Weakness of Will: The Plurality of Medieval Explanations

Abstract

Sometimes the history of philosophy can provide us with a laboratory situation in which new ideas are introduced into old contexts in such a way that we can clearly see the reactions they provoke and the changes they cause. This was the case when Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethicswas translated into Latin in the middle of the thirteenth century. Within a very short time a new Aristotelianism introduced a number of new questions related to philosophical psychology. The old context of Augustinian Christianity offered only a limited amount of conceptual tools for the understanding of these new questions. A paradigm shift was, therefore, necessary in many areas related to the philosophy of mind. In spite of some conflicts the contemporary historian is for the most part surprised to find how flexible the medieval scholars were in changing their conceptual frameworks to suit the new philosophy. In the following I will highlight these developments through one exemplary case study, that is, the medieval reception of Aristotle’s ‘weakness of will’.