130. Necessity and the Will: Freedom and Natural Inclination

Subscribe in Podcast App | Download Transcript

Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

• Necessity and Its Meanings: Thomas distinguishes multiple senses of necessity—intrinsic (from form or matter), hypothetical/conditional (from the end), and extrinsic (from agent or end)
• Natural Necessity vs. Coercive Necessity: Only necessity of force (coactio) is repugnant to the will; natural necessity belongs to the will’s inclination and does not oppose freedom
• The Will and the Last End: The will necessarily adheres to beatitude (happiness) as its final end, just as the intellect necessarily adheres to first principles
• Particular Goods and Contingency: Particular goods do not necessitate the will because the will’s capacity extends to universal good, which is not exhausted by any single particular good
• The Foundation of Freedom: Natural necessity provides the ground and foundation for freedom; without something unchanging in the will, choice itself becomes unintelligible

Key Arguments #

First Objection and Reply #

Objection (Augustine): If something is necessary, it is not voluntary; therefore nothing the will wills is necessarily desired.

Reply: Augustine distinguishes two senses of necessity. Necessity of force (from external compulsion) destroys voluntariness. But natural necessity does not, because it accords with the inclination of the will itself.

Second Objection and Reply #

Objection (Aristotle): Rational powers have themselves to opposites; the will is a rational power; therefore the will is not determined by necessity to anything.

Reply: When considering what the will naturally wills, it corresponds more to intellectual understanding (intellectus) than to reason as such (ratio). The distinction parallels reason as nature versus reason as reasoning—the will has a natural determination that serves as foundation for its rational operations.

Third Objection and Reply #

Objection: We are lords of our acts; what is necessary is not in our power; therefore the will cannot act from necessity.

Reply: We are lords of our acts through choice (electio), which concerns means to the end, not the end itself. The desire for the last end (beatitude) is not something we are lords over in the same way as particular choices.

The Mover and the Movable #

Key Principle: A mover necessarily causes motion in the movable only when the mover’s power exceeds the movable’s power to resist.

Application to the Will: The will’s capacity with respect to universal good and perfect good is not exhausted by any particular good. Therefore, no particular good object moves the will from necessity.

Important Definitions #

Necessity (from Aristotle): What is not able not to be (quod non potest non esse).

Contingent: What is able to be and not be (potest esse et non esse).

Natural Necessity: From intrinsic principles (matter or form); exemplified by a triangle necessarily having angles equal to two right angles.

Hypothetical/Conditional Necessity: From the end (ex fine); if this end is to be achieved, then this must precede. Example: food is necessary if one is to live.

Necessity of Force (coactio): From external agent; what is violent is against the inclination of a thing (either natural or voluntary inclination). Absolutely repugnant to the will.

Voluntariness (voluntarium): According to the inclination of the will itself. Just as natural means according to the inclination of nature, voluntary means according to the inclination of the will.

Beatitude (beatitudo): The final end, happiness; that which all necessarily will in a general way, though not in a determinate way.

Choice (electio): Concerns means to the end, not the end itself; the province of lordship over our acts.

Intellect (intellectus): Natural understanding; understanding without having to reason it out. Distinguished from reasoned understanding (scientia).

Reason as nature vs. Reason as reasoning: When considering reason as naturally understanding principles, one considers it as a kind of nature. When considering reason as investigating and reasoning to conclusions, one considers it as ratio (discursive reasoning).

Examples & Illustrations #

The Chair: If you smash up a chair into its parts, you no longer have a chair. Division destroys being; things resist division as they resist non-existence.

The Army vs. the Crowd: An army has a certain order and unity; a mere crowd lacks this. Disorder means the entity ceases to be as such.

The Letters C-A-T: If you divide the letters from each other, you do not have a word.

Fire and the Doctor: A natural power like fire is determined to one effect (burning my hand, not cooling it). A rational power like that of a doctor can produce opposite effects (curing or harming).

Cooking: I can cook a steak or burn a steak—both by my art. Shows the rational power’s openness to opposites.

Childhood Understanding of Happiness: As a boy, Berquist thought his refrigerator filled with soda pop would make him happy. Later he realized this does not constitute true happiness. The will naturally desires beatitude, but people err about what beatitude consists in.

The Child and the Ten Commandments: The young man asks Christ what is necessary to be saved. Christ lists the commandments (necessaria). Then he offers the consilia (counsels/evangelical counsels) like poverty and following him—adbenedisia (ad bene esse—for living well), not necessary for salvation.

The Divine Will: God necessarily wills himself; God does not necessarily love us but freely loves us. Nothing adds to God by his giving; all goodness in us is caused by his will. God’s providence extends even to contingent events like parents meeting.

The Baseball Changing Place: The ball changed its place, but the ball remained. Without the ball remaining, you could not speak of change of place. Change requires something unchanging.

The Stone Thrown Upward: Naturally, a stone falls downward (natural motion). When thrown upward, it moves violently, against its natural inclination. Natural and violent cannot coexist in the same motion.

Geometry Example—Right Angles: When a straight line intersects another making equal angles, we call these right angles (this is the definition). All right angles are equal to one another—more or less obvious. But one can also prove it by imagining one angle laid upon another and using the axiom that the whole is greater than the part.

The Sixth Theorem of Euclid: If in a triangle two angles are equal, the sides opposite them are equal. The proof uses the axiom that the whole is greater than the part.

Matthew’s Gospel Division: Berquist was preparing to read Matthew’s Gospel and consulted Thomas’s division/outline of the Gospel. He chose to read Matthew rather than John—a contingent choice. Neither Gospel is necessary for becoming wise, yet reason can choose among them as means to wisdom.

Pope Speaks Magazine: Berquist subscribes and reads it several months after issue arrival. Also reading Sophocles’s plays in Greek. Shows contingency even in pursuing good things—he could be reading different texts.

Notable Quotes #

“If you divide something, it ceases to be. Right? Oh, okay, yeah. And so things resist their division just as they resist, you know, being put out of existence.”

“Augustine says in the fifth book about the city of God, that if something is necessary, it is not, what, voluntary, huh? But everything that the will wills is voluntary. Therefore, nothing that the will wills is necessarily desired.”

“The necessity of coaction is altogether repugnant to the will huh it is a kind of a violence right for we call that violent which is against the inclination of a thing.”

“Just as something is said natural because it is according to the inclination of nature so something is called voluntary because it’s according to the very inclination of the will.”

“If you’re going to live, then you must eat. If you’re going to live, you must breathe, right? You see? So they call it conditional necessity, right?”

“The end is in things to be done as the principle is in what speculative matters so just as Euclid proceeds from understanding that a whole is more than a part to some other theorem right or even to the postulates right right so the will from going to the end proceeds to will the what meanings to that end.”

“The very idea of change requires something unchanging.”

“You can’t even speak of change without something not changing. You can’t figure, you know, that baseball that got knocked out of the ball crack the other night, right? You know, it’s changed its place, yeah. But if the ball didn’t remain, you couldn’t speak of a change of place, could you?”

“God alone is liberal, you know? Because the liberal man gives without expecting any return, right? And this is, only God really gets nothing out of his giving, right? And we get everything.”

“You realize that there’s so many others that could have been instead of you, you know? You realize that it wasn’t because of some excellence of me that I was generated with somebody else, right? It was altogether free and liberal that he decided that I would be.”

Questions Addressed #

Does the will necessarily will whatever it wills? No—not in a univocal sense. The will necessarily wills the last end (beatitude) in a general, confused way. But particular goods do not necessitate the will unless their connection to happiness is understood. The will’s capacity extends to universal good, so no particular good exhausts the will’s possibility.

How can the will be free if it necessarily wills happiness? Natural necessity (rooted in the will’s nature) is compatible with freedom. Only coercive necessity (external force) destroys freedom. The will’s natural inclination to happiness is the foundation of freedom, not its negation.

Why doesn’t every good object necessarily move the will? Because the will’s possibility with respect to universal and perfect good is not wholly subject to any particular good. The mover causes motion necessarily only when the mover’s power exceeds the movable’s power to resist. Since particular goods do not exhaust the will’s openness to good, they do not move it from necessity.

What is the relationship between intellect and will regarding necessity? Both necessarily adhere to their respective starting points: the intellect to first principles (like “the whole is greater than the part”), the will to the last end (beatitude). Just as the intellect does not necessarily assent to conclusions until it sees their necessary connection to principles, the will does not necessarily will particular goods until it understands their necessary connection to happiness.