Sir Duncan of Cranberry, De libertate viri (1248); transl. M. A. Andreacchio. “Three Cardinal Questions about Freedom” (De libertate quaerenda tria), Caput 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAeEQkOoX3A
Whether our choices are free? (Utrum arbitria nostra libera sint)
It might seem to us that our choices are always determined by external forces. For every finite motion as finite is compelled and thus unfree. Yet, there is something self-evidently irreducible about freedom and the finite is never found in nature aside or cut off from the infinite, so that unfreedom or mechanical compulsion must be a sub-category of freedom. For the finite belongs to the infinite.
Now, though we may not understand what makes us free, it is evident that freedom stands to infinity as slavery or mechanical compulsion stands to finitude. But what is finite is corporeal, whereas the infinite as such pertains to thought or mind. Freedom must then pertain to thought properly and to bodies only metaphorically. Yet, to the extent that mind buries itself in bodily passions, mind forsakes its freedom, falling into a state compulsion. Its choices will no longer be free, but dictated by passions bound in turn to a context of ever-changing external forces.
Whether a slave can become free? (Utrum servus fieri liber possit)
At first glance it might seem that minds preys of compulsion cannot be free, so that their choices are illusory. Yet, even when buried in bodily senses, mind remains itself and thus capable of lifting itself out of subjection to external forces. In order to understand this, we must posit two states of mind, or mind in itself and mind insofar as it is buried in bodily motion. The latter state is naturally drawn back to the former state. Indeed, the former state attracts the latter state as an inner magnet. Thus we commonly say that slaves seek freedom, even though a slave as such cannot want anything freely. It would then seem that no one can be a slave absolutely, but only accidentally. Yet, Aristotle tells us of slaves “by nature,’ or people of a slavish nature. Perhaps, then, there are slaves who merely pretend to want anything, or who are compelled to believe to choose, whereas in reality they merely follow purposes that are somehow inculcated in them. And yet even such slaves must remain, however faintly, bound to their natural end, which is irreducible to any acquired purpose. A slave becomes free to the extent that his natural end attracts him more that any of his acquired purposes. On the other hand, insofar as a man is attracted to acquired and thus finite purposes, he must remain compelled and thus unfree, his purported choices being mere functions of goals determined mechanically by forces external to him.
Whether freedom has a proper, inalienable seat? (Utrum libertas sedem propriam sanctamque habeat)
At first glance it might seem that the seat of freedom is variable so that freedom would be reducible to license. Yet, the principle commonly called reason defines man independently of any of his choices, grounding them essentially, thereby justifying our calling certain choices free. In reason and so in the element of reflection we are free, just as we lose our freedom as we abandon reflection to take refuge in bodily reflexes or compulsions.
To those, however, who argue that the loss of freedom is a free choice, reason responds that no one freely chooses either to forsake or to recover freedom. Yet, neither can the loss of freedom be compelled mechanically, in which case freedom would not be inalienable. The loss of freedom must then stem directly from the proper seat of freedom, which is mind, which by its very nature enters into a condition of unfreedom by way of rising out of it.
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