FREEDOM

The various meanings of the term "freedom" center around three main themes. The first is the possibility of the subject to act as he will to satisfy his tendencies, aspirations, and the like (freedom of action as opposed to constraint, servitude, etc.; civil and political liberties, etc.). The second is the power of self-determination without any necessitation in willing, if only from pressures of a nature slightly distinct from the ego (freedom of willing, free will, as opposed to necessity). The third is the fulfillment of the reasoning subject by the internal domination of reason, of superior motivations over feelings and over inferior motivations (rational freedom). This article sketches the historical development of the various notions of freedom and then presents a systematic analysis of topics relating to freedom that are of particular interest to Catholics.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

The history of the concept of freedom may be conveniently divided into periods corresponding to those of ancient, patristic, medieval, modern, and contemporary thought.

Ancient period. Man's first awareness of things outside himself naturally led him to an early appreciation of the first type of freedom mentioned above. socrates and plato, impressed with the idea of servitude, presented its correlative as a liberation internal to man. The evildoer who thinks he is free because he can satisfy his desires is himself a slave. Only the wise and virtuous man in whom reason rules is truly free. Can man freely choose between true and false freedom? The Socratic theory, which identifies virtue and wisdom, is interwoven in the answer. Sin comes only from ignorance of the true good. This logically seems to exclude freedom of choice properly speaking. In any event, Plato conceived of freedom in the third sense already mentioned.

aristotle rejected the Socratic principle; for him, evil can knowingly be willed, although not as evil. However, there is no agreement among scholars as to whether or not Aristotle affirmed the existence of free will. He admits of choice (Gr. προαίρεσις) preceded by deliberation. Both concern means alone. Deliberation ends upon a person's accepting one means as the most appropriate. There is neither deliberation nor choice about the end. Again, Aristotle gives the practical syllogism as the application of a general rule to a particular case. Passion can impede the correct use of the principles of reason and substitute for them another rule (e.g., pleasure to be sought). Aristotle's notion of freedom is thus not clearly defined and is difficult to distinguish from spontaneity, just as the will is poorly distinguished from desire. Similarly, the idea of free will is not made precise; the word itself (αύτεξούσιον) appears only later in Greek philosophy with the problem of morality, and thenceforth occupies a prominent place in philosophical thought.

Paradoxically, the Stoics, holding for a strict causal determinism (a revival of the old notion of fate), assert most strongly that man has the power to be master of himself and to arrive at virtue; and they maintain an opposition between what depends on man and what does not. The wise man who has himself conquered virtue is superior to the gods. They strive to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory positions by showing that human acts, although conditioned by their antecedents, are man's very own and truly proceed from him, much like a cylinder that, once thrown on a plane, rolls by itself. In fact, the Stoics consider true freedom as an acceptance of necessity. It has its perfection in the wise man who is free from passions and emotions and is master of himself through submission to universal reason. No less paradoxically, epicurus and his followers, although materialists, admit of freedom of choice, freeing themselves from the fear of destiny. To ensure such freedom they posit an indeterminism in the physical world by acknowledging, in atoms undergoing falling motion, the power to deviate from the vertical.

In the Hellenistic period many treatises on destiny appeared, and the first meaning of freedom found energetic defenders (e.g., Alexander of Aphrodisias, second and third centuries a.d.). The problem of reconciling freedom with divine foreknowledge and providence had already arisen by this time.

Patristic era. Christianity, or more precisely Judeo-Christianity, emphasized the idea of freedom: freedom of God in creation, in calling men to salvation, and so on; freedom of man, without which precepts and sanctions would have no meaning. The fact that a free act involves an eternal destiny gave to the problem of freedom a tragic aspect completely overlooked by the Greeks, Aristotle in particular. The specifically Christian problem of the harmony between freedom and grace further complicated the problem of the harmony between divine knowledge and freedom. Moreover the Christian message, with St. Paul in particular, was presented as a liberation: the Christian is torn from servitude to sin, to the flesh, and to the letter of the law in order to enjoy freedom of spirit.

The Fathers of the Church, in fact, at first appeared concerned with defending free will against the fatalism of the Gnostics and the Manichaeans (St. irenaeus, origen, methodius of olympus, gregory of nyssa, etc.). Knowledge does not change the nature of its object; what is foreseen as free is free (St. augustine). boethius was more precise. He clarified the idea of eternity, that in God there is not foreknowledge but knowledge, so that what is future for man is present for God. The problem of freedom and grace came to the fore with the Pelagian controversy (see pelagius and pelagianism). In what sense and to what point is man, a fallen creature and enslaved to sin, free? How can God move man toward good without infringing upon his freedom, and so on? The Latin Middle Ages would remain under the influence of the Augustinian problematics.

Middle ages. In the early scholastic period, Saints anselm of canterbury and bernard of clairvaux are the two outstanding figures. Anselm considered freedom essentially as the power to retain rectitude of the will for love of this very rectitude. It is inseparable from the will and perdures even in the sinner who cannot recover his lost rectitude. St. Bernard distinguished three freedoms: a natural freedom that is contrary to necessity; another, the effect of grace, that frees from sin; and a third, an effect of glory, that frees from suffering. The will is essentially free, and in man this freedom effects a special resemblance to God.

The thinkers of the high scholastic period dealt more rigidly with the nature of the will's freedom, some relating it to reason, others to the will, still others to both. St. thomas aquinas saw it as an attribute of the will insofar as the latter is rational. He based his theory of the free act on the distinction between the order of specification, in which intelligence is primary, and that of exercise, in which the will has primacy. Only the good in general, the Absolute Good, can necessarily determine the will in the order of specification. But in the latter case, although this necessity does away with freedom of choice, it does permit a freedom of spontaneity. Man participates in such freedom here on earth to the degree that he is led by the Holy Spirit. It must be noted that, since divine motion respects natures, God can move the will with no detriment to its freedom. (see free will; causality, divine.)

John Duns Scotus gives freedom a particular emphasis as that which characterizes the will and differentiates it from "natural" powers. The will is the sole cause of its decision, the role of the intellect being merely that of proposing its object. Even when faced with the Absolute Good, the will strictly retains the possibility of refusing its assent. The theology of Scotus tries to avoid anything that would place in God a dependence of will on intellect.

The nominalist school further accented the voluntarist and indeterminist tendency. Physical and moral laws are completely subject to the divine mind, and a type of theological determinism begins to appear. This does not always deny free will but views it as necessarily determined by God and in reality as nonexistent. thomas bradwardine and John wyclif are representative of this tendency.

Modern period. Such theories found an echo among the reformers. For M. luther and J. calvin, among others, free will no longer exists in man, who is fallen and totally enslaved to his desires. It is basically incompatible with the foreknowledge and sovereign dominion of God.

The controversy raised by such opinions afforded Catholic theologians the opportunity to study the nature of freedom and of its compatibility with divine knowledge, providence, and action. As regards the first topic, Thomists maintained the nondetermining character of motives, whereas F. suÁrez and the Molinists held for the possibility of acting or not acting, all conditions required for action being present, and "all" being understood to include divine motion. On the other hand, Thomists and St. Robert bellarmine held that the will always follows the last practical judgment, a point on which Suárez disagreed. The second topic gave rise to the systems of D. Báñez and L. de molina and their variations. Báñez emphasized the primacy of divine action, which infallibly predetermines the will to determine itself freely. Suárez, on the other hand, was careful to safeguard the psychological reality of free will, but he faced serious problems also, particularly in his theory of the scientia media. These two systems have confronted each other throughout the history of Catholic theology (see concurrence, divine; predetermination; premotion, physical).

The problems of philosophers during this period differed from those of the theologians. While T. hobbes professed determinism, R. descartes vigorously affirmed freedom in God and in man. In God freedom is absolute and operates with essences and truths as well as with existences. This indifference is one aspect of God's infinite perfection, of His supreme independence. Freedom is in some way infinite in man too; in this way it is in him the mark of the Creator. Man can oppose the clearly known good simply to assert his freedom. However, this indifference is not purely and simply a perfection in man, who does not create the true and the good. On the contrary, the infinity of freedom in man, insofar as it goes beyond the extent of understanding, is the cause of error and sin, for man can affirm and will something whose truth and worth he does not perceive clearly. Perfect freedom, for him, would be an irresistible and fully spontaneous adherence to the clearly perceived good. Descartes cites an example of this in consenting to the evidence of the Cogito. The Cartesian notion of freedom oscillates between the second and the third meanings cited at the beginning of this article.

For B. spinoza, something is free if it exists because of the sole necessity of its nature and if it alone determines itself to act. Only one being fits this definition, God or substance, whose freedom and necessity are identical. There is no freedom of choice in God, for this would place contingency in Him; things derive from Him as conclusions from a principle. Again, there is no freedom of choice in man, whose activity is determined not only by his own essence but by the action of other beings (modes). Human freedom in the third meaning, however, does exist; it consists in freedom from passions or affections and in determination by reason, and comes about because of "knowledge of the third kind," which grasps things through their highest reason, sub specie aeternitatis.

G. W. leibniz rejected this necessitarianism and attempted to restore the freedom of choice. In his view, the free act is characterized by (1) spontaneity, a characteristic common to every activity since the substance, or monad, is alone the cause of all its determinations; (2) intellectuality; and (3) contingency, in the sense that the opposite act does not imply any logical or metaphysical contradiction. Decision is always the result of judgments, affections, tendencies, "little perceptions," and the like, which converge in the soul at a moment coinciding with the autonomous development (with no external command) of the monad. A "freedom of indifference" would violate the principle of sufficient reason, whose discovery Leibniz attributed to himself. Thus he never went beyond psychological determinism and considered the free subject an immaterial automaton. In his opinion, God Himself is determined by His perfection to the choice of the better.

Eighteenth-century empiricism and materialism completely rejected free will. Freedom is an attribute of man, not of the will, and it consists in the power man has to determine his actions (including his internal acts) by his will when faced with possible alternatives. But the will is necessarily moved by the attraction of pleasure and especially, according to J. locke, by the desire to escape "uneasiness," although Locke acknowledged in man the power to suspend his decision to make the choice clearer. According to D. hume, internal facts appear to be as completely dependent upon their antecedents as are external facts. Yet these writers were deeply interested in freedom in the first meaning. In this period, the development of liberal ideas in politics and economics put an end to the old regime and created a new type of society.

I. kant stated the problem of freedom in original fashion. The pure reason, requiring that phenomena be linked among themselves according to causal determinism, excludes the freedom of the phenomenal world but allows the possibility of freedom in the noumenal world, of which it knows nothing (see phenomena; noumena). But the practical reason sees in the fact of obligation a determination by pure reason that implies freedom. In reality Kant has two ideas of freedom: one negative, the power to begin a series of phenomena, and the other positive, the autodetermination of practical reason (or will) in positing moral law. How is negative freedom reconciled with the determinism in this view? In his Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Königsberg 1793), Kant acknowledges a timeless choice that determines the intelligible character governing the complete unfolding of empirical existence for every man. This idea was to appear many times in the future, for example, with F. W. J. schelling and A. schopenhauer.

Contemporary period. The notion of freedom is much used in contemporary philosophy but with very different meanings, a diversity already seen in post-Kantian idealism. J. G. fichte exalted the creative freedom by which the ego set up for itself a world where morality was to be practiced (The Vocation of Man), while G. W. F. hegel located true freedom in man's having within himself the reason for his own activity. Such a notion of freedom excludes contingency; it is an inclusive and internalized necessity. Concretely it is realized within a well-organized state. This notion of freedom as the perfect penetration of man by reason, as the realization of the true ego (i.e., the rational ego), is common to the rationalist-idealist tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as exemplified by F. H. bradley and B. Bosanquet.

Whereas the positivistic empiricism of J. S. mill recognized only freedom in the first meaning—and scientific determinism spread this conception—Marxism adopted and transposed certain Hegelian ideas into materialism. True freedom is what all of humanity will possess when men control the physical and social mechanisms that dominate them at present. Freedom is necessity that is understood and utilized. There is no free will. Because they make no distinction between theory and practice, the Marxists speak of liberation (i.e., from the mastery of a determinism imposed by science and technology) rather than of freedom. Man learns what freedom is by liberating himself. They insist on the dialectical connection between determinism and freedom; without determinism freedom is impossible, because man cannot act upon nature.

Among the defenders of free will, apart from traditional spiritualism, may be cited C. Renouvier. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, an antirationalist and antideterminist reaction appeared in the form of pragmatism, the philosophy of contingency developed by W. james. Unfortunately, the assertion of freedom has often been separated from a finalist metaphysics that alone renders it intelligible.

H. bergson stressed the freedom of spirit as opposed to the determinism of matter. The free act is the continuous expression of the underlying ego, which continually reconstitutes itself so that one state can never be reduced to a previous state. Determinism proceeds from an illusion that expresses pure spiritual duration in terms of space.

More recently some claim to have found a defense for freedom in the indeterminism of quantum mechanics.

Existential or existentialist thinkers since S. A. kierkegaard insist on the irrational side of freedom as the generator of anxiety. Choice plays an important role in the ontology of J. P. Sartre, for whom freedom is conscious awareness and existence. It precedes the entire order of reason and in this sense, but in this sense alone, it is "absurd." The radical choice is that by which being-for-itself puts itself, in an absolutely contingent fashion, into being-in-itself as its negation. Such a freedom has no limit but the impossibility of self-renunciation. No nature or order of values is before or above it; it itself creates values.

For N. hartmann and others, freedom encounters a world of values to be realized, but it can move toward realization only by choosing among them. This necessity is the radical evil. On the other hand, human freedom is interpreted by the theory of "levels of being," each of which is free with respect to the inferior levels.

Among contemporary Thomists, Jacques Maritain has studied the problem of freedom more profoundly than any other (see thomism). Freedom of choice presupposes freedom of spontaneity, common to everything that lives and acts, but it must lead to the freedom of "autonomy and exultation." This is the opening out of a personality whose aspirations nothing harms or contradicts, either as a human personality or as a personality in general. Moreover, Maritain draws attention to the ontological basis of freedom by relating it to the Thomistic doctrine of existence.

SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS

Among the topics associated with freedom that merit more detailed consideration are its ontological basis, its relationships to God, and its particular relation to the person.

Ontological basis. In its metaphysical essence, freedom implies autodetermination of the subject more than it does nonnecessity. Its various types stem from the various ways of considering the subject, which can be (1) man as determined from without; (2) more particularly, man as determining his internal or external acts by his will; (3) deeper still, in the willing subject, the ego as not completely determined by nature, circumstances, motives, and the like; or (4) the superego, as opposed to the ego and to the id. To understand the bond between freedom broadly associated with being in this way, one must consider being not only as an essence, as a determination to be this or that, but also as an existent actuality.

A purely essentialist notion of being tends to conceive the bond between various beings after the fashion of a logical connection; in its extreme form, this is found in the rationalist determinism of Spinoza and somewhat less in that of Leibniz. In reality, the act by which the subject exists and subsists in his incommunicable individuality, and this in accordance with the demands of his essence, is the root of his activity and spontaneity. His activity is his own inasmuch as it is the expression and realization of this radical actuality.

Spontaneity increases with the ontological level of being. Being is more unified and more itself, its activity more its own and more autonomous, the more it is being and the more it approaches the sufficiency and independence of Subsistent Being. But below the level of spirit, this spontaneity remains entirely determined by the nature of the agent and the concrete conditions of its exercise. With spirit there appears a new kind of spontaneity. Spirit, of course, acts according to its nature, or essence, but its nature is not to be simply a nature, not to be simply what it is, but to be somehow everything. Its essence is "open" and its aspirations can be satisfied by the Absolute alone. In this way it escapes from determinism. Other existents, being only what they are, can act only according to what they are at a given moment. But spirit is not imprisoned by any particular determination, by any end or value; it can transcend them all. This condition of the spirit can be referred to as ontological freedom. In spirit, in fact, there "freely" appears the positive indetermination of being as such, its eminence over its various determinations. Freedom of action is rooted in this ontological freedom.

Obviously, for a spirit incarnate in matter, the exercise of this power of surpassing is conditioned by what it has of the nonspiritual within itself. Human freedom is essentially impure and its field of immediate action is quite diminished.

Freedom in no way constitutes an irrational exception in being, as was believed under the influence of determinist thought. On the contrary, it is nonfreedom that marks a decadence in being. For St. Thomas, free action as action "by itself" has primacy over any action that is determined by a given nature, which is action "by another" (De pot. 3.15). The mystery of freedom is basically the mystery of being itself, of the existent. This is why, if every act clearly makes existence manifest, the free act does so to an eminent degree. The essence of the will does not explain such behavior in these circumstances; only the existent can remove such indetermination. Insofar as freedom implies the contingency of the act in the choice of a finite good, the mystery that it envelops is also that of finite being, of nonbeing in being itself. Finally, insofar as created freedom expresses the (at least radical) possibility of failure, it implies nonbeing not only on the part of the object but also on the part of the subject.

Freedom and God. Two points here merit consideration: freedom in God and man's freedom before God.

God's freedom. As pure act of being, dependent on nothing, not even on a nature that might differ so little as to be His act and for Him a given, God is freedom. Some thinkers, such as C. Secrétan (1815–95), even consider this freedom as the principle of divine being ("I am what I will"). This implies two impossibilities: self-causation, in the strict sense, and the contingency of the Absolute Being. Divine existence can be called a free act only if one understands by this the independence and unconditional character of Absolute Being. Such a freedom is also a necessity because Absolute Being cannot not exist (contingency is a defect of being). Only He exists by Himself alone; His existence is neither a pure fact nor the effect of necessity that is a priori with respect to Him. God simply is.

Neither is there freedom of choice in the love that God has for Himself, which is the internal aspect of His necessity, although He does have freedom of choice with regard to other beings. God is determined neither to create, nor to create a particular type of world, nor to impress a determined course on its history. To think otherwise would be to include this world among the conditions without which God would not be God. The Divine Being is sufficient unto Himself; His worth does not depend upon the beings He establishes, nor is He better for having created (better for man, indeed, but this is true only insofar as man exists). This poses a difficulty, which was accentuated by Spinoza, for indetermination and contingency seem thus to be attributed to God. Had God created another world, His act would have been different; and since His act and His being are inseparable, His being would have been other than it is. Here it is pointless to make, as some do, a distinction between God and His choice, to presume that such a distinction can be reconciled with the simplicity of god and that it does not introduce nonbeing or potency in Him. Even though it is claimed that the determination God gives Himself proceeds from His plenitude and presupposes no lack within Him, there is still the presence of this determination itself that must be explained, and this can proceed ad infinitum. In reality, here one encounters the mystery of free causality. It is proper to the thing that it cannot produce a different effect unless it is modified in its being. It is proper to spirit to be able to give rise to different effects without so changing. For the finite spirit, acts are specified by their objects, and the contingency of objects reflects back on the acts. On the other hand, God is not involved in a network of relationships, for He gives and receives nothing. Contingency, multiplicity, and the diversity of beings that He establishes cannot affect His unique, identical, and necessary act. Man's reason cannot very well grasp the "how" of this. The affirmation of divine freedom guarantees the contingency of the universe but transfigures it at the same time; such contingency is no longer absurd and distressing, as the existentialists hold, but rather it becomes the expression of a loving freedom. The world's entire value stems from its appearing to be the result of a free gift.

Man's freedom before God. There is no need to examine here the particular problems encountered in reconciling human freedom of choice with divine knowledge and providence (see predestination; providence of god). The more general difficulty is the following. If man can begin a chain of events, he seems to be a creator and to possess within himself something that does not depend upon God. Human freedom thus seems to limit the universality of divine action. In fact, some thinkers, for example, H. Höffding (1843–1931), have asserted that to admit free will is to admit a kind of polytheism. Without entering into an examination of theories that have tried to clarify the problem of divine concurrence, one may note that a correct understanding of the relation between freedom and being can shed much light on the problem. The relation of created freedom to God is then seen as an aspect of the relation of participated being to Absolute Being (see participation). God is this very relationship at its maximum intensity. Human freedom participates in divine freedom, but it no more limits divine freedom than finite being limits Infinite Being. On the contrary, divine freedom and omnipotence are manifested by the ability of beings to determine themselves, to be in some way "causes of themselves"—a capacity that itself comes from their "openness" to the Absolute. The free act reveals the infinite depth of the Spirit who makes its originator be an "image of God." Thus in every way human freedom bespeaks dependence upon God; it does not limit God. The participated character of human freedom is here the fundamental truth. To specify the "how" of this must be left to various systems of explanation, though none offers complete satisfaction.

The real problem lies in the matter of choosing evil, for one would not wish to place responsibility for this on God. But the possibility of sinning, far from perfecting freedom, limits it. Man sins to the extent that he participates only imperfectly in divine freedom. Sin is the expression of the nothingness in the creature. It is the negation or "rupture" of the divine movement toward good; and as such, it is the work exclusively of the creature. Although contrary to the divine will, sin is permitted by this will, which wishes beings to be what they are and to act according to their nature. Divine action (grace) and human freedom must not be considered as contradictories, as though man is freer when less "moved" by God; it is the opposite, rather, that is true.

Human freedom, participating in God's freedom, perfects itself as freedom only to the extent that it allows itself to be completely enveloped by God.

Freedom and person. Freedom appears as the act proper to the person. Metaphysically speaking, the person is radically composed of two elements: (1) subsistence, that is, individual existence proper to a unit that is relatively autonomous and incommunicable, fully "in itself"; (2) spirituality or an intellectual nature, together with all this implies for openness to being, values, and so on, and for the ability to enter into communication with other persons. This latter aspect is particularly stressed in contemporary thought. But freedom exhibits the person in this twofold characterization: (1) Not only does the free act show the existent as existent, but eminently as this existent. My free act is mine; I alone am responsible (whereas a truth is true for all). Moreover, freedom completes individuality, adding to natural differences or those owed to circumstances that stem from various choices.(2) The free act is expressive of a spiritual nature insofar as this act involves going beyond particular values. The awareness of freedom is nothing more than the awareness of this power of surpassing and of the opening out toward the Absolute. In this way the person is rendered present to himself, in possession of himself, as opposed to the dispersion and the alienation of the thing. This enables the person truly to give himself in a selfless love.

Authentic or spiritual love and freedom are thus closely related; both express the superabundance of the spiritual existent. True love implies freedom, and it is itself a liberator. It is obvious from this that freedom is a condition for the establishment of a true society of persons. personality and freedom progress on an equal footing. This implies that the person must be placed in conditions conducive to the full operation of his power of self-determination, and this normally implies a certain amount of freedom in the first meaning mentioned at the beginning of this article. Only a really strong personality can find in servitude the opportunity to affirm his proper freedom. The education of the person will thus leave some play for freedom, even though this involves some risk; one need not attempt to prevent every deviation by external restraints. The virtuous act must proceed from within, and this presumes the subject's recognition and acceptance of moral values as his own. When the Good, with whom the subject identifies himself through love, completely determines him and conditions and envelops the very good of his subjectivity and freedom, it is then that he is fully self-determined, fully free, and fully a person.

See Also: contingency; freedom, intellectual; freedom, spiritual; freedom of religion; free will.

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