Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
situation.”
65
And this deeper structure is steadfastness, which constitutes
the perfection of the will: “a perseverance and stability in the will's adher-
ence to the good.”
66
It is in this steadfastness of commitment that we
attain our perfection, not in particular choices, regardless of their rela-
tion to the good.
The affection for justice is the capacity to love something or someone
for their own selves, regardless of whether this happens to be a good for
me or not. As Wolter phrases it, this is a “freedom from nature and a
freedom for values.” The conclusion is the paradox that “what differ-
entiates the will's perfection as nature from the perfection of all other
natural agents is that it can never be attained if it be sought primarily
or exclusively: only by using its freedom to transcend the demands of
its nature, as it were, can the will satisfy completely its natural
inclination.”
67
Duns Scotus's affirmation here is that we have the capacity to value
an entity for its own sake, independent of its personal or social utility.
As Duns Scotus would put it, we have the ability to transcend the capac-
ity to do justice to ourselves by doing justice to the good itself. The strong
claim is that we are capable of recognizing goods distinct from our self-
perfection and independent of our interests, and capable of choosing
them even though such a choice may run counter to our personal self-
interest or what does justice to my own nature. Or as Valerius Messerich
remarks,
The will by freely moderating these natural and necessary tendencies to happi-
ness and self-perfection is able to transcend its nature and choose Being and
Goodness for their own sake. . . . Thus the free will is not confined to objects or
goods that perfect self, but is capable of an act of love. . . . [L]ove is the most
free of all acts and the one that most perfectly expresses the will's freedom to
determine itself as it pleases.
68
The conclusion is that one can distinguish at least a good and a better
in human life. What is good in human life is a life that perfects us, that
brings our being to a greater actualization. This is the realization of the
affectio commodi. But what is better is the transcendence of self either
to appreciate goods independent of us or even curb our legitimate inter-
est in self-perfection to seek the good of others for their own sakes. This
is the realization of the affectio justitiae. In Messerich's existentialist ter-
minology, “A free choice, then, is the meaning of existence and the total
