My name is Fr. Tom Washburn, OFM. This was my undergraduate thesis for my Baccalaureate degree in Philosophy. Blessed John Duns Scotus was a Franciscan philosopher-theologian who we should really re-discover. I hope you enjoy reading this and I welcome any comments.
INTRODUCTION
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In the history of philosophy there is probably no more magnetic a figure than that of the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Aristotle lived as part of an exciting time in the history of thought. He was the third of a generational troika of monumental thinkers inheriting a history from Socrates and Plato. Aristotle, too, passed on that inheritance to countless other philosophers throughout the centuries - the millennia - following his death.
Although lost to the Western world for a very long time, the thoughts of Aristotle thrived among Arab philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes, and during the Medieval period in philosophy, was finally once again discovered in the West as his texts were found, translated and brought back to life following the Christian Crusades. This re-discovery of the great, ancient thinker caused somewhat of a renaissance in philosophy during this period. Two of the era’s greatest thinkers, the Dominican St. Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan St. Bonaventure often found themselves in the midst of debate over the philosophic issues of their day. It is interesting to note this point as Aquinas was squarely on the Aristotelian side of this debate while Bonaventure was still holding the line that followed Plato who had remained the prominent thinker of that day.
St. Thomas Aquinas was the first philosopher-theologian to earnestly take up the task of incorporating the ideas of Aristotle into this Christian framework. He held Aristotle in such esteem that he bestowed upon him the title, The Philosopher. Aquinas was particularly impressed with Aristotle’s ethical treatises and sought to fuse them together into a complete code of Christian moral conduct. Aquinas was not simply engaged in the task of Christianizing Aristotle, however. Aquinas had a very different method than the prior philosopher. He did not seemingly wander through a topic exploring its different aspects and eventually come to a cohesive conclusion. No, rather, Aquinas approached the issues in a much more organized and systematic way.
A little less than a generation away from the Dominican, another Franciscan thinker was on the scene - Blessed John Duns Scotus. Scotus showed that the Franciscan school was not solely locked up in the Platonic camp, but that Franciscans too could begin to take a look at the thought of Aristotle. Scotus too found himself in amazement at the constructs of Aristotle, but seemed to feel a bit freer to re-interpret or simply put aside aspects of Aristotelian thought that he simply did not agree with.
When it comes to the issue of the will, particularly the free will as it is held in Christian belief, there is a commonality between these three great philosophers. There is however, also sharp diversity in their thoughts.
Aristotle never explicitly took up the topic of what we call the will. However, he did spend a great deal of time pondering the many aspects of human action, and in particular, right human action. Aristotle posits a theory of human action that is soundly based on a eudaimonic principle, and one that involves a great deal of interaction between the intellect and action. The role of deliberation is highly exalted in this process and it is in this process of deliberating actions that the human person becomes a singular entity on this planet. Aristotle holds that it is precisely this process that distinguished the human being from all other animals: what we do is up to us.
I hope to show that within Aristotle’s discussion of deliberation and rational choice prohairesis there can be found an implicit concept of the will. Locating this implicit concept is important for our task because it is from this concept that I contend Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus build there more explicit conceptions of the will.
As stated, Aquinas is quick to accept and integrate Aristotle’s eudaimonism into his own moral theory. Aquinas agrees with Aristotle that the actions of the human person are directed towards an ultimate end of happiness. This will be important in understanding what the objects of the will are.
Aquinas also integrates and concurs with Aristotle’s elevation of the intellect and its role in ascertaining what is good and what is an object for action by the will. In fact, it may be that in many ways, Aquinas is simply making explicit what I believe Aristotle has made implicit.
John Duns Scotus is equally impressed with Aristotle’s view of the intellect and deliberation. He also accepts this eudaimonist concept in an introductory way. But, the major shift in thought from Aquinas to Scotus in regards to the will and human action is that Scotus is concerned with what he sees as movements that can be perceived as denying the one element that is essential to the will - namely, freedom. Scotus is concerned that an over-elevation of the intellect, or that an over-emphasis on teleological eudaimonism can potentially lead to a view of necessity in the will in regards to action. Scotus contends that this would go against the basic freedom that belongs to the will.
Clearly based upon the thought of Aristotle, engaged in the task of integrating Aristotelian thought into the moral constructs of their day, then, how is it that Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus took the position of The Philosopher in two very different directions regarding the will? I hope to show in this thesis both that the constructs of the will as put forth by both Aquinas and Scotus are indeed in line with the thought of Aristotle and also that the sharp differences in opinion that each have regarding the will’s freedom can too be seen to be legitimate interpretations of Aristotle’s thought. For this task I plan to look primarily at Books III, IV and VI of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Questions 6-10 of the Prima secundiae of Aquinas’ Summa theologica and portions of Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality by Allan B. Wolter.
Let us begin.
CHAPTER 1:
Aristotle and rational choice
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Philosophers of the Medieval period were engaged in a task of integrating the thought of the ancient Greek philosophers who had made such a great impact on thinking around the world, and especially in all of Christendom. The Medieval period was particularly marked by this task of integration of Aristotle since the texts of The Philosopher had been virtually lost in the West until the time of the Crusades. Notably engaged in this task were Dominican philosopher-theologian St. Thomas Aquinas and then later Franciscan philosopher-theologian Blessed John Duns Scotus.
Both Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus hold the philosophic thought of Aristotle in high regard. Both were strongly influenced by the ethical and practical thought of Aristotle and saw his ideas as quite compatible with the moral/ethical structure of Christianity. Both attempted to merge together the two into an Aristotelian-Christain vision. As part of this task, quite naturally, the issue of the will was prominent in their discussions. In this vein it is worthwhile to explore what The Philosopher had to say about the will. It is important at this point to note that I do not intend to suggest that Aristotle in fact subscribes to a theory of free will as we understand it, nor even as Aquinas or Scotus will postulate, but rather that the conclusions of Aquinas and Scotus can squarely find their basis in the thought of Aristotle. Additionally, while I do not make the claim that Aristotle supports a free will theory, I do believe that there is at the very least, a skeletal version of the will implicitly existant in Aristotle’s opus.
There is probably no one philosopher who had a greater influence on Christain philosophy and moral theology than the Greek, Aristotle. While up until the Medieval period the Church and its philosophers had been greatly influenced by Aristotle’s predecessor, Plato, there was quite a renaissance of thought as the works of The Philosopher had been rediscovered in the East and brought back to the West during the Crusades.
As a backdrop to his discussion of human action it is important to recognize Aristotle’s eudaimonist orientation since this is one of the strong characteristics of Aristotelian work that Aquinas will pick up on in his work. Actions by the human being are directed towards happiness, which is the telos of human action, according to Aristotle in Book 1 of The Nicomachean Ethics. As Anthony Kenny states, “[Aristotle’s] concept of prohairesis (choice) places excessive emphasis on those practical reasonings whose overarching premiss is a theory of the good life.” Aquinas will adopt this “excessive emphasis” on teleological happiness in his construct of the will.
Aristotle focussed his attention greatly on the practical aspects of living. Among other places in his opus, Aristotle takes up the question of action and right action in Book III of his Nicomachean Ethics. We hear the hint of a notion of the will early on in this book. Aristotle states, “So when a man acts, both what is voluntary and what is involuntary should be mentioned. Now in such actions he acts voluntarily, for the [moving] principle of setting the parts of his body in motion is also in him; and if that principle is in him, it is up to him to act or not to act..” (editor’s emphasis) We see, even here, Aristotle put forth a notion that there is an internal cause of motion and that the human being acts voluntarily. Not only does the human being act according to an internal principle and voluntarily, but as Aristotle says, “it is up to him to act or not to act.” Could this internal principle perhaps be the development of a concept of will? Is Aristotle in this passage hinting at what Scotus will develop later as crucial to his belief in the essential freedom of the human being in action?
In his discussion of happiness, Aristotle discusses human action. It is in this discussion that we find his division of the soul into parts. Aristotle divides the soul into the rational (including the scientific and deliberative) and the non-rational (which includes the appetitive and vegitative). The rational part of the soul is critical in Aristotelian thought, particularly in regards to human action. It is in Aristotle’s concept of the reasoning part of the soul, I believe, that we find the closest concept to what will be formalized as the will by later philosophers.
Aristotle sought to define the relationship between mind and action. According to Daniel Westberg in Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action and Prudence in Aquinas, “The challenge for [Aristotle] was to explain human action so as to give a coherent account of the links between mind and action (within a causal framework) and yet allow room for the indeterminate element needed for responsiblity and for praise and blame; and to allow for an account of growth and the development of virtue.” Aristotle will posit that there is this relationship between the mind and action that somehow separates humans from other animals in that there is a free choice involved in action. However, Aristotle does not necessarily speak of this free choice in the same ways that later philosophers will in defining their concepts of the will. While using the word “prohairesis” it might be better to understand what Aristotle means as something closer to what was already quoted in that our actions are up to us. While he does not put forth an explicit explanation of the will as such, it seems that his explication of human action contains an implicit construct of the will, so much so that Aquinas will formulate his rational view of the will and Scotus will formulate his voluntarist view of the will as an outcropping of Aristotle’s thought.
Anthony Kenny, in his book, Will, Freedom and Power says, “The will . . . may be regarded as the capacity for voluntary action irrespective of whether ‘action’ in the relevant sense covers only external behavior or also mental activities.” Kenny purports that in the history of philosophy, this notion of the will stems from Aristotle. (cf. p. 15) Aristotle speaks of actions in terms of hekousia (voluntary) and akousia (involuntary). Kenny states that both action and inaction are part of this voluntariness. Kenny gives the example of a person failing to try and save a drowning child as a voluntary action. “In English it is more natural to use a verb to report the inaction as an action, and speak of what is voluntary as ‘letting the child drown,’” Kenny said. He admits, however, that some addition or further explanation is necessary to reach the concept of the will. According to Kenny, what Aristotle puts forth regarding human action is not in and of itself enough to be considered a concept of the will as such. He states, “Aristotle’s concept of voluntariness, valuable though it is, is not one which can be used without modification to define the capacity which is the will, or to assist in assessing responsiblity.” Greater explanation of human action is required on the part of Aristotle, because although voluntariness is central to free choice or will, it is not a sufficient condition for actions being up to us, since even animals possess a degree of voluntariness in their actions. Hence, the dog chases the bone because the dog desires the bone, not because of any external force causing the dog to do such an action, according to Kenny.
It is the rational agent that posseses such a thing as this ability to act or not act as he wants. Aristotle is concerned with how the human being differs from the other animals in this way. He says, “There remains, then the life of action of a being who has reason. Of that which has reason, (a) one part has reason in the sense that it may obey reason, (b) the other part has it in the sense that is possesses reason or in the sense that it is thinking.” The life of action of the “being who has reason”, the rational agent then must be somehow different from that of other animals. Deliberation is central to the life of action of the rational agent.
Thus we deliberate about things (a) which are possible or occur for the most part, (b) whose outcome is not clear, and (c) in which there is something indeterminate; and we call in advisers on matters of importance when we are not convinced that we are adequately informed to make a good diagnosis, he says.
In Book 3, he states how this telos, this end, relates to action. “As already stated, then, it seems that [the human being] is the [moving] principle of actions; and deliberation is about things to be acted upon by the [human being] who deliberates, and those actions are for the sake of other things,” Aristotle states. So, then, there must be other internal causes of action than desiring, like the dog, if the human being is to be distinct in action from other animals. Kenny says that these internal causes can be found “in the context of Aristotle’s theory, wish (boulesis) and choice (prohairesis).” These two concepts are peculiar to the human being and contribute to the process that leads to action. Deliberation leads to choice for Aristotle. Kenny states, “In Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics (1113a4) we are told that something is chosen if it is decided on by deliberation.” There is, then, this link between mind and action, what Aristotle will term prohairesis, or choice of action. Is it possible then that this choice of action constitutes an action of the will for Aristotle?
Deliberation is quite specific for Aristotle. There are types of intellectual activity that are not deliberation. In Book 3, Aristotle states that for example, mathematical inquiry is not deliberation. Deliberation is related to action since, Aristotle states, we do not deliberate the end, but rather the means. For example, a doctor does not deliberate about whether to make a sick individual healthy, but rather how. “The object of deliberation, then, is not an end but the means to an end; nor is it an existing particular, such as whether this is bread or whether it has been baked as it should, for these are objects of sensation,” Aristotle states. Westberg sums this idea of Aristotle well:
In Aristotle’s general explanation several elements are put between desire and action which involve the human mind and thus differentiate it from the determinacy of ordinary animal action by allowing for choice. Desire posits an end to strive for (and moral virtues are required for right desires); the person then deliberates about the means of attaining it; there is a perception of something being possible to do here and now; then the choice to do it, followed by the action.
Westberg terms this the desire-deliberation-perception-choice-act sequence.
Since Aristotle evidently thinks that the deliberative process is limited, that there are many mental activities which are not part of deliberation, but rather part of other functions (like inquiry for example), scholars like Kenny conclude that “only a small sub-class of free human actions are ‘chosen:’ only those that are chosen as part of a worked-out plan of life.” Westberg wants to disagree with this notion, however, and claims that Aristotle has been somewhat misinterpreted in this degree. That argument falls outside of the scope of this thesis, however.
The deliberative process is linked to human action, though. “We deliberate, then, about things which can be done by us, and these are the things which are left; for [moving] causes are thought to be nature, necessity, luck, and also intellect and every other cause through man,” Aristotle states. Deliberation for Aristotle does not relate to the “everyday” actions of life. For example, we do not deliberate about how to write our name each time. We do not deliberate about things which are relatively the same. This appears to be a developing freeness of choice. We deliberate about and choose these other actions that are not in some way determined. Aristotle states, “Thus we deliberate about things (a) which are possible or occur for the most part, (b) whose outcome is not clear, and (c) in which there is something indeterminate . . .”
That deliberation will also lead to action, as Aristotle states “The object of deliberation is (generically) the same as that of intention; but the object of intention is distinguished from the other objects of deliberation by being judged, after deliberation, to be the one to act on.” As Kenny states, it is precisely this characteristic that is unique to human beings. “It is this capacity to originate action by choice that Aristotle offers as the defining characteristic of human beings,” he states. Within this capacity, I believe, is the implicit will for Aristotle that will be further explicated into an explicit will by Aquinas, Scotus and others later.
In his account of wish and choice (boulesis and prohairesis) we are presented with something that will echo later on in the work of Scotus. It is reminiscent of the dual affectiones which we will further pursue in Chapter 3. Wish, while particular to human beings for Aristotle, does not alone account for the type of activity that would normally be considered an act of will. In Book VI, Aristotle discusses the way in which something is chosen through his process of deliberation:
The origin of conduct - its efficient, not its final, cause - is choice; and the origin of choice is appetition plus means-end reasoning. So without understanding and reasoning on the one hand, and moral character on the other, there is no such thing as choice; for without reasoning and character there is neither welldoing nor its opposite. Reasoning, in itself, moves nothing; only means-end reasoning is concerned with conduct . . . for good conduct is the end in view, and that is the object of the appetition. Therefore choice is either appetitive intelligence or ratiocinative appetite.
This is peculiar to human beings, this ability to decide upon a course of action following deliberation for Aristotle.
CHAPTER 2:
Aquinas on the Will
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St. Thomas Aquinas stood out among philosopher-theologians of his day for many reasons. Notably to the purpose of this thesis, however, is that Aquinas was one of the few in his day to take a serious look at the works of the ancient Greek Aristotle, who had not been widely read up to that point in history because much of his works had been lost in the West. The fact that few were working with Aristotle can also be seen in the fact that St. Bonaventure, another of the great Medieval philosophers of the same period, was deeply rooted in the thought of Plato, as were most thinkers in the Church then. Aquinas, however, broke away from that pack of thinkers and radically embraced the thought of Aristotle, regarding him so highly that he gave him the title, The Philosopher.
Aquinas takes up many of the same subjects as Aristotle and while he repeats much of what The Philosopher states, Aquinas is not engaged in an activity of simple repetition, but rather he seeks often to clarify positions of Aristotle and at the same time adds new ideas to Aristotle’s. Additionally, Aquinas’ method is quite different from that of The Philosopher. Instead of the sort of weaving through an issue that we see with Aristotle, Aquinas approaches his subjects in a much more organized, systematic way.
This embrace of Aristotelian thought would have a crucial impact on the philosophic doctrine of Aquinas as he sought to integrate the thought of Aristotle into his Christian world. Notably, Aquinas embraces Aristotle’s eudaimonism, as well as the primacy that he gives to the intellect. We will see this further in exploring Aquinas theory of the will.
In Aquinas’ account of the will the role of the intellect is central. Aquinas discusses the will in the context of his discussion of human acts in the Prima secundae of the Summa theologiae. In Questions numbered eight through 20, Aquinas treats the questions on the will, beginning with the objects that the will is directed towards, what moves the will, how it is moved, and continuing with the acts of the will including enjoyment, choice, consent, use as well as others.
Calling upon this Aristotelian foundation, Aquinas develops a theory of human action in which the will is primarily directed by the intellect. In a general sense, for Aquinas the will wills what the intellect presents to it as good in most cases.
In the eighth question of the Prima secundae, Aquinas shows that the will is directed towards the good. In this, Aquinas is incorporating Aristotle’s thought that human actions are directed towards good. Aquinas sticks with this eudaimonist approach and put forth the idea that all actions are directed towards good even though some may not appear directed in that way.
The will can will only what is good or more precisely what the agent perceives to be good. In other words, should the will will something that is not really good (e.g. I will to eat chocolate even though I’m allergic to it.), the thing willed at least appears to be good (e.g. I’m focused on the chocolate as delicious and not as allergenic).
Aquinas explains this inclination toward good, “The will is an appetite . . . Now nothing is favorably disposed to something unless it is like or suitable to it. Hence, since everything, insofar as it is a being and a substance, is a good, every inclination is to a good. Therefore the Philosopher says that the good is ‘that to which all desire.’” And further on he states, “For the will to tend to something, it is not required that it be in truth good, but that it be apprehended as good. This is why the Philosopher says that ‘the end is the good or the apparent good.’” So then, anything which is apprehended by the intellect as a good can be an object of the will if the intellect passes it on to the will for action.
An explanation of the formal object of the will is important here. In De Malo Aquinas says,
[I]f we consider the objects of the will and the intellect, we will find that the intellect’s object is the first principle in the genus formal cause, for its object is being and true. But the will’s object is the first principle in the genus final cause, for its object is good, under which are contained all ends, just as all apprehended forms are contained under true.
Jeffrey Hause in Thomas Aquinas on the Will and Moral Responsibility states that in order to know what this power of the soul called the will is, we need also to know what its object is. “Therefore, in order to understand what the will is - to distinguish it from other powers of the soul generally, and specifically from other appetitive powers of the soul - we have to know what it seeks, what its object is,” he states. Aquinas states that powers, like the will are related to certain types of objects. “For any power extends to those things in which its kind of object can be found in any way; for example, sight extends to all things whatsoever whichin any way share color.” As for the object of the will, he states “But the aspect of good, which is the object of the power of the will, is found not only in the end but also in the means.”
We need to distinguish here between the formal object and the material object of the power, the will. Regarding object, Aquinas writes:
. . .because powers are not distinguished on the basis of a material distinction of objects, but only on the basis of the formal character of an object, if some object corresponds to some power on the basis of (the object’s) common character, there will not be a distinction of powers on the basis of the diversity of the particulars contained under that common (character). For instance, if the proper object of the seeing power is color on the basis of the character of color, we do not distinguish several seeing powers on the basis of the difference white and (the difference) black. But if the proper object of a power were white qua white, the power which can see white would be distinguished from the power which can see black.
In this text, Aquinas is explaining the difference between a material and a formal object; between the sameness or universal character of an object, and its individual qualities. Hause writes, “A power’s material objects are the particular items that can move that power . . . A power’s formal object is what is common to all its material objects and makes them its material objects.” Hause points out that in the case of sight, the material object would be white, black, green, etc., but the power’s formal object is color. “One never sees color qua color, but it’s precisely in virtue of being colors, of having that character (ratio) of color, that black, white, green, etc. are visible,” he states.
This distinction between the formal and material object is crucial to Aquinas theory of human action because the will is understood as pursuing what is presented as good in the formal sense. Again, Hause states, “All material objects of the will have the common feature which makes them material objects: the intellect presents them to the will as good. The will has as its formal object not any particular good, not even any particular kind of good, but good qua good.” Aquinas states:
It is clear from what I have said that the object of the intellective appetite, which is called the will, is good according to the general character of good . . . Consequently, in the intellective part (of the soul), the appetite is not divided according to the distinction among some particular goods, the way the sensitive appetite is divided, which does not concern good in its common character, but a particular good.
This brings us to the question of how the will receives an object which is good. It is not the will that ascertains the goodness of an object. The will must work together with the intellect in this regard. The will works in cooperation with the intellect in selecting the proper goods to be willed. Hause states, “. . . it is a necessary condition of the will’s desiring any object that the intellect judge that object to be good.” [A sidebar to this point is that Aquinas believes that pure malice is impossible since we cannot will evil totally and purely for the sake of evil. For any evil to be willed it must at least appear in some way to be good or the will will not will it.] Hause states, “Human beings and angels pursue the ends they pursue because their intellects judge them to be good, to be objects of which ‘good’ is predicable. It’s because they are good - or, more precisely, because they are judged good by intellect - that they are objects of the will.”
Once establishing the object of the will, we come to the question of whether the will wills an end or only the means to an end. For Aquinas, all human beings pursue really on one ultimate end, that of happiness (again, note Aristotle’s eudaimonism creeping in). As the ultimate end of human action, all other ends contribute to this ultimate end. According to Hause, “Aquinas argues at 1.6 that whatever a human being seeks, it seeks for the sake of the ultimate end.”
The will wills an end, but wills a means only insofar as it leads to the desired end. Aquinas here is disagreeing with his teacher Albert the Great, who thought that the rational part of the soul was divided into three parts: intellect, will and liberum arbitrium, or free choice. According to this theory, the will would will the end as presented by the intellect, but the liberum arbitrium would choose the means to attaining that end. Albert, building upon Augustine who said that we all have free choice, or the ability to select ends, said that this ability to select must be located in a power of selection, namely the liberum arbitrium. He thought that since the end was formally distinct from the means, that the faculties related to these two objects must also be different. Hence he distinguished the will from liberum arbitrium. For example, when you are sick, your desired end is health and to attain that health you take medicine as a means. Albert would say that the will desires the end, health, while the liberum arbitrium desires to take medicine. The liberum arbitrium makes the choice to take the medicine. But, Daniel Westberg in Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas states “It is in a formal way that choice is connected properly to appetite: since choosing has to do with selecting means to an end, and means are considered under the aspect of good, and good is the object of the rational appetite (the will), the choice is properly an act of the appetitive power.”
Aquinas disagrees with his master and says instead that both functions belong to the will. In fact, according Westberg, “. . . Thomas regarded liberum arbitrium and electio, to be the equivalent to Aristotle’s prohairesis, understood in both a general and a particular sense.” Aquinas’ view is a complex one, however. He wants to stress the interdependence of the will and the intellect, but not to do so in such an exclusive way as to assert that the will wills of necessity since this would alienate a concept of free choice. Westberg states, “The will is not moved without reasoning preceding it; but then a movement of the will (desire) is required before we take counsel.” While I do not expect to treat this issue in full here, I bring up the issue inasmuch as it pertains to the topic at hand (i.e. Aquinas’ faithfulness to Aristotle’s theory of human action) as well as we will see in the next chapter the ways in which John Duns Scotus resolved the very same issues of managing the balance between an interdependent intellect and will that still maintains an essential freedom of the will.
Aquinas says that the goodness of the means comes from the goodness of the ends. For example, taking medicine is good only inasmuch as it brings you health. There are not, in fact, two distinct formal objects and so there are not these two faculties but rather only one, the will. It may be helpful here to remember the distinction between formal and material objects that we have already discussed.
Thomas makes the proposition that it is God alone that moves the will as an exterior principle. Aquinas is referring to Aristotelian thought of the four causes (material, final, formal and efficient). He doesn’t consider the material cause because the will is not moved through material causes. The good in general Aquinas concludes as the final cause. The formal cause is simply whatever gives the act of willing its particular characteristics (the intellect which presents the object to the will). And in this final article of the question, Aquinas posits God as the efficient cause of the movement of the will. He says, “Now although something can move a natural thing which is not the cause of the nature of the thing, still it cannot cause a natural movement in it except as it is in some way the cause of the nature.” As an example, Aquinas points out that a person can push a stone uphill and be the cause of that movement. But, it is not the natural movement of the stone to move uphill; its natural movement is to seek the center of the earth. “Its natural movement is caused only by that which causes the nature,” he states. The will can be moved to act by other things. It can be moved to take medicine by seeking an end of health, which has previously been determined to be good by the intellect. But, the will gets its natural disposition or inclination towards seeking the good (its nature) only from God. Aquinas gives two reasons for this assertion. “First, the will is a power of the rational soul, which is caused by God alone through creation . . . Second, the will is ordered to the universal good. Hence nothing else can be the cause of the will except God Himself, who is the universal good,” he states. So ultimately, the movement of the will is attributed to God.
In Question 9, Aquinas takes up the issue of the intellect’s involvement in the function of the will. This issue is particularly important because what Thomas has to say about the role of the intellect differs significantly from what Duns Scotus wants to say about the will. Aquinas states that the intellect moves the will. The will, as we have said, is not independent of the intellect. The intellect presents the will with a goal and the will pursues it. The intellect moves the will which in turn is moved - a teleological self-mover. The will needs to be moved since “whatever is potential needs to be brought to act by what is actual, and to do this is to move.” But it is also moved and mover. The will will move something else to act. As Aquinas says, “Thus an art which is concerned with an end directs an art which is concerned with the means, ‘as the art of navigation directs the art of shipbuilding.’” Aquinas is pointing out that actions can be related in a multitude of ways. For example, the art of shipbuilding cannot be looked at only on its own, but also in relation to its higher end, that of navigation. One end can be the means for yet another end as the end of shipbuilding is a means to the end of navigation. So, too with the will and human action.
Once the intellect determines some good which should be followed, it presents that good to the will and the will wills it. “Hence the intellect moves the will in this way, as presenting its object to it,” Aquinas states. He qualifies this claim in his Reply to objection 2 by saying that he is speaking of the practical intellect and not the speculative as a mover.
Aquinas will also state in the remaining articles of this question that the will is moved by the sensitive appetite, by itself, and by an exterior principle which can be only God, but that it is not moved by a heavenly body.
Regarding sense appetite, he says, “Something seems fitting to a man when experiencing a certain passion which would not seem so with the passion absent; for example, something seems good to a man when angry which does not seem so when he is calm. In this way, on the part of the object, the sense appetite moves the will.” The senses will apprehend something as a good, and as I previously stated, the will wills what is presented to it as a good.
Aquinas also wants to put forth that the will can move itself since it has dominion over its own acts. “[T]he will, through willing the end, moves itself to will the means of the end,” he states. But he does clarify this to say that the will is not the mover and the moved with respect to the same act. “Insofar as [the will] actually wills the end, it brings itself from potency to act with respect to the means, so as to will them actually,” he says. The end still must be presented to the will by the intellect, however. Again, he states, “[The will] is moved by the intellect with regard to its object, but is moved by itself as to the exercise of its act in respect to the end.” The will, then is not totally responsible for moving itself, but in respect to the means it is the cause of motion.
The will also can be moved by an exterior principle. Aquinas states, “An object of the will can be some external thing presented to the senses.” The will is moved by previous deliberations. For example, I will health, but Aquinas says, I did not always will to have health so something must have moved me to will it at some point. “Now this cannot go on endlessly. Hence it is necessary to hold that it is due to the impulse of some external mover that the will is roused to its first movement, as Aristotle concludes,” he states. After noting that external principles do move the will, Aquinas further states in the next article that the heavenly bodies do not move the will, although he does admit that they can have an influence upon the will.
The question then arises that if the will’s inclination toward the good came from God, then how can it be said that the will is free? It would appear then, that God is responsible for an individual’s choices. Aquinas will answer that no, God is not responsible for a person’s choices. God gives the inclination, but through deliberation and use of the intellect, the individual determines what the material object of the will will be. God doesn’t make those individual choices for a person. You can obviously choose the wrong thing, under the appearance of what is a good. This is where free choice resides, in the interaction between the will and the intellect. It is precisely in a human person’s ability to deliberate that free choice lies.
In understanding this free choice, we must also look at some other aspects of the will’s activity. We have the ability to not even think of an action and hence the ability to not will an action. “In the first way, no object moves the will necessarily, for no matter what the object may be, it is in man’s power not to think of it, and hence not actually to will it,” Aquinas states. But, he also states that there are some things that the will wills of necessity. Aquinas uses the example of sight. If an object is colored and it is offered to sight, by necessity sight sees that object. However, if an object only had color in some respects and not in other and was presented to sight, sight could see some part of it and not see another. The power of sight would not see the object necessarily.
He says the same is true with the will where its object is the good. This thought seems somewhat in line with the Christian view of the Beatific Vision - the notion that once the human being beholds the splendor of God, the human being would not be able to choose against it. Aquinas is saying the same thing with the will, that should the will be presented with an object which is in every way good, the will would of necessity act on it. He says, “Hence if the will be offered an object that is good universally and from every point of view, the will tends to it necessarily, if it wills anything at all, for it cannot will the opposite. But if the will be offered an object which is not good from every point of view, the will will not necessarily tend to it.” One would have to imagine, though, that these types of objects, which it cannot be denied are good in every respect, are at best rare. So free choice is not without its limitations. An individual could not choose against an object that is recognized as good in every respect. This object, Aquinas says is happiness. “Now because the lack of any good whatsoever has the aspect of a non-good, consequently only that good which is perfect and lacking in nothing is such a good that the will cannot not will it, and such a good is happiness,” he states. Any other good, one may not appear good from “every point of view” can be refused or accepted since it is possible that it appear or not appear to be a good to the intellect and hence the will.
The issue of the will’s freedom is important to all three of the philosophers that are being treated in this thesis. Aquinas does hold, as does Aristotle and John Duns Scotus, that the will is free. (Aristotle, as I have stated, does not quite have an explicit view of the will, but his notion of choice prohairesis includes this aspect of freedom inasmuch as what we do is up to us.) But how Thomas understands that freedom is somewhat different from Aristotle and significantly different from Scotus. Aquinas finds the basic freedom of the human being the ability to weigh courses of action, the pros and the cons, and determine which is the best course. The human being can make plans and adopt them. In this it is the intellect which makes the plans for action and the will that adopts them. Aquinas said that the human being is free because the interaction of the intellect and the will open us up to possibilities and alternatives. For Aquinas, the human being is “reason-responsive,” responsive to the reasons and considerations of the intellect. Scotus will expand on this idea a bit. Let us now turn to him.
CHAPTER 3:
Blessed John Duns Scotus: The essential freedom of the will _____________________________________________
By the time we reach Franciscan philosopher Blessed John Duns Scotus in history we begin to see a significant shift regarding the will from the thought of Aristotle. Where Aquinas did not clearly try to change what Aristotle had to say and instead rather refined Aristotelian thought to bring it more in line with the tenets of Christianity, Scotus makes some strong movements in his thought on the will particularly in regard to his views on the will as free. This has led the debate between Aquinas and Scotus to be polarized into rationalist versus voluntarist. While some scholars argue that this is an oversimplification of the differences between these two Medieval thinkers this stratification does provide a helpful frame in which to discuss the two. For the two philosophers already treated in this thesis, Aristotle and Aquinas, there is an exaltation of sorts of the intellect. While Scotus, too, exalts the intellect he also wants to place the will as even higher than the intellect.
Scotus’ endeavor, though, is still in line with this Medeival attempt to Christianize the thought of The Philosopher. “John Duns Scotus belongs to the second generation of philosopher-theologians who worked to integrate Aristotelian insights with Christian revelation (sacra doctrina),” according to Mary Elizabeth Ingham, CSJ in The History of Franciscan Theology. Ingham states that this was a major focus of Scotus, as had been for Aquinas before him. She states, “Scotus succeeded in effectively rethinking the relationship between philosophy and theology in light of a deeper understanding of Aristotle as well as of a concern to safeguard key elements of Christian revelation: the possibility for free choice in the will, the contingency of creation, and the value of theology as a scientific discipline.” It is perhaps in this light that we see Scotus’ semi-demotion of the intellect in favor of the will. Ingham states that Scotus naturally had a strong understanding of Aristotle as well as Arab philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes. “Had Scotus lived beyond his 42nd year, he surely would have produced the sort of synthesis for which Thomas Aquinas is famous,” she says. It is precisely in the will that Scotus’ vision begins to differ from Aristotle as a result of his integration of Christian values into the debate. The difference in vision comes because of “an Aristotelian vision of reality in which necessity dominates, and its Christian counterpart where freedom is present.” We will see later, however, that scholar John Boler does not fully accept that the Scotistic differences lie solely in the addition of his Christian beliefs to the debate.
Scotus in his construct of the will is quite similar to Aquinas, and therefore to Aristotle. His major differences lie in his concept of the will as free, and his contribution of the dual affectiones of the will (although these too are Anselmian in their roots). That is not to make light of these differences, for, as we shall see that they are quite significant in their consequences.
Mary E. Ingham has stated that it can be a difficult task to endeavor into the thought of John Duns Scotus. She describes the work of the Subtle Doctor in this way: “Beyond textual and critical problems of spurious manuscripts and contaminated passages, Scotist thought is not expressed clearly, nor does one find the stylistic clarity of a Thomas Aquinas.” Scotus is one of a long line of other philosophers who also took up the question of human action and the will - a tradition carried from Plato and Aristotle down through Thomas Aquinas and Scotus; and his Franciscan predecessor St. Bonaventure. Also of influence on the thought of Scotus was the infamous Condemnation of 1277 (at least according to Ingham).
Much of what Duns Scotus wants to say about the will is similar to Aquinas’ position regarding this rational function. But, he differs significantly in several ways. Probably most significant is Duns Scotus view on how the will and the intellect relate and the role that free choice plays. Scotist thought shows a primacy of the will over the intellect as well as an essential freedom in the will which is remarkably different from anything that we have seen in Aquinas or Aristotle. In general terms, Aquinas is considered to hold an intellectualist view while Scotus holds a voluntarist view in regards the will.
Scotus’ theory of synchronic contingency, as Stephen D. Dumont calls it, has the will with the capacity to will something’s opposite at the very same moment that it is performing an action. In other words, a person may retain the capacity to stand at the very same time that he is sitting, for example. This is central to Scotus’ radical freedom in the will. This theory purports that there is never a moment when the will does not still possess this capacity to choose between two contraries. This differs from Aquinas’ view (and Aristotle) that a human being can will an opposite, but a moment later, not at the very same time. For Aquinas, the will loses that capacity during the moment it acts in one way, hence, a standing man is not sitting since he cannot have the properties of sitting and standing at the same time in the same place. And, of course, while Scotus would not say that an individual cannot stand and sit at the same time, he would claim that an individual retains the capacity to will to sit while at the very moment standing. For Scotus, this freedom to incline towards opposite objects is part of the perfection of the will. “Freedom for opposite objects, however, not only does not imply any imperfection, but is required for the will’s perfection, for a power is perfect only if it can tend to all objects over which it by nature has scope,” according to Stephen D. Dumont. So for Scotus, freedom (libertas) is a perfection. Scotus also believes that it is in the will that the human being is most like God as this is the most perfect part of the human being.
Ingham in The History of Franciscan Theology states that the aspect of freedom is central to understanding Scotus. “[Scotus] considers the basis for free choice in the two affections internal to the will. The centrality of freedom is a fundamental insight for Scotus, who sought to articulate a coherent doctrine of willing in the decades following the Condemnation of 1277,” she says.
J.R. Cresswell finds that Scotus’ freedom of the will consists of three points:
First, the will is free in regard to contrary acts; it can will or refrain from willing the same objective. Second, the will is free in regard to contrary objects; it can tend towards opposite objects. Third, the will is free in regard to contrary effects; it can choose among opposite objectives, and to be able to choose thus is to be able to produce opposite effects.
Scotus likewise believes that the only thing that can move the will is the will. Patrick Lee quotes Scotus from Opus Oxoniense (Bk. II, d.25), “Nothing but the will is the total cause of the act of willing in the will.” (Lee claims that Scotus would later abandon this position in favor of a view that the will is moved by itself and the object in concurrence.) Essentially, Scotus believes that the object alone cannot move the will since this would remove free choice from the act. “Taking the object . . . the position must be rejected essentially because it would lead to a denial of free choice and of moral responsibility,” Lee states.
Recall that Aquinas’ view is that the intellect through a process of deliberation presents an object as good to the will and the will then acts upon it. For Aquinas, the intellect is a rational faculty along with the will. Duns Scotus too, recognizes a relationship between the intellect and the will, but it is a relationship where the will maintains primacy, perhaps control over the intellect which at best influences the will. The will can direct the intellect to certain objects and even select something other than what the intellect puts forth as the correct choice. There is a level of dependency (I use that word cautiously) in that the will cannot independently choose something that has not been the object of the intellect.
According to Lee, “Because the will is free, the intellectually proposed object is not sufficient to determine the will to act toward it. A known object actually influences an act of will (i.e. specifies it) only if the will freely acts (inclines) toward it.” Equally notable is that for Scotus, the will alone is a rational faculty - quite different from Aquinas’ view. For Aquinas, whatever the intellect presents to the will as good will be acted upon unless somehow prevented from doing so. Owing to preservation of the notion of free choice, our Subtle Doctor wants to say that such a position is false and that the will in its freedom does not have to act necessarily on a object of will as presented to it by the intellect. This quality of freedom and rationality is central to Scotus’ view and significantly different from the view of Aquinas. Scotus says:
In short, there simply is no appropriate example whatsoever that could be given, because the will is an active principle distinct from the whole class of active principles which are not will, by reason of the opposite way in which it acts. It seems stupid, then, to apply general propositions about active principles to the will, since there are no instances of the way it behaves in anything other than will. For the will alone is not this other sort of thing. Hence one should not deny that it is the sort of thing it is, just because other things are not like it.
This is equally interesting in the fact that Aquinas is typically impressed by patterns that follow nature and can also be found in humans. Scotus is not impressed by such data. “For Duns Scotus, the will has no example or analogue in the rest of nature. He takes it to be an elementary, simple self-activity, not derivable from anything else, and distinct from every sort of activity that is not the will,” according to Cresswell.
For Aquinas, the human being is free because they can weigh courses of action, the pros and the cons, and determine which is the best course. The human being can make plans and adopt them. In this it is the intellect which makes the plans for action and the will that adopts them. Aquinas said that the human being is free because the interaction of the intellect and the will open us up to possibilities and alternatives. For Aquinas, the human being is “reason-responsive,” responsive to the reasons and considerations of the intellect. Duns Scotus has a problem with this notion because if the will is necessarily moved by the intellect and freedom requires determination by reason, how free is that? “Scotus presents the will as the sole rational faculty, unlike the intellect in that it is capable of self-determination and self-movement. The will is an active principle ‘distinct from all other active principles’ and cannot be examined from any analogies found within nature,” Ingham says.
Aquinas was on the side of intellectualism (the will as dependent on the intellect) as opposed to voluntarism (the will as seen as completely independent of the intellect). Again, Ingham says, “The will is simply what it is: a free, rational cause which controls its own act. The will can will (velle) or nil (nolle), but in addition it can suspend all judgment and choose not to choose (non velle).”
Whereas Aquinas admits to the fact that there are things outside of the will that move the will, Scotus wants to say that nothing outside of the will causes it to do what it does. The will moves itself. As opposed to a rational determinism, Scotus wants to charge that the will is a non-determinate rational capacity. Scotus states that not only does the will not act of necessity when presented with something good, but can even choose to not act. “However, this concern with opposite actions or action should be understood to include the negation of action (i.e. the ability deliberately not to act when all the conditions for acting are present),” Scotus states in Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality edited by Allen B. Wolter, OFM.
To maintain the total freedom of the will, Scotus will say that the will still maintains its capacity to act in one way even when it has determined to act in a contrary way. The will is so free for Scotus, that not even commitment to one action removes the will’s freedom to retain the capacity to act in another way. With the example of the horse in the field which can either stay there or jump over the fence, for Scotus the horse retains the capacity to stand still even though it is already determined to jump the fence. (This of course is merely an example, a horse does not have a will.) For Aquinas, the horse no longer retains that capacity. It will again have the choice once it is done jumping, but not during. Scotus says:
For either (1) the potency of itself is determined to act, so that so far as itself is concerned, it cannot fail to act when not impeded from without, or (2) it is not of itself so determined but can perform either this act or its opposite, or can either act or not act at all. A potency of the first sort is commonly called ‘nature’ whereas one of the second sort is called “will.”
And Cresswell states:
A will is thus potentially able to will the contrary of that which it wills; it is capable of causing the contrary of what it causes at the moment in which it actually wills. Certainly it cannot will or cause contraries simultaneously; but, at the very moment that it wills or causes one thing, it could equally well will the contrary. A decision of the will never takes away its potentiality to act in the opposite way.”
Cresswell states that this ability of the will for Scotus is central to his account of the will’s freedom. For Scotus, the will is a higher power than the intellect and has a high degree of independence from the intellect. As stated earlier, the will is the only rational power in Scotus’ view. This is a voluntarist view of Scotus’. “Scotus’s defense of the will as rational and free clarifies the traditional Franciscan position on the will as superior to the intellect and lays the metaphysical basis for the distinctive quality of the will which makes such superiority possible,” according to Ingham.
For Scotus, the will inclines and commands, while the intellect shows and directs. He says, “From this standpoint, the intellect falls under the heading of ‘nature,’ for it is of itself determined to understanding and does not have it in its power to both understand and not understand . . . it does not have the power to both assent and dissent.” This is a distinction between the intellect and the will for Scotus. The will does retain the power to will something and its opposite at the same time. “The will, however, has the ability to elicit an act proper to itself in opposite ways,” he says.
The will further has a level of control over the intellect by being able to control what the intellect thinks. This is not a totally controlling feature of the will. The will does not have the capacity to initiate thoughts from scratch. Rather, the will has the ability to direct the intellect to this object or that. As an example, think of someone watching television. They have the ability to select any station they want and watch that, but they do not have the ability to select a station that is not available. Much in the same way the will can direct the intellect to pursue a thought that is present already as opposed to another. The mind has many thoughts going on in a given instant, these thoughts will be present to the will and the will can choose to move to that thought. For example, the intellect may be concentrating on writing a paper (let’s say a thesis, hypothetically), but also may be thinking about a piece of chocolate cake in the kitchen. The will can direct the intellect away from the thought about writing the paper, and to the thought of the cake. This is not without limits, though. If a thought is completely focused, the will cannot cause the intellect to stray from it. Scotus calls these focused thoughts “complete, distinct and actual.” The will also cannot introduce entirely new thoughts. The will is also limited in that it is not necessarily required for the intellect’s action, according to Scotus.
This view of the will is an important distinction from Aquinas as well as it is related to Aquinas’ eudaimnonist tendencies. The will necessarily seeks the good for Aquinas and hence, is inclined towards happiness. Not so for Scotus. Aquinas’ eudaimonism taken to its extreme requires that the will will happiness all the time, in every action and in every way.
Scotus states that a true act of the will, the free appetite, is more than an act of inclination. Scotus believes that in most cases the will does seek happiness, but not necessarily. “The will contingently wills the end and happiness both in general and in particular, although in most cases it seeks happiness in general, and also in particular when the intellect has no prior doubt that happiness consists in this particular thing,” he states.
While the will cannot will misery it also cannot hate happiness. Scotus says that the will cannot move in these directions because it is not of the nature of the will to will misery or hate happiness. The will in most cases when presented with happiness will choose an act of volition, according to Scotus. This however, is not of necessity, because the will can also choose another route: not acting at all. “Hence, when it is shown happiness, it can refrain from acting at all. In regard to any object, then, the will is able to not will or nill it, and can suspend itself from eliciting any act in particular with regard to this or that,” Scotus states.
Whereas the will does have an inclination towards happiness as its supreme perfection, it does not of necessity act in that way. The will does act because of happiness in a certain sense, but it can also choose to not act at all. Scotus states, “I say that it is not necessary that the will seek whatever it seeks because of its ultimate end as a source of happiness. For one could fail to seek something because of happiness...” as in the case Scotus shows of fornication where it is seeking something opposed to happiness.
This choice of action or non-action is directly related to his discussion of natural will and volition and their active and passive powers. Dumont states that the ability of the will to be inclined towards opposites is a function of the will as a passive power. “This power for opposites is evident, says Scotus, in all things that change, since opposed states can exist in them successively . . . Scotus regards this power for opposites as a function of the will as passive power, that is, as a subject that can over time successively receive opposed acts,” Dumont states. The so-called natural appetite is the passive mode, while what Scotus terms the free appetite is active. Scotus says:
Hence the natural will does not tend, but is the tendency itself by which the will as an absolute or nonrelative entity tends, and this it does passively, being a tendency to receive something. But there is another tendency in this same power inasmuch as it tends freely and actively to elicit an act.
According to its natural inclination to seek its own perfection, the natural appetite seeks happiness necessarily. However, as having the active choice to act or not to act the free appetite can act in desire of happiness or it can choose to not act at all. “Thus there is a twofold tendency in the one power, one active, the other passive,” Scotus states.
Scotus also makes the distinction of the will into the two inclinations of the will following upon Anselm. There is the affectio iustitiae (affection or inclination to justice) and the affectio commodi (inclination for advantage). Both are types of goods and different types of goods, as opposed to Aquinas’ view that the will has one inclination of seeking the good in general. Aquinas recognizes different types of good, but they are all subject of the will’s one inclination. Scotus posits them under these two different inclinations. Scotus describes the two inclinations as follows:
According to Anselm, two basic inclinations may be assigned to the will, namely the affectio iustitiae and the affectio commodi. He treats of these extensively in The Fall of the Devil, ch. 14, and The Harmony of God’s Foreknowledge, Grace and Predestination, ch. 19. The affectio iustitiae is nobler than the affectio commodi, understanding by “justice: not only acquired or infused justice, but also innate justice, which is the will’s inborn liberty (libertas ingenita) by reason of which it is able to will some good not oriented to itself. In accord with the affectio commodi however, nothing can be willed save with reference to (the willer). And this could be had where only an intellectual appetite with no liberty followed upon intellectual cognition, as sense appetite follows sense cognition.
In these two inclinations, Scotus is able to bridge the gap between Aquinas who wants to put forth the will as always seeking the good and the type of total, complete, perfect freedom that he wants to ascribe to the will. John Boler states, “Every agent, as Scotus and his Aristotelian contemporaries held, so acts as to realize . . . the potential of its nature. An intellectual agent, therefore, tends to, or has an appetite for the realization of its intellectual nature; and Scotus, as Anselm before him, labels the fulfillment of that potential ‘happiness.’” The inclination for advantage, affectio commodi, inclines me to will what is beneficial to me, while the inclination to the just, affectio iustitiae, is a more noble inclination. It is more giving, less selfish, more sharing. Here Scotus differs again from the view of Aquinas. Aquinas would agree that we will things that are beneficial to us, but only in that they relate to our ultimate happiness. Scotus says no, we can will something simply because it is beneficial to us and for no other reason. Also we can be purely self-less in Scotus’ view. An act can be totally self-less in nature and giving, not applying at all to our ultimate happiness (e.g. martyrdom). It is in this aspect of the will that we find this ultimate freedom for Scotus. “Affectio iustitiae, however, although it is an essential feature of the will, is not described as a natural and/or necessary inclination; indeed, it represents the ‘will as free,’” according to Boler. Boler also says that in order to elicit an act, the will needs more than its natural appetite for the perfection of its nature since this is only an inclination or a tending towards its proper perfection. He quotes Scotus in Ordinatio III, where he states, “But this signifies only an inclination of a power to tend towards its proper perfection, not to act as such . . . But there is another tendency in the same power (viz., the will) as free, and it actively tends to the eliciting of acts.” It seems then, for Scotus that Aquinas’ view of the will as rationally ordered towards good lacks the essential freedom necessary in the will since the will in this view does not possess the ability for true freedom of choice.
Another significant aspect of Scotus’ construction of the will is his view that the will alone is a rational faculty. The will holds this singular position as a rational faculty for Scotus precisely because its freedom includes freedom from the course of nature. “For within the realm of finite agency, the will is not determined to act by any nature including its own. The will, therefore, and only the will for Scotus, is a ‘rational power’: roughly, a power that can determine itself with respect to opposites,” according to Boler. The will’s superabundant sufficiency makes it capable of this free agency. In opposition to Aquinas’ view of the rational will, one that acts according to the good presented it by the intellect, Scotus posits that the will is not caused to act because of anything outside of itself. Boler states, “No finite agency or natural conditions operating upon the will, in particular nothing internal to the rational agent (e.g., the passions, sensations or even what is presented to the will by the intellect), determines a free will to move itself to will or refrain from willing.”
With this construction of the will’s freedom, Scotus is really breaking away from Aquinas and his more traditional Aristotelian scheme of the will. Boler states, “Scotus is not saying just that the rational will has a higher and lower appetite; he is saying that the normal (Aristotelian) scheme, in terms of appetite and proper object, for explaining how an agent comes to move itself is not appropriate for will.” The will for Scotus then does not maintain the same teleological focus on happiness that it does for Aristotle and then Aquinas. While the affectio commodi does have a natural inclination or tendency towards happiness (here Scotus is in line with our other two philosophers), it does not have a necessity to act in those ways and in fact what we find as necessary and natural in this affectio does not also include a principle of action.
It is in this way, too, that not only does Scotus continue to break away from typical Aristotelian eudaimonism, but also away from Aquinas. Where a positive slant is placed on items by Aquinas that mimic things in the natural world, Scotus wants to point out that in the will acting freely, it is unlike anything in the natural world. Boler states, “The point I take Scotus to be making is that the will’s bringing itself to act cannot be accounted for on the model of natural appetite and its proper object. For while affectio iustitiae has its proper object, its mode of operation is not that of a natural appetite.” He states that the will, as rational, acts radically different from any type of natural appetite. Again, Scotus is breaking away from Aristotelian eudaimonism, something which Aquinas embraces. “It is against a background resulting from this shift that Scotus develops the contrast of iustitia and commodum that is central to his moral analysis,” Boler states. With his view of affectio commodi Scotus is much in line with Aristotle, but it is when this central concept is further expanded into the two affectiones that the break away becomes more poignant.
Boler states several reasons why Scotus moves away from The Philosopher. The first he raises is that perhaps it is Scotus’ Christian beliefs that alter what he wants to say about the will and its relation to the Divine. This argument is at first limiting since many philosopher/theologians before Scotus (most notably Aquinas) were able to maintain the Aristotelian eudaimonist scheme while incorporating their Christian beliefs. Boler ultimately rejects this view also since Scotus’ view relates really to any moral action. “If eudaimonist or self-realization schemes are limited by their structure to the analysis of an agent’s ‘natural’ potential, it follows that they operate only within the range of affectio commodi and so simply fail to capture what is essential about morality as such and not just Christian morality,” he states.
However, I am not so sure that Scotus has gone as far away from Aristotle as many scholars believe. Surely, he has put great distance between Aristotelian/Aquinian eudaimonism and his own views (although not totally removing any eudaimonist tendencies, hence, the eudaimonism of the affectio commodi), but this separation of the two affectiones seems to me to be a further development of Aristotle’s view on deliberation, which was discussed a bit earlier. Recall that Aristotle was very discerning about what was actually considered to come under the context of actual deliberation, in fact, very few things fall under that category. In fact, much of what is sought for advantage (commodi) is not done so through a deliberative process. As Kenny stated, “Only a small sub-class of free human actions are ‘chosen:’ only those that are chosen as part of a worked-out plan of life.” Aristotle placed most human actions within the realm of inquiry and other types of mental or instinctive processes. There are very few human actions for Aristotle which are actually the result of deliberation. I am not trying to suggest that the Aristotelian notion is a direct carry over into what Scotus will say, but rather that we can at least see the foundation of the Scotist development. It seems at least plausible that Scotus view of the two affectiones is rooted in this Aristotelian notion of deliberation as being very specific. Much of what Scotus envisions in his construct of the will is the same as Aquinas, which again, is a carry over from Aristotle’s eudaimonistic vision of human action. But, it is a mitigated eudaimonism since Scotus wanted to avoid the perception that too strong a focus on the teleological good would remove choice from action.
Boler points out that Scotus accepts much of Aristotle’s ethical schema, and that it does not appear to be the intent of Scotus to over turn The Philosopher. He says, “There is much about Aristotle’s writings on ethics that Scotus is willing to adopt, notably from the account of virtue. Moreover, so far as I know, Scotus never makes a direct attack on Aristotle’s ethical scheme.” In accord with his Subtle nomenclature, any criticism that Scotus offers of Aristotle is implicit rather than explicit. Boler claims that what leads Scotus to such a different conclusion than Aquinas in formulating a vision of the will is his insistence on the singularity of the will. The will remains something more than a higher version of the natural intellect. “What Scotus holds . . . is a much more subtle criticism: i.e., that it is only the (mistaken) assumption that a rational agent is simply a higher form of natural agent that makes a self-realization scheme seen plausible in the first place,” Boler states. So Scotus maintains much of the Aristotelian ethical scheme but at the same times demotes the intellect while promoting the will. “What is presented by the intellect does not, for Scotus, explain why the will acts (rather than not acting at all), and it does not explain how the will acts (i.e. freely),” Boler says.
CONCLUSION
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Let us review then where we’ve been. Particularly in his discussion on human action as it relates to deliberation - the so-called mind-action connection or relationship - Aristotle has put forth an implicit theory that will later be developed into a more detailed construct of the will by Aquinas and Scotus. Nevertheless, present within Aristotle’s discussion on human action is a theory that relates to choice in action (prohairesis) and a process that can be ascribed to a power of the soul that is immaterial.
Aristotle’s teleological focus on happiness is incorporated later into the Aquinian construct of the will and human action, and is a guiding principle in the will as it relates to its objects, both formal and material. This also proves to be the problem that Scotus will have with the construct of the will in Aristotelian terms as this eudaimonistic focus has the potential of negating the radical freedom that Scotus feels is necessary for a true concept of willing freely.
In a sense, Aquinas’ theory of the will follows a natural, systematic progression from the thought of Aristotle. Aquinas seems quick to integrate the Aristotelian ethical structure into his Christian perspective.
Scotus on the other hand, feels a need to mediate that notion in order to protect what he believes is the essential freedom found in the will. But, this is not to say that his position does not also have a basis in the thought of Aristotle. Particularly in his discussion on the two affectiones (which admittedly is more of an Anselmian, Augustinian slant), I believe that Scotus is also highlighting the important distinction that Aristotle states regarding the limited nature of deliberation. Recall deliberation is only related to limited actions, and that very many actions do not fall under the activity of deliberation. This is very much like the difference between the two affectiones in that the affectio commodi is related to a great many everyday activities of life, the things for advantage; while the affectio iustitiae is more in line with Aristotle’s thought on deliberation which is limited in its focus. Although not a direct parallel between the two, there is certainly enough similarity to make a case.
While both Aquinas and John Duns Scotus attempt this union of Aristotle with their Christian perspectives, I am personally more partial to the thought of Scotus. I think that his analysis in protecting the freedom in the will is more on the mark. It seems obvious, as well, that it is indeed possible to choose against good (particularly in the case of martyrdom) or to not choose at all. This may be the flaw of Aquinas; that he held too strictly to a eudamonistic approach and left out perhaps a bit of reality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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