On Free Will Is Free Will A Good Thing?

1. On Free WillIs Free Will A Good Thing? By St. Augustine of Hippo

2. What is free will? • Free will is not simply political freedom or other kinds of freedoms. • It is the most radical notion of human freedom. • Free will means that, given any choice a person has made, he could have either refrained from making that choice or he could have made a different one.

3. Free will • Free will is a sufficient and necessary condition for one’s sinning. • Free will is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for one’s escaping sin and doing the right thing. • Meaning that one could never be a morally good person, if they did not have free will.

4. The movement of the will must be voluntary – hence free will • “unless the movement of the will towards this or that object is voluntary and within our power, a man would not be praiseworthy when he turns to the higher objects nor blameworthy when he turns to lower objects, using his will like a hinge.”

5. Argument Against Free Will • We ought not to have been given free will because by it men commit sin. • We should have been given free will just as we have been given justice which can only be used rightly.

6. Rebuttal: Body and Soul • What is greater the body or the soul? • What is superior, that by which we can live a morally good life or that by which we cannot live a morally good life?

7. The Eye and The Soul 1) The eye is a good thing 2) You can live a morally good life without an eye. 3) However, without free will you cannot live a morally good life. 4) To live a morally good life is more important than to see. 5) Therefore, free will must be a good thing, at least better than our eyes.

8. Premise 3 Why is it that without free will you cannot live a morally good life. • If we do not make choice (whether moral or immoral) freely, then it makes no sense to say that we are either morally blameworthy or praiseworthy in making the choice. • There is no sense in which we could be responsible for the non-free “choice” we make.

9. Goods • There are great goods, intermediate goods and small goods. • Great goods: Virtues • No one can make bad use of virtues • Virtues are the correct use of the will • Virtues: justice, temperance, prudence, fortitude.

10. Intermediate and Small Goods • Intermediate goods and small goods can be made good or bad use of. • Free will is an intermediate good. • The good use of free will depends on to what the will is “is turned” toward (i.e., what the will wants, desires, strives for)

11. The Good Will vs. the Bad Will • The good will is turned towards the unchangeable good. • The unchangeable good is the common property of all people • The bad will is turned towards my own personal and private good.

12. Common vs. Private • The virtues are private. • No man is made prudent by the prudence of another. • Truth and Wisdom are common

13. How does one become virtuous? • “A man is made virtuous by regulating his soul according to the rules and guiding lights of the virtues which dwell indestructibly in the truth and wisdom that are common property to all.” • That is, by controlling one’s will and directing it according to eternal truths.

14. Sin • Sin occurs when the will turns to private goods, either something external or something lower. • It turns to its private good when it tries to be its own master (Pride). • It turns to something external when it busies itself to the business of others (Meddlesome). • It turns to lower goods when it seeks bodily pleasures (Lust) • Sin: Pride, Meddlesome, and Lust

15. How does a person sin? • “But the will which turns from unchangeable and common good and turns to its own private good or to anything exterior or inferior, sins.” • “It turns to its private good when it wills to be governed by its own authority.”

16. The Will Is Not Bad • Free will is an intermediate good. • It is judged bad or good depending on how it is used – to what it turns to. • The wills turning is voluntary.

17. What causes the will to move away from God? • The turning of the will from goodness to sin cannot be caused by God.

18. What does it mean for the will to ‘turn’ ? • The will desires something. • The will wills it. • The person establishes it as her end. • The person establishes it as her goal. • The thing “turned toward” is what motivates the person. • It is the reason/cause the person does what she does. • It is what pulls and pushes her to act.

19. Will Power and Grace • “If you do not will it, it will not exist.” • “What can be more secure than to live a life where nothing can happen to you which you do not will?” • “But since man cannot rise of his own free will as he fell by his own will spontaneously, let us hold with steadfast faith the right hand of God stretched out to us from above, even our Lord Jesus Christ.”

20. The Cause of Sin Continued: Determinism vs. Free Will • Can the movement of a person’s will from God to private/lower things be attributed to the nature of the human person? • Can this movement be natural and thus necessary. • Can this movement be like the movement of a stone that falls to the ground and is destroyed. • If it is, we would not be culpable for the sins we commit. We would not be responsible.

21. The Mystery of the Evil • “God, then, will not be the cause of that movement [the movement of the will to sin]; but what will be its cause? [The devil?] • If you ask this, and I answer that I do not know, probably you will be saddened. And yet that would be a true answer.” • “That which is nothing cannot be known”