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This article explores the intimate relationship between act and action in Thomas Aquinas. According to Thomas, every agent acts insofar as it is in act, since it is proper to the act to communicate itself in its action. As applied to creation, this basic principle raises the question of God’s will : is there any place for a free will in God if his action flows directly from the act of his being ? This question is addressed together with a critical discussion of Norris Clarke’s philosophy of dynamic action. Clarke interprets the connection between act and action in the sense that ‘being manifests itself in self-communicative action’. The consequence of this view, I argue, is that the difference between the first act (the substantial act of a thing in itself) and the second act (operation) is obscured.
