Folia Theologica 18. (2007)
Zoltán Turgonyi: Compatibilism and Concursus Divinus - A (Hopefully) Possible Approach to the Problem of Freedom
COMPATIBILISM AND CONCURSUS DIVINUS 347 We can illustrate this by the following example. Let us suppose that I am on a party and somebody offers me a cigarette; I am not a smoker, it is even a matter of principle for me to struggle against smoking, I clearly see its dangers, I do not want to disturb the other guests, there is no curiosity in me to experience the feeling of having a smoke and so on; and I am not even motivated to light up notwithstanding all these circumstances, only to demonstrate indeterminism, showing that I am not determined by them, since I know that this would be in vain because the others could say that such a motivation, too, is determined (e.g. by my philosophical opinion which is also a product of my past). That is to say: at that moment nothing (neither a reasonable argument accepted upon consideration, nor my actual state of mind based on my personality and on external effects, nor any other in principle explainable factor) motivates me to try out smoking. Still, at that very moment I take a cigarette and I light up. The question is the same as in the case of the previous example: shall I regard this as a free act? I think, the answer is negative. I should rather think that I am in a state of momentary mental aberration, or that I am hypnotized or influenced in another way by an external will; that is to say: instead of being free I am the prisoner of some unknown force. I do not experience this act as my own; it does not come from the traits characterizing my self (generally or at least at that moment); I cannot identify myself with that act. Somebody can perhaps say that - since I experience the decisioir in both examples as an effect of external forces - it is not the freedom of will but the libertas a coactione which has been violated here. But if it were so, the freedom of will par excellence would be realized in a very radical form of external constraint. Thus, could we say that there is a kind of inverse proportionality between libertas a coactione and libertas arbitrii? After all, terminology can be a question of convention, and we can say that from now on we shall use the expression 'an act of free will' to denominate the situation in which somebody acts irrationally, being unable - by some enigmatic reason - to act according to his personal traits, his value system or his momentary state of mind. It is true, it sounds funny, but this would not be a theoretical difficulty in itself. Still, let us remember, the purpose of incompatibilism is not only to find an undetermined human de-
