Folia Theologica 18. (2007)
Zoltán Turgonyi: Compatibilism and Concursus Divinus - A (Hopefully) Possible Approach to the Problem of Freedom
350 Z. TURGONYI alization. If it were, that is to say if my mind were only a kind of witness to the functioning of my body and my instruments and not an active participant in it, then I would be a completely passive puppet. If this is what determinism means, then it is evidently false, and it is quite unnecessary to examine whether it is compatible with freedom and morals. But if we accept the active role of the mind, the decision is not an illusion but a real factor in the causal process; it is not an epiphenomenon but an integral part of the latter. The causal processes of the world partly pass through human minds; the direction taken there by these processes really depends upon men's value system, knowledge, purposes, virtues, actually given state of mind; briefly: in the case of each man it depends on what he is like. It is in him that all these factors measure themselves with each other, though not as independent subjects, but as the constitutive elements of his self, organized in an ordered (although changeable) structure. These factors are formed partly by him, in the course of his self-education. We can certainly say that the concrete way of this self-education, too, is based on his certain previously given properties, and the more we go backwards in his past, the stronger we find the role of external causes and inborn factors, and in the last analysis we must attribute - directly or indirectly - each of his qualities to the effect of external factors which are partly preexistent as compared to him. In this sense, of course, we are all determined. But we have to emphasize two important things. Firstly: even if the concrete set of our character, values, feelings, knowledge etc. is a 'product', it is at the same time a factor; it is in it that the decision is made as a decision, as the choice of the act corresponding to our state given at the moment, even if the mentioned factors together completely determine the realization of one of those choices which are all possible from the point of view of an external observer. Secondly: what is essential is that these factors determine the choice, since at the moment of the decision they are not external natural forces functioning separately, but they constitute together the thing which I name my self. I am not like the spectator of gladiators' struggle or of a tournament, an external observer watching the battle of my different values, virtues and momentary feelings as a 'fan' of one among them, waiting for the result which
