The Will and Human Action: From Antiquity to the Present Day (London Studies in the History of Philosophy)

The Will and Human Action

London Studies in the History of Philosophy Series editors: Tim Crane, Tom Pink, M.W.F. Stone, Jonathan Wolff, Jill Kraye, Susan James, Daniel Garber, Steven Nadler, and Christina Mercer

London Studies in the History of Philosophy is a unique series of tightly focused edited collections. Bringing together the work of many scholars, some volumes will trace the history of the formulation and treatment of a particular problem of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, while others will provide an in-depth analysis of a period or tradition of thought. The series is produced in collaboration with the Philosophy Programme of the University of London School of Advanced Study. Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy Edited by Jill Kraye and M.W.F.Stone Proper Ambition of Science Edited by M.W.F. Stone and Jonathan Wolff History of the Mind–Body Problem Edited by Tim Crane and Sarah Patterson The Will and Human Action From Antiquity to the Present Day Edited by Thomas Pink and M.W.F. Stone

The Will and Human Action From antiquity to the present day

Edited by Thomas Pink and M.W.F Stone

First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Thomas Pink and M.W.F. Stone for editorial matter; individual contributors, their contributions All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN 0-203-50024-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-57412-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–32467–X (Print Edition)

Contents

Notes on contributors Introduction

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T H O M A S P I N K A N D M . W. F. S T O N E

1 The concept of the will from Plato to Maximus the Confessor

6

RICHARD SORABJI

2 Aristotle, the Stoics and the will

29

A . W. P R I C E

3 Intellect with a (divine) purpose: Augustine on the will

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JOSEF LÖSSL

4 The effect of the will on judgement: Thomas Aquinas on faith and prudence

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CARLOS STEEL

5 Moral psychology before 1277: the will, liberum arbitrium, and moral rectitude in Bonaventure

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M . W. F. S T O N E

6 Suarez, Hobbes and the scholastic tradition in action theory THOMAS PINK

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Contents

7 Kant on the will

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J. B . S C H N E E W I N D

8 Nietzsche and Schopenhauer: is the will merely a word?

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C H R I S T O P H E R JA N AWAY

9 Theories of the bodily will

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B R I A N O ’ S H AU G H N E S S Y

Index

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Contributors

Christopher Janaway is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Self and World in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy (1989) and Images of Excellence. Plato’s Critique of the Arts (1995). He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (1999). Josef Lössl is Lecturer in Patristics at Cardiff University. He is the author of Intellectus gratiae: die erkenntnistheoretische und hermeneutische Dimension der Gnadenlehre Augustins von Hippo (1997) and Julian von Aeclanum: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung (2001). He has also written many articles on the Greek and Latin Church Fathers. Brian O’Shaughnessy is Emeritus Reader in Philosophy at King’s College, London. He is the author of The Will, 2 vols (1980) and Consciousness and the World (2000). He has published numerous articles concerning philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology. Thomas Pink is a Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College, London. Besides The Psychology of Freedom (1996), forthcoming work includes articles on early modern natural law theory and The Ethics of Action, a two-volume study of moral normativity and its relation to action. He is series editor of London Studies in the History of Philosophy. A.W. Price is a Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has chiefly published on Greek ethics and moral psychology, and is the author of Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle (1989) and Mental Conflict (1995).

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Contributors

J.B. Schneewind is Professor of Philosphy at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He is the author of Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy (1977), and a major history of modern moral philosophy, The Invention of Autonomy (1988). He has also published numerous articles on Kant and the history of ethics. Richard Sorabji, MBE, FBA, is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy at King’s College, London. He is the founding editor and organizer of the English translations of the Ancient Commentaries on the Works of Aristotle that unite the philosophy of late antiquity with the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He is also the author of several influential books on ancient philosophy and science. Carlos Steel is Professor ordinarius of Philosophy at the Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, where he is also director of the De Wulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. He is a member of the Royal Belgian Academy, and the author of many books and articles on ancient and medieval philosophy. M.W.F. Stone is Professor of Philosophy at Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and Visiting Professor at King’s College, London. His forthcoming book is on the history of casuistry, and he has published many articles on medieval, Renaissance and early modern philosophy. He is one of the series editors of London Studies in the History of Philosophy.

Introduction Thomas Pink and M.W.F. Stone

Modern philosophy of action is largely agreed, along with common sense, on what might count as particularly clear examples of its subject matter. Consider crossing the road, raising one’s hand, or thinking hard about what to do this summer – these are things that one can do intentionally or deliberately, as actions. By contrast the idea of the will is much more obscure. There is hardly any clear consensus, either among philosophers or within everyday opinion, about what might count as a clear case of willing. The very absence of such a consensus might be said to reflect a fundamental lack of clarity about just what the notions of ‘will’ and ‘willing’ legitimately involve. It may, then, be surprising that throughout history, at least from late antiquity onwards, philosophers have frequently turned to some theory of the will in order to characterize and clarify human action. Not only that, but the notion of the will has been central to many philosophical accounts of the human self and of the relationship of human beings to the wider world of nature. Despite historical interest in the will, it is important to stress that here again, one can hardly speak of any consensus. For some, the will is a reason-involving psychological capacity that distinguishes humans from the other animals. While for others, the will is a drive that extends beyond reason, even beyond animality itself, and which can be said to unite human beings with inanimate nature. If it is possible to identify any recurring features in the historical discussion of the will then it is this: the term will has been taken by most philosophers to refer to the source of a drive that expresses itself in human action if nowhere else. For familiar and everyday actions such as crossing the road or thinking hard are always expressions of some kind of drive or motivation. This drive or motivation provides action with something essential to its nature – its ‘goal’ or ‘purpose’, to the attainment of which the action is

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directed, and in terms of which we seek to understand the action or make it intelligible. Disagreement about what ought to be understood by the term will is really a dispute about the nature of this drive – and so also about the place of human action within the wider realm of nature. What is this drive that expresses itself in human action, and how does human action express it and derive from it a goal or purpose? Is human action to be something essentially reason-involving? If it is, then the drive that human action expresses must come from our rationality, and our theory of the will must be a theory of it as a special kind of rational appetite or rational motivational capacity. Centre stage, then, in the theory of action we shall find a theory of willing as an exercise of reason. Or is human action essentially self-determined in a strong sense, so that what determines an action is simply the agent and his capacity for agency and nothing else? Should we focus on self-determination rather than on rationality, then we will be disposed to view the will, or the drive that expresses itself in what we do, as itself a capacity for action, and freedom of action will be based in, and an expression of, freedom of will. If, however, we are minded to think that neither reason nor selfdetermination helps to clarify the idea of will, then we could adopt another approach. Here we might inquire whether human action can be seen as a phenomenon continuous with wider nature, so that what we do is just the same as what animals do, or even what inanimate nature does. Depending on our answer to this complex question, we may come to view the drive that expresses itself in action as a motivation that need not be reason-involving at all. The drive might even take the form of a general force found in living and non-living alike. Whether or not we adopt any of these different approaches to the will, it is apparent that the obscurity of the will and of willing is just the obscurity of the constitution of action, when reflectively or philosophically considered. Further, it is the obscurity of the place of action in a more general metaphysics of the self. Modern philosophy, at least in Britain and the United States, has until recently been dominated by ‘budget accounts’ of action motivation. These parsimonious theories of human action appeal to nothing more, by way of motivation, than an all-purpose category of desire, where desires are thinly and inspecifically understood simply as those psychological states or attitudes which motivate our actions. Should any more be required, for example in order to differentiate the actions and motivations of humans from those of the lower animals, the

Introduction 3 ‘budget account’ is merely complicated rather than deepened. We are told that the issue can be illuminated, and the springs of human action and motivation fully revealed, if we refer not merely to desires, but to ‘desires to desire’ – an inventive refinement that seems, however, to add rather little to so uninformative a theory. Given the inherent complexity that attends the phenomenon of human action, it is doubtful whether any interesting conclusion about its nature and significance is to be attained by so thin an understanding of motivation. The theory of action needs an account of the will that is substantive, and faithful to the complexities of its subject matter. It has no need of a mere place-holder such as the ‘budget theory’ mentioned above, but requires a rich grasp of the issues that attend the nature and circumstances of action itself. Such a grasp, we believe, can only come from a return to the history of philosophy and to the many detailed accounts that ancient, medieval and early modern philosophers advanced in order to understand the will and human action. Without tearing arguments out of their original context and riding roughshod over particularities of time and circumstance, we believe that the history of philosophy can be used as a creative tool in which alternative ways of considering human beings as agents, and human action in nature, can be debated and discussed. Such is the purpose of our collection. The first two chapters, by Richard Sorabji and Anthony Price respectively, give different views of the development of a concept of will in Greek and Roman philosophy. By a concept of will in this context both writers have in mind the idea that every case of deliberate human action might involve a special motivation – a motivation afforded us by our rationality, but which is not simply constituted by any intellectual judgement, and which can even conflict with such judgements; a motivation, furthermore, that might provide the general basis of freedom and moral responsibility. Both writers are agreed that no such motivation is clearly entertained in the thought of Plato, Aristotle or the Stoics, though Sorabji conjectures that the idea of it is to be found in Augustine’s understanding of voluntas. In Chapter 3, Josef Lössl takes the discussion of Augustine forward by considering the Augustinian view of the will and the will’s relation to the intellect. The modern idea of Augustinian voluntas is of a faculty radically distinct from the intellect, a faculty by which we independently choose between good and evil. However, Lössl argues that this is a distortion, and that Augustine inherits an intellectualizing view of motivation that goes back to Plato and Aristotle, and which links human action closely to judgement and intellect. The

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corruption and regeneration of voluntas involved in sin and redemption has to be understood in terms of an intellectual corruption and an intellectual regeneration. Leaving late antiquity for the Middle Ages, Carlos Steel (in Chapter 4) discusses Aquinas’s account of the possible determination of intellect by will. Focusing on Aquinas’s theory of the determination of judgement by motivation in decision, he argues that the examples of faith and prudential judgement help to bring out what is distinctive about Thomas’s teaching on the will, and its relationship to reason. Steel’s essay helps to clarify a disputed issue in late thirteenth-century philosophy, and enables us to view Aquinas’s teaching on the will in a much broader intellectual context. In Chapter 5, M.W.F. Stone treats the subject of the idea of will and moral rectitude in Bonaventure. He argues that Bonaventure’s socalled ‘voluntarism’ needs to be qualified by several other features of his philosophical anthropology. Focusing on the role of the will in the formation and application of moral judgement, Stone argues that Bonaventure’s account of liberum arbitrium (free choice) is much richer than is commonly supposed, since it illuminates so many aspects of Bonaventure’s mature thought on human nature and moral rectitude. As with Steel, Stone aims to set high scholastic teaching about the will in a clear philosophical and theological framework. Thomas Pink argues in Chapter 6 that many influential medieval and early modern scholastics used the notion of will, when that is understood as a rational motivational capacity, to develop a theory of human action which is radically different from any found in modern English-speaking philosophy. These scholastic theories conceived action to occur, not as an effect of a desire or other motivation to perform it, but rather as the exercise of a distinctively practical capacity for rationality. This practical reason-based conception of action is shown to be common property to a wide range of scholastic thinkers, ‘intellectualist’ and ‘voluntarist’ alike, from Aquinas and Scotus to Suarez. The implications of the practical reason-based conception are explored, before an account is given of the fundamental and wide-ranging assault made on the notion by Thomas Hobbes. In Chapter 7, Jerome Schneewind discusses Kant’s conception of the will and its place in human action as a response and reaction to the earlier theories of Wolff and Crusius. He emphasizes the central role played by the Kantian will in determining a person’s fundamental conception of the world as providentially ordered or as Godless and unordered.

Introduction 5 Finally, Christopher Janaway (Chapter 8) and Brian O’Shaughnessy (Chapter 9) explore the very different legacy of nineteenth-century Germany. Janaway discusses the abandonment by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche of any notion of the will as a rational appetitive faculty peculiar to humans, and its replacement by a conception of the will as a more general drive uniting humans and nature. In Schopenhauer our understanding of the drive can be gained on a first-personal basis, from the case of our own will. In Nietzsche, there is no distinctively first personal orientation to the drive. Rather, the notion of an agent self is a mythical construction out of the case of the plurality of drives that constitute our psychology as part of wider nature. O’Shaughnessy develops Schopenhauerian themes in a restatement of his double-aspect theory of willing as trying. Willing is the point at which the mind realizes itself, not just as a drive that is an inner psychological event, but as a developing physical process that includes the final attainment of what is attempted. The views expressed in this volume by no means present a unified theory of action or even a replacement of the budget account mentioned above. Nor do they claim to present a chronologically comprehensive account of earlier treatments of the will in ancient, medieval and early modern philosophy. Rather, by means of historical retrieval and contextual analysis they propose to contemporary philosophers earlier ways of conceptualizing human action and volition that extend our existing set of options for thinking about such things. The philosophy of action needs to deploy a much richer set of concepts, and to go beyond a thin notion of action as ‘what is motivated by desire’. It is our belief that the resources for recasting many standard ideas and beliefs about the will and human action are to be found in the pages of earlier philosophy. Contemporary philosophy of action can only be enriched by a more forthright and protracted engagement with its distinguished past; it should never ignore its history.

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The concept of the will from Plato to Maximus the Confessor Richard Sorabji

The concept of the will evolved gradually and there have been many suggestions about who first formulated it. Suggestions have included Plato,1 Aristotle,2 the Stoics Chrysippus and Posidonius, followed by the Platonist Galen,3 the Stoic Seneca,4 the Stoic Epictetus,5 Augustine6 and Maximus the Confessor.7

Terminology To start very briefly with the terminology of the will, it developed somewhat independently of the concept, and both developed only gradually until their full flowering in the Latin of Augustine, whose On Free Choice of the Will was written in AD 388–95. As regards terminology, Aristotle sometimes reflects the practice of Plato’s Academy, which used boulêsis as a term for rational desire for the good, as opposed to thumos for the desire for honour, and epithumia for the desire for pleasure.8 Boulêsis, both in this context and in others, is often translated ‘will’. It has been shown that in the Christian era forms of another word for willing, thelein, became more prominent.9 Thelein and thelêma are often used in the New Testament, along with thelêsis in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. When Christ asks for the cup to pass from him, but nevertheless for his Father’s will, not his, to be done, the verb used is thelein more often than boulesthai, and the noun is thelêma.10 Origen, discussing human self-determination (autexousion), asks if it is threatened by Paul’s remarks that reward does not depend on the man who wills (thelei), but on God’s mercy, or that it is God who wills (thelei).11 Among the pagans, Epictetus uses the verb thelein often enough, but not the corresponding nouns, which are not common pagan usage, although we shall notice thelêma for the will of the One in Plotinus,12 Porphyry speaks of the soul’s ethelousion,13 and

The concept of the will 7 thelêsis appears once as a species of boulêsis for the Stoics.14 The Christian who made thelêsis the standard word for will, it has been said,15 was Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century. But the most important terminological developments were in Latin. The phrase ‘free will’, libera voluntas, appears in Latin in the first century BC in the Epicurean Lucretius, followed by Cicero.16 But in Lucretius, although there is an important discussion of freedom due to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, the fact that this is connected with will does not prove to be very significant. The innovation, I believe, has more influence on terminology than on concepts. As others have shown, the Christian Tertullian, writing in Latin shortly after AD 200, uses the phrase ‘free power of choice’ (libera arbitrii potestas) and ‘freedom of choice’ (arbitrii libertas).17 These are, at least sometimes, translations of the completely different Greek term to autexousion, self-determination, which makes no reference to choice or will.18 It has been suggested that the phrase ‘free choice of the will’ (liberum arbitrium voluntatis) originates with Augustine, who uses it extensively in his On Free Choice of the Will.19 From this account of Latin terminology, it looks as if Boethius is reading Augustine’s Latin expression back into an earlier Greek debate, when he talks of free choice of the will.20

The concept: a history of clustering But that is enough on terminology. I want to focus instead on the development of the concept, and to reframe the central question. Instead of asking ‘who invented the concept of will?’, I think it is more profitable to ask something different, since there is no one concept, and much less is there an agreed concept nowadays. Rather, will is a desire with a special relation to reason and a number of functions associated with it. Some of these functions come in clusters. It is more illuminating to ask when these functions came together and who made the decisive difference. The functions include two important clusters, freedom and responsibility on the one hand and will-power on the other. My claim will be that both these clusters can be found early in Greek philosophy, and even in the same philosophical treatise, but totally dissociated from each other, and often connected with reason rather than with rational desire. It is a long time before all the elements get associated together. When they do get associated, yet other ideas previously instantiated in isolation join the group: the idea of perverted will and of will as ubiquitously present in all decisions. Once this history of clustering is

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clear, it will be the history that matters. As to when the concept of will was invented, we can say what we like, but we shall see the reasons for saying one thing rather than another. In conclusion, I shall explain why I do not think the invention has to wait for Maximus the Confessor.

Reason versus rational desire for the good: Aristotle’s restructuring of Plato Aristotle gave a strong impetus to the idea of will as a desire, so distinct from reason, but none the less belonging with reason as rational. In two passages Aristotle treats boulêsis as belonging to the rational part of the Platonist soul.21 At the same time, in one of the two passages he urges against Plato that if one is going to distinguish parts of the soul, one should bring boulêsis together with other types of desire, thumos and epithumia, to form a desiderative part of the soul (orektikon) quite distinct from reason.22 Thus far this seems to encourage the view that boulêsis is not reason, but a rational desire. And I think this is close to Aristotle’s view, but I must enter a caveat. For Aristotle qualified the Platonist view that boulêsis belongs to the rational part of the soul, as indeed Plato himself had done before him.23 At the opposite extreme, Aristotle once says that boulêsis exists in children before reason or intellect (logismos, nous) and is irrational.24 But elsewhere he calls it rational.25 And his more considered view is that the part of the soul that desires, even if called irrational, does have a share in (koinônein) reason, and can even in a secondary sense be said to have reason (logon ekhein), because it listens to reason even if it does not reason things out for itself.26 The general effect is to make boulêsis distinct from reason, though still related to it.27 With regard to boulêsis being directed to the good, Aristotle draws on an idea found in three passages of Plato,28 where Plato was seen to use the verb boulesthai to say that what we really want is good. The contrast in each of the three passages is with mere appetite (epithumia), which is for pleasure, not for good. Plato added that no one is satisfied (arkein) with apparent good.29 But in Aristotle’s version boulêsis is directed to what is or appears good.30 Later, as I will argue, the Stoics had more to say about whether the good willed in boulêsis is real or apparent. The term ‘good’ (agathon) in this context is used by Plato and Aristotle in a narrow sense, in contrast with honour and pleasure, which are the goals of the lower types of desire, thumos and epithumia.31 In some sense, however, Plato and Aristotle are ready to

The concept of the will 9 say that all desire, not just boulêsis, sees its objective as good in some way or other.32

Plato: freedom and responsibility separated from will-power Plato might seem an unpromising source for a concept of the will, since we have already seen Aristotle criticizing him for not distinguishing sharply enough between reason and rational desire. None the less, the good point has been made that something very like the function of will-power is assigned by Plato to another part of his soul, high spirit or the spirited part (thumos, thumoeides).33 Thumos is like will in being distinct from reason, but a desire which, according to Plato, is always allied with reason and never opposes it in a struggle against appetites (epithumiai), although elsewhere it is sometimes shown opposing reason.34 Plato thus foreshadows the debates that arose in AD 1270 as to whether will is free to oppose reason.35 However, according to Plato’s first-mentioned view, thumos shepherds the baser appetites, as if it were reason’s sheepdog. So far it seems to play the role of will-power. What is missing is any particular connection with moral responsibility, or with freedom, so that only some of the criteria for a concept of will are satisfied. In another part of Plato’s Republic, however, choice (haireisthai) is connected both with freedom and with moral responsibility.36 Souls are represented as choosing their next lives before reincarnation. Because of the choice, the responsibility will be theirs, not God’s: ‘Responsibility (aitia) is the chooser’s; God is not responsible (anaitios)’. Moreover, they may choose virtuously, and virtue is free: it has no master (adespoton). This is the earliest use I have encountered of the metaphor of freedom. It is earlier than the use of the same word by Epicurus, to which Charles Kahn has drawn attention.37 What is still missing is any cross-reference to the treatment of thumos as willpower elsewhere in the Republic.

Platonists: the separation continues The separation of the two subjects continues in later Platonists, although they develop one of the subjects. They pick up Plato’s term for freedom (adespoton),38 and integrate it much more fully with the ideas of responsibility and will, and Christians follow. The Middle Platonist Didaskalikos says that if virtue has no master (adespoton), it must be voluntary (hekousion), and that since the soul chooses

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(helesthai) its next life and has no master, it is up to it (ep’ autêi) whether it acts or not. Plotinus connects the term adespoton not only with choice (helesthai) and with what is up to us (eph’ hêmin) and voluntary (hekousion), but also with boulêsis,39 one of the words conventionally translated as ‘will’. Virtue is up to us and without a master, if we will and choose. Plotinus has an extended discussion in the treatise which Porphyry calls On the Voluntary and the Will [thelêma] of the One.40 We find extra terms not only for the will (thelêma) and willing (thelein) but also for freedom (to eleutheron), control (kurios) and purpose (proairesis). The Christian Gregory of Nyssa repeats that virtue and the soul have no master (adespoton), and adds that virtue is voluntary (hekousion). He connects this with the self-determination (autexousion) of the human will (proairesis) or soul, and with the soul being steered by its own willing (thelêmata).41 None the less, Plato’s idea of thumos as will-power which is found in an earlier part of the Republic, is not integrated with these other ideas, either by him or by later Platonists. When the power of thumos is treated by a later Platonist, Galen, it is again dealt with separately from these other ideas. Galen discusses contests of strength between reason (logismos) and high spirit (thumos). The talk is of strength (iskhuron, rhômê), violence (sphodroteron), domination (arkhein, kratein, epikratein), carrying off (sunapopherein), dragging (sunepispan), defeat (nikasthai) and weakness (arrhôstia).42 In another passage, it is all three elements of the Platonic soul that are involved, not only reason and high spirit, but also appetite (epithumia). Each of these can stir up or stop impulses (hormai). But already there is an important difference from the passage in Plato’s Republic 440. Thumos in Galen is not always the ally of reason, but frequently opposes it. So if we want to find rational desire in Galen’s account, we must look rather to his boulêsis, boulêthênai. But boulêsis is not treated in this context as having any special dominance over the other desires, thumos or epithumia. Any of the three elements will have more or less power at different times.43 When Galen wants to give the highest element in the soul a special status, comparing it with a charioteer or a rider who ought to take control, he reverts to Plato’s usage, calling it reason (logismos) rather than boulêsis.44 Galen’s discussion of will-power, if it is one, is not connected by him with any discussion of freedom or responsibility. He does also discuss, as others have well shown,45 the power exerted from the brain through the nerves. But this is a discussion of physiological power, and so takes us away from will-power.

The concept of the will 11

Aristotle’s proairesis distinct from responsibility and will-power I have ascribed Aristotle a role in developing the concept of will in so far as he contrasted two concepts borrowed from Plato, those of reason and of boulêsis, or rational desire for the good. But it was boulêsis which I stressed. It is in Aristotle’s other concept of proairesis that some interpreters have detected a concept of will. Proairesis is generated from boulêsis, which, as Plato had already hinted,46 is the desire for ends. Proairesis is the desire for the means which will lead towards those ends.47 And proairesis is even more closely connected with reason, because it is a desire based on reasoning out what means would secure those ends.48 An example of proairesis, as I understand it, would be the kind of dietary policy that Aristotle cites, like eating dry food.49 This is something one might have reasoned would lead to the goal of health. I do not think the concept of proairesis, as it features in Aristotle, is yet very close to a concept of will. Aristotle does not treat proairesis as a kind of will-power. When he discusses people who fail to abide by their proairesis,50 he does not present this as due to their proairesis being weak. In his main account of this failure of control (akrasia), he insists that appetite makes us overlook the facts, for example the fact that the food we are taking is not of the right sort.51 Furthermore, he follows Plato, and says that it is reason (logos) against which the appetites fight.52 He does not say it is will. Conventionally, this discussion is spoken of as Aristotle’s explanation of weakness of will. But this is a misnomer. His diagnosis is not in terms of proairesis being weak or strong. If he concedes anything to the idea of will-power, then I would agree with the point that has been put to me53 that it is when he discusses the opposite phenomenon, that of maintaining control (enkrateia) and sticking by our proairesis, in the face of rival desires. I agree that this is described in terms of winning or losing (nikan, hêttasthai) against strong (iskhuros) desires.54 But the discussion is extremely brief, because all the emphasis is given to failure of control. Moreover, it is never said what enables proairesis to win, when it does. But if Aristotle had addressed the question, at least part of his answer would surely have been in terms of intellect, rather than will. It must make a difference how carefully you have thought out your policy (proairesis) at the stage when you were deliberating about the best means to your goal. Aristotle’s very silence is significant: a proponent of will-power would be likely to tell us how victory depends rather on the strength of the will.

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Aristotle does not associate proairesis very closely with freedom, and he even dissociates it from moral responsibility. He is explicit that voluntariness, which links with moral responsibility,55 extends much more widely to the doings of animals and children, who are not capable of anything as rational as proairesis. Although proairesis (deliberate choice) appears to be voluntary, then, it is not the same thing. The voluntary extends further. For children and animals both share in the voluntary, but not in deliberate choice.56 I have elsewhere resisted an alternative interpretation according to which Aristotle distinguishes ‘up to us’ (eph’ hêmin) from voluntary (hekousion), at least in the Nicomachean Ethics, connects only the ‘up to us’ with moral responsibility, and confines the ‘up to us’ to what has been sanctioned by rational proairesis.57 Against this, I think Aristotle implies that all that is voluntary is also up to us. He sometimes includes this requirement directly in the definition of voluntariness58 and sometimes makes it an implication of the demand, which is itself included in the definition of voluntariness, for an internal origin of action.59 Nor is it unreasonable of Aristotle to suppose that, despite lacking proairesis, the dog which bites you can be blamed. Animals were held morally responsible by other philosophers too, possibly by Democritus,60 certainly by Clodius or Heracleides of Pontus,61 and tame animals by Epicurus.62

Alexander and Aquinas: making proairesis ubiquitous in all action that is up to us It is rather, I believe, the much later Aristotelian Alexander who makes the moves just described. In speaking of what is up to us, he ties it, unlike Aristotle, to proairesis. It is found only in beings capable of proairesis, and (I think he means) only when they are using their proairesis. In this he conforms, at least verbally, to the Stoic Epictetus, who had said that nothing is up to us except what falls under proairesis, in his rather different sense of the term.63 Alexander is motivated to show that Aristotelianism can match the intellectualist presuppositions of Stoicism. He not only accepts the Stoic linkage of what is up to us with proairesis, but borrows the Stoics’ own terminology in linking proairesis with rational impulse (logikê hormê).64 Thomas Aquinas compromises, but is closer to Alexander’s intellectualist account in his discussion of proairesis, which he translates into Latin as electio.65 He claims that voluntariness in the primary sense

The concept of the will 13 does depend on electio, so that animal behaviour is voluntary only in a secondary sense.66 Similarly, Alexander, in a treatise available to Thomas, had reported that some Stoics allowed a weaker sense of ‘up to it’ to be applicable to the doings of animals.67 Alexander’s new move has the significant effect of making proairesis ubiquitous in all action that is up to us. This gives it something in common with concepts of the will in Descartes and in modern philosophy as involved in every intentional action.68 In another passage, Alexander switches attention from proairesis to boulêsis and gives it a special role in preserving our freedom. Impulse and desire (hormê, orexis), he says, going along with the Stoics’ intellectualist account, are cases of assenting that something is choiceworthy (epi tisi sunkatathesis hôs hairetois). But, he warns, in opposition to Stoic determinism, hormê will not necessarily lead to action, if boulêsis does not concur (sundramein).69

The Stoics: will related to voluntariness but not distinct from reason The Stoics, I believe, come closer than Aristotle to a full-blooded idea of the will, but there are still some very important differences. When Seneca describes anger as involving an act of will (voluntas) to the effect that (tamquam) we should be avenged,70 he is using voluntas in a broad sense to refer to impulse. What is significant is that he does not contrast will, as a type of conation, with cognition. He intellectualizes it, treating it as merely one type of cognition: assent to a proposition about how it is appropriate to react. This fits perfectly with the view ascribed to the Stoics in general that impulse (hormê) is assent to a proposition71 and in particular is assent to the appearance that it is appropriate (kathêkei) to act.72 Assent to appearance, we know, is a judgement. Impulse is also described intellectualistically as reason (logos) commanding (prostaktikos) us to act.73 It matters that the command is said to come from reason. I dissent from the view that Seneca innovates and dissociates will from intellect.74 It is important to see that the Stoics are going beyond Plato’s Socrates in their intellectualism. Socrates’ few restrictions in Plato’s early dialogues on what beliefs are compatible with wanting fall far short of Chrysippus’ bold idea that wanting simply is the intellectual judgement that a certain act is appropriate. I believe that will has traditionally been thought of as much more distinct from rational judgement than that. Although Seneca treats wanting here as an intellectual judgement, in the same paragraph he takes a step in the direction of a fuller

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concept of the will, by connecting the will (voluntas) with the notion of voluntariness (voluntarius), and hence with moral responsibility. This connection, it has been pointed out, is one which comes out in Latin, but not in Greek,75 since the Greek word for voluntariness, hekousion, has no connection with words for will. The link between the Latin terms is found already in Cicero.76 Seneca is using the word voluntas in a wide sense for any desire or hormê. But sometimes voluntas and boulêsis are used in a narrow sense for an attitude that only the sage achieves,77 and then the Stoic usage has a further implication. Since the sage is supposed to be infallible, he knows what is really good, and so his will must be a desire not merely for the apparent good, but simply for what is good. A non-sage could presumably achieve a similar result by desiring what he believes to be good, only with the reservation, ‘if God wills’. He can then set his heart on what he believes to be good only in so far as it actually is so. But a non-sage’s desire will be called a boulêsis or voluntas only in a looser sense.

The Stoics: interrogation of appearances versus Posidonius’s willpower Although there were developments in the direction of a fuller concept of will, for most Stoics a big gap remains: no notion of will-power is at all prominent, because their account is more intellectualist. Great moral effort is required, but it is the intellectual effort of questioning appearances. Epictetus told his students to practise questioning the appearance that the beautiful or grand passer-by involves something good, or the bereaved or hungry person has encountered something bad.78 Admittedly, Epictetus does refer to the questioning of appearances as a struggle (agônisteon),79 but the process is described in intellectual terms. Other references to strength, or domination, are also intellectualized by the Stoics. Although they talk of strength and weakness, connecting it with tension in the soul, which enables it to endure,80 the weakness is the intellectual weakness of a weak assent: if you have not sufficiently questioned appearances, you will have a weak and changeable opinion about what is good, or bad.81 There is a similar intellectualizing when the Stoics talk of the ruling (hêgemonikon) or dominating (kratoun, kurieuon) part of the soul, for it is standardly referred to as reason, not as will. And similarly, when the runner’s momentum is greater than (pleonazei) his impulse to stop, we have to recall that the impulse thus overpowered is an intellectual judgement. There is, I believe, at least one exception to this lack of reference to will-power. But it is found in Posidonius, the Stoic who deliberately

The concept of the will 15 reverted to Plato’s tripartite psychology. Posidonius takes up Chrysippus’s concession that people sometimes weep without willing to (mê boulomenoi). But he makes an entirely different use of the notion of will. He says that the emotional movements press so hard (sphodra enkeisthai: a military metaphor) that they cannot be mastered (krateisthai) by the will (boulêsis).82 Here the will is turned into something that tries (but fails) to exert power. Similarly, some people stop weeping in spite of willing (boulesthai) to continue, because the emotional movements can no longer be aroused (epegeiresthai) by the will. The will had not been treated in this dynamic way by Chrysippus. On his account, people who weep, or cease weeping, against their will are receiving conflicting appearances,83 presumably appearances about whether things are bad. Theirs is a state of intellectual confusion, not a failure of will-power. It is Posidonius’ Platonist sympathies which bring will-power into the Stoic account. Elsewhere Posidonius tends to speak in terms of reason (logismos) rather than will (boulêsis), but, as noted above, at least he puts a premium on reason as opposed to high spirit and appetite, by following Plato’s comparison of it to the charioteer who ought to take control.84 Even Posidonius’ teacher, Panaetius, had moved a little way in this Platonic direction, when he suggested that there is a force (vis) called impulse (hormê) in the appetite (appetitus) and another force in reason (ratio), and that reason presides (praesit), while appetite submits (obtemperet). At least in the temperate person, the impulses are obedient (oboedientes) to reason. But the force in reason is not spoken of in this brief citation as a kind of will.85

Epictetus: proairesis connected with freedom and responsibility Epictetus, as I have noted, does not follow Posidonius in speaking in terms of will-power. But he gives renewed prominence to Aristotle’s term proairesis.86 Zeno had continued to use this term in Aristotle’s way,87 but Epictetus changes its meaning in a way that brings it much closer to an idea of will, which is how I have translated it, in the passage in which he says: “I will fetter you.” “What did you say, man? Fetter me? You will fetter my leg, but my will [proairesis] not even Zeus can conquer.” Here and repeatedly elsewhere, Epictetus is insisting that my proairesis is free from all constraint.88

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Epictetus connects proairesis not only with freedom, but also with what is up to us (eph’ hêmin). All that falls under proairesis is up to us.89 Moreover, unlike Aristotle, he holds that nothing is up to us except what falls under our proairesis.90 I have already suggested that this may have helped to motivate a parallel shift in Alexander.91 The result is that only the mental is up to us. Epictetus specifies, following his teacher Musonius Rufus, that the evaluation of appearances is up to us,92 and so is assent to those appearances,93 and hence the shaping of our proairesis, but nothing else. Had any earlier Stoic anticipated the idea that only the mental is up to us? Antipater, head of the Stoic school from about 152 to 129 BC, has been named as a possible candidate.94 He described the goal of life as doing everything in one’s power (kath’ hauton) to achieve the natural objectives.95 So it is probably he who made the comparison with an archer, and said that the goal is not hitting the target, but doing everything one can (facere omnia quae possit) to aim or align (collineare) the arrow right.96 Evidently, hitting the target is not thought of as, or as necessarily, in one’s power. What is, or is necessarily, in one’s power is a step towards aiming right. But are these steps sometimes, or always, mental rather than physical? For all that we have been told, physical steps may be, at least often, in one’s power, and it has not even been excluded that in favourable circumstances hitting the target may be in one’s power. Thus, Epictetus is the first to make it clear that physical activity is never up to us, on the grounds that it always could be frustrated. So far I have argued that Epictetus connects proairesis not exactly with will-power, but with freedom and with what is up to us. I assume the last means that he connects it with moral responsibility, that is, with what you can be praised or blamed for. But this inference has been challenged.97 It would mean that someone could not be blamed directly for a physical activity, but only for the mental attitudes involved in a physical activity. Can we be sure that Epictetus intended this? For we have evidence that at least some late Stoics broke the connection between ‘up to’ and moral responsibility by allowing that animals’ behaviour is up to them, without, however, holding them morally responsible.98 However, I am persuaded that Epictetus does not break the connection.99 For he is prepared to confine moral responsibility as narrowly as what is up to us, that is, confine it to mental attitudes. We should praise or blame (epainein, psegein) people only for their judgements (dogmata), not for indifferents (koina),100 and you are accountable (hupeuthunos) only for the only thing that is up to you (epi soi), and that is the proper evaluation of appearances.101

The concept of the will 17

Epicureans: freedom more important than will The Stoics’ Epicurean rivals were interested in freedom, but less so in the will. As others have pointed out,102 Epicurus made a very early use of the metaphor of freedom. The text, as emended by Usener, says of the wise man: He laughs down that fate which is introduced by some as mistress (despotis) of all, and says instead that some things happen of necessity, some by chance, and some things are due to us (par’ hêmas). For he sees that necessity is unaccountable, and chance unstable, but what is up to us has no master (adespoton) and it is to this last that blameworthiness and the reverse naturally belong.103 In fact, Epicurus’ usage goes back still earlier to Plato, as we have seen.104 But what is missing from the passage is any reference to will. Lucretius takes Epicureanism further.105 He is the first to introduce the expression ‘free will’ (libera voluntas), though he is shortly followed by Cicero, who complains that the Stoics preclude free will.106 Lucretius bases its possibility on the unpredictable swerve of atoms. But what seems to do the work in Lucretius’ explanation of freedom is the swerve rather than the will. He is perfectly happy to say that the mind (animus), when it wills (velit), strikes the force of the soul, rather than talking of the will acting.107

Perverted will, pride, and fall: Pythagoreans and Plotinus I have mentioned Plotinus already as developing Plato’s treatment of the choice of one’s next incarnation, and as using thelema as a word for the will. But much more important were his views on pride and will as the beginning of evil. For souls that turn away, break loose, and become ignorant of the Father the beginning of the evil is pride (tolma) and willing (boulêthênai) to belong to themselves alone. They are pleased with their own self-determination (autexousion) and create the greatest possible distance (apostasis) from the Father.108 The same happens at the level of intellect, when it becomes multiple by willing (thelein) to possess everything.109 There is a restless nature originally at rest in eternity, which, however, wills (boulesthai) to govern itself and belong to itself, and chooses (helesthai) to seek more than the (timeless) present. This results in the creation of time out of timeless eternity.110 Tolma, or pride, had also played a role in earlier sources in the creation of lower levels of reality. Thus the neo-Pythagoreans’ Dyad,

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which provided a model for Plotinus’s intellect, was called by them tolma, because it separated itself from their version of the One.1101Further, Irenaeus reports that among certain Gnostics it is tolma which leads to the creation of the physical world.112 However, in Plotinus the connection of tolma with will makes closer the relation to Augustine, who alludes to Plotinus’s treatise.113

Augustine’s clustering Augustine’s treatment of the will is new in more than one way. Most relevantly, Augustine brings together all the criteria which we have seen occurring separately in others. I will illustrate this for each in turn. First, will (voluntas) belongs to the rational soul: To the irrational soul also He gave memory, sense, appetite, to the rational he gave in addition intellect, intelligence and will.114 Second, Augustine connects the will with freedom, for the choice (arbitrium) that the will makes is free, and one of his best-known treatises is called On Free Choice of the Will (De libero arbitrio voluntatis). Third, Augustine connects the will (voluntas) with responsibility, as in the following passage, whose talk of perverted will (perversa) may remind us of the perverted reason (aversa) of Zeno and Chrysippus: It makes a difference what a person’s will (voluntas) is like. If it is perverted (perversa), these movements [sc., appetite, fear, joy, grief] will be perverted in him. If it is upright (recta), they will be not just blameless, but praiseworthy. Indeed, the will is present in all these movements. Rather, they are all nothing other than acts of will (voluntates).115 Another relevant passage connects free choice of the will with responsibility: And I attended in order to understand what I heard, that free choice of the will is the cause of our doing wrong.116 Fourth, Augustine repeatedly speaks in terms of will-power and the failure of will-power. He sees his will as struggling against lust. He often speaks in terms of the will’s command, while Julian insists against him that he should also recognize the will’s different role of consent.117

The concept of the will 19 Fifth, Augustine comes to make willing ubiquitous in all action: Yet, if we attend more subtly, even (etiam) what anyone is compelled to do unwillingly (invitus) he does by his will, if he does it. It is because he would prefer something else that he is said to do it unwillingly (invitus), that is, wanting not to (nolens). He is compelled to act by some evil, and he does what he is compelled to do through willing to avoid or remove from himself the evil. For suppose his will is so great that he prefers not doing this to not suffering that. Then indubitably he will resist the compulsion and not do it. Hence if he does it, it is not indeed with his full (plena) and free will. But because the effect follows his will, we cannot say control over his act was missing.118 Augustine reached this position gradually. First, he suggests in Confessions 7 that whatever we really do we do by will, but this leaves out the evils that one does unwillingly (invitus), because these one may undergo (pati), rather than doing.119 But this exception is put in doubt in Confessions 8 by the view that one has two wills, neither of them complete (tota),120 which suggests that reluctant misdeeds may be following the will, even if not the complete will. This is confirmed in our new passage, among others.121 Unwilling acts follow the will, even if not the full (plena) will. That is why Augustine says even (etiam) unwilling acts are done by will. A fortiori all other acts are so done. Sixth, and finally, Augustine develops the criterion of a perverted or bad will. In City of God122 he quotes a version of Ecclesiasticus: ‘The beginning of all sin is pride (superbia)’. He connects this with the will, saying: ‘What could be the origin of evil will (mala voluntas) except pride?’ Further, he applies this to the Fall of Man, saying that the effect on the will of being too pleased with oneself and falling away from God instead of loving him was what made Eve believe the serpent and Adam heed his wife, rather than obey God’s command. Another fall, that of the fallen angels, is treated by Augustine,123 as it had been earlier by Evagrius,124 as due to pride (huperêphania). In addition, Plotinus had seen tolma as causing a descent. Augustine himself applies the message to his own case. Lust was the result and punishment of his own pride, when he failed to listen to God.125 A further great innovation of Augustine’s is to expand enormously the functions of the will. In On the Trinity, for example, will performs some of the functions of directing attention. It unites perception with the perceptible,126 memory with internal vision,127 and intellect with objects taken from memory.128 It is responsible for imagination.129

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Faith is also due to will.130 Belief depends on the assent of the will.131 Emotions are acts of will,132 and the will is the centrepiece of Augustine’s objections to lust. The expansion of functions gave the will a greater importance than ever before. We have seen how the different functions discussed here gradually became associated in clusters with each other and with a rational desire for the good distinct from reason itself. We can see that Augustine made the most decisive difference. But the associations had started long before him, and it will not matter if we talk of concepts of will in earlier philosophers, provided we see, as we now can, how they fall short of Augustine’s.

Maximus’s thelêsis and Stoic oikeiôsis I do not think that the concept of the will had to wait until Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century added his contribution. So much had already been brought together by Augustine, and what Maximus added did not remain an uncontroversial piece of orthodoxy. I also want to suggest that Maximus’s contribution was not so novel either. Instead, it was a borrowing from something that had gone before, but something from a completely different direction: the Stoic theory of oikeiôsis. Maximus was defending the view that Christ had two wills, one human, one divine. But he wanted to explain why Christ’s human will could not sin. Therefore, he distinguished Christ’s human will as a natural will (thelêma phusikon) different from our gnomic will, since the latter can turn in either direction, towards good or bad, according to our opinion. This, to scholastics, came to be seen as the right view, and Maximus has been praised for defining the natural will as a faculty directed of its essence to the good, rather than as something one calls ‘will’ when it happens to be so directed. Another point considered important is that the will aims at this good quite independently of reason, although reason recognizes the same good.133 This last point, however, is not a universally agreed feature of the will, since after 1270 it became a matter of debate whether and in what sense the will was independent of reason.134 As for the first point, the idea of a naturally directed desire for the good does not seem particularly new. Even before the Stoics, Aristotle already holds that everybody naturally desires a happy life.135 In fact, it is the Stoics from whom Maximus’s favoured definition of the will seems to derive. No less than five features of the definition he cites (and silently presupposes) proclaim this link. First, the good

The concept of the will 21 aimed at is self-preservation. Second, what is to be preserved is described by the Stoics’ word sustasis, our ‘constitution’. Third, will is said to depend only on nature, unlike proairesis. Fourth, the Stoic term sunektikê, sunekhein is used when it is said that will holds the substance together. Even more characteristically, what it holds together is the idiômata, the attributes which the Stoics postulated as lasting through an individual’s life and distinguishing it from all other individuals. My suggestion is that Maximus’s will (thelêsis) is a variant of the Stoics’ oikeiôsis, that attachment that is felt by newborn infants and animals to their own physical constitution (sustasis), and which the adult human can later extend to his entire rational constitution. This attachment drives infants and animals to preserve that constitution. The claim that it is natural is important to the Stoics, because they argue, against opponents who want to ascribe reason to animals, that this penchant for self-preservation is due to nature, not to reason.136 The account of the will that Maximus turns out to favour, and for which he has been so much praised, is as follows: They say that natural thelêsis or thelêma is a capacity desirous (orektikê) of what is in accordance with nature, a capacity which holds together in being (sunektikê) all the distinctive attributes (idiômata) which belong essentially to a being’s nature. The substance, being naturally held together by this, desires (oregetai) being and living and moving in accordance with perception and intellect, striving for (ephiesthai) its own natural and complete existence (ontotês). A thing’s nature has a will (thelêtikê) for itself, and for all that is set to create its constitution (sustasis), and it is suspended in a desiderative way over the rational structure of its being, the structure in accordance with which it exists and has come into being. That is why others, in defining this natural thelêma, say that it is a rational and vital desire (orexis), whereas proairesis is a desire, based on deliberation, for things that are up to us. So thelêsis is not proairesis, if thelêsis is a simple rational and vital desire, whereas proairesis is a coming together of desire, deliberation, and judgement. For it is after first desiring that we deliberate, and after having deliberated that we judge, and after having judged that we deliberately choose (proaireisthai) what has been shown by judgement better in preference to the worse. And thelêsis depends only on what is natural, proairesis on what is up to us and capable of being brought about through us.137

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The idea of the will as a desire for self-preservation continues in the fourteenth century.138 My suggestion is that this, coming through Maximus, may be a Stoic legacy.139 I shall not discuss here the immediately following lines of Maximus’s text, in which he describes the stages by which will is converted into action, because, although I believe these stages are of greater interest, they are not the ground on which he has been presented as inventing the concept of the will.

Evaluation I have ascribed to Augustine the originality of bringing all the criteria together. But it is a different question whether bringing them together is a good idea. I believe new reasons would need to be found, and indeed a recent work has offered a rationale to show that some such clustering round a concept of will is required in order to show what human action involves.140 But without a new rationale, we have little incentive to accept the clustering. The idea of perverted will involves a metaphysics that is not now widely shared. As for the idea of will as ubiquitously present in all action, people may nowadays be more sympathetic to Aristotle’s idea that in voluntary action what is always present is an internal cause,141 always, I believe, desire, sometimes negligence in addition,142 but not always rational will. Aristotle’s examples include such baser desires as anger143 and appetite.144 The idea of freedom may be better treated without the idea of will. Certainly, Lucretius’s idea of an uncaused swerve in the operation of the will seems to me unhelpful, leaving us caught in the dilemma as to whether our actions are inexplicable or necessitated. I have sought elsewhere to tackle this dilemma by arguing that actions can be fully explained, and indeed caused, without being necessitated.145 But there are other treatments of freedom too, which feel no need to invoke the idea of will, and I shall mention another shortly. As for moral responsibility, Aristotle’s view is persuasive that it extends wider than just to actions and agents motivated by rational will. For some idea of will-power there is a good use. We need to describe the effort to pursue what we think best against desires of which we approve less. But this phenomenon may be better analysed in the way just indicated, in terms of different layers of attitudes. Desires at the first level may be the subject of second-order approval or disapproval. The effort to act in accordance with the approved desires requires what we call will-power. But I doubt that anything is gained

The concept of the will 23 by thinking of this effort in terms of the exercise of a rational faculty, rather than in terms of the varied thoughts, imaginings and acts of attention involved. One element in the notion of freedom has also been analysed, in recent years, in terms of first- and second-order attitudes. Freedom involves being able to give second-order approval to one’s attitudes of the first order.146 To this extent there may be some overlap between treatments of freedom and of will-power. But on the whole, we may think it was more reasonable of Plato, Posidonius and Galen to handle them quite separately.

Notes A version of this chapter has appeared in my Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, Oxford University Press, 2000. 1 David Sedley, ‘Commentary on Mansfeld’, The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 7, 1991, pp. 146–52. The idea that Plato invented the will had also been expressed in conversation to me by George Kerferd; and Jaap Mansfeld, ibid., p. 107, n. 1, cites a passing remark along the same lines by F. Dirlmeier in Aristoteles, Nikomachische Ethik, 3rd edn., Berlin, 1964, p. 327, n. 3. 2 Terence Irwin, ‘Who Discovered the Will?’, Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 6, Ethics 1992, pp. 453–73. 3 Jaap Mansfeld, ‘The Idea of the Will in Chrysippus, Posidonius and Galen’, The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 7, 1991, pp. 107–45. On Chrysippus, see Pohlenz, Die Stoa, vol. 1, pp. 141–53; N. Gilbert, ‘The Concept of Will in Early Latin Philosophy’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 1, 1963, pp. 17–35, at p. 22. 4 Pohlenz, op. cit., p. 319; Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 25–7. 5 Charles Kahn, without committing himself, shows what is to be said in favour of this in ‘Discovering the Will: From Aristotle to Augustine’, in J. Dillon and A. Long (eds), The Question of Eclecticism, Berkeley, 1988, pp. 234–59. 6 Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, Berkeley, 1982. 7 R.A. Gauthier, Aristote: l’Éthique à Nicomaque, 2nd edn. (only), vol. 1, pt 1. Introduction, Louvain, 1970. 8 Plato, Charmides, 167 E and further references below; Aristotle, Topics, 126a12–14; On the Soul, 3.9, 432b5–6; Politics, 7.15, 1334b22; Nicomachean Ethics, 3.2, 1111b11; On the Movement of Animals, 6, 700b22. 9 See, for example, John D. Madden, ‘The Authenticity of Early Definitions of Will (thelêsis)’, in F. Heinzer and C. Schönborn (eds), Maximus Confessor , Fribourg, 1982, pp. 61–79. 10 Luke 22: 42; Matthew 26: 39; Mark 14: 36. 11 Origen, On First Principles, 3.1.8; 3.1.18; 3.1.20. 12 Plotinus, 6.8, entitled in Porphyry’s edition On the Voluntariness [hekousion] and Will [thelêma] of the One.

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13 Frag. 268, in A. Smith (ed.), Porphyrius Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1993), pp. 100–1. 14 Stobaeus, 2.87.22 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3.173), conjectured by some to be from Arius Didymus’s Epitome of Stoic Ethics (translations in preparation by Brad Inwood and by Julia Annas). 15 R.A. Gauthier, ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de 1’acte humaine’, Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale, vol. 21, 1954, pp. 51–100, at p. 78; Madden, op. cit. 16 Lucretius, On The Nature of Things 2.251–93; Cicero, On Fate, 9.20. 17 Tertullian, On the Soul, 21.6 and 20.5, recorded by Kahn, op. cit., pp 250–1. 18 Tertullian, On the Soul, 21.6; Jerome, Against the Pelagians, 3.7. 19 Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, 2.1.1 and passim. 20 Boethius, On Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9, 2nd comm., 195.2–197.10; 217.17–219.9 Meiser. 21 Aristotle, Topics, 126a12–13; On the Soul, 3.9,432b5–6; cf. ibid., 3.10, 433a24–5. 22 Aristotle, On the Soul, 3.9, 432a22–b7. I have not been persuaded by challenges to this conventional interpretation of Aristotle: see my Animal Minds and Human Morals, Duckworth and Cornell University Press, 1993, p. 70, n. 38. 23 Plato, Laws, 863 B; 904 B–C; Paul Vander Waerdt, ‘Aristotle’s Criticism of Soul Division’, American Journal of Philology, vol. 108, 1987, pp. 627–43, at p. 641. 24 Aristotle, Politics, 7.15, 1334b22–5. 25 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.10, 1368b37–1369a4. 26 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.13, 1102b29–1103a3. 27 For different views, see Terence Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles, Oxford, 1988; Michael Frede, Introduction to M. Frede and G. Striker (eds), Rationality in Greek Thought, Oxford, 1996, p. 8 and pp. 25–6. Frede’s Sather Lectures will be devoted to the subject of the will, but I have not had access to these at the time of writing. 28 Plato, Gorgias, 468 C; Meno, 77 E–78 B; Charmides, 167 E. 29 Plato, Republic, 505 D–E. 30 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 3.4, 1113a15–24; Rhetoric, 1.10, 1368b37ff. 31 Plato, Charmides, 167 E. 32 Plato, Republic, 505 E; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.1, 1094a1–3. 33 Plato, Republic, 440 B, D. So Sedley, Kerferd, and Dirlmeier (as in note 1, above). 34 For example, Plato, Republic, 9, 586 C7–D2. Thanks to Julius Tomin for this reference. 35 Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will, Washington, 1995, ch. 3, ‘Voluntarism’. 36 Plato, Republic, 617 E. 37 Epicurus in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 10. 133, cited by Kahn, op. cit. Plato’s use is also the subject of work in progress by Myles Burnyeat. 38 Alcinous, Didaskalikos, ch. 31, 184.37–40; ch. 26, 179.10–11. Thanks to David Sedley for the Platonist references. 39 Plotinus, 6.8.5 (30–2). 40 Plotinus, 6.8.1–6. 41 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 4; 16.11; cf. 16.14.

The concept of the will 25 42 Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines, 3.3.5–6, pp. 184–6 de Lacy. 43 Galen, op. cit., 4.2.36–8, pp. 244–6 de Lacy. Both passages are discussed by Mansfeld, op. cit. 44 Galen, op. cit., 5.5.32–5; 5.6.31; 3.3.5–6, pp. 324, 332, 184–6 de Lacy. 45 Mansfeld, op. cit. 46 Plato, Gorgias, 467 C–E. 47 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 3.2, 1111b26–30; 3.4, 1113a15. 48 Ibid., 33, 1113a10–11; 6.2, 1139a32; b4–5. 49 Ibid., 7.3, 1146b35–1147a7; cf. 6.7, 1141b20; 6.8, 1142a22–3. 50 Ibid., 7.4, 1148a9–10; 7.8, 1151a7; 1150b29–1151a4; 7.9, 1151a29–35; 7.10, 1152a17. 51 Ibid., 7.3, 1146b31–1147b19, discussed above; cf. 6.8, 1142a23. 52 Ibid., 1.13, 1102b13–31, also discussed above; 7.3, 1147b2–3. 53 By David Sedley. 54 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 7.2, 1146a9–16; 7.7, 1150a12–13; 33–6. 55 Literally, praise and blame, ibid., 3.1, 1109b31. 56 Nicomachean Ethics, 3.2, 1111b6–9. Cf. Eudemian Ethics, 2.8, 1223b37–1224a4; 2.9, 1225a37; 2.10, 1226b30, for voluntariness distinguished from proairesis. 57 In my Animal Minds and Human Morals, ch. 9, pp. 111–12, referring to Waiter Englert, Terence Irwin and Roderick Long. 58 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 5.8, 1135a24; Eudemian Ethics, 2.9, 1225b8–10 (cf. 2.10, 1226b30–2). 59 Nicomachean Ethics, 3.1, 1110a15–18; 3.5, 1113b19–23; 1114a18–19. 60 Democritus frags. 257–9 DK, from Stobaeus Florilegium, 4.2.13, Hense. 61 Ap. Pophyrium, Abstinence, 1.14. 62 Epicurus, On Nature, 34.25, lines 22–34, Arrighetti, 2nd edn, Turin, 1973. 63 Epictetus, Discourses, 1.22.10. 64 Alexander, On Fate, ch. 33, 205. 15–22 Bruns (CAG suppl., vol. 2, pt 2), discussed in my Animal Minds and Human Morals, p. 110. 65 R.A. Gauthier traces other uses of electio, first for the Stoic selection (eklogê) of preferred indifferents, and then, in William of Auxerre, for assent: ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l’acte humaine’, pp. 86–7, n.127; p. 92. 66 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-I, q.13, a.2, ad 3; II-I, q.6, a.2, in corp., discussed in my Animal Minds and Human Morals, p. 113. 67 Alexander, On Fate, ch. 13. Bob Sharples has pointed out that P. Thillet’s preface to his 1963 edition of the medieval Latin attributes the Latin to Thomas’s associate, William of Moerbeke. 68 Descartes, Fourth Meditation. 69 Alexander, On the Soul, 72. 26–73. 2 Bruns (CAG suppl., vol. 2, pt 1), a passage discussed by Victor Caston at the Commentators Workshop, Institute of Classical Studies, London, 16 June 1997. 70 Seneca, On Anger, 2.4.1. 71 Stobaeus, 2.88. 1 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3.171). 72 Stobaeus, 2. 86.17–18 Wachsmuth (= SVF 3.169). 73 Plutarch, On the Contradictions of the Stoics, 1037 F (= SVF 3.175). 74 Pohlenz, Die Stoa, vol. 1, p. 319. This has been the dominant view. For replies see Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 224ff., and, decisively, Brad Inwood, ‘The Will in Seneca the Younger’, Classical Philology, 95 (2002): 44–60.

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75 Kahn, ‘Discovering the Will’, Gauthier, ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de 1’acte humaine’, p. 90. 76 Cicero, On Fate, 11.23. 77 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4.12. 78 Epictetus, Discourses, 3.3.14–19. 79 The title of Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18 is, ‘How one is to struggle [agônisteon] against appearances’. 80 Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines, 4.6.5–6; 5.2.26–7, p. 300 de Lacy. 81 Stobaeus, 2.111.18–112.8 (= SVF 3.548; LS 41G). The point is made by Sedley, ‘Commentary on Mansfeld’. 82 Posidonius at Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines, 4.7.37, p. 288 de Lacy. 83 Chrysippus at Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines, 4.7.16, p. 284 de Lacy. 84 Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines, 5.5.32–5; 5.6.3 1, pp. 324, 332 de Lacy. 85 Cicero, On Duties, 1.101; 2.18. 86 Robert Dobbin, ‘Proairesis in Epictetus’, Ancient Philosophy, vol. 11, 1991, pp. 111–35, argues that Epictetus appropriates the term in order to answer criticism from the Aristotelian school, that the Stoics failed to make room for proairesis in their account of basic causal principles (arkhai). 87 The contrast of proairesis and nature as sources of nobility in Zeno’s letter to King Antigonus contains some echo of Aristotle: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 8. 7. 88 Epictetus, Discourses, 1.1.23; cf., for example, 1.17.21–8; 4.1.72–80; Handbook 9, discuss this further in ‘Epictetus proairesis and the self’, in Dory Scaltsas, ed., Epictetus, Proceedings of conference held in Lanorca, September 2001, in preparation. 89 Epictetus, Discourses, 2.13.10; 4.1.100. 90 Epictetus, Discourses, 1.22.10. 91 Alexander, On Fate, 33, 205. 19–20. 92 Musonius, frag. 38, Hense, from Stobaeus 2.8.30 Wachsmuth; Epictetus, Discourses, 1.1.7; 1.12.34; 2.19.32 and 39; 3.24.69; 4.1.74. 93 Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1.74. 94 Susanne Bobzien, ‘Stoic Conceptions of Freedom and their Relation to Ethics’, in Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle and After, pp. 71–89. 95 Stobaeus, 2.76. 13–15 Wachsmuth. 96 Cicero, On Ends, 3.22; with Plutarch, On Common Notions, 1071 B–C. 97 See the illuminating D.Phil. dissertation of Susanne Bobzien, ‘Determinism and free will in Stoic philosophy’, Oxford, 1992, revised version Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy, Oxford, 1999; overview provided in her article ‘Stoic Conceptions of Freedom and their Relation to Ethics’. 98 Alexander, On Fate, ch. 13, 182.8–20; cf. Nemesius, On the Nature of Man, ch. 35, both discussed by Bobzien. 99 By Ricardo Salles, who supplied me with the first reference and plans to discuss the matter further. See his ‘The Stoic account of the psychology of responsible actions and the question of determinism’, Ph.D. dissertation, London, 1997.

The concept of the will 27 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

112 113 114 115

116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132

Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4.44. Ibid., 1.12.34. Kahn, ‘Discovering the Will’. Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 10.133. Plato, Republic, 10, 617 E 3. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.251–93. Cicero, On Fate, 9.20. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Gods, 4.886–7; Gilbert, ‘The Concept of Will in Early Latin Philosophy’, pp. 19–20. Plotinus, 5.11.1 (1–22). The references are collected by John Rist, Augustine, Cambridge, 1996, p. 188. Plotinus, 3.8.8 (32–6). Plotinus, 3.7.11 (15–16). Pseudo-Iamblichus (Nicomachus of Geresa), Theologoumena Arithmeticae, p. 9, lines 5–6 de Falco (Teubner edn.). See the note in A.H. Armstrong’s translation of Plotinus (Loeb edn.), ad 5. 1. 1, and his discussion in the Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy, Cambridge, 1970, pp. 242–5; see also Naguib Baladi, ‘L’audace chez Plotin’, in Le Néoplatonisme, Colloque CNRS at Royaumont, Paris, 1971, pp. 89–97. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1.2.2ff.; 1.29.4. Augustine, City of God, 10.23, alluding to 5.1.1. Augustine, City of God, 5.11. Ibid., 14.6. For perversion of reason in Zeno and Chrysippus see Galen On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines, 4.2.12 and 24; 4.4.17; 4.4.20–1; 4.4.23; 5.5.14, pp. 240–2, 254–6, 318–20 de Lacy; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 7. 110; Themistius, In DA 107. 17–18 (= SVF 3. 412, 382); Calcidius, In Tim. ch. 165; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4. 11 (= SVF 3.229 and 229a; 1. 205). Augustine, Confessions, 7.3.5. Augustine, Against Julian, 5.5.20. Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, 31.53. Augustine, Confessions, 7.3.5. Ibid., 8.9. Cf. also Augustine, Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 9.14.25. Augustine, City of God, 14.13. Augustine, Confessions, 7.3.5. Evagrius, On Eight Bad Thoughts, 15 , col. 1217 A, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 79. Augustine, Confessions, 7.7.11. Augustine, On the Trinity, 11.2.2ff.; 11.2.5; 11.3.1. Ibid., 11.3.6. Ibid., 14.10.13. Ibid., 11.17. Augustine, Exposition of 84 Propositions in the Epistle to the Romans, 60–1; On the True Religion, 24.45; Sermons, 43. 4; On the Spirit and the Letter, 31.54; 34.60. Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, 54. Augustine, City of God, 14.6.

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133 Gauthier, ‘Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l’acte humaine’, 58, 79, endorsed by Madden, ‘The Authenticity of Early Definitions of Will (thelêsis)’. I am grateful to Martin Stone for drawing my attention to this literature. 134 Kent, Virtues of the Will, ch. 3. 135 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.1, 1094a1–3. 136 Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals, ch. 7. Oikeiôsis is explained in chapters 12 and 13. 137 Maximus, Letter to Marinus, cols. 12 C–13 A, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 91. 138 Kent, Virtues of the Will, ch. 3. 139 I am grateful for discussion with Malcolm Schofield, who has helped me to strengthen my case, and to B. Markesinis for letting me see his forthcoming edition of the text and for his valuable comments. 140 Thomas Pink, The Psychology of Freedom, Cambridge, 1996. 141 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 3.1, 1111a22–4. 142 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 5.8, 1135b17–19, as treated in my Necessity, Cause and Blame, pp. 275, 279. 143 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 3.1, 11I0b25–7; 5.8, 1135b20–2 with 1135a23–33. 144 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 7.3, 1147a33–4, with 7.10, 1152a15–16. 145 Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame, ch. 2, Duckworth, 1980. 146 Harry Frankfurt, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, 1970, pp. 5–20.

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Aristotle, the Stoics and the will A.W. Price

Introduction Philosophers have intended the concept of the will to distinguish action from mere bodily movement. The locus of responsibility then became the agent’s identification with his actions through acts of will. The will was further taken to be at work in forming intentions, these rather data than postulates; and so an ability to stick to one’s intentions could be described as strength of will, a tendency to lapse from them as weakness of will. Yet the primary task was to define and explain action. I take a classic definition of volition, and of will, from Locke’s Essay: Volition, ’tis plain, is an act of the mind knowingly exerting that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of the man, by employing it in, or withholding it from any particular action. And what is the will but the faculty to do this?1 Volitions are mental acts that stand in a peculiarly intimate relation to bodily movements. We could call them initiations of movement: once I will to move my right arm, then it does move – unless prevented (say by a paralysis or restraint that excludes any movement, or by a faulty rewiring that produces the wrong movement). As Gilbert Ryle put it, ‘I perform a volition which somehow puts my muscles into action.’2 Once I have willed, I may still fail to act, but it is too late for second thoughts. So far as the mind goes, will is final. Volitions relate to movements both intentionally and causally. We explain my raising my arm by a volition to raise my arm that causes my arm to rise. Volitions translate intentionality into actuality. Such theorizing went long out of fashion through the influence of Wittgenstein and Ryle. They invited us to look instead at what one

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might call the language-game of action: the way we associate the ascription of action with the giving of reasons, and the citing of beliefs and desires that explain the point of the action for the agent. For a time it was claimed that such explanation differs in kind from causal explanation. However, Donald Davidson has been influential in insisting that reasons only explain an action, in addition to rationalizing it, if the action indeed occurred because of the reasons, a ‘because’ that looks to be causal. If so, even this becomes a causal approach. Twenty years ago, Anthony Kenny3 could suppose volitions to be so defunct that the only way of rescuing the concept of the will was to conceive it, in the case of rational agents, as an ability to act on reasons. However, volitions have reappeared, freed of dualist connotations, in the ‘tryings’ of Brian O’Shaughnessy4 and Jennifer Hornsby.5 In Hornsby’s account, an action of trying to raise my arm is the action of raising my arm if it causes my arm to rise. But tryings are not essentially introspectible occurrences, and the line between trying and succeeding does not lie on any interface between mind and body. As so often, the philosophical battle is not won, but re-fought on firmer ground. Davidson likes to cite Aristotle, to whom, in many ways, he is strikingly faithful. By contrast, Terence Irwin6 has raised the question ‘Who Discovered the Will?’, and suggested Aristotle, albeit as understood by Aquinas. A more generally tempting candidate is the old Stoa. The issue seems to me not straightforward. Pursuing it carefully, even if (here) with negative result, may alert us to features of the will that we need to keep in mind if we are to consider Irwin’s question without confusion.

Aristotle Voluntary action An initial doubt must be this: how could Aristotle have had a concept of volition when he plausibly lacked one of intention? In its place, he appears to have two concepts: ‘choice’ (proairesis, literally taking in preference, Nicomachean Ethics, 3.2.1112a16–17), which is narrower, since it standardly entails prior deliberation (3.3.1113a9–12), and the ‘voluntary’ (hekousios), which is wider, since it applies to the behaviour of beasts and infants (3.2.1111b8–9) to whom we would deny acting on reasons.7 Plausibly they are not responsible for what they do, and not proper subjects of praise and blame. Yet an adult man who acts acratically is responsible for what he does, though he does not choose

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it (7.10.1152a15–17). If we say that he acts intentionally, as infants and beasts do not, we may seem to be making a necessary distinction that Aristotle lacks. In fact, Aristotle varies between a broad concept of action that allows infants and beasts to act, and a narrow concept that makes all action chosen. For the broad concept: Presumably things done because of anger or appetite are not rightly called involuntary. For, in the first place, none of the other animals will act voluntarily, nor will children; and, secondly, is it meant that we do not do voluntarily any of the acts due to appetite or anger? (3.1.1111 a24–8) And for the narrow concept: It is clear that beasts possess perception but do not partake of action … Of action the origin is choice. (6.2.1139a19–20, 31; cf. 6.5.1140b6–7) With reference to the narrow concept of action, one may argue, with Irwin, that Aristotle has the concept of a will that displays itself in choices. It may be that a third, intermediate, notion is expressed in the Eudemian Ethics: ‘A man is an origin of certain actions, and he alone of animals; for of nothing else should we say that it acted ’ (2.6.1222b19–20); ‘We do not say that a child acts, nor a beast, but he who already acts through calculation’ (2.8.1224a28–9). If Aristotle means here that not all actions are rational, but all agents are, in that they can act rationally (and do so at times), this would be a notion of action that coincides with a plausible concept of responsibility. Extending the sphere of responsibility to cover trained animals and children would still leave its sphere narrower than that of the voluntary. In any case, that is not the line that Aristotle draws. Praise and blame view action as virtuous or vicious, and he denies virtues and vices to wild animals on the ground that they lack choice and calculation (Nicomachean Ethics, 7.6.1149b31–5), and not that they have missed out on a circus training. His thought may be that adult action on irrational desire displays a failure to live rationally of a kind that cannot be assigned to infants and beasts for whom it is natural to lack the capacity. We can then make sense of a concession that he makes to human weakness that is common-sensical but theoretically problematic: he allows duress as an excuse so long as no man could have

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resisted it (3.1.1110a23–26). Such action might seem a paradigm of action for which the agent has compelling reason: why should the very power of the reason make the action involuntary? But the thought may be that there can be no failure to choose otherwise when no one would be capable of it; then the motive that operates is humanly not so much overriding as overwhelming, and acts not through a choice that the agent makes, but a desire that is imposed upon him. If the action is to count as involuntary, Aristotle needs to add, as he does more oddly for action through ignorance (1111a19–21), that it be regretted: it must be contrary to one’s best judgement, even if that is a judgement of which no one would have been capable at the time. Actions and reasons Even if Aristotle fails to focus upon the concept of intention, Aristotelian man acts on reasons, as a beast does not, even when he is not acting on choice. And this degree of rationality may be a further ground of his responsibility. Aristotle makes the striking claim that both parts of the soul that partake of reasoning, whether their role is to prescribe or to obey (and so passion and desire as well as reason) are peculiar to the human soul (Eudemian Ethics, 2.1.1219b37–8). We share a capacity for appetite and anger with the beasts; but our appetite and anger are not theirs, for they are transformed, as our perceptions are, by our possession of language and concepts. (Compare one’s incidental perception of the ‘son of Diares’, De anima, 2.6.418a21: this is still a perception, and independent of inference, though it is surely open only to a language-user.) Our anger is distinctively principled and priggish, while even our appetite is more than animal. Aristotle distinguishes acrasia in anger and in appetite as follows: Reasoning or appearance informs us that we have been insulted or slighted, and anger, reasoning as it were that anything like this must be fought against, boils up straightway; while appetite, if reasoning or perception merely says that an object is pleasant, springs to the enjoyment of it. (Nicomachean Ethics, 7.6.1149a32–b1) Such anger does not ensue obediently upon a principle (Anything like this must be fought against’) that happens to be exigent; but neither is the reasoning rationalization, if that would imply that it is an idle accompaniment to an emotion already defined. Rather, such irrational thinking is a form that human anger has a tendency to take.

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Human appetite is less opinionated, but also coloured by concepts. While animal appetite pursues present pleasures, human appetite pursues immediate pleasure (7.3.1146b22–3, 8.3.1156a32–3); it inclines us not just to greed, but to sensuality.8 Moreover, a well-ordered appetite not only falls in with reason, but takes on its goals: The appetite of the temperate man must harmonize with reason; for the target (skopos) of both is the fine. (Nicomachean Ethics, 3.12.1119b17–18) Strikingly here, the fine becomes the criterion of an educated appetite not merely in inhibiting but in inspiring it. The temperate man is not only unable to savour what is not fine (as my desire for a piece of Roquefort may evaporate when I see its price), but finds fineness to his taste. One may compare the heroic aesthete of 9.8, an Achilles as reconceived by Walter Pater, who ‘would rather choose intense pleasure for a short time than mild pleasure for a long one, and to live finely for a year than mediocrely for many years’ (1169a22–4). No doubt he carries fine sentiments in his head (Aristotle would say, heart); we may also suppose that he finds in heroism a physical abandon. Immediate pleasure remains appetite’s primary goal, and pleasure somehow rooted in the body; but its inspiration may come from above, so that it incarnates a moral value. Aristotle denies beliefs to the beasts on the ground that they are not capable of being persuaded: Every belief involves conviction, which involves being persuaded, which involves reason; but some beasts have imagination, but not reason. (De anima, 3.3.428a20–24) (Which must mean that some beasts have imagination, while none has reason.) The same argument does not apply to the human irrational soul, whose task is precisely to be persuaded by reason, and to obey it (Nicomachean Ethics, 1.13.1102b13–1103al). In a sense, even this can possess reason (al–3); at worst, it has the intelligence to resist it (1102b16–18). Hence Aristotle can explain all human action, chosen and unchosen, rational and irrational, by reference to beliefs and desires. Within the practical syllogism, these are given direction by premises of the good, and of the possible (De motu animalium, 7.701b24–5), the one speaking to desire, the other transmitting it from ends to ways and means. De anima offers a general schema (3.11.434a18–19):

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Even acratic action is to be explained by such patterns of reasoning: The acratic man, and the bad man, if he is clever, will reach as a result of his calculation what he sets before himself. (Nicomachean Ethics, 6.9.1142b18–19) Distinctive of rational desire sufficient to motivate action is that it originates from a conception of the good life that incorporates all the agent’s projects.9 Yet all human action is to be explained by reasons, good or bad. All this already fits a passage in the Metaphysics: Whichever of two things the animal desires decisively (kuri™s), it will do, when it is in the circumstances appropriate to the potentiality in question and meets the passive object. Therefore everything which has a rational potentiality, whenever it desires that for which it has a potentiality and in the circumstances in which it has it, must do this. (9.5.1048a11–15) Thus far I have said nothing about any initiation of action by any mental act such as an act of will. What I have drawn on has been that aspect of Aristotle that remains congenial to Davidson. Moreover, there are three points that one might make in favour of stopping here, and against adducing some final occurrent desire. First, Aristotle can say that, in practical reasoning, the conclusion is the action (De motu animalium, 7.701a19–23); so perhaps we need no intermediary event between the grasping and linking of the premises, and the performing of the action. Second, as Richard Loening already noticed,10 the Nicomachean Ethics, perhaps in order to avoid the confusion of the Eudemian discussion, first defines the involuntary (3.1.1109b35– 1110al) as involving compulsion or ignorance, and then argues that the voluntary is its contradictory (1111 a22–4); by adopting the same strategy, J. L. Austin11 hoped precisely to escape the assumption that all voluntary acts share a single positive defining feature. Third, Aristotle also counts choices as voluntary (3.2.1111b7, 1112a14; cf. Magna moralia, 1.11.1187b19–20). Indeed, he makes the point that praise and blame, which accompany the ascription of responsibility, look rather to choice than to actions, for the reason that actions, but

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not choices, can be compelled (Eudemian Ethics, 2.11.1228a11–15). Yet he clearly has no sense that this must rest choices on choices ad infinitum. His thought may be simply that it is within one’s power to make a choice, or not to make it (cf., of action, Nicomachean Ethics 3.5.1113b7–8).12 The initiation of action A more precise statement, however, is that the conclusion becomes the action (De motu animalium, 7.701a12–13). Voluntary action must have an origin (archü) in the agent himself (Nicomachean Ethics, 3.1.1111a23) – a statement vague as yet, but already positive. That the origin is a desire is explicit in the De motu animalium: The last cause of movement is desire, and this come to be either through perception or through imagination and thought. (7.701a34–6) It is typical of Aristotle’s hylomorphism that he provides a psychophysical explanation of bodily movements: There are three things, one that which produces movement, second that whereby it does so, and third again that which is moved, and that which produces movement is twofold, that which is unmoved and that which produces movement and is moved. That which is unmoved is the practical good, and that which produces movement and is moved is the faculty of desire (for that which is moved is moved in so far as it desires, and desire as actual is a form of movement), while that which is moved is the animal; and the instrument by which desire produces movement is then something bodily. Hence it must be investigated among the functions common to body and soul. (De anima, 3.10.433b13–21) What seems crucial for Aristotle’s general view that men are selfmovers is that the external impetus comes from a final, and not an efficient, cause.13 Circumstances affect agents by providing targets and not tugs. Aristotle proceeds, here (b21–7) as more fully in the De motu animalium (8–10), to liken the mechanism by which movement is produced to the ball-and-socket joint, in which one part remains stationary while the other is moved. Just as the boiling of the blood round the heart stands to a desire for revenge as matter to form (De

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anima 1.1.403a25–b2), so some process feeding into a mechanism of this kind must stand as matter to form to an occurrent desire to move a limb (cf. ‘Desire as actual is a form of movement’, 3.10.433b18). This would seem to be the ‘origin’ of action unspecified in the Nicomachean Ethics (3.1.1111 a23). In two ways, this proposal is closer to tryings than to empiricist volitions: the initiating act is not a purely mental event; and, continuing through the action, it does not cease where that begins. Note here a remark in the Nicomachean Ethics: ‘We are masters of our actions from their origin to their termination, if we know the particulars’ (3.5.1114b31–2). As Harry Frankfurt has plausibly urged,14 a causal account of action cannot be satisfactory if it allows the agent to be ‘out of touch’ with the bodily movement as it occurs, so that it does not unfold ‘under his guidance’. Aristotle can relate occurrent desire to movement as its cause without incurring that objection, since the desire continues throughout the movement. So might we say that, just as explicit theorists of the will take it to be displayed in forming intentions but also in volitions, so Aristotle has a conception of a faculty of desire that is displayed in wishes and appetites of all kinds, but also in occurrent desires to act, productive of movements, that are identical to tryings? I think the question deserves a pause. However, presently setting aside choices as a possible special case until my next section, I would doubt whether he is conceiving these desires as acts of will, for two reasons. First, he recognizes no occurrence of desire that is by its own intrinsic nature an initiation of action. All desires are liable to come into conflict: thus sometimes rational desire ‘defeats and moves’ other desire, and at other times is defeated and moved by it, like one ball hitting another, when acrasia occurs (De anima, 3.11.323a12–14). If a desire issues in action, that is not in virtue of its own nature, but because it happens not to lose out to another desire in a play of forces. All desires may exert a pull, and some will prevail, but none is an exercise of that ‘dominion’ of which Locke speaks. Second (a point wrongly denied by Irwin 1992: 462), Aristotle allows that voluntariness comes in degrees: Men are thought especially to have done themselves, and voluntarily, those things done rationally. (Nicomachean Ethics, 9.8.1169a1) However, I take everything willed to be equally willed: acts of will as the source of responsibility should make responsibility all or nothing.15

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Choices and volitions This last point actually tells in favour of Irwin’s own proposal that Aristotle’s conception of choice is a conception of acts of will. For it is when an action is chosen that it can be ascribed fully and unqualifiedly to the man who does it: Choice is either desiderative reason or deliberative desire; and such an origin is a man. (Nicomachean Ethics, 6.2.1139b4–5) This moral conception of a self as a persona realized especially in choices may be crucial for an otherwise mystifying claim that virtuous friends love one another at once for their character and ‘for themselves’.16 It also explains how wicked men who recoil from their own choices cannot escape hating themselves (9.4.1166b6–25). Aristotle centrally conceives choices as occurrences that result from the drawing of a practical conclusion. Thus he writes, ‘Choice comes out of deliberative opinion’ (Eudemian Ethics, 2.10.1226b9; cf. Rhetoric, 1.11.1370a19–20).17 Moreover, while intimately linking choice and judgement, he distinguishes them conceptually in ways wholly apt to acts of will. Thus he writes: Opinion is distinguished by its falsity or truth, not by its goodness or badness, while choice is distinguished rather by these…Choice is praised for being related to the right object rather than for being rightly related to it, opinion for being truly related to its object. (Nicomachean Ethics, 3.2.1111b33–4, 1112a5–7) Yet these points would seem to distinguish opinion from desire in general. So it is more precisely pertinent of Aristotle to recognize that the objects of choices are simply acts: We choose to get or avoid something good or bad, but we have opinions about what a thing is or whom it is good for or how it is good for him; we can hardly be said to opine to get or avoid anything. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1112a3–5) Aristotle’s choosing shares this feature of willing: what one wills is to do something. It is not that there is a schematic willing that A do X, of which willing to do a thing oneself is an instantiation. Willing and choosing (in Aristotle’s sense) demand a special kind of intending

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whose object is simply an act. Compare how, when I freely express my feelings, I am not choosing that it be my feelings that I express, nor that it be I who expresses them. Similarly, the kind of choosing that is integral to actions on choice is choice between acts, not between agents.18 A further feature of choices is one responsible for Aristotle’s embarrassment in his treatment of acrasia, and his conclusion (as most though not all interpreters agree) that hard acrasia, intentional action consciously contrary to current practical judgement, is impossible. In preparing his diagnosis of acrasia, Aristotle relates practical syllogism to practice as follows: The one opinion is universal, while the other concerns particulars, of which perception is determinant. Whenever a single opinion results from them, the conclusion must in the one case [viz. theoretical reasoning] be asserted by the soul, and in that of practical reasoning be immediately enacted; e.g., if everything sweet should be tasted, and this is sweet (which is one of the particular premisses), the man who is able and not prevented must at the same time [sc. as he asserts the conclusion] also enact this. (Nicomachean Ethics, 7.3.1147a25–31) He allows here for the possibility of a ‘prevention’ that causes a slip between the cup of choice and the lip of action. But he probably here has in mind nothing less than the paralysis (cf. 1.12.1102b18–20), or physical compulsion (cf. 3.1.1110a1–4), that rule out action altogether. As it does not hold of any irrational desire, it is in the nature of choice to be decisive. Such is the case for supposing that Aristotelian choices are conceived (without the later terminology) as acts of will, and thus that, as regards ‘actions’ in his narrow sense, Aristotle is a theorist of the will, indeed the first such theorist. However, I still incline to be resistant. When Aristotle advances into his account of what he will later distinguish as an acrasia of weakness (‘Some men after deliberating fail, owing to their emotion, to stand by the conclusions of their deliberation’, 7.7.1150b19–21), he allows that, while a choice cannot be overridden, it may be subverted by a temporary blindness that robs the agent of the situational awareness that he needs if he is at once to keep the universal principle in play and the particular conclusion in mind (7.3.1147a24–b17). And he never separates off any subclass of choices that are immune to such an eclipse in virtue of their proximity to action. I remarked in the introduction to this chapter that volitions are

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initiations of action: paralysis may prevent any movement, but it is at least too late for second thoughts. Aristotle never envisages that degree of intimacy between choice and action; we find in none of his choices that sui generis feature of acts of will. How his assumption that standing choices must prevail is to be explained is a question that requires and demands speculation.19 Aristotle seems to envisage that practical reason reaches a conception of the human goal, which he calls eudaimonia, through a reflective mingling of all the motivations that come with our composite make-up and social acculturation. Forming a conception of one’s end is not mechanical, and demands the exercise of intelligence (6.11.1143a35b5); yet non-rational desires are not just a datum but an input.20 Inasmuch as we are creatures of desire, our goal is characterizable as a way of life that is ‘such that one who obtains it will have his desire fulfilled’ (Eudemian Ethics, 1.5.1215b17–18). An all-in practical judgement, to the effect that I must now do this, comes of applying the total goal to the context of action. So long as the judgement is sincerely meant, then, since it is practical, the desires that influence it must exert equal influence upon action (if nothing prevents); since it is all-in, taking all desires into account, what is decisive for judgement must be decisive for action (if any). Provided that the all-in view is kept to bear upon the context of action, judgement must prevail. What then goes wrong in acrasia? Buridan remains illuminating: The affections of the sensitive appetite involve the motion of the blood, or of other humours or spirits, and if this motion is great it disturbs sense and prevents it from duly reporting to the intellect. (Buridan, Quaestiones in decem libros ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum, 7.7) Because perception and irrational desire share the same stratum of the soul (that lying between reason above, and vegetable life below), irrational desire can defeat rational desire through sabotaging perception. All that is speculative. It may be that a different explanation of how choice is liable to acrasia, but not to hard acrasia, would bring it closer to volition; I leave the exploration of that to others. Let me finally mention one assumption of Aristotle’s that must tell against his having a conception of the will for anyone who supplements what I initially took from Locke by a voluntarist understanding that allows acts of will the licence to deviate from judgement. Aristotle is explicit in distinguishing thought and desire, much as we distinguish cognition

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and conation. While he allows a kind of thinking to be practical, this derives from desire: The object of desire produces movement, and, because of this, thought produces movement, because desire is its startingpoint…Thus there is one thing which produces movement, the faculty of desire. (De anima, 3.10.433a18–21) However, all desire, including choice, is closely tied to some matching evaluation of its object. Appetite may fail to make comparisons, and pursue some particular pleasure without assessing it as the greatest; but, faced with two equal pleasures, it lacks the freedom just to opt. Choice may adopt one means out of several, but this must be out of preference, say because it is the easiest or the finest (Nicomachean Ethics, 3.3.1112b16–17). What then of Buridan’s ass? Aristotle is explicit: in the De caelo, he illustrates a point about celestial motion by citing ‘the man who, though exceedingly hungry and thirsty, and both equally, yet being equidistant from food and drink, is therefore bound to stay where he is’, also comparing ‘the hair which, it is said, however great the tension, will not break under it, if it be evenly distributed’ (2.13.295b30–34). He allows men no freedom to escape ‘the necessity of the similarity’ (b30). If the will must be able to opt gratuitously, Aristotle’s man has no will.

The Stoics If Aristotle were still to count as discovering the will, this would have to be not through possessing a concept of the will or of volitions, but through inventing a concept of choice that shares certain features. If the early Stoics did so, it was through elaborating an aetiology of action, still evident enough in our later sources, which gives a salient role to impulses (hormai) that are at least the best Greek equivalents of Locke’s volitions. In fact, I shall argue that they fall short of acts of will for the same reasons as Aristotle’s choices, being neither close enough to action, nor distant enough from judgement. But here at last we face an identification that is plausible and tempting.21 Action and impulse The Stoics detected a logical structure defined by fine conceptual distinctions within the psycho-physical process whose upshot is

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distinctively human action. First there is an impression (phantasia), which is at once a physical alteration of the mind’s matter (which they identified with a fiery pneuma), and the presentation of an incorporeal proposition (an assertoric ‘sayable’ or lekton). Second comes an assent (sunkatathesis) to the proposition presented. Third, given that the proposition is practical, the assent yields an impulse (hormü), or ‘motion of thought to something or away from something’.22 This accords with the assent, and may be conceived as a self-addressed command:23 if the assent was to the proposition that it is appropriate to Ø, the command to oneself is to Ø, and the impulse is towards the predicatively identified attribute Ø-ing (katügorü ma, Cicero, SVF, 3.91, 3.398).24 Finally, if fate does not prevent it (Nemesius, SVF 2.290.34–5), there ensues the action of Øing. Some of these elements are causally distinct. Thus a presentation cannot generate an impulse except through an act of assent (Plutarch, LS 53S) of which it is a, though not the, cause: in Stoic jargon, it is its ‘proximate’ but not its ‘principal’ cause, occasioning it like a blow that sets a cylinder rolling but only according to its own nature (Cicero, LS 62C8). Other elements coincide: thus an impulse can be identified with an assent (Stobaeus, LS 33I1).25 This is an account of all adult human action. We saw that Aristotle has various conceptions of action, of which the narrowest connects it with choices that arise from deliberation about how to apply some conception of how best to live (or are rationalizable by such deliberation), and the widest allows action to be acratic, and even animal or infantile. Neither notion is really satisfactory. Taken narrowly, actions are only a proper subset of things done for which the agent is responsible. Taken widely, actions may arise spontaneously from aspects of the agent from which he consciously keeps his distance. Just as I may observe my lower leg moving by an involuntary reflex with an impression not of doing something but of having something happen to me, should I not be able passively to observe it moving according to a mental impulse as I kick someone in a moment of malice? On Aristotle’s view, any part of the soul can cause motion (Nicomachean Ethics, 7.3.1147a35).26 If so, it should be possible for my true self, which he identifies with my better and rational self (cf. 9.8.1168b25–1169a4), to stand back and look on as desire effects action by the causal sequence already described. The many are led by physical pleasures (7.7.1150a25–7, 7.9.1151b11–12). Moreover, appetite leads by force, not persuasion (Eudemian Ethics, 2.8.1224a 38–b2); though the man remains responsible, since the appetite is his, his reason may be said to act (or be acted upon?) by compulsion (b28).

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It becomes obscure, indeed, how a rational agent can experience an acratic or impulsive action as an action of his own. We saw how the human irrational soul, colonized by concepts, becomes a field of reason; but it is not clear that the passionate agent acts on reasons. Within the mental repertory that Aristotle accommodates, what but choice can truly identify an agent with a movement so as to make it really an action?27 The Stoic conception at once avoids that problem, and relates all action to impulses that, like acts of will, are fully assignable to a unitary agent. Instead of segregating motivations within the soul, and letting action be generated by any one of them (once it has come to bear upon the here and now), so long as nothing elsewhere countervails, the Stoics assign all impulses to a single mental agency, that of the hügemonikon or ‘commanding faculty’. Indeed, they identify ensuing action either with the extension of the hügemonikon into the limb that moves, or simply with the hügemonikon itself (Seneca, LS 53L). Thus a single faculty supports a plurality of functions: just as an apple possesses in the same body sweetness and fragrance, so too the commanding faculty combines in the same body impression, assent, impulse and reason (lamblichus, LS 53K). Unity is retrieved, and with it a model of agency that applies at once aptly and widely to human behaviour. Thus Stoic impulses at last unequivocally connect human agents to all human action. One is indeed tempted to ask: is this a conception that does justice to action in importing what are functionally acts of will (even if the will is not recognized as a distinct faculty)? But, before we offer an answer, we need to pay attention to misdirections of impulse that the Stoics locate as malfunctions of reason. Irrationality in action Irrationality, in the sense not of a lack but of a failure of rationality, is a kind of paradox (though one that, in various forms, pervades the exercise of our cognitive faculties): it is a perversion of reason, parasitic upon reason’s success elsewhere in grasping and applying concepts. In Aristotle, it comes of the distortions that arise from the incarnation of intelligence (nous). Human anger and appetite are informed from above by concepts that they tend to misapply. An imprudent appetite takes what is immediately pleasant to be unqualifiedly pleasant and good (De anima, 3.10.433b8–10). An undiscriminating anger declares that it must fight against any slight, real or imagined (Nicomachean Ethics, 7.6.1149a32–4). Such misjudgements are symptoms of physical imbal-

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ance, either in the species or in the individual. Anger is at once ‘a desire for retaliation or something of the sort’, which interests the dialectician as its form, and ‘the boiling of the blood and hot stuff round the heart’, which interests the student of nature as its matter (De anima, 1. 1.403a29–b2). As blood boils in anger, it cools in fear (Rhetoric, 2.13.1389b32). An excess of water in the blood predisposes an animal to fear, just as the presence of thick and abundant fibres predisposes it to bursts of anger (Parts of Animals, 2.4.650b27ff). Another factor is the size of the heart: a large heart, out of proportion to an animal’s heat, contains colder blood, so that ‘the bodily affection which results from terror already pre-exists’ (Parts of Animals, 3.4.667a15–19). Affections not in a mean are at once disorders of the body and errors of the soul. The Stoic view of the affections developed by Zeno and Chrysippus is similarly dual-aspect, but gives a role to judgement and impulse which makes agents unequivocally responsible for how they feel, and how they act on their feelings. Pneuma that lacks sufficient tension (tonos) cannot sustain correct judging and acting (Stobaeus, SVF 3.68.30–31). Instead, it breeds passions that are excessive impulses either identical, or closely related, to false judgements. The four genera of affection are appetite and fear (the primary affections), pleasure and distress (the secondary ones). The primary affections are directed at things external: appetite is an orexis (a term that conveys at once physical stretching and mental desire towards something), while fear is an ekklisis (which conveys at once physical shrinking and mental aversion from something). The secondary affections are provoked by things external but directed at things internal: pleasure is a swelling, or a thought demanding a swelling, at the presence of some supposed good; distress is a contraction, or a thought demanding a contraction, at the presence of some supposed evil. The excessive impulse is variably directed inside or outside: within the primary affections, the internal motion of the pneuma is also an impulse aiming outside; within the secondary affections, the impulse is towards the internal motion. Only notionally distinct from the excessive impulse is a false judgement about an external object, preferred or rejected but really indifferent, either – if the affection is primary – that it is to be intensely pursued or shunned (Cicero, SVF 3.104.31–5), or else – if the affection is secondary – that it is the right sort of thing about which to have a contraction or swelling of the soul (Cicero, SVF 3.95.30–33). Passionate agents have an expanding responsibility: as subjects of acts of assent, they identify with judgements that in turn identify them with external movements constituting actions, or internal movements

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consisting of swellings or contractions. If we think of impulses as acts of will, then the will is taken to be active not only when a man acts intentionally, but also when he gives way to his feelings. Here is an account that allows us to mean – what we often say – ‘You ought not to have felt that’ with the very same connotations as when we say, ‘You ought not to have done that’. It is also meant to make practical a claim that one ought never to feel anything.28 This Stoic theory of (among other things) the emotions has recently won sympathetic attention that abstracts from its evident schematism and artificiality, but respects its recognition of the intentionality of emotion, and welcomes the corollary that emotions are to be corrected by rational persuasion. As neither ground, at least so stated, distinguishes Chrysippus from Aristotle (cf. Rhetoric, 2, and, for example, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.13.1102b30–1103a1), a revaluation of the Stoics for these reasons runs the danger, not always escaped, of sanitizing them and caricaturing Aristotle. A juster assessment, which faces up to the oddity of making emotion something like an exercise of the will, can also appreciate the ingenuity that Chrysippus brought to reconciling his philosophical view with the commonsense conception – and the common experience – of emotions as liable to carry one away. How was the Stoic moralist to do justice to the phenomenology without sacrificing the responsibility? The thesis that the Stoics advanced is that affections are ‘perversions of reason and mistaken judgements of reason’ (Themistius, SVF, 3.93.17–18). Common ways of talking that they wished to take on include the following: impulse is ‘carried away and disobedient to reason’ (Clemens, SVF, 3.92.6); like a runaway horse, affection ‘throws off the reins and departs and disobeys the command’ (Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, 244.6–7), as when a rider is carried away by a disobedient horse (Arius, SVF 3.94.29 = LS 65A6); affections become ‘out of control’ (literally, akrateis or ‘acratic’), ‘as if the men had no power over themselves but were carried away’ (Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, 256.7–8), like runners who continue moving even against their will (cf., of love, 276.7–25; of anger, 278.32–280.6). Galen complains that such language only permits the picture of psychic division and faction that we find in Plato and Aristotle. Chrysippus may have hoped that, if he could accommodate such phrases, no facts could refute him. Two lines of thought suggest themselves in reply to two questions. How can an agent enter into an affection of whose irrationality he is aware? Perhaps in the sense that it disregards what he is conscious he would be commanding if he were still rational. How can he continue in an affec-

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tion of whose irrationality he has become aware? Perhaps further because he is trapped in a sequence, of his own initiation, that he cannot escape until it has worked itself out. In either case, we may detect at work the physical aspect of the psychological process. A slack tonos may preclude assent to certain truths of which the agent still receives presentations. He half-believes that he is assenting to the wrong things, because he is half-aware of what he would be assenting to in a happier state. In a manner, he is in two minds, but through imagining a better way of thinking, and not through adopting two ways of thinking at once. As Galen quotes from Chrysippus, ‘By this account a person would not give up hope that with the passage of time, when the inflammation of the affection has slackened, reason will make its way in and find room, so to speak, and expose the irrationality of the affection’ (On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, 286.18–21). It remains a plausible objection that a regretful awareness of what one could and should be thinking falls far short of conflict so acute that the agent feels at war with himself. As Aristotle put it, the bad man’s soul is in a state of faction, one element pleased while another is pained, one pulling one way, another another, as if they were tearing him apart (Nicomachean Ethics, 8.4.1166b19–22). To cover this case, the Stoics deployed two concepts of their own invention, ‘fluttering’ (ptoia) and ‘collision’ (proskopü). Of fluttering, Plutarch offers an implicit gloss: he writes of ‘a turning of the single reason in both directions, which we do not notice owing to the sharpness and speed of the change’ (SVF 3.111.27–38 = LS 65G). In collision, one idea actually provokes its opposite (Cicero, SVF 3.103.29–33, 3.424): thus a man may not only alternate between misogyny and philogyny (cf. Cicero, SVF 3.103.39–104.3), but be prompted to each by the other. The two concepts work well in conjunction: swinging rapidly between two extremes, each pulling him from the other one moment and pushing him back towards it the next, a man may well feel as if he is being torn apart by two simultaneous forces. Impulses and volitions Aristotle appeared to come closest to volitions in his concept of choices (prohaireseis). These are ascribable to the agent as a whole, and cannot be viewed as anything but exercises of agency; they are not psychic forces from which he could intelligibly detach himself. As is explicit in the treatment of self-love and self-hatred (Nicomachean Ethics, 9.4), accepting or regretting one’s own choices is inescapably an

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attitude towards oneself. Stoic impulses are more nearly identical to volitions in two respects. First, as we have seen, they operate more widely, so as to cover the entire field of human action. Second, they are not tied to one mode of practical thinking, viz. deliberation. Even in my sketch, the Stoic aetiology of action is complex and minute; yet it leaves open what kind of thinking may lie behind a judgement that an external action, or internal movement, is appropriate. So it may be disappointing that the two grounds I gave above against taking Aristotelian choices to be volitions hold here also. The first was that while, standardly, barring prevention or paralysis, choices are enacted, they may also be subverted by passion. In cases of conflict, a choice that survives (when the agent is self-controlled) is a choice that prevails; but Aristotle has no conception of choices of a special kind that exempts them from that danger. (Of course, there is the general class: choices of a good, or self-controlled, man.) The second ground was more hypothetical: if volitions must be capable of autonomy from reason (a voluntarism that points to a separate faculty of the will), then Aristotle’s choices are not volitions, for they lack that autonomy. For all the greater proximity of impulses to volitions, the same grounds of distinction are still apparent when we reflect upon the Stoics. As we have seen, impulses are of a kind to be cancelled by counter-impulses (as most vividly through ptoia and proskopü ). If the impulses of the virtuous are not at risk, this is not because they differ in kind. And impulses cannot but agree with rational judgements (as is later explicit in Epictetus, Discourses, 1.18.2). Thus volitions appear to be absent from Greek philosophy, even where it looked most promising to find them. I attempt to establish the fact, without offering an explanation; it is not my ambition here to suggest a moral.

Appendix on weakness of will I remarked at the beginning of this chapter that, once one takes the will to be active in intentions as well as in volitions, one can make literal sense of weakness of will as a failure to stick to one’s intentions. Can Aristotle and the Stoics do justice to this phenomenon in their own ways? To a degree, Aristotle does so indisputably when he distinguishes weakness as one species of acrasia: ‘Some men after deliberating fail, owing to their emotion, to stand by the conclusions of their deliberation’ (Nicomachean Ethics, 7.8.1150b19–21). And yet it might be objected that he attributes the failure not to a lack of strength of will, but to a cognitive deficiency. I have said that he does not accommodate

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hard acrasia, and so cannot admit that in such cases the only failure may be to stand firm in action. However, one must remember that he counts acrasia as a defect of the character, and not of the understanding. It is blameworthy (7.4.1148a2–3), and so must be voluntary (cf. 3.1.1109b 31), most plausibly because acratic action is performed in, but not because of, ignorance (a distinction drawn at 1110b24–7). The ignorance fails to excuse since it is not the cause of the action; for the cause of the action is also the cause of the ignorance, namely the disorderly passion or appetite. Though much will remain debatable, an adequate understanding must be able to reconcile the talk of cognitive loss in the Nicomachean Ethics (7.3) with the language of mental conflict. A passage in the Ethics, similar to one in the De anima quoted earlier (3.11.434a12–14), has reasoning and desire, being separate, ‘knocking out’ one another, with the victory going to the reasoning of the encratic and the desire of the acratic (Eudemian Ethics, 2.8.1224b23–4). In fact there is no need to impute any inconsistency: the struggle is relocated, as the agent strives to maintain his sensitivity to the situation in opposition to a force that threatens to cloud it. (Compare a tired sentry who tries and fails to keep his eyes open.) Careless inadvertence is itself a deficiency of character if it is characteristic (Nicomachean Ethics, 3.5.1114a3–4). Acrasia is different, since it essentially involves a conflict of motivations. In Aristotle’s view, as I interpreted it, appetite or anger can only win the day by subversion or sabotage; this exploits a kind of weakness, an incapacity in the face of temptation not simply to do the rational thing, but to remain rational (cf. 2.4.1105a28–33). It is true that, while both failures are voluntary (in Aristotle’s terms), neither is intentional (in ours). Yet the conception of eudaimonia from which the agent is lapsing is an active ideal at once of what to do, and of how to be as he acts; he is doubly failing to stick to his intentions. An unwillingness to do justice to weakness of will, in its familiar connotations, is not one that one would have expected of Aristotle. (Whence room for puzzlement about what motivates his exclusion of hard acrasia.) Of the early Stoics, one has different expectations. Their reliance upon intellectual therapy – they far outdid the Peripatetics in philosophical salesmanship – may suggest a blindness to the need for strength of will as an ally of sound opinions. They seem open to a nice complaint, cited by Aristotle in a survey of things said, that the acratic are incurable, since it is not to the point to change their minds, for these are already in order; he quotes the proverb, ‘When water chokes, what is to wash it down?’ (7.2.1146a3 1 -b2). However, a fairer view is not that the Stoics disregard strength of will, but that they view it as an aspect of soundness of judgement.

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This emerges through their distinction between primary and secondary vices. Folly is classified among the ‘primary’ vices, consisting of a lack of knowledge or of expertise, while weakness of will counts as a ‘secondary’ one (Stobaeus, SVF 3.23.32–5; Diogenes Laertius, SVF 3.65.17–19): the weak man lacks the strength of soul, at once mental and physical, that consists of a tension (tonos) that is sufficient for correct judging and acting (Stobaeus, SVF 3.68.30–1). Any affection is a symptom of a sickness (nosü ma), conceived as a misdevelopment of practical belief: this is ‘a belief of desire strengthened and hardened into a tenor according to which they take things which are not choiceworthy to be very choiceworthy’ (Stobaeus, SVF 3.102.37–9, cf. Cicero, SVF 104.31–3). Weakness (astheneia) makes a sickness also an ailment (arrostü ma, Stobaeus, SVF 3.103.1–2 = LS 65S3; Diogenes Laertius, SVF 3.103.5–6; cf. Cicero, SVF 3.104.9). Ailment is associated with inferiority (Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, 264.30–266.5, 272.18–22), and so we can appeal to a remark about ‘inferior men’: ‘Chrysippus says that their soul is analogous to a body which is apt to fall into fever or diarrhoea or something else of that kind from a small and chance cause’ (ibid., 294.33–6 = LS 65R1). A tenor (hexis) differs conceptually from a ‘character’ (diathesis) in permitting variations of degree; a faulty tenor is the effect of a tonos not tuned to the right pitch. Thus weakness is a failure of tonos that underlies false valuations. Correspondingly, strength of will (enkrateia) is conceived as constancy over time: it is ‘an unconquerable character in respect of what appears according to right reason’ (Sextus, SVF 3.67.20–21; cf. Clemens, SVF, 3.67.45–68. 1), or ‘a tenor invincible by pleasures’ (Andronicus, SVF 3.66.40). Apparently the distinction between ‘tenor’ and ‘character’ was not always respected. An intelligible view would be that strength of will is a character sufficient for maintaining a sound judgement, while weakness is a tenor that produces more or less instability of purpose. This instability is vividly evidenced in ‘fluttering’ and ‘collision’. As purely judgemental failings, these would hardly be intelligible; we must rather suppose that they are symptoms of a physiological imbalance veering between extremes. Plutarch reports that fluttering was likened to the sudden assaults of children who are violent out of weakness (SVF 3.111.27–38 = LS 65G). Cicero traces collision to the mutual conflict of corrupt beliefs: when a ‘changing and turbulent tossing of beliefs’ becomes established, and settled as it were in our veins and marrow, there arise sicknesses together with their opposites (SVF 3.103.29–33). Thus weakness is a distinctive deficiency displayed not merely in unsound views, but in inconstancy of judgement and incon-

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sistency of behaviour. In Aristotle, enkrateia is a half-virtue just as acrasia is a half-vice (Nicomachean Ethics, 7.10.1152a17), transcended by the wholly good who have no passions that they have to resist. In the Stoics, it is a mark of any virtuous man, but it has a special function, to ensure moral stability. Strength of will becomes a central aspect of virtue of character. In both the Aristotelian and Stoic ideals, the virtuous have no mental battles to fight and win. Even Aristotle requires for courage that the agent remain untroubled (atarachos) in the midst of grave dangers (3.8.1117a19, 31), and for good temper that he remain so in the midst of acute provocations (4.5.1125b33–4). Although his doctrine of the moderation of the affections contrasts theoretically with the Stoic demand for their extirpation, his own ideal may not in practice be very distant from Stoic apatheia: the deportment of the Aristotelian gentleman (cf. 4.3) could easily be confused with that of the Stoic sage. Though he and the Stoics analyse the affections rather differently, they would seem to agree that strength of will could never be a reliable quality in the face of a temptation that was felt. We need not, for that reason, deny them their own conceptions of what it is to succeed or fail in sticking, as we put it, to one’s intentions.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689, 2.21.15. The Concept of Mind, London, 1949. Will, Freedom and Power, Oxford, 1975. The Will: A Dual Aspect Theory, Cambridge, 1980. J. Hornsby, Actions, London, 1980. ‘Who Discovered the Will?’, in J.E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 6: Ethics, Atascadero, 1992. I leave the reader to make his or her own judgement how far the terms ‘choice’ and ‘voluntary’ diverge as traditional translations of Aristotle from their idiomatic senses in English. Compare F.H. Bradley’s notion of the ‘ideal voluptuary’, Ethical Studies, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1927, pp. 273–5. It is a peculiarly difficult question whether Aristotle would place even wishes and choices, though essentially rational desires, within the irrational soul (cf. Price, 1995: 108–11, with notes). If he would, then the obedience of desire to reason can take two forms within a temperate mind: one automatic, when a rational desire reflects rational judgement within motivation, depending upon it directly for its existence and content; one habitual, when an irrational desire is inspired or inhibited by reason, but is a slave of reason rather than its creature. Die Zurechnungslehre des Aristoteles, Stuttgart, 1903, p. 131. J.L. Austin, ‘A Plea for Excuses’, in Philosophical Papers, Oxford, 1961.

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12 This confirms that irresistible coercion (cf. 3.1.1110a23–5) produces action, but not choice (cf. the end of the section on voluntary action above). 13 This is discussed by David Furley and others in M.L. Gill and J.G. Lennox (eds), Self-Motion: From Aristotle to Newton, Princeton, N.J., 1994. 14 ‘The Problem of Action’, in H. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About, Cambridge, 1988. 15 I ignore here the complications that arise through ignorance or negligence. When Aristotle writes that actions seem especially (malista) involuntary if performed because of ignorance of the most vital factors (Nicomachean Ethics, 3.1.1111a15–18), he has in mind excusability, which can be stated as a matter of degree (cf. ‘It was less excusable of him to do it than of her’), while intentionality has always to be relativised to actions under descriptions. As was already implicit in my initial quotation from Locke, volitions are commonly attached to so-called ‘basic actions’, for example, raising one’s arm; it is then a problem that not all such acts are intentional as such, even when idiomatically they count as ‘voluntary’ (as when I intentionally sign my name without being aware of how I am voluntarily moving my fingers). 16 Compare A.W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, extended edn., Oxford, 1997, pp. 107–8. 17 A famous exception, also to Nicomachean Ethics, 3.2.1111b9–10 (cf. 1112a15–16), is Nicomachean Ethics, 3.8.1117a18–22, where Aristotle unusually allows action in an emergency to be chosen but not deliberated. Yet presumably, in his theory, this imputes a judgement justifiable by a potential piece of reasoning encapsulating the state of character that the action displays. 18 However, I doubt whether Aristotle was properly aware of this feature of his choices. For what is chosen (prohaireton) is ideally identical to what is done (prakton) and he wrongly takes this to be a particular (for example, Nicomachean Ethics, 7.3.1147a3–4), thereby confusing what I do with my doing of it. 19 I have attempted this already in my Mental Conflict, London, 1995, pp. 129–32, in some pages singled out approvingly by one reviewer, and sceptically by another. What follows now in my text is at once brisker and more precise. 20 This may explain why Aristotle can assign the right goal not to practical wisdom, but to virtue of character (Nicomachean Ethics, 6.12.1144a8–10, a29–b1). This is misleading to the extent that, in their full forms, each entails the other. But it warns us against any over-rationalistic understanding that, by defining the right relation of desire to reason simply as one of obedience, would make the practicality of practical reason either a corollary (in that it automatically generates rational desire) or an accident (in that it habitually generates or licences irrational desire in the virtuous). We can better conceive of practical reason as relating to desire rather as form to matter, and as intimately as soul to body. Just as there is no formed human desire without reason (cf. Nicomachean Ethics, 6.13.1144b1–17), so there is no practical reason without desire (cf. De anima, 3.10.433a15–20). The life of reason that transcends our corporeality is indeed theory, whereas rational practice is an exercise of our composite nature (cf. 10.7–8).

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21 I simplify: in fact, Stoic ‘impulses’ are of various kinds, no doubt interestingly distinguished in ways perhaps not interestingly recoverable (cf. B. Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, Oxford, 1985: appendix 2). One species of impulse is orousis, defined as ‘a movement of thought towards something in the future’ (Stobaeus, 3.40.13, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta (= SVF), J. von Arnim (ed.), 4 vols, Leipzig: Teubner, 1906–24) – a feature that it shares with many of our intentions. Here, however, I focus upon impulses as immediate instigants of action. 22 Clemens, SVF 3.92.4–5 23 Plutarch, SVF 3.42.4–6; also at 53R in A.A. Long, and D.N. Sedley (eds) (= LS), The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1987. 24 Aristotle, by contrast, uses the metaphor of command and obedience not of the relation of choice to action, but of reason to desire (as in Nicomachean Ethics, 1.13), and of judgement to action (as frequently when right reasoning, orthos logos, is described as prescriptive). Whereas he wrongly supposes that things done (or to be done, prakta) are particulars (e.g., 7.3.1147a3–4), the metaphor takes on a new felicity from the Stoic recognition that impulses are directed at concepts: for example, an action of going realizes an impulse to go (a predicate explicit in the imperative ‘Go’). In making the object of the impulse a predicate, the Stoics make salient the fine point (not more than intimated by Aristotle at 3.2.1112a3–5) that the content of the impulse is a kind of act, and not an action of mine (needing to be distingished from an action of yours). 25 A neat way of making a distinction that Aristotle needs, but fails to formulate, would be to say that it is impulse that makes actions voluntary, and assent that makes adult human agents responsible. Beasts and children are not capable of assent to presentations, but only (Inwood 1985: 75–6) of a ‘yielding’ to them (eixis). 26 An alternative construal of the sentence, to the effect that appetite can move each of my limbs, would exclude a possibility (say that it can move my legs, but not my arms) neither plausible nor pertinent. 27 Aristotle’s denial of hard acrasia saves a man from what would surely be an uncanny experience: his mind is made up, his perception of the situation is unchanged, nothing apparent goes wrong until, at the very moment of action, he finds himself moving according to appetite but contrary to choice. In excluding hard acrasia Aristotle at least ruled out that. 28 I simplify: there are good passions (eupatheiai) like joy, directed solely at virtue and undisturbing, that the Stoic sage is permitted. These are not pathü that happen to be permitted, but must be quite different phenomena (just as joy, hatred and kindness are in Aristotle, cf. Price, Mental Conflict, p. 118).

Bibliography Ancient and medieval Aristotle, De anima. —— De caelo. —— De motu animalium. —— Eudemian Ethics.

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—— Metaphysics. —— Nicomachean Ethics. —— Parts of Animals. —— Rhetoric. ps-Aristotle, Magna moralia. J. Buridan, Quaestiones in decem libros ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (PHP), P. De Lacy ed., Berlin, 1978–80. Long, A.A. and Sedley, D.N. (eds) (LS), The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1987. von Arnim, J. (ed.), Stoicorum veterum fragmenta (SVF), 4 vols, Leipzig, 1906–24.

Modern Austin, J.L., ‘A Plea for Excuses’, in Philosophical Papers, Oxford, 1961. Bradley, F.H., Ethical Studies, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1927. Frankfurt, H., ‘The Problem of Action’, in The Importance of What We Care About, Cambridge, 1988. Gill, M.L. and Lennox, J.G. (eds), Self-Motion: From Aristotle to Newton, Princeton, N.J., 1994. Hornsby, J., Actions, London, 1980. Inwood, B., Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, Oxford, 1985. Irwin, T.H., ‘Who Discovered the Will?’, in J. E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 6: Ethics, Atascadero, 1992. Kenny, A., Will, Freedom and Power, Oxford, 1975. Locke, J., Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689. Loening, R., Die Zurechnungslehre des Aristoteles, Stuttgart, 1903. O’Shaughnessy, B., The Will: A Dual Aspect Theory, Cambridge, 1980. Price, A.W., Mental Conflict, London, 1995. —— Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, extended edn, Oxford, 1997. Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind, London, 1949.

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Intellect with a (divine) purpose Augustine on the will Josef Lössl

Augustine on the will: the intellectual dimension Will is the power or faculty of choosing and determining. Intellect is the mind in reference to its rational powers, the ‘thinking principle’. Intellect and will are the two basic faculties of the mind. But how are they related to one another? Does the will exert its power over the intellect, so that the intellect is subject to the will, or is the will a mere attribute of the intellect? We call those individuals who hold the first view voluntarists, those who hold the second, intellectualists. The question concerning the relationship between intellect and will must be distinguished from the one which concerns the relationship between freedom of the will and determination (necessitation) by nature. We term incompatibilists those who hold that if everything were determined by necessity of nature, then freedom of the will would not exist; and compatibilists those who hold, by contrast, that even if the will were determined, freedom of the will could still exist. These two questions of intellectualism versus voluntarism and incompatibilism versus compatibilism are obviously very different. The first is an issue about the structure of the mind or soul, the second is an issue to do with the mind’s place in a (material) nature, and the consequences of that place for freedom. The second question of whether free will is consistent with natural determination becomes especially compelling if the mind is conceived as itself material, as it is on a natural understanding of the Stoic tradition, rather than being conceived dualistically, as immaterial and so outside material nature, as in the Platonic tradition. In this chapter, I argue that Augustine’s conception of the will and its freedom must be understood in the light of his position in the debate between intellectualists and voluntarists. On the basis of such statements as the one in On Free Choice of the Will (De Libero Arbitrio Voluntatis, 3.1.2) that ‘the soul is moved by

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this movement’ of the will, Augustine is widely held to be a voluntarist. He certainly is thought to have influenced voluntarist positions in the medieval and early modern period, notably those of the theologians of the Reformation regarding the precedence of the will over the intellect in God concerning the order of creation and salvation, for example in the doctrine of predestination. Yet it is clear that Augustine does not develop his concept of the will without linking it to a strong notion of the intellect. He must therefore be seen as fundamentally an intellectualist – and an intellectualist within a Platonic-Aristotelian tradition that emphasizes the intellect’s distance from material nature. The reasons why Augustine is so often thought of as an extreme voluntarist, to the extent of excluding or downgrading the intellect, are twofold. The first is that in his later works he seems to have distanced himself from the intellectualism more apparent in his earlier works. Particularly during the Pelagian controversy, the will seems to take centre stage – and it seems to be a will understood in a straightforwardly compatibilist manner, as determined but still free. This view is reinforced by a widespread tendency in scholarship to treat his later thought separately from his earlier one. Thus the intellectualism more obvious in the earlier works is often disregarded in accounts looking at Augustine’s thought as a whole. However, this runs contrary to Augustine’s own insistence on the coherence of his thought throughout his lifetime. In this chapter, therefore, I aim to take account of the intellectualism of his earlier thought and show how it is still at work in his late concept of the will. A second reason why Augustine is often passed off as a voluntarist is the way in which his concept of the will has been handed down in the history of thought, especially during and after the Reformation. It has been seen mainly from an ethical perspective. The underlying psychology of the will’s relation to the intellect was largely ignored. This tendency can still be felt in such studies as G.J.P. O’Daly’s ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics’.1 In another study, published almost simultaneously, O’Daly writes splendidly about Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind (London 1987). But concerning Augustine’s concept of the will he tends to exclude the intellectualist dimension on the ground that Augustine identifies the will – rather than the intellect – with the soul and casts it as a moral agent, a move without precedent in ancient thought.2 As O’Daly presents it, Augustine’s concept reminds one strongly of Stoic compatibilism, that is, the notion that determinism is reconcilable with the freedom of the will without the will being part of an intellectual mind-soul. The argument goes roughly as follows: since in Adam the human will rejects

Augustine on the will 55 God’s grace universally, it lies entirely with God whom he predestines to salvation and whom to damnation.3 God does not compel the will,4 but determines it prior to any merit of its own.5 Within the realm of God’s grace the will is established as the centre of human action.6 Grace is irresistible, not compelling the will, but determining every single event in reality in such a way that the actions of the will are at best acts of consent to the call of God.7 O’Daly calls this Augustine’s ‘own particular brand of determinism which he believes to be compatible with human freedom’,8 a kind of ‘liberty of spontaneity [which] is not so much the ability to do otherwise, as the ability to act free of compulsion or constraint’,9 although there remains, at least in principle, an ability to do otherwise: ‘Augustine’s “praedestinatus” has the power to commit sin, as an alternative to being good, even when it is predetermined that this power will not be exercised.’ However, ‘to accept the compatibility of freedom with determinism in this manner is to make it difficult to avoid the consequence that God is responsible for sin’.10 In another recent study, Christopher Kirwan also casts Augustine in a similar mould.11 Kirwan explicitly excludes any philosophy of mind considerations from his analysis and asks how, according to Augustine, human willing is effectively possible in the light of universal divine causation. He obviously understands the latter in a rather one-dimensional, materialistic way as a kind of determination by a necessity of nature. Unlike O’Daly, who seems to be ultimately, albeit subtly, undecided about what to think of Augustine’s position, Kirwan does not hesitate to reject what he takes to be Augustine’s combination of voluntarism with deterministic compatibilism. Significantly, both O’Daly and Kirwan are repeatedly referring to questions arising from Reformation and post-Reformation theology, notably the concept of compulsion of the will. They notice that Augustine, unlike many theologians of the early modern period, distinguishes between compulsion and determination of the will. But like many theologians of the early modern period they fail to recognize that Augustine is able to make that distinction on the basis of the intellectualist concept of a transcendent, namely spiritual, mind-soul. Several recent studies in contrast do consider this aspect. In Augustine and the Limits of Virtue,12 James Wetzel, against positions in the wake of Harry G. Frankfurt’s view that will is merely a form of desire, assumes a ‘maximally intellectualist’ concept of the will in order to ‘cast the problem of free will not as the problem of whether we are determined to act, but […] whether we can be said to act intelligibly’.13 Similarly, in his recent book Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized

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(Cambridge, 1994), John Rist retracts from positions held in an earlier paper14 and compares Augustine’s concept with Aristotle’s, for example in the case of weakness of the will (akrasia) or absence of good will. For Augustine, as for Aristotle, so Rist, the primary concern is not for the will, but for the intellect to conceive of the right aim and the means to reach it.15 T.D.J. Chappell makes a similar comparison.16 In my study, Intellectus Gratiae,17 I have looked at the matter from a theological perspective and tried to demonstrate that Augustine developed a concept of grace as an intellectual power from God as a divine counterpart to the human intellect, and rejected the notion, developed especially in the Reformation, of divine grace as a non-, or only marginally, intellectual force compelling the will. In this chapter, I shall endorse that view and throw some light on the intellectualist background of Augustine’s concept of the will. This might not only help to understand better Augustine’s own concept, but also the ways in which it was interpreted (and misinterpreted) throughout the centuries and the way in which such a concept could be developed today. First, I shall consider the concepts of will and choice in relation to divine foreknowledge in Augustine’s earlier works. I shall then analyse the development of these earlier concepts into the later concepts of victorious grace, transmitted guilt and evil will restored. I shall thereby concentrate on showing how Augustine, on grounds of the intellectual dimension of his concept of the will, insists that these later concepts do not fundamentally contradict his earlier ones and that his concept of the will as a whole is coherent. Finally I shall outline the metaphysical background of this position and draw to a conclusion.

From the Platonism of the early works to the concept of ‘intellectus gratiae’ The Platonism of the early works In On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine relates that in his youth he had become a Manichean, because he thought this would enable him to find an answer to his question concerning the origin of evil.18 The Manicheans denied the freedom of the will assuming that everyone is either good or evil by nature. In On Free Choice of the Will Augustine refutes this position. However, his own distinction between free choice (liberum arbitrium) and will (voluntas) bears some resemblance to it. He may have refuted the position that there are naturally evil beings (or wills), but he held that under the conditions brought about by the

Augustine on the will 57 fall, will is not free to choose the good, unless divine grace enables it to do so. Yet his view that the main faculty of the soul is the intellect and that the main problems the soul thus faces under the yoke of sin are primarily intellectual (besides physical constraints [difficultas] mainly ignorance) can only be explained from Platonic influence. Clearly, for Augustine, the limitations of the will caused by sin are not primarily affecting the physical and moral faculties but the intellect; and for that reason the remedy, too, divine grace, – in itself by nature (divine) intellect, – exercises its effect primarily on the (human) intellect.19 In Against the Academics (Contra Academicos),20 one of his first extant works, Augustine not only argues against Academic scepticism, but he also displays a certain inclination towards this brand of philosophy, as he himself admits.21 This is the more significant as he also saw a link between Manichean pessimism regarding the human capacity for leading a moral life (will), and Academic pessimism regarding the human capacity for acquiring true knowledge (intellect). Again, for Augustine, freedom, that is full moral functioning, of the will cannot be assumed, unless the intellect, too, is in full working order. The will depends on the intellect. It is in fact as much as a function of the intellect. There are two further factors that may have influenced, at least in part, Augustine’s ability to perceive that link. First, in The Happy Life (De Beata Vita), written simultaneously with Against the Academics, he reports how he was helped to overcome scepticism by understanding the Platonic distinction between spirit and matter after listening to the sermons of Saint Ambrose and reading Plotinus.22 But, second, he also had the notion that this progress had an aspect of willed assent to it, which points to a Stoic influence. In The Happy Life (2.10), he cites Cicero’s Hortensius, that more unhappiness is caused by an evil will than happiness by mere chance, thereby implying (i) perfect happiness is not just the result of mere chance; it requires, at least partially, will; but (ii) will is not indifferent; it is either evil or good and only good will leads to perfect happiness. According to the Platonist tradition, however, this is only achieved through knowledge of the good, namely participation in the idea of the good. In other words, the act of the will is primarily an act of the intellect perceiving the good. In his latest study, John Rist makes two important comments on this point. First, in Augustine’s time the Platonic and the Stoic aspects of the theory were no longer conceived as separate teachings. They had become two aspects of one and the same (middle- and neoPlatonic) tradition. The act of the (good) will which makes the

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intellect perceive the good and the act of the intellect in which this act of will consists, were perceived as one, intellectual, act, that is compatibilism had acquired an intellectualist character. Second, because of his Christian faith we must assume that when Augustine speaks of believing as ‘knowing on grounds of assent’ or cogitare cum assensione (On the Predestination of the Saints [De Praedestinatione Sanctorum], 2.5) he means ‘more’ than what one might understand as ‘Stoic reasoning’ or ‘rationalism’ in the materialist-monist sense, namely that whatever the Stoic influence on Augustine, his perception of the relationship between intellect and will is always more Platonic than Stoic,23 especially since he identifies the end of the Christian faith with the Platonic intellect. For him the act of faith is from its very beginning (initium fidei) an intellectual process. This is rather different from the understanding of faith developed in the Reformation, which depicts instead the act of faith rather as a non-intellectual (‘blind’) act. Intellectualist use of the Bible Augustine does not abandon his intellectualism when he increases his use of the Bible. In the early works this is still scarce and reflects the philosophically motivated combination of the concepts of intellect and will, for example when Christ is called ‘God’s power (virtus) and wisdom (sapientia)’ (1 Corinthians 1:24), Jesus is quoted as saying ‘seek and you will find’ (Matthew 7:7), and the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 7:9 LXX): ‘If you do not believe, you will not understand’.24 Soon, however, a whole range of Biblical motives and texts gains importance for Augustine and with them a particular way of interpreting them. They are taken mainly from Genesis 3, Romans 9, and Galatians 4, for example Adam and Eve as the historically primeval and anthropologically paradigmatic human beings, their fall and original sin, the story of God gratuitously rejecting Esau, electing Jacob and hardening his heart against Pharaoh. However, even in his later works Augustine approaches these texts with a peculiar intellectualism. He consistently interprets them in the light of such verses as Proverbs 8:35 LXX: ‘The will is prepared by the Lord’ (voluntas praeparatur a domino) and 1 Corinthians 1:31; 4:7; 13:11; 2 Corinthians 10:17: ‘Whoever glorifies him- or herself, let them do so in the Lord’ (qui gloriatur, in domino glorietur), meaning: whatever is said of the human will with its limitations caused by original sin and predestination, what matters is that in the light of Christ, in whom the human intellect is illumined by the divine, everything becomes clear. However ‘determined’ the will may

Augustine on the will 59 be because of original sin and predestination, it is freed and thus given its (intellectual) purpose.25 Divine foreknowledge and predestination in the light of ‘intellectus gratiae’ The three major writings in which Augustine began to develop the latter view are To Simplicianus (Ad Simplicianum; especially 1.2 on predestination – an exegesis of Romans 9), the Confessions (Confessiones), on Augustine’s own paradigmatic experience of the universal and irresistible power of God’s grace, and On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana), which is really on Biblical hermeneutics. On Free Choice of the Will paves the way for Augustine’s concept of the will, which is brought to fruition in those more mature works. In On Free Choice of the Will Augustine relates the freedom of the will (liberum arbitrium voluntatis), its ability to choose, with its limitations and constraints through evil and divine foreknowledge. Based on studies of Saint Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians,26 he developed the view that every human being is called by God to faith (vocatus), and able to decide by free will whether to follow the call or not. God, who has foreknowledge (praescientia) of each individual response, grants sanctifying grace to those who respond positively, and withholds it from those who reject his call. Augustine knew, of course, that since God is beyond time and space, we cannot really speak of God having foreknowledge. God’s knowledge as such is eternal. But Augustine also knew that things are not as simple as that. For whatever we may assume to be an object of God’s foreknowledge, may perfectly well happen in time and space, for example my decision to go to the cinema tonight. If I assume this decision of mine to be an object of God’s eternal knowledge, it is, from my point of view, at this particular time and location, really an object of foreknowledge, since what is known will only happen later from now. In this case, Augustine says, it does indeed make sense to speak of God’s foreknowledge, that is God’s knowledge of future events. However, God does not ‘know’ these future events in the way that human beings know that this or that future event might happen, as in cases in which it is quite certain that the event will happen, for example that an item will fall to the ground when dropped (on the basis of the law of gravity). Rather, if God foreknows that something will happen, it will happen because God foreknows it to happen. God’s foreknowledge is not a mere anticipation, it is a cause of what is going to happen.

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Augustine arrived at that conclusion only gradually, while writing On Free Choice of the Will. But the basic philosophical assumptions on which he finally reached it, had always been there. His intention when starting On Free Choice of the Will had been to refute Manichean fatalism. ‘Tell me, is not God the author of evil?’ asks Evodius provocatively in the opening line of the dialogue. Augustine responds with a barrage of Platonic-Stoic doctrines: God, the One, is good, creator of a universe, the perfection of which is in no way adversely affected by evil, since held together by a network of good reasons. On top of it all the eternal law rules everything. Happiness consists in acting and thinking in full accordance with the structure laid down by the eternal law. Everything is good and accessible to reason. Human intellect and free will are part of the whole and called to perfection within it. If put to work in the right way, i.e. according to the law of nature, nothing can prevent them from reaching their goal, which consists in eternal happiness and perfection.27 However, looking at the Bible and the writings of Saint Paul, Augustine began to see the universe as affected by a man-made evil so profound that humanity is reduced to a damned ‘mass of sinners’.28 A merely just God, he now thought, would not have prevented humanity from being damned in its entirety. The God, however, he believes in, has acted to the contrary. He who is not only omnipotent and just, but also good, does not decree universal damnation, but salvation29 by choosing an albeit small number of elect and enabling and effectively causing them to will and do the good. This is how the concept of foreknowledge began to grow into a concept of predestination. What drove Augustine to try and unite such disparate elements of thought in one theory, and, in the case of On Free Choice of the Will, even in one and the same work? ‘Are there two Augustines?’30 When about to complete On Free Choice of the Will in 395, Augustine must have felt that he had to provide further clarification regarding his concept of the will. A concept of freedom of the will in man understood as man’s freedom to choose to reject God’s call to faith effectively, with God being reduced to foreseeing human acts without being able to cause or prevent them, would be irreconcilable with the concept of divine omnipotence. In On Free Choice of the Will Augustine therefore tries to make it clear that he had never understood divine foreknowledge as ‘God happening to know what is going to happen’, but always as ‘God causing what is going to happen’.31 For him this was in agreement with his insight from early on in his career that in principle, and especially in God, intellect and will are essentially

Augustine on the will 61 one. A year after the completion of On Free Choice of the Will, in quaestiones 1.2 To Simplicianus, he would actually define God’s foreknowledge as divine causation. But that causation represented at least a dimension of divine foreknowledge was clear to him already in On Free Choice of the Will. Equally, it would not lose its intellectual dimension when being called causation; and since, in Augustine’s view, in the intellect there is no compulsion, there was really no question for him that this might mean that the human will is in any way limited by divine causation. Nevertheless, he is prepared to discuss the issue. ‘Is not that the problem that disturbs and puzzles you’, he asks Evodius in book 3 of On Free Choice of the Will, ‘that it seems indeed contradictory and inconsistent that God should foresee everything in the future, while we sin out of our own wills and not out of necessity?’32 The solution he offers a few paragraphs further on is that it is the willing of our wills that is caused by God’s foreknowledge, ‘and it will not be able to be our will, if it is not in our power. So God also foreknows the power, which is therefore not taken away from us by his foreknowledge.’33 Kirwan has questioned the soundness of this solution:34 if God’s foreknowledge is understood as necessitating what it foresees, and if being necessitated in this way is to be understood as not willing, how can willing be understood as being necessitated by God’s foreknowledge? The definition of willing as being in one’s own power and of God’s foreknowledge as necessitating even that which is in one’s own power does not resolve the contradiction; for being necessitated had earlier been defined as not being in one’s own power.35 Besides, Augustine fails to distinguish between absolute and conditional necessity. His conception, God foreknowing future contingent acts, would have fallen under the latter category. Only 100 years later Boethius made that point clear when claiming that such acts are ‘necessary by the condition of the divine knowledge, and, considered by themselves, they lose not absolute freedom of their own nature’.36 Both criticisms are in themselves justified, but in the given combination they fail to throw out Augustine’s main argument, which was not that God necessitates the wills of human beings, but, on the contrary, that he does not do so, despite the causative nature of divine foreknowledge. Augustine had raised the whole issue only in anticipation of a possible intervention by Evodius that divine foreknowledge might necessitate human wills. Ironically therefore, it seems that Augustine would readily agree with Kirwan’s first point, and even though he would have to concede that he did not see his second, that is Boethius’, point, he would welcome it, too, in support of his view.

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Kirwan’s objection, however, he would discard, on the ground that it does not consider the intellect-involving nature of the issue. The question whether, and if, in what cases, divine causation can be understood as necessitation of the human will and whether, and if, in what cases it renders the latter ‘unfree’ or eliminates it altogether, cannot be tackled at the same level as the question whether the law of gravity eliminates the freedom of choice for a certain lump of matter. It is the human and divine intellect that are interacting here, and since the latter is, by definition, perfect, any problem concerning loss or elimination of freedom, choice, or will, must lie with the human side. Kirwan might criticize Augustine for mingling the two issues (the issue of the intellect-will relation and the issue of freedom’s consistency with determination); for Augustine, however, it is essential to link the two, and fundamental to his views as a whole is his underlying intellectualism. Augustine’s main point in book 3, and indeed in the whole of his dialogue On Free Choice of the Will, is that it is not divine causation – be it by divine foreknowledge or whatever – that puts the human will under the strain of necessity and deprives it of its own power thus rendering it incapable, but a culpable act of the human will itself. Thus Augustine does not opt positively for divine causation as opposed to other forms of causation, he only excludes divine causation for what he considers essentially a ‘defect’.37 ‘Creatio ex nihilo’ includes human willing as a matter of fact. Evil is willing ‘ad nihilum’. God does not (indeed ‘cannot’) do that, because his very nature is goodness. Therefore he does not prevent the human will from doing it, although he stands by his original decision not to let there be nothing.38 What he prevents the evil will from doing is to bring about nothing. What he does not do is prevent it from ‘willing’.39 This is also where the distinction between choice and will applies. Evil will has no choice – by definition. The choice attached to will before the fall is lost after the fall. Intellect and will are ignorant and disabled. They have no power to do the good and to know the truth. Only God’s grace,40 Christ, God’s power and wisdom (1 Colossians 1:24), the eschatological judge (Matthew 25:31–46), the original image of God (Genesis 1:26),41 is able to restore all that. But as the causes for the defection of created wills away from God and the good are deficient causes, so the conversion of wills through God’s grace is gratuitous.42 God has no obligation to do so, man has no other means of responding but by praising God in hope and gratitude (retrospect and anticipation). The location, however, where the will relates to reality, where it begins and where it ends, is the intellect. This is also where God, through grace in Jesus Christ, can come in to restore it.

Augustine on the will 63 A test case: do animals have wills? To illustrate this point Augustine also deals with the question whether animals can be said to have wills. They do have souls, he concedes, they also have sense perception, a capacity to remember things (memory) and to imitate other beings. They strive to fulfil their desires, avoid pain and seek pleasures. They have a sense of self-preservation and enjoy living in tranquillity and peace.43 However, we do not speak of animals having wills, because they lack intellect. It is the latter that enables angels and human beings to do consciously, deliberately and always with a certain degree of self-awareness, what animals do instinctively, especially such things as recognizing the beautiful, good and just according to its nature, distinguishing good from evil, practising science, perceiving truth, searching for God, gaining eternal salvation or, equally, squandering it through sin. Animals cannot end up living in utter misery, but they also have no prospect, or hope, for eternal happiness. Animals will not be suffering in hell, but equally, they will not enjoy eternal happiness in heaven. It is typical that, for Augustine, the best proof that animals do not have wills, is their obvious incapacity to restrain them or, equally, to misuse them for perverse acts like self-infliction of pain or suicide.44 Again, it is the intellect, the power to distinguish good from evil, which, for Augustine, gives the will its purpose.

Victorious grace, transmitted guilt, and evil will restored The coherence between earlier and later thought In his Retractations (Retractationes)45 of 427, Augustine responds to a claim advanced by his opponents that his concept of the will developed in On Free Choice of the Will contradicts the one which he holds ‘now’ (in his later period). In On Free Choice of the Will, they claim, he held the will to be free, while in his later thought he holds it to be determined or compelled by divine grace. He insists that he always held only one concept of the will, that his later thought does not contradict his earlier one and that his concept of divine grace determining the will does not contradict the freedom of the will but endorses it. An assessment of this statement has to start at To Simplicianus. Written only one year after On Free Choice of the Will, it is the first work to contain the ‘later’ concept.46 However, Wetzel records some first steps towards it already a few years earlier, when the concept of ‘involuntary sin’ appears in two anti-Manichean writings, On Two

64 Josef Lössl Souls (De Duabus Animabus) and Against Fortunatus (Contra Fortunatum) (392/4).47 The concept of involuntary sin results from a synthesis of the (Stoic, compatibilist) concept of volition by purely self-motivated (natural) desire (without reference to value and intellect) and the (Platonic, intellectualist) concept of volition as caused by the idea of the good, i.e. being attracted by and aiming at, the idea of the good on intellectual grounds. Chappell in addition points to an Aristotelian element in Augustine’s approach, namely the idea that volition is always conscious, rational and free. Even though he calls Augustine’s argument, as it evolves, a ‘mish-mash’48 – Wetzel speaks more benevolently of ‘arguments lagging behind […] insights’49 – he accepts its conclusion, namely the possibility of a concept of involuntary sin resulting from a kind of volition which is conscious and free but irrational, that is he concedes that with his concept of involuntary sin Augustine does not give up his underlying Platonic-Aristotelian intellectualism. This shows that one must be careful not to treat To Simplicianus in isolation. Augustine’s development of thought must be considered as a whole, with individual works being treated each according to its own limited scope. In the Retractations Augustine states that On Free Choice of the Will and To Simplicianus differ in content as they differ in purpose. On Free Choice of the Will contains a concept of the will in the form of a theory of action: how to fight evil, do the good and find a way towards salvation. To Simplicianus gives a theoretical outline concerning the extent of grace and the limits of evil based on the exegesis of some Biblical texts. But each individual work also reflects Augustine’s state of mind as a whole. It may therefore be of some significance that in his review of To Simplicianus in book 2 of the Retractations Augustine relates that when writing To Simplicianus he was trying at first to present the relationship between divine grace and human freedom as if he was dealing with two equally strong and balanced powers. However, after several attempts at trying to tackle the problem he found his project frustrated: ‘God’s grace won the victory’ (vicit Dei gratia). A lot has been read into this pitching of grace and freedom against each other and some scholars have concluded from it that Augustine abandoned his concept of a free will and replaced it with a deterministic concept of predestination by grace. From an intellectualist perspective, however, there simply is no ground for such an assumption. In On Free Choice of the Will Augustine stresses the universal, even, in a Kantian sense, transcendental, character of the will. One cannot deny it without at the same time affirming it.50 However,

Augustine on the will 65 already in On Free Choice of the Will this did not prevent him from assuming that will loses its freedom in the event of the fall; and even when restored by grace as effected by divine foreknowledge it remains weak in terms of intellect and power to do the good without the support of grace. But nevertheless, it is the will that is engaged that way in the conversion process; and, as the Confessions show, Augustine was not going to abandon this view. In To Simplicianus 1.2, however, he turns to something entirely different. Here the only thing that matters is grace, with respect to its loss in the fall.51 After the fall, or rather, by deficient cause of the fall, there are no moral criteria left to explain why God chooses one person and rejects another.52 There seems to be no human will left to be restored.53 In fact, there is no will without a call from God (non volumus) and where there is no will, compulsion or duress are absent, too. But if God decides to recreate the will through grace, it is as free as it can possibly be.54 Everything depends, of course, on the underlying concept of creatio ex nihilo, which allows for the distinction of a divine and a created order of being, with freedom in the latter not being affected by dependence on the former. In a sense this anticipates Boethius’s insight.55 If, in the aftermath of the fall, God decides to bring about salvation, he is bound by the order he himself created. But first he has to create that very order, in principle, namely as a quasiPlatonic idea, as the very conditions under which he can begin his work. It is at that level that Augustine considers divine grace irresistible in a radical and fundamental sense, not as compulsion, which it would only be, if the order had already been established, but as a creatio ex nihilo, creatio understood as the whole – primarily intellectual – in nuce complex of grace, call, election, conversion, perseverance and salvation, to the effect of eternal perfection and happiness, nihilum as sin and damnation.56 Thus, what victorious grace restores is the intellect to know the idea of the good, rather than the power of doing the good. In To Simplicianus (1.2.21) the intellectus gratiae is defined by 1 Corinthians 1:3: ‘Whoever glorifies him- or herself, may do so in the Lord.’ Doing the good by virtue of the free will is secondary to knowing it by virtue of the intellect, although, once grace is restored, it is directly caused by virtue of the intellect restored by grace. The account of ‘Confessions’ book 8 In his Confessions, written almost simultaneously with To Simplicianus 1.2, Augustine tries to outline the actual working of this complex. He starts at the level of his own daily experience of not being able to do

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the good. At this level, lack of freedom of the will to do the good is experienced as lack of grace; grace, however, as ‘liberating’, empowering (‘enabling’) the will to do the good. In book 8 Augustine analyses the state of his own will, or rather, his ‘two wills at war’.57 Recalling his conversion process he remembers a phase when he found himself effectively unable ‘to will’.58 He had already decided to act, that is to lead a celibate life. He now only needed to abide by his decision. But he failed, at least for some time. Ten years later he concludes that his problem had not been that he had lacked will in the sense that he had lacked the ability actually to live a life of celibacy, but in the sense that he had lacked the will to do so. Augustine is not quite consistent in this passage in applying his ‘two concepts of the will’. What is clear, however, is that he sees the second set in motion by the intellect through grace as outlined in To Simplicianus 1.2. In his view, what made him finally able to lead a life of celibacy was at the surface an interaction of intellect and will, but at a deeper level the determination of the will as good through intellect constituted by grace. On the surface his model may therefore look somewhat compatibilist. As Wetzel observes, for Augustine, even improving one’s external habits may lead to improving one’s knowledge, certainty and judgment of what is good. That may result in yet better habits, which in turn produce a yet deeper understanding, and so forth.59 At a deeper level, however, it presents itself once more as intellectualist. It is not just a question of ‘acting on what one knows is right’ (applying a theory),60 but of good will and action as actually being caused by an appropriate intellectual act of insight. Original sin and evil will restored The novelty of Augustine’s concept, what sets it apart from other ancient models, is that it takes into account, on the basis of a particular Biblical and Christian tradition, the possibility and assumed reality of the absence of that kind of intellect and will and the consequences of that absence, as the cause of which it identifies an instance of ‘wilful wrongdoing’, a kind of ‘voluntary action which is nonetheless irrational’.61 Augustine first uses the term ‘original sin’ in To Simplicianus 1.1 after having developed the concept between 391 and 397. He elaborates on it further between 397 and 411.62 The beginning of a new phase is reached in 411, as Augustine is forced to clarify his position of On Free Choice of the Will in On Merits and Remission (De Peccatorum Meritis et Remissione).63 He insists that it had never been his view that a merely abstract philosophical concept

Augustine on the will 67 of freedom suffices as an explanation for the motivation of the will towards perfection in goodness, happiness and salvation. Rather, the concept of grace implies that constant prayer, especially for the remission of sins and the protection from further temptation to sin,64 is a necessary prerequisite for progress in intellect and will towards salvation. This is only possible within the church, that is for those who are baptized; in other words, the criteria for responsible human goodness (full consciousness, maturity, rational behaviour) apply only to them. For those who are not baptized, these criteria do not indicate any ability to do the good or to progress in intellect, whether they are adults or children. If they die unbaptized, they are ‘sons of wrath’ (Ephesians 2:3), that is, as Augustine understands the verse, eternally damned. For those who are baptized, the will is far from strong enough to sustain their progress in intellect and good deeds without prayer. God recreates them from the nothingness of original sin and sustains them through grace, with the effect that they desire to draw near to God in prayer and let God replace their own inability with his ability to do the good. In Confessions 10.29.40 Augustine had first stated that principle, coining the catchphrase ‘provide [o God] what you order me to do, then order whatever you want’ (da quod iubes et iube quod vis). Now, fifteen years later, in On Merits and Remission, he puts it more precisely in the context of his ecclesiology: The baptized ask God to give them intellect so that they will be able to learn what he expects them to do and act accordingly (Psalm 118:73). Again, as in To Simplicianus, the primary gift of grace is intellect. The work of grace begins in the intellect which begins to pray and ask for good will. Augustine builds his concept of original sin on the basis of a strictly literal exegesis of Romans 5:12: ‘Through one man sin entered the world and through sin death.’65 In his view the fact that human beings suffer and die indicates that creation suffers under the yoke of an evil, the author of which cannot be God.66 It is in the will of the primordial man, Adam, that every human being has denied God’s grace.67 By way of propagation this ‘original guilt’ is common to every human individual.68 Only baptism eliminates it and through the practice of a Christian life grace effectively sustains the conversion. In the Unfinished Work against Julian (Opus Imperfectum contra Iulianum) Augustine specifies further that by propagation he means transmission in the act of procreation, although he does not want to commit himself to a clear position as to whether this means that the guilt is transmitted on the material level (for example, through the genetic apparatus) or whether it is transmitted at a spiritual level (in the soul);

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but he does link the transmission to the corrupt intellect–will complex which engages in concupiscence in the act of procreation.69 Augustine’s exegesis of the respective Biblical passages is dubious, even by ancient Christian standards.70 But to criticize it, or indeed any other aspects, in isolation from the whole of his concept will not be sufficient to dislodge the concept as a whole. Augustine himself was not impressed by criticisms aiming at his exegesis, nor by questions like: (1) Why is concupiscence, suffering and death not immediately overcome by baptism? – Because, his answer would be, grace not only initiates but also sustains conversion. (2) Why did God not prevent Adam from sinning? – Because it would have contradicted his freedom. (3) But is not freedom eliminated, if the will is determined by original sin or irresistible grace? – No, Augustine would say, because, if Adam had not sinned, freedom would not have to be restored. These questions do not take into account that Augustine developed his concept of the will in close connection with his concept of original sin on the basis of his early concept of an intellect–will complex, which means he can defend his concept of original sin with arguments known since On Free Choice of the Will and To Simplicianus.71 Loss of freedom is a result of original sin. Being necessitated by grace is not compulsion but freedom restored at the level of the intellect. No one wills against his will. If it is compelled, it is not will. Determination at the level of the intellect and by the intellect, however, cannot be interpreted as compulsion. In other words, we are here ultimately not dealing with some form of Stoic compatibilism, but with PlatonicAristotelian intellectualism. If the intellect–will dimension is ignored, freedom can only be defined as absence of compulsion, necessity, however, as compulsion – which leads to the conclusion that freedom cannot be necessitated.72 While such a conception is fully workable in itself, it misses the point when held against Augustine’s. For Augustine, necessity, as we have seen, is primarily absolute necessity. It is established by God against the impossibility that there is nothing as opposed to something, namely in creation. In original sin that impossibility is reaffirmed by man. If left on its own, humanity remains in that state. But God chooses to reverse the situation once more and replace the impossibility of being saved with the possibility of being saved, namely through grace in baptism and perseverance. In heaven that possibility ‘will turn into’ a conditional necessity. In that regard, the freedom established by grace is necessitated, as Augustine understands it, while whatever is done under the spell of original sin is not free, since the rejection of God’s grace resulted in another kind of necessity, namely

Augustine on the will 69 that of damnation, which by definition cannot have established any kind of freedom. A sinful will may seem free and act ‘as if’ free, but looked at from the perspective of what freedom of the will was supposed to be at creation, that is as far as the ‘idea’ of a free will is concerned – on the intellectual level – it is not free. In turn, if under the spell of grace, will may seem at first as if under duress. This however, rather than actually being duress, may turn out to be a first phase of liberation, initiated by a change at the intellectual level.

God’s will as intellect and the end of human history God’s will as intellect Whether or not one accepts Augustine’s concept of the will depends on whether one accepts his basic assumptions, on creation, God’s intellect and will, human destiny, the original state of man, the nature of salvation and its specific (historical) conditions. This becomes clear from the way in which already Julian of Eclanum criticizes Augustine for assuming that man can turn against God in an irreversible way and develop an evil will. For Julian, the freedom of the will is guaranteed by God through creation. It is good by nature, incorruptible. It is the ability to do otherwise in every single act.73 Grace merely sanctifies this originally good and incorruptible state of creation. Sin is merely a passing immoderation, temporarily violating the harmony of an otherwise untainted divine–human relationship. For Augustine this is what in his view Manicheism teaches to be the good creation as opposed to the evil one. It is semi-Manicheism.74 So far as he is concerned, the good is more than just a reality that categorically excludes evil. I pointed out earlier that Augustine argues in favour of the concept of original sin partly on grounds of a ‘literal exegesis’ of certain Biblical passages. The most fundamental concept he holds on such grounds, in fact, is not that of original sin but that of creatio ex nihilo – God creating everything ‘out of nothing’. All creative power is strictly speaking solely God’s.75 That something exists rather than nothing is due to God’s (eternal) intellect and will. At the beginning of On the Literal Sense of Genesis (De Genesi ad Litteram) Augustine specifies what he means by ‘literal exegesis’, not a naïve understanding of every sentence in the Bible at its face value, but an interpretation of certain passages based on the ground of a rational (scientific) perception of the universe as a whole.76 Thus, if we read in Genesis 1:1 about ‘beginning’ (principium), we have to consider – in philosophical terms – such topics as eternity, temporality, finiteness, infinity, necessity,

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contingency, absoluteness, relativity, etc.77 The metaphysical nature of those issues results in most cases in aporias and their discussion usually leads to further questions rather than answers.78 However, as in his early refutation of scepticism, Augustine takes that to be an argument in favour of the reasonableness and ultimately intellectual character of faith, not a call to (irrational) despair. On that epistemological basis he develops his doctrine of creation. In his timeless eternity God knows, that is wills, the existence of the universe as a whole and in each of its individual instances in the world of forms as well as in time and space. Humanity is part and, as created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26), in some sense even the purpose of creation. Free will is an essential of human existence in the original state, the image of God’s creative intellect and Will.79 Augustine wrote On the Literal Truth of Genesis approximately between 401 and 416. During the same period he developed his concept of original sin. He obviously saw no reason why not to approach a passage like Romans 5:12 in any other way than Genesis 1:1. His concept of a free will restored by grace from original sin runs structurally parallel to his concept of a free will created out of nothing. In other words, for Augustine, the nothing out of which God creates everything is in some sense a metaphysical evil overcome by the will of God. But once more, what God wills comes about by God conceiving it in his intellect; and the human will is created in this very image. Beyond that Augustine was confident that on the basis of his metaphysical exegesis of the respective Biblical passages he would be able to draw definite conclusions from the nature of the universe, as he saw it, to the nature of God, the aporetic character of the whole enterprise notwithstanding.80 Up to the early 390s, Augustine was reluctant to call God ‘love’. In the course of developing his concept of the will he overcame that reluctance until in his reflections on the trinitarian nature of God in The Trinity (De Trinitate) the notion of God as love plays a central role.81 In a summary of this concept towards the end of that work Augustine repeats a question, raised during the doctrinal disputes of the fourth century, whether God begets his Son willingly or unwillingly.82 If the answer is ‘willingly’, it implies that the Son is not (like) God by nature. If it is ‘unwillingly’, it implies that God is not free. Augustine relates that his source answers the problem with a retort: ‘Is God willingly God, or unwillingly?’ If, on the assumption of the earlier question that nature and will are not one in God, the answer is ‘willingly’, it implies that God exists by will rather than nature. But if it is ‘unwillingly’, it questions God’s omnipotence as well as his good-

Augustine on the will 71 ness and beatitude. Again Augustine mixes the two questions concerning the compatibility of intellect and will and freedom and determination. The question of freedom or determination in God does not arise because God is pure intellect, even in so far as he wills. From this Augustine also draws a conclusion with regard to his concept of the human will, with the Spirit as the grace of God in Jesus Christ constituting the good will in the human intellect, that is man being created in God’s image. At the end of the passage just mentioned Augustine remarks that if we wanted to identify the faculty of the will in God with one of the divine persons, it would be the Spirit; and further on he adds that it is indeed the Spirit with regard to whom it can be said most appropriately that man is created in God’s image.83 For Augustine, therefore, the will is not just thought of as being created in man but as being created in view of the perfection of man in God. The end of human history However, as nice and true as these reflections may seem in principle, they do not quite take into account as yet the concrete situation of human nature in time and space. They abstract from the fact that human nature, even if recreated in its original state and directed towards its final destiny as a member of the ‘city of God’, has not yet reached its goal but is still on its way far from home, travelling as a pilgrim, struggling for survival in a world ruled by impious men.84 Should it not be told, Augustine asks, on the assumption that human nature really is in that situation, why it is in it and how it will overcome it? To do so is the intention of City of God. This work situates the analyses of creation, fall and salvation in their historical context, pitches them against the pagan background of Roman history and the ultimate battle between the good and the evil will, illustrated by Biblical and Christian history, with the purpose of making it intelligible through and to the intellect. The City of God is supposed to demonstrate and illustrate the fact that in so far as the purpose of the human will is intellectual, it relates to the concrete historical reality of human life on earth in such a way that every individual event and act affecting life in time and space has implications for eternity. Every individual human will restored (in baptism) at the level of the intellect and sustained (in perseverance) by God’s grace is predestined to eternal (everlasting) happiness and glory, every human will remaining in the state of original sin and not being restored or sustained after being restored in that way is left to eternal

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damnation;85 and the unimaginable pains suffered by the damned are meant to be as real and concrete as the unimaginable joy relished by the saved.

Conclusion In summary, City of God (especially books 11 to 22) illustrates in a drastic way the synthetic character of Augustine’s concept of the human will. On the one hand the will seems to be a rather limited power, obviously not in charge of the world, as the numerous techniques of divination in pagan religions and theories of fate in pagan philosophies illustrate. But on the other hand a closer look at the truths of Platonic philosophy and the Biblical message reveals that there is a depth dimension to it which links it to the intellect and through it to the will, that is the intellect, of God; and suddenly the most insignificant acts in time and space take on a most grave (eternal) importance. The will is a Janus-faced concept, destined to raise the highest hopes in some, while horrifying others, making some believe that it denies freedom, and others that it provides the only way in which one can properly speak of freedom; and this is indeed how it seems to have been handed down in the history of western philosophy and theology since. Some scholars have rightly stressed its intellectualist trait, influenced by an ancient (middle- and neo-Platonist) philosophical tradition. Others derived from it the presentation, or rather, misrepresentation, of the will as a unified power of either good or evil (!) nature without considering that Augustine thought of it merely as a part of a complex of powers within the mind-soul constituted by the intellect. As some have pointed out, this latter tendency, which was particularly strong between the thirteenth and the eighteenth century, after which it became gradually obsolete86 may have led to a ‘culpabilization’87 of intellectual, moral and spiritual life unprecedented in the ancient world and unparalleled outside the western world.88 Although, or better, because both tendencies are already present in Augustine’s own work it would be wrong to blame, as it is sometimes done, the latter tendency entirely on Augustine himself. Augustine may have been hesitant to commit himself to a particular concept of the soul, in his analyses of the links between intellect and will, however, he was consistently working with such a concept; and although he developed the concept of an evil will, his preeminent concern, as I have tried to show in this chapter, was not to demonstrate the antagonism between the good and the evil will, but the way in which the (good)

Augustine on the will 73 will was constituted and given its purpose by the power of the intellect as constituted by divine grace.

Notes 1 G.J.P. O’Daly, ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics’, in: G. Vesey (ed.), The Philosophy in Christianity, Cambridge 1989, pp. 85–97. 2 Ibid., p. 89; cf. J.M. Rist, ‘Augustine on Free Will and Predestination’, in Journal of Theological Studies, NS, vol. 20, 1969, pp. 420–47, at p. 421. On the innovative character of Augustine’s concept of the will, cf. A. Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, Berkeley, 1982. 3 O’Daly, ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics,’ p. 90; cf. especially, the instructive comments on On John’s Gospel (In Ioannis Evangelium Tractatus), 48.4, 6; 107.7; 111.5; 68. 1; On the Literal Truth of Genesis (De Genesi ad Litteram), 6.11.19; Predestination of the Saints (De Praedestinatione Sanctorum), 9.18. 4 O’Daly ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics’, p. 91: ‘For Augustine, the notion of “compulsion of the will” (cogi velle) is nonsensical’ (Unfinished Work Against Julian [Opus Imperfectum contra Iulianum] 1.10 1). 5 One might call this ‘active determination’, an expression not actually used by O’Daly, but compare this with ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s ethics’, p. 91: ‘Augustine…is convinced…that we have the power to do X through, and only through, the means of willing X… The notion of passive determination is contradicted by the…facts of human psychology.’ Cf. also A. Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, pp. 123–32, 231–8; G.J.P. O’Daly, Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind, London, 1987, pp. 43–5, 84–7, 108–11, 132–3 (on intentio). 6 O’Daly, ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics’, p. 91. 7 Ibid. O’Daly points out that this is different from Jansenism, which speaks of compulsion of the will. Cf. J. Burnaby, Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St Augustine, London, 1938, pp. 219–52, esp. pp. 222, 231; Rist, ‘Augustine on Free Will and Predestination’, pp. 434–40; Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, 34.60. 8 O’Daly, ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics’, p. 93. 9 O’Daly, ibid., p. 96. 10 Ibid.; see also A. Kenny, The God of the Philosophers, Oxford, 1979, pp. 83–6. 11 C. Kirwan, Augustine, London, 1989, pp. 102–28. 12 J. Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue, Cambridge, 1992. 13 Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue; cf. H.G. Frankfurt, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, in Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, 1971, pp. 5–20. 14 Rist, ‘Augustine on Free Will and Predestination’. 15 Rist, Augustine, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 184, 188–202. 16 T.D.J. Chappell, Aristotle and Augustine on Freedom, London, 1996. 17 J. Lössl, Intellectus gratiae: die Erkenntnistheoretische und Hermeneutische Dimension der Gnadenlehre Augustins, Leiden, 1997. 18 On Free Choice of the Will, 1.2.4; cf. Confessions (Confessiones), 7.7.11.

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19 Cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 1.1.1; 3.3.6; 3.15.42–3.23.75. In On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine considered these conditions, in particular ignorantia and difficultas, more as punishment for sin rather than as sin in themselves, as in later stages of his intellectual development. The latter view resembles the Manichean position rather more strongly than the former. However, Augustine never abandons the, rather ‘un-Manichean’ notion of intellect as the prime starting point of conversion through grace. Cf. also Chappell, Aristotle and Augustine on Freedom, pp. 130–9. 20 Against the Academics. 21 Against the Academics, 3.20.43; Confessions, 5.10.19. Interestingly, Academic positions are presented in great detail in Against the Academics. In the same way as Manicheism, scepticism attracted Augustine because it sanctioned the imperfect ‘status quo’: “If it is impossible to reach perfect happiness through moral and intellectual effort, why not assume that it suffices to ‘seek it?” (R. Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, London, 1983, p. 150). Rist (Augustine, pp. 41–8) points to ‘sceptical’ positions in Augustine, for example: (1) Our learning depends on God. (2) In some sense no one can learn anything from anyone. He does not mention Philo of Alexandria (De Ebrietate 162–200) as a possible source (cf. J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, London,1977, pp. 143ff.), probably because Philo is unlikely to have influenced Augustine directly (cf. Rist, Augustine, pp. 262–5). However, traces of De Ebrietate 167 can be found in Against the Academics, 2.2.5 and 2.5.12. 22 The Happy Life (De Beata Vita), 1.4. 23 Cf. Rist, Augustine, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 51, 60–2. Lössl, Intellectus Gratiae, p. 200: ‘Da verwandelt sich Streben nach Einsicht in Gebet’. T.J van Bavel, ‘Review of Lössl’, in Augustiniana, vol. 47, 1997, pp. 401–2. 24 Against the Academics, 2.1 1; 2.3.9; 3.20.43; On Order (De Ordine), 2.7.24; The Happy Life, 4.34; The Teacher (De Magistro), 38; On Free Choice of the Will, 2.2.18; further references and literature can be found in Lössl, Intellectus Gratiae, pp. 23–4. 25 The three crucial works in that regard, To Simplicianus (Ad Simplicianum) (especially 1.2 on predestination – an exegesis of Romans 9), Confessions on Augustine’s own paradigmatic experience of the universal and irresistible power of God’s grace, and On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana) on Biblical hermeneutics (a work strongly influenced by the Donatist theologian Tyconius) appeared almost simultaneously in 397. 26 Cf. On Romans, 55 and 60–2. 27 Obviously, as mentioned above, this serves to refute scepticism as well as Manicheism. Cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 1.1.1; 6.15; 15.32, 3.5.13; 9.26; 16. 28 Cf. 83 Questions, 68.4. 29 Cf. V. Grossi, ‘La cuestion de la voluntad salvifica en los últimos escritos de Agustín (420–27)’, in Augustinus, vol. 36, 1991, pp. 127–39. Augustine understands his concept as one of universal salvation because it eliminates what he conceives as the necessity of universal damnation. 30 Thus the subtitle of an instructive paper by M. Djuth, ‘The Hermeneutics of De libero arbitrio III’, in Studia Patristica, vol. 27, 1993, pp. 281–9. 31 He does so especially in book 3, most sections of which he wrote only shortly before publishing the work; cf. also The Trinity (De Trinitate),

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32 33

34 35

36 37

38

39

40 41

15.13.22 (creation does not precede God’s knowledge of it, rather the creatures exist first in God’s mind, then on their own account. ‘He created, because he knew, not knew because he created’). On a critique of this view, cf. Kirwan, Augustine, p. 102. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.3.6. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.17–8. Cf. On the Predestination of the Saints, 10.19, that God, while knowing everything he causes, does not necessarily cause ‘everything’ he knows (although such ‘things’ are not things in the strictest sense, but deficiencies caused by evil willing). Cf. Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, Duckworth, 1983, pp. 253–67. Kirwan, Augustine, pp. 96–8. On p. 96 op. cit., Kirwan seems to make a concession. Augustine’s position is contradictory, ‘if willing falls within the range’ of j-ing, i.e. any possible human act. Thus Kirwan seems to concede that there is the possibility, in the context of a philosophy of mind, that willing could be something entirely different from committing acts like walking or thinking. More on this below. Consolation of Philosophy, 5.6. Cf. also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.14, a.13. Cf. the closing passages of book 2, especially On Free Choice of the Will, 2.19. 53–20.54. On the deficient cause of evil willing, see also City of God, 12. Note that apart from human wills Augustine also posits the wills of angels. Since angels are created outside the framework of time and space, their wills are unchangeable, having willed once and for all. On City of God, 12 see also the discussion in Kirwan, Augustine, 73–4. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.9.26; cf. also To Simplicianus, 1.2.18 (God hates the sin and loves the sinner, in the case of the damned by allowing them to be damned rather than not to exist). To assume an intrinsic evil is therefore absurd. By preventing created wills from getting their way when verging towards nothing, God allows for evil to exist rather than nothing. Thus evil is something good, which is spoiled by some created will (including that will itself), but held in existence by God. In consequence even the damned are to be considered happier than if they did not exist, since they are part of an harmonious universe. Cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.1.1–3.5.15. Augustine would probably (and rightly) assume that this view of the absoluteness of human willing is compatible with Boethius’ distinction. Cf. note 35 above. If willing falls within the range of j-ing, every single act of j-ing could as well be declared essentially different from any other. It even has to in a philosophy-of-mind framework. How else, for example, could we distinguish someone’s dozing from someone else’s preparing a speech or a third person’s calculating the square root of forty-five. A behaviourist would say there is nothing to distinguish, all three persons display the same behaviour (lying on the sofa). Augustine, however, would say, there are three different states of mind, whatever different external manifestations there are. In his view it is at this level that human and divine will interact. Therefore the prayer in Psalm 18:13: ‘Cleanse me from what is hidden to me and liberate me from what is not my own!’ Cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.10.29. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.9.28.

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42 Cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.15.42–16.46. 43 Cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 2.8; 3.69; M. Baltes and D. Lau, ‘Animal’, in Augustinus-Lexikon, 1988, pp. 356–74, at p. 358. 44 Cf. 83 Questions (De Diversis Quaestionibus 83), 36.1; Against Faustus (Contra Faustum), 21.7; Confessions, 9.9. 45 Cf. Retractations, 1.9. 46 Cf Retractations, 1.9.2. 47 Wetzel, op. cit., pp. 92–8. 48 Chappell, op. cit., p. 206. 49 Wetzel, op. cit., p. 96. 50 Cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.2.8; 3.8.32. 51 In To Simplicianus, 1.1.11, Augustine for the first time uses the term originale peccatum. From now on he stresses the guilt rather than just the punishment transmitted through Original Sin. 52 To Simplicianus, 1.2.4. 53 To Simplicianus, 1.2.12. 54 Cf. On Free Choice of the Will, 3.2.8 and 3.8.32. 55 Cf. notes 35 and 39, above. 56 We have already mentioned the remark in To Simplicianus, 1.2.18 (ut ordinate disperdat) that God may be considered as actively condemning sinners; cf. also in 1.2.8 the expression praedestinare. 57 Thus Wetzel, op. cit., pp. 126–38, in the heading to the chapter in which he relates the issue. 58 Confessions, 8.8.20. Interestingly, this recalls the anti-Manichean thrust of On Free Choice of the Will. 59 Wetzel, op. cit., p. 137. 60 Cf. Wetzel, op. cit., pp. 2–4. 61 Chappell, op. cit., pp. 201, 206 62 On this period, cf. W. Simonis, ‘Heilsnotwendigkeit der Kirche und Erbsünde bei Augustinus’, in C. Andresen (ed.), Zum Augustinus-Gespräch der Gegenwart II, Darmstadt, 1981, pp. 301–28. 63 Merits and Remission, 2.1–5. 64 An allusion to Matthew 6:13 (ne nos inferas in temptationem), which is quoted more than 500 times in Augustine’s works; cf. on this my ‘Matthew 6:13 in Augustine’s later works’, in Studia Patristica, vol. 33, 1997, pp. 167–72. 65 Cf. Merits and Remission, 1.9. Other references besides Romans 5:12 and Ephesians 2:3 are Psalm 50:7, Job 14:4–5 and John 3:5; cf. Kirwan, Augustine, 131ff. 66 Cf. above On Free Choice of the Will, 1.1.1. 67 A philosophical analysis of this complex has already been provided in On Free Choice of the Will 3 (cf. above notes 65–7). Here Augustine only adds the Biblical foundations to his theory. 68 Augustine does not understand original guilt as some form of collective guilt. 69 Cf. also Kirwan, Augustine, pp. 129–42; Rist, Augustine, Cambridge, 1996 pp. 317–27. 70 Cf. Kirwan, op. cit., pp. 71, 138ff. 71 Even against Julian of Eclanum; cf. Unfinished Work, 1.10.1; Wetzel, op. cit., pp. 197–206.

Augustine on the will 77 72 According to Wetzel, op. cit., this is exactly how Rist, in ‘Augustine on Free Will and Predestination’ article (1969), treats the matter. 73 Unfinished Work against Julian, 1.44.46–51. 74 Ibid., 6.40. 75 Cf. The Trinity, 3.7.12–9.18; City of God (De Civitate Dei), 12.25–26; 22.24; On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 9.15. 26ff; 16.29; Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, pp. 302–5. 76 On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 1.1.1; cf. A. Solignac, ‘Exégèse et métaphysique. Genèse 1:1–3 chez saint Augustin’, in In principio. Interprétations des premières versets de la Genèse, Paris, 1973, pp. 153–71. 77 Cf. on most of those aspects Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, pp. 30–2, 83, 123–4, 189–90, 233–5, 240–1, 251, 256, 263–5, 302–5. 78 Cf. On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 1.1.2; A. Solignac, ‘Le caractère aporétique du De Genesi ad Litteram’, in La Genèse au sens littéral I-VII, Bibliothèque Augustinienne, vol. 43, Paris, 1972, pp. 575–80. 79 Again, this is a reminder of Boethius’ concept of human free will as an ‘absolute freedom of a second order’. Cf. note 35, above. 80 Cf. in this regard already the demonstration, or proof, of God’s existence in On Free Choice of the Will, 2. 81 Cf. The Trinity, 6.7 (love is God’s substance); 8.14; 9.2; 15.27; 15.28; 15.31; 15.37. 82 The Trinity, 15.38. Augustine relates that the point was made by Eunomius who held that the Son was not of the same substance as the Father. 83 The Trinity, 15.43. 84 Cf. City of God, 1 praef. 85 Original sin and the two wills are analysed in City of God, 11–14, eternal happiness and damnation in City of God, 19–22. Books 1 to 10 focus on pagan Roman culture in contrast to the Christian concept, books 15 to 18 on Biblical and Christian history. Obviously, this is only a rough outline of the complex structure of the work. 86 It was because the Platonic foundations were withdrawn from thirteenthto eighteenth-century voluntarism that the concept became ultimately obsolete, since necessitation was now understood as compulsion of the will. Theologians of the Reformation were still able to make sense of that, not so the philosophers of the Enlightenment. See also O’Daly, ‘Predestination and Freedom in Augustine’s Ethics’, pp. 92–5. 87 Cf. J. Delumeau, Le Péché et la Peur. La Culpabilisation en Occident. XIIIe-XVIIIe Siècles, Paris ,1983. 88 Even the eastern Christian tradition remained largely unaffected by it, as the lack of enthusiasm in the eastern Church for supporting Augustine’s anti-Pelagian polemic shows.

4

The effect of the will on judgement Thomas Aquinas on faith and prudence Carlos Steel

In the last pages of his famous History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell remarks: Philosophy, throughout its history, has consisted of two parts inharmoniously blended: on the one hand a theory as to the nature of the world, on the other an ethical or political doctrine as to the best way of living. The failure to separate these two with sufficient clarity has been a source of much confused thinking.1 For my part, I have always sought to blend these two aspects of philosophy – the search for truth and the pursuit of good – and I believe that it is precisely this blending that accounts for philosophy’s continuing appeal during this age in which the rationality of the sciences is entirely disconnected from the way in which we experience and conduct our lives.2 Of course, these two pursuits are essentially distinct. On the one hand, there is the disinterested quest for truth, the desire to know how things are, to know ‘the constitution of the universe’, as Russell puts it. This inquiry comes to an end in a theoretical judgement in which we either affirm or deny that such and such is the case, whether we like this state of affairs or not. On the other hand, there is the search for a good way of living, for what is enjoyable, what makes us happy and flourishing, what gives meaning to our lives. This is not primarily a matter of knowing and judging; it depends, rather, on our basic desires and on the corresponding goals of our actions. We want certain states of affairs to come about and make efforts in that direction, while we desire that others do not happen and try to stave them off. The disinterested search for the truth regarding the nature of things is an activity of the intellect, while the interested pursuit of the good is the proper object of the will. There is, however, as Thomas Aquinas often repeats, a circular relation between the will and the

Will and judgement 79 intellect. For, as rational beings, we can desire only what we apprehend as a good; therefore all appetite follows upon some judgement. On the other hand, the will moves the intellect and influences the ways in which we understand and judge reality. As Thomas puts it: One must say that the will and the intellect include each other mutually. For the intellect thinks the will and the will wants the intellect to think. One must consider that the act of the will and the act of reason can reflect upon each other mutually: for reason reasons about willing and the will wills reasoning.3 In this chapter, I examine, with Thomas, the manner in which the will can influence rational judgement, limiting my investigation to those cases in which the will has a constitutive effect upon judgement, or, as Thomas says, in which the will is an antecedent cause.4 Thus, I shall not investigate all of the possible – indeed innumerable – cases in which the will might exert an accidental, inessential, and often perverse effect upon judgement. For, as many truths are painful to live with, and as many others are comforting or edifying, we might strongly desire that some state of affairs either is or is not the case. Thus, we might be inclined to interpret the information on which we base our judgements in such a way as to reach favourable conclusions. We all can cite examples of this from our daily lives and from academic research. Here, Russell is right to warn us against manipulating the truth for the sake of consolation or edification. Of course, in a certain sense, the will is always an antecedent cause, inasmuch as it is the motivator of all our activities, including our rational acts. In this sense all intellectual activities and their corresponding habits, such as science or wisdom, can be said to follow upon acts of the will. Those intellectual virtues, however, depend on the will, not in their specific constitution (in genere naturae), but only as regards their use. We construct scientific arguments, for instance, only when we want them, and, in that sense, science follows upon our willing. However, the scientific character of our understanding does not depend upon our willing. When in reasoning we arrive at an incontrovertible conclusion following upon incontrovertible premisses, we cannot but assent to this conclusion. We cannot refuse to assent, even if we should wish to; neither can we be forced to deny what we discern to be true, whether we come by this truth immediately or inferentially. Therefore, the knowledge of mathematics or physics does not depend, in its specific nature, upon any act of the will. To be sure, there must

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always be an act of the will commanding us to study this or that theory; and if we take no interest in it, or have other, stronger desires at the moment, then we will not study it. Moreover, in the absence of a deep-seated urge to know the truth, we would not dedicate our lives to research. But even if we do not care for the noble aim of knowledge for its own sake, we still cannot but assent to a mathematical conclusion once we understand that it logically follows from certain premisses, just as we cannot refuse to judge that a table is white once we perceive that it is so. It seems, then, that intellectual activity is somehow a ‘natural’ process: in the absence of outside interference (from the will or passions) the conclusion is arrived at by necessity from the evidence of certain principles. For this reason Thomas denies to the will all antecedent causality regarding science, maintaining instead that the will functions as the ‘motivator’ or ‘commander’ of intellectual activity. Its role, according to Thomas, concerns the use of that activity, not its constitution. Now, owing to this relation of the intellect to the will, activities like academic research can take on a moral character (in genere moris): they can be done in either a blameworthy or praiseworthy manner. We can, for example, engage in scientific investigation either out of vanity or out of the desire to contemplate the order of the universe, the first being a sinful endeavour, the second a virtuous one. However, this moral qualification of the act as either sinful or virtuous does not give the specification of the act. What makes science good or bad science has nothing to do with what makes it moral or immoral science. The former qualification depends only on the nature of the intellect, its natural ‘light’ and principles, whereas the latter depends upon the will and its intentions regarding the use of the science.5 There are, however, some intellectual virtues that depend on the will not merely in their use but also in their specific constitution. Following Thomas, I shall examine two such virtues, faith and prudence, the former being a virtue of theoretical reason, the latter of practical reason.6 That the will plays an important role in the making of a practical judgement is obvious, since a practical judgement is an objective, neutral judgement concerning not only how things are but also how they ought to be by means of our action (‘agibilia’). Indeed, we would not act unless we were desirous of achieving certain goals. However, before turning to the complicated case of practical judgement and the interaction between will and reason in the making of such a judgement, I shall explore the role of the will in the formation of a theoretical judgement about how things are, as happens in an act of faith.7

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Faith Against the Augustinian tradition, Thomas argues that, formally speaking, believing is an act of the intellect, a cognitive act, and not an act of the will, since its object is truth. (And how can the act of adhering to a truth possibly be an act of the will?) It is not because we intensely desire the existence of a certain state of affairs, that we can affirm it to be true that it indeed exists. Certainly, the will to believe is, as we will see, a determining factor in the formation of faith, but this is no reason to regard belief itself as an act of the will. Thomas avoids that confusion by maintaining that the act of belief, although moved by the will, is formally an act of the intellect. In order to evaluate the will’s precise role in the cognitive act, let us examine how the intellect assents to the truth.8 According to Thomas, this assent can occur in one of two ways. First – and this is the usual way – the intellect can assent by being determined by the known object itself. Consider, for example, a self-evident proposition, the truth of which is known by the definition of its terms; or consider the conclusion of a scientific demonstration. In such cases the knower is forced to assent to the truth by the necessity of the fully intelligible content. This is the state of mind called ‘science’. In other cases, however, the intellect is not forced to adhere to a particular proposition. Due to a lack of evidence, due to the fact that the reasons supporting one proposition are no better than those supporting its contradiction (for example, the soul is immortal; the soul is mortal), the intellect leans neither towards one nor the other proposition, but is left in a state of doubt. It might also happen that the intellect leans towards one rather than the other proposition, but that, while accepting one proposition, yet fears that the other might be true: Thomas calls this holding an ‘opinion’ about a particular state of affairs. When the intellect is not fully determined by the known object, it remains open to the other possibility. The intellect can be determined in another way, however: not by its object (as in the case of science), but by the will. It may happen that there are no strictly determining rational grounds for assenting to the truth of a proposition but that we none the less assent to it, because we choose to, because it seems ‘good’ and ‘fitting’ to believe a particular proposition. This is often the case with our general beliefs about the world and human life. Although there are no strictly demonstrative arguments for the belief that we will be alive next week, we firmly believe this without doubt or fear; and we believe this because it strikes us as a good and fitting belief. For most of us, the will’s role is limited in this example, since there exists enough evidence (our age

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and physical condition) to ground this belief. However, when the arguments grounding a belief are weaker, the will plays a more prominent role in the constitution of a belief. Thus we might possess some evidence and some arguments for the belief that the mind will survive the death of the body, but the grounds are insufficient to warrant such a belief. If we none the less believe in the soul’s immortality, this is because our will is strongly inclined to believe this truth. Of course, as we have seen, just because we desire that a certain state of affairs exists does not mean that that state of affairs does indeed exist. Otherwise we should feel free to believe whatever we desire. According to Thomas, the intellect, in forming a belief, must always have good reasons for assenting to one particular proposition rather than another. The will does not provide extra grounds for the truth. It plays only an indirect, extrinsic role.9 It helps the intellect adhere firmly and without doubt to the truth; and so it transforms an intellectual disposition that in itself would be a mere opinion into a firm belief without fear of the contrary. Thus the will determines the intellect, not in so far as the truth is concerned (only the intellect can judge truth), but by making the intellect firmly adhere to the truth of a thesis without fearing the truth of its antithesis. Thus far we have been examining faith in general. We must distinguish, however, Christian faith from natural, human faith. For Christians, religious faith is not simply a special instance of the general species ‘belief; it is of another kind, not naturally acquired, but infused, a theological, God-given virtue. Thomas calls Christian belief an ‘act of the intellect assenting to divine truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of God’.10 This gift of faith is required because the truth about our ultimate destination as revealed to us by God surpasses all human reason. Without God’s grace, which elevates and perfects the natural capacity of the will, we could never firmly assent to this supernatural truth.11 But how are we to understand ‘the help of God’s grace’? It is often said in the Christian tradition that grace enables us to achieve a higher understanding, that through the light of faith we come to see things and events differently. Certainly; but how does this light function? In Thomas’s view, faith does not provide us with a kind of supernatural, mystical knowledge, since divine truth remains, even in faith, beyond all human understanding. God’s grace moves us not by means of the intellect (per viam intellectu) but by means of the will (per viam voluntatis): it makes us desire what is revealed as our supreme good.12 As believers, we are moved to believe in a divine revelation because we are strongly drawn towards the promise of eternal happiness. This, again, is why the certainty of

Will and judgement 83 belief is founded upon affection and not upon intellectual power. In fact, in its cognitive aspect, belief remains an act of the deliberative intellect that is always accompanied by some kind of inquiry; it is a cogitatio, as Augustine says, that never attains the perfection of a clear vision.13 Seen as a purely cognitive disposition, belief comes close to opinion, conjecture and doubt. It is only through the influence of the will that belief acquires the firmness that sets it apart from these other inferior forms of knowledge. Thomas’s position on the respective roles of the intellect and will in an act of faith is excellently summarized in the Summa contra Gentiles: In the knowledge of faith the will takes priority; indeed, the intellect assents through faith to things presented to it, because of an act of the will, and not because it is necessarily moved by the very evidence of the truth.14 As is evident, Thomas draws a very clear distinction between faith and science: both are virtues, or good dispositions, of the theoretical intellect, enabling us to grasp the truth; but whereas faith is knowledge under the commandment of the will, science is without any interference from the will except insofar as it becomes perverted. One might doubt whether the distinction between the two dispositions of the intellect is always so clear. For we know that the will and its aspirations play an important role in all theoretical reasoning. This role may be less important in a purely mathematical science, but what about metaphysics, which for Thomas is the supreme science? We cannot deny that philosophers inquiring into the first cause of being have an ‘interest’ in this inquiry, for the conclusion they arrive at might well have implications for their understanding of the ultimate meaningfulness or absurdity of their lives. Therefore, their wills also play a role in their argumentation. They might wish to prove the existence of a first cause, to prove that this cause is omnipotent and good, that human beings are not merely the result of the blind mechanism of evolution. In this sense, most metaphysical speculations have been motivated in various ways by our quest for meaning. And it is precisely for this reason that Russell rejected most of metaphyics; that is, he rejected it as a manipulative project subordinating the truth about the nature of the universe to our desire for edification and consolation.15 It seems doubtful, however, that a purely disinterested science is possible (particularly a disinterested human science such as sociology or psychology) and that its ‘objectivity’ is not often a disguise for implicit

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interests. Habermas has argued that no real understanding is possible without some ‘interest’.16 We could also argue that today there is no longer a clear distinction between speculative and practical knowledge, as there was in the pre-modern age. If we admit that the will plays an essential role in practical judgement, and if we hold that all knowing is somehow a making of the object, then we must also accept that the will might be an essential factor in our theoretical understanding of the world – a claim made by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche! Of course, all of this diffiers radically from Thomas’s view of science and faith. For on his view, the will plays no role in a scientific account of the nature of the world, no matter how great our practical interest might be in the actual exercise of science. To attribute such a function to the will can only lead to manipulation of the truth in function of our desires and reduce it to the status of a belief. In that sense Thomas is not so far from Russell in his rejection of the desire of edification as an essential element in understanding. But practice shows that many sciences, and certainly many metaphysical speculations, are closer to forms of faith than is allowed for in Thomas’s nice distinction.

Prudence I shall turn now to Thomas’s understanding of practical judgement. Here the interaction between the will and reason is at its most evident. For the will is even an intrinsic constituent in the formation of the judgement itself, which is not the case with faith, where the will remains an external, albeit an essential, factor, forcing us to adhere to revealed truth. As we will see, the volitional and the intellectual are respectively the material and formal element in the constitution of a practical judgement. Therefore the ultimate conclusion of practical reasoning is by that very fact an act of choice (electio), that is, a decision to act in a particular way. Freedom of judgement-choice All animals endowed with cognition develop desires upon the apperception of some good or evil. On the basis of this apperception they form a sort of practical judgement regarding what is to be done or avoided. Brute animals, however, are inclined by natural appetite to their good, which is uniform and the same for each species. Further, even if they react upon a perception, they do this through a natural judgement (iudicium naturale) and an instinctive inclination. Thus every sparrow builds its nest in the same way, and every lamb flees

Will and judgement 85 when it sees the wolf. It does not lie within the animal’s power to judge, desire, or act differently from what it actually does. Similarly, human beings are inclined to their own good by some natural appetite (for they all desire to be happy, to live in a community, to procreate), but since this good consists in many and varied things, according to different conditions, times, places, and so on, a natural, or instinctive, appetite is not enough for them; neither does a natural judgement, which is uniform, suffice for determining human good. Hence each person should seek and judge his own proper good according to the conditions under which it is here and now to be sought. This determination of the good must come through reason, which is able to consider diverse aspects of things.17 For, in fact, things may be good from one perspective while bad from another, and some goods may exclude other goods. Reason has this discriminative power because, being a reflexive power, it is able to consider its own acts. Therefore, rational beings can judge their own judgements (iudicare de iudicio suo) and thereby control the very judgements that will govern their action. Thus only human beings, which are rational animals, enjoy freedom of choice, because only they have freedom of judgement (liberum arbitrium). In fact, as Thomas remarks, the root of all freedom (totius libertatis radix) lies in the power of reason precisely owing to reason’s capacity for reflection.18 However, that does not lead Thomas to conclude that the subject or principle of the liberum arbitrium must be reason. To be sure, in so far as it involves an act of judgement, the liberum arbitrium is sufficiently accounted for by the power of reason. However, reason as such is not sufficient to explain the free character of this judgement. Free judgment requires not only a capacity for reflection (implying thereby that it is an act of reason), but requires in addition some influence of the will (to explain the libere iudicare). Therefore the freedom of judgement, which must also be understood as the freedom of choice (electionis), is ultimately situated in the will as in its subject, not in reason. This may seem difficult to admit. Of course, we moderns have no problem in accepting that choice, or decision, is a proper act of the will, a decision to take one action rather than another. After all, we have been through centuries of voluntaristic and decisionistic theories. But how could the arbitrium, the judgement itself, be attributed to the will? Aristotle himself cannot make up his mind whether to regard proairesis (or choice) as primarily a rational or a volitional act. Indeed, he calls it both an intellectus appetitivus (orektikos nous) and an appetitus intellectivus (orexis dianoetike).19 Following Aristotle,

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Thomas raises the question ‘whether election (or choice) is an act of the will or of reason’. The objection against taking the will to be the agent of choice is obvious: Not only do inquiry and argumentation belong to reason, but also conclusion. But a choice is, as it were, the conclusion of a deliberation, as is made clear in the Ethics. Since deliberation belongs to reason, choice also belongs to reason.20 But in giving his own answer to this question, Thomas goes beyond Aristotle. Choice, according to Thomas, is definitely an act of the will, but only insofar as it is determined by the intellect. In fact, Thomas distinguishes two aspects in the process that leads to a practical decision. On the one hand, we have deliberation, comparison and evaluation, judgement, all of which are certainly cognitive activities. Through this process the action that is rationally preferable to others will come about. However, this final conclusion is as much an act of the will as of the intellect, for it is the will that, either by directing the sensible appetites or by executing them, places values, preferences, desirable objects, into the deliberative process. For in practical reasoning we always deliberate within a set of values that are given beforehand. Therefore, the final preference, or proairesis, is not simply a conclusion, as it is in an instance of speculative reasoning; rather, it is a decision, for it is the concretization of a particular intention of the will. As Thomas says in his reply to the above mentioned objection: The conclusion of a practical inquiry is of two kinds: one is in reason, and this is the judgement (sententia) about what has been deliberated upon. The other is in the will, and this is choice (electio). We may call the choice by analogy the ‘conclusion’ of the practical reasoning. For just as in speculative matters the discourse finally comes to rest in the conclusion, so in matters of operation it comes to its end in doing (in operatione). [Therefore]… although the judgement, when taken absolutely, does not pertain to the will, the judgement of choice (electio) does belong to the will, not however taken absolutely, but insofar as the force of reason remains in it.21 Because the will is the ultimate principle, or support, of the activity of choice, we can say that choice is materially an act of the will but formally an act of reason.22 However, choice receives its formal character through the rational process that leads to this rather than that

Will and judgement 87 particular decision. Thus deliberation and decision are, as form and matter, the two aspects of one and the same practical judgement, which ends not in a mere conclusion, but in a conclusion that is an immediately operative decision (like the final decision of a tribunal).23 There is, then, no way to go against a practical decision, for the appetite, which is a constitutive element in the weighing and deliberating, can never be contrary to the final conclusion-decision. So it is not possible to conclude that some particular action is for me, here and now, the best thing to do, and yet not do it (unless external circumstances prevent my action). A frequently raised objection against Thomas’s view of choice as the ultimate conclusion of a rational deliberation, an objection which reveals a deep misunderstanding of his view, is that it leads to someform of intellectual determinism. For it would seem that, on this view, we cannot avoid taking that option that seems rationally the best. This was already a common objection in Aquinas’s own time, which he formulates in his discussion of liberum arbitrium in De Veritate as follows: The philosophers define free choice as a free judgement of reason (liberum de ratione arbitrium). The judgement of reason, however, can be constrained by the force of demonstration. But what is constrained is not free. Man is therefore not endowed with free choice.24 In his reply Thomas shows that the judgements to which freedom is attributed are judgements of choice, something quite different from those judgements made in the speculative sciences, which are constrained by the rational evidence and in which the will plays no role. There has been, since the late thirteenth century, a great deal of discussion of the problem of intellectual determinism, and many have sought to defend Thomas against this charge. Some of these authors, in attempting to solve the problem, have developed the distinction found in Thomas’s later works between the exercise and the specification of a volitional act. The will is only the motivating power of actions, whereas the influence of the intellect is just formal. The intellect gives the specification to the volitional act: I am choosing this or that action.25 It seems, however, that this distinction does not suffice to escape intellectualism. For this reason, many scholars have insisted that the will is truly free in its choice only if it also has an influence on the formal specification it receives from the intellect. This is the case

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since the will can freely move our intellectual attention from one aspect to another. Because of this shift of attention we can see courses of actions and their objects under different aspects and thus determine the specifications of our choice. We are not rationally determined in our choice, since we can modify the cognitive specifications of our willing through the shift of attention. This solution is defended by David Gallagher in a recent article.26 However, as Gallagher himself remarks, the problem with this explanation of free choice is that it tends to make the act of choice into something irrational: Does not this explanation of choice make it something arbitrary and, in the final analysis, wholly irrational? [For Thomas does]…not attempt to find another, prior judgment which would explain why the will acted according to this judgment and not according to that. […] It belongs ultimately to the will, or better to the willing person to determine which judgment will govern an action. We cannot give a reason other than the will itself, why the will acts according to that particular reason. […] We can find no reason that eliminates the radical contingency of freedom, but rather we can only acknowledge its character as a mystery. I shall not further examine the ‘mystery’ of freedom along these lines. However, it seems to me that this explanation of the interaction of will and reason must end at an impasse, because it gives too much weight to the shift of attention. But, in the formation of a practical judgement and choice, the role of the will is much more fundamental than that of shifting attention, whereby we let the intellect go from one consideration to another. The will is primarily oriented to the goals of action, and thereby strongly influences the apperception of the first principles of practical reasoning. For, as we know, in practical deliberation the principles are the ends or goals. The will and the first principles of practical reasoning Unlike Aristotle, Thomas emphasizes that human reason is not, of itself, the rule of what ought to be done. In its practical reasoning and decision-making, human reason must start from the first principles of morality, which are naturally known. These are the so-called principles of natural law, of which the judgement of conscience is an application. Whenever Thomas argues that there must be such naturally known first principles for practical reasoning he draws a parallel with the process of theoretical reasoning:

Will and judgement 89 Man’s act of reasoning, since it is a kind of movement, proceeds from the understanding of certain things (namely, those which are naturally known without any investigation on the part of reason), as from an immovable principle; it also terminates in the understanding, inasmuch as, by means of those naturally known principles, we judge of those things that we have discovered by reasoning. Now it is clear that, as the speculative reason reasons about speculative matters, so the practical reason reasons about practical matters. Therefore, we must be naturally endowed with not only speculative principles, but also practical principles.27 The first practical principles that we grasp by nature form in our intellect a special habit, which the scholastic tradition calls the synderesis. The act corresponding to this habit, by which we apply these universal practical principles to what must be done, is called conscience (although the term conscience’ may also be used for the synderesis itself). By conscience we judge that an action should or should not be done. In that sense, conscience is a practical judgement with application to the particular. However, as we have seen, the same may be said of the practical judgement of choice, which Thomas calls an applicatio rectae rationis ad opus. How, then, can we differentiate this judgement of prudence from the practical judgement of conscience, except by the obvious fact that the conscience also has a retrospective power, as is evident in remorse or justification, which prudence does not have? It may seem that prudence is simply a further specification of those principles of conscience that are, after all, general even when applied to particular situations. Prudence, then, would be the ultimate application of the principles of conscience to the hic et nunc of action. We often find such an interpretation in the later Thomistic tradition, in which an attempt is made to better integrate the divergent ethics of conscience and prudence. Thomas himself sometimes gives the impression that the prudential judgement is merely a final conclusion in a deductive chain of reasoning that starts from the first principles: Just as in the speculative reason we proceed from naturally known first principles to conclusions, so too it is that from the precepts of natural law as from common and indemonstrate principles the human reason needs to proceed to more particular determinations of certain matter.28

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The danger with this view is that it leads to an intellectualistic understanding of practical judgement and underestimates the role of the will in the applicatio ad opus. Thomas himself, however, corrects such a view, as I shall explain. Although Thomas likes to draw a parallel between the procedures of practical and theoretical reason, he is in fact well aware that the parallel falls short on an essential point. Both in theoretical science and in practical wisdom, a judgement is true when it can be correctly reduced to the respective principles: omne judicium fit per resolutionem ad prima principia. In theoretical knowledge, however, the reduction of the conclusions to the principles happens, as it were, ‘by the nature of the intellect’, or, in Thomas’s phrase, per naturale lumen intellectus agentis. To understand a proposition in the ‘natural light of the intellect’ just means to be capable of reducing the proposition to those principles (axioms or principles taken from experience) on which it ultimately depends. An excellent example of this reduction to principles is geometry, where all propositions are ultimately reduced to self-evident principles. If, then, practical judgement is really a judgement, it must also be reducible to its proper principles. Now, the first principles of practical reasoning are precisely the ends, or goals, towards which our action is directed. As we have seen, the direction to those ends is formulated in the so-called principles of natural law. However, it is not possible in practical reasoning, as it is in theoretical reasoning, to ‘naturally’ deduce the particular conclusions from the first principles. In practical reasoning, the light of reason does not suffice, but, as Thomas shows, an influence of the will is required to help us make the ‘right deduction’ in our judgement. Indeed, to make a correct judgement about what ought to be done, we must be ‘rightly disposed’ to the principles of practical reasoning. But those principles are the ends of our actions. And to these ends human beings are rightly disposed (bene se habet) by the rectitude of the will (per rectitudinem voluntatis), just as they are rightly disposed to the principles of theoretical reasoning by the natural light of the agent intellect. (Summa Theologiae, hereafter ST, 1–1l, q.56, a.3) In fact, the principles from which we begin our deliberation regarding what must be done, here and now, are the ends that we perceive as valuable or deleterious, whatever they may be, from the ideal of chastity to the pleasure of fornication. Therefore, the truth of our moral judgement depends upon the rightness of our appetite. It is

Will and judgement 91 not possible to form a correct practical judgement when our appetites have not been regulated by moral dispositions. If we are angry or jealous or ambitious or cruel or cowardly, then the goals of our action will never lead to a true practical judgement. To arrive at a correct theoretical judgement, on the contrary, the morality of our appetites is not required. Whether we are chaste or licentious, temperate or intemperate, cowardly or courageous, greedy or generous, does not affect the correctness of our judgement. Moral judgement, then, cannot be a mere application of the right principles; rather, such a judgement presupposes an affinity of our appetites to those principles: Ad prudentiam pertinet applicatio rectae rationis ad opus quod non fit sine appetitu recto (ST, 1111, q.47, a.4). As Thomas explains in a rightly celebrated text: The rightness of a judgement can come about in two ways, either through the perfect use of reason or through connaturality with the things on which one has to pass judgement. For example, concerning sexual behavior, the person who has studied moral science may have a right judgement regarding what to do, but this remains a mere theoretical insight, whereas the one who has the virtuous habit of chastity has a right judgement through connaturalitas.29 The effective character of prudence Because the will and the subordinated appetites play an essential role in the constitution of prudence, the latter is not just an intellectual virtue (as are science and the productive arts), but it also has the properties of a moral virtue, which is, for Thomas, virtue in the strict sense. We may define virtue in general as an acquired disposition by which we can perform a certain activity easily and well. However, such a disposition may be directed to the corresponding activity in two ways. First, we may acquire through such a disposition an aptness to perform well. For instance, through the art of grammar we acquire a know-how, which enables us to speak or write correctly; and through the art of music we acquire an ability to play an instrument. Moreover, a purely theoretical science such as geometry can be regarded as a virtue because it perfects the intellect and gives it a capacity to investigate and to solve easily and well, geometrical problems. However, although those intellectual virtues give someone an aptness to act well, they do not make him act well. Thus when we possess the virtue of grammar we can write correctly, but, if we wished to, out of fancy or

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caprice, we can willingly make errors in writing. Similarly, the musician can play false notes, and so on: For it does not follow from the fact that a man has science that he is moved to will the consideration of the truth, but only that he is capable of doing so. And the like may be said of art with respect to the practical intellect: art does not perfect a man so that he wills to produce good works according to the canons of arts: but solely so that he knows how and is capable of doing so. (De Virtutibus, a.7) According to Thomas, this shows that the intellectual virtues are not virtues in the true, or strict, sense. What, then, are virtues in the strict sense? They are those habits that do not merely make us capable of acting rightly; nor do they merely provide us with the know-how to do so; but they also make us willing to do so.30 Consider those possessing the virtue of justice: they have acquired, not only an aptitude to behave justly whenever they are given the opportunity, but an aptitude that makes them act justly (‘facit ut juste operetur’, ST, II-II, q.56, a.3). Thus it is absolutely impossible that a just man would sometimes, for pleasure or out of caprice, behave unjustly, whereas, as we have seen, the good grammarian can, if he so wished, abuse the rules of grammar, and the good card-player can cheat at cards. Thus, a person who has acquired intellectual virtues or arts may be called a good scientist, a good musician, or a good grammarian, but he is not for that reason a good man. Someone is called good absolutely (simplicite) if he has an aptitude that makes him do the good (virtus operativa faciendi bonum), which just is moral virtue. This operative (or effective) character of the moral virtues comes from the fact that they are virtues of the will and of the other appetitive powers in so far as they are moved by the will. For only if a man has a good will, that is, a will directed to the right ends, is he acting rightly.31 It has been shown that only the moral virtues are virtues in the strict sense because they are perfections of our appetitive powers and hence make us desire and do the good. But this effective character of virtue is also found in prudence, although, strictly speaking, prudence is a virtue of the intellect, not of the will. However, as we have seen, prudence is a disposition acquired by the intellect in conformity with the will. Whereas the truth of a theoretical judgement depends on its conformity with reality (accipitur per conformitatem intellectus ad rem), the truth of the practical intellect depends on its conformity with right appetite (per conformitatem as appetitum rectum) because it is about

Will and judgement 93 things to be done through a voluntary action (ST, II-11, q.57, a.5, ad. 3). Through this connection with the will, prudence acquires the effective character that is lacking in the purely intellectual virtues. Conscience and prudence We may now better understand the essential difference between conscience and prudence, although both are in a way an applicatio ad opus.32 (1) The judgement of conscience, which applies universal first principles to the particular conditions of human action, remains basically a cognitive act: iudicium conscientiae consistit in pura cognitione. To be sure, conscience issues a practical judgement concerning what ought to be done – and a binding judgement at that – but it does not enforce its judgement. In this sense, it remains ‘theoretical’, which is similarly the case with ethical theories regarded as further developments of the principles of conscience.33 Thus it is always possible to act against one’s conscience, which, indeed, is the very definition of sin. And, of course, moral philosophers do not always follow the principles of the moral theory that they have developed. However, we can never act against our practical judgement regarding what we ought to do here and now.34 For such a judgement can never be contrary to our desires and always leads to an effective decision, which, again, is not the case with conscience. Thus, it often happens that the judgement of conscience remains correct while the practical judgement to act goes awry. For example, when a man ponders about what is to be done here and now and judges, still speculating, as it were, in the realm of principles, that a certain action is evil, for instance, to have sex with this woman: However, when he comes to apply this rule to acting, many circumstances relevant to the act present themselves from all sides, for instance, the pleasure of the fornication, by the desire of which reason is constrained, so that the dictates may not issue in choice. (De Veritate, q.17, a.1, ad.4) (2) Both prudence and conscience may be wrong in their application to act, but the explanation of their failure is quite different. As the last example shows, practical reasoning often arrives at a wrong conclusion-decision because it starts from principles expressing a perverted order of goals of action. As when we start in our practical reasoning ‘from the major premiss that we must follow pleasure as the supreme

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good’.35 This perversion of our reasoning is due to a disorder in our appetites. Similarly, the judgement of conscience can err, but, as Thomas shows, this error has nothing to do with the problem of disordered appetites. The errors in conscience are, rather, of a cognitive nature. As an example, consider those heretics who regard it as absolutely against the divine commandment to make oaths. This heretical view, according to Thomas, is an error based on a ‘fundamentalistic’ misunderstanding of the Bible, and it is possible to correct this erroneous view through a rational critique. (3) Even when erring, conscience is morally binding. This is, of course, impossible when talking about an erring practical judgement. For it is this ignorance in choice that precisely constitutes the act of sin, whereas the ignorance in conscience (if it is not a willed ignorance) takes away sin. As Thomas says: The ignorance that is opposed to prudence is ignorance in choice (ignorantia electionis): in that sense, every evil man is ignorant, and Socrates is right: nobody knowingly does evil. This ignorance arises from the fact that the judgement of reason is hindered by the inclination of the appetite (intercipitur per appetitus inclinationem), which does not excuse sin but rather constitutes it. But the ignorance that is opposed to practical science (scientiae practicae) does excuse and, at least, diminish sin. (De Virtutibus, a.6, ad.3) (4) Conscience remains fundamentally intact in an immoral person, as shown by the phenomenon of remorse or justification afterwards. But prudence cannot exist in an immoral person, because immorality precisely proceeds from the perversion of our practical judgement.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined, with Thomas, two intellectual virtues in which the role of the will is essential: faith and prudence. In faith the will forces us to adhere to a revealed truth that is not cognitively evident but vitally important for our well being. The influence of the will on this intellectual disposition is very strong: for the will not only determines our adherence to certain principles but makes us accept the whole articulation of the object of faith. There is no vague zone that remains optional and is given to the free research of the indi-

Will and judgement 95 vidual. In the formation of the virtue of prudence the role of the will seems to be more limited. Here the will determines only the principles of practical reasoning, not the decision of the concrete action: ‘prudence is an intellectual habit which depends on the will for its principles’.36 But, once given the correct orientation to the fundamental goals of action, it is up to prudence to further determine, by a process of deliberation and evaluation, the right action. Indeed, we should never forget that prudence remains essentially a virtue of the intellect, a cognitive disposition: hence the whole art of deliberation, investigation, comparing, selecting, deciding. The connection between our practical judgements and our appetites through the moral virtues does not suffice to render us capable of making the right decisions. For, even if we are directed toward the right ends of human life through the virtuous ordering of our appetites, still, unless we know how to realize this end here and now, we could make very foolish, and thus immoral, decisions. Thus we also need a virtue to perfect reason and to render it suitably disposed so as to make the right decisions in view of certain ends, and this virtue is precisely what we call prudence. In this sense, the role of the will is more limited in prudence than in faith, because it only determines the principles of action and lets the conclusive decision be taken by reason. However, in another sense, the will is more constitutive for the formation of prudence, because its intention always gives the basic drift out of which the decision is formed. As we have seen, the will and reason are as the material and formal constituents of a decision. In faith, on the contrary, the will’s role remains, as it were, external. Therefore, faith can persist as a cognitive disposition even in sinners, that is, in those who do not live according to their faith but who are attracted to other ends. To be sure, such a faith without the corresponding behaviour, namely, loving behaviour, will be imperfect, or ‘unformed’, fides informis, as the scholastics say. Nevertheless, faith, in Thomas’s view, even without love, is preserved in its essential nature (in genere naturae). This shows the cleavage between the cognitive attitude and the will acting upon it.37 Regarding prudence, however, it is impossible that it could exist in the sinner because, as we have seen, there can never be a split between our concrete desire and our ultimate decision. Therefore, while prudence remains a man will not sin. Clearly, then, prudence is not of meagre but rather of tremendous importance for virtue – indeed, it is the cause of virtue itself.38

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Notes 1

B. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2nd edn., London, 1961, p. 788. 2 Even Russell could not refrain from blending the two, as he hoped that ‘scientific truthfulness’ might become an ‘inspiring virtue’ in our way of life (ibid., p. 789). 3 See Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST), I, q.16, a.4, ad 1: ‘dicendum quod voluntas et intellectus mutuo se includunt; nam intellectus intelligit voluntatem et voluntas vult intellectum intelligere’; ST, III, q.17, a.1: ‘considerandum est quod quia actus voluntatis et rationis supra se invicem possunt ferri prout scilicet ratio ratiocinatur de volendo et voluntas vult ratiocinari’; ST, I-II q.17, a.3, ad 3: ‘reflectuntur supra se ipsos’; ST, II-II, q.109, a.2, ad 1: ‘intellectus et voluntas invicem se includunt’; De Virtutibus, a.6, ad 5 and a.7: ‘istae duae potentiae scilicet intellectus et voluntas, se invicem circumeunt’. See also ST, I, q.82, aA, ad 1 and I-II, q.9, a.1, ad 3, as well as De Veritate, q.22, a.12c. 4 See De Virtutibus, a.7: ‘Sciendum quod intellectus potest perfici dupliciter aliquo habitu: uno modo abolute et secundum se, prout praecedit voluntatem, quasi eam movens; alio modo prout sequitur voluntatem, quasi ad imperium actum suum eliciens.’ 5 See Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (In Sent), 3, d.23, q.1, a.4, qa1. 6 Thomas explicitly compares those two intellectual virtues in ST, I-II, q.56, a.3, and in the quaestio, De Virtutibus, art. 7, which will be the basis of my exposition. The translation of my quotations is based loosely on that of J.A. Reid, St. Thomas Aquinas on the Virtues, Providence, R.l., 1951. 7 My exposition of Thomas’s doctrine of faith is based mainly on ST, II-II, qq.1–7 and De Veritate, q.14. I profited from the magisterial study of R. Aubert, Le problème de l’acte de foi (Louvain, 1945). An earlier version of this section on faith was published in my paper, ‘The Devils’ Faith: Some Considerations on the Nature of Faith in Augustine and Aquinas’, Louvain Studies, 1988, vol. 13, pp. 294–6. 8 See ST, II-II, q.2, a.1; De Veritate, q.14, a.1. 9 ‘Intellectus credentis determinatur tantum ex extrinseco’ (De Veritate, q.14, a.1, in fine). This is why Paul writes, in 2 Corinthians, 10: 5, that the intellect is ‘captured’: ‘In captivitatem redigentes omnem intellectum’. 10 ‘Ipsum autem credere est actus intellectus assentientis veritati divinae ex imperio voluntatis a Deo motae per gratiam’ (ST, II-II, q.2, a.9). 11 See ST, II-11, q.6, a.1: ‘Cum assentiendo his quae sunt fidei, elevatur supra naturam suam, oportet quod hoc insit ei ex supernaturali principio interius movente, quod est deus.’ 12 See In Boethium de Trinitate, q.3, 1.1, ad.3: ‘Lumen fidei…non movet per viam intellectus, sed magis per viam voluntatis’. It should be noted that, in his earliest works, Thomas still understood the influence of the faith upon our understanding as furnishing an extra-supernatural light. He also liked to compare the light of faith to the natural light by which we understand first principles. Later, however, Thomas gave up this view and came to understand the influence of divine grace primarily as a strenghtening of the will. Cf. Aubert, op. cit., pp. 51–2 (with bibliographical references). 13 According to the famous definition of Augustine, to believe is ‘cum assensione cogitare’ (De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, 1, c.5).

Will and judgement 97 14 ‘In cognitione fidei principalitatem habet voluntas; intellectus enim assentit per fidem his quae sibi proponuntur, quia vult, non autem ex ipsa veritatis evidentia necessario tractus’ (Summa contra Gentiles, III, c.40). 15 ‘Philosophers, from Plato to William James, have allowed their opinions as to the constitution of the universe to be influenced by the desire for edification; knowing, as they supposed, what beliefs would make man virtuous, they have invented arguments, often very sophistical, to prove that these beliefs are true’ (Russell, op. cit., p. 778). 16 See J. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt, 1973). 17 ‘Unde oportuit in homine per rationem cuius est inter diversa conferre, invenire et diudicare proprium bonum, secundum omnes conditiones determinatum’ (De Virtutibus, a.6). 18 See De Veritate, q.24, a.2: ‘iudicare de iudicio suo est solius rationis quae super actum suum reflectitur … unde totius libertatis radix est in ratione constituta’. In my paraphrase of Thomas’s doctrine of freedom I rely on D. Callagher, ‘Free Choice and Free Judgment in Thomas Aquinas’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 1994, vol. 76, pp. 253–5. 19 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 2, 1139 b43; cf. Thomas, ST, I-II, q.13, a.1. 20 This objection is formulated in De Veritate, q.22, a.15, arg.2. 21 ‘Quamvis iudicium non pertinet ad voluntatem absolute, iudicium tamen electionis quae tenet locum conclusionis ad voluntatem pertinet, secundum quod in ea virtus rationis manet’ (In Sent, 2, d.24, q.1, a.3, ad 2). 22 ‘Materialiter quidem est actus voluntatis, formaliter autem rationis’ (ST, III, q.13, a.1; see also ST, I, q.83, a.3). 23 On the interaction between the intellect and will in the act of choice, see the notes of S. Pinckaers in the French translation of ST, I-II, q.6–17: Les Actes Humains, trans. by H.-D. Gardeil, Paris, 1962, pp. 425ff. 24 See De Veritate, q.24, a.1, arg.17: ‘Philosophi definiunt liberum arbitrium esse liberum de ratione iudicium: iudicum vero rationis cogi potest virtute demonstrationis. Quod autem cogitur, non est liberum. Ergo homo non est liberi arbitrii.’ 25 On this point, see Gallagher, op. cit., p. 250, n.10. 26 Cf. ibid., pp.275–7. On the importance of the shift of attention for freedom, see also J. Laporte, ‘Le libre arbitre et l’attention selon saint Thomas’, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1931, vol. 38, pp. 61–73; 1932, vol. 39, pp. 199–223; 1934, vol. 41, pp. 25–57. 27 Thus in ST, I, q.79, a.12. 28 See ST I-II, 91,3: ‘Similis processus rationis practicae et speculativae: utraque enim ex quibusdam principiis ad quasdam conclusiones procedit.’ A similar argument in the celebrated article on natural law, q.94, a.4. 29 ‘Rectitudo iudicii potest contingere dupliciter: uno modo secundum perfectum usum rationis, alio modo propter connaturalitatem quandam ad ea de quibus iam est iudicandum’ (ST, II-II, q.45, a.2). 30 ‘In quantum per eos homo efficitur non solum potens vel sciens recte agere, sed volens’ (De Virtutibus, a.7). 31 ‘Ideo quod homo actu bene agat, contingit ex hoc quod homo habet bonam voluntatem’ (ST, III, q.9, a.1 and q.17, a.1. Cf. also Summa contra Gentiles). 32 On the distinction between prudence and conscience, see the French translation of ST, II-II, q.47–56: La Prudence, trans. by T.-H. Deman, Paris,

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34 35

36 37 38

Carlos Steel 1949, pp. 423–78; R. McInerny, Ethica Thomistica, Washington, DC, 1982, p. 105ff; and M. Rhonheimer, Praktische Vernunft und Vernünftigkeit der Praxis: HandlungsTheorie bei Thomas von Aquin in ihrer Enstehung aus dem Problemkontext der aristotelischen Ethik, Berlin, 1994, pp. 383–401. Thomas himself does not often discuss the question. The clearest formulation is found in De Veritate, q.17, a.1, ad 4, a text discussed by all scholars. See Thomas’s reply in De Virtutibus, a.6, ad 1: ‘even if moral science is present in us, the judgement of reason in a particular case may be disturbed so that it does not judge rightly – hence moral science is said to be of little value for virtue, because even when a person possesses it, he may sin against virtue’. ‘Iudicium de hoc particulari operabili, ut nunc, numquam potest esse contrarium appetitui’ (De Veritate, q.24, a.2). Cf. ST, I-II, q.77, a.2, ad 4 (with reference to Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VII, 5 1147, a.24–31): ‘ille qui habet scientiam in universali, propter passionem impeditur ne possit sub illa universali sumere, et ad conclusionem pervenire; sed assumit sub alia universali quam suggerit inclinatio passionis, et sub ea concludit’. See also De Veritate, q.24, a.2. ‘Habitus intellectus dependet a voluntate sicut a qua accipit principium suum.’ See De Virtutibus, a.7, for a comparison of faith and prudence. On the problem of ‘informis fides’, see Steel, op. cit., pp. 198–9. See De Virtutibus, a.6, ad 1: ‘Prudentia manente, homo non peccat; unde ipsa non parum sed multum confert ad virtutem; immo ipsam virtutem causat.’

5

Moral psychology before 1277 The will, liberum arbitrium, and moral rectitude in Bonaventure M.W.F. Stone Cum primum principium sit in producendo potentissimum, sapientissimum et optimum, et in omnibus effectibus suis hoc aliquo modo manifestet, potissime debuit hoc manifestare in ultimo effectu et nobilissimo, cuiusmodi est homo, quem inter ceteras creaturas produxit ultimo, ut in hoc potissime appareret et reluceret divinorum operum consummatio. (Breviloquium, 2.10)1

There is a widespread perception among historians of philosophy that medieval theories of human action and freedom underwent a series of profound changes in the last decades of the thirteenth century.2 Labouring under the weight of events that led to Bishop Tempier’s condemnations of 1277,3 thinkers at the University of Paris are held to have stressed the primacy of the will (voluntas) over reason (ratio) in their analysis of liberum arbitrium,4 as well as in their more general theories of human nature.5 For many scholars, the second half of the thirteenth century is witness to the growing ascendancy of different versions of ‘voluntarism’ over varieties of ‘intellectualism’. Any survey of the considerable literature that attends this subject will reveal that these same commentators contend that two distinct types of voluntarism are in evidence throughout the period.6 The first confection, ‘psychological voluntarism’, is believed to be common to Franciscan writers before 1270 such as Alexander of Hales (c.1185–1245), John of La Rochelle (c.1190/1200–1245), and Bonaventure (1221–1274). Constructed from the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and his monastic and pre-scholastic interpreters, this view amounted to the thesis that in any philosophical account of human action, one had to stress the role of the affective and volitional parts of our nature over reason in the ‘kingdom of the soul’.7

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As such, this version differed from ‘ethical voluntarism’, a thesis which came to prominence after 1270, and one which is associated with the writings of later Franciscan authors such as John Peccham (c.1230–1292), Peter John Olivi (1248–1298), Walter of Bruges (d. 1307), and John Duns Scotus (1226–1308), as well as with secular masters like Henry of Ghent (d. 1293). Essential to this idea was the claim that in the ‘kingdom of soul’, the will possesses a more active and dynamic character than reason and is ‘free’ to act against the dictates of reason. To be ‘free’, the will had to resist the bidding of reason or any other influence (be it internal or external to the soul) and simply move itself toward its object. The very independence of the will was sufficient to guarantee liberum arbitrium.8 Thinkers who upheld this further version of voluntarism argued that any genuine notion of moral responsibility must be based on just such a conception of the will’s freedom. Many scholars contend that ethical voluntarism was advanced in order to meet certain challenges to Catholic Christian belief posed by thinkers who developed an account of moral psychology from the texts of Aristotle and his Arab commentators. Such theories, which are now classified in histories of medieval philosophy under the heading ‘intellectualist’, took the view that human action has its origins in the rational part of the soul, and that liberum arbitrium is nothing more than informed moral choice (electio) issuing from rational deliberation. If human beings are to possess ‘freedom’ at the level of action, their natural instincts as well as their acts of volition must be subject to reason and policed by the requirements of practical rationality. In order to counteract the theological infelicities of this position, or at least to a form of necessitarianism associated with one version of it, late thirteenth-century theologians are said to have advanced ethical voluntarism in order to preserve a robust account of human freedom. If we review the main features of the philosophical anthropology of the so-called ‘Latin Averroists’, such as Siger of Brabant (d. 1282) and Boethius of Dacia (1230–1285), whose reading of the works of Aristotle was inspired by the interpretations of his great Arab commentator Averroes (1126–1198), it is not difficult to appreciate why Siger’s description of human agency might have appeared to its critics like a denial of free will. Bernard of Clairvaux’s (1090–1153), De gratia et libero arbitrio, one of the authoritative texts used in thirteenth-century discussions of liberum arbitrium, had sought to posit the concepts of ‘necessity’ and ‘liberty’ as contrary to one another.9 Given Siger’s allegiance to Avicenna’s principle of causality – ‘every effect issues only

Moral psychology 101 from a cause, with regard to which its being is necessary’ (nullus effectus evenit nisi a causa, respectu cuius suum esse necessarium est),10 and his rejection of the idea that the will is autonomous of the intellect – one can begin to understand why it was felt that his account left little room for a dynamic account of human freedom.11 An important aspect of the previously stated analysis of late thirteenth-century philosophy is the claim that philosophers and theologians at this time can be divided into two opposing parties. First, we are to believe that there were ‘neo-Augustinian’ thinkers, such as the aforementioned Franciscans and Henry of Ghent, who looked to the intellectual heritage of Augustine in order to explain moral choice and human freedom.12 These authors – whose precise allegiance to the Bishop of Hippo naturally admitted of degrees – stressed the primacy of the will in the explanation of action, advocated a more prosaic view of practical reasoning, and stressed the necessity of divine grace for the performance of right action.13 Opposed to this party were putative ‘Aristotelian’ thinkers such as Albert the Great (1200–1280), Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), Giles of Rome (c.1243/7–1316)14 and Godfrey of Fontaines (c.1250–c.1306),15 whose different accounts of moral psychology were all influenced to some extent by the Nicomachean Ethics. Sometimes this group is further sub-divided in order to distinguish them from the ‘Latin Averroists’. Despite significant differences of opinion, such philosophers as Albert, Thomas, Giles and Godfrey each agreed that an appropriate use of practical reasoning (ratio practica) coupled with a virtuous disposition (virtus) were a much more significant factor in an individual’s attempt to pursue and bring about the good. Moral excellence and human freedom were thought to reside in the effective use of practical rationality or right reason (recta ratio), rather than in the restraint of one’s will or natural instincts. As Aquinas put it, ‘reason or intellect is the cause of freedom’ (ratio causa libertatis).16 As with most established theses in the history of philosophy prima facie evidence for the view that varieties of ‘Augustinian voluntarism’ came to dominate and thence to supplant ‘neo-Aristotelian intellectualism’ is not difficult to find. If one follows the direction and content of debates about moral psychology from the full reception of the Nicomachean Ethics into intellectual discourse around 1255,17 to the work of Henry of Ghent, Peter John Olivi and John Duns Scotus in the last decades of the thirteenth century, it is evident that there is a noticeable change in the emphasis accorded to the will in philosophical discussion.18 It is not unreasonable to conclude from this, as so many scholars have done and continue to do, that the aforementioned

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versions of ‘psychological’ and ‘ethical’ voluntarism did assume an increasing importance as the thirteenth century came to a close. It is significant that recent scholarship has not so much abandoned the general structure of the traditional reading of late thirteenthcentury moral psychology, but has sought to clarify specific details of its interpretation. A great deal of effort over the last thirty years has been expended in trying to liberate certain authors from an all too rigid system of taxonomy. Further to this, some commentators have now taken a further step and have begun to actively question the accepted practice of dividing authors into mutually exclusive categories like ‘intellectualist’ and ‘voluntarist’. Against this, they argue that a large body of textual evidence would suggest that many of the significant personalities of late thirteenth-century philosophical thought embraced aspects of both positions, and that what might be said to separate an ‘intellectualist’ from a ‘voluntarist’ is sometimes little more than a matter of emphasis rather than philosophical principle. This last view can be said to be gaining momentum in the literature, and can be judged to have already made an important impact on the study of such thinkers as Albert the Great,19 Thomas Aquinas,20 Henry of Ghent,21 Peter John Olivi22 and John Duns Scotus.23 The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the on-going re-evaluation of the traditional method of classifying late thirteenth-century moral psychology, by examining aspects of the work of Giovanni Fidanza or Bonaventure.24 An assessment of the ‘Seraphic Doctor’s’ rich corpus is pertinent to any attempt to explain the development of medieval voluntarism, not only because he wrote in the intellectually turbulent period before the Parisian condemnations of 1270 and 1277, but also because it has been thought that features of his work anticipate the thoughts of later Franciscan thinkers who were moved to react to versions of ‘Aristotelian intellectualism’. Historically, Bonaventure has been classified as a stalwart member of the ‘neoAugustinian’ constituency and is taken to have conservative theological views.25 For this and other reasons, an analysis of his work is perceived to be crucial to any analysis of the putative changes that occurred in scholastic circles concerning the analysis of human freedom. While several scholars have been at pains to distinguish Bonaventure’s moral psychology from the theories of later Franciscan voluntarists – there is widespread agreement that he is an exponent of ‘psychological’ rather than ‘ethical’ voluntarism26 – few of his modern philosophical interpreters, if any, are minded to consider his account of liberum arbitrium from the perspective of his theological anthro-

Moral psychology 103 pology. Further to this, there is a general reticence among these same interpreters to read his work synoptically; that is, to portray his thinking about the conditions and end of morality as intimately connected to his account of the relationship of man to God and other overt theological concerns. In what follows, I argue that this omission is significant, especially if we are to arrive at an accurate appreciation of what Bonaventure said about the will, liberum arbitrium, and moral rectitude, and the bearing of his reflections on the development of late thirteenth-century moral psychology. In order to introduce the salient features of Bonaventure’s thinking on these topics, we must first say something about his views on ‘philosophy’ in general and his account of human nature in particular. A vexed question in twentieth-century medieval scholarship has been whether or not one can reliably identify an independent system of philosophy in his work.27 Putting to one side a precise answer to this question, we can initially concentrate on the much less demanding task of explaining just what Bonaventure understood concerning the content of the term ‘philosophy’ (philosophia), and his account of the workings of the human mind. In his Collationes in Hexaemeron, Bonaventure says that philosophy was initiated by the Greeks who used human reason in an attempt to understand the nature and purpose of the universe. To this end they developed nine sciences, which are classified under three general headings: the ‘essential’ or ‘natural sciences’ (metaphysics, mathematics and physics); the ‘moral sciences’ (individual ethics, domestic ethics and politics); and lastly, the ‘rational sciences’ (grammar, logic and rhetoric). These nine disciplines reach their terminus ad quem in the speculative science metaphysics, a body of knowledge that not only communicates an awareness of the First Being or God, but one which further reveals God as the Supreme Good and the final end of all things.28 Further to his view that the science of metaphysics reveals God as the final end of all things, Bonaventure’s work is also characterized by his distinctive account of the working of the human mind, a theory that is now referred to by the instructive term ‘divine illumination’.29 Throughout his theoretical writings he frequently speaks of the ‘light’ (lumen) of knowledge as illuminating the mind in order that it may scrutinize and come to understand truth.30 The ‘light’ in question is an interior light that empowers the mind to inquire into the hidden causes of things by the principles of knowledge (scientia) and ‘natural truth’, or those principles that are innate to the consciousness of every human being.31 As the lumen of natural philosophy or the physical sciences

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assist the mind in its analysis of the created order, so the ‘light’ of moral philosophy considers the point and purpose of human life and the appropriate end of all moral action.32 The aim of moral philosophy is nothing less than ‘rectitude of will’ (rectitudo voluntatis), and this entails living in accordance with the divine or eternal law.33 By living correctly and righteously, an individual is led to a pertinent understanding of the end of human life that is beatitudo or union with God. Bonaventure follows Aristotle in specifying that the end of any human life is to be achieved by the performance of good actions. Like most other scholastics he then departs from the Stagirite by arguing that one’s ‘ultimate end’ or beatitudo differs from one’s ‘proximate end’ or happiness (felicitas), since the former directs any human being to union with God while the latter is merely concerned with the procurement of the earthly well-being of the individual.34 Moral philosophy is concerned with the description and clarification, as well as with the rational defence of God conceived as the ultimate end of human life. Since all creatures have an innate tendency to pursue and bring about their good, they will gravitate toward God, who is the causa, fons et origo of such goodness. As the ultimate end, God is sought because of His goodness, for the nature of goodness coincides with that which is our ultimate end.35 Bonaventure embraces Aristotle’s principle that ‘all things long for the good’.36 That said, he thinks that human beings do not desire just any kind of good, but rather seek that good which suffices for their specific needs and desires. It is beatitudo, he argues, that fully meets the primordial requirements and yearning of the human soul. Seen thus, our human desire for beatitudo is a consequence of our humanity, a condition that lends itself to a characterization in terms of an overwhelming desire for goodness. Yet notwithstanding this general desire, Bonaventure contends that all human beings can frame much more specific desires of the good. In many cases, due to our sinful nature and errant use of rational deliberation, these more specific desires to procure the good fail to hit their intended target. Thus, to countenance the idea that one’s ultimate end is to be found in worldly goods such as honour, esteem or riches, is to hold quite mistaken views on goodness per se. An individual’s actual good, Bonaventure thinks, can only be realized in union with God.37 A human being’s desire for beatitudo, then, rests upon his innate knowledge of God as our supreme good. By deliberative knowledge Bonaventure means an assumption or estimation made by rational deliberation that a specific good be ordered to beatitudo. A man may

Moral psychology 105 err in his moral judgements if he ignores the supreme good (God) that he knows naturally, and bases instead his grounds for acting on a mistaken view of where his good is thought to reside, as in the pursuit of worldly riches. His fault (culpa) resides in his failure to order his action to God. As a rational creature a man comes from God, and being made in the image of God, he ought to have God as the principle (principium), exemplar (exemplum) and end (finis) of his actions. Only by imitating the standard of supreme goodness can a man make his deeds good and moral. When an individual fails to act in accordance with the standard of goodness, the moral quality of his actions will be diminished. This comes about when a person loves himself too much, or acts for his own sake in such a way that, not seeking God as the ultimate end, he does not act for the sake of God.38 Having set down that the ultimate end of all human life is the pursuit of union with God, Bonaventure then proceeds to explain how such an end might be attained by reference to the workings of the human mind and the requirements of the natural law.39 His understanding of man’s innate knowledge of natural law is contained in his various remarks on conscience (conscientia), while his account of the instinctive desire for the true good is to be found in his description of synderesis.40 Conscience, Bonaventure says, can be defined by means of three related definitions. First following John Damascene (c.690–750) conscience is the law of our intellect for it is the law that we know by our conscience.41 Second, conscientia refers to the habitus or disposition by which we are conscious of the moral law. Third, it is a ‘conscious potency’ according to which the natural law is written on our hearts. Bonaventure settles on the second sense of conscience and defines it as a habitus of the practical intellect that differs from the speculative intellect only by extension.42 The activities of inclining and moving the will, as well as perfecting the practical intellect and promulgating moral principles, are the designated tasks of conscience.43 Just as the first principles of speculative reasoning, such as the law of non-contradiction, are evident in the innate lumen of the human mind, so the first principles of morals or the natural law, such as ‘that God ought to be obeyed’ and the so-called ‘Golden Rule’, are present in the practical intellect. The basic truths of morality, then, are known innately but it takes a great deal more than the mind’s innate lumen to draw practical conclusions from these regulative principles which can be applied to the level action. It is conscience alone, Bonaventure thinks, which has the capacity to instruct an agent in the field of action which particular things he ought to do and those which he

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ought to avoid; conscience directs our propensity to determine the rectitude or otherwise of every conceivable class of action. So while conscience is innate to the human person, its exercise is dependent upon the effective functioning of our practical intellect and our effective deliberation as to where our moral duties and obligations may be said to reside.44 Central to these reflections on conscience is Bonaventure’s further thought that all human beings were originally created with a twofold ability to achieve moral rectitude. The first concerns conscience that expresses itself in the appropriate exercise of moral judgement in particular cases, while the second has to do with synderesis that accounts for rectitude of will. These two principles of moral action are so entwined that conscience rouses the will to right action by means of synderesis that in turn stimulates the will to do good and to avoid evil. This is why Bonaventure says synderesis is sometimes called the ‘spark of conscience’ (scintilla conscientiae). Seen thus, synderesis is a natural disposition of the will since it provides human volition with sufficient stimulation to desire the good.45 Conscience and synderesis are both to be observed in the functioning of the natural law. As a habitus, the natural law enfolds conscience and synderesis for it is the means of instructing all agents in moral truth and of commanding them to pursue and instantiate the good. The natural law, Bonaventure thinks, is the proper object of both conscience and synderesis, the former promulgating a legitimate course of moral action by means of an objective judgement about a situation, and the latter inclining the will toward the perceived good believed to be inherent in bringing about such a state of affairs. Regarding any particular truth that is known by a process of practical reason, a deliberative judgement of conscience can be erroneous, and being such can lead synderesis astray by means of a faulty deliberation. This last point is important for Bonaventure because it stands as evidence for the fact that things like the judgement of conscience and the deliberative movement of the will are subject to free choice (liberum arbitrium) and not the natural instinct of synderesis or the innate judgement of conscience.46 As an innate disposition conscience originates in man’s rational nature and attains perfection only in so far as his intellect is ameliorated and perfected by divine grace. As an acquired habitus, however, conscience has its origins in human free choice that can only be used when the intellect has attained the requisite set of deliberative abilities that comes from rational maturity.47 Explaining liberum arbitrium, Bonaventure says that the appetite of the will is directed toward an object according to natural instinct or

Moral psychology 107 according to deliberation and choice (electio).48 Thus my act will incline itself to its object only if I am naturally disposed to desire the object as good, or else if by a process of practical reasoning I judge that I am rationally justified in so acting. The will is properly called ‘elective’ in that it is concerned with an act of election or choice, yet when it is accompanied by a preceding deliberation it can be said to be ‘free’ in that it is unconstrained by any natural appetite. Freedom of choice is brought about by both reason and will working in unison, with reason acting self-reflectively in concomitance with the will. Bonaventure illustrates his position by quoting the authoritative statement of Augustine who held that the faculty of free choice is not an individual part of the soul, but is an ability of the whole soul.49 Liberum arbitrium is neither peculiar to reason nor will but is the result of their effective cooperation.50 That said, it is important to stress that Bonaventure, throughout his corpus, strongly emphasizes the role of the will in decision-making as can be observed in his remark that ‘decision belongs to reason, freedom to will, for the other powers in us have to be moved at the behest [nutum, literally a ‘nod’] and command of the will’.51 Here we may espy the source of the idea, essential to later versions of so-called ‘ethical voluntarism’, that the will commands (imperium) the intellect and the other powers of the soul. But tellingly, Bonaventure also argues that free choice (liberum arbitrium) resides formally and principally in the will. Certainly liberum arbitrium must begin with reason, for thought disposes the will to move; but since no action would follow without the will’s command, liberum arbitrium is completed by and consists principally in the will. Finally, Bonaventure claims that the will is essentially active. As his authority he cites Anselm’s notion that the will is a self-moving instrument, a phrase that often occurs in the writings of later Franciscan thinkers.52 We are now beginning to get a clearer picture of the ideas that provide Bonaventure’s anthropology with its distinctive emphasis. For the ‘Seraphic doctor’ human beings have liberum arbitrium because (by nature) they are rational creatures possessed with reason (ratio) and will (voluntas). Judging things by means of reason, an individual can come to know (his knowledge further fortified by sufficient moral training and the ‘assistance’, or auxilium, of divine grace) supreme justice, which is the measure of every right act. An individual can also come to know himself and can reflect upon his deeds and motives because his reason is not limited and constrained by the limits of context. Thus a human being can properly judge what legitimately belongs within the realm of his own moral goods and interests and

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those that belong to another. As a living being created in the image of God, man has the power to comprehend what is right and just. Moreover, his will is ‘free’ because of its full dominion over its objects and its own acts. Man’s will is able to seek every good, to avoid all evil, and to move him in regard to his body and soul, so that he has a natural capacity to love and to hate. Consequently, from this exercise of practical judgement and from his full dominion of will, he has the ability of free choice concerning his due and appropriate good, which is the ‘noble good’.53 Ratio and voluntas combine in ‘free choice’ (liberum arbitrium) rather than ‘free judgement’ since choice (electio) regulates reason by a command of the will, but judgement regulates it by the rule of truth, or the eternal law. Hence a judge (iudex) is one who decides a case according to law, but a moral arbiter is one who decides to act or to refrain from acting by his own will. The exercise of human freedom, then, is more properly dependent upon electio because decisions of liberum arbitrium are made according to will rather than according to a precept of law.54 Through a correct use of free choice an agent can attain rectitude of will, whereby he can direct his life according to the rules of the eternal law. He consults this law by means of his ‘superior reason’ (ratio superior), which observes the immutability of God’s power and equity, and issues a competent assessment of the requirements of the divine will.55 When considering the good that issues from his body and his sensory appetites, he uses an inferior form of reason that in all cases must be subordinate to the superior form of reason set down in the eternal law. In deliberating on matters concerning moral goods, an agent regulates and commands his sensory powers and corporal inclinations only by means of employing such superior reason. In this way Bonaventure means to give content to the thought that practical reasoning, properly construed, should concern itself with the consideration of those spiritual goods, such as the cardinal virtues, which are directed toward the attainment of an individual’s salvation and beatitudo.56 When judging according to the eternal law human reason does not err. For this is the noblest act of superior reason. It can err, however, by deviating from that law and attending inordinately to the good identified by the sensory appetites and corporeal inclinations which in effect entails bypassing the natural instinct of synderesis. Human reason is correct in its moral judgements only when it effectively consults and understands the requirements of the eternal law, a body of knowledge that it can come to know by means of the first principles of practical reason or the natural law. Should reason then attempt to

Moral psychology 109 apply these rules to the level of action, it needs to be policed and thoroughly conditioned by the dispositions of moral virtue.57 Supporting these contentions by means of Aristotle’s argument at De anima, III, 10, 433a21–433b5, that the intellect is always right, Bonaventure means to convey the idea that a man’s natural conscience (which is his practical intellect as it is moved by synderesis) is capable of securing right judgement. That said, it is important to remember that this idea is subject to an important set of qualifications. Because of original sin (originale peccatum), all men are afflicted with ‘blindness in the practical intellect’, whose propensity to right judgement can be impeded by the bogus petitioning of the sensory appetites and our corporeal inclinations.58 Since these impediments can and do thwart the cultivation of those dispositions necessary for the attainment of moral rectitude, the Holy Spirit and the revelation of Scripture provide each human being with the grace necessary to overcome the effects of original sin.59 Despite the cognitive defects that all men must bear as a consequence of being born in a sinful state, the human intellect does possess sufficient illumination to know the natural law and the principles of morality. The flagrant denial or erroneous use of such principles in the context of human life does not undermine, Bonaventure thinks (and here he simply reiterates orthodox Christian teaching), the fact that all men can contribute to their own salvation. Divine grace is always present to assist mankind in its search for truth and moral rectitude.60 We have had cause to note that for Bonaventure the goodness of the will is grounded in the natural disposition of synderesis that is essential for the proper exercise of liberum arbitrium. The will is both good and right only in moving towards the same object both naturally and by means of deliberation. To be completely good and right in his action, a man must first be moved by his natural will, and perfecting his act by means of the disposition of virtue, will the object in accordance with the standards of right reason (recta ratio). In this way the human will conforms to the divine will with regard to both act and object. What God wills, He wills lovingly, freely and justly. Similarly, when a man wills, he ought to will from love, freedom and justice. As divine volition wills the ultimate end, so all human volition should be directed toward the attainment of that end.61 The good or evil of any human action follows then from a man’s intention, which is the rule (regula) of his rational appetite, or the lumen of reason inclining toward God and directing him to choose moral goodness and beatitudo.62 Putting these threads together we can say that for Bonaventure an agent acts correctly whenever his reason and will conform to the

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supreme truth that inheres in God. Human reason is ‘right reason’ (recta ratio) when an agent’s intellect is directed toward and capable of understanding the requirements of the divine will, for truth is rectitude perceptible by the mind alone (here Bonaventure repeats a well-known idea of Anselm).63 A human intellect edified by truth is necessarily upright, for a man judging rightly looks to the claims of truth alone. 64 Seen thus, the human will attains the state of rectitude whenever it is regulated by, and conforms with, the requirements of supreme goodness, which is divine equity and justice. A man’s will is rectified, therefore, when it conforms to both equity and justice and turns toward God with love. A human being can do no more than love God.65 In order to understand more clearly the necessity for rectitude of will, it is important to stress that each human individual in Bonaventure’s eyes is a radically contingent being, and as such, limited and impotent. The moral history of humankind, he thinks, is marked by frequent lapses from grace that betray these fundamental traits.66 Yet despite repeated recourse to incontinentia, moral failure and mortal sin, the resemblance to the Creator is manifest in every class of human action.67 Being made in the image of God, human individuals must accept the consequence of their intrinsic shortcomings: they must seek the remedy of rectitudo voluntatis. Rectitudo is an absolute requirement if human beings are to direct their will towards the final end of life. It is only with this orientation of their will, that human beings are able to employ their freedom properly with the consequent eradication of self-deception and covetousness.68 In the general economy of salvation, liberum arbitrium plays a pivotal role. Each human being is able to participate in this economy, whose term is union with God through love, precisely because each person is able to seek such a union freely.69 However, this divinely implanted capacity for freedom in a radically contingent being such as a human being can be directed properly only if such beings accept their contingency and all the moral limitations that this state entails. Without rectitudo voluntatis an individual cannot discover or accept the full implications of his human state. Rectitude of will, for Bonaventure, is a basic requirement of the examined Christian life. Despite the seeming clarity of this call, there is a serious difficulty attendant upon a human being’s response to this request. A ‘right will’ requires a proper evaluation of self. Yet because human beings are so initially captivated by the sensory delights of their natural inclinations, Bonaventure considers that they find it difficult to override the claims of their natural appetites. Unless liberated, the human soul can remain

Moral psychology 111 in a state of continuous servitude to its affective dispositions. For Bonaventure, it is love that impels the human agent to know. The more intense the love, the stronger the impetus to know the beloved and one’s relation to it.70 Human beings, first define themselves in relation to other limited beings to whom they are drawn by love.71 Yet if a person is to define himself correctly, he must first orient his will properly. Thus, as Bonaventure intimates, it is only when a person’s love is directed steadfastly towards the Absolute Good (God) that he can begin to know himself for what he really is, an intrinsically limited being. Only then can he truly define himself, not in relation to other creatures, but to the Eternal Trinity whose likeness he is. According to the theological insights at play here, proper selfknowledge requires rectitudo voluntatis, and in that the will is free it resembles the Divine Will. There is, however, another aspect to Bonaventure’s thinking which concerns the fact that the stress he places on rectitude of will reveals a deep personal commitment to the way of life described above. Rectitudo voluntatis, a notion that forms an important link between his psychology, ethics and theology, thereby identifies him as a religious philosopher embedded within the central contours of medieval Christianity. We need only look to his Sermones de Sanctis for an illustration of this last point. There, he says that it is the chief part of a Christian to be a humble servant, one who reins in his own ego, assists his neighbour and respects God.72 The vocatio of the Christian philosopher for Bonaventure is humility, a virtue that requires a ‘right will’ that conforms to the Divine Will. Seen thus, humanity achieves its final end through the grace of rectitude, a gift that enables each person to freely act in the humble service of God. The humility, which Bonaventure here envisages, is of the same order as the unremitting, self-humiliation prescribed and practised by St Francis of Assisi (c.1181/82– 1226), the founder of the order of friars to which he devoted his life.73 Central to the spiritual message of Francis was a free acceptance of the role of a slave in the imitation of Christ, an acceptance that entailed a thorough annihilation of the self and a ‘resurrection’ in the life of God’s boundless love.74 Here then are the summary steps, as Bonaventure describes them, which reveal the function and significance of rectitudo voluntatis. Prompted by a caritas Dei and a desire for peace (pax) that such love brings, human beings gifted with faith undertake their own conversio. To preserve the way to salvation facilitated by conversio, they need a will that is rightly ordered. As they proceed on their way they are quickly reminded of their moral and spiritual limitations and of their need for divine grace in order to counteract their own imperfections of

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reason and will. Seen thus, rectitudo voluntatis for Bonaventure is not simply a quality of perseverance, but rather a quality that enables human agents to intensify a love rightly ordered to God. It is love of God that, in the first instance, inclines all humans toward a way of life whose term is beatitudo. As love intensifies, so rectitudo blossoms; as rectitude develops, so there is an every increasing understanding that finally issues itself in wisdom (sapientia). At the end of the process a human agent is able to conform his voluntas more and more to the Divine Will. The seas of theological language and mystic imagery run high in the Seraphic Doctor, and they may be said to temper any overt philosophical assessment of his views on moral psychology. For the fact is that when we come to study his description of such concepts as liberum arbitrium, the virtues, and human action – notions which for us are recognizably a part of autonomous disciplines as ‘moral philosophy’ and ‘the philosophy of mind’ – it is important to recall that they form but a part of a larger vision that is predicated on the idea of beatitudo. That is not say that Bonaventure is disdainful of philosophy, or that he trivializes the intellectual benefits that the human being can obtain by means of developing their philosophical prowess. One only has to examine his profound esteem for the ‘Aristotelian’ philosophy of his day and his skilful appropriation and development of some of its arguments, as well as his knowledge of Neoplatonic writers that had come down to him from Augustine and the writers of the monastic schools.75 First and foremost a theologian, Bonaventure respects the integrity of philosophy. For the Seraphic Doctor there is always a pertinent contrast between ancient philosophers and Christian theologians. The philosophers appraise liberum arbitrium as the principle of moral actions subject to a natural law, but theologians view it as the principle of meritorious works assisted by grace, which is necessary to please God and to merit beatitudo. Under natural law liberum arbitrium looks to good deeds ordered to the ultimate end, such as helping the needy, but those deeds cannot actually be ordered to such an end without grace, which is also necessary to combat the effects of original sin.76 The point of importance, then, is that Bonaventure’s description of the springs of human action is but a prolegomenon to setting in place a spiritual vision of an individual’s journey back to God, a journey which all can take if properly equipped with rectitudo voluntatis. To the secular sensibilities of contemporary philosophy, Bonaventure’s writings on liberum arbitrium and voluntas may seem too theological to be of any real use in determining the nature and

Moral psychology 113 extent of human freedom in the field of action. This of course may be true, but in any case it is a question that need not deter the historian of philosophy who is much more preoccupied with the structure and genealogy of ideas that have played such a prominent role in Western thinking about human agency. It is here, surely, that a formal study of Bonaventure’s moral psychology needs little by way of apology. For what is important in his survey of the way in which human beings act is a notion of liberum arbitrium that is composite. The freedom of a human being is not exclusively reliant either upon the intellect or the will, but is dependent on their co-operation and complementarity.77 This last feature is significant, for not only does it cause us to review our existing survey of the repertoire of concepts that constitute the medieval ‘voluntarist tradition’ (whatever that may eventually be agreed to be), but it further invites us to consider that so many of the putative differences that separated thinkers in thirteenth-century moral psychology were essentially matters of emphasis rather than principled disagreements.78

Notes 1

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Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 2. 10 (Opera omnia, V, p. 228): ‘Because the First Principle is in the act of producing the wisest and the best, and because God manifests this in a certain way in all His effects, it was fitting that He manifested this most of all in the last and most noble effect. Such is man, whom He produced last among the creatures, in order that in this effect there may appear and shine forth in the most excellent way the consummation of the divine works.’ All references to the works of St Bonaventure are to Opera omnia, 10 vols (Quaracchi, 1882–1902). References to Patristic literature are taken from J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latine (hereafter PL; Paris, 1844–1890) and Patrologiae cursus completus, series Graece (hereafter PG; Paris, 1857–1890). For influential representatives of this view see Lottin (1942–60), i, pp. 11–389; Bonafrede (1952); San-Cristobal (1958); Mazzantini (1962); Stadter (1971) and Korolec (1982), pp. 629–41. Kent (1995), pp. 98–143, takes a much more considered view of these developments but still adheres – notwithstanding several significant qualifications – to the outlines of the traditional thesis. The relevant extracts from medieval authors are collected and assessed by Lottin (1942–1960), see especially ‘Libre arbitre et liberté depuis saint Anselme jusqu’ à la fin du XIIIe siècle’, i, pp. 11–389. For a full description of the events that led up to the condemnations, and the theological and philosophical views that ground the 219 propositions see Hissette (1977); and Piché (1999). The now standard work of reference and commentary on 1277 is by Aertsen, Emery Jr. and Speer (eds) (2001).

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4 It is well known among scholars that the Latin expression liberum arbitrium does not lend itself to a simple rendering in English despite the best efforts of those who continue to translate the phrase as either ‘freedom of will’ or ‘freedom of choice’. This is due to several difficulties that attend the task of finding an exact English equivalent for the term. The first complication surrounds the fact that the expression does not contain the word for will (voluntas), and that it was a matter of some debate among medieval writers whether it was the will, or some other faculty, which was the bearer of the ‘freedom’ involved in liberum arbitrium. Further to these reasons, it is important to note that voluntas was defined in different ways: as a rational appetite, or as the desire for the good apprehended by reason, and sometimes as a capacity for choosing between alternatives. In the light of these complicating factors, I propose to render liberum arbitrium as ‘freedom of choice’, if only to preserve continuity with existing discussions, while acknowledging the infelicity of this English equivalent. 5 For a general discussion of this thesis see Stone (2001a), pp. 795–826. 6 This view has been common to historians of medieval philosophy at least since Mandonnet (1911), i, pp. 70–152; and De Wulf (1936), ii, pp. 190–200. More recent histories of thirteenth-century philosophy continue to classify late thirteenth-century moral thought in this way, see Gilson (1955), pp. 387–409; Stadter (1971), pp. 29–30, and pp. 135–320; and Kent (1995), pp. 94–8. 7 For medieval thinkers the ‘soul’ (anima) was understood in terms of a detailed faculty psychology, inherited from ancient philosophy, which divided it up into different components: rational, sensory and nutritive. This idea was frequently relayed by means of an analogy (again common to ancient thinkers) whereby the soul was held to be a kingdom made up of different orders (reason, will, and the sensory appetites) and governed by a ruler (either reason or will). One finds this image frequently used by thirteenth-century authors from William of Auvergne (d. 1240) (De anima, c. II, pt. 15) to Henry of Ghent (Quaestiones disputatae, q. 6 ad 9). For further discussion of this idea see Stadter (1968), pp. 56–72. On the general orientation of thirteenth-century psychology see Pegis (1976; originally published 1934); Dales (1995); and Stone (2001b), pp. 35–89. 8 For general discussions of both versions of voluntarism see Bourke (1964); and (1970), i, pp. 138–47; San-Cristobal (1958), pp. 35–55; Stadter (1971), pp. 29–30, and pp. 135–320; Korolec (1982), pp. 629–41; and Kent (1995), pp. 98–143. For a recent criticism of this division and its implications for the study of medieval philosophy see McCluskey (2001a): 185–208. It should be noted that both versions of thirteenth-century voluntarism differ quite considerably from a further variety of the theory, one ordinarily associated with a reading of the work of William Ockham (c.1285–1349) and other late scholastic figures. This version, which came to prominence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, emphasizes God’s freedom or ‘absolute power’ (potentia absoluta) to will any state of affairs that does not contain a contradiction. The refutation of an early modern surrogate of this type of voluntarism by such thinkers as Gottfried von Leibniz (1646–1716) and Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) is often thought to be one of the central features in the development of ‘modern’ moral philosophy, see Schneewind (1998), pp. 17–36. The following essay will

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have nothing to say about this version of voluntarism as it cannot be said to belong to the thirteenth century. See Leclercq and Rochais (eds) (1963), De gratia et libero arbitrio, 2, p. 168, ‘Ubi quippe necessitas, iam non voluntas’; and 2.1, p. 169, ‘porro ubi necessitas est, libertas non est’. Throughout the late thirteenth century, Bernard’s stipulation is quoted with approval as can be seen in the work of the aforementioned Walter of Bruges, see Longpré (ed.), Quaestiones disputatae (Les Philosophes Belges, X) (Louvain, 1928), p. 125: ‘Ubi est necessitas, non ibi est libertas’, and ‘ergo ubicumque est actus volendi, ibi nulla est necessitas’. See Impossibilia, V, in Carlos Bazan (ed.), Siger of Brabant. Écrits de Logique, de Morale et Physique (Philosophes médiévaux, 14) (Louvain, 1974), pp. 86–7. Siger is not quoting Avicenna verbatim, but the same causal principle can be found in Avicenna’s Metaphysics, I.7; see S. Van Riet (ed.), Liber de prima philosophia sive scientia divina (Avicenna Latinus, 1) (Leiden, 1977), p. 50. On this see Ryan (1983): 155–99, and Stone (2001a). For further discussion of the influence of Augustine on medieval debates see Stone (2001c), pp. 253–66. The fullest survey to date is by Marrone (2001), although his analysis of Augustine’s influence is restricted to metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. See San-Cristobal (1958), pp. 250–67, for a survey of the exact nature of the debt of many of these authors to the moral and psychological writings of Augustine. Kent (1994), pp. 39–93, covers the same ground but in more detail. For further discussion of Giles’s moral and political thought see Lambertini (1991): 239–79; and Kempshall (1999), pp. 130–56. It should be noted that the extent of Giles’s ‘Aristotelianism’ is a matter of some controversy. On Godfrey see Lagarde (1943–45): 73–142; Kent (2001), pp. 704–19; and Kempshall (1999), pp. 204–65. Summa theologiae, I-II, q.17, a.1, ad 2. The idea that many of the most important arguments in thirteenth-century philosophy can be attributed to an on-going Kulturkampf between ‘Augustinians’ and ‘Aristotelians’ has been a staple feature of medieval scholarship since the end of the nineteenth century. See Ehrle (1889): 172–93; and (1925): 517–88; Mandonnet (1911), i, pp. 70–152; De Wulf (1936), ii, pp. 190–200; Gilson (1955), pp. 387–409; Copleston (1972), pp. 199–212; and Van Steenberghen (1991), pp. 372–432. This view has recently been revived and defended by Marrone (2001). For helpful discussion of the reception of Aristotelian ethics by thirteenthcentury writers see Weiland (1981); Celano (1986): 23–53; and (1990): 93–119; and Kent (1995), pp. 39–94. See also Köhler (2001). More than ample evidence is provided in the texts assembled by Lottin (1942–60), i, pp. 11–389. For further commentary see Stadter (1973), pp. 50–78, and 125–43. A lengthy discussion of Olivi’s contribution to these changes is provided by Belmond (1927): 33–56, 145–63, 273–95, and 441–54. See Müller (2001), pp. 136–221; and McCluskey, (2001b): 491–533. See Bradley (1997), pp. 257–322; Stump (1997): 576–97; Gallagher (1994): 247–77; and Carlos Steel, supra. See McCluskey (2002): 421–56, for a

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recent survey of the difference of opinions that surround an interpretation of Thomas’s account of liberum arbitrium. See Stone (2003), which takes issue with the interpretation of Henry advanced by Macken (1975): 5–51, and (1977): 125–82. Stadter (1971), pp. 154–238; and Pasnau (1999), pp. 15–25. Despite his traditional classification as an ‘ethical voluntarist’ the unedited state of a significant proportion of Scotus’s theological and philosophical corpus precludes any definitive classification of his moral psychology in terms of one or other of the traditional headings. That said, a voluminous body of commentary exists on the basis of the early modern Wadding, and more recent Vivès, editions of his work, and most contemporary commentators are minded to highlight his ‘voluntarist’ credentials. For one of the more recent attempts to reassess Scotus’s moral psychology in the light of new textual findings and improved editorial methods see Dumont (2000), pp. 719–94. For a discussion of Dumont’s claims see Ingham (2002): 88–116. For a general discussion of the principal events of career and writings see Wegemer (1924): 5–38; Bougerol (1961; reprinted and corrected edition 1988), pp. 3–35; and Convino (1980), pp. 111–75. Among the more general works of commentary that classify Bonaventure under the rubric of ‘Augustinianism’ are Gilson (1924); Ratzinger (1959); Bettoni (1973); Cousins (1978); Convino (1980); Bigi (1988); and Marrone (2001). A more nuanced account of Bonaventure’s intellectual influences, which includes a very detailed assessment of his use, appropriation and attitude to Aristotle, Bernard of Clairvaux and Pseudo-Dionysius, can be found in Bougerol (1989). See also Putallaz (1997), for a revisionist reading of the traditional division of late medieval philosophy as it impinges upon the study of members of the Franciscan order. See Ventosa (1951): 289–315; Stadter (1971), pp. 25–37; and Kent (1995), pp. 101–4. For a very helpful discussion of the scholarly preoccupation with issues concerning whether or not a philosophy independent of theology can be found in Bonaventure’s writings see Quinn (1973), pp. 17–99. Taking issue with the views of such luminaries of medieval scholarship as Pierre Mandonnet, Maurice De Wulf, Étienne Gilson, Joseph Ratzinger and Fernand Van Steenberghen, Quinn argues that such a ‘philosophy’ can be found and that it is an important component of Bonaventure’s theological system. Significantly, Quinn’s book has not stopped the onslaught of secondary literature on this topic. For a representative sample of differing views see Cousins (1978); Vignaux (1978): 391–412; Sweeney (1985), pp. 271–308; and Aertsen and Speer (1997): 32–66. Collationes in Hexameron, IV, 1–5 (Opera omnia, V, pp. 348–9). It is worth recording that the text that has come down to us is a reportatio of lectures that Bonaventure gave in 1269 on the creation account relayed by the Book of Genesis. Despite being a reportatio the Collationes in Hexameron are representative of his mature thought. On the division of the sciences in Bonaventure see Hinwood (1978): 220–59. The theory of divine illumination is generally conceived of as distinctively medieval and ‘Augustinian’ in origin. There is some justification for this view as medieval philosophers gave the theory a structure and subjected it to sustained discussion, and inasmuch as Augustine gave ‘illumination’ a very

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34 35 36 37 38

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prominent role in his theory of knowledge. That said, it is better to think of the theory in a much wider context. The idea of divine illumination played a prominent part in ancient philosophy, in the later Greek commentary tradition on Aristotle, in Neoplatonism, and in medieval Islamic, Jewish and Byzantine philosophy. Moreover, it was medieval philosophers towards the end of the thirteenth century who were responsible for decisively refuting its claims. For helpful discussions of the history of the divine illumination see Gersh (1978),; pp. 35–95; Owens (1982) pp. 440–60; Pasnau (1995): 49–75; and Marrone (2001), see vol. i, pp. 29–110, and 111–246. For a discussion of divine illumination theory in Bonaventure see Gilson (1924), pp. 326–87; McAndrew (1932): 32–50; Hurley (1951): 388–404; Quinn (1973), pp. 447–664; Bérubé (1976), pp. 163–200; Bigi (1988), pp. 105–42; and Baum (1990). See Scientia Christi, q.2, ad 5 (Opera omnia, V, p. 9); Collationes in Hexeameron, IV. (ibid., p. 349a); and Itinerium in mentis Deum, 2. 5 (ibid., p. 302). For further discussion of Bonaventure’s use of the term lumen in his theory of knowledge see Bigi (1961): 395–422; and Schlosser (1986): 3–140. General commentary on the wider usage of the term light in thirteenthcentury philosophy can be found in Hedwig (1980). For further discussion of this point see Bérubé (1976), pp. 165–76; and Baum (1990), pp. 25–50. On Bonaventure’s moral philosophy see Gilson (1924), pp. 388–413; Nölkensmeier (1932); De Benedictis (1946), pp. 32–114; Iammarrone (1979); Convino (1980), pp. 283–302; and Speer (1987), pp. 135–88. Bonaventure develops the concept of rectitudo which had come down to him from Augustine, Gregory the Great (590–604), Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) and Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253); see Pouchet (1964), pp. 250–8. For further discussion of Anselm’s conception of rectitudo voluntatis see Goebel (2001), pp. 363–502. I Sent., d.3, p.1, dub.1 (Opera omnia, I, p. 78; cf. I, p. 56). II Sent, d.1, p.1, a.2, q.2, sc.2 (Opera omnia, II, p. 28; and II, p. 21). See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1 1094a3. For further discussion of Bonaventure’s account of beatitudo see Veuthey (1971), pp. 97–108. This last paragraph is a paraphrase of the lengthy argument found at Sermon II (De regno Dei descripto in parabolis evangelis), n. 44 (Opera omnia, V, pp. 551–3). When Bonaventure is speaking in this text about a human being’s instinctive desire for beatitude, which he can know in a general and inchoate way by use of his natural reason, it is important to stress that he means to draw a contrast between the claims of Christian theology and ancient philosophy. The theory of the final end of human life set down by the ancient philosophers can only be achieved, he thinks, by means of divine grace. As the ancients desired beatitude by natural reason, they could not desire beatitude as it is known by faith. In this manner, Bonaventure sought to argue that the promise of ancient philosophy can only be brought to fruition in the revelation of the Christian Gospel; see II Sent, d.28, a.2, q.1. ad 2–3 (Opera omnia, II, p. 683). For further discussion of Bonaventure’s appeal to the natural law in his moral philosophy see Quinn (1974), i, pp. 571–98; and Gestoni (1976), iii, pp. 245–55, especially pp. 245–50.

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40 Like other Latin writers of his period, Bonaventure inherited the term synderesis from St Jerome (d. 420). Jerome stimulated medieval discussions of conscientia and synderesis by writing of the latter as a power of the soul ‘which the Greeks call sunt»rhsin, which is the spark of conscience (scintilla conscientiae) which was not extinguished in Cain after his expulsion from paradise, and by which, when we succumb to pleasure or frenzy and are sometimes deceived by a semblance of reason, we realise that we are sinning’, see Commentary on Ezechiel, I, 1 (PL, 25, col. 22). Jerome’s use of sunt»rhsij has baffled many scholars; see Lottin (1948), iii, pp. 103–5. Some argue that it is a copyist’s error for sune…dhsij, but this does not explain why Jerome should consider it necessary to draw attention to such a common scriptural term. As a noun derived from the verb sunthrî, meaning ‘to keep, preserve, or observe strictly’, sunt»rhsin would appear to be capable of expressing moral control or awareness, 0and instances of such a usage can be found, see G.D. Liddell and R.S. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1925), vol 2, s.v. sunthrî. This would appear to bear out the thesis of Potts (1980), pp. xiii, and 10–11. Moreover, G. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), cites usages by Gregory of Nazianzen (d. 389), Gregory of Nyssa (d. after 385) and others, which have the meaning of ‘preservation’, ‘maintenance’, or ‘conversation’, whether by the soul, the body or by the commands of Christ. This general sense of ‘holding together’ in some sort of composure seems to fit the function assigned by Jerome to sunt»rhsij as being ‘above’ the other elements in the Plato’s tripartite characterization of the soul at Republic IV, 435–444e. For further discussion see Verbeke (1983), pp. 53–70. 41 St John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, 4.22 (PG, 94, col. 1119): ‘Ac proinde lex quidem mentis meae, id est conscientia.’ For further discussion of Damascene’s views as they relate to the issues of moral psychology see Frede (2002), pp. 63–96. For a general assessment of work and influence see Louth (2002). 42 Here Bonaventure is using the argument from Aristotle, De anima, III, 9, 432b21–433a8. 43 II Sent, d.39, a.1, q.1 (Opera omnia, II, p. 899). For further discussion of Bonaventure’s views on conscience see Veuthey (1971), pp. 117–22; Potts (1980), pp. 32–44; Schlosser (1990), pp. 73–84; and Langston (2001), pp. 21–38. Lottin (1948), iii, pp. 101–349, provides the most extensive treatment of the scholastic debate. 44 II Sent, d.39, a.1, q.2 (Opera omnia, II, p. 902–4). See also II Sent, d.23, a.2, q.1 (ibid., p. 538) for the argument that conscience does not amount to a set of innate ideas, but rather is an innate habitus of the human species. 45 For further discussion of this issue see Sala (1957): 3–11; and Trottmann (2000): 129–50. 46 II Sent, d.39, a.2, q.3, ad.4, 6 (Opera omnia, II, p. 915). 47 See Nölkensmeier (1932), pp. 76–80; and Potts (1980), pp. 32–44. 48 The central texts pertaining to Bonaventure’s description of liberum arbitrium are II Sent, dd.XXIV, XXV and XXVI (Opera omnia, II, pp. 553–649). 49 Contrary to Bonaventure’s sincere belief that this is an authentic dictum from Augustine, the statement actually derives from a work by pseudoAugustine, Hypognosticon, 3.5.7 (PL, 45, col. 1624). The passage in

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50

51

52

53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60

question reads: ‘igitur cum de libero arbitrio agimus, sed de toto: quia cum peccavit homo primus, non in parte aliqua, sed tota quia conditus est, natura deliquit’ Breviloquium, p. 2, c.9 (Opera omnia, V, p. 227); cf. II Sent, d.25, p. 1, 3 (ibid., pp. 597–600). On liberum arbitrium as a ‘faculty’ of reason and will see loc. cit., q.2 (ibid., II, pp. 595–6). For further discussion of Bonaventure’s account of liberum arbitrium see Belmond (1928): 5–63; Thompson (1958): 1–8; and Convino (1976), ii, pp. 549–61; Schlosser (1990), pp. 61–72; and Kent (1994), pp. 98–104. II Sent, d.25, p.1, a.un., q.3 (Opera omina, II, p. 598): ‘Dicitur enim liberum et dicitur arbitrium; et arbitrium est ipsius rationis, libertas vero ipsius voluntatis, ad cuius nutum et imperium moveri habent cetera, quae sunt in nobis.’ II Sent, d.25, p.1, a.un., q.6 (Opera omnia, II, p. 605): ‘Dicendum quod cum liberum arbitrium sit facultas sive dominium, ex qua dicitur potentia facilis, non solum ad movendum alia, sed etiam ad movendum se ipsam; sicut ratio movendi se inchoatur in ratione et consummatur in voluntate… Dico motum inchoari in ratione quia non movetur appetitus nisi praeambulo cogitatu; nequaquam enim amare possumus quod non cognoscimus; et ideo ad hoc, quod motus fiat, praeit cognitio disponens, et subsequitur voluntas perficiens. Quantumcumque enim praecedat cogitatus, nunquam motus sequitur, nisi ipsum imperet voluntatis affectio … Et sic patet, quod libertas arbitrii sive facultas, quae dicitur liberum arbitrium, in ratione inchoatur et in voluntate consummatur. Et quoniam penes illud principaliter residet, penes quod consummatur, ideo principaliter libertas arbitrii et dominium in voluntate consistit. Et iterum, quia illud, in quo res inchoatur se habet per modum materialis; illud, in quo consummatur, se habet per modum formalis.’ For a discussion of self-movement of the will in Franciscan authors like Peccham and Olivi see Stadter (1971), pp. 86–185. II Sent, d.25, p.1, un.1, Resp., ad 1–4 (Opera omnia, II, pp. 593–4). For further discussion of this point see Cornelio Fabro, ‘La Libertà in San Bonaventura’, in Pompei (ed.) (1976), ii, pp. 507–35. Ibid., dub. 1, Resp. (Opera omnia, II, p. 594). For a very helpful elucidation of Bonaventure’s use of this concept in the context of a contrast with the work of Aquinas, see Mulligan (1953), pp. 20–55, 98–125; see also his earlier article (1955): 1–32. Superior and inferior reason are not diverse powers but different dispositions giving rise to diverse functions of reason in the act of free choice, see II Sent, d.24, p.1, a.2, q.2 (Opera omnia, II, p. 564) and III Sent, d.16, a.2, q.2, ad 6 (Opera omnia, III, p. 351). Following Augustine, see De Trinitate, 14, 15 and 21, Bonaventure holds that even an unjust man knows with certitude the immutable rules of justice in the eternal law or ‘book of light’. To know a thing with such certitude is to know it according to its eternal rule or verity. On Bonaventure’s treatment of the virtues see the older but still valuable study by Israel (1914). More recent commentary can be found in De Benedictis (1946), pp. 220–61; Emery, Jr. (1983): 183–218. On Bonaventure’s account of our sinful nature see De Wachter (1967). II Sent, d.7, p.2, a.1, q.1 (Opera omnia, II, p. 191). See Gilson (1924), pp. 347–78; and Schlosser (1990), pp. 99–246.

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61 II Sent, d.39, dub.3 (Opera omnia, II, p. 917); and I Sent, d.48, a.1, q.1 (ibid., I, pp. 852, 676–7). 62 II Sent, d.38, a.2, q.1 (Opera omnia, II, pp. 890–891). 63 See Anselm’s De veritate, 11–12. 64 Here Bonaventure is echoing the sentiments of the Scriptures, see Luke 7:43, and the teaching of Augustine, De vera religione, 31. 57 (PL, 34, col. 147). For Bonaventure’s use of and particular interest in Luke’s Gospel see Reist (1985). 65 II Sent, Proem (Opera omnia, II, p. 4). For Bonaventure’s view of our natural love of God, which contrasts with our love of God from charity, see II Sent, d.3, p.2, a.3, q.1, ad 3 (ibid., pp. 126 and 117–18). For further discussion of this dimension to his thought see Alszeghy (1946); Ennis (1974), iv, pp. 129–45; and Châtillon (1976), iii, pp. 217–38. 66 For further discussion see Ratzinger (1959), pp. 56–91; and Schlosser (1990), pp. 130–47. 67 Breviloquium, V. 2 (Opera omnia, p. 253): ‘cum primium principium sua omnipotenti virtute et benignissima largitate creaturam omnem de nihilo produxerit ad esse; ac per hoc creatura de se habeat non esse, totum autem esse habeat aliunde; sic facta fuit, ut ipsa pro sua defectibilitate semper suo principio indiqeret […]. Cum ergo spiritus rationalis, hoc ipso quod de nihilo, sit in se defectivus; hoc ipso quod natura limitata et egena, sit in se recurvus, amans proprium bonum; hoc ipso quod totus a Deo, sit totaliter Deo obnoxius; et quia defectivus est, de se tendit in non esse; quia recurvus, per se non assurgit ad rectitudinem perfectae iustitae.’ 68 Breviloquium, V. 1 (Opera omnia, V, p. 253): ‘mens nostra non efficitur conformis beatissimae Trinitati secundum rectitudinem electionis nisi per vigorem virtutis, splendorem veritatis, et fervorem caritatis’. 69 Ibid., V. 2 (Opera omnia, V, p. 254): ‘Nam cum solus Deus sit ipsius gratiae fontale principium influendi, ipse solus est principium augmentandi per modum infundentis, et gratia per modum meriti et dignitatis, et liberum arbitrium per modum cooperantis et merentis, pro eo quod liberum arbitrium cooperantur gratiae et quod est gratiae suum facit’; cf. III.3 (Opera omnia, V, p. 254). 70 Itinerarium, 3.4 (Opera omnia, V, p. 305). 71 Itinerarium, 4. 1–2 (Opera omnia, V, p. 306). 72 Sermones de Sanctis (Opera omnia, IX, p. 578). 73 The major writings of St Francis have been published in Opuscula S. P. Francisci Assisiensis (Quaracchi, 1904). On Bonaventure’s Franciscan vocation see Léonard de Carvalho de Castro, Saint Bonaventure le docteur franciscaine (Paris, 1923); and Bougerol (1961), pp. 35–46. 74 For Bonaventure’s definition of love see I Sent, d.10, dub.1 (Opera omnia, I, p. 205). For commentary see Schlosser (1990), pp. 147–65. 75 For clear evidence of this see Bougerol’s famous article on the relationship between Bonaventure and Aristotle, ‘Dossier pour l’étude des rapports entre S. Bonaventure et Aristote’, Archives d’Histoire et doctrinale du Moyen Âge, 40 (1973): 135–222, reprinted in Bougerol (1989); Quinn (1973), pp. 17–99; and Aertsen and Speer (1997). 76 II Sent, d.25, p.1, dub.3 (Opera omnia II, p. 607). 77 On the matter of Bonaventure’s unified account of the human person see Osborne Jr. (1999): 227–50.

Moral psychology 121 78 This chapter has its origins in a seminar on Bonaventure jointly run with Andreas Speer at the Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Spring 1999. I would like thank Professor Speer and all the participants in the seminar. I am also grateful to Tom Pink and Guy Guldentops for their comments on a later draft.

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Suarez, Hobbes and the scholastic tradition in action theory Thomas Pink

The actions of adults have often been thought to involve specially rational or reason-involving motivations – motivations that are not available to mere animals, or even to children and mental defectives. One use of the notion of will is to pick out these rational motivations, or the psychological faculty in which they occur. I want to go further, however, and suggest that the notion of will or voluntas was used, at least in late medieval and early modern scholasticism, and I suspect before, to construct a distinctive conception of what fully voluntary agency or action is: a practical reason-based conception of agency. According to this conception, to perform an intentional action is to respond to a specifically practical or action-guiding reason, thereby exercising reason in a practical or action-constitutive way. Any account of when and how a concept of the will developed needs, inter alia, to be a discussion of when and how this particular conception of agency developed. The much discussed division between intellectualism and voluntarism in medieval action theory should not be allowed to obscure a far more fundamental consensus – a consensus about the essential nature of action itself. The practical reason-based conception was a property common both to a philosopher customarily classed as intellectualist such as Aquinas and to one customarily classed as voluntarist such as Scotus. It defined a broad mainstream in scholastic action theory, a mainstream that could accommodate intellectualist and voluntarist alike. An assault on scholastic action theory that was to be truly radical – that was to confront it on fundamentals – would have to be an assault on precisely this conception of action. Thus when Thomas Hobbes engaged in his famous dispute about liberty with John Bramhall, it was the practical reason-based conception of action that Hobbes was concerned to attack and supplant. For Hobbes, Bramhall was merely a mouthpiece, and (in Hobbes’s view) a not particularly impressive mouthpiece, for a whole school tradition in

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action theory – a tradition one of whose more formidable recent representatives Hobbes rightly took to be Francisco Suarez. In what follows, I discuss the form which the practical reason-based conception took in the work of Suarez, and the connexion between Suarez’s work and earlier accounts of the conception in Aquinas and Scotus. Finally, I consider the radical polemic directed against the practical reasonbased conception by Hobbes.

Suarez A practical reason-based conception of agency characterizes human agency as the exercise of a distinctive capacity for rationality – the exercise of a capacity to be moved or directed by a specifically practical or action-guiding reason. Such a conception of agency is not current in modern English-language philosophy, nor is it generally identified as a feature of past action theory.1 But it was such a feature; and is of immense historical and philosophical importance. In the work of Suarez, and of predecessors in his intellectual tradition, such as Aquinas and Scotus, it took a particular and distinctive form. Consider Scotus’s account, to which Suarez himself referred. Scotus used the term praxis for voluntary action. For Scotus, praxis occurs as the exercise of a faculty that has the function of being moved and directed by reason; specifically, by a practical or praxis-guiding reason as it directs the operation of faculties besides the intellect itself. Also note that praxis or practice is an act of some power or faculty other than intellect, that naturally follows an act of knowledge or intellection, and is suited by nature to be elicited in accord with correct knowledge if it is to be right.2 In other words voluntary action occurs as the exercise of a capacity to be moved or directed by practical reason – to respond motivationally to cognitions of practical reason that direct us to the good or to some other practical value. The exercise of this rational capacity may of course be defective as well as competent: the practical reason-based conception of voluntary agency allows for voluntary action that is irrational. This faculty where praxis occurs, according to Scotus, is the will. As he puts it: From all this it follows that nothing is formally praxis except an imperated or elicited act of will, because no act other than that of will is elicited in agreement with a prior act of the intellect.3

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The will then is the faculty in which we exercise our capacity to respond to practical or praxis-governing reason. Scotus’s account of praxis was noted and endorsed by Suarez himself, in his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, using, unusually for Suarez, Scotus’s own term praxis. There Suarez distinguishes an actus practicus of the intellect – an exercise of the intellect that involves arriving at a conclusion about what is to be done – from praxis or voluntary action itself: for an actus practicus is that exercise of the intellect which orders or directs some action, while praxis surely is the action which is regulated and ordered by the actus practicus…4 Suarez also entirely shared Scotus’s view as to the location of voluntary action in elicited and imperated or commanded acts of the will, as we shall see. A central feature of a practical reason-based conception of human agency is that it has a dual structure. That is, there are two levels of human action. Besides the first order level, at which we move our hands, look out the window and the like, there can be the prior point at which we decide or form intentions to do these things. And this point of decision-making and intention formation, of intentio and electio, will be an action, too – a second order, action-generating action. For the point at which I decide to look out the window as opposed to continue reading my book is, intuitively, a point at which I am indeed exercising, correctly or incorrectly, a capacity to be moved by practical reason. For a natural conception of decisions and intention formations is that they have the function of applying our prior deliberations or reasonings about what to do, by ensuring that thereafter we are and remain motivated to act as we have deliberated that we should. Our decision-making capacity or will was viewed generally in the schools as a rational motivational power – a motivational capacity that is responsive to reason in practical form, as it concerns the good or some other relevant practical value. Therefore, on a practical reasonbased conception of human agency, that makes the exercise of the will itself a case of action – which is precisely what scholastic proponents of a practical reason-based conception of agency held the exercise of the will to be. A great part of Suarez’s work on the voluntary, as indeed was typical practice in sixteenth-century Iberia, given the increasing centrality at that time of Aquinas to the intellectual life of the

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Catholic church, took the form of an extended commentary on Aquinas’s Prima secundae discussion of the same topic. Not that Suarez was an uncritical disciple. The Thomistae are referred to as a class with whom Suarez feels under no absolute obligation to agree; and disapproval of Aquinas’s own views can be strongly expressed (as in the highly critical discussion of Aquinas’s views on virtue and passion). Suarez was working within a generally agreed Thomist framework. However, he used that framework to express a view of freedom and agency that is far more voluntarist in tendency than Aquinas. That is, as we shall see, Suarez saw the will as operating to a fairly great degree independently of the intellect; and viewed the will as the sole locus of human freedom, to the clear exclusion of the intellect. Whereas Aquinas tied the operation of the will closely to that of the intellect; and refers to the intellect’s free judgement of reason in characterizing our freedom. It is important to note, however, that in fundamentals Aquinas’s basic theory of agency still falls clearly within the practical reasonbased model which we have been discussing. On this question, there is simply no disagreement between Scotus, Suarez or Aquinas. Aquinas, after all, characterizes a voluntary action as a rational operation – the exercise of a capacity for rationality.5 The relevant kind of exercise is one which involves the agent being moved by a practically rational cognition – by cognition of an end.6 And voluntary actions thus characterized are clearly to be found in actions of the will: for an act of will is nothing other than a certain inclination proceeding from an internal cognitive principle.7 In Aquinas, as in Scotus and Suarez, we find the same view of voluntary agency as located in elicited and imperated or commanded acts of the will. For Aquinas, the voluntary – our exercise of agency, of what lies within our power – is to be found in the exercise, whether competent or defective, of our capacity to be moved by practical reason, and so in the occurrence of acts of the will. If Aquinas ties the operation of the will far more closely than Suarez does to the intellect, both Aquinas and Suarez share the same conception of voluntary action as involving the exercise of a will-based capacity to be moved by practical reason. I have argued that Suarez inherits a practical reason-based conception of voluntary agency – a conception that involves a dual structure conception of agency. But it is also true that Suarez saw the second

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order actions of the will as fundamental to agency – indeed as the primary and immediate cases of agency. And in this too he was, I think, only being faithful to his intellectual inheritance. Fully human agency was conceived, as I have noted, as the exercise of a rational capacity – a capacity to be moved by reason. But for Suarez, as for his predecessors, this brought an important kind of dualism to bear on the theory of action. This was faculty dualism. Rational cognition and motivational responses to rational cognition took place in special rational faculties – those of intellect and will. And these faculties, as befitted the dignity of reason that placed it above matter, were immaterial. They lacked a bodily organ, and survived bodily death without corruption. In so far as voluntary action involved the exercise of a reason-motivational capacity, its primary occurrence must be within one of these immaterial rational faculties – that is, in particular, within the motivational faculty of will. Consider the possibility that someone performs a first order action – take an example which Suarez considers, the action of giving alms: actus dandi eleemosynam. Suarez terms this an external act – exterior actus – by contrast to internal actions of the will, such as deciding to give alms; and, as an action involving limb motion, locates this external action in the exercise of a corporeal locomotive capacity. The action occurs then, in a corporeal organ. What then makes this first order action a voluntary action? It cannot be that the exercise of the locomotive capacity of itself constitutes a case of being moved by some cognition of practical reason. For, as we have seen, rational responsiveness to such a cognition must take place in an immaterial faculty. Suarez combines the conviction that first order bodily actions, such as giving alms, are exercises of and occur within corporeal locomotive faculties, with a conviction that the process of responding to and being moved by a rational cognition, and so the primary occurrence of agency, must occur within an immaterial faculty of will. This means that we cannot explain the voluntary status of giving alms directly in terms of the practical reason-based model. Instead, we have to explain the voluntary status of a corporeally located action in terms of its being in a certain relation to a prior act of the will to which the practical reason-based model directly applies. Whenever I voluntarily give alms, the following occurs: first, there is an intrinsically voluntary or active event of my willing that I give alms, the status of which as agency being explained by its very nature – as my exercise of my immaterial capacity to be moved by reason. This is an elicited act of the will – elicited in relation to the will because an act

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of the very faculty of will itself. This elicited act of the will has as its object the first order action of giving alms – an action which it then efficiently causes and informs. The first order action of alms giving then occurs as an imperated or commanded act of the will – as an effect and object of the first elicited act that occurred within the will itself. The elicited act is intrinsically voluntary; the imperated act is only extrinsically voluntary, by virtue of its standing as effect and object of the prior eliciting action: Voluntariness in the way of an imperated act, is nothing else than a certain character or denomination of the imperated act received from an elicited act, of which the imperated act is object and effect. For an imperated act is termed voluntary simply because it proceeds from an elicited act of the will, and is in a measure informed by it, and with it constitutes one morally significant act.8 Thus one effect of faculty dualism is to make unavoidable, for Suarez as for the mainstream of his predecessors, a hybrid account of voluntary agency. The overall theory is practical reason-based. Whenever human action occurs, there must be some intrinsically voluntary action, the status of which as voluntary arises out of its constituting an exercise of an immaterial rational motivational capacity – a capacity to be moved by some rational cognition. But the status of first order actions that are exercises of corporeal faculties then has to be explained in other terms – by virtue of their being objects and effects of the intrinsically voluntary actions of the will. Let us call motivation-based, a theory of voluntary action that characterizes an action as the effect of a motivation to do it, such as a desire or will to do it. Suarez’s theory of action, therefore, contained a practical reason-based account of the voluntary status of second order, elicited actions. But it supplemented this with a quite different, motivationbased account of the voluntary status of first order, imperated actions. This hybrid feature of mainstream scholastic action theory is vital to bear in mind when we come to Hobbes’s reaction to the theory; as we shall see, it did not escape his critical notice. There is one important feature of Suarez’s theory of the voluntary that deserves especial notice; and this is Suarez’s formulation of the voluntary status of elicited acts. Elicited acts of the will, we have seen, are acts of the rational appetite itself – of a capacity to be moved by practically rational cognitions. But it is important that, for Suarez, the voluntariness of these elicited acts involves their possessing a reflexive quality:

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Voluntariness in an elicited act of the will comes to nothing else than being an act that, in coming immediately from the will, is inherently self-willed through a virtual and inherent selfreflexion.9 Being willed is, then, a characteristic of imperated acts. But for Suarez it is a characteristic of elicited acts too, though not in the same way. By contrast with the case of imperated acts, the inherently willed character of elicited actions does not involve their being the object and effect of any prior and distinct act of will. Rather, it is a reflexive relation they bear to themselves, simply as elicited acts of the will. Suarez appeals to Augustine, Anselm and Scotus to vindicate this view of elicited acts of will, appealing to what I shall call the reflexion principle that ‘omnis volens ipse suum velle necessario vult’ – anyone who wills necessarily wills his own willing. Suarez also uses this reflexion principle, in traditional manner, to explain why acts of will cannot be coerced or subject to coactio. For, he argues, coercion or coactio of an act of will would involve the occurrence of a willing despite the willer at the same time willing it not to occur. But then since the willer, by the reflexion principle, was also willing that same willing to occur, it would follow that he would be at one and the same time willing something to occur, and willing it not to occur – which in Suarez’s view is impossible.10 Further, Suarez also uses the reflexion principle to argue for a view that locates freedom and the voluntary in the will and what is subject to it, to the exclusion of the intellect. Thus Suarez uses his view to buttress his own form of voluntarism – his view that freedom is located not in the intellect, but only in the will and in what is subject to the will; and that in so far as the will operates freely, its operation must be undetermined by the intellect. Suarez’s general method of argument is as follows. Voluntariness, he argues, is to be found only in the will and what is subject to the will. But voluntariness is a necessary, though not sufficient condition of freedom. Freedom is to be found, therefore, only in the will and what is subject to the will. I shall now outline the steps in more detail. First, Suarez argues that though intellectual acts of cognition are exercises of reason that make us capable of the voluntary, these intellectual acts themselves fall outside at least the intrinsically voluntary. In fact, just as much as exercises of corporeal capacities, intellectual acts of cognition can only count as voluntary, when and if they do, extrinsically – by occurring as imperated objects of prior willings that they occur. Why? Consider assenting to a conclusion:

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Thomas Pink assent to a conclusion in itself is not voluntary, but something natural, except in so far as it can occur as an act imperated or commanded with respect to its exercise by the will. For it is neither inherently self-willed, as an appetitive act is, nor does it proceed from cognition of the object at which it is directed, but rather is itself the cognition of that object.11

Acts of cognition are not what the inherently voluntary must be – selfwilled motivational responses to prior cognitions of objects. Then, Suarez uses the reflexion principle to tie freedom to the voluntary – and so clearly exclude it from the intellect. Freedom or libertas is conceived by Suarez as the freedom of alternatives or a freedom to do otherwise. He conceives freedom thus understood to occur as an indifference between opposites which excludes determination by prior necessity. For a faculty to operate freely, its operation must not be determined by necessity from without. In fact, Suarez argues, for a faculty to operate freely, its operation must be self-determined. But selfdetermination presupposes voluntariness: The faculty can however only be self-determining by willing its operation, because it is impossible to understand how a faculty that is of itself indifferent between opposites, should be determined to one of them, unless because it wills to be so determined; hence it is necessary that that free determination be inherently voluntary.12 Suarez agreed with Aquinas’s intellectualism to this extent, that the willing of a particular object presupposed some judgement picking out that object as in at least some respect good. He agreed, then, that essential to human freedom was the fact that the intellect presents the will with alternative objects of volition that are represented as each being good in certain respects. But then Suarez’s account of freedom left intellectualism behind. By contrast to Aquinas, Suarez argues, as we have just seen, that the intellect itself is not a locus of freedom. Freedom belongs only to the will that the intellect serves to guide. Since the intellect is not a locus of freedom, and freedom is inconsistent with being determined by what is not free, the intellect cannot determine the free operation of the will. So, provided that there are alternatives each of which is judged to possess some good, no judgement of the intellect prior to the will’s operation in favour of a given object serves to determine the willing of

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that particular object. For example, I can freely will an action that I judge to be worse than alternatives, provided I judge it to be good in at least some respect. Therefore, in general, in this life – in via – the operation of the will is free. That will not be true in heaven – in patria – where the absolute goodness of the beatific vision will be an offer the blessed are not free to refuse. Thus Suarez has a general conception of the voluntariness of human acts as involving subjection to the will – as involving the status of occurring as something willed. This willedness is an inherent and reflexive characteristic of elicited acts of will. It is an extrinsic feature of imperated acts of other faculties. A further important feature of the practical reason-based theory of action we find in Suarez, has to do with its account of the actions of non-rational humans – children and the mad, pueri et amentes – and of non-rational animals. Clearly, a practical reason-based model cannot strictly apply to beings incapable of reason. But it can dictate what, by virtue of their analogy to human actions, are going to count as actions within these beings. Thus we come to the distinction between what Suarez calls the perfectly voluntary – agency as it occurs in rational beings such as adult humans; and the imperfectly voluntary – the analogue of this agency in non-rational beings. If the intrinsically voluntary in humans is the exercise of a capacity to be moved by practically rational cognitions, there is going to be an obvious analogue of that in the non-rational. For those who possess at least a capacity for sense cognition can be led towards cognised things by an elicited act of a genuine appetite, and be moved by that appetite, and so in some way act voluntarily.13 For non-rational agents will still possess some capacity to cognize, on the basis of which they can be movitated. Children and the mad are not morally responsible because they have no conceptual grasp of the honestum – of the good as befits a rational nature – and thus no grasp of moral good and bad. However, they are capable of conceiving of things as generally commodus or incommodus, and of conceiving of means to ends. Animals are not even capable of fully grasping things as in any way good, or of fully grasping them as providing alternative means to ends. But animals are still capable of cognitions that present goods to them, though not formally representing them as goods, and of being moved by such cognitions to adopt, on the basis of instinct, what are in fact means to attaining these.14

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These motivational responses to non-rational cognitions are the imperfect analogues in animals of the intrinsically perfectly voluntary in us. They are therefore the primary locus of intrinsically voluntary agency in animals. But such non-rational motivations occur in humans too. For we also make motivational responses to non-rational cognitions. These are our passions – the acts of our sensitive appetite, a corporeal capacity, which we share with the animals, to be moved by non-rational cognitions of the senses and imagination. The passions are the non-rational and corporeal analogues, common to humans and animals, of the immaterial acts of the rational appetite or will which only humans and higher beings can perform. So the passions are importantly categorized by Aquinas as those actions falling within the voluntary that are common to us and the animals.15 Suarez is faithful to this tradition. He gives an important categorization of the voluntary at the beginning of his commentary on Aquinas’s account of the passions: Among human acts, some are of themselves free and so human and moral, and are wholly internal and immaterial; others are wholly external, and are efficiently caused by the internal actions with a certain necessity: others are as it were middle actions – alii sunt quasi medii – as actions of the sensitive appetite which we refer to thoughts or acts of the imagination.16 These middle actions are the passions of the soul. We can see now that we have a conceptualization of the voluntary that is rather alien to that which comes naturally to modern philosophers. We naturally think of the voluntary as first and foremost including the actions that are explained by prior decisions or intentions to perform them – as first and foremost our first order actions. Some of us also countenance second order actions of deciding to act. But even for those of us who countenance these, I think, second order actions of the will are dubiously paradigms of the voluntary. The paradigm, surely, is still found in the first order actions which it is the function of second order actions to determine and guide.17 And then passions, desires and emotions tend to fall outside the voluntary altogether – though they may be important causes of or influences on the voluntary. As we can see, things were quite different for Suarez. The paradigm of the voluntary were those perfectly voluntary internal and immaterial second order actions, where the practical reason-based model of the voluntary directly and perfectly applied. Furthest from the

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paradigm were the external actions, where the model did not directly apply at all. These actions fell within the voluntary on extrinsic grounds, as has been noted. In between come the passions; and it is clear why, in that their voluntariness, though imperfect, is at least intrinsic. They are motivational responses to cognitions, albeit nonrational cognitions. This feature of mainstream scholastic action theory is of great importance for an understanding of how the precise boundary between humans and animals was then conceived – in particular, for understanding disputes about whether some sort of freedom might be found among animals. One standard view of freedom understood as a freedom to do otherwise, certainly Suarez’s as we have seen, was that such freedom presupposed perfect voluntariness. Suarez regarded freedom as characterizing a perfectly voluntary response to cognitions that presented objects as alternatives to each other that were only good in some respects. Hence though there was voluntariness in non-rational animals, because this voluntariness was imperfect, because objects were not presented to animals as partially but not wholly good alternatives to each other, there was no freedom. Nor was there any freedom in our passions except in so far as they were subject to the will. But for one Jesuit contemporary of Suarez, Molina, there could be a trace of freedom, a vestigium libertatis, even in imperfectly voluntary animals. An animal, tired of sitting down, might be faced by a choice of routes to move. Its action would be unfree and necessitated in so far as one particular route was presented as having features that left it clearly better than another. But if this were not so, the animal would be free to follow a given route or not. Molina therefore argues that provided the animal’s cognitions are not such as to necessitate the appetite to command a particular motion, the animal will be free to perform the motion or not perform it. In particular, it is not necessary for this freedom that the animal represent to itself both options – that of making the motion and not making it – which, Molina agrees, may exceed the animal’s conceptual capacity. The important point is that the locus of this vestigium libertatis, the contingency that gives the animal a limited control over how it moves, is the animal’s sensitive appetite – its passions; provided its operation is not necessitated the animal’s appetite is free – is able both to command or not command a given motion: When freedom, or a trace of freedom is present in the appetite, then provided the object’s character doesn’t so forcefully move the

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Thomas Pink appetite as to necessitate its operation, that freedom or trace of freedom is enough for the appetite not to command the movement which it has the capacity to command, and so it’s not necessary that there also be cognition of the movement’s negation…18

If not only the voluntary, but freedom, is to be found in animals, then the natural primary locus of that freedom is to be found, not in any capacity for first order external action, but in second order form in the passions – which are, after all, the analogues of the primary locus of the perfectly voluntary in humans. For scholastics working within a practical reason-based conception of the voluntary, the dual structure theory of agency is applied all the way down to the realms of the nonrational, by analogy with the domain of the perfectly voluntary to which that theory perfectly applies. One further aspect of agency as conceived by Suarez needs to be considered. I have talked of the theory as a dual structure theory. That is, the rational appetite is the primary locus of fully voluntary agency – a second order, action-generating intrinsically voluntary agency which consists in the operations of a decision-making capacity whereby we determine which first order actions we perform. But that is not all there is to our intrinsically voluntary agency, as conceived by Suarez. Consider again the general model of agency with which Suarez is operating. To act is to exercise a capacity to be moved by some practically rational cognition – towards some object as good, say. But the object to which we are moved need not be a first order action. It could be another human person, or a supernatural being. We could be moved to love of neighbour or God. Or to joy at a situation we find ourselves in. Emotions, such as love and hate, joy and sadness, can have objects other than actions. Indeed, on Suarez’s practical reasonbased conception of agency, as such they may still fall within the bounds of the perfectly voluntary. They can still do so, if they are exercises of our capacity to be moved by practical value – to respond to rational cognitions of the value of their objects. And as perfectly voluntary, at least in this life – seclusa beata visione, the beatific vision in heaven aside – they can be free. It can be directly within our power whether we have such emotions. Thus the will or rational appetite is not just a locus of free decisions, where decisions are second order actions directed at external and imperated first order actions. Second order agency directed at and productive of first order agency, is only a special case of a more general inner agency of the will: an agency whereby we move ourselves

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to favour or become averse to a variety of objects, objects of which first order actions and their effects are only one kind. Suarez is emphatic that for every passion or emotion of the sensitive appetite – every exercise of a capacity to be moved by non-rational cognition – there is a corresponding perfectly voluntary act of the rational appetite: For in truth all the acts enumerated above [i.e. passions] are found in the rational appetite, no less distinct from each other, whether they too are given the name passions or not.19 This is a view of the inner agency of the will which we may well find very alien. Some of us may allow that we have a capacity for strictly second order action: for deciding on which particular first order actions we perform, which decisions are up to us and within our control, that is, actions too. But we do not readily conceive of the possibility of a fully voluntary version of every motivational or emotional state that can occur in us. Yet Suarez really did. Indeed, his practical reason-based conception of agency naturally led in this direction, in so far as it allowed for full voluntariness in every motivational affect that could occur as a response to a practical value presented with rational clarity. At this point we need to stand back and look in very general terms at the work which the practical reason-based conception of agency was doing for Suarez – and why it mattered so much that the voluntary occur in particular as an inner elicited agency of the rational appetite. One way an agency of the rational appetite mattered was as a locus of specifically second order action – as a locus of action directed at, imperating and determining first order action. For Suarez the fact of agency’s occurrence at second order level matters partly because of a natural and, I think, defensible theory of human freedom. Freedom worth the name must take the form of rational self-determination – a capacity to apply our deliberations about how to act, in a deliberatively based free act of self-determination. Moreover, this self-determination must, for Suarez, involve freedom from prior necessitation from without – from other than our own past free agency. This capacity for rational self-determination is, however, unconvincingly to be found at the point of first order actions alone, which after all are determined by prior decisions of the will. If we suppose that decisions are not a further, second order locus of free agency, then our first order actions, as determined by prior decisions of the will, would be necessitated from without – by other than by our own free actions.

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There would be no rational self-determination. Thus freedom as a capacity for rational self-determination requires there to be freedom and agency at the point of the will: action-determining decisions have to be free actions themselves. But there was another and deeply important pressure on Suarez. He needed to make sense of the demands on us of divinely promulgated law. However, this law makes demands on our emotions – and in particular, on the emotion of love. The natural law contains, for example, as one precept that we should love God: Secondly, we suppose that natural law contains a special precept that we should love God as the author of nature… 20 The concept that we are under an obligation to love God and neighbour is absolutely central to Christianity. It is Christ’s summation in the new law of the old law presented in the Decalogue. But of course, the idea places great pressure on the voluntary. For it is very natural to suppose that laws and commands address our fully voluntary agency – laws can only require us to do things, or refrain from doing them. Laws cannot be passed that we feel feelings or experience passions. At least this is clearly so for human or positive law. And why should the natural or moral law be any different? Yet is love really a fully voluntary action that can be commanded or made legally required? Is it not just another passion? One response to the thought that love is morally obligatory might be to detach at least the specifically moral law from agency. If the obligations of positive human law address agency alone, the same – on this view – is not true of moral obligations. We find this approach in secular form in Hume, where the Christian commandment to love becomes a natural duty to benevolence – an obligation that applies to a motivation that exists in us as an inherently passive characteristic. But this was not Suarez’s response. For Suarez, the precepts of law in general, moral or positive, address free and so perfectly or fully voluntary agency – and free agency alone: lex tantum datur de humanis actibus – law is only given regarding human, that is, free and fully voluntary acts.21 The only possible response, then, is to voluntarize love as much as possible – to the point of making a species of that emotion a perfectly voluntary and free act of the rational appetite – and then to explain the law of love as applying to that emotion in so far as it falls within the required category of the voluntary. And it is the latter which Suarez does. In this he was not the first. In De Veritate, Aquinas noted as a problem the appearance that we could merit by our passions:

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It seems that we do, for we merit by fulfilling precepts. But by divine precepts we are induced to rejoice, to fear, to grieve, and to have other such passions …22 However, Aquinas goes on to note that these precepts or laws are not really directed at imperfectly voluntary passions; nor could they be. Precepts or laws can only address the perfectly voluntary rational will, and what is subject to it. For we can only merit in the strict sense through our exercise of the will and what is subject to it. Since we are speaking of merit with respect to reward, to merit in the strict sense is rather to acquire something for oneself as reward; which only happens if we give something which is equal in worth to what we are said to merit. But we can only give what is ours, and over which we are master. But we are masters of our acts through the will; not only of those which are elicited from the will immediately, such as loving and willing, but also of those commanded by the will and elicited in other faculties, such as walking, speaking and the like.23 But then joy, fear, love and the like can also occur as elicited acts of will – or even if mere passions may occur as imperated acts subject to and explained by decisions that they occur. Thus Aquinas replies: So to the first point, we should say that by God’s precepts we are admonished to rejoice or to fear in so far as joy and fear and the like consist in acts of the will and are not passions … or also in so far as such passions follow from the will.24 Suarez argues that the divinely promulgated law requires of us only that we love in so far as this love is a perfectly voluntary action – an action of the rational appetite or will – that lies within our power. Hence it is only necessary that we love God on certain appropriate occasions, and that on these occasions we at least love him above other things: ‘quod potest homo in hac vita praestare’ – which humans can do in this life. It is not required that we love him with the greatest possible intensity, or that we do this at all times. Nor, as the Protestant heretics wrongly suppose, exaggerating the demands of the law to make it quite impossible for us to obey, are we required to be motivated by the love of God in all our actions.25 Suarez uses the fact that some actions of the will – emotionconstituting actions – need not be directed at action, need not be

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strictly second order actions, to establish conclusions about the moral worth of internal intrinsically voluntary actions. This was a matter of considerable controversy within Suarez’s intellectual tradition. And it is easy to see, in broad terms, why. For the everyday ethical consciousness is inclined to find an independent moral worth in the successful performance of external actions. It is actually helping the poor that many of us immediately have in mind when we think of charitable action; not simply intending to help the poor. And ordinarily laws are naturally understood as addressed at external actions and their effects: we are required not to kill, not simply not to intend to kill. But the practical reason-based conception took internal actions of the will, not external actions, as the primary and underived locus of the voluntary. For it was to these inner actions of the will that the practical reason-based model directly applied. In which case the intuition that moral worth and moral law were concerned with external, imperated actions to a degree that went beyond their concern with elicited inner willings, became particularly problematic. As a result there was a long debate between, on the one hand, those such as Scotus, who tried to accommodate belief in some genuine and independent moral worth of external actions – some worth additional to that of the internal actions which gave rise to them; and those, on the other hand, who denied external actions any moral worth, or, who more moderately accepted the moral worth of external actions, but as an extrinsic feature of them, like their very status as voluntary acts – extrinsic because wholly derived from the moral worth of internal actions. Suarez’s considered view, is that the moral law addresses both elicited internal actions of the will and external actions – but external actions only as imperated and caused by internal actions.26 And while moral worth attaches intrinsically to internal actions, it attaches only extrinsically to external actions, derived from the moral character of the acts of will that cause them. It followed, in Suarez’s view, that holding fixed facts about an agent’s internal agency, the occurrence or non-occurrence of a given external action – such as whether an agent who has decided to give alms, actually manages to do so and thereby does relieve poverty – makes no direct difference to the moral worth of the agent.27 This brings us back to Suarez’s theory of fully voluntary emotions, such as the love of God. Suarez notes what he takes to be the particularly implausible view of Cajetan as regards the moral relation between internal and external actions. Cajetan’s view was that internal

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actions only have a derived moral value – a value they have as causes of the external actions which provide their objects, where alone intrinsic moral worth is to be found. Suarez dismisses this view as implausible. Further, he dismisses it by first adverting to the evident moral worth found in internal acts such as loving God. Suarez’s point is that the object of the love of God is God – not some first order action with a given moral worth that it is the function of this inner act to cause. Cajetan’s theory, Suarez argues, clearly cannot apply to this sort of highly morally worthy inner action of the will. So why should it apply at all?28 I have noted that Suarez conceives of the voluntary as something essentially willed and subject to the will, whether reflexively in elicited acts, or as the object of a distinct act of will in imperated acts. Notice further that connectedly at the heart of Suarez’s conception of humans as rational beings is a hierarchical conception of intellectual and even appetitive faculties as to some degree subject to the will. This is importantly the case in relation to the sensitive appetite. The sensitive appetite is not like the locomotive faculties, subject to the will ad nutum. It does not obey on the nod. That is because, as an imperfectly voluntary faculty, the sensitive appetite has its own cognitively presented objects, at which its exercise is directed. We cannot, therefore, will away the repugnance or attraction which the sensitive appetite feels for various objects. Nevertheless, the sensitive appetite’s capacity to motivate action is in particular subject to the will – and this is essential to Suarez’s conception of humans as forming a whole ordered by reason, an order that the fall has damaged without removing entirely: Whenever the will efficaciously commands the sensitive appetite that it possess a motivating desire for or aversion of some object, the sensitive appetite always and necessarily obeys.29 Why must the sensitive appetite be subordinate at least to this degree to the rational appetite? Suarez’s reply is that since there are these two distinct appetites – these two distinct motivational capacities – occurring in one and the same soul, there had to be an ordering of them, with the lower as subordinate to and subject to the higher: for a multitude without order brings forth confusion; and so the lower appetite has a natural tendency to obey the higher even against the lower’s own particular inclination, as both light and heavy things incline to fill a vacuum outside their natural locations.30

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This notion of rational order and hierarchy lies at the heart of Suarez’s conception of voluntary agency. Voluntariness flows from the higher rational motivational faculty into other faculties of the soul, and thereby helps order the psyche.

Hobbes Thomas Hobbes’s most sustained engagement with late scholastic accounts of the voluntary was in an extended debate with John Bramhall, the Anglican bishop of Derry and fellow royalist exile in Paris. Not that Hobbes ever took Bramhall to be his most imposing intellectual antagonist on this topic. Indeed, Hobbes made it charmingly clear that to address Bramhall on the subject of the will and its freedom was very much to address the monkey rather than the organ-grinder. Hobbes drily reported that he had found nothing in Bramhall on free will and on free will’s relation to God’s concurrence that could not have been read earlier in Suarez’s Opuscula.31 Suarez, we saw, has a paradigm of the voluntary: a paradigm designed for the case of humans – humans who are distinguished from mere animals by possessing special, immaterial rational faculties. It is in exercising our capacity for making immaterial motivational responses to distinctively rational cognitions – in exercising our specifically rational appetite or will – that we humans perform fully voluntary actions. Hobbes’s view was fundamentally different; and here lies the heart of the disagreement. Humans, for Hobbes, possess wholly material minds, just like the material minds of other animals. Human thoughts and actions are wholly corporeal, and determined by prior necessity. Granted, humans are rational, as animals are not. But human rationality does not consist in any psychological discontinuity from the animal case – and certainly not in the possession of special psychological faculties not found in animals. That which constitutes distinctively human rationality, then, is not any special rational faculty within the human mind, but merely the ability of humans to develop and use a particular physical tool, namely language. By language humans can use words to express their thoughts – which otherwise are just like animal thoughts, occurring within a wholly corporeal imagination. Reasoning involves nothing more than the deduction of consequences from the defined terms or words of a language – and is carried out in speech or in the same corporeal imagination we share with animals. As Hobbes put it bluntly to Bramhall: ‘Reason and understanding are acts of the imagination, that is to say they are imaginations.’32

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There is, then, nothing about any human motivational responses to cognitions to distinguish them as at all different in kind from animal motivational responses to sensorily or imaginatively based cognitions. Bramhall does his best to express a practical reason-based conception of agency. He tries to explain the voluntary by talking of reason making representations to a specifically rational appetite or will – and by claiming that it is thanks to will’s receptiveness to reason that acts of the rational appetite are voluntary and free. But Hobbes is wholly dismissive of all this. Liberty cannot be limited to a distinctively human rational appetite, or be peculiar to rational humans, because there is no distinctively rational appetite, nor any distinctively rational representations to such an appetite: For I do not fear it will be thought too hot for my fingers, to shew the vanity of words such as these, Intellectual appetite, conformity of the appetite to the object, rational will, elective power of the rational will; nor understand I how reason can be the root of true liberty, if the Bishop (as he saith in the beginning) had the liberty to write this discourse. I understand how objects, and the conveniences and inconveniences of them, may be represented to a man by the help of his senses; but how reason representeth anything to the will, I understand no more than the Bishop understands there may be liberty in children, in beasts, and inanimate creatures. For he seemeth to wonder how children may be left at liberty; how beasts imprisoned may be set at liberty; and how a river may have a free course.33 In every case humans and animals alike are responding motivationally to the same sensorily based and corporeal representations of actions and their possible consequences. As such, animals can deliberate as well as humans. If, unlike the animals, we can reason about how to act, that is simply because as language users we use and understand words – words whose implications we can by reasoning deduce. It does not follow that action is generated in us by deliberative processes different in kind from those found in animals. Hobbes’s approach, then, is to build a theory of agency that directly fits the case of the least complex motivations and actions, and so, in particular, the agency of non-human animals. For he is persuaded that there will be no difference of principle arising in more complex cases. Rather than, like Suarez and Molina, semi-voluntarizing animal emotions and passions on the pattern of some analogy to a rational will, Hobbes devoluntarizes the will on the basis that there are no

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action motivations different in kind from the most humdrum appetite. A favourite Hobbesian example is the appetite of hunger: nor can a man more determine his will than any other appetite; that is, more than he can determine when he shall be hungry and when not.34 Motivations, for Hobbes, whether in animals or humans, are linked to evaluations: ‘to love a thing and to think it good are all one…’35 How far for Hobbes these evaluations come to anything more than aspects of the very appetites to which they are linked – how far they are cognitions of anything independent of those desires – is obscure. But we do not need to settle the matter here. The important point is that for Hobbes, the motivations behind our first order actions are all on a level; and they do not differ in kind from a simple appetitive state such as hunger. The practical reason-based model of voluntary agency, we saw, was designed directly to fit a class of supposedly reason-involving motivational responses – responses that centrally include the operation of our decision-making capacity. Other non-rational motivations – the passions – take on a semi-voluntary role by virtue of some supposed imperfect likeness to the special class of reasoninvolving motivations. But for Hobbes, there is no special and distinct class of reasoninvolving motivational responses. If you want to consider the voluntary status of any motivational response, your search might as well start and end with something basic, like being hungry. For such an appetite is perfectly representative. If, considered on its own terms, being hungry looks as distant from voluntary action as anything does, that settles the matter. Voluntary actions cannot occur in second order form as motivations. Thus Hobbes’s model of voluntary agency is singular in structure, not dual. A voluntary act is what follows from and is explained by the will – by motivations to act such as hunger or a desire to win an argument. There is no second order agency of the will – of our motivation itself. Hobbes, of course, determinist as he was, had no interest in a conception of the will as a locus of unnecessitated self-determination. Nor had he any other commitment from his ethical theory to a dual structure theory of agency. Hobbes was in fact rather unhappy with the idea of laws as specifically addressing the will. Bramhall, Hobbes says, claims that

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that law is unjust and tyrannical which commands a man to Will, that which it is impossible for him to will. Whereby it appears he is of opinion, that a law may be made to command the will. [But Hobbes disagrees.] The stile of a law is Do this or Do not do this; or if thou do this, thou shalt suffer this; but no law runs thus, Will this or Will not this; or if thou have a will to this, thou shalt suffer this.36 In the event, the issue did not matter too much, because Hobbes was happy to allow that in any case blame can still be addressed to the will. For blame is no more than a negative evaluation. Now negative evaluation, just thinking badly of something or someone, does not presuppose the voluntary or free nature of what is evaluated. So blame, in particular, does not presuppose the freedom or voluntariness of what people are being blamed for. Thus if people are motivated or willing to do what is against the law, Hobbes says: I answer, they are to be blamed though their wills be not in their power. Is not good good and evill evill though they be not in our power? And shall I not call them so? And is that not praise and blame? But it seems that the Bishop takes blame not for the dispraise of a thing, but for a praetext and colour of malice and revenge against him that he blameth.37 A further, and vital component to Hobbes’s hostility to Suarezian action theory has to do with the theory’s hybrid nature: its combination, thanks to faculty-dualism, of a practical reason-based theory of elicited acts of will, with a motivation-based theory of imperated acts of will. Hobbes’s hostility to this feature of the theory is open and frequently expressed. The schoolmen, as Hobbes sees it, are appealing to the operations of a given faculty, the will, to characterize and make intelligible a given phenomenon – voluntary action. They are characterizing first order actions, in motivation-based terms, as products of a will to perform them. And that, in Hobbes’s view, is quite all right. But having done this, it appears that the very phenomenon that was to be clarified, voluntary agency, turns up as an essential feature of the very same faculty of will that was supposed to have clarified it. The very faculty that was used to characterize what agency is now turns out to operate as an instance of voluntary agency itself. Hobbes regards this not just as circular and question-begging in a theory of the voluntary, but as downright incoherent. In particular, the

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scholastic idea that the will is a locus of elicited second order action is viewed by Hobbes as involving a serious confusion – the confusion of a power to act with the person who acts. For if, in our account of first order action, we characterize such actions as voluntary in virtue of being effects of the will, we are treating the will as, precisely, a power to perform voluntary actions – as what provides our capacity to perform voluntary actions and explains their performance. But a power or capacity to perform voluntary actions does not perform voluntary actions itself: As if it were not Freedome enough for a man to do what he will, unless his will also have power over his Will, and that his will be not the power itself, but must have another power within it to do all voluntary acts.38 And where he [Bramhall] sayes our wills are in our power, he sees not that he speaks absurdly; for he ought to say, the will is the power…39 Later, Hobbes exclaims in exasperation: Can any man but a schoolman think that the will is voluntary? But yet the will is the cause of voluntary actions.40 Hobbes believes that the only category of voluntary action, as conceived by Suarez and his allies, that is at all respectable, is the category of imperated act – the category of willed actions explained by prior and distinct willings of them. At one stage in the debate, Bramhall introduces the elicited/imperated act distinction within the voluntary, in the following, by now familiar, terms: There is a double act of the will, the one more remote, called imperatus, that is in truth the act of some inferiour faculty, subject to the command of the will, as to open or shut one’s eyes; without doubt these actions may be compelled. The other act is neerer, called actus elicitus, an act drawn out of the will; as to will, to choose, to elect; this may be stopped or hindered by the intervening impediment of the understanding, as a stone lying on a table is kept from its natural motion, otherwise the will should have a kind of omnipotence; but the will cannot be compelled to an act repugnant to it, for that is both to incline, and not to

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incline, to the same object, at the same time, which implies a contradiction.41 Hobbes’s response was clear: imperated acts as effects of the will are acceptable, allowing for reservations about the term ‘imperated’; but elicited acts of the will itself qua power to act, are unintelligible. As Hobbes puts it: Wherein letting pass that Metaphoricall speech of attributing command and subjection to the faculties of the soul, as if they made a commonwealth or family among themselves, and could speak to one another, which is very improper in searching the truth of this question; you may observe first that to compell a voluntary act, is nothing else, but to will it; for it is all one to say, my will commands the shutting of mine eyes, or the doing of any other action, and to say, I have the will to shut my eyes. So that actus imperatus here, might as easily have been said in English, a voluntary action, but that they that invented the term, understood not anything it signified. Secondly, you may observe, that actus elicitus, is exemplified by these words, to will, to elect, to choose, which are all one, and so to will here is made an act of the will; and indeed, as the will is a faculty or power of a man’s soul, so to will is an act of it, according to that power. But as it is absurdly said, that to dance is an act allowed or drawn by fair means out of the ability to dance; so it is also to say, that to will is an act allowed or drawn out of the power to will, which power is commonly called, the will.42 The will is the power of the person to act. It does not itself perform actions. To suppose otherwise is a gross confusion, akin to supposing that our capacity or power to dance, goes in for dancing itself. Hobbes returns once more to underline the acceptability of imperated acts, once you remove the implication, in the term ‘imperated’, that the will is some specifically rational faculty with authority over other lesser faculties and capacities: He [Bramhall] says that Actus Imperatus is when a man opens or shuts his eyes at the command of the will. I say when a man opens and shuts his eyes according to his will, that it is a voluntary action; and I believe we mean one and the same thing.43

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Hobbes further developed his case against elicited acts of the will by turning the reflexion principle against the very dual structure theory of will agency that contained it, and against the allied conception of freedom and the voluntary as involving self-determination at the point of the will. Hobbes agrees that to occur as willed is a defining characteristic of the voluntary: ‘The question is whether the will to write, or the will to forbear, come upon a man according to his will…’.44 But he crucially disagrees that this feature is to be found in our motivations themselves: I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will, but to say, I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech.45 Here we come to a fundamental difference between Hobbes’s psychology of action, and the psychology proposed by his opponents. Suarez and Hobbes both saw subjection to the will, or willedness, as defining the voluntary. But for Suarez, it is vital that the phenomenon of being subject to the will – of occurring as something willed – be fairly extensive. In particular, it is vital that our own motivations, both rational and non-rational, be, to varying degrees and in various ways, subject to the will. Note that Suarez saw the reflexive and inherent willedness of elicited willings – the reflexive subjection of the will to itself – as vital to the will’s character as a locus of self-determining freedom. Further, he saw the qualified subjection of the sensitive appetite to the rational appetite as an essential feature of a rational order within the human psyche. Hobbes denied the possibility of either kind of will subjection in respect of motivation. In so doing, he was not only expressing a rejection of Suarez’s theory of human agency as a locus of a capacity for a distinctively rational self-determination. He was also rejecting Suarez’s conception of human psychology as located in faculties varyingly related to reason and so consequently exhibiting a reason-derived hierarchy of order and subordination. Hobbesian voluntary agency is nothing more than the scholastics’ motivation-based imperated agency – only now merely motivated, not imperated by some rational psychological authority. Hobbes, in his own eyes, had preserved the solid motivationbased core of scholastic action theory, removing the extraneous practical reason-based category of elicited acts. In so doing he had abandoned a link between the voluntary and a faculty-based rational psychological order that was fundamental to Suarezian action theory. The claim that appetites or motivations are not subject to the will expressed Hobbes’s profound rejection of and incomprehension of this link.

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Notes 1 The idea of a practical reason-based theory of agency is introduced and defended against current English-language theories in my ‘Reason and Agency’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society May 1997. See also my ‘Action, Will and Law in Late Scholasticism’ in Jill Kraye and Risto Saarinen (eds), Moral Philosophy at the Threshold of Modernity (Dordrecht, 2004), and my forthcoming The Ethics of Action: Action and Self-Determination (Oxford, 2004). 2 ‘Sciendum etiam est quod praxis est actus alterius potentiae quam intellectus, naturaliter posterior intellectione, natus elici conformiter intellectioni rectae, ad hoc quod sit rectus’ (Scotus, Lectura, prol. pars 4, qq. 1–2. See also Allan Wolter (ed.), Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington, 1986), pp. 126–8. 3 ‘Ex hoc sequitur quod nihil est praxis formaliter nisi actus voluntatis imperatus vel elicitus, quia nullus actus sequitur actum intellectus cui conformiter elicitur nisi actus voluntatis, quia omnes actus aliarum potentiarum possunt praecedere actum intellectus, sed non actus voluntatis’ (Scotus, ibid.). 4 ‘Tam forte dissensio est de nomine, nam actus practicus dicitur ille actus intellectus quo ordinat aut dirigit operationem aliquam, praxis vero dicitur illa operatio quae regulatur et ordinatur per actionem practicam intellectus, nam “praxis” nomen graecum est, latine “operationem” significans. Et hic videtur communis usus vocabulorum. Et ita communiter praxis est actus alterius potentiae ab intellectu; actus ver practicus est elicitus ab ipso intellectu’ (Suarez, Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis De anima, vol. 3, Disputatio Nona (Madrid, 1991), p. 250). 5 ‘…voluntarium est actus qui est operatio rationalis’ (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1,2, q.6, a.1). 6 ‘…ad rationem voluntarii requiritur quod principium actus sit intra, cum aliqua cognitione finis’ (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1,2, q.6, a.2). 7 ‘actus voluntatis nihil est aliud quam inclinatio quaedam procedens ab interiori principio cognoscente’ (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1,2, q.6, a.4, resp.). 8 ‘voluntarium per modum actus imperati, nihil enim aliud est, quam habitudo, seu denominatio quaedam in actu imperato ab actu elicito, cuius est obiectum et effectus, non enim alia ratione actus imperatus voluntarius dicitur, nisi quia procedit ab actu elicito voluntario, et ab ipso quodammodo informatur, et cum illo constituit unum actum moralem…Tota ergo difficultas revocatur ad actus elicitos’ (Suarez, De Voluntario et Involuntario in Genere, deque Actibus Voluntariis in Speciali (Opera Paris, 1856), vol. 4, p. 160). 9 ‘esse voluntarium in actu elicito, nihil aliud esse quam esse actum, ita immediate manentem a voluntate, ut per se ipsum intrinsece sit volitus per virtualem, et intrinsecam reflexionem in ipso inclusam’ (Suarez, ibid., p. 160). 10 Suarez, ibid., p. 196. 11 ‘assensus enim conclusionis per se non est voluntarius, sed naturalis, nisi quatenus imperari potest a voluntate quoad exercitium, quia neque per se est intrinsece volitus, sicut actus appetitus, neque procedit ex cognitione sui

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proprii obiecti circa quod versatur, sed potius ipse est cognitio sui obiecti … ’ (Suarez, ibid., p. 162). ‘ … non potest autem se determinare nisi volendo talem operationem, quia intelligi non potest, quod potentia ex se indifferens ad opposita, ad alteram partem determinetur, nisi quia vult; ergo necesse est ut illa determinatio libera sit voluntaria per se ipsam’ (Suarez, ibid., pp. 169–70). ‘At vero, quae participant cognitionem, saltem sensitivam, possunt proprio appetitu a se elicito ferri in res cognitas, et ex illo appetitu moveri, atque ita aliquo modo voluntarie operari’ (Suarez, ibid., p. 180). See Suarez, ibid., p. 23. See the introduction to Quaestio 6 of the Prima Secundae: within the voluntary two kinds of acts are to be considered: ‘Et quia beatitudo est proprium hominis bonum, propinquus se habent ad beatitudinem actus qui sunt proprie humani, quam actus qui sunt homini aliisque animalibus communes. Primo ergo considerandum est de actibus qui sunt proprii hominis: secundo, de actibus qui sunt homini aliisque animalibus communes, qui dicuntur animae passiones.’ ‘Humanorum actuum quidam per se liberi, atque adeo humani, et morales sunt, et omnino interiores, et immateriales, alii sunt prorsus exteriores, qui ab interioribus necessitate quadam efficiuntur: alii sunt quasi medii, ut actiones appetitus sentientis quas ad cogitationes seu actus phantasiae revocamus’ (Suarez, De Actibus Qui Vocantur Passiones (Opera Paris 1856), vol., 4, p. 455). In my The Psychology of Freedom (Cambridge, 1996), I argue that first order action is paradigmatic of agency in this sense: first order action is the action with which practical reason is primarily concerned, practical reason’s concern with second order action being derivative and secondary. ‘Etenim quando libertas, vel libertatis vestigium ex parte appetitus adest, neque obiectum tam vehementer promovet vel appetitum pro sui qualitate necessitet, sola libertas, aut libertatis vestigium sufficit, ut eum motum non imperet, quem potest imperare, atque adeo necessaria non est notitia negationis motus, ut motum non imperet’ (Molina, Concordia Liberi Arbitrii, Disputatio 47 (Paris, 1876)). ‘nam revera omnes actus supra numerati in appetitu rationali reperiuntur, et non minus distincti, sive illis detur passionis nomen, sive non’ (Suarez, De Actibus Qui Vocantur Passiones (Opera Paris 1856), vol. 4, p. 476). ‘Secundo, supponimus legem naturalem continere speciale praeceptum diligendi Deum ut auctorem naturae, quod in materia etiam de charitate ostendendum est’ (Suarez, De Legibus et Legislatore Deo (Opera Paris 1856), vol. 5, p. 126). Suarez De Bonitate et Malitia Humanorum Actuum, vol. 4, p. 293 (Opera Paris, 1856). Suarez is insistent that precepts of law only address free, and so perfectly voluntary acts: ‘Addo praeterea, loquendo de propria lege, de qua nunc agimus, tantum esse posse propter creaturam rationalem: nam lex non imponitur, nisi naturae liberae, nec habeat pro materia, nisi actus liberos… ’ (De Legibus (Opera Paris 1856), vol. 5, p. 7). ‘Quaeritur utrum passionibus mereamur. Et videtur quod sic. Implendo enim praecepta meremur. Sed divinis praeceptis inducimur ad gaudendum, timendum, dolendum, et alias huiusmodi passiones, ut Augustinus dicit, XIV de Civitate Dei, cap. IX. Ergo passionibus meremur’ (Aquinas, De Veritate (Marietti Rome, 1964), q.26, a.6, p. 495).

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23 ‘Cum autem mereri respectu mercedis dicatur, proprie mereri est aliquid sibi magis acquirere pro mercede; quod quidem non fit nisi cum aliquid damus quod est condignum ei quod mereri dicimur. Dare autem non possumus nisi id quod nostrum est, cuius domini sumus. Sumus autem domini nostrorum actuum per voluntatem; non solum illorum qui immediate ex voluntate eliciuntur, ut diligere et velle, sed eorum qui a voluntate imperantur per alias potentias eliciti, ut ambulare, loqui, et huiusmodi’ (Aquinas, De Veritate (Marietti Rome, 1964), q.26, a.6, p. 496). 24 ‘Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod praeceptis Dei admonemur ad gaudendum et timendum, secundum quod gaudium, timor, et huiusmodi, in actu voluntatis consistunt, et non sunt passiones...vel secundum quod huiusmodi passiones ex voluntate consequuntur’ (Aquinas, De Veritate (Marietti Rome, 1964), q.26, a.6, p. 497). 25 Suarez, De Bonitate et Malitia Humanorum Actuum (Opera Paris 1856), vol. 4, p. 307. 26 Suarez, ibid., p. 427. 27 ‘Dicendum primo formalem bonitatem actionis humanae solum esse intrinsece in interiori actu voluntatis, in exterioribus vero solum esse per denominationem tantum extrinsecam’ (Suarez, ibid., p. 425); ‘…actus exterior praecise et per se sumptus, non addit homini formalem bonitatem moralem, nec reddit illum magis studiosum’ (ibid., p. 426). 28 Suarez, ibid., p. 308. 29 ‘Quandocumque voluntas efficaciter imperat appetitu sensitivo, ut appetitione absoluta appetat vel fugiat aliquod obiectum, ipse semper et necessario obedit’ (Suarez, De Voluntario et Involuntario in Genere, deque Actibus Voluntariis in Speciali (Opera Paris 1856), vol. 4, p. 272). 30 ‘nam multitudo sine ordine parit confusionem: et propterea inferior appetitus habet naturalem propensionem ad obediendum superiori etiam contra propriam et peculiarem inclinationem, sicut levia et gravia ad replendum vacuum extra sua loca naturalia’ (Suarez, ibid., p. 273) 31 Hobbes in The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, clearly Stated and Debated between Dr Bramhall Bishop of Derry, and Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (London, 1656), p. 28. 32 Ibid., p. 309. 33 Ibid., pp. 35–6. 34 Ibid., p. 25. 35 Ibid., pp. 301–2. 36 Ibid., p. 138. 37 Ibid., p. 39–40. 38 Ibid., p. 38. 39 Ibid., p. 40. 40 Ibid., p. 256. 41 Ibid., pp. 215–16. 42 Ibid., pp. 217–18. 43 Ibid., p. 236. 44 Ibid., p. 29. 45 Ibid., p. 29.

7

Kant on the will J.B. Schneewind

The will is of major importance for Kant’s ethics and for his moral psychology. Yet he spends relatively little time in explaining exactly what the will is or how we know about it. Although he treats our possession of will as an empirical fact, he also holds that not all the properties of the human will are learned from experience, or at least not from sensory experience. Morality itself has a crucial part in showing us how we must understand our will. ‘[M]an’s moral capacity [das sittliche Vermögen],’ Kant says, must be estimated by the law, which commands categorically, and so in accordance with our rational knowledge of what men ought to be…not in accordance with the empirical knowledge we have of men as they are’.1 The second Critique specifies what this means. Each of us has an unshakeable awareness of being bound by categorical requirements. ‘This fact of reason’, as Kant calls it,2 requires us to infer, for practical purposes, that we are free to do what is morally necessary, even if it be opposed by all our empirically given desires. Our ability to will must be such that morality can have this kind of hold on us. Kant arrived at his idea of categorical obligation by the mid-1760s, before the turn to critique that he began to work out in the Inaugural Dissertation.3 Thereafter his thought about the will embodied his search for a way to articulate the view of its freedom presupposed by this vision of morality. Earlier he had been a follower, more or less, of the Leibnizian Christian Wolff. In the work of the leading antiLeibnizian of the period, Christian August Crusius, he found an alternative to Wolffianism that helped him to make his own crucial break with it. These two sets of doctrines provide the most immediate philosophical context for Kant’s views of the will,4 and are discussed in the first section of the chapter. Next, I consider some of Kant’s statements about the nature of the will, and, finally, turn to some questions about his view of its powers.

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Two predecessors For Wolff the soul or mind is a simple spiritual substance possessing one essential power, the power of representing the world from its own unique perspective. Our representations function in two ways. They enable us to know the world, and they tend to move us. They move us because they all represent some amount or other of perfection, and the soul always tries to realize what it represents as the greatest available amount of perfection. Perfection is simply the combination of parts into a whole serving some purpose. God has made the world so that all things in it have some degree of perfection. We can represent these perfections either confusedly and indistinctly, or clearly. Sensuous desires are confused and indistinct representations of perfection or goodness; higher desires are clearer and more distinct representations; and feelings of pleasure themselves are nothing but intuitive or immediate representations of perfection.5 Wolff and the Leibnizians work within a traditional way of conceptualizing our mental powers. Sleigh, Chappell and della Rocca give an admirably clear statement of the view, which they attribute to Aquinas as well as to Leibniz: When a rational agent exercises a power of its soul the resulting action is specified by its object, which characterizes the particular action it is. Associated with each kind of power possessed by an agent is a general objective which characterizes the ultimate goal of all exercises of that power. Thus, truth is the general objective of the cognitive power and the good forms the basis for the general objective of the will.6 For the Leibniz-Wolff school the will is similar to desire in tending to move the soul toward the good, but it is more than a single desire. It is the mind’s comparison of representations in respect of their degrees of perfection, not simply as cognitions but considered as motivating us. The outcome of the comparison is the agent’s determination to seek the greatest good, the representation of which serves as our reason or motive (Bewegungsgrund).7 Without such a reason we cannot act. Justifying reason and explanatory cause are thus the same. What explains someone’s action is necessarily his belief about its justification. Since the Wolffian will aims at maximizing perfection it has an inherent formal side. But the content of its decisions is wholly determined by what is given to the mind in its representations, and Wolff shows no interest in separating out the motivating power of the form as distinguished from the content.

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Because God has created the unique best possible world and because we necessarily act for what we take to be the best option available to us, Wolff’s view leads to a problem about freedom. Kant engages it in the New Elucidation. Are not our representations of perfection determined from the beginning of the world by God’s choice of the best? If so, how can we be free and responsible agents? The standard answer, due to Leibniz, is that we have a choice as long as more than one course of action is conceivable. If that were not true we would be absolutely determined to do the one conceivable act. So long as alternatives are conceivable, however, each is necessary only if the agent chooses it. Kant reports Crusius’s comment that this is a dodge, not an answer; but although he agrees, he still thinks the Wolffian view allows for freedom. Even if our acts are determined, what determines them is not anything external to the agent, ‘as if the agent were compelled to perform his actions against his will’. His actions come from his will as that is moved by ‘the blandishments of his representations’. He is thus moved spontaneously by his own reasons, and, Kant says, in italics, ‘When this spontaneity is determined in conformity with the representation of what is best it is called freedom’.8 The alternative, Kant thinks, would be random choice – the ability to will against even one’s most settled convictions about what there is reason to do. This is what the supposed liberty of indifference amounts to; and nothing would be more regrettable than that our wills should possess it. If they did, we could not rely on ourselves or anyone else to act on even the most carefully considered conclusions as to what is best.9 In cases where we seem to have no grounds for choice but choose anyway – we guess whether you are holding an odd or an even number of beans – there are determining factors below the level of conscious awareness. Obscure representations determine our choice if clear ones are lacking.10 Kant later repudiated this account of freedom as predetermined spontaneity, saying that it allowed no more than, in his well-known phrase, ‘the freedom of the turnspit’.11 His new vision of morality plainly required such a repudiation, and with it a rethinking of the will itself. He never rejected the Wolffian view that a will that could act without grounds would be a horror. What he rejected was the view that the will is to be defined in terms of the nature of the object it seeks – the good. He was not, however, the first to break with this classical position. Crusius had already developed a theory of the will that did so. He defines will as ‘the power of a mind to act according to its representations’. Willing is, roughly, deciding to make real something

Kant on the will 157 represented.12 Acts of will or volitions bring to the representations that elicit them an otherwise absent thrust toward realization. Beings who can think must have wills because otherwise their representations of the world would be pointless; and God does not create anything that is without a purpose. ‘The understanding,’ Crusius says, ‘exists for the sake of the will.’13 His account leaves open the question of what in the representation leads us to realize something we have conceived. In so doing it separates the justification of action from its explanation. We are able to will what we do not think justified, and to think justified what we do not will. Crusius couples his definition of will with a strong view about its freedom. Freedom is not just the absence of external hindrances to doing what we will. Nor is it acting for what we perceive as the greatest available amount of good or perfection. Crusius thinks that if there were only this Leibnizian sort of freedom, ‘all our virtue would be turned into a mere piece of luck’, since it would depend on our having a constitution enabling us to acquire knowledge and on our being situated so as to get it.14 If we are truly free, then even given constant antecedents and circumstances we can determine ourselves to act in several ways.15 ‘Whenever we freely will something,’ Crusius says, we decide to do something for which one or several desires already exist in us…Freedom consists in an inner perfect activity of will, which is capable of connecting its efficacy with one of the currently active drives of the will, or of omitting this connection and remaining inactive, or of connecting it with another drive instead of the first one.16 Elaborating this view, Crusius distinguishes between physical causes and what he calls motives or exemplary causes, which are reasons justifying proposed actions. He argues that the Leibnizian principle of sufficient reason systematically and inexcusably overlooks this distinction, collapsing radically different kinds of reason (Grund), the physical and the moral, into one.17 Crusius feels no hesitation in allowing moral reasons the power to move bodies in a material world. Granting physical determinism a large part in explaining the behaviour of inanimate objects, he thinks that total determinism is unacceptable. It allows neither for morality nor for miracles.18 Mind, however, is spiritual substance, and both God and we, insofar as we are spirits, must be able to alter the course of events.19 If determinism cannot account for these things, so much the worse for it.

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How, then, does the will determine its objects? Will as active power contains various strivings, some constant, some intermittent. These strivings are desires.20 Many desires are caused by representations of the world; but not all representations attract or repel, so that there must be something already in the will that makes it responsive to some and not other representations. Sometimes desires themselves cause other desires, as desire for an end causes desire for the means. However, Cruasius argues that not all desires can be derivative in these ways, thus some desires must be basic and essential to the will as such, or innate. Crusius identifies three basic desires. First is the desire to increase our own appropriate power or perfection.21 Against the Leibniz-Wolff school’s use of this desire, Crusius argues that it is the origin, not of all striving, but of the desires for truth, clarity, good reasoning, the arts, bodily improvement, freedom, friendship and honour.22 The second basic desire is a desire for community with those in whom we find perfection.23 This leads us, among other things, to feel a general moral love, or desire to help others.24 The third basic desire is ‘the natural drive to recognize a divine moral law’.25 This drive is evident in our conscientiousness (Gewissenstrieb), a sense of indebtedness which moves us to do our duty and carry out our obligations. As forms of will, all desires require representations.26 The innate drive of conscience has its own innate ideas. They spell out our general obligations. We have two kinds of obligation. One kind requires efficiency and planning in satisfying our desires, the other kind requires us to obey God’s commands. The rules for duties of prudence and those for duties of virtue, as Crusius calls these obligations, are both inherent in the will. When these rules seem to conflict, we are to follow God’s laws above all else. We can do so because conscientiousness is a permanent basic drive, and because our will is free. Although we feel the charm of the various representations to which the will’s strivings respond, we are not determined by them. We can turn the will away from them and ‘connect its efficacy’ with our conscientious feeling of obligation. The will, as Crusius sees it, is thus like the Leibnizian will in having a formal element built into its nature. But its formal structure is far more complex. It contains an ordered multiplicity of rules but requires no maximizing. The overriding formal requirement, carried in the rule of virtue, is that we do whatever God has commanded, and do it simply as his command. The content here comes neither from our desires nor from the will’s own structure. It comes directly from God’s essentially untrammeled will. The human will can thus be moved by

Kant on the will 159 God’s bidding as such, no matter what the content of his commands. Unlike Wolff, then, Crusius thinks that we can respond specifically to the purely formal aspect of a reason for action. And because the will is free, failure to do so is our own fault, or rather, our sin.

The Kantian will Crusius takes the mind to have two basic abilities, to know and to will, and he thinks of desires as elements or aspects of the will. Kant takes the mind to have three basic abilities: to understand, to desire, and to feel pleasure and unpleasure.27 Willing for him is a specific exercise of the capacity for desire . He transforms Crusius’s definition of will into a definition of desire: the faculty of desire, he says, ‘is the faculty to be, by means of one’s representations, the cause of the objects of these representations’.28 Like Crusius and unlike Wolff, he gives a definition that leaves open the question of what feature or features of representations or their content lead us to desire and to decide to act. To understand Kant’s conception of will we must see how he distinguishes will from other aspects of the faculty of desire. Animals and humans, he holds, are moved in different ways by their representations to cause the objects of these representations. In so doing, both exercise a power of choice. But, as he tells us in the first Critique and the Metaphysics of Morals, animals have one sort of power of choice and humans as rational beings have another sort. He calls the first arbitrium brutum, or animal power of choice, and the second arbitrium liberum, or free power of choice.29 He uses the term Willkür rather than the term Wille in making the distinction between the animal and the human ability. His early remarks on animals shed some light on what he has in mind. In his False Subtlety essay of 1762, Kant writes that although animals give differing responses when they perceive different things this is not because they make different judgements about them. They are unable to conceptualize and so unable to judge. They differentiate, not logically, but physically: they are ‘driven to different actions by different representations’. Seeing a roast causes the dog to act one way, seeing a loaf causes it to act another, because these representations cause different desires. What animals lack is ‘the faculty of inner sense’, that is, the ability to make one’s own representations the objects of one’s thoughts. This reflective ability grounds all the other higher abilities.30 In lectures on metaphysics given during the same period, Kant connects animal power of choice with Willkür:

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J.B. Schneewind Animals (by hypothesis) have an ability to act from choice [nach Willkür], but they cannot represent to themselves the moving grounds. They are not self-aware of the preference to act on them. This preference is a preference in preferring and is in humans the essence of freedom; otherwise I could not distinguish the soul from other necessitating grounds in nature. Animals are not machines but they nonetheless do something machine-like, where preference comes in between, rather like a cogwheel. The human can reflect on it, even if the object has already made an impression. He can prefer to be rationally self-aware.31

Representations of various attainable conditions come to an animal; sooner or later one exerts a stronger pull than the others, or is decisively preferred. When the representation causes behaviour, we say that the animal exercises its power of choice, or arbitrium brutum. The animal capacity for choice is thus like the Leibnizian will. It is what enables animals to respond to the strongest pull; to do so it must somehow carry out a non-conceptual analogue of comparison. In lectures on metaphysics given in the late 1770s Kant adds that the animal’s alternatives, as given in particular sensuous representations, present objects as likeable or dislikeable. And he expands on the earlier distinction between brute and rational choice. Every act of choice [actus arbitrii] has an impelling cause. The impelling causes are either sensitive or intellectual. The sensitive are stimuli or motive causes, impulses. The intellectual are motives or motive grounds. The first are for the senses, the others for the understanding.32 Kant’s mature doctrine is in accord with these earlier remarks. Animals are moved by sensuous particular representations; rational beings by intellectual or conceptual representations of which they can be aware. The understanding is, in general, the ability to conceptualize the given element in experience. To understand experienced givens is to unite them according to a rule. In outer experience whenever such and such is sensed, we understand it as a continuing object of a specific sort; in inner experience when such and such is felt, we understand it as a specific feeling or desire. Understanding provides the concepts with which we can reflect on our desires or (as we now say) describe them to ourselves.33 It enables us to have theoretical knowledge of the inner experience in which we find ourselves moved to do something. Thus Kant speaks in the Groundwork of ‘empirical

Kant on the will 161 motives which the understanding raises to universal concepts merely by comparing experiences’.34 The animal is caused by its representations to go to the food but cannot reflect on its desires. It is harder to say what the situation is for rational agents. Let us imagine beings who are capable of conceptualizing the empirical urges they feel. Suppose that they not only feel urges to act but are also able to conceptualize them, yet like animals they are simply caused to act by their (conceptualized) urges. Kant himself envisages something of the sort when he considers a being moved only by its instincts but possessing theoretical reason, and hence able to admire the suitability of its instincts for guiding it to happiness.35 Since the ability to form concepts carries the ability to reflect on those concepts, a conceptualizing animal of this kind would have and be aware that it has observational knowledge that it is, say, moved to go to a table where there is food; and it would observe itself going and eating. Consider in addition that it does not further reflect. It does not categorize going to the table as means, and eating as end. Its action is caused by its representations. They are efficacious as its plan. If something got in the way, the being would walk around it, continuing to the table; or if someone held its arm, it would try to get free and eat. It is acting by instinct, only its instincts are both mediated through its concepts and accompanied by a theoretical conceptual commentary.36 This is not how Kant thinks it is with humans. If a human is aware that he wants to go to the table in order to get the food he wants, then he is both subsuming some feelings under concepts – wanting to go to the table, wanting to eat – and having thoughts about the concepts he uses in so doing. He does not simply think that the desire to eat, given his representation of his surroundings, instinctively causes in him the desire to go to the table. He thinks that going to the table is a means to something else he wants, eating; and he thinks that his desire to eat gives him a reason that justifies his going to the table. The faculty that enables us to transform our conceptual representation of our own desires and the acts to which they prompt us into practical knowledge of reasons and the acts they justify is what Kant calls the will [Wille]. In one of the less transparent passages in the Groundwork, he notes that: Everything in nature works in accordance with laws. Only a rational being has the capcity to act in accordance with the representation of laws, that is, in accordance with principles, or has a will. Since reason is required for the derivation of actions from laws, the will is nothing other than practical reason.37

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The instinctive animal works in accordance with laws: desiring food and seeing it on the table, it is caused to want to move to the table and then to eat. Kant thinks there cannot be an empirical science of psychology, so he presumably thinks it impossible to formulate a natural law covering this case. However, he also thinks that the animal is deterministically caused by its hunger to seek food and eat, and some sort of uniformity must underlie the causation here. If the conceptualizing animal were possible, it would also be causally determined, and its conceptualizations would give its desires their direction and cause its brute choice. In fact, though, Kant would deny the possibility of the conceptualizing animal. He holds that the ability to think presupposes freedom: this is the message of Part III of the Groundwork. A being that gets as far as conceptualizing its urges and impulses is already not causally determined by them to act. The rational agent does not simply observe his conceptually guided desires. He cannot understand his desire to move to the table as simply a causal outcome of his desire for food. He must think, not that he cannot help moving toward the table, but that moving toward the table is an act that would be justified by his desire to eat. He must represent his desire to go to the table as a means to getting the food he wants. To say this is to say that the rational agent can act in accordance with, and because of, his idea of a law. Kant says that the agent wills the law through his maxim.38 His maxim is his conceptualization of his desires as justifying reasons; and he wills through it because the law is only implicit in that conceptualization. What law? Implicitly, at least, the law that if you have an end you must use the means needed to obtain it. Kant does not suppose that the agent must consciously formulate the law or even be able to do so.39 But he treats going to the table as a means. This is shown not only by his trying to get to the table, but also by various counter-factuals, for instance that if someone offered to bring him food where he is, he would (let us say) stop thinking he has reason to go to the table himself. The will, Kant says, is practical reason; and reason is ‘the power of deriving the particular from the universal and so representing it according to principles and as necessary’.40 Reason enables us to try to connect the particular action toward which desire urges us to the universal or universals implicit in our conceptualization of our situation. If we find that we can make the connection, we have found that the action urged by our particular desire is implied or made necessary by a universal principle. The desire now counts as a reason for doing the act, and not only as a force urging us to choose to perform it. And reason does not stop here. Reason is the tendency to seek the uncondi-

Kant on the will 163 tionally necessary. It is not unconditionally necessary that I eat. Kant thinks that it is unavoidable that I should pursue the greatest possible satisfaction of my desires, and that makes it necessary to eat at least sometimes. But no specific desire is necessarily part of the total I want to satisfy. Reason presses on, therefore, to find a completely unconditional practical necessity; and of course it is only when we have come to specific reasons in compliance with the moral law that our quest for that sort of necessity is completed. The will, then, as distinct from the ability to choose, is the capacity to transform felt urges or desires with causal force into motivating reasons for action with justifying validity. There is, of course, no guarantee that all our felt urges will be transformable into good reasons. To possess a will is therefore also to be able to test desires to see whether or not they can be validated as reasons. The tests are purely formal because practical reason is simply the imposition on desires of the form of ‘being a justifying motivation to act’. The tests are well known. If my desire arises because of a desire for something else, the former must prompt action that satisfies the latter. If my desire is for something for its own sake, there is a more complex test: In prescribing rules for our pursuit of happiness…reason goes from the general to the particular according to the principle: not to overshadow all the other inclinations…just to please one inclination, but rather to see to it that the inclination in question can co-exist with the totality of all our inclinations.41 And because as having a rational will I transform all my desires into candidate reasons, and do not treat them simply as urges, each must pass the basic moral test for being a reason, universalizability. ‘The will,’ Kant says, ‘is therefore the faculty of desire considered not so much in relation to action (as choice is) but rather in relation to the ground determining choice to action.’42 The grounds for action produced by the will take into account the agent’s beliefs about the circumstances and consequences of acting because those beliefs go into causing the desires that are transformed into the proposed reasons for acting. The product of will’s activity is maxims, which, like the representations of the likeable and dislikeable experienced by animals, can serve as urges to the power of choice. Kant thinks, disappointingly, that there is no need to explain how pleasure, desire and reason collaborate in forming maxims.43 But once I have a maxim available, it is up to my Willkür, my faculty of choice, to decide whether to accept it and thereby to make this representation into the cause of what is represented.

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The faculty of choice enables rational agents to move beyond desire to action. It does so by enabling the representation of reasons to act to move them to decide to act. Nothing in Kant’s definition of the faculty of choice says that it can respond to the form as well as to the content of maxims.44 Only the fact of reason shows that it can, or at least requires us to suppose for practical purposes that it can. The representations of reasons urge or tempt or pull at the power of choice but do not remove its freedom. We can choose to act on a maxim that passes the means–end test or the happiness test but fails the universalization test; we can choose to act on a maxim that passes the universalization test but fails the happiness test. The complex psychology of will and power of choice allow Kant room to claim that we have the kind of freedom he thinks is needed as the underpinning for his moral principle.

Weakness, wickedness and belief I pointed out that there is a formal element to the functioning of will both for Wolff and for Crusius. The Wolffian will is constructed so that in its choices it necessarily attempts to act justifiably by maximizing perfection. Kant attributed something like this will to God. Only God’s faculty of choice is so constituted that he necessarily does what the justifying law of action directs. Our own faculty of choice enables us to act for the sake of that law but does not make it necessary that we do so. Kant is thus closer to Crusius, who thinks that although our will enables us to do whatever God commands, we often freely choose not to do so. But Kant breaks radically with both Wolff and Crusius on the role of the formal aspect of will. For both Wolff and Crusius, the formal element required of justified choice – maximizing perfection, obeying God – simply sets the stage on which factors external to the will determine what specific act is justified. A fully justified act must maximize perfection, or it must comply with God’s command. To will rightly we must know about something not determined by the will. But for Kant, formal willing is sufficient as well as necessary for an act to be justified. No other features of an act are required for it to be the one we ought to do. To say this is simply to point out what Kant means when he claims autonomy for the will. Another side of autonomy shows itself when we consider what Kant says about radical evil. A perverse or evil heart, he claims, ‘can co-exist with a will which in the abstract is good. Its origin is the frailty of human nature, in not being strong enough to comply with its adopted principles’.45 Kant seems here to be allowing for moral weak-

Kant on the will 165 ness or incontinence. Is he considering the classical problem of weakness of will?46 If not, what sort of lack of strength does he have in mind? I begin with Wille, or the will as practical reason. Practical reason is neither strong nor weak. It cannot fail to process conceptualized causal impulses into motivating reason-based proposals for action, or maxims. If it could fail, we might be simply caused to behave, as animals are; and Kant regularly denies that possibility. Kant holds, however, that it is difficult or impossible to know one’s own motives.47 Thus it may be that what practical reason presents to me as my maxim does not accurately represent what is urging me to act; but if so, this is not due to a malfunction of practical reason. It is a failure of the understanding to conceptualize my desires adequately. It is not a deliberate or willed failure on my part. Issues of weakness for Kant, then, must concern Willkür or the will as power of choice. If we must always act on some maxim, or for some reason, and if doing so requires that we have used our power of choice to select for action one among the maxims that the will as practical reason prepares, then whenever we act, we act as we choose. None the less, Kant thinks it most important to insist that we can deliberately act on what we see to be a ground of action less justified than another that also tempts us. He gives some suggestions as to how this may occur with purely prudential deliberation. Our several passions can make it difficult for us to use reason to compare one of them with another and with other, less powerful, desires.48 Similarly, we are sometimes agitated by a feeling (Affekt) not because of its intensity but because it tends to make us fail to compare it with the rest of our pleasures and pains.49 When our passions and emotions make us unreasonable, it is not because they misrepresent the world, as the Leibnizians think, or are caused by false beliefs, as Hume holds. They cause us, rather, to fail to use reason to put them in perspective. They make it especially hard to relate the immediate call for action to the shifting totality of satisfactions that we call happiness. Does this mean that I can deliberately choose not to do what I know I have the best prudential reason for doing? Imperatives of prudence, for Kant, are analytic; so refusing to use necessary means to a supposed end shows simply that one is not committed to the end. One has at most a wish for it. Similarly, refusing to pursue what one says is part of one’s happiness would show that one had not really adopted it as part of that end. Passions and emotions, it seems, may lead me to alter my ends but not to act in deliberate irrational opposition to them.

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For Kant the morally central form of acting for less than the best reason is choosing an impermissible prudential or technical maxim over a mandatory moral maxim. That is exactly what makes willing evil. His account of virtue makes it clear that he thinks that there can be and usually is a serious question of whether one has the strength to stick to acting as morality requires despite the strength of one’s desires. He does not suggest that acting wrongly shows that we have given up on our commitment to the moral law, as acting imprudently seems to show that we do not really want what we think we want. Indeed a rational agent cannot exist without feeling the pull of the moral law.50 But in describing particular cases of conflict between passion and the moral motive as he does, Kant seems to be treating the motive arising from awareness of duty as a force in the same field of forces as the impulses or tugs on the power of choice arising from empirically caused desires. His hope, he says, is that respect will be ‘more powerful than all such feelings together’.51 This comes perilously close to treating the power of choice in rational agents as determinable by the strongest force, in the way that arbitrium brutum is. Kant, criticizing Wolff for holding an analogous position, rejects all such views.52 The difficulty is not removed by his emphatic statement that ‘there can be no theory about the causal relation of the intelligible to the sensible’.53 Kant’s description of the on-going struggles that make virtue always difficult even for those who try suggests that acceptance of a moral maxim by the Willkür can be altered by the sheer strength of a rejected prudential maxim. He thus allows for the kind of moral irrationality that is at the core of the question of weakness of will. But he denies that there can be a theory that explains it. The problem takes another form when we come to Kant’s account of the radical evil in human nature. Here Kant goes beyond the problem of occasional incontinence to consider a general choice of what is overall less good in the face of awareness of what is overall better. In one way there is no ‘overall better’ for Kant. There is the prudential good and there is the moral good, and in either category some acts may be better than others. But the two kinds of goodness are not commensurable, as the classical notion of weakness seems to require them to be if the weak-willed agent rejects what is evidently overall better. Kant does have a counterpart notion: the distribution of happiness in accordance with virtue. This is the complete good; and the radically evil agent, choosing in principle to set prudential maxims over moral maxims, rejects it as a goal. Yet it is hard to understand the choice of radical evil as due to weakness in the power of choice. In

Kant on the will 167 individual cases of evil-doing it seems that Kant allows the strength of a passion to overcome the strength of respect.54 Here it may be right to speak of weakness of will. Radical evil, by contrast, originates in a fundamental act of the power of choice. Although the Willkür always feels respect for the law, it can, apparently, reject or override its motivating force and opt to adopt maxims according to the strengths of empirical desires as they come, or at least to the strength of the general desire for the agent’s own wellbeing.55 We cannot ascribe this choice to our sensuous nature, because it is blameworthy and so must be free. We cannot suppose that we as rational agents act without any law at all, since our causality must be law-governed. And we cannot blame our evil choice on corruption of the Wille, still less on its replacement by a malignant will that imposes a law requiring the choice of evil. Ours is a choice made by a Willkür that feels the pull of respect as well as the pull of empirically grounded desire, and while acknowledging the law also rejects its claim to priority.56 The ban on seeking a theoretical explanation of radical evil is as absolute as the ban on looking for an account of particular wicked choices.57 But we can see Kant’s insistence on this puzzling point as part of his insistence on the freedom of the power of choice, or as one aspect of autonomy. The fact that nature makes us rational does not compel us to be morally good agents. We are born with predispositions to animality, humanity and personality. Our humanity gives us prudential rationality but not yet morality. ‘The most rational being in the world,’ Kant says, ‘might still stand in need of certain incentives, originating in objects of desire, to determine his Willkür.’ Such a being might not even suspect the existence of the incentive arising from the moral law.58 Hence to reject that incentive when I am aware of it does not deprive me of rationality. Kant thinks that I must choose to accept morality. ‘The human being,’ he says, ‘must make or have made himself into whatever he is or should become in a moral sense, good or evil.’59 I want now to speculate about a point that Kant himself does not discuss. What would or should Kant think about the bearing of the decision to be radically evil on the evil agent’s stance in relation to the arguments for God, freedom and immortality? It is natural to ask, because Kant holds that those arguments are thoroughly practical. Belief in God, immortality and freedom is not metaphysically justified. Kant does not simply assume that the universe displays the kind of moral harmony that might result from the interplay of such realities.60 Such justification as these beliefs have arises from demands that the categorical imperative makes on finite agents. Kant’s point is that

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moral agents must look at the world as being friendly to morality; otherwise they will think that they cannot do what they are required to do. To see the world as receptive to moral endeavour, they must accept their freedom to respond to categorical obligation as such. They must also acknowledge the more specific obligations to make themselves perfect and to bring about a just distribution of happiness, one that matches it to virtue. Kant says that the voice of conscience is the voice of God in us, so that the idea of God is implicit, if only obscurely, in ‘the moral self-awareness of conscience’.61 But some people pay no heed to the voice of conscience, although they cannot always escape it.62 In the Groundwork Kant bemoans our all too probable loss of innocence. But he does not say much about the frame of mind of those whose power of choice has allowed self-interest to corrupt them. In the second Critique he says that those who make self-love their basic law suffer from ‘Eigendünkel’, or self-made darkness.63 In the Religion he adds that those who choose to be radically evil deeply deceive themselves. If they escape the bad results of their evil deeds, they think of themselves as meritorious rather than lucky. Their inner dishonesty conceals them from themselves.64 How, beyond that, does the world look to what Kant thinks is the vast majority of us, who have opted to be radically evil? What are we able to make of the moral arguments for God, freedom and immortality? To decide for radical evil is to reject categorical obligations. It is to say that moral imperatives will be followed only on condition that they do not conflict with prudential ones. One who has opted for evil, moreover, will not acknowledge any obligation to proportion happiness to merit or to perfect oneself endlessly. He will think that it is perfectly rational to pursue his own ends without limit. He will think that it is a tough world out there, and that there is no one who will help him except out of greed or folly. The decision will lead him, therefore, to interpret the fact of reason as some sort of psychological twinge. The depraved man, Kant says, untroubled by conscience, ‘laughs at the scrupulousness of the honest who inwardly plague themselves with self-inflicted rebukes’. Even if he feels a few twinges of conscience, he feels that they are ‘made good by the pleasure of the senses for which alone he has a taste’.65 Nowadays he might go to a therapist to get rid of the twinges. If this is along the right lines, it shows a striking feature of Willkür as Kant understands it. Our own power of choice determines not only whether we accept moral rationality or stay at the level of prudential rationality. It also determines the face that the world presents to us.

Kant on the will 169 There is no counterpart choice about how the world looks to theoretical reason. If practical reason as morality gives us religion, practical reason as immorality takes it away. Kant seems committed to the view that the wicked will have in effect chosen to be atheists. They will also have forfeited their only ground for hope of immortality. If, as Kant seems to think, we all wish for eternal life, then radical evil condemns us to ultimate despair.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5 6

7 8 9

Metaphysics of Morals, 6.404–5. In citing Kant I give the volume and page numbers of the Gesammelte Schriften, except for the Critique of Pure Reason, where I cite the usual A/B page numbers. I use the translations listed in the bibliography, giving my own only where these volumes do not contain the passage I cite. Since all translations use the same system of references that I use, I do not cite the translations separately. I use the following abbreviations in the notes: Anthro (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View); FS (The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures); Grund (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals); KpV (Critique of Practical Reason); KrV (Critique of Pure Reason); KU (Critique of Judgement); LM (Lectures on Metaphysics); MdS (Metaphysics of Morals); ND (New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition); Rel (Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason); Theod (‘On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy’). KpV, 5.42, 47. See Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge, 1998), ch. 22 and references there. J.N. Tetens published his Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung (Philosophical Essays on Human Nature and its Development) in 1777, and Kant reputedly kept a copy of it on his desk as he worked on the first Critique. Tetens was an empiricist who opposed Leibnizianism. He defined freedom of the will as the power to do what we do not in fact do, and tried to offer empirical evidence for the existence of such a power. His arguments are less than compelling and would have done no more for Kant – if he even read this part of the work – than support his conviction that experience would not serve as a basis for the kind of freedom his moral theory seemed to require. Wolff, Vernunftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele, §492. Abbreviated as VGG. See Robert Jr., Sleigh, Vere Chappell and Michael Della Rocca, ‘Determinism and Human Freedom’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 1195–278, at p. 1197. And see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VI.1, 11391.9–10: ‘where objects differ in kind the part of the soul answering to each is different in kind’. Wolff gives motiva as the Latin equivalent for Bewegungsgrund. ND, 1.399–402. ND, 1.403.

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10 ND, 1.406. 11 KpV, 5.97. 12 Crusius, Anweisung, vernünftig zu Leben, 4; Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten, 866. Hereafter Anw and Ent. 13 Ent, 885–6. 14 Anw, 46. Crusius accuses Leibniz of altering the meaning of ‘free’ to suit his philosophy. Ent, 752. 15 Anw, 44–5; cf. Ent, 140–5. 16 Anw, 54–5. 17 Anw, 204–6; Ent, I., ch. V; cf. 865–6. 18 Ent, 723–5. 19 Ent, 776–7. 20 Anw, 9–11; Ent, 867–9. 21 Anw, 133ff. 22 Anw, 135–44. 23 Anw, 145. 24 Anw, 148ff. 25 Anw, 157. 26 Anw, 109–15. 27 See LM, 28.228–9, where Kant speaks of the faculties of representation, of desire, and of pleasure and displeasure; KU, V. 177–8 and n. Kant’s term for the faculty of desire is Begehrungsvermögen. Gregor sometimes uses the term ‘capacity’ for Vermögen, and sometimes ‘faculty’. I shall use ‘capacity’, ‘faculty’ and ‘ability’ as seems suitable. 28 MdS, 6.211. 29 KrV, A534/B562; MdS, 6.213. 30 FS, 2.59–60. 31 LM, 28.99. 32 LM, 28.254. 33 Anthro, 7.196. 34 Grund, 4.391. 35 Grund, 4.395. 36 Cf. Anthro, 7.197. 37 Grund, 4.412. 38 Grund, 4.421. 39 See KpV, 5.8n. 40 Anthro, 7.199. 41 Anthro, 7.266. 42 MdS, 6.213. 43 Grund, 4.427. 44 See MdS, 6. 226. 45 Rel, 6.37. Kant adds that the perverse will does not take care to ask about its motive and is satisfied with external compliance. 46 Aristotle describes incontinence as follows: ‘But there is a sort of man who is carried away as a result of passion and contrary to the right rule – a man whom passion masters so that he does not act according to the right rule, but does not master to the extent of making him ready to believe that he ought to pursue such pleasures without reserve; this is the incontinent man, who is better than the self-indulgent man, and not bad without qualification; for the best thing in him, the first principle, is preserved’ (Nicomachean Ethics, VII.8, 1151a20–27).

Kant on the will 171 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

See, for example, KrV, A551/B579. Anthro, 7.265; MdS, 6.408. Anthro, 7.254. Rel, 6.36. MdS, 6.408. Grund, 4.391. MdS, 6.439n. See, for example, Rel, 6.58n. Rel, 6.45, 46n. Rel, 6.34–6. Rel, 6.43. Rel, 6.25n. Rel, 6.44, p. 89; cf. Theod, 8.271. Here I disagree with Gordon Michalson, who in Fallen Freedom (Cambridge, 1990) attributes to Kant a metaphysical assumption of cosmic harmony. See, for example, pp. 6, 29, 119. MdS, 6.439. MdS, 6.438. KpV, 5.74; In Mary Gregor (ed. and trans.), Immanuel Kant. Practical Philosophy (Cambridge, 1996), at p. 200 Gregor translates this, I think less felicitously, as ‘self-conceit’. Rel, 6.38. Theod, 8.261.

Bibliography Allison, Henry E., Kant’s Theory of Freedom, Cambridge, 1990. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W.D. Ross, Oxford, 1980. Crusius, Christian August, Anweisung, vernünftig zu Leben, Leipzig, 1744. Reprint, ed. G. Tonelli, Hildesheim, 1969. ——Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten, Leipzig, 1745. Reprint, ed. G. Tonelli, Hildesheim, 1964. Hatfield, Gary, ‘Empirical, Rational, and Transcendental Psychology: Psychology as Science and as Philosophy’, in Paul Guyer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 200–27. Kant, Immanuel, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary J. Gregor, The Hague, 1974. ——Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith, Oxford, 1911. ——Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor, in Immanuel Kant. Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge, 1996. ——Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and eds Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge, 1998. ——‘The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures’, in Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770, trans. and eds David Walford and Ralf Meerbote, Cambridge, 1992. ——Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1902–.

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——Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor, in Immanuel Kant. Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge, 1996. ——Lectures on Metaphysics, trans. and eds Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, Cambridge, 1997. ——The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor, in Immanuel Kant. Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge, 1996 ——New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition, in Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770, trans. and eds David Walford and Ralf Meerbote, Cambridge, 1992. ——‘On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in theodicy’, in Immanuel Kant. Religion and Rational Theology, trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, Cambridge, 1996. ——Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. George di Giovanni, in Immanuel Kant. Religion and Rational Theology, trans. and eds Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, Cambridge, 1996. Laberge, Pierre, ‘La définition de la volonté comme faculté d’agir selon la représentation des lois’, in Otfried Höffe (ed.), Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: Ein cooperativer Kommentar, Frankfurt am Main, 1989. Meerbote, Ralf, ‘Wille and Willkür in Kant’s Theory of Action’, in S. Gram Moltke (ed.), Interpreting Kant, Iowa City, 1982. Michalson, Gordon, Fallen Freedom, Cambridge, 1990. Nussbaum, Charles, ‘Kant’s Changing Conception of the Causality of the Will’, International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 36, 1996, pp. 265–86. Schneewind, J.B., The Invention of Autonomy, Cambridge, 1998. Sleigh, Robert, Jr., Vere Chappell, and Michael Della Rocca, ‘Determinism and Human Freedom’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 1195–278. Tetens, Johann Nicolaus, Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung (1777), 2 vols., Hildesheim, 1979. Wolff, Christian, Vernünftige Gedancken von der Menschen Tun und Lassen zu Beförderung ihrer Glückseligkeit (1720), ed. Hans Werner Arndt. Reprint Hildesheim, 1976. ——Vernünftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen Überhaupt (1719), ed. Charles A. Corr. Reprint Hildesheim, 1983. Wood, Allen W. (ed.), Self and Nature in Kant’s Philosophy, Ithaca, 1984.

8

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer Is the will merely a word?1 Christopher Janaway

An entry in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy states that ‘the will reached its philosophical apotheosis in Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea (1818, 1844)’.2 This is correct inasmuch as the central term of that work’s account of human beings and the world is Wille, a word we can translate only as ‘will’. And Nietzsche of course has his doctrine of Wille zur Macht, ‘will to power’. In the face of these wellknown facts the title of this chapter suggests some scepticism. I follow a train of thought through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche which finds first an attempt to assimilate human willing to blindly operating natural forces, then the proposal to abandon ‘will’ as a term with any proper descriptive role, as Nietzsche claims in his writings of the 1880s that ‘willing’ refers to no genuine kind of occurrence,3 that ‘the “inner world” is full of phantoms…the will is one of them’,4 and that ‘today we know it is merely a word’.5

Will and ‘the riddle’ Will makes its dramatic debut in Schopenhauer’s main work in §18 after a well-orchestrated build-up that allows it to be presented as ‘the answer’ to a riddle. The First Book of The World as Will and Representation6 gives a systematic account of the world of objects. Objects are objects of experience for a representing subject, organized by space, time and causality, the a priori forms of all representation. The subject perceives or has ‘intuitive representations’7 and, using concepts, it thinks, reasons and judges. Throughout all this its representations are ordered, each representation being grounded in others in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. But as the curtain rises on the Second Book something is missing from this orderly scenario: we as investigators cannot be content to have cognition of the relations among our representations, but must seek their essence or

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‘inner nature’.8 The riddle is: What is the ‘inner nature’ of things? and will’s role is to provide the answer, to be that ‘inner nature’. But what precisely is the problem? Here is part of Schopenhauer’s build-up, before the explicit entrance of will: We are not satisfied with knowing that we have representations, that they are such and such, and that they are connected according to this or that law, whose general expression is always the principle of sufficient reason. We want to know the significance [Bedeutung] of those representations; we ask whether this world is nothing more than representation. In that case it would inevitably pass by us like an empty [wesenloser] dream, or a ghostly vision not worth our consideration. Or we ask whether it is something else, something in addition, and if so what that something is.…Here we see already that we can never get at the inner nature [Wesen] of things from without. However much we may investigate, we obtain nothing but images and names. We are like a man who goes round a castle, looking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the façades. (W1, 98–9) Most commentators have taken Schopenhauer to be exercised by the thought that the thing in itself is an unknowable something hidden behind the world of our experience, unable to be an object of our acquaintance. His metaphors of penetration elsewhere suggest that this thing in itself can be known to the subject in a unique way: a way from within stands open to us to that real inner nature of things to which we cannot penetrate from without…so to speak a subterranean passage…which…places us all at once in the fortress that could not be taken from without. (W2, 195) Here it looks as if the initial problem is the subject’s having no avenue of acquaintance with a thing that is unknowable because it lies in a realm beyond all experience. But if that is his starting point, Schopenhauer seems set to perpetrate a muddle, saying that we can know an unknowable. There is an alternative reading, put forward recently by John Atwell.9 Atwell’s prime thesis is that Schopenhauer is concerned with the world’s being understandable or ‘readable’ to the philosophical enquirer. Schopenhauer says that we want to know the meaning

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer 175 (Bedeutung) of the world of representations. He talks of the world’s threatening to be strange or alien, or nichtssagend, uninformative or insignificant (literally ‘having nothing to say’, W1, 95). When the world is displayed to us in its scientifically discoverable causal connections, it consists of representations that ‘stand before us like hieroglyphics that are not understood’ (W1, 97); experience is a ‘cryptograph’ we must decipher (W2, 182–4). Schopenhauer’s talk of ‘essence’ or ‘inner nature’, Atwell suggests, concerns equally the ‘meaning’ or ‘content’ of things.10 The riddle or puzzle concerns our interpreting the world we experience or making it appear less alien to ourselves. Atwell’s view makes good sense of Schopenhauer’s initial discussion in §18, where he imagines how I might fail to be intelligible to myself. Were I to regard myself as nothing but the subject that experiences an objective world of spatio-temporal, causally interacting things, then I would not be able to locate myself within the world I experience. I would float in detachment from the world like ‘a winged angel’s head without a body’.11 What I call my body would be on a par with any material thing I experience: ‘its movements and actions…would be equally strange and incomprehensible’.12 This would make me, the individual that acts and moves in the objective world, some kind of riddle to myself. Atwell is right about the nature of the riddle here. Schopenhauer is not saying that if I were merely the subject of representations, I would be unacquainted with my body and its movements. The point is that the body to which I owe my status as one objective individual among others would indeed be experienced by me, but experienced as alien and incomprehensible – I would not make sense to myself. However, none of this is the case, as Schopenhauer rightly says. There is a way in which I do make sense to myself. My body’s movements are, when I am acting, intelligible to me directly because I am moving my body, because the actions involving these movements are mine. Thus Schopenhauer’s project is to use the absence of riddle regarding the part of the objective world that I am, to address a genuine riddle concerning the rest of the objective world: ‘From yourself shall you understand nature, not yourself from nature.’13

Human willing and action Schopenhauer’s account of the will begins by giving an analysis of what we might term ‘human willing’ or ‘acts of will’: conscious, mental states of a human agent, which are directed at, and typically bring

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about, actions that the agent regards as ‘up to her’ in virtue of their being what she wills. Schopenhauer’s first step is to insist on the bodily nature of human willing. Every true act of his [the subject’s] will is also at once and inevitably a movement of his body [Bewegung des Leibes]; he cannot actually will the act without at the same time being aware that it appears as a movement of the body. The act of will and the action of the body [Aktion des Leibes]…do not stand in the relation of cause and effect, but are one and the same thing, though given in two entirely different ways, first quite immediately and then in perception for the understanding.…Resolutions of the will relating to the future are mere deliberations of reason about what will be willed at some time, not genuine acts of will. Only the carrying out stamps the resolve, which till then is always a mere alterable intention, and exists only in reason, in abstracto.14 Schopenhauer’s theory of willing is anti-volitionalist and antidualist.15 There are no volitions, if those are understood as would-be occurrences of willing in the category ‘mental and not physical’ (or ‘mental and not bodily’). There is an act of will (Willensakt), but it is a ‘movement of the body’ or ‘action of the body’. Going by what Schopenhauer says about ‘resolutions’, certain antecedents of this action which could prima facie fall in the category ‘mental and not bodily’ are not properly acts of will at all. So presumably someone’s merely intending to act in a certain manner but not acting, or deciding to act but not doing so, falls short of the description ‘genuine act of will’. Yet elsewhere Schopenhauer makes it clear that the wider category ‘willing’ (if not that of ‘act of will’) does include resolves or decisions. In his essay On the Freedom of the Will he talks of ‘decisions [Entschlüsse] or decided acts of will’ which ‘though they originate in the dark recesses of our inwardness, will always enter the perceptible world at once’ as bodily movements,16 and says that self-consciousness contains ‘decided acts of will that immediately become deeds’ and ‘formal resolves together with the actions that issue from them’.17 This suggests that willing is a conscious mental state of setting oneself to act, which is a willed bodily movement in that it naturally becomes, or develops into such a movement. An even more clearly developmental picture is found in these remarks: ‘as long as [an act of will] is in a state of becoming, it is called a wish [Wunsch], when it is complete, a resolve [Entschluss]; but that this is what it is is shown to selfconsciousness only in the deed [That]: for until the deed it can be

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer 177 altered’.18 Willing, then, is progressive: a wish or a state of wanting to do something is (becomes) a resolve of the will, which is (becomes) an act of will, which is (becomes) a deed or bodily action. Schopenhauer’s reason for holding that genuine acts of will are identical with movements of the body lies in the nature of our cognitive access to the body: To the subject of knowledge…this body is given in two entirely different ways. It is given as representation in intuition of the understanding, as an object among objects, and subordinate to the laws of objects. But it is also given at the same time in a completely different way, namely as that which is known immediately to everyone and is denoted by the word will.19 What situates me in the world of objects is my having immediately given to me, as subject, the actions of the bodily individual I am identical with. Schopenhauer thus puts forward – with, it must be said, very little detailed analysis – a dual aspect view of action.20 Actions of the body, as he calls them, are movements in space and time of a particular material object. The agent is aware of the body’s movement in space and time and its causal relations to other objects, but is aware of those same movements as his or her own will in operation. In action something of which we are ‘inwardly’ conscious enters the world of objective phenomena, providing ‘a bridge between the inner and the outer worlds which otherwise remain separated by a bottomless abyss’.21

Will as ‘inner nature’ This anti-dualist thesis concerning the bodily nature of human willing is the tip of a long strand in Schopenhauer’s thinking, which subsumes willing as an instance of organic process at work in nature. At any given time an organism tends towards some localized telos. Whatever telos it tends towards, its functioning is governed by enduring ends that must be secured repeatedly – nutrition, for example – and the single overarching telos which explains them all (to which they are all instrumental) is that of being alive and perpetuating life. Human willing is one among a multitude of instances, distinguished from other organic processes by the kind of causal antecedents which deflect the organism’s course. There are three basic kinds of causal relation: cause pure and simple, stimulus, and motive.22 While other processes in nature are either instances of bare cause and effect, or of the relation

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of stimulus to response, human willing (or an act of will) occurs when the body’s movements are caused by motives, these being mental states in which an objective world is presented to consciousness. Once we have said something about these distinctive antecedents (the capacity for which can itself, Schopenhauer believes, be given a naturalistic explanation in terms of the functioning of the human organism, in particular its brain23), human willing is nothing special. The boundary between human willing and other processes of organic end-directedness is not one between metaphysical kinds. As an agent I have an ‘inner nature’ in virtue of which I tend towards local ends and the overarching end of life – being alive and reproducing life. The organized structure and normal functioning of my body, its growth, and all bodily processes which presuppose neither consciousness nor even mindedness, are manifestations of the same tendency. The inner nature of the human being is that it tends towards maintaining and propagating life: a tiger, a sunflower or a single-celled organism have the same inner nature or essence. Schopenhauer even argues that at the most fundamental level the same inner nature must be that of the whole phenomenal world, not only in the organic but also in the inorganic realm where it underlies the processes of gravitation, magnetism and crystal formation: ‘That which in us pursues its ends by the light of knowledge…here, in the feeblest of its phenomena, only strives blindly in a dull, one-sided, and unalterable manner.’24 Of course, the material world does not in every one of its formations pursue life. But Schopenhauer wants to say that at the broadest level of generality every part of the world possesses the same essence as I do; like me it – as it were – pursues, strives or tends somewhere. ‘It will not cost us a great effort of the imagination’ to recognize this, he comments. Schopenhauer has reasons for his view. We have seen his belief that a fundamental riddle about the world’s inner nature stands in need of a solution. We should note three further premises at work: (1) that my experience of my bodily acts of willing gives me a knowledge or understanding of myself that has a unique immediacy and transparency; (2) that scientific explanation of phenomena is essentially incomplete and requires metaphysical foundation in an account of the ‘inner nature’ underlying the world of phenomena; (3) that, on pain of the world’s being unintelligible to me, I cannot regard my own inner nature as different from that of reality as a whole: if I am to understand the world from my own nature, then, what it really is to be me cannot be different from what it really is to be anything in nature. The following passage shows Schopenhauer’s strategy with tolerable clarity:

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer 179 In everything in nature there is something to which no ground can ever be assigned, for which no explanation is possible, and no further cause can be sought. This something is the specific mode of the thing’s action, in other words, the very manner of its existence, its essence [Wesen]…it was supposed that, starting from the most universal forces of nature (e.g. gravitation, cohesion, impenetrability), we could explain from them those forces which operate more rarely and only under a combination of circumstances (e.g., chemical quality, electricity, magnetism), and finally from these could understand the organism and life of animals, and even the knowing and willing of man.…[But] do we understand more about the inner nature of these natural forces than about the inner nature of an animal? Is not the one just as hidden and unexplored as the other? Unfathomable, because it is groundless, because it is the content, the what of the phenomenon, which can never be referred to the form of the phenomenon, to the how, to the principle of sufficient reason.…my body is the only object of which I know not merely the one side, that of the representation, but also the other, that is called will. Thus instead of believing that I would better understand my own organization, and therefore my own knowing and willing, and my movement on motives, if only I could refer them to movement from causes through electricity, chemistry, and mechanism, I must, in so far as I am looking for philosophy and not for etiology, first of all learn to understand from my own movement on motives the inner nature of the simplest and commonest movements of an inorganic body which I see ensuing on causes. I must recognize the inscrutable forces that manifest themselves in all the bodies of nature as identical in kind with what in me is the will, and as differing from it only in degree.25 If my self-consciousness as bodily agent gives me a uniquely unmediated knowledge, may it not be an accurate pointer towards the ‘inner nature’ of the portion of the world that is me? If the world and my place in it can be intelligible to me only if I interpret the world as having the same inner nature as myself, and if the limitation of scientific explanation leaves us crying out for a unifying metaphysical account, then it would be irresponsible not to apply the knowledge of my own nature to the metaphysical unriddling of the world. ‘Obviously,’ says Schopenhauer, ‘it is more correct to teach understanding of the world from the human being than understanding of the human being from the world, for it is from what is immediately

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given, that is self-consciousness, that we have to explain what is mediately given and belongs to outer perception; not the other way round.’26 By such an argument Schopenhauer arrives at his alleged common inner nature of all things, which he calls will – an adventurous exercise in nomenclature which enables him to say that human willing is merely one manifestation of will in the world of empirical nature. For example, he says: What appears…as plant, as mere vegetation, as blindly driving force [blind treibende Kraft], will be taken by us, according to its inner nature, to be will, and it will be recognized by us as the very thing which constitutes the basis of our own phenomenon, as it expresses itself in our actions.27 It is characteristic of human willing that it is caused by motives, which are representations in consciousness of the objective world: perceptual and conceptual representations, sometimes rational thought which is peculiarly human. But having this aetiology does not belong to the essence of the will as such: we have…to get to know more intimately this inner nature of the will, so that we may know how to distinguish from it what belongs not to it itself, but to its appearance…Such, for example, is the circumstance of its being accompanied by knowledge, and the determination by motives which is conditioned by this knowledge.…this belongs not to the inner nature of the will, but merely to its most distinct phenomenon as animal and human being.28 Just how we are to understand this inner nature, and just why it is appropriate to call it will are problems Schopenhauer never fully resolves. But we can, I believe, sympathize with his general predicament. He seeks a continuity between the mind and nature which he thinks can be secured neither by dualism nor by materialism. Dualism is unavailable because there is no immaterial substance: the only substance is matter.29 But materialism starts by removing conscious subjectivity from its picture, and cannot work its way back to including it. We could never explain our consciousness of ourselves as subjects of our mental states in materialist terms; materialism is ‘the philosophy of the subject that forgets to take account of itself’.30 Looking for another alternative, we might be tempted to classify Schopenhauer’s strategy as a species of panpsychism, understood as

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer 181 ‘the view that the basic physical constituents of the universe have mental properties’.31 We might see him as trying to ensure that the phenomena of human willing are part of physical reality by claiming that a truly mental willing is found everywhere, each tiniest portion of nature containing a degree of mentality in virtue of which it primitively wants or tries to achieve some end. But this is not accurate. Mind, for Schopenhauer, is what the single principle of nature can manifest itself as, at one end of the scale. But when this principle manifests itself ‘dully and blindly’, as gravitational force or as lightseeking movement in plants, it is not manifesting itself as mind at all. The challenge is to explain how one and the same fundamental reality can manifest itself as me – acting with consciousness – and as a mindless falling stone or growing crystal. Schopenhauer perhaps hopes to meet it by retaining a mentalistic word, ‘will’. But tension shows when he warns that his use of the word is revisionary, and effectively tells the reader to think away its mentalistic connotations: if I say that the force which attracts a stone to the earth is of its nature, in itself…will, then no one will attach to this proposition the absurd meaning that the stone moves itself according to a known motive, because it is thus that the will appears in man.32 This is an important warning if Schopenhauer is not to be plain laughable. But why call the ‘inner nature’ will rather than something else? He replies that: the word will, which…is to reveal to us the innermost essence of everything in nature, by no means expresses an unknown quantity…but something cognized absolutely immediately, with which we are so well acquainted that we know and understand what will is much better than anything else.33 This is an effective reply only if it means that we know better than anything else what it is in general to seek, to strive, or tend towards an end, whether blindly and dully, or with consciousness and rational motivation. Or: we know, by what is immediately given to us in the experience of bodily action, what it is to be any part of nature. Not the least strange feature of this account is the thought that the deliverance of my consciousness of myself doing something uncovers the nature of being or activity as such, whether conscious or not, throughout the whole of reality. The term ‘inner nature’ is perhaps being stretched too far here. Many philosophers would acknowledge

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that there is something that it is like ‘from the inside’ to be myself engaged in bodily action, without which I would be unintelligible to myself. They might, perhaps, acquiesce in the assumption that every part of reality must in itself be something – or have an essence – that exceeds its manifestation in the world of appearances. But we cannot easily suppose that for every part of reality there is something that it is like to be it. Neither does Schopenhauer suppose it. But then it is hard to see how the alleged common ‘inner nature’ of all things could be that which I cognize immediately through ‘inner awareness’ of myself as agent. How could a thing that never acts, or experiences, or has any self-consciousness – a stone, say – be in its own nature just what I discover myself to be in the self-conscious experience of being an agent?34 Leaving aside these admittedly severe difficulties, a salient feature of Schopenhauer’s account is the continuity of kind it claims between human willing and all other processes in organic nature. While his task of ‘unriddling’ nature gives primacy to self-consciousness over the experience of external phenomena, the upshot is that I am brought to acknowledge my kinship with and incorporation in nature at large. It is as though I must admit that when I act, it is one specialized case of nature doing what it does – and one specialized case of living organisms doing as they do – everywhere. When I spoke of life as the overarching telos of all organic behaviour and morphology, I was describing what Schopenhauer characterizes as ‘will to life’ (Wille zum Leben). The end-seeking movements of all living things, and their organic formation and functioning, answer to no purpose consciously entertained in a mind, but all subserve the end of life. Hence, according to Schopenhauer, ‘the fundamental theme of all the many different acts of will is the satisfaction of the needs inseparable from the body’s existence in health; they have their expression in it, and can be reduced to the maintenance of the individual and the propagation of the race’.35 If my inner nature is ‘will’, it can also be more narrowly described as ‘will to life’. Indeed, Schopenhauer says that ‘the real self is the will to life’:36 in other words, the real self is the principle of blind striving for existence and reproduction that manifests itself as one organic body among others, as me, the bodily individual. Schopenhauer also believes there is a unique character peculiar to me, which he calls my will, and which he tends to describe using the Kantian expression ‘intelligible character’.37 In On the Basis of Morality he writes:

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer 183 the individual is only the phenomenon. The thing in itself underlying the phenomenon is outside space and time and free from all succession and plurality of acts; it is one and unchangeable. Its constitution in itself is the intelligible character, which is equally present in all the actions of the individual and is stamped on every one of them, like the signet on a thousand seals. The empirical character of this phenomenon, manifesting itself in time and in the succession of acts, is determined by the intelligible.…Operari sequitur esse [doing follows from being]. This means that everything in the world operates in accordance with what it is, with its character and quality, in which all its manifestations are therefore actually contained potentially. These appear actually when external causes bring them about, for in this manner that very quality or character itself is revealed. Such quality is the empirical character;…its inner ultimate ground, one that is not accessible to experience, is the intelligible character, in other words, the essence in itself of this thing. Here man forms no exception to the rest of nature; he too has his fixed disposition and unalterable character, which, however, is entirely original and different in each case.38 But this account of the intelligible character is troubling, given Schopenhauer’s repeated assertion that the world at the level of the thing in itself is beyond individuation. Space and time are the principle of individuation, so the world in itself, outside of space and time, does not split up into separate individuals. That individuality is only phenomenal is a fundamental tenet of Schopenhauer’s philosophy: it is why in his ethics he can rely on the thought that individuality is ultimately an illusion.39 However, at the same time he wants my will or intelligible character to be an individual essence which determines that I behave in certain ways in certain environments. Otherwise ‘my’ intelligible character, what I am in myself, would be no different from what you are in yourself, or what any phenomenal object is in itself. But then if the intelligible character of a thing determines its empirical character – the way it observably behaves under various causal influences – why is it that every object does not behave in the same way in the same causal environment? Not only does Schopenhauer wish to avoid that absurdity, he wants it to be precisely my intelligible character that marks my actions as having a quality unique to me, ‘like the signet on a thousand seals’. A little-noticed late passage in Parerga and Paralipomena shows an openness to the problem, if not a solution:

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Christopher Janaway individuality does not rest solely on the principium individuationis and so is not through and through mere phenomenon, but…it is rooted in the thing-in-itself, the will of the individual; for the character itself is individual. But how far its roots here go, is one of those questions which I do not undertake to answer.40

The best we can say is that there is considerable elasticity in Schopenhauer’s account of what I am in myself. His short answer is that what I am in myself, that is, my essence or ‘inner nature’, is will. But in practice this contains at least three different thoughts about my essence. It is either: (i) will (an essence I share with everything in the world), (ii) will to life (an essence I share with organic nature as a whole), or (iii) my individual will or underlying character (which is peculiar to me). Schopenhauer often relies on answers (ii) and (iii) when he seeks to corroborate his metaphysics by means of empirical evidence. Whichever of these aspects we emphasize, the Schopenhauerian vision of the individual as a phenomenon whose inner essence is will must have an effect upon our conception of human action and thought. The self-conscious thinking self that I usually take myself to be is not the true origin of my bodily actions. Given my character and the course my experiences actually take, I could not have willed otherwise than I did on any particular occasion. Motives channel me, but are not the driving force within me: All that the motives can do…is to alter the direction of the will’s effort…But such an influence can never bring it about that the will wills something actually different from what it has willed hitherto. This remains unalterable, for the will is precisely this willing itself, which would otherwise have to be abolished.41 On Schopenhauer’s conception, in simply being a living and hence a striving thing, I am – to adapt a related simile he sometimes uses himself42 – like a stream of water rushing ahead, its course shaped both by contingencies in its path and by tendencies towards movement inherent in its own nature. The stream has no control over its own inner nature or the direction it actually takes given what it meets – and no more do I. The ways in which I differ from a stream of water, in having a mind, having conscious states, and being caused to will by rational motives, do not alter the case. Georg Simmel, writing in 1907, provides the following excellent summation of Schopenhauer’s view: ‘I do not will by virtue of values and goals that are posited by reason,

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer 185 but I have goals because I will continuously and ceaselessly from the depth of my essence.’43 Whatever coherence Schopenhauer’s general theory of the will may have or lack, this displacement of the rational, thinking self from explanatory and ontological primacy is one of the most influential aspects of his thought.

Will to… Nietzsche has a tendency to make pointed juxtapositions between his expression ‘will to power’ and Schopenhauer’s ‘will to life’. In the work of fiction, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, life speaks to Zarathustra at one point, saying ‘He who shot the doctrine of “will to existence” at truth certainly did not hit the truth: this will – does not exist! ‘Only where life is, there is also will: not will to life, but – so I teach you – will to power! ‘The living creature values many things higher than life itself; yet out of this evaluation itself speaks – will to power!’ Thus life once taught me: and with this teaching do I solve the riddle [Räthsel] of your hearts, you wisest men.44 Will to power is announced as the replacement for will to life, and as solving a riddle – the same one as Schopenhauer posed? It is hard to say. In his next work, Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche makes a similar point more directly: Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of selfpreservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength – life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.45 In addition, there are more verbal juxtapositions in the same vein: ‘Life simply is will to power’; ‘exploitation belongs to the essence [Wesen] of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the genuine will to power, which is after all the will of life’.46 Upon dismissing Schopenhauer’s attempt to found ethics on the principle ‘neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva’ (‘injure no one, but rather help all those you can’), Nietzsche goes out of his way to ridicule his predecessor thus:

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Christopher Janaway whoever has once felt deeply how insipidly false and sentimental this principle [neminem laede…] is in a world whose essence is will to power, may allow himself to be reminded that Schopenhauer, though a pessimist, really – played the flute. Every day, after dinner: one should read his biography on that.47

Nietzsche not only chooses a discussion of Schopenhauer in which to insert this reference to the will to power, but he calls it the world’s essence (here, Essenz). With no other interpretative clues in the immediate vicinity, the passage invites us to regard this doctrine as a direct competitor to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will. Maudemarie Clark has labelled as the ‘cosmological’ doctrine of will to power the view that ‘the world, or at least the organic world, is will to power’.48 She claims Nietzsche espouses no such view. Before assessing this claim, it is worth remarking that Clark’s formulation betrays a point of kinship with Schopenhauer. Nietzsche’s apparent willingness to keep simultaneously in play the thoughts ‘life is will to power’ and ‘the world is will to power’ matches Schopenhauer’s habit of flitting back and forth between saying that my inner nature is will to life (an essence shared with the organic world) and that it is simply will (an essence shared with everything). Both philosophers seem to want a global theory, but to waver in presenting it as relatively or absolutely global. How similar, then, is Nietzsche’s position to Schopenhauer’s? Consider the most complex published presentation of the ‘will to power’ doctrine in Beyond Good and Evil, section 36:49 Suppose nothing else were ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other ‘reality’ besides the reality of our drives…is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the question whether this ‘given’ would not be sufficient for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic (or ‘material’ world?…) – as a more primitive form of the world of affects in which everything still lies contained in a powerful unity before it undergoes ramifications and developments in the organic process…one has to risk the hypothesis whether will does not affect will wherever ‘effects’ are recognized – and whether all mechanical occurrences are not, insofar as a force is active in them, will force, effects of will.… Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic form of the will – namely, of the will to

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer 187 power, as my proposition has it; suppose all functions could be traced back to this will to power and one could also find in it the solution of the problem of procreation and nourishment – it is one problem – then one would have gained the right to determine all efficient force univocally as – will to power. The world viewed from inside, the world defined and determined according to its ‘intelligible character’ – it would be ‘will to power’ and nothing else. Note the Schopenhauerianisms: not merely the notion of a unitary ‘will’ expressing itself in all organic functions, not just the slide from ‘all organic functions’ to ‘the world’, not only the whole world ‘viewed from inside’ so as to discern its ‘intelligible character’, but even the thought that what is ‘given’ in our self-consciousness might be the starting-point for understanding material reality as one basic form of will. However, I want to argue that ‘will to power’ is neither simply analogous to Schopenhauer’s theory, nor simply opposed to it: a complicated set of parallels and contrasts pertains between the two. At a very broad level, Nietzsche mirrors Schopenhauer in conceiving will to power to occur globally and blindly. But he rejects both the metaphysical destination of Schopenhauer’s philosophical enterprise, and his would-be initial datum of ‘willing’ from self-consciousness. Nietzsche is much closer than Schopenhauer to what is now thought of as naturalism. For he conceives the world of which humanity is a part as thoroughly empirical and accessible to science. There is no suprascientific essence to the world. And he holds that subjective consciousness has no primacy in the discovery of the natural, even within ourselves. Indeed, as we shall see, it has to be ignored as erroneous. So we cannot ‘understand nature from ourselves’. According to Clark’s account the ‘cosmological’ doctrine of will to power is not held by Nietzsche. She argues for this on the grounds that he cannot consistently have an a priori metaphysics which purports to describe the world as thing in itself. I agree. Part One of Beyond Good and Evil, ‘On the Prejudices of the Philosophers’, is Nietzsche’s clearest and most articulate attempt to undermine the enterprise of metaphysics, conceived as knowledge of a real, enduring essence of the world that lies beyond its empirical nature. That enterprise is to be superseded by his own ‘task’, characterized later in the book as ‘To translate man back into nature…to see to it that man henceforth stands before man as even today, hardened in the discipline of science, he stands before the rest of nature’.50 Thus, if section 36 literally claimed that the ‘in itself’ of the whole world is will to power, it would

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be a stark anomaly. But what does it literally claim? There is ironic distancing in Nietzsche’s multiple use of ‘suppose…’ – he signals acceptance of none of the premises thus introduced – and in his use of quotation marks around ‘intelligible character’ in the putative conclusion. Clark’s account shows how the supposed argument of section 36 never implicates Nietzsche in any assertion that the world as it is in itself, or the world’s inner nature, or the intelligible character of the world, is will to power.51 Nietzsche’s enterprise has other epistemological ‘modesties’52 by comparison with Schopenhauer’s. Nietzsche’s view of the world is always liable to be an ‘experiment’ or ‘hypothesis’, a proposition put forward provisionally, possibly to be rejected in the face of further ‘experiments’ in thinking. It must also be self-consciously a view of the world adopted from a certain perspective: the view of a theorist with attitudes For and Against and depths of personality that exert influence over his thinking.53 The claim that the world is will to power is, Nietzsche says, ‘my proposition’ – it is not necessarily how every thinker will be drawn to understand the world, but is, notoriously, ‘only an interpretation’.54 Its truth or falsity may not even be the most important feature of such a hypothesis.55 By contrast, Schopenhauer is the traditional metaphysician par excellence, setting out his doctrines as the single, impersonal, once and for all truth. However, all this is compatible with Nietzsche’s holding some interpretation that has global scope. His provisional, perspectival hypothesis can still be a general claim about everything in the empirical world, a hypothesis that it all manifests ‘will to power’, whatever that means. Clark holds that Nietzsche’s thesis of ‘will to power’ is solely or primarily a psychological doctrine. One reason for this is her tacit assumption that ‘will to … ’ describes a mental occurrence of some kind. She argues, against Kaufmann, that Nietzsche could not plausibly see everything even in human behaviour as explained by a desire for power. On the assumption that the ‘will’ in ‘will to power’ is literally some kind of desire, any global reading is unappealing – it invites us into anthropomorphism or panpsychism with regard to the natural world. But our reading of Schopenhauer should alert us to the possibility that ‘will to…’ need not mean ‘desire for…’. Schopenhauer would say that desires are but one specialized instance of the will in nature, and would label as absurd the attempt to see every kind of will throughout nature as a species of desiring. Clark insists rightly that Nietzsche’s doctrine is primarily psychological in its use: that is, Nietzsche’s most important explananda are the multifarious forms of mental and behavioural phenomena human

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer 189 beings exhibit, and (in the published works at least) his concern with a wider cosmology is far less. But if we recall the aim of translating humanity back into nature, of standing before ourselves as we do before ‘the rest of nature’ – all of it, presumably – and if we allow that Nietzsche’s terminology may, like Schopenhauer’s term ‘will’, lack literal mentalistic import, it is easier to think that he might enfold the entire empirical world within that same description. The parallel from Schopenhauer is only circumstantial evidence for the assertion that ‘will to…’ in ‘will to power’56 should not be read as meaning ‘desire for…’. The chief ground is that the bearers (or perhaps units)57 of will to power are not primarily individual agents or human beings, but rather sub-personal elements which Nietzsche calls drives (Triebe). Drives ‘constitute the being [Wesen]’ of someone58 – even though, significantly for our discussion, self-knowledge can never completely embrace them. The person is a synthesis of drives, or is composed of drives in the way a political unit such as a state is composed of human individuals.59 Thus Nietzsche says: ‘In the philosopher…his morality bears decided witness to who he is – that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other.’60 Earlier in the same passage these drives are anthropomorphized: Anyone who considers the basic drives [Grundtriebe] of humanity…will find that all of them have done philosophy [Philosophie getrieben61] at some time – and that every single one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all the other drives. For every drive wants to be master – and it attempts to philosophize in that spirit. This is a string of metaphors. If an agent’s beliefs and desires are held in virtue of the agent’s ‘innermost nature’, and this nature is a plurality of drives each of which is less than the whole agent, it would be most natural to think, not that the drives themselves literally ‘seek’, or ‘attempt’, or ‘would like’ this or that, but that desires occur in the agent because of the way the multiple, and changing, drives of his or her nature are disposed. It would be especially bizarre for Nietzsche to think that sub-personal drives are literally some kind of desiring agent, since he rejects the very idea of the agent even in characterizing what we normally conceive as a person’s actions. The ‘doer’ is a fiction added on to the deed.62 The idea of a subject or ‘I’ that acts is an error foisted on us by the subject-predicate form of

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language, it enshrines an ancient superstitious psychology which has to understand every occurrence as the action of a being that could have withheld its action. Subsequent metaphysics has preserved this notion because its values require responsibility, a locus of good or evil which can be blamed for choosing to express itself in one action as opposed to another.63 If he located agency at the level of ‘innermost drives’, Nietzsche would be personifying drives in a way that is illegitimate even for persons! The vocabulary of ‘wanting’ and ‘trying’ and ‘seeking’ can be used only metaphorically in connection with these drives. We might think that to say a drive exhibits will to power means that power is the end that a drive serves. The rhetoric of ‘not will to life, but will to power’ gives sustenance to this reading, for, as we saw, Schopenhauer genuinely believes that all organic activity reduces (his word) to the maintenance of the individual and the propagation of the species, that the single grand end of all episodes of willing is life, and in that sense there is only one basic drive, of which all others are expressions. Now if we were to retain this structure and merely replace ‘will to life’ with ‘will to power’, we should have Nietzsche claiming that all drives are directed towards power as their end. But this would make a nonsense of his idea that ‘every drive wants to be master’, that ‘every single one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all the other drives’. For we have to consider what distinguishes one drive from another. If every drive simply consisted in ‘wanting to be master’, none of them would truly be a drive distinct from the others. The only plausible way with this passage is to construe it as saying: the drive towards X, the drive towards Y, and the drive towards Z are disposed to dominate over one another. What distinguishes the drives is what they are the drive for (we might for the purposes of the schema imagine such things as a sex-drive, a survival-drive, a pleasure-drive, or whatever: Nietzsche does not commit himself as to what the ‘basic drives’ are). What unites them is their mode of behaviour: each ‘wants’ – putting it metaphorically – to dominate over other drives within the same organism. And it is this latter ‘wanting’ that Nietzsche means when he attributes will to power to every drive. The idea is well put by John Richardson: ‘Nietzschean power…is (roughly) improvement in whatever a drive’s activity already is.…These drives “will power” inasmuch as they will the “full achievement” of their internal ends, at the expense, if need be, of all competing drives’ efforts.’64

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Nietzsche’s analysis of the phenomena of ‘willing’ In discussing Beyond Good and Evil, section 36, we discovered that its conclusion was not a Schopenhauer-style metaphysics of the ‘in itself’. But what of the starting point, where Nietzsche says: ‘Suppose nothing else were “given” as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other “reality” besides the reality of our drives?’ Is it the case, for Nietzsche, that nothing else is ‘given as real’? Not if this means a Schopenhauerian ‘given immediately in selfconsciousness’. ‘There are still harmless self-observers’, Nietzsche says, ‘who believe that there are “immediate certainties”; for example, “I think”, or as the superstition of Schopenhauer put it, “I will” ;65 ‘Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as if it were the bestknown thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known’.66 But these self-observers and accustomed philosophers are wrong, according to Nietzsche. Why? willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unit only as word…let us say that in all willing there is, first, a plurality of sensations, namely the sensation of the state ‘away from which’, the sensation of the state ‘towards which’, the sensation of this ‘from’ and ‘towards’ themselves, and then also an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting into motion ‘arms and legs’, begins its action by force of habit as soon as we ‘will’ anything. And,67 just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, secondly, should thinking also: in every act of the will there is a ruling thought – let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the ‘willing’, as if any will would then remain over! Third, the will is not only a complex of sensations and thinking, but it is above all an affect, and especially the affect of the command.…A human being who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience… . ‘Freedom of the will’ – that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person willing, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of that order…The person willing adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful ‘underwills’ or under-souls – indeed our body is but a social structure composed of many souls – to his feelings of delight as commander.68

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In what we call willing, sensations occur, thinking occurs – ‘when “it” wills, and not when “I” will’, as Nietzsche has already told us69 – and there occurs a feeling of being in command over something that has to obey, and a host of other feelings. But Nietzsche’s preferred description of such an episode is that various of the drives that constitute the human being have won out temporarily over others. What constructs itself in consciousness is a picture that allows the ‘I’ to identify itself with the victorious forces in the sub-personal struggle. Is Nietzsche’s allegation just that willing can be analysed as a complex of conscious experiential states? That would show error of a kind on the part of those who regard self-consciousness as giving immediate, indubitable acquaintance with willing. But the more serious implicit charge is that no aggregate of these experienced sensations, affects, or thoughts gives us knowledge of ourselves at all. Indeed, Nietzsche holds in general that anything given in consciousness is not a reliable guide to the reality of our drives: whatever reaches consciousness is an epiphenomenon, or a merely accompanying appearance (Begleiterscheinung70) thrown up by the various underlying activities; yet ‘we have sought to understand the world through the reverse conception – as if nothing were effective and real but thinking, feeling, willing!’71 Schopenhauer attempted to take as foundational the will as known to the acting subject. But Nietzsche cannot do so: what is ‘given’ in our self-consciousness as agents is no guide even to our nature, let alone to that of the world as a whole.72

Conclusion The parallels and differences I have argued to obtain between Schopenhauer’s ‘will’ and Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ can be summarized as follows: 1

2

Nietzsche’s notion of will to power resembles Schopenhauer’s account of will in having a certain global ambition: it is either relatively global (every organic process manifests will to power); or absolutely global (the world is will to power). However, Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ does not purport to describe some supra-scientific ‘inner essence’ to the world waiting to be deciphered. It provides no metaphysics of the ‘in itself’, something the Nietzsche of Beyond Good and Evil considers both disreputable and incoherent.

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4

5

If will to power is to be either absolutely or relatively global it must parallel Schopenhauer’s will in being able to occur ‘blindly’. No more than in Schopenhauer’s usage can the word ‘will’ in ‘will to power’ connote rationality, consciousness or mentality. Drives, not agents, are the fundamental bearers of will to power. ‘Power’ in ‘will to power’ is unlike ‘life’ in ‘will to life’: it is not the single telos towards which drives tend, rather it is a principle governing the manner in which any drive behaves with respect to other drives. For Nietzsche, ‘will to power’ cannot be understood, in the manner Schopenhauer hopes, from an immediate knowledge of our own willing, for there is no such knowledge and no such simple phenomenon as ‘willing’. The belief that our consciousness is a reliable guide to the occurrence of states of willing, or acts of will, is false.

As stated at the start of the chapter, these two philosophers might appear to assign the will a prominence it has not enjoyed everywhere in the history of thought. In fact, they succeed in rendering the status of human willing radically problematic. For both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, what we call willing in ourselves does not distinguish us from nature, but belongs to a wider kind that encompasses other natural processes. Since natural processes are non-rational, unthinking, and mostly unconscious, the outcome of this assimilation is to place the ‘driving force’ of human beings, still called ‘will’ or something similar, outside the control of the agent as traditionally conceived. (As Richardson says, ‘precisely because we are constituted out of drives or forces, we don’t “will” anything in the way we ordinarily suppose.’73) The drive or drives in virtue of which each of us is aimed this way or that are deep within the human being, they are the real self, but they appear alien to the self-conscious rational agent the human being likes to see himself or herself as. We do not choose our drives. We, with all our goals and choosings, are a kind of illusion our drives throw up as they attempt to fulfil themselves.

Notes 1

2

A version of the sections ‘Will and “the riddle”, ‘Human willing and action’, and ‘Will as “inner nature” in this chapter appears as part of Christopher Janaway, ‘Will and Nature’, in Janaway (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, Cambridge, 2000. Roy C. Weatherford, ‘Will’, in Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford, 1995, pp. 910–11.

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3 The Will to Power (hereafter WP), 478. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann, New York, 1968. In quoting from Nietzsche’s works I sometimes modify the translations, using the German text in Kritische Studienausgabe (KSA), Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag and Walter de Gruyter, 1988, 15 vols. References to Nietzsche’s works are by section number. 4 Twilight of the Idols (hereafter TI), ‘The Four Great Errors’, 3. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth, 1990. 5 TI, ‘ “Reason” in Philosophy’, 5. 6 The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols (hereafter W1 and W2), trans. E.F.J. Payne, New York, 1969. For the German text of this and other published works by Schopenhauer, see Sämtliche Werke, ed. Arthur Hübscher, Wiesbaden, 1972, 7 vols, and (in paperback) Werke in zehn Bänden, ed. Arthur Hübscher, Zurich, 1977, 10 vols. 7 Intuitive or anschauliche Vorstellungen – see W1, pp. 6, 35: Payne’s translation for anschauliche Vorstellung is ‘representation of perception’. 8 ‘Essence’ or ‘being’ are the most obvious translations of Wesen. Payne favours ‘inner nature’ for inneres Wesen, and sometimes translates the word Wesen on its own as ‘inner nature’. 9 John Atwell, Schopenhauer on the Character of the World: The Metaphysics of Will, Berkeley, 1995, chs. 3 and 4. 10 Ibid., pp. 80, 81, 91. 11 W1, p. 99: geflügelte Engelskopf ohne Leib. Payne’s translation has ‘cherub’ for Engelskopf. 12 W1, p. 99. 13 Manuscript Remains, trans. E.F.J. Payne , Oxford, 1988, pp. 1, 466. 14 W1, pp. 100–1. 15 As Brian O’Shaughnessy has made clear in The Will, Cambridge, 1980, vol. II, pp. 349–51. See also Atwell, p. 82. 16 On the Freedom of the Will (hereafter FW), trans. Konstantin Kolenda, Oxford, 1985, p. 18. 17 FW, p. 11, my translation (Kolenda is misleading here). 18 FW, p. 18 (my translation). 19 W1, p. 100. 20 See O’Shaughnessy, op. cit. 21 FW, p. 18. 22 See FW, pp. 30–7; W1, pp. 114–17; W2, pp. 248–50. 23 See especially W2, pp. 272–92. 24 W1, p. 118. 25 W1, pp. 124–6. 26 W2, pp. 642–3 (my translation). 27 W1, p. 117. 28 W1, p. 105. 29 See W1, pp. 490–1. 30 W2, p. 13. 31 Thomas Nagel, ‘Panpsychism’, in Mortal Questions, Cambridge, 1979, p. 180. 32 W1, p. 105. 33 W1, p. 111. 34 In a vivid passage, Schopenhauer implies that the process of willing in a human agent is the same as any natural process, with the mere addition of

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35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63

consciousness: ‘Spinoza…says that if a stone projected through the air had consciousness, it would imagine it was flying of its own will. I add merely that the stone would be right’ (W1, p. 126). W1, p. 327. W2, p. 606. See On the Basis of Morality (hereafter BM), trans. E.F.J. Payne, Providence/Oxford, 1995, pp. 109–13; W1, pp. 289–90; FW, pp. 96–7. BM, pp. 110–12. See especially BM, pp. 203–13. Parerga and Paralipomena, trans. E.F.J. Payne, Oxford, 1974 vol. II, p. 227. W1, pp. 294–5. Compare Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 360. FW, p. 43. Georg Simmel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, trans. Helmut Loiskandl, Deena Weinstein and Michael Weinstein, Amherst, 1986, p. 30. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II, 12, ‘Of Self-Overcoming’, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth, 1961. Beyond Good and Evil (hereafter BGE), 13. Trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York, 1966. BGE, 259. BGE, 186. Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge, 1990, p. 205. See Clark, pp. 210, 212. BGE, 230. See Clark, pp. 212–18. The term and my account here are strongly indebted to John Richardson, Nietzsche’s System, New York, 1996, pp. 284 ff. See especially BGE, 6; On the Genealogy of Morals (hereafter GM), III, 12. BGE, 22. Cf. BGE, 4. And in a swarm of other Nietzschean expressions: e. g. will to truth (BGE, 1), will to illusion (BGE, 2), will to the denial of life (BGE, 259), will to contradiction and anti-naturalness (GM, III, 12). See Richardson, p. 21. Daybreak 119: ‘However far someone may drive his self-knowledge, nothing can be more incomplete than the picture of the collective drives that constitute his being [Wesen]’ (my translation). Daybreak, Book 2, contains many sections relevant to the present discussion – see especially 109, 112, 115, 124, 129 – though Nietzsche has not yet reached his formulation ‘will to power’. See the accounts by Richardson pp. 44–7, and Leslie Paul Thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul, Princeton, 1990, pp. 51–65. BGE, 6. It is hard to bring out this pun. All of the drives have ‘driven philosophy’ – though ‘Philosophie treiben’ is also the ordinary phrase for ‘doing philosophy’, or ‘going in for philosophy’. See GM, I, 13. See ibid.; TI, ‘Reason in Philosophy’, 5, and ‘The Four Great Errors’, 3, 7; BGE, 16.

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64 Richardson, Nietzsche’s System, pp. 23–4. Cf. Richard Schacht, Nietzsche London, 1983, p. 242: ‘ “will to power” is not a teleological principle, identifying some state of affairs describable in terms of “power” as a goal to which all forms of behaviour of living creatures are instrumentally related.’ 65 BGE, 16. 66 BGE, 19. 67 Kaufmann’s translation of ‘Wie also…’ as ‘Therefore, just as…’ seems unjustified: I do not see how this sentence can be a conclusion from what precedes it. 68 BGE, 19. 69 BGE, 17. 70 See TI, ‘The Four Great Errors’, 3, where Nietzsche says that ‘motive’, like ‘will’, is ‘merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, an accompaniment to an act, which conceals rather than exposes the antecedentia of the act’. 71 WP, 479. 72 So, as Clark sees (pp. 213–14), Nietzsche cannot accept the premise about the ‘given’ that BGE, 36, would require if it were a genuine argument of Nietzsche’s to the conclusion that the world is will to power. 73 Nietzsche’s System, p. 20.

9

Theories of the bodily will Brian O’Shaughnessy

(1) I begin this chapter by stating a few of the relevant historical facts concerning philosophical theories of the bodily or physical will. I think it can safely be said that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century views on this phenomenon were relatively homogeneous in character. From Descartes to Kant there was near general agreement on the following doctrine. Namely, that when we perform physical actions – as opposed to, for example, when our limbs respond either to simple external force or in reflex fashion to given stimuli – or we engage in internal or mental actions like listening – something of the following kind is taking place. An active mental event occurs, which happens in the privacy of our own minds, that is akin in ways to a thought or internal command. This mental event somehow manages to activate regular motor pathways in the body, beginning in the brain and leading in the end to the occurrence of a desired bodily movement, which movement would then be said to have been ‘willed’. Such a doctrine could be, I think, described as Cartesian in spirit, if only because it in some way seems to drive a wedge between the mind and the body and is dualist in character. Then the internal event postulated in this theory has been called a ‘volition’ by some. And it is important that we note that its very existence has been a matter of dispute. With the advent of the physical sciences, and the increasing naturalization of the conception of man in general and the mind in particular, it is not surprising that the above account of physical action should be challenged by some thinkers. The most noteworthy example was, I believe, Schopenhauer. The views that he came by on this topic seem to me to be of great interest. The theory of physical action that he very bluntly enunciated began by endorsing the existence of the act of the will, which is to say the volition. Then the great novelty in the theory lay in the account which he proceeded to offer of the volition. His theory was to the effect that the act of the will or the volition, and the

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act of the body or the physical act itself, were not two distinct events, one inner and mental and the other outer and physical, linked by the relation of causality. According to Schopenhauer they were one and the same event: given epistemologically immediately to the agent of the act as a willing, and given mediately in visual and tactile perception both to the agent and to everyone else as bodily movements. This interesting theory was not supported with much argument or elucidation, and just how it was intended is perhaps a little obscure. None the less, there can be no doubt that it constituted a radical break with the tradition that preceded it, a tradition which included Descartes, Locke, Hume and others – with the exception of Spinoza, who in all probability embraced a psycho-physically unified account reminiscent of that propounded by Schopenhauer. The last of my historical references brings me to the twentieth century. Here, for thirty or so years, roughly between 1935 and 1965, the influence of Behaviourism and certain of its more subtle derivatives, was paramount in Anglo-American philosophy. As a result, mental phenomena generally had to run something of a gauntlet in philosophical thinking. Either they were crassly reduced out of existence, or else they had to produce credentials before existence would be granted them. In any case, volitions or acts of the will were as a general rule discounted as mythical metaphysical creations. Even philosophers who had no quarrel with the reality of mental phenomena generally, had a quarrel with volitions in particular, as they had also with sense-data. Exactly why this negative partiality was shown, it is difficult to say. Two likely factors may be mentioned. One was that it seemed to many philosophers that to postulate acts of the will was in effect to split the mind off from the body in a way that appeared to lead to an unsatisfactory dualism. The other possible determinant of this repudiation of volitions consists in their apparent unobservability. Thus, when one engages in some relatively unselfconscious physical activity like walking, one seems not to be aware of two sets of parallel phenomena – one internal or mental and the other merely bodily or physical – let us say in the way that one would if one were a sportsman who in a training session performed a physical act such as playing a backhand in tennis and at the same time closely and selfconsciously studied what he did as he acted. Normally the mind seems to be directed outwards onto one’s body and the environment when one is performing such simple deeds as walking and hitting a ball in tennis, and we do not seem to be aware of any simultaneous parallel inner processes going on in the mind at the same time.

Theories of the bodily will 199 Both of these charges are, I think, justified to a degree. More exactly, if acts of the bodily will or volitions are understood in the way Locke understood them, for example, the charges are I believe correct. Thus, if acts of the will are construed as akin to thoughts or internal commands (say), then I think this would very likely split mind off from body in unacceptable ways which I will not try to spell out. And the second charge – namely, that of the unobservability of acts of the will – would likewise stick. If acts of the will really were akin to thoughts or internal commands, there can be no doubt that we should be selfconsciously aware of them in the way the selfconscious player of the backhand was aware of his own mental activity of self-scrutiny as he performed the stroke in training. I think it is pretty clear that we are not aware of any such thing as we perform such humdrum physical deeds as taking a walk or reaching for a cup of tea. What are the implications of this latter fact? What follows from this negative epistemological finding? Two possible conclusions might theoretically be drawn from it. The first would be in agreement with the neo-behaviourists. Namely, that volitions or acts of the will are simply non-existent, that we are not introspectively conscious of engaging in some inner active quasi-thinking or self-commanding when we physically act, for the simple reason that no such phenomena occur. And this conclusion tends naturally and unreflectively to be taken to have disposed also of the theory that there exists a special psychological and active event which is unique to active situations – even though these two theories are not the same (for the distinction between them mostly escapes notice). The second possible, and alternative conclusion, is one that recommends itself to me. That is, not that we throw out volitions, but that we re-model our conception of them. Above all, that we primitivize them. For to conceive of volitions as akin to thoughts or internal commands is, I believe, to upgrade them developmentally to a quite absurd degree. If volitions exist, they must occur in cats, in fish, and even in insects. How can we possibly suppose that events that are on a par with thoughts or internal commands go on in such creatures? Since volitions are postulated as necessary conditions of all those phenomena that we describe as ‘bodily actions’, it is difficult to see how we can refuse to attribute them to animals of all kinds. For there can be no doubt that the distinction between action and non-action is just as valid in their case as it is in our own. Dogs and cats walk and run and eat in precisely the sense and way in which language-using rational thinking beings do, just as they feel pains and hear sounds in the very same sense in which we do. Therefore if volitions exist, they in all probability occur in

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pretty much the same form throughout the animal kingdom. If walking and swimming are more or less the same phenomenon in man and beast – as they surely are – then it will have be so. It follows from this conclusion that if volitions exist they must be markedly unlike internal commands, or any of the other mental phenomena which are peculiar to the self-conscious members of the animal kingdom. Therefore they must be significantly dissimilar from the traditional philosophical conception of the volition. However, if they are to actually exist, they cannot be so dissimilar as to rate as a different thing altogether. The claim must therefore be that they preserve enough that is vital in the old concept to justify the application of the same term in their case. In sum, one way of meeting the charge of unobservability takes the following form. The reply is that, in searching for volitions and finding none, the fault lay in our conception of the object of that search, rather than in the non-existence of the object. The fruitlessness of the search did not show that something which merits the title ‘act of the will’ did not exist and was not detectable on those occasions when actions take place. From the fact that the search for a distinctive active quasi-thought was fruitless on such occasions, it does not follow that a distinctive active psychological event – let us say of a much more primitive ilk than thought – could not have been present and escaped awareness. Thus one might manage to retain the volition – understood now as an event that is at once active, psychological, distinctive to action, and vastly more primitive than internal events like thoughts – even though introspection fails to disclose anything matching the Cartesian conception of the will when one engages in simple physical deeds such as walking and playing tennis. I say one might do so, but, of course, one would need reasons or arguments supporting such a step. (2) So much for why volitions have proved to be so unpopular with latter-day and not so latter-day twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophers, and how one might come to terms with the facts which bothered many philosophers. I will now briefly try to explain how one might come to believe there are such things as acts of the will or volitions, quite irrespective of whether one conceives of those events as akin to thoughts. However, before I state this theory in a little more detail, I must make a few preliminary observations. To begin, let us note that the phenomenon under investigation is physical action. The type physical action covers a wide variety of phenomena, ranging from walking and

Theories of the bodily will 201 swimming, to talking and playing the piano, and thus from simple, relatively primitive occurrences to complex, highly sophisticated ones. Then physical actions must, in the first place, be sharply distinguished from two other related types of phenomena: the first being mental actions, by which I mean active genuinely interior processes of the type of, for example, listening and thinking – by contrast with inactive interior processes like dreaming and hearing; the second contrast is with so-called bodily reflex actions, by which I mean bodily phenomena which owe their existence to a bodily stimulus rather than to the operation of the will. But as well as these distinctions, we have also, I believe, to exclude from the class of bodily acts such closely related bodily phenomena as laughter as well as most of the typical examples of breathing. I now pass on to the attempt to demonstrate that the phenomena which we thus single out under the heading of bodily or physical actions are such as to necessitate the occurrence of volitions. The first major step is linguistic. Thus, one very simple fact which seems to militate against belief in the existence of volitions is that ‘volition’ is a term of art, for this seems only too readily to cohere with the supposition that volitions are the unobservable metaphysical products of philosopher’s minds. If ordinary language makes no reference to them, why believe these supposedly vastly familiar phenomena so much as exist? If the language has terms for singling out emotions and perceptions, for example, and thoughts and any psychological type one can think of, then how is it that it has no term for acts of the will? How is it that we have to invent our own term? Does not this strongly suggest that the phenomenon itself is likewise an invention? One possible counter-suggestion to this claim is that the language does after all have such terminology, which is to say a familiar nontechnical term that fits the volition. The suggestion that has been made by some people is that the putative inner event can be singled out under the unexceptionable and familiar concept of trying. And there is no need to be wedded to the particular word ‘try’: ‘strive’ ‘attempt’ even ‘have a go at’, would in my opinion all do just as well, and perhaps even as vague sounding an expression as ‘do something or another’. This in effect is to say that these perfectly ordinary expressions will prove on closer examination to fit something that sufficiently matches what philosophers traditionally have called a ‘volition’ to merit its application to what they single out. Such a thesis at first blush sounds highly implausible, since volitions have traditionally been thought of as internal phenomena, whereas most of us could hardly be said to entertain such a picture in general of physical attempts and strivings and suchlike phenomena. After all, have we not often enough

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witnessed someone doing something like push hard at a door in trying to open it, and how could what we see on such occasions possibly be described as interior in type? Nevertheless, despite such difficulties, the claim that some philosophers at present endorse can be couched in such familiar terms. Thus, the claim is that when we engage in physical actions like walking or talking we are trying or attempting or striving to do such a thing. Despite the absurdity of saying ‘I am trying to walk down the street’ or ‘I shall now make an attempt to walk down this corridor’ in the normal situations in which one walks with effortless ease, the claim is that it remains true that one is trying or making an attempt or having a go at, and so forth. True, but so blindingly obvious as to arouse misconceptions should one single it out for mention. One could take this claim that tryings or strivings go on whenever we act – which I have not so far substantiated by argument – as a first step towards a volitionist theory of physical action. Later, I shall briefly set out the kind of arguments that might be advanced for the above claim, which for the most part tend to be variants on the age-old argument from illusion and error. In any case, the next step in the setting up of the volitionist theory of bodily action consists in making out a case for the view that this act of trying can legitimately be construed as a psychological event. One would do so largely on the grounds that a subject is immediately aware of his tryings in a way that strongly matches the immediate awareness which most of us have of our own thoughts and sensations. Thus, roughly along such lines, a case gets made out for the view that whenever we physically act, a distinctive active psychological event of the type of ‘trying’ or ‘striving’ goes on at the same time, and that this is one of the prime determinants of the fact that an event occurred which is of the type of ‘action’: that is, a type which ranges over walkings and talkings and punchings, and so on. Let me now briefly set out the sort of justification that one might offer in support of the claim that whenever we physically act we try to do such a thing. Suppose a man agrees in an experiment to move his right arm at the sound of a bell, suppose that he hears the bell ring, and at that very moment carries out the deed in compliance with the request. It seems to me perfectly possible that such a person might find himself persuaded, let us say by completely reasonable sounding arguments, that a number of bizarre scientific tricks had been played upon him just as the bell sounded, that he had just now been the victim of several illusions, that his limb had not really in fact stirred, and that he had therefore failed to carry out the bodily act which he had seemed to

Theories of the bodily will 203 himself to have done. Fantastic as the case may be, he need not in principle have arrived at such a belief illicitly, since ex hypothesi it was rational persuasion that was brought to bear upon him. Accordingly, let us suppose that this man changes his mind and for what looks like good reasons believes he did not after all perform the deed in question. Despite this belief, would it not be true that such a man would still know that he had at least actively co-operated with the experimenter, and attempted to move the limb at the sound of the bell? He did not disobey the order, and the form his co-operation took was surely both occurrent and active in character: surely something actually happened as he heard that bell: surely in some sense he obeyed! In fact, I think he would know absolutely immediately that he had done something or another, and know with the kind of immediacy that is reserved for psychological phenomena of the kind of thoughts or sensations and suchlike. That is, he would know with mentalistic immediacy that an event which he would describe as one of trying had occurred. Then if he really does know this, it must be true that such an event took place, so that it will still have happened even though the trying was in fact successful and a perfectly well-formed act of limb moving had occurred. It is roughly along lines of this kind that one might come to the view that whenever we perform physical acts like move our limbs, an event of trying occurred, even though linguistically there is something odd about saying so. We have here a vital first claim which is endorsed by myself and various other philosophers. However, it is only a first step towards assembling a satisfactory theory of physical or bodily action, which is a relatively complex enterprise. For it leaves a number of important questions unanswered. Notably the following: (i) What is the character of this event of trying? (ii) How does the event of trying to move a limb relate to the act of moving a limb which it is said to accompany? (iii) How can we manage to meet the charge, a charge of which we have already spoken, that positing volitions is in effect to divide mind off from body in a way that is unacceptable? (3) I shall say a word here on each of these matters, beginning with the question as to the character of the event of trying. I think it is very likely that this event really is psychological in status – whatever else it may be. A strong case can be made out for that view. For one thing, the event of trying emerges immediately out of mental causes like desire and decision. But the prime reason for believing that the trying was a psychological phenomenon is to be found in the epistemological property which I have already had occasion to comment upon.

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Namely, that we know of its occurrence immediately and more or less independently of what happens in our limbs, indeed of whether total paralysis obtains in the limb we attempt to move. Whether the limb moves, or whether it does not, we immediately know ‘just like that’ and with near infallibility that we tried to move it, and we immediately know ‘just like that’ and with near infallibility that we did something or other. The situation was not that, as the bell went, nothing whatsoever occurred. It was not just that he merely abided by or stood by his intention of co-operating. More important is that the intention actually found occurrent and active expression, and the subject knows immediately that it did. But ‘psychological’ is one thing, and ‘internal’ is another. Have we a right to describe this supposedly psychological event of trying also as non-internal in character? It seems to me that the concept of psychologicality is clear enough, even if it is indefinable, for it is that property which is common to thoughts and pains and moods, etc. – and we all know what the ‘etc.’ ranges over, we are all sure we can continue the list. But what does ‘internal’ mean? Here we seem to have a true philosopher’s term of art: perhaps none the worse for that, but standing in need of explanation or stipulation none the less. I myself am convinced that in a perfectly good sense of the word ‘internal’, bodily tryings rate as at once psychological and non-internal in character. Just what this claims amounts to will become clearer in the course of the discussion. In any case, as I observed earlier, I am of the view that a satisfactory account of bodily willing must be such as to sharply distinguish itself from the radically dualist position adopted on the matter by Descartes, Locke and others. Volitions cannot be like thoughts or inner commands or anything of that ilk: they have to be conceived in much more primitive terms. If volitions really do exist, they will, in my opinion, have to be markedly different from the phenomena posited by those philosophers. A new look is required in our concept of this item. The second question that remains to be settled – once we have for various reasons agreed that bodily willings exist – concerns the relation holding between bodily willings or volitions and the bodily act that they realize. For example, between the event of trying to raise an arm and the act of arm-raising that it realizes. This is a very simplesounding question, but it is by no means an easy question to answer. In effect, we are embarking upon a theory of bodily act-constitution, armed with a theory of the reality of the bodily will as we set out. For example, what phenomena go to make up or constitute the process of walking? Does walking consist in a continuous sequence of leg move-

Theories of the bodily will 205 ments which owe their existence to volitions? Or does it consist in the volitions which were responsible for such bodily movements? Or is it a sort of inner-outer amalgam of the two: a kind of oil-and-water psycho-physical complex? If one takes the volition in the traditional sense, which is to say as an internal active event that causes limb movements, then each of these three doctrines carry implications which are intellectually unacceptable. I shall run through them in order. First, identifying the act with the limb movement – which is, I think, the traditional view – would then imply that an inner doing or willing causes an outer doing or acting, imply that trying to walk causes walking, would make the act itself something of which we are not immediately aware, and so on. Second, to identify the act with a volition that is said to occur in the privacy of one’s own mind, let us say to identify walking with a volition which is a mental event that causes activation of the motor-system, carries the absurd implication that acts like walking and swimming prove to be neither visible nor overt, so that these eminently public and visible deeds have to beat a retreat into the mind. Meanwhile, the third theory, which conceives of the act as a sort of oil-and-water psycho-physical amalgam, seems to be no real advance upon the dualist position adopted by Descartes and Locke, and has to my way of thinking other unacceptable implications which I shall not go into here. Thus we have just now brought forward three different theories of the constitution of physical actions, theories in which the volition is accepted as a reality and brought into determinate relation to the physical action it helps to realize, and we have rejected all three! What is the next step? Is it to renege on the theory of the volition? I do not think that it is. I have spoken several times already of the need to re-model the traditional conception of the volition: to primitivize it (so to speak), if only with a view to making it a feasible possible inhabitant of primitive animal psyches. But I think we need to do something more than that, I believe we need also to physicalize it. I will now try to explain what I mean by this statement. (4) Before I do so, note that having rejected all three theories, I am now preparing to espouse one of them – in amended form! I am proposing to accept the doctrine that identifies the bodily act, let us say an act of arm raising, with the psychological event of trying or willing that I am convinced accompanies that act. What justifies this about-face on my part is the fact that the theory I propose carries out the recommended remodelling. That is, it rejects the idea of the act of the will as an event

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occurring in the privacy of the mind, which those three theories accepted. It endorses its psychologicality, but rejects its interiority. This seems to me to be something more than primitivizing. After all, bodily sensations like pain or sensations of contact are primitive enough entities, and yet they are interior in some perfectly natural sense. The specific step that I shall propose justifies the additional epithet ‘physicalizing’. The reason I say this is that this theory identifies the event of trying to raise an arm with the act of arm-raising, where the latter is understood to include the event of arm-rise and to occur in the full light of day and to be open to visual perception of first- and third-person alike. It identifies willing to move a limb and the overtly physical event of bodily action. More exactly, it identifies willing to walk and the whole physical ensemble, stretching from brain to bodily extremity, that constitutes the realization of this act. That is, an extended, causally linked developing sequence of events which are the same thing as the full activation of the motor system. Such a theory of the physical will was already prefigured in the account of the mind-body relation propounded by Schopenhauer, who advanced a non-Cartesian theory in which mind and body were united overtly and essentially. The theory in question is of the type, ‘dual aspect’. It merits this title for several reasons, which I will now explain. Thus, once one has decided that a theory of volitions is correct, two main issues arise: the constitution of the physical action, and its ontological status. Then the dual-aspect theory which has my approval offers the following answers to these two questions. The physical act itself is understood to be identical with the volition or event of trying; and, because there are powerful arguments favouring the theory that all tryings are invariably psychological events, the physical act is assumed to have psychological ontological status. Meanwhile the act is said to be capable of a purely physical bodily specification. Namely, it is constituted out of the activation of the entire motor-system, a causally linked sequence of events which begins somewhere in the brain and terminates with the limb movement that was actively executed. This entire physical process is accessible epistemologically to its owner-executant in two quite different ways. It is given absolutely immediately in the way in which our own thoughts and sensations are epistemologically immediately given, being given under the psychological heading of ‘trying’ or ‘striving’ or ‘attempting’, etc. For the claim is, that when someone physically acts he is immediately aware of his action in being immediately aware of an event of trying or at any rate of doing something or another. Meanwhile, the physical act is simultaneously epistemologically given to the same agent mediately and

Theories of the bodily will 207 through visual and proprioceptive perception – as when one sees or feels one’s own actively moving limbs – or even when walking down the street one catches sight of oneself in a mirror in a shop. This epistemological double-facedness is part of what people are thinking of when they describe the doctrine as double-aspect in character. However, in my opinion the primary meaning of the term ‘doubleaspect’ in this context is not epistemological in kind. It is rather constitutive-ontological. For the physical act is characterized, and on purely a priori grounds, as identical at one and the same time with a psychological event of willing and also under a purely physical characterization as the activation of a motor-mechanism. It is identified as at once completely psychological and also as completely physical in type. Note that it is not identified as both psychological and physical on the general grounds of Physicalist Theory. It is given this double characterization because of arguments which have specific application to physical actions alone among mental phenomena – arguments which cannot be applied holus-bolus to other mental events, let us say of the type of thinking or sensation – arguments which I have not really stated in detail. If this theory is true, one can see very well how one might wish to say of the trying that, while it is psychological in status, it can scarcely be described as ‘internal’. How could an event openly encompass limb movement and be internal in type? Well, if physicalism is a true account of the mind, some such thing might be said to be true of absolutely all mental events. Accordingly, the claim concerning physical action has to be expressed differently. What is special on this account about physical action is the fact that it alone of all mental events is susceptible of an a priori-given purely physical specification. Nowhere else do we discover such a thing. And it is probably this property that we should build into a natural stipulation as to the sense of the term ‘internal’. In any case, this is the stipulated meaning that I have in mind when I claim of bodily actions that they are psychological but not internal in character. One noteworthy feature of this theory – which, I must emphasize again, is merely the theory that persuades me – is, that the theory does not suppose that the act of the will activates the motor-system. The claim is, that willing is the activation of the motor-system, and to whatever extent that activation extends, whether from brain to spinal cord, or brain to paralysed muscle, or all the way from brain to the limb-event that is the natural goal of the whole thing. Now it is true that motor-mechanisms can be activated by purely physical intervention in the brain, and that we are (rightly, in my view) disinclined to

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describe such occurrences as actions. This would happen when, for example, a person inserts a probe into his brain, activates the motorsystem, and in so doing finds his limb move. As I say, we would discount this as action. Accordingly, any valid theory of willing must stress that it is a binding requirement upon willing that it give absolutely immediate expression to the appointed antecedent causes of action: namely to act-desire and very possibly also to act-intention. The aforementioned activation at the hands of cerebral intervention fails to meet this requirement, and on this account alone has to be disqualified as an action. However, I must at this point acknowledge that difficult problems exist in this area, which remain to be explored. In any case, the double-aspect theory which identifies act of the will and activation of the motor-mechanism, will undoubtedly have to append the rider that this theory could be true only if the motor-activation in question is understood to be immediately caused by act-desire and possibly also by act-intention. While the will does not activate the motor-system, act-desires and act-intentions or decisions precisely do just such a thing. After all, the will is here understood to be activation of the motor-system that is blessed with the right psychological ancestors. (5) So much for the moment for the theory of the volition, and associated theories of the constitution of bodily actions, of ‘basic acts’ so-called. But it is clear that other varieties of action exist besides basic actions. Indeed, basic actions are probably the least interesting variety, if not from the point of view of philosophy, from the point of view of mankind generally. Thus, from the point of view of the law the really interesting actions are murder, theft, fraud, rape, manslaughter, the establishing of a right of property, and suchlike acts, and many legal minds have gone to great pains to precisely delimit these various categories of action. Meanwhile, from the point of view of the arts, the acts of greatest interest must surely be such events as the writing of ‘The Messiah’, the painting of ‘The Night Watch’, the construction of Chartres Cathedral, and so on. All these actions involve the production of phenomena lying beyond their own confines. An act of murder is one such that a death of another person is (intentionally) produced (for bad reasons), the writing of The Messiah was a deed such that a set of musical marks appeared upon paper. And so on. Such acts are as a result generally termed ‘instrumental actions’. The question naturally arises as to the relation between instrumental acts and the so-called ‘basic actions’ which have been our main topic until now. Where are the basic acts

Theories of the bodily will 209 when instrumental acts are going on? What has happened to them? Have they disappeared for the moment? Plainly not, for it is clear that when most of the above acts are taking place, acts in which their agent is moving his own body are also going on. Thus let us now rephrase the above question: when basic bodily acts occur in the course of instrumental actions, what is the relation between the two? Before I answer this question, we should note a subsidiary but interesting point. Namely, that instrumental actions derive their type but not their ontological kind from the type of the instrumentally effected phenomenon. Thus, when I give a kick as a means of generating an event wherein a door swings open, the act I have thereby performed rates as one of door opening. Then it is to my mind interesting that a door opening could have occurred, not just when the means employed were very different, for example the triggering of some Heath Robinsonian device of ludicrous complexity which led to the door’s swinging ajar. It might also have been the case that the means involved were of an ontologically different type. They might have been such that no basic bodily act of any kind occurred, and the chain of events might instead have gone back in the beginning to an internal act of the type of visualizing or thinking or reminiscing: in short, to a purely mental act. Thus, were it the case that an act of visualizing led to the quickening of one’s pulse, which in turn fired some electrode, which in turn triggered the Heath Robinsonian apparatus and led to the door swinging open, then an instrumental act of door opening will have occurred in the full and proper sense of the term, notwithstanding the fact that the operation of the will here seemed to be nothing like the volition we have been talking of, and to be of a much more sophisticated and wholly interior type. What these observations show is that we cannot expect to find a common character to instrumental actions of a given type. The question: are door openings interior or non-interior events? is simply illicit. I return to the question as to the relation between the basic act means, for example the giving of a kick, and the instrumental act it somehow realizes, such as the act of opening the door. Certain supposed temporal paradoxes are said by some to seriously complicate the picture. The following is a stock example. We shall suppose that in the year 2000 Mr. X sends a laser beam towards Mr. Y’s spacecraft, believing that it will arrive at and kill Mr. Y in the year 2010. The problem that is then posed is: when did the murder occur? If we say it happened in the year 2000, the implication is that an act of killing occurred ten years before the death it involves. If, on the other hand, we say either between 2000 and 2010, or else in the year 2010, we imply

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that Mr. X has yet to do, or yet to complete, the act of killing, even though in one very good sense he has done all that he is ever going to do towards the action by the year 2000. Indeed, Mr. X might drop dead in 2005, yet surely when Mr. Y dies in 2010 we would nonetheless retrospectively brand Mr X a murderer. But, then, so also might Mr. Y manage to die at the very same time as Mr. X, that is in 2005! In that case the act of sending the laser beam will never rate as one of killing or of murdering. So when did the murder – which, despite these conjectured possibilities, we will now assume to have in fact occurred – actually take place? In 2000? In 2010? Over the entire temporal stretch between 2000 and 2010? Or are we simply labouring under a misapprehension in supposing that there is such a thing as the precise time of instrumental actions in such temporally disjointed cases? What is the way out of this not all that momentous puzzle? It seems to be relatively simple. It is to say that the act occurred in the year 2000, and it was an act of sending off a laser beam; and then to say that this act qualifies for the further character of being a killing if and only if it leads to the death of someone, and that that happened in the year 2010. Retrospectively we will then say that a killing occurred in 2000, and perhaps we should add that the act of the year 2000 only became one of killing in the year 2010– in the same way that Van Gogh’s famous pictures of sunflowers became famous long after his death. The acts of painting these paintings were no doubt wonderful things to be doing at the time in 1888, but they acquired their additional and inessential characters of money-spinner acts and fame-maker acts only by the 1920s. This solution of the time puzzles points the way to the answer to the question concerning the relation holding between the instrumental act and the basic bodily act means which in some sense it involves. For all that we have just now said in relation to time, we could equally well have said concerning space. Thus, instead of puzzling over the time of a killing when the act occurs in 2000 and the death in 2010, we could equally well puzzle over the place of a killing when the act of pushing occurs at one point in a field and the death by sword takes place a yard away. While this is scarcely perplexing, as the temporal case is to a degree, it seems to me to point to the same conclusion: namely, that the act of killing occurred where the agent’s body was sited. In short, instrumental acts in general occur when and where the body of the agent happens to be sited in space and time. Then along these lines one naturally arrives at what is certainly the most economical, and to my mind the most convincing account of the relation between basic and instrumental action. Namely, that it consists in the simple relation of

Theories of the bodily will 211 identity. In this highly specialized sense we might say, that all we ever do is move our bodies, and leave the rest up to the environment, in many cases as per intentional design. However, this statement cannot be strictly correct as it stands, since the act in question might have been a purely internal phenomenon of the type of visualizing or thinking or suchlike. But provided we confine the class of acts under consideration to those which begin with basic or bodily action, the above statement of the situation is in a good sense correct. All that is happening is, that these basic bodily actions acquire a whole series of instrumentally redescriptive characters, which are naturally derivative from the phenomena triggered instrumentally into being by the basic act.

Index

absoluteness 60, 75 n. 39 Academic scepticism 57, 74n.21 acrasia 46–9; in Aristotle 32, 34, 36, 38–9, 51n.28; in Kant 164–9; in the Stoics 47–9 actus practicus 129 Adam 67–8 adespoton 9, 10, 17 affections: appetite and 33; in the Stoics 43; terminology 6 Against the Academics (Augustine) 74n.21 Albert the Great 101, 102 Alexander of Hales 12, 99 angels 74n.37 anger: in Aristotle 32, 42–3; in Seneca 13 animals 144–6; appetite 33; in Aquinas 12–13; in Aristotle 31–4; in Augustine 63; belief 33; choice 159–60; constitution 21; desires and 34; freedom 137–8; in Kant 159–60; in Maximus 21; in Molina 137–8; practical reasoning 135–6; in Suarez 135–6; volitions and 199–200; voluntariness 12–13, 31–2, 137–8; will and 63 Anselm 107 antecedent cause 79 Antipater 16 appearances: in Schopenhauer 180; in the Stoics 14–16 appetites: in Aristotle 32–3, 41–2; in Bonaventure 110; in Hobbes 145–6; in Suarez 143–4 Aquinas, St Thomas: Aristotle’s

influence 30, 101; faith 81–4; influence of 130; intellect 78–80; love 140–1; moral psychology 101–2; proairesis 12–13; prudence 84–94 Aristotle 3, 20, 22; acrasia 32, 34, 36, 38–9, 46–9, 51n.28; in Aquinas 30; bad men 45; choices and volitions 37–40; incontinence 170n.46; influence of 101; initiation of action 35–6; irrationality 49n.9; proairesis 11–12, 85–6; reasons 32–5; restructuring of Plato 8–9; terminology 6; virtue 50n.20; voluntary action 30–2 assent 41 attitudes 22–3 Atwell, John 174–5 Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (Wetzel) 55 Augustine of Hippo: animal will 63; the Bible 58–9; clustering 18–20; coherence between earlier and later thought 63–5; evaluation of 22; foreknowledge and predestination 59–63; God’s will 69–71; human history 71–2; influence of 99, 101; intellect and 53–6; involuntary sin 63–5; original sin 66–9, 71–2; Platonism 56–8; self analysis 65–6; terminology 7 Augustine (Rist) 55 Austin, J.L. 34 autonomy 164–5, 167 Averroes 100

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Averroists 100–1 Avicenna 100 bad men 45 baptism 67–8 basic actions 208–11 On the Basis of Morality (Schopenhauer) 182 beatitudo 104–5, 117n.38 Behaviourism 198 belief: in Aquinas 81–4, 94; in Aristotle 33; in Augustine 20; in Kant 164–9; science and 83–4 Bernard of Clairvaux 100 Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche) 185, 186–8 the Bible: in Augustine 58–9; literal truth of 69–70 blame 105, 147 bodily actions 204–8; historical facts 197–200; instrumental actions 208–11; mental acts and 197; physical will 205–8; temporal paradoxes 209–10 the body 174–6 Boethius of Dacia 61, 100–1 Bonaventure: Augustinianism 99, 102, 116n.25; conscience 105–6; judgements 106–9; liberum arbitrium 106–8; moral rectitude 109–13; ’philosophy’ 103–4, 112 boulêsis (rational desire for the good) 6, 8–10 Bramhall, John 127–9, 144–5, 147–8; imperated acts 148–50 Breviloquium (Bonaventure) 99 ‘budget accounts’ of motivation 2–3 Buridan, J. 39, 40 Cajetan 142–3 categorical obligation 154, 167–8 cause see reasons Chappell, T.D.J. 56, 64 Chappell, Vere 155 character, tenor and 48 children: boulêsis 8; constitution 21; freedom 145; practical reasoning 135; voluntariness 12, 31–2 choice: in Alexander 12–13; in

Aquinas 12–13, 84–8; in Aristotle 11–12, 34–5, 37–40, 45, 85–6, 50n.17, 50n.18; in Augustine 62, 107; in Bonaventure 102–3, 106–13; in Epictetus 12, 15–17, 26n.86; freedom and responsibility 15–16; in Kant 159–69; liberum arbitrium 114n.4; medieval theories 99–101; in Plato 9; practical 86–8; prudence and 84–8, 89–91; random 156; volitions and 37–40; see also voluntarism Christianity 18, 70–1; the Bible 58–9, 69–70; faith 82–3; love 140; terminology 6 Chrysippus 13, 15, 43, 44, 48 Cicero 7, 17, 48 City of God (Augustine) 18, 71–2 Clark, Maudmarie 186, 187, 188–9 clusters, history of 7–8 coercion 133 Collationes in Hexaemeron (Bonaventure) 103–4, 116n.28 collision 45, 48 compatabilists 53 compulsion of the will 55 conceptualization 160–2 condemnations 99, 113n.3 Confessions (Augustine) 18, 65–6 conscience: in Aquinas 88–91; in Bonaventure 105–6; in Kant 168; prudence and 93–4 constitution 21 control 11 ‘cosmological’ doctrine 186, 187 creation 69–71, 74.n31 Crusius, Christian August 154, 156–9, 164 Davidson, Donald 30 De Anima (Aristotle) 33–4, 35–6 decisions 176 deliberate choice 129 Della Rocca, Michael 155 desires: in Aristotle 34, 35; in Crusius 158; in Kant 159–64; opinions and 37; terminology 6; thought and 39–40

Index 215 determination 53 determinism 54–5, 87–8 Didaskalikos 9–10 distress 43 divine illumination 103–4, 116n.29 drives 189–92 dualism 129–32, 147, 198–9, 206–8, 152n.15 Duns Scotus, John 100, 102, 128–9, 116n.23 duress 31–2 Dyad 17–18 elicited acts 131–3, 150 Epictetus 6, 12, 14; freedom and responsibility 15–16 Epicureans 17 Epicurus 9, 17 epithumia 6 eternal law 108 ethelousian 6–7 Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle) 31 evil: in Augustine 56–7, 62, 74n.38; in Kant 164–9; origins of 56; in Plotinus 17–18; unwilling 18 experience 178 faculty dualism 130–2, 147 faith: in Aquinas 81–4, 94; in Augustine 20; science and 83–4 fall 17–18 False Subtlety (Kant) 159 fear 43 first order acts 136 first principles 88–91, 113n.1 fluttering 45, 48 folly 48 foreknowledge 59–63 Francis of Assisi, St 111 Franciscan writers 99 Frankfurt, Harry 36, 55 On Free Choice of the Will (Augustine) 17–18, 53–4, 56, 59–62; later works and 63–9 ‘free power of choice’ 7 ‘free will’ 7, 17 freedom: animals 137–8; in Aquinas 85; attitudes 22–3; in Augustine 17–18, 56, 59–62, 63–9; in Crusius 156–7; in Epictetus 15–16;

existence of 53; in Kant 156; original sin and 66–9; responsibility and 7–10, 15–16; in Suarez 133–5 On the Freedom of the Will (Schopenhauer) 176 functions 7–8 Galen 10, 44–5 Gallagher, David 88 Genesis, literal truth of 69–70 Giles of Rome 101 Gnostics 18 God: beatidtudo 104–5; foreknowledge 59–62; predestination 59–62; trinitarian nature of 18, 70–1; will as intellect 69–71 Godfrey of Fontaine 101 Golden Rule 105 good, rational desire for 6, 8–10 grace: in Aquinas 82–3, 96n.12; in Augustine 55, 56, 63–5; irresistibility of 55 Greek philosophy 103 Gregory of Nyassa 10 Groundwork (Kant) 160–1, 161–2 Habermas, J. 84 happiness: in Augustine 57, 60; in Bonaventure 104; in Kant 161, 163 The Happy Life (Augustine) 57 heart, size of 43 hegemonikon 42 Henry of Ghent 100, 101, 102 history, end of 71–2 Hobbes, Thomas 144–50; Bramhall debate 127–9; faculty dualism 147; materialism 144–5; voluntarism 146, 147–9 honour 6, 9, 10 Hornsby, Jennifer 30 Hume, David 140 humility 111 ignorance: in Aquinas 94; in Aristotle 32, 34, 47, 50n.15; in Plotinus 17 imagination 136, 144

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imperated acts 131–3, 148–50 impressions 41 impulses: in Aristotle 41–2; in the Stoics 13, 14–15, 40–2, 45–6, 51n.21, 51n.24; volitions and 45–6 incompatibilists 53 incontinence 170n.46 individuality 182–5 inferior men 48 inferior reason 108 initiation of action 35–6 inner agency 138–9 inner nature 174, 177–85 innocence, loss of 168 instrumental actions 208–11 intellect: in Aquinas 81–4, 85; in Augustine 53–9, 69–71, 74n.19; in Bonaventure 107–9; God’s will as 69–71; in the Stoics 13, 14; in Suarez 133–4; truth and 81–4 intellectualists 53, 127 ‘intellectus gratiae’ 59–63 Intellectus Gratiae (Lössl) 56 involuntariness 32, 34, 63–5 Irenaeus 18 irrationality: in Aristotle 39, 42–3, 49n.9; in the Stoics 42–6 Irwin, Terrence 30 Janaway, Christopher 5 Jesus Christ 20–2 John Damascene, St 105, 118n.41 John of La Rochelle 99 judgements: appropriateness 13; in Aquinas 84–8; in Aristotle 37; assent to appearance 13; in Bonaventure 106–9; choices and 37; false 43; practical 84–8; in Seneca 13–14; in the Stoics 13–14, 43 Julian of Eclanum 17, 69 Kahn, Charles 9 Kant, Immanuel 159–64; animals 159–61; categorical obligation 154; influences on 155–9; loss of innocence 168; weakness 164–9 Kenny, Anthony 30 Kirwan, Christopher 55, 74n.35; foreknowledge 61–2

language 29–30, 144 law 154, 162 Leibniz, Gottfried 155 ‘libera voluntas’ 7 liberum arbitrium 114n.4, 159 On the Literal Truth of Genesis (Augustine) 69–70 Locke, J, 29 Loening, Richard 34 Lössl, Josef 3–4, 56 love 140–4; in Aquinas 140–1; in Bonaventure 110–11, 112; self-love 45, 168; in Suarez 141–4 Lucretius 7, 17, 22 lust 17, 18 the mad 135 Manicheism 56, 69 Maximus the Confessor 7, 20–2 merit 141 On Merits and Remission (Augustine) 66–7 Metaphysics (Aristotle) 34 middle actions 136 Molina, Luis de 137–8 morality: in Bonaventure 103–4, 106, 109–13; reason and 88–91; in Schopenhauer 182 motivation: budget accounts 2–3; evaluations and 146–7; inner agency 138–9; motive 177; in the Scholastics 127–8; in Schopenhauer 177–8, 184 natural law: in Bonaventure 105, 106, 108–9, 112; in Hume 88; in Maximus 20–2; in Suarez 140–2 natural sciences 103 nature 53 necessity 77n.86; in Augustine 61–2, 68–9; liberty and 100–1 neo-Augustinian writers 101 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 34, 36, 47 Nietzsche, Friedrich: drives 189–92; metaphysics and 187–8; psychological doctrine 188–9; reality 186–7, 191–2; Schopenhauer and 185–90, 192–3;

Index 217 will to power 185–90; ’willing’ 191–2 obligations 154, 158, 167–8 O’Daly, G.J.P. 54–5 oikeiôsis 20–2 Olivi, Peter John 100, 102 opinion 37, 81 Origen 6 original sin: in Augustine 66–9, 71–2; in Bonaventure 109 O’Shaughnessy, Brian 5, 30 paganism 6 Panaetius 15 Parerga and Paralipomena (Schopenhauer) 183 passions: in Kant 165; in Suarez 136–7 Pater, Walter 33 Peccham, John 100 Pelagian controversy 54 perfection: in Crusius 164; in Kant 156; in Wolff 155 perverted will 17–18, 22 pessimism 57 philosophical anthropology 100–1 physical actions see bodily actions Pink, Thomas 4 Plato 3, 8–9 Platonists 9–10 pleasure 6, 33, 43 Plotinus 10, 17–18 Plutarch 45, 48 pneuma 41, 43 Porphyry 6–7, 10 Posidonius 15 practical reasoning: in Bonaventure 108–9; duality of 129, 130–1; first principles 88–91; in Hobbes 127–8; in Kant 161–3, 165; in Suarez 128–44 praxis 128–9 predestination 55, 60–3, 64 presentations 41 Price, Anthony 3 pride 17–18 Prima Secundae (Aquinas) 130 proairesis see choice procreation 67–8

prudence: in Aquinas 84–94, 94–5; character of 91–3; conscience and 93–4; judgement-choice 84–8; in Kant 165–6; practical reasoning 88–91 Pythagoreans 17–18 random choice 156 rational sciences 103 rationality: in Hobbes 144; in Wolff 155 reality 178, 186–7, 191 reasons: in Aquinas 88–91, 130; in Aristotle 32–5, 51n.24; in Augustine 61; causal relations 30, 36, 177–8; cause 177; in Davidson 30; desires and 51n.24; good and 8–10; independence from 20; in Kant 154, 162–4; rational desire and 8–10; in the Stoics 14, 44–5; sufficient reason 157; superior and inferior 108, 119n.56; terminology 6; volitions and 30 rectitude of will 109–13 reflexion principle 133 reincarnation 9 remission of sins 66–7 representations 155–8, 173–5 Republic (Plato) 9, 10 resolutions 176 responsibility 7–10, 15–16, 43–4 Retractions (Augustine) 63 Richardson, John 190 Rist, John 56, 57–8, 74n.21 Russell, Bertrand 78, 83, 97n.15 Ryle, Gilbert 29 salvation 110 scepticism 57, 74n.21 Schneewind, Jerome 4 scholastics 20–2, 127–8 Schopenhauer, Artur 173–85; the body 174–6; causal relations 177–8; individuality 182–5; inner nature 174, 177–85; intelligible character 182–4; motivation 177–8, 180, 184; nature 178–82; Nietzsche and 185–90, 192–3; representations 173–4; volitions 197–8

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Index

science, faith and 83–4 scientific explanation 178–9 second order acts 136, 138–9 self-consciousness 176–7, 179, 184, 199 self-determination 10, 134, 139–40 self-hatred 45 self-love 45, 168 self-movement of the will 107 self-preservation 21–2, 185 Seneca 13–14 Sermones de Sanctis (Bonaventure) 111 Siger of Brabant 100–1, 115n.10 To Simplicianus (Augustine) 61, 63–5 Simmel, Georg 184 sin: in Aquinas 80; in Augustine 63–5, 66–9, 71–2; in Bonaventure 109 Sleigh, Robert Jr. 155 Sorabji, Richard 3 soul: in Aristotle 8–9; kingdom of 99–100, 114n.7; in Plato 9; strata of 39; in Wolff 155 Steel, Carlos 4 stimulus 177 the Stoics: acrasia 47–9; appearances 14–16; impulses 40–2, 51n.21, 51n.24; irrationality 42–6; oikeiosis theory 20–2; terminology 6–7; voluntariness 3, 12–14 Stone, M.W.F. 4 strenght of will 49 strength of will 48 Suarez, Francisco 128–44; animals 135–8; on Aquinas 130; elicited acts 131–3; inner agency 138–9; love 141–4; natural law 140–2; voluntarism 130–5, 150 sufficient reason 157 superior reason 108 swerve 17, 22 synderesis 89, 105, 106, 118n.40 Tempier, Bishop 99 temporal paradoxes 209–10 tenor, character and 48 terminology 6–7 Tertullian 7

thelein 6 thelêma 6 thelêsis 6, 20–2 thing in itself 183 thought 39–40 thumos 6 Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche) 185 time 17, 209–10 On the Trinity (Augustine) 18, 70–1 truth, search for 78–80 ‘tryings’ 30 unwilling acts 18 Usener 17 value 142–3 De Veritate (Thomas) 87 vices 31, 48 virtue: in Aquinas 80, 91–3, 98n.33; in Aristotle 31, 49, 50n.20; in Bonaventure 108, 111; in Kant 165–6; in Platonists 9–10; in the Stoics 49 volitions: bodily actions and 204–8; choices and 37–40, 64; definition of 29; divine 109; dualism 198–9, 206–8; existence of 199; impulses and 45–6; language and 201–2; non-existence of 198–200; physicalized 205–6; primitivized 199–200, 205; remodelled 200–8; support for 197–8; tryings 30, 201–4; unobservability 198–200 voluntarism: in Alexander 12–13; animals 137; in Aquinas 12–13; in Aristotle 12, 30–2, 36; in Augustine 53–4; domination of 101–2; duality of 129, 130–1, 152n.15; elicited acts 131–3; in Epictetus 15–16; ethical 100, 102; in Hobbes 147; intellectualism and 127; motivation-based 132; in the Platonists 9; psychological 99, 102; in Scotus 128–9; in Seneca 13–14; in Suarez 130–5; varieties of 114n.8; ‘voluntarists’ 53 voluntas 13–14

Index 219 Walter of Bruges 100 weakness of will 46–9, 164–9; see also acrasia Wetzel, James 55, 63, 64 Wilkür 159–60 will, defining 1–2 will-power 9, 10, 14–15, 22–3 will to power 185–90 Wille 159–69, 165–6, 182 ‘willing’ 191–2

wise men 17 wishes 176 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 29–30 Wolff, Christian 154–6 The World as Will and Representation (Schopenhauer) 173 world in itself 183 Zeno 43