Book V, Chs 2, 3, & 6
- FREE WILL It is a requirement of a rational nature that it possess free will.
Argument: Having reason means you have the power of judgment to make decisions and to distinguish between things which should be desired and things which should be avoided “by its own resources.” Everyone seeks that which he judges desirable, and rejects what he thinks should be avoided. Therefore there is freedom of desiring and shunning.
How does Boethius define “freedom” then?
Freedom seems to mean that there is no antecedent necessity about what a rational creature will desire. The rational creature itself determines what it will desire—a free action is one that is not predetermined. Necessary acts, the opposite of free acts, are predetermined, and so can be foreknown. (I know the speed and direction of an object struck by another, if I know the speed and direction of that striking object, as well as some minimal facts about the situation.)
Free Will is squarely situated in an unconstrained use of reason.
Degrees of freedom: Therefore, the more rational a nature is, the more free; slavery or loss of freedom is occasioned by loss of reason. In the next paragraph—”Clear judgment, uncorrupted will, and effective power to obtain what one desires” makes a rational creature more free! Being blinded by ignorance and obsessed by vicious passions makes a rational creature less free = slavery and captivation. Applying to the above, if I can confuse you, or keep you in the dark about things, or control your reason by your passions, I can more easily predetermine what you are going to do, because those things remove your freedom of action!
- THE PROBLEM OF DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE.
The conundrum
- God sees everything in advance and cannot be deceived.
- Therefore whatever his Providence foresees will happen, must happen, including all the acts of men, as well as their plans and wishes.
- Therefore everything is known beforehand by the infallible Providence of God
- Therefore it looks like what a rational creature will do, plan, and desire is predetermined before the rational creature determines it.
- But freedom means that the decision of the rational creature is not predetermined before the rational creature determines it. (I.e., freedom is the ability of the rational creature to determine its own course of action by its own means). ______________________
- Therefore it looks like rational creatures have no free will.
[NOTE: Freedom meant above that nothing is determined in advance; but if God foreknows what is going to happen, then it looks like it is determined in advance!]
A solution rejected:
The “solution”: Things do not happen because divine Providence foresees that they will happen, divine Providence foresees that they will happen because they will happen.
In other words, this solution says, divine Providence is not to be thought the cause of things happening as they do, but things happen as they do because that’s the way they happen, divine Providence only “sees” this.
But this fails to resolve the problem—for things still happen as they happen, and free will is still only an illusion. It doesn’t matter whether God causes events to unfold as they do, or something else (fate?) causes it, either way, events are predetermined in advance, and so either way the “freedom of the human will is destroyed.”
- SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF PROVIDENCE
The resolution
- Whatever is known is known according to the nature of the knower.
- The nature of the divine being is eternal.
- Eternity is the whole, perfect, and simultaneous possession of endless life.
- Therefore, an eternal being must be in full possession of itself, always present to itself, and hold the infinity of moving time present before itself.
- Therefore, God’s knowledge transcends all movement of time and abides in the simplicity of its immediate present.
- Therefore the foreknowledge of God is not a foreknowledge of future events, but knowledge of a never changing present. (Providence is the name of God’s knowledge, not “prevision.”)
- Therefore divine foreknowledge simply sees things present before it, as they will later turn out to be in what we regard as the future.
- Therefore God knows that something will happen in the future (our future) and at the same time knows that it will not happen through necessity. Solution of the difficulty about nature of the necessity… Whatever God foresees as happening cannot help but happen. Whatever must happen is bound by necessity. Therefore human action is bound by necessity. Answer: from the standpoint of divine knowledge, future things (including future acts of free will) are necessary, but only because of the condition of their being known by God. (For whatever is known, must be as it is known to be—conditional necessity.)
However, considered in themselves, acts of free will are not necessary (simple necessity); before they happened, they were able not to happen.
“As he says, “God sees those future events which happen of free will as present events; so that these things when considered with reference to God’s sight of them do happen necessarily as a result of the condition of divine knowledge; but when considered in themselves they do not lose the absolute freedom of their nature.””