Imperium and causality in Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

Given certain free agent causal models inspired by Tomás de Aquino, it is interesting to look at the causal model presented by Aquinas himself, especially in a text from which the exposition of free action as the effect of the four Aristotelian causal senses. This is the question of the commanded acts (ST I-II, q. 17); in whose first four articles –and in its parallel texts– it determines that the will is an agent cause; practical reason, ordering cause; and the imperium of both (reason and will) is related to the ruling act as the formal with the material.