GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL 265
are inherited, environmental or physiological, which cloud
my judgment or undermine my will, with the result that
I do not recognize what it is right for me to do or, having
recognized what is right, nevertheless do something
different. If freedom is a fact and I am, it will be remembered,
concerned only to indicate the minimum conditions
which must be satisfied, if freedom is a fact it will consist
in just this ability to eliminate the influence of the factors
which science emphasizes, so that my judgment can give
an unhampered verdict upon what is right, and my will
then proceed to realize in action that of which my judg-
ment approves. Thus to act freely will, on this view, be
to do what one's judgment, uninfluenced by the bias of
inherited or environmental factors, tells one that one ought
to do. We may thus fine down the issue of our discussion
to this single question, are we ever in this sense free?
St. Thomas Aquinas on Freedom. In discussing freedom
the philosopher Leibniz (1646-1716), a professed
believer in free will who, nevertheless, frequently gives
unwitting hostages to determinism, invokes the simile of
a swinging pendulum. The pendulum, he points out,
never really comes to rest; it is always swinging in one
direction or the other. Similarly, the estimates and judgments
of the human mind are never completely unbiased;
they are always inclined in one direction or another, and
they are inclined from the start. I mention the simile
because, if it is apposite, if, that is to say, human nature
is in fact like a swinging pendulum, which is never at rest,
then the belief in free will must be surrendered. For the
minimum condition of free will is that there should be a
period of deliberation during which we compare the various
alternative courses of action which arc before us, and
weigh and estimate their respective merits, while not, as
yet, inclining to any one. A phrase of St. Thomas Aquinas's
(1227-1274) clearly brings out the nature of this unbiased
period of deliberation. While I am weighing the various
alternatives, comparing their respective merits and wonder-
Ii