40. Free will is based on reason
40. FREE WILL IS BASED ON REASON
Reason seems to confine us. How can free will be based on reason?
(1) Some things act without judgment, as a stone moves downwards, and in like manner all things which lack knowledge.
(2) And some act from judgment but not a free judgment, as brute animals. For the sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned, from a natural (instinctive) and not a free judgment, because it judges not from reason but from natural instinct. And the same thing is to be said of any judgment of brute animals.
(3) But man acts from judgment. . . . But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things . . . and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And (thus) forasmuch as man is rational it is necessary that man have a free-will (I,83,1).
St. Thomas uses “judgment” here in a broader sense than we usually do today, as something animals also share. And he uses the term “natural” here in a narrower sense than we usually do, as contrasted to “free” and “rational”. Thus animals have judgment, but not free judgment.
His point is that our reason, unlike animal instinct or sense perception, knows not just concrete particulars but abstract universals, and this is why we are free. Animal instinct knows “the good” only in the form of food or sex or sleep, and whichever concrete, particular good is stronger will always move the animal. If it is more tired than hungry, it will sleep; if it is more hungry than tired, it will eat. But human reason knows “the good” in general, and that is why we can choose between different concrete, particular goods. We can compare one concrete good with another only because we have an abstract and universal standard for this judgment, as animals do not. Even if we are more tired than hungry, we may refuse to sleep if we are on sentry duty, and we may eat even if we are not hungry if we know we need the strength the food will give us.
Why then do we so often think reason confines us rather than frees us? Why do we think that free will is not really free if it conforms to reason? We think that reason confines us because we think of it in materialistic and even mechanistic ways, like a computer. It is, in fact, more like light: it frees us to make choices. Or perhaps we complain that reason confines us because moral reason commands us to do things that require sacrifice. But these things too liberate us—from an addiction, in fact from our master addiction to selfishness. We are never free by violating reason, especially moral reason, any more than we are free when we put our eyes out.
Therefore, if we want to be saints, we must listen to reason. That is the practical payoff of this theoretical point. (Needless to say, “reason” means far more than “cleverness” or “logical consistency” or even “scholarly sophistication”—it means knowing the truth.) Training our will by habit to obey reason is an essential preliminary to training our passions to obey. If we do not see, or understand, by reason, the attractiveness and rightness of will obeying reason instead of passions, we will not be able to control our passions freely. “Reason” is a holy thing, or at least something tremendously helpful to holiness; for it sees through the Devil’s most effective lie, that sin is fun.
That is why we are commanded to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5), like taming wild beasts. Buddhists often understand the importance of thought better than modern Christians do. The first line of the most popular Buddhist book, the Dhammapada, is: “All that we are is determined by what we think.” That is why Buddhists meditate so much, and why we should too. It works!