Are We Free To Do What I want?
It is undeniably, unless ill or paralyzed, that we enjoy a certain liberty, freedom of movement, we are able to move our heads, to raise fingers, to run, etc. But this physical freedom is not unlimited, we can frantically wave our arms but we cannot manage to fly. Our freedom of movement is governed by rules which we are unable to transgress, we cannot live without eating, we cannot eat anything whatsoever, etc. To rebel against the limits of our physical liberty is useless. On the other hand, if we accept to submit ourselves to the laws of the nature of things, like that of gravity for example we can succeed in flying but by going up in an airplane.
Are we free to do What I wish?
Our thought and our will possess a certain freedom. To deny it would be to reject the testimony of our conscience. Even the man who is chained down keeps it. One can beat him, torture him, but one cannot prevent him from thinking of his wife or of wanting to escape; his jailer can apply the whip as much as he likes but he can never constrain him by force to like him. The latter remains free to think or to like whatever he wants; one can by force prevent him from expressing his thoughts or of realizing his desires but one cannot force him to change his opinion; he keeps his free will, a freedom which he calls free judgement. To reject it would amount to putting in doubt the very purpose of counsels, exhortations, teaching, prohibitations, rewards and punishments; the Penal codes of every country would lose, e.g., their reason for existing.
Are We Really Free?
Imagine that I have the choice between two paths to arrive at an appointment, one is long but nicer than the other. Before making my decision, I use my intelligence to find out which is the better way for me. I ask myself which is the best for me, the less tiring or the contemplation of a lovely scenery? The solution could vary, according to circumstance but I wall always seek to take the best route. My free-will permits me, in fact, to choose a way to reach what is good. That which I always seek is what is best for me.
I can be mistaken. I could just as well follow the impulses of my disordered sensibility rather than the judgement of my intelligence; e.g. starving, I could take a balanced meal or swallow many bars of chocolate. If I suffer a liver attack, it is not less true that it was to my benefit which I believed to find in swallowing the chocolates; I sought to be satisfied by enjoying the taste of the chocolates, but not to suffer a liver attack!
This thing is important because it proves that liberty is not an end in itself but a means to achieve an end. That which makes the importance and the value of liberty is the importance and the value of that which it allows to be achieved. In itself, liberty is only a potentiality, e.g., I am free to go and see a film at a cinema. I have the possibility. It is evident that this possibility has value only by relation to the film in question; it relates to a good film I will be delighted by the possibility which is given to me; if I know, on the contrary, that the film is long, sad and tiresome, I have no reason to be particularly delighted. One sees by this that liberty is not a goal or end in itself as one hears it today. Liberty is only valuable because of the good it permits us to achieve. It has no value except in as far as the thing which one achieves is good in itself.
If man always seeks his good, he can be mistaken in his search: e.g. he could take a poisoned fruit, whether he wants it or not, that fruit could cause him harm. If the human being has therefore the power of freely directing itself towards its good, it has not, however, the power to choose that which is good for him. He could never arrange it so that a deadly poison, taken in a big dose, would give him health. Things are good or bad independently of his will. This is what one wants to express when speaking of moral liberty. By moral liberty one means the right man has to do that which is good for him, whether he wills it or not. Man is free and can be mistaken; so a moral law exists to indicate that which is good. The moral law shows that a hierarchy exists among the good things, e.g. my life has more value than the pleasure obtained through a poisoned sweet, even if it is delicious. One has not the right, therefore, to sacrifice a higher good for an inferior good. Evidently the moral law which man should follow to attain and achieve his good flows from human nature.
