Limits to What Is Voluntary

one

There are things that can hinder our freedom

Aquinas says that we act voluntarily when we are “knowingly self-moved”. What that means is that for our wills to be free, two things are required. First of all, we have to know what we’re doing. If we don’t know what we’re doing, then we’re not freely choosing to do it anymore than a sleepwalker is freely choosing to sleepwalk. Secondly, we must be moving ourselves. That means we can’t be compelled from without, by physical force. It also means we can’t be compelled from within, by a psychological compulsion. These three things: ignorance, physical force, and psychological compulsion, will make us unfree

two

Since Freedom and Responsibility go together, a lack of freedom means a lack of responsibility

When some physical force, ignorance about the relevant truth, and psychological compulsion are present it means we’re not responsible for the things we do.

The Catechism gives a long list of variations of these three inhibitors of freedom. It says that “imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological and social factors.” (#1735) However, we are responsible for the evil we do, even under the influence of these freedom-diminishing factors, if we were the ones who made ourselves unfree in the first place.

three

Responsibility for your lack of Freedom

A man who hits someone drunk driving is held responsible for the damage he does, even though his faculties weren’t fully operating, and so he wasn’t fully free at the time. Why? Because it’s his fault that his faculties weren’t fully operating. He got himself drunk and the resulting poor judgment caused him to get behind the wheel anyway and hit somebody.

So too, being ignorant, being forced, and being psychologically compelled are sometimes our fault. If we freely chose not to investigate something we needed to know to make a well-informed decision then that ignorance and the evil that comes from it is our fault.

If we allow corrupt governments to enact policies that take away our freedoms one by one, then we’re asking for our own freedom to be replaced by the external force of tyranny.

If we have knowingly committed evil to the point of being addicted, then we’re largely to blame for the compulsion we now struggle against. A person who willingly surfs on the waves of disordered desire shouldn’t be surprised when it’s a brutal struggle trying to swim against those massive waves towards sobriety and back to freedom.

Freedom, both external and internal, is something to safeguard and develop. If we don’t, if we let our wills atrophy and become fettered by ignorance and addiction, we’ll be answerable for that.

four

More or Less Free

Our wills are in a perpetual process of becoming more or less free. If we choose to snort heroin, it makes us less free. If we choose to only listen to people who already agree with us, or if we choose to not reflect on the ways in which we are at fault, it makes us less free. Whereas if we pray, if we rigorously examine our consciences, if we moderate our desires and our self-indulgence then we can see clearly enough, and feel tranquil enough, to choose wisely and well. Then we can actually be knowingly self-moved.

five

Not Judging Others

Because freedom and responsibility go together, the factors which remove freedom also remove the blameworthiness of bad actions. We can usually see when physical compulsion is happening, when someone is being violently forced to do something against their will but we can’t see to what extent a person is ignorant, and to what extent a person is the victim of some psychological or emotional compulsion. Nor can we tell whether that ignorance or emotional compulsion is originally the fault of that person himself.

The takeaway is consequently two-fold. We should be recommitted to fighting the enslaving power of ignorance, addiction, and even political oppression but we should also abstain from judging how guilty someone else is of their wrongdoing, since we don’t know to what extent these freedom-diminishing-factors are involved. In which case, we can continue fighting evil, but not be tempted to determine how free, or how responsible, our neighbor is when he gives into that evil.

God is the only one fit to judge those people, may He be very merciful to them and to us!