Theological Theses · §1857 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

Three freedoms: of contrariety or specification, of contradiction, and simple freedom or complacency

They therefore distinguish three kinds of freedom in free agents. The first, called in the Schools freedom of contrariety or of specification, is the power to do this, or its contrary, or something else.

The second, called freedom of contradiction, is the power, even where one cannot do this and its contrary, at least to act or to stop acting. Both of these are opposed to necessity and to being fixed on one course, and both go together with a certain contingency in one's acts.

To these they add a third, called simple freedom or freedom of complacency. Here a free agent's will and intellect turn back on themselves, tacitly or explicitly, approve their own acts, and in a way give orders to themselves, and so move and act themselves in a manner all their own: the intellect judges that it is judging rightly and that it ought to judge as it does, and the will wills its own willing and fixes and settles itself in its own act. This freedom can exist without freedom of contrariety or of contradiction, and it is compatible with a necessary and unchangeable determination to one course.

Latin

VIII. Unde est quod in agentibus liberis triplicem libertatem notant. Prima est quae dicitur in Scholis libertas contrarietatis, sive specificationis, per quam aliquis potest hoc, aut ejus contrarium, vel diversum agere. Secunda est quae dicitur libertas contradictionis, per quam, licet aliquis non possit hoc agere & ejus contrarium, potest tamen agere, & ab actione cessare. Quae utraque libertas opponitur necessitati, & determinationi ad unum, & comitem habet quandam actuum contingentiam. Denique his adjungunt tertiam libertatem, quae vocatur simplex sive complacentiae, per quam agentis liberi voluntas atque intellectus, dum in seipsa reflectuntur, vel tacite, vel expresse, proprios actus probant, & sibi ipsis quodammodo imperant; & ita ratione quadam peculiari seipsa movent, atque agunt; dum, scilicet, intellectus judicat se recte judicare, & sibi judicandum esse prout judicat; voluntas vero vult se velle, & in proprio actu seipsam figit atque firmat. Quae libertas esse potest sine libertate contrarietatis, vel contradictionis, & consistit cum necessaria, atque immutabili determinatione ad unum.

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