Biomedical Engineering Reference
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certainly the normative U.S. experience of freedom and perhaps the
Enlightenment tradition as well. For we revel in individual choice and
assume that this is the essence of freedom. Such freedom is the core of
autonomy, our expression of self-determination. From early in our lives,
we are taught that ahead of us lies a series of decisions that will shape
our lives and for which we alone will be responsible. For those of us in
the United States, we have taken to heart existentialism's perspective that
our existence precedes our essence and that one becomes oneself only
through particular, individual choices. And if such choices are absent,
one remains inauthentic.
Yet Duns Scotus fashions his development of freedom “from above,”
from a theological perspective that grapples with the question of how
God can be free if love for the divine essence—for only an infinite being
can fulfill an infinite being—is necessary. Duns Scotus develops two for-
mulations of freedom to respond to this. The first looks to love for finite
objects and, in Frank's words, is the ability “
not to limit
oneself to
limitedly perfecting objects.” The second envisions love for God and
freedom as, to cite Frank again, the “ability to
continually adhere
to the
unlimitedly perfecting object.” The point common to both formulations
is the will's ability to achieve perfection “through active union with its
beloved.”
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This holds true regardless of whether the will is infinite and
de facto there is no other intentional object or whether the will is finite
and there are multiple intentional objects. Thus, for Duns Scotus, the
essence of freedom is not choice but what he calls
firmitas
, or what we
could call fidelity or constancy.
What follows from this is that the finite will can never fully express
its basic freedom, because for humans there will always be another inten-
tional object, another “what if I would have done this?” that would lead
to another version of myself. For us to choose one goal, then, is to
abandon others together with the perfection they could have given us.
And given that we are finite, we are not able—as is God—to choose that
which would ultimately perfect us. Freedom therefore manifests itself in
choice: “basic freedom in inferior conditions”—that is, in the context of
finitude.
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For Duns Scotus, however, free will is not limited only to the fact
of choice or even appropriately characterized by it. Rather, as Frank
notes, choice is “reflective of a deeper structure at work in a specific
