Folia Theologica 18. (2007)
Zoltán Turgonyi: Compatibilism and Concursus Divinus - A (Hopefully) Possible Approach to the Problem of Freedom
COMPATIBILISM AND CONCURSUS DIVINUS 351 will determine my final choice, and being disappointed if the winner is not my 'favourite' factor. I am myself the structured totality of these factors, and I identify myself with their resultant. When I decide, I make just that decision and not another one because then and there it is that very decision which I like above all, which causes me the greatest satisfaction or the smallest inconvenience. (Of course, the terms 'satisfaction' and 'incionvenience' are not used here in a merely hedonistic sense. An act of sacrifying myself can also give me satisfaction if my value system is structured so that, e. g., in a certain situation I prefer Christian faith to my life.) At that moment it is me who is just such a man whose system of preferences and momentary dispositions results in that decision. Though I can say that I have made that decision very reluctantly, excluding other possibilities, this means only that my reluctance was greater in relation to all those other possibilities, therefore it is me that my actual decision contains, expressing what I preferred in the given situation. Thus, even if my decision is completely determined by the antecedents, for me it is not like an effect of an external force; quite to the contrary: as we have seen in our earlier examples, I would speak of external forces just then, if - in an unexplainable way - something made me do an act following not from my character and my momentary state of mind. Maybe some philosophers call this latter event a free act, but in the real life we feel free when we choose from possibilities after confronting and weighing them on the base of our inner factors, even if this decision is completely determined by our durable properties and momentary states of mind, and these latter elements are also determined by other, earlier factors. Thus, if an act chosen from among several possibilities of acting after a deliberation based on the structure of my inner conditions (even if these conditions themselves are determined by antecedents) is named by me free, then determinism is compatible with such a freedom. On the basis of this we can try to resolve a problem concerning merit. Some people criticizing the principle of merit-based distribution or wanting to diminish the responsibility of criminals say that one owes his diligence, his good will, his accuracy, his correctness, or his aggressivity, his deviant inclinations, his selfishness etc. to inborn constituents or to factors received from outside (e. g. by edu-
