Is the act of deciding an act of being, of knowing, of doing, or making?

Simple question? Not really.

Simple answer? No way.

But I am beginning to wonder if I have found a significant clue to the answer in The Arts of the Beautiful by Etienne Gilson. Therein the author suggests that human acts can be distinguished into first, simply being; then knowing, primarily via our senses; doing things, meaning activity; and finally, making things.

Most books I have read on decisions do not tie decisions to being in any direct manner, suggest they are at the most a momentary activity, and at the end of a process of knowing the facts and reasons involved in an issue. To me this is the way we know to make judgments.

From my perspective and from seeing the process of deciding played out in stories and real life, I wonder if decisions are really not rather the result of a process of making.

While I've heard that some people prefer to speak of deciding as a process of "taking," rather than "making," a decision, the former approach suggests that decisions are already out there now, like fruit on a tree, or raw data waiting to be mined. The latter approach suggests that deciding is more an art than a science, something that is made out of somethings, and not created out of nothing.

Following this approach then, Gilson's book may be of help to recognize that we can make beautiful decisions (comedies?) or we can make, by contrast, ugly decisions (tragedies?); but in either case, the best way of to decide an issue is to realize it is a process of making a work of fine art.

A fine art of what?

The fine art of making happiness in the story of our lives or the industrial art of making success in the resume of our work lives?

What do you think?

John