The Basis of the Suarezian Teaching on Human Freedom [Second Installment]

THE BASIS OF THE SUAREZIAN TEACHING ON HUMAN FREEDOM [Second Installment] I. THE SuAREZIAN TEACHING ABouT HuMAN FREEDOM I. THE APPETITIVE FACULTIES IN GENERAL 1. Appeties in General. Everything that is has a propensity toward its own good, an appetite called natural which follows every form, even the forms of non-living things.7 Over and above this, living, knowing substances have an appetitive power peculiar to them, a power through which the soul, by an elicited act proper to that appetite seeks what is good for it in a living way. The reason for this is that appetite always follows form. Therefore, according to the diversity of the ratio of the form there follows a diverse ratio of appetite. Agents which know apprehend what is good and what is evil for them; and that apprehension is a form in them. Necessarily, then, they have a special and peculiar power of seeking that good and avoiding the evil.8 Even within the general class of knowing subjects we find differences. Some things endowed with knowledge do not rise above the level of sense knowledge; others are intellectual. Since from diverse kinds of knowledge there flow diverse kinds of appetites we must conclude that the appetites of knowing things differ: some are sensitive, and as such are material and limited to individual material objects; others are rational. rising above the plane of mere sense. They are, in their object and nature, spiritual.9 7 Appetitus naturalis dicitur quaelibet propensio cujusvis rei in suum proprium bonum (De Anima, Liber V, cap. 1, n. 1). 8 Appetitus sequatur formam, ideoque juxta diversum modum, rationemque formae diversa ratio appetitus consequatur (Ibid., n. 2) . • Ibid., n. 2. 330 BASIS OF SUAREZIAN TEACHING ON HUMAN FREEDOM 881 We can consider the object of an appetitive power in a twofold way: that of which it is "prosecutive " (to which it tends), and that to which it is " aversative " (from which it turns away). The adequate object of appetite in general as it is prosecutive is good, or the ratio of good. This does not mean that bonum in universale is the object of every appetite; but every appetite does seek good either in general or in particular. The object of appetite in general as it is aversative is evil. This aspect is founded, rooted, in the first; the appetite cannot bear on the evil (as desiring it) under the aspect of evil, as some have said that the intellectual appetite (will) can do; for the appetite is always for the good of the supposit, and for its perfection, which cannot be attained by evil. Hence when an appetite does in fact tend to an evil it always seeks it under some aspect of good, real or apparent, in it.1° For this reason we cannot desire an impossible thing, apprehended as impossible, except in a conditional way, "if it were possible." It is to be noted that we can never will any good that does not have some reference to ourselves. We will good to God, but He is universal good, the font of all good, in Whom is all good; we will good to creatures because they are in some determined way one with us, or for us.11 A capital point in the Suarezian account {)f the acts of the appetite is the role played by the object. The appetite elicits its own act without any efficiency on the part of the desired object, or on the part of our knowledge of that object. Many have maintained that the object as well as the appetite has efficiency with respect to the act. This for him is false. For it to do so it would be necessary either: I) that the object produce something in the appetite, given which the appetite could then move to act; or !2) the object per se concurs to the 10 Notandum est ... nor. esse sensum conclusionis potentiam appetitivam habere pro objecto bonum sub absoluta ratione bcni ... sensus ergo est omnem potentiam appetitivam habere pro objecto formaii rationem boni communis, vel particularis (Ibid., sect. 2, n. 4) . 11 Impossibile est appeti quod non respiciat bonum proprium ipsius appetentis, vel illud includat...