Will and Choice in Medieval Thought

Abstract

Early medieval thinkers operated with various distinctions pertaining to the notion of the will. Anselm of Canterbury distinguished between the will as a power of the intellectual part of the soul, the inclination of the power, and the act of that power. The inclinations provided the motivational basis for the acts of will. An often quoted part of Anselm’s theory was the division between the inclinations to what is advantageous and what is right, the former being affectio commodi and the latter affectio iustitiae. In addition to natural inclinations, it was assumed that some reactions of the will are natural rather than chosen. This distinction between the will as reactive and the will as actively choosing was later referred to with the terms ‘natural will’ and ‘rational will’. While Peter Abelard suggested that something is willed only when it is pleasing, most thinkers thought that reluctantly chosen acts can be characterised as acts of will. Early medieval views of the freedom of will were strongly influenced by Augustinian ideas. Human freedom, which was taken to be required for moral responsibility, was discussed until around 1270 under the concept of ‘free decision’ (liberum arbitrium). Thomas Aquinas regarded the will as the motive power of the intellectual part of the soul, which is directed to what the intellect considers good. Although Aquinas thought that the will is free, he took the reason as the cause of the freedom of the will. John Duns Scotus, as a voluntaristic thinker, looked at the will as a self-mover and a free cause of its own volitions to the effect that the will cannot be forced to will by any other cause, whether internal or external to the mind. His conception of the causality of the will was in line with the view of Henry of Ghent and Peter John Olivi who taught that the cognition of an object is a sine qua non cause of volition, the will alone being its total efficient cause. Aquinas and some other Aristotelians thought that while the follows reason, if it acts at all, it may happen that overwhelming emotional impulses interfere with the choice of the will according to reason with the result that an akratic action takes place. Scotus and Ockham formed their views in conformity with the idea of the will as a free cause which can elect against the alternative which one’s reason believes to be best. This may show a change of mind for which there is no other effective cause but the will. An akratic person may also choose false things when the will is occurrently inclined to a wrong end by a passion.