Consent

Deliberation returns with candidates, and the will responds to them. Consent is the will’s approval of the means found acceptable — its assent to their being real options.

The distinguishing mark of consent is that it can extend to several means at once. Having deliberated about how to learn a language, you may consent to classes, to an app, and to moving abroad — all three genuinely acceptable to you, none yet chosen. Consent settles the field; it does not yet pick.

Aquinas treats this as a real act of will rather than a bookkeeping step, because withholding it is possible and consequential. A means can survive deliberation on the merits and still be refused: the efficient path you will not take because it would require becoming someone you decline to be. Consent is where such refusals live, and it is the reason two people with the same end and the same information can face genuinely different sets of options.

In Actus Humani

Consent is the quiet stage where acts stop being hypothetical. When you keep an act on the list rather than deleting it, you have consented to it — you have said it is a thing you would actually be willing to do.