Alfons Malmgren

A large portion of the free will discourse is centered around the principle of alternate possibilities, determinism, and moral responsibility. However, the pertinent question to freedom of will lies in how one is free with respect to oneself. In this thesis I focus on the psychological aspects of the self to account for freedom of will. I begin by explicating Harry G. Frankfurt’s account of freedom of will, presenting the traditionally levied objections to the account. I then show how Eleonore Stump resolves the objections by construing the self in terms of Aquinas’s notion of the intellect as the determiner of good. I then argue that even if her revised account of freedom of will becomes more tenable, it ends up susceptible to the problem of the guise of the good; by requiring that an agent’s intellect must represent any action as the good to be pursued to act with freedom of will, an agent’s freedom becomes unduly restricted to that which is regarded as good. Lastly, I present the reasons account of freedom of will and its accompanying solution to the objection, arguing that by understanding the intellect to simply be constitutive of reasoning, an agent’s freedom no longer becomes restricted to that which is regarded sub specie boni, or under the guise of the good.