|Descartes' Thoughts On Freedom Descartes regards the freedom of
the human will "or liberty of choice to be so great" that it is
the respect in which we most resemble divine infinity. His
initial analysis of human freedom-as "our having the power of
choosing to do a thing or choosing not to do it"-seems ordinary
enough. But then he shows us a more complicated version of his
definition, "it consists alone in the fact that in order to
affirm or deny, pursue or shun those things placed before us by
the understanding, we act so that we are unconscious that any
outside force constrains us in doing so." He holds that the
power of free will "is the greatest perfection in man," through
the exercise of which we become "masters of our actions and
thereby merit praise or blame."