One of the basic principles of the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas is that human
beings are on a quest for happiness.
We're not talking about happiness in the contemporary and superficial sense of the term, which basically
equates happiness with feeling good or being in a good mood.
We're talking about happiness in a deeper and richer sense.
Happiness is the enjoyment of the highest good.
God did not design us to settle for shallow, transitory, and superficial things, but designed
our nature to seek out goodness in the fullest sense.
The highest goodness is always calling us, summoning us to seek it and enjoy it.
The main question set before us every moment of our lives is how?
What is the way towards goodness in the deepest and highest sense of the term?
In the world of nature around us, the plants and animals seek out their full
realization by instinct.
Bees gather pollen, worms crawl around, and birds migrate here and there because they
have built in instincts or tendencies to do these things.
The animals do not deliberate about what to do or how to do it.
Human beings on the other hand, do think and deliberate about what to do, how to do it,
how to live life to the full.
Should I leave this job for another?
Go to this school or that?
Rent an apartment or buy a house?
When acts are voluntary and come from just this kind of thinking and willing about what
to do, they're called human acts.
And human acts are sometimes also called free acts or free choices because they come from
our free agency or freedom.
One of the most important characteristics of our human nature is that we seek out happiness
or the highest good, not by instinct alone, like lower animals, but by human acts, by
the choices we make.
We search for happiness in freedom.
All human beings as such, have the ability to carry out human acts or free choices.
But in our society today, there's a vast and bewildering confusion about the meaning of
this ability or characteristic of our nature, the meaning of our freedom.
We find ourselves confronted with a bewildering variety of options wherever we go, the grocery
store, restaurants.
Many people think of freedom as the ability to opt blindly for this or that option or
as the ability to live according to impulse and whim.
However you feel at the moment, many people think freedom means we have a right to do
just anything we want, but all these accounts leave us disoriented and wondering what the
real point of life and freedom is.
What is the point of freedom?
Is freedom really just for the sake of impulse satisfaction or doing whatever you want?
Is there no higher purpose to freedom at all?
If not, then what's the difference between freedom and license?
Did God give us freedom just so that we would live licentiously,
without any regard for principles or guidance on the way to true happiness?
For Thomas Aquinas, the point of freedom is to choose one's way to happiness, real happiness,
the highest and most enjoyable good of all and every free choice is regarding the ways
or means to the true happiness.
The whole point of freedom is to choose those ways and means that will actually bring us
to what actually is the highest and most enjoyable good of all.
This requires learning to see through the many counterfeits and deceptions regarding
happiness and the good life.
Things that look like they'll make us happy but in the end, fail to do so.
They only disappoint.
For Aquinas, deep within every human heart there is a process of interaction, a kind
of dialogue between our knowledge and our love, our intellect and our will.
Human acts issue from out of this dialogue, how does this inner dialogue or dialogue of
the heart go?
We don't have to go far to answer this question since it takes place within
our experience every day.
Suppose a friend comes up to you and says, "Do you want to go to the baseball game this
Friday night?"
First you hear the question with your intellect and immediately compare the proposal with
your will.
If the proposal meets with a love of baseball, then you spontaneously see the goodness of
it, and you wish to go to the game.
Aquinas calls this wish a simple volition, but wishes are one thing and intentions are another.
When a wish arises in our will, the wish confronts a host of circumstances and limits,
including other intentions or pre-commitments you might have.
You make a judgment of possibility about going.
Maybe you have to work or maybe you have a date.
In either of these cases the wish goes no further but maybe you judge there is nothing
standing in the way of going to the game.
If so, your wish develops into what Aquinas calls an intention.
You resolve to go to the game with your friend.
You are pursuing the end.
The question now is by what means?
Now there are various ways to get to the game.
You can go to the game by your own car, by taxi, by public train, or by walking.
First, you might assemble the list of ways to go and deliberate over them.
Going by private car makes for a parking problem.
Taxis can be expensive.
Public trains after baseball games are overcrowded or it is too far to walk.
But then again, private car makes for a pleasant ride to and from the game or the walk may
not be too far and it might be a good exercise.
One way or another when compared to the many loves in your will and reasons in the mind,
the batch of ways and means to the game might meet with various forms of inner approval
or disapproval of the will.
And it is this inner approval or disapproval that makes one say no or that's fine or that
sounds great.
Eventually you need to make a decision with your intellect about which way or means
you elect to use.
The decision is an act of the intellect judging this way rather than that as the means to
take.
And the election is an act of the will agreeing to that particular means among others.
Having chosen to go by car for example, you now actually execute the choice you've made.
The execution consists of an inner command of the intellect to use your body parts to get into the car and
use is the act of the will actually moving your body parts to do so.
Now let's suppose you and your friend are in the car off to the game or perhaps at the
game or perhaps at some point after the game.
At any one of these points, you might reflect upon your experience of the transportation
to the game or of the game itself or of the choice to go.
From out of that reflection comes the question, did I enjoy that?
Or was it worth it?
Or was this a good idea?
The answer to the question is called the judgment of fruition.
If in your intellect you answer yes, then in your will you enjoy the game.
That joy is called fruition.
The point of our example is to illustrate the various little acts that take place within
the human heart in every free choice.
We carry within us, this ability to make free choices and every day of our lives we deploy
it.
In the depths of our hearts we're faced with various proposals about good things and we
have many wishes for this or that.
We're always forming judgments about whether it is possible or desirable to pursue this or that.
And we're always forming or pursuing all sorts of intentions.
In our hearts, we also deliberate and decide about ways to pursue our intentions, and we
consent to and elect specific means for doing so.
And we also make this inner executive command to do this or that.
And finally we reflect upon our pursuits and ask whether they're worth it
or whether we enjoy them or more or less.
All of these little acts go on in our hearts and they go to make up the essence of free agency.
And the point of our free agency is to pursue what will really and truly make us happy.
What is really and truly the highest good of all?
When we understand human acts and freedom this way, we realize the first and most fundamental
thing a free agent needs is to know the truth about what is good, what will really and truly satisfy.
Only if we know the truth about what is good,
can we walk towards what will satisfy without walking into a trap or a deception about happiness.
Knowing the truth about what is good preserves us from all that.
And in this way, the truth will set you free, free to love and enjoy the one true good that
does not disappoint.
So what is that one true good?
What are you living for?
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