Hello everyone, how was your long weekend? Today I am so inspired to write about my interpretation oh how St. Thomas Aquinas defined freedom. As we all know freedom is what usually people tried to reason when they want to do something, or want to speak of something that can achieved their happiness or fulfillment.
Human acts and freedom has a more complex meaning and explanation than what others think. It revolves around one's thinking capacity wether a certain action would make them happy in the end or the opposite of it, not just only that, one's freedom also comes along with choices and responsibility. If a certain person choose to act on their free choice for a good reason, only then he would achieve the result, the satisfaction he have been wanting to savor, and that's true freedom. True freedom is choosing ways that we can attain true happiness.
At the end of the day, doing something with your own freedom would always lead to you, questioning yourself, "Is it worth it?", "What would I get from this?", "What if I do not achieve the results that I want?" and a lot more. Actually, if you think about it, who would want to do actions that they won't be able to gain something with? Who would do something that won't benefit them in the end? What a certain person desires is the best or let's say the most suitable "end" that they'll receive from doing a certain human action using their free choice.
Other than that, there are also stages of human action, they are as follows: simple volition, deliberation, consent intention, and execution. Simple volition is when you're seeing the goodness of something and when you're wishing about a certain thing. Deliberation is the process of thinking, wether you consider on doing that certain action or not. Consent is when you're thinking if you will allow yourself to do it or the opposite. Intention is what you want to happen, or making a resolution to pursue an end. Execution, is an act of will, this is where you're doing the desire of the means.
Unlike animals, human is a kind of specie that is complex or let's just say, difficult to understand, humans have brains which enables them to think and choose whatever they want, especially in doing things or actions, while animals, they too have a capacity of thinking, however, they are far more different than humans, they tend to do things with their instinct and what they're used with. Humans, especially in doing actions has to always think if they will get something out of it, wether they liked it, dislike, were they disappointed, was it worth and the such, by that time, they will question themselves wether that certain action affected them in a way, like are they happy about it or is it the opposite? Did they get the true freedom everyone's been trying to have a grasp with?
Having your own free choice is both a curse and a blessing, since true freedom should lead to someone's happiness, the greatest good of all, you have no idea or any clue how it will happen and what the circumstances are, you will one way or another experience decision makings with bad results, and that's when responsibility comes ( Since everyone has their own free choice or freedom, one could choose wether they'd be on the good side or the opposite). As creatures with intellect, we seek for what is good and for own perfection, but, remember that not because we're all allowed to make free choices doesn't mean our desires should also include those for the bad things.
CLOSING THOUGHTS:
All human actions and free choices has the reason of what they think is the "end" of it, however the result will still depend with how they view things, just like what the stages of human actions had told us. Everything is done with one's own will and intellect.
PS: Thanks again everyone for reading. I would love to hear your thoughts as to when is the time that you can tell or experienced where you can say to yourself "oh wow, this is what we called freedom"?
Lead image and all other images are from Unsplash....
True, not because we have given that free will, we all have the right to do whatever we want even though it may result some harm to others.