Abstract
This chapter outlines developments in conceptualizing ‘free will’ on the part of such Christian thinkers as Augustine, Aquinas, and the ‘voluntarist’ theologians who increased the power of the free will to unprecedented proportions by insisting that the will could even ignore the advice of reason. In the Reformation, Protestant thinkers, building on earlier Christian traditions, maintained a somewhat self-contradictory position in regard to free will. They admired its capacity to accomplish great things, especially in ancient times. Yet they also insisted, more than their Christian predecessors had, that without ‘prevenient grace,’ the free will could only produce sin. This premise sets the stage for Hamlet, a play that tries to show how the admirable quality of free will was nonetheless inevitably divorced from what would be considered ethical conduct.
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Notes
- 1.
Bobzien, “The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem,” 160.
- 2.
Risto Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought, 19. T.H. Irwin, “Who Discovered the Will?,” Philosophical Perspectives 6 (1992), 455.
- 3.
Irwin , “Who Discovered the Will?,” 454. Neal Ward Gilbert suggested in 1963 that “what Augustine introduced into philosophy was not the concept of will in general but the concept of the evil will.” “The Concept of Will in Early Latin Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 1.1 (1963), 18. For two additional studies, see T.D.J. Chappell, Aristotle and Augustine on Freedom (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995) and Simon Harrison, Augustine’s Way into the Will: The Theological and Philosophical Significance of De Libero Arbitrio (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
- 4.
Augustine, “On the Free Choice of the Will,” 22.
- 5.
Augustine, “On the Free Choice of the Will ,” 21. I might add that this free will, while primarily based in reason, also contains thumos . When discussing what power it is that enables humans to conquer animals who are bigger and stronger than they are, Augustine’s initial answer provided is “reason.” But he soon modifies this claim to include “spirit” as an additional quality distinguishing humans from animals. “On the Free Choice of the Will,” 14–6. While the Latin ‘spirit’ is generally seen as a translation from the Greek ‘pneuma,’ meaning breath, in this context “spirit” is also the boldness that conquers beasts, suggesting thumos . In English, the notion of spirit as in “spirited” appears, from the OED, to have begun in Shakespeare’s time.
- 6.
Harrison, Augustine’s Way into the Will, 118.
- 7.
Augustine, The City of God, 2:225 (Book 5, Chapter 18).
- 8.
Augustine, “Answer to Julian ,” trans. Roland J. Teske, in The Works of Saint Augustine, eds. John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999), I/24:391. Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Past Masters Series, Electronic Edition, 1st release, 2001. T. H. Irwin uses this passage to demonstrate an alternative point, what he calls the “teleological criterion” of Augustine’s sense of virtue: “virtuous actions … proceed from a virtue only if they are directed to the right end.” T. H. Irwin, “Splendid Vices? Augustine For and Against Pagan Virtues.” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8 (1999), 109–10. I question whether Augustine’s presentation of the cardinal virtues in this passage encourages the optimistic possibility of using any of them in a truly noble way.
- 9.
Harrison, Augustine’s Way into the Will, 28–62.
- 10.
Augustine’s “On the Free Choice of the Will ” is certainly difficult to date; when Augustine referred to it in his later “Reconsiderations ” (Retractationes) (426/7), he wrote that it was begun in Rome and “finished” later in Africa. See Augustine, “Reconsiderations 1.9,” in On the Free Choice of the Will, Grace and Free Choice, and Other Writings,” ed. and trans. Peter King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 127. Drawing on Augustine’s remarks about the book’s construction, Simon Harrison concludes, “it would seem that in 388 book 1 was complete in a way that books 2 and 3 were not.” Harrison, Augustine’s Way into the Will, 20.
- 11.
Augustine, “On the Free Choice of the Will,” 108. In the 1540s this insistence on the sinfulness of the free will was the position Calvin attributed to Augustine, primarily citing the “Reconsiderations ”; in contrast, Calvin’s opponent Pighius emphasized Augustine’s earlier comments in the “On the Free Choice of the Will.” See John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice against Pighius, trans. G. I. Davies, ed. A. N. S. Lane (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996).
- 12.
Augustine, “On the Free Choice of the Will,” 71.
- 13.
For instance, see Philip Sidney’s famous remark: “our erected wit maketh vs know what perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth vs from reaching vnto it.” “An Apology for Poetry” (“An Apologie for Poetrie;” “The Defence of Poesie”), in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith. 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904; rpt. 1950), 1:157.
- 14.
See Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995).
- 15.
Such references to Augustine’s “On the Free Choice of the Will ” are suggested by the routine use, by later writers, of Augustine’s phrase, de libero arbitrio (free decision), when discussing freedom and the will. Anselm of Canterbury wrote De Libertate Arbitrii (c. 1085) and Bernard of Clairvaux wrote On Grace and Free Choice (De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio) (c. 1128). As Bonnie Kent notes, the phrase de libero arbitrio was standard usage until the late thirteenth century: “medieval writers discussed liberum arbitrium until around 1270. Thereafter some discussed free will (voluntas libera), some liberum arbitrium, and some both.” As Kent notes, liberum arbitrium was often defined as “a faculty of will and reason,” and the topic was discussed by a variety of thirteenth-century thinkers. Kent, Virtues of the Will, 98–100. Even Renaissance works such as Valla’s De Libero Arbitrio (c. 1435–1443), Erasmus’s De Libero Arbitrio , and Luther’s De Servo Arbitrio also apparently are written in relation to this tradition of focusing on the ‘free will’ specifically in the contexts of deliberation and decision.
- 16.
Kent, Virtues of the Will, 30.
- 17.
For example, Thomas Aquinas, “Of the Voluntary and the Involuntary ,” in Summa Theologica . 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:615 (First Part of the Second Part; Q6).
- 18.
Thomas Aquinas, “The Will of the Angels,” in Summa Theologica. 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:295 (First Part; Q59. A2); and Thomas Aquinas, “Of That Cause of Sin Which Is Malice,” in Summa Theologica. 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:941 (First Part of the Second Part; Q78. A1. R2).
- 19.
Thomas Aquinas, “Of the Will, in Regard to What it Wills,” in Summa Theologica. 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:626 (First Part of the Second Part; Q8. A1).
- 20.
Qtd. in Pearson, Aristotle on Desire, 161. The passage is from the Rhetoric 1.10.1369a3-4.
- 21.
For Aquinas’s distinction between supernatural and natural moral virtues, see Kent, Virtues of the Will, 31, and the Aquinas texts cited there. When Aquinas discussed charity, for instance, he faced interesting challenges trying to separate its natural from supernatural components. See “Of Charity, Considered in Itself” in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 2:1274 (Second Part of the Second Part; Q23. A7. R1).
- 22.
For a clear discussion of Aquinas’s reading of Aristotle in relation to Stoicism, see Mary Beth Ingham, “Stoic influences in the later Middle Ages,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, ed. John Sellars (Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2016), 99–114, esp. 108–112.
- 23.
Thomas Aquinas, “Of Free-Will,” in Summa Theologica, 1:418 (First Part; Q83. A1).
- 24.
P. S. Eardley, “The Foundations of Freedom in Later Medieval Philosophy: Giles of Rome and his Contemporaries.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 (2006), 358.
- 25.
Tobias Hoffman and Cyrille Michon, “Aquinas on Free Will and Intellectual Determinism.” Philosophers’ Imprint 17.10 (May 2017), 3.
- 26.
Aquinas, “Of Free-Will,” in Summa Theologica, 1:419 (First part; Q83. A3). He also wrote, “free-will … is nothing else but the power of choice.” “Of Free-Will,” 1:420 (First part; Q83. A4).
- 27.
Eleonore Stump , Aquinas (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 277. Stump notes that whereas electio is usually translated as ‘choice,’ she will define it (presumably along Aristotelian lines) as “what the will does” when it accepts “the course of action that intellect proposes as the best,” 288–9.
- 28.
Stump, Aquinas, 287–90.
- 29.
Stump defines “intention” as “an act of will to try to achieve the end through some means,” “consent” as “an act of will accepting the means the intellect proposes,” and “electio” as “an act of will selecting the means the intellect proposes as best.” Stump, Aquinas, 289–90.
- 30.
Kent, Virtues of the Will, 105, 112–3.
- 31.
Michael Sylwanowicz , Contingent Causality and the Foundations of Duns Scotus’ Metaphysics (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 54. Sylwanowicz does not discuss the possibility of the influence of the Platonic thumos on Scotus. But he does refer to the idea of “self-motion” in the Platonic soul as one of Scotus’s influences, 53.
- 32.
Kent, Virtues of the Will, 122.
- 33.
John Duns Scotus , Selected Writings on Ethics, ed. and trans. Thomas Williams. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 205 (Ordinatio III, d. 33, q. un.).
- 34.
Perkins, “A Treatise of Gods Free-Grace, and Mans Free-Will,” in Workes, 1:723.
- 35.
Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.26, 286.
- 36.
Qtd. in Richard A. Muller, Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 202.
- 37.
Calvin, Institutes 2.2.7, 264.
- 38.
“The Augsburg Confession, 1530,” 613 (Article 18).
- 39.
Calvin, Institutes 2.2.13, 273.
- 40.
Calvin, Institutes 2.2.13, 274. See also Institutes, 2.2.16, 275.
- 41.
Calvin, Institutes, 1.15.8, 196.
- 42.
Perkins, “A Treatise of Gods Free-Grace, and Mans Free-Will,” in Workes, 1:728–9.
- 43.
Perkins, “A Treatise of Gods Free-Grace, and Mans Free-Will,” in Workes, 1:729.
- 44.
Aquinas, “Of Free-Will,” in Summa Theologica 1:418 (First Part; Q83. A1).
- 45.
Erasmus, “On the Freedom of the Will,” 91.
- 46.
Perkins, “A Treatise of Gods Free-Grace, and Mans Free-Will,” in Workes, 1:729.
- 47.
Calvin, Institutes, 2.3.3, 292–3.
- 48.
Calvin, Institutes, 2.3.3, 294.
- 49.
Calvin, Institutes, 3.20.46, 914.
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Gleckman, J. (2019). The Free Will in Augustine, the Middle Ages, and the Reformation. In: Shakespeare and Protestant Poetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9599-5_13
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