Folia Theologica 18. (2007)
Zoltán Turgonyi: Compatibilism and Concursus Divinus - A (Hopefully) Possible Approach to the Problem of Freedom
COMPATIBILISM AND CONCURSUS DIVINUS 353 we cannot even distinet ourselves, while we consider other properties, e. g. our physical strength, our intelligence etc. as means. We always affirm our actual purpose (this is logically inevitable), but we can be either dissatisfied or satisfied with our means. In the last case I can say a sentence like this: 'It is lucky that I can run away so fastly from the policemen!' But we do not use a similar sentence about the features we really consider as ours, as our self. It would be very strange to say: 'It is lucky that the desire for getting rich at any price has prevailed over my other preferences!' Since this circumstance is not considered by me as one of my means, but it expresses my purpose, or, more exactly, that person who am I at that moment: a common criminal. (Of course, afterwards we can repent of our former will, but at that time the system of our inner conditions is not the same any longer as it was at the moment of the earlier decision which now we repent of. And what interests us now is the direction of our will then, in the moment of that moral decision; we want to know whether the resultant of the factors constituting our self was at that time good or bad.) Thus, when people blame my character because of my sins or they praise it because of my merits, they do not pick out arbitrarily some of my features from among all the properties equally determined - in the last analysis - by external factors, but they value just that set of features which I also identify myself with. When I have committed the valued act, my preference system was in such a state, that it was just that act which I preferred to any other possibilities; the act is the consequence of those features of mine, which I affirmed then and there, which constituted my self. So, if that decision has been caused by these features, it has been caused by me; it was because of me that the act in question has happened. Then I can rightly attribute it to my sin or my merit, while I do not speak of my sin if I cannot do something because of my physical weakness or insufficiency of my intellectual capacities. If e. g. one has not helped to an old lady to carry a heavy luggage, and he is therefore called to account, he can say: 'It is not my fault! I could not carry it!' This is a usual form of excusing oneself. But we never excuse ourselves in the following way: 'It is not my fault! I did not want to carry it!' Thus in quotidian speech everybody makes a clear distinction between the kernel of his self and the additional
