"The sense in which what Thomas means by 'will' is to be identified with my real wants is this: whatever else I may want, in wanting it what I really want is happiness. Unfailingly this is so. I may be wrong in thinking that adultery with Mary-Jane will make me happy. Indeed, most people are wrong some of the time about what will make them happy, some are wrong much of the time. But if I can be wrong in what I think will make me happy, I cannot be wrong that it is happiness that I desire when I contemplate adultery's (false) attractions. For while I may pertinently ask of any other characteristic of a course of action or way of life that is for me a reason for engaging in it, 'why does that make it desirable?' Thomas says it cannot make any sense to ask what makes happiness desirable. 'It makes me happy' puts an end to any chain of questions concerning why you want this or that. Nor does it put an end to a chain of such questions in the way 'Well, I just do' puts an end to the question, 'Why do you like caviar?' For though it is true that if I like caviar it is for the taste of the stuff that I like it and for no further reason, when I say 'I just do' this is to admit that my liking it is a contingent fact that might be otherwise for me, as no doubt it is in fact for you, since you dislike it. Whereas for Thomas, 'It's connected with my being happy' is to give a reason that is decisive not just for a person with my particular desires or yours, but as arising from the nature of desire itself, for anyone at all. Though there need not be, there can be a reason why I like caviar. There cannot be a further reason why I want happiness; the word 'reason' loses all meaning and any power of motivation when the question is asked of happiness itself: 'Why would you want that?'
Thus far Thomas in the first five questions of the Prima Secundae is following closely Aristotle's argument in book I of the Nicomachean Ethics. He continues to do so when he goes on to say that since of course anyone can be mistaken as to what will make them happy, human beings have to learn how to be happy both in the sense that they have to learn what kind of life will in fact make them happy, and in the sense that they have to acquire the stable dispositions that make it their common practice to live a life conducive to happiness in the event. And what today we are likely to call the 'moral' life, for Thomas is more simply described as the 'happy' life, or at least the life lived in the pursuit of true happiness. Moreover, we can say that for Thomas a person succeeds in living the happy life when she gets to do, regularly and routinely, what she 'really wants.'
But here the force of the word 'really' is not, as before, that in which it contrasts with the false perceptions of desire that characterize the self-deceived. There is a very profound sense in which even the most perfectly honest person may not know what she wants: not, that is, the case where, of two things both of which she wants, she does not know which to choose, like whether to marry John or James. More problematic is the case where there is something that we want but we do not know what it is, except that it is somehow importantly connected with our happiness. Such is the case when we are morally befogged, because our deepest desires are hidden from us by veil upon obscuring veil, of upbringing, of socialization, of personal insecurities and fears, of relationships abusive and abused, of desire habitually unfulfilled and frustrated; and in this sense of 'want' in which we want something but for all these reasons do not know what it is, we do not know our own 'wills.' For what we will is happiness; and what we really will, whether or not we know it, is whatever it is that will make us happy, but we may not—and all too often do not—know what it is. It is for this reason that the moral life consists in the first place in those practices that enable the discovery of what it is that we really want, the happy life, and the power of insight that leads to that discovery is what Thomas calls prudentia, skill in seeing the moral point of human situations, what true desires are to be met within them. It is then, and only secondarily that the moral life consists in virtuous forms of living, the practices of desire that prudentia has interpretatively uncovered within the maelstrom of desires as actually experienced.
And it is here within his conception of moral practice as desire-discovery—or as he calls it, 'practical wisdom'—that for Thomas a principal means of tracing the way back to what we really want, is prayer, oratio. And our only available starting point for that practice of self-discovery is our wants and desires as we actually experience them. Therefore, Thomas says, we ought to pray for what we think we want regardless. For prayer is 'in a certain manner a hermeneutic of the human will,' so that by way of placing our desires as we experience them before God we are asking also that those desires be 'unfolded,' 'explicated,' thereby to release their real significance, the real want that is wrapped up in, 'implicated' in all their opacity in their form as experienced. Therefore, says Thomas, we ought to pray, as Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane, 'in response to our animal desire' (secundum sensualitatem). For when we pray as Jesus did then, out of animal need and desire—for Jesus was scared of death, as naturally any animal is—we are placing that animal need and desire within the interpretative power of the divine will itself, wherein alone we will discover our own real will. Therefore, Thomas concludes, we ought always to pray for what we think we want; for Jesus prayed as he did in Gethsemane so as to teach us just that lesson, namely that it is 'permitted for human beings naturally to desire even what [they know] is not God's will'; and, as if in reinforcement of what for many is a startling thought, he cites the authority of Augustine to the same effect, commenting on the same prayer of Jesus: 'It is as if [Jesus] were saying: "See yourself in me: for you [too] can wish something for yourself even though God wishes something else."' Only thus, in the prayer of honest desire, is there any chance of our discovering what are our true desires, our real will."
— Denys Turner, "Grace, Desire, and Prayer," Thomas Aquinas: A Portrait (via wesleyhill)
