The rule of spirit

Having written its opposite, I write here my blog post on free will. As before, no one should read it.

0. Contents

1. Choice
1.1. Types of desire
1.2. Willpower
2. Sufficient reason
3. Burdened by flesh
4. Control over desire
5. Order

1. Choice

I believe that in human acts, we always do what we most desire to do. (Most, as in, we always have a range of concomitant desires, and we fulfill the foremost.) Plainly, “I did what I did not most want to do” is a description of an accident, not of a choice.

I also believe that we do not, ultimately, choose what it is that we desire (although, see §4).

In light of these facts, I have been asked, whence moral responsibility? Clearly, if we have no control over our desires, and no choice affecting which one will become foremost at any given time, then we never make any choice which affects the actions that we will take, which appears to be Trouble 4 Moral Responsibility.

The answer, in short, is that regardless of whether it really is so troublesome, I do not actually believe that we have no control at all over our desires – I believe that we have some ability to moderate our irrational desires. The same answer in slightly longer form is what follows.

1.1. Types of desire

I believe that desires can be divided into two main kinds – rational desires, caused by the soul, and sensitive desires, caused by the body. (And no more – see §2.)

Rational desires are caused by the operation of reason. Barring some interference with the natural operation of the rational faculty – which can only be caused by the body (see §3) – such desires always follow strictly from the known truth about things; they may be said to be deduced.

The way this works is that goodness, being really identical with being, can be known with as much certainty by reason as anything else. When reason knows an object to be good, the will desires it (with rational desire) in exact proportion to how good it is; nothing else can happen (although, see §5). Regarding those desires, “the will desires of necessity whatever it desires”, which is against what Thomas had said.

Sensitive desires, on the other hand, are caused by the operation of the body’s “power of sensuality”; this is further divided into irascible and concupiscible, but this is not relevant here. What is relevant is that sensitive desires, being caused by a non-rational power, can be either in accordance with reason or against it (cf. §3). We can know whether they are in accordance with reason (i.e., “properly ordered”, “correct”) by examining them with the rational faculty.

1.2. Willpower

Given those desires and their causes, this is what we can choose to do. We can either examine our sensitive desires or not; if upon examination we find them to be incorrect, we can either bring them into accordance with reason (see §4, §5) or not; if we do not do so, then they will be allowed to become our foremost desires for irrational reasons, and we can act upon them. This is always our fault, being a result of choice.

These choices are determined only by how just we are, i.e., how strongly we desire to “avoid evil and do good”. Which is to say, they are free. The power rightly to make these choices may be termed “willpower”, and may be construed as our “attention” and “diligence” in examining our desires and bringing them into accordance with reason. In connection with the latter operation, we may bring up another necessary to it, which is that of deriving the logical consequences of the principles of the natural law in application to each particular case. Defect of willpower is always fully our fault.

2. Sufficient reason

Rational and sensitive desires comprise an exhaustive division of desires. This means that we never desire anything without either a physical cause (sensitive desires) or a logical reason (rational desires), caused by the operation of our minds on our knowledge.

So, I do not believe, as some people think must be admitted to safeguard free will, that any action is ever done for no reason at all, and in that sense “undetermined”. I think that that is pretty much nonsense.

You have always had your body, and you have always had access to the floor. When have you last rolled on the floor? For most people, it has been some weeks, perhaps months – we simply lack any reason to roll on the floor most of the time. Every other action is like this – we never do things for no reason, but only when some reason comes up. How could it be otherwise?

3. Burdened by flesh

The will desires whatever appears to it under the aspect of good, in precise proportion to how good it appears. If, then, we ever desire anything out of proportion to how good it is, this must be because a false appearance has been admitted to be a reality.

There is no way for reason to create a false appearance; its natural operation is to deduce rightly from known premises. So if a false appearance has been admitted into the soul, it must be through the senses, whose natural operation is that of chaotic material causes, prone to lead us to error if we are not diligent.

It is always through defect of the will that we fail to act rightly. But it cannot happen without the senses as a motive. Without the body, we would have no disordered desires, and even the weakest willed man could be a saint.

4. Control over desire

To be clear – for willpower to bring a desire into accordance with reason amounts to making us desire it less. All of our desires are ordinally placed in a “value scale”, from foremost to hindmost, and we always act upon the most wanted one; for a sensitive desire to be disordered, or mistaken, is for it to be quite literally out of order on this scale, and what reason can do, through willpower, is to bring it into rational order, i.e., to lower it in the scale.

Our control over our desires, then, amounts to the fact that, at some given times, there are things which we can choose to desire less than we currently do.

We do not choose which things it is that we rationally desire, since this is a necessary rational deduction. And we do not ultimately choose which things it is that we desire with our senses, since we lack sufficient control over the external world to decide which things will even come before our eyes. (Although, of course, sometimes we know enough to avoid near occasions of sin.)

We do not, then, in any ultimate sense choose what it is that we desire; what we can do is to bring our irrational desires into line. This is what I had meant in §1.

(For now, I have nothing more to say on the idea of “second-order desires” – desires to have other desires – besides what was said in §1.1 of this other post.)

5. Order

Given the opinions above, it can technically be said that having a disordered sensitive desire is the same as having a disordered rational desire. For if a sensitive desire is above its proper place in the scale, and if it sometimes does (as it does) surpass for the time being the place of any rational desires, then those rational desires are, of course, below their proper place.

Here I would note that, yes, sometimes some rational desires are beneath their proper place with respect to some sensitive ones; but every rational desire is always in its proper place in relation to every other rational desire. It is only sensitive desires which can be out of order absolutely, i.e., in relation to every other desire of any kind. So it is more proper to speak of disordered sensitive desires than rational ones.