
Luther reply that the
commands of God show us not what we can do but what we ought to do. In condemnation of these views, the
Council of Trent declared that the free will of man, moved and excited by
God, can by its consent co-operate with
God, Who excites and invites its action; and that it can thereby dispose and prepare itself to obtain the grace of justification. The will can resist grace if it chooses. It is not like a lifeless thing, which remains purely passive. Weakened and diminished by Adam's fall, free will is yet not destroyed in the race (Sess. VI, cap. i and v).
Free will in modern philosophy
Although from
Descartes onward, philosophy became more and more separated from
theology, still the
theological significance of this particular question has always been felt to be of the highest moment.
Descartes himself at times clearly maintains the freedom of the will (Meditations, III and IV). At times, however, he attenuates this view and leans towards a species of providential determinism, which is, indeed, the
logical consequence of the doctrines of
occasionalism and the inefficacy of secondary causes latent in his system.
Malebranche developed this feature of
Descartes's teaching. Soul and body cannot really act on each other. The changes in the one are directly caused by
God on the occasion of the corresponding change in the other. So-called secondary causes are not really efficacious. Only the First Cause truly acts. If this view be consistently thought out, the
soul, since it possesses no genuine
causality, cannot be justly said to be free in its volitions. Still, as a
Catholic theologian,
Malebranche could not accept this fatalistic determinism. Accordingly he defended freedom as essential to religion and morality. Human liberty being denied,
God should be deemed cruel and
unjust, whilst
duty and responsibility for man cease to exist. We must therefore be free.
Spinoza was more
logical. Starting from certain principles of
Descartes, he
deduced in mathematical fashion an iron-bound
pantheistic fatalism which left no room for contingency in the
universe and still less for free will. In
Leibniz, the prominence given to the principle of sufficient reason, the
doctrine that man must choose that which the
intellect judges as the better, and the optimistic theory that
God Himself has inevitably chosen the present as being the best of all possible worlds, these views, when
logically reasoned out, leave very little reality to free will, though Leibniz set himself in marked opposition to the
monistic geometrical necessarianism of
Spinoza.
In
England the mechanical materialism of Hobbes was incompatible with moral liberty, and he accepted with cynical frankness all the
logical consequences of his theory. Our actions either follow the first
appetite that arises in the mind, or there is a series of alternate
appetites and fears, which we call deliberation. The last
appetite or fear, that which triumphs, we call will. The only intelligible freedom is the power to do what one desires. Here Hobbes is practically at one with Locke.
God is the author of all causes and effects, but is not the author of
sin, because an action ceases to be
sin if
God wills it to happen. Still
God is the cause of
sin. Praise and blame, rewards and punishments cannot be called useless, because they strengthen motives, which are the causes of action. This, however, does not meet the objection to the
justice of such blame or praise, if the
person has not the power to abstain from or perform the actions thus punished or rewarded. Hume reinforced the determinist attack on free will by his suggested
psychological analysis of the notion or feeling of "necessity". The controversy, according to him, has been due to misconception of the meaning of words and the
error that the alternative to free will is necessity. This necessity, he says, is
erroneously ascribed to some kind of internal nexus supposed to bind all causes to their effects, whereas there is really nothing more in
causality than constant succession. The imagined necessity is merely a product of custom or
association of ideas. Not feeling in our acts of choice this necessity, which we attribute to the
causation of material agents, we mistakenly imagine that our volitions have no causes and so are free, whereas they are as strictly determined by the feelings or motives which have gone before, as any material effects are determined by their material antecedents. In all our reasonings respecting other
persons, we infer their future conduct from their wonted action under particular motives with the same sort of
certainty as in the case of physical
causation.
The same line of argument was adopted by the Associationist School down to Bain and J. S. Mill. For the necessity of Hobbes or
Spinoza is substituted by their descendants what Professor James calls a "soft determinism", affirming solely the invariable succession of volition upon motive. J. S. Mill merely developed with greater clearness and fuller detail the principles of Hume. In particular, he attacked the notion of "constraint" suggested in the words necessity and necessarianism, whereas only sequence is affirmed. Given a perfect
knowledge of character and motives, we could
infallibly predict action. The alleged consciousness of freedom is disputed. We merely feel that we choose, not that we could choose the opposite. Moreover the notion of free will is unintelligible. The
truth is that for the Sensationalist School, who believe the mind to be merely a series of
mental states, free will is an absurdity. On the other side, Reid, and Stewart, and Hamilton, of the Scotch School, with Mansel, Martineau, W.J. Ward, and other Spiritualist thinkers of Great Britain, energetically defended free will against the disciples of Hume. They maintained that a more careful analysis of volition justified the argument from consciousness, that the universal conviction of
mankind on such a fact may not be set aside as an illusion, that morality cannot be founded on an act of self-deception; that all languages contain terms involving the notion of free will and all
laws assume its existence, and that the attempt to render necessarianism less objectionable by calling it determinism does not diminish the fatalism involved in it.
The
truth that phenomenalism
logically involves
determinism is strikingly illustrated in
Kant's treatment of the question. His well-known division of all reality into phenomena and noumena is his key to this problem also. The world as it appears to us, the world of phenomena, including our own actions and
mental states, can only be conceived under the form of time and subject to the category of
causality, and therefore everything in the world of experience happens altogether according to the
laws of nature; that is, all our actions are rigidly determined. But, on the other hand, freedom is a
necessary postulate of morality: "Thou canst, because thou oughtest." The solution of the antinomy is that the determinism concerns only the empirical or phenomenal world. There is no ground for denying liberty to the
Ding an sich. We may
believe in
transcendental freedom, that we are noumenally free. Since, moreover, the
belief that I am free and that I am a free cause, is the foundation stone of religion and morality, I must
believe in this postulate.
Kant thus gets over the antinomy by confining freedom to the world of noumena, which lie outside the form of time and the category of
causality, whilst he affirms necessity of the sensible world, bound by the chain of
causality. Apart from the general objection to
Kant's system, a grave difficulty here lies in the fact that all man's conduct--his whole moral life as it is revealed in actual experience either to others or himself--pertains in this view to the phenomenal world and so is rigidly determined.
Though much acute
philosophical and
psychological analysis has been brought to bear on the problem during the last century, it cannot be said that any great additional light has been shed over it. In
Germany, Schopenhauer made will the noumenal basis of the world and adopted a pessimistic theory of the
universe, denying free will to be justified by either ethics or
psychology. On the other hand, Lotze, in many respects perhaps the acutest thinker in
Germany since
Kant, was an energetic defender of moral liberty. Among recent
psychologists in America Professors James and Ladd are both advocates of freedom, though laying more stress for positive
proof on the
ethical than on the
psychological evidence.
The argument
As the main features of the
doctrine of free will have been sketched in the history of the problem, a very brief account of the argument for moral freedom will now suffice. Will viewed as a free power is defined by defenders of free will as the capacity of self-determination. By
self is here understood not a single present
mental state (James), nor a series of
mental states (Hume and Mill), but an abiding rational being which is the subject and cause of these states. We should distinguish between:
- spontaneous acts, those proceeding from an internal principle (e.g. the growth of plants and impulsive movements of animals);
- voluntary acts in a wide sense, those proceeding from an internal principle with apprehension of an end (e.g. all conscious desires); and, finally
- those voluntary in the strict sense, that is, deliberate or free acts.
In such, there is a self-conscious advertence to our own
causality or an awareness that we are choosing the act, or acquiescing in the desire of it. Spontaneous acts and desires are opposed to coaction or external compulsion, but they are not thereby morally free acts. They may still be the
necessary outcome of the nature of the agent as, e.g. the actions of lower animals, of the insane, of young children, and many impulsive acts of mature life. The essential feature in free volition is the element of choice--the
vis electiva, as
St. Thomas calls it. There is a concomitant interrogative awareness in the form of the query "shall I acquiesce or shall I resist? Shall I do it or something else?", and the consequent acceptance or refusal, ratification or rejection, though either may be of varying degrees of completeness. It is this act of consent or approval, which converts a mere involuntary impulse or desire into