Philo Anthro Notes

Human Will
Rationality: Both Intellect & Will
The will and intellect, ​together​, are spiritual powers of the soul.

Will
● The ​power/faculty​ of man by which the powerson moves towards the good presented to
him by his intellect.
○ The spiritual power: power of the will
○ Facility in which the person acts.
○ Tendency of the will, tendency that desires
● The will’s power is appetitive in nature: It is an inclination towards a desired good.

Appetition
● All the mental process through which we move towards good/pleasure or away from
evil/pain. In appetition, the subject that desires is carried outward to its object of desire.

○
○ You can only desire something that you do not have

Comparisons: Intellect & Will

Intellect:
● The nature of the intellect is ​COGNITIVE
○ Cognitive= Gnoscere= Something that you can know
○ nature= innate → Fundamental
● The object of the intellect is the ​INTELLIGIBLE​ thing
○ Things that you see will be intelligible.
○ We could see the form which is beyond sense data.
● Cognition leads to ​INTENTIONAL ​union.
○ Cognition = Act of the intellect
○ Intentional = that has to do with mind relates to reality

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 ○ Mind unites with the object

Will:
● The natures of the will is ​APPETITIVE
○ The will moves through appetite
● The object of the will is a DESIRABLE thing (Human desire is dependent on knowledge
that is intellectual)
○ Desire= to want
○ Object of the intellect = truth/knowledge
○ Wanting depends on what your intellect leads you to know
● Appetition leads to ​REAL​ or ​MORE INTIMATE​ union
○ No one could desire something you do not know
○ Will is an appetitive power
○ When you want something, you become it

Synthesis: The will is open to infinite good ​(infinite desire & ways + act)​, just as the intellect is
open to infinite truth, ​because it is immaterial

You will be better from yesterday./ Man spirit is limited. Your mind is open to endless knowledge
but the brain is not.

See page 38

Description of the human will

See page 38

Spontaneous/Natural will

● We are made for happiness

● Concupiscible/Irascible= We might not do something good now but in the end will be
good.
● Necessity- Principle to which, it must be so, and cannot be otherwise. Simply on its
virtue of nature (e.g. We are necessarily gonna die)
● Man’ necessity is happiness. You have no choice to be happy and not happy.
● OBJECT OF THE INTELLECT = TRUTH
● OBJECT OF THE WILL = GOOD
● It is the will’s choice to attain the good. Proof of it is Desire.

See page 39 Con’t of Description of the human will

● 2 elements of Freedom:
○ You can’t not want

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 ○ It wants the good
● Intrinsic: Something within
● Principle: Foundation
● Man is free because he wants to be happy
● Free ←action, desire → good/end
● SEEN(Perspective)= subjective
● Man could fixate how to be happy
● Happy in the wrong way = its no the same as eros

Rational will

● Ratio= Rationality (Intellect + Will) you weight your choice (Deliberate)

● Determination: Something that you need t do. Opposite of Necessity
● The person is the one that chooses to be happy
● Never ending = will as choice
● Small choice help us attain happiness which will be finite comes to an end
● Perception could also see a wrong perception
● The will could act in the wrong way but you do not know it

Will and praxis

See page 39

● Choice→ Subject → Intellect→

● We know the good if we do not know we do trial and error.

Will, feelings, motivations

● Motivations: Reasons and affections that can “move” a person to act

○ Affectivity: Source of affection because it is the inner world.
● The human being can rise above motivations: He can be motivated to not want to do
something, but yet still want and will himself do it.
○ Human = Motivation counter
● The will is not to be confused with physiological processes, “conditionings” or even the
sum total of all forces of subjectivity.

Will & Action

● A “Voluntary Act” is an action that consciously comes from “Me” that whose principles is
in one’s self, and insofar as one knows the concrete circumstance of the action

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TWO MOMENTS OF THE WILL (THAT DETERMINE THE VOLUNTARINESS OF THE
ACTION)
1. Moment of rational desire
● Willing in general: The tendency of the will to move towards a good grasped as an end
● Desire, Intention: The minimum requirement for something to be considered voluntary

2. Moment of choice
● Choosing an act of Decision- Making, about what means and how we are to carry out an
action with those means
● Preferring, deliberating, weighing, reflecting, about what we want to achieve

Synthesis:
● Wanting is more general than choosing
● We can want infinitely (Ends that are possible and even impossible). In contrast,
choosing is limited to means that are specific because they are relevant to a specific end

Reflexivity of the will

● The concomitant awareness of a future improvement in relation to what is presently the
case for a person is called ”Reflexivity of the will”
○ Concomitant: Naturally accompanying
○ When you make a decision, it won't end there
○ You make another decision after another
○ There will be another proposed decision
Paraphrase
● The reflexivity of the will refers to how what is presently the case is always naturally
accompanied by future improvements.
Implications
● If this were not so, then person would not will anything and so be contented with
whatever goods he has so far willed as the “Maximum” Good
● The person would so to speak stagenate
○ People keep wanting to improve himself

Integration of Voluntas ut Natura & Vountas un Ratio: See page 40

Uses of the will

See pages 43-44

1. Desiring or wanting
2. Choosing: acceptance or rejection of the past
3. Choosing: dominion, power or choice of the future
4. Creative
5. To love or affirmation and recognition of a reality

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Freedom

● Freedom is the property of the will by which it tends towards the good that it rationally
grasps.
● The two elements of freedom are the will and the good
● Third element: Free choice, an imperfection of human freedom
○ determined - choice
● It is imperfect because we do not always choose the good
● Happiness is not a choice, because we are necessarily oriented towards that direction.
What we do choose are the particular things (the “how’s”) that makes us happy.

Freedom in the fullest sense of freedom as such consists in a necessity and not in a possibility
● Human free choice can choose between good and evil. This possibility is not the
essence of freedom. To have that possibility so that one can end up choosing evil is only
a sign of freedom b ut not its essence.

The essence of freedom constitutes is loving the good

● To love to tend towards the good
● (Latin: Bene-volens)
● Even in the absence of alternatives, freedom remains because the will to love remains

In the context of authentic freedom, to love and choose are really one and the same thing even
if they differ as concepts
● Authentic Freedom determines the self: “I do good by choosing it: I become good
through love”

Man is a task unto himself

● Together with intimacy and the manifestation of this intimacy, freedom is the most radical
of the human features because it defines the person

Human Nature and freedom are intrinsically interrelated

● The tension between who he is and who he wants to be indicates that man’s nature is
open to perfectibility

Synthesis:
● The person’s process to self-perfection is always carried out within the context of
freedom: While all person want to be happy necessarily, not all are in fact happy
because not all make the right free choices amount the means to be happy.

“We are by nature free;

So whether or not we liked it

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.The fulfillment of our lives depends on us.”

Levels of Freedom

Fundamental/Internal Freedom

● A ​self-possession​ in one’s origin, being lord of one’s self, manifestations, and actions.
● No ​external​ factor can destroy the ​deepest​ level of freedom.
○ When you brainwash and torture people, it attempts to violate the fundamental
freedom
○ You can only take it away if you kill the person
● We cannot remove fundamental freedom without ​annihilating​ the person himself
● Man’s being free is both a ​given​(he is free) and an ​idea​ (he can become freer).
○ Ontologically, man is free
○ We are restless to manifest interiority. We wanted to shape our actions
○ Reality
■ external : born- Affirm→ life project
■ internal : inner world- create

Freedom of Choice/ Psychological Freedom

● The capacity of the human will to determine itself through
1. Freedom of ​exercise​ (to do or not to do something) or
2. Freedom of ​specification​ (to do something this or that way)

● Two mistaken views about freedom of choice

○ Freedom of choice is unreal because our lives are determined by things out of
our control (the thing we are born with)
○ The exaggeration of Freedom of choice. Not all actions that we do are connected
because the intellect could be wrong.
Moral Freedom:
● Growth of Freedom in the ​life project​ and shaping one's identity through the ​good​ use of
choice
● To explain Moral Freedom is maturity
○ One’s Life Project is a result of concrete ​choice​: It is how we used our freedom at
the different moments that makes up our lives
● Our ​biography​ is written throughout ​choices

Political/Social Freedom

● Allowing persons to achieve their ​ideals​, and allowing those ideals to be ​lived​.
E.g. Misery and Education.