Free Will

The will is free with the freedom of choice of means. If a man’s will were not free, all counsels,exhortations, commands, rewards, and punishments would be meaningless things. Man does not always act from necessity. He weighs and considers a course of action; he seeks advice; he judges that this way is to be followed, then perhaps changes his judgment and decides on that way. Nor does a man act withthe mere sense-judgment of an animal, an instinctive judgment; he works on understandable motives. Man acts with the unhamperedjudgment of an intellect which shows various courses open for choice and makes practical and nonnecessitated decision. In a word man has free will. In the fact that man is rational is involved the fact that he has free will.

The term free will, strictly understood, means the act of the will making a free choice. But the term free will is commonly used as a synonym for the will itself. And thus free will is the will in its character as a faculty fort ending to or choosing, without being necessitated, goods upon which the intellect is capable of making various practicaljudgments.

Free will is an appetitive power, not a knowing power.It operates in the light of knowledge furnished by the intellect. Knowledge is, of course, necessary for the act of free will; choice cannot be made without knowledge of the field of choice. A travelercannot choose a road in total darkness which prevents his seeing any roads at all. But the characteristic act of free will is the act of choosing, and therefore it is a faculty of the appetitiveorder, and not of the cognitional or knowing order.

Free will as an act is the will exercising itsconnatural tendency towards good and resultant beatitude by choosing, without being forced, some particular object apprehended by the intellect as good or desirable.