Welcome to the Timistic Institute podcast.

Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at

to mystic institute.org. Is free will an illusion the metaphysics and psychology of choice?

Halfway up Mount Pargatory, Dante and Virgil find themselves in the ring of sloth,

where souls are purged of a defect of habitual inaction. By their own failure to act,

these poor saved sinners have made themselves unable to be rightly moved by God's love. This prompts Dante to ask Virgil

to explain the relationship between human freedom and the motive force of divine love.

For if love's offered from outside of us, Dante asks, and if the soul is moved by love alone,

how then can it be meritorious,

should we go right or wrong?

Dante wants to understand how, if God's love has power to move us,

which is an overarching theme, not only of Purgatorio 18,

but of the whole divine comedy, in what sense can we be responsible for our own actions,

subject to praise or blame depending on whether they are good or bad?

Virgil indicates a qualified willingness to answer Dante's question.

I'll tell you everything that reason sees.

Beyond that, wait for Beatrice still, for faith must do the work.

In other words, Virgil the pagan can provide the philosophical perspective of reason,

but certain further questions may have to wait for the saint, Beatrice, to provide the fuller

perspective of Christian faith. Virgil continues, first explaining a basic orientation of the will

...