to act? Why do we blame a human being for knocking over the vase and
not the family dog? What gives us the idea that we are free to choose
as we wish, that we have free will? These and other questions about
human action have fascinated philosophers for centuries. Throughout
the thousand year period of the Middle Ages, scholars provided a wide
variety of different answers to these questions. These thinkers
developed theories both remarkable and original in their own right
that continue to be of interest to scholars working in this area
today. While they shared an understanding of human psychology and
enjoyed a common intellectual heritage, they nevertheless maintained a
lively and diverse conversation on this topic throughout the whole of
the Middle Ages, providing us with a sophisticated intellectual
inheritance.
This article considers a wide range of theories written throughout the
Middle Ages, from the foundational work of Augustine in the early part
of the period through that of John Duns Scotus at the end. It notes
the ways in which later work on the topic builds upon that developed
earlier, shows the lively disagreements that often arose on the topic,
and, although medieval thinkers worked within a different framework
than philosophers do today, reveals how their discussions share
certain affinities.
1. Medieval and Current Understandings of Free Will
Although at first glance it might not seem so, medieval philosophers
were concerned with many of the same issues that interest philosophers
today. The current discussion of action focuses on the topic of free
will: whether free will is compatible with causal determinism, and the
relationship between free will and moral responsibility. Medieval
thinkers also discussed many of these issues; for example, they accept
the common intuition that unless one acts freely, one cannot be held
morally responsible for what one does. But the structure of their
discussion often makes it difficult to recognize the extent to which
their concerns both resemble and deviate from the current debate.
Thinkers in the early part of the Middle Ages discussed human action
and freedom in the context of broader theological concerns such as the
problem of evil or the effects of the Fall, that is, the sin of the
first human beings. As the Middle Ages progressed, scholars became
more interested in discussing the nature of freedom for its own sake,
apart from the particular theological problems in which free will
forms an important part of their solution. Thus, discussions of free
will become embedded in larger treatises of human psychology. This is
not to say that later theorists lost interest in those theological
problems; rather, discussions of the two issues diverged from each
other and became discrete subjects of investigation.
Medieval philosophers did not ask the question whether free will was
compatible with causal determinism, not because they did not
understand the ramifications of cause and effect or because they
lacked a scientific notion of the world. They recognized the
regularities of the world and understood the implications of a
mechanistic world-view. They did not ask this question because they
accepted the position that the freedom of human action is incompatible
with causal determinism and because they believed that human beings in
fact do act freely, at least on some occasions. Thus, in current
terms, they were libertarians about human freedom. They argued that
human beings are importantly different from other animals and the rest
of creation. Human beings act freely because they possess rational
capacities, which are lacking in other animals. Rational capacities
enable human beings to act freely because those capacities are
immaterial. How does the immateriality of those capacities enable
human beings to act freely? The argument, roughly, is as follows:
Everything else in the world is made of matter and thus is material or
physical. Material things are governed by particular laws and so are
determined to particular activities. If human beings were wholly
material, then their actions would also be determined and they would
not act freely. But because the capacities that bring about action are
immaterial in nature, and hence, not governed by physical laws,
actions that come about as a result of those capacities will be
uncoerced, at least under ordinary circumstances. According to
medieval accounts of freedom, then, freedom is incompatible with
causal determinism (although medieval philosophers would not express
the point in these terms). Since they all agree on this issue,
medieval accounts of freedom then attempt to answer the question "how
is it that human beings are able to act freely?" The answer to this
question was hotly contested.
All medieval theorists agreed that human beings have a soul that
enables them to perform the actions that they perform. As the era
progressed, theories of human psychology grew more and more elaborate,
but even in the earliest theories, two capacities in particular stood
out: the intellect and the will. The intellect is the human capacity
to cognize. The will is the human motivational capacity; it is the
capacity that moves us to do what we do. The will depends upon the
intellect to identify what alternatives for action are possible and
desirable. It is on the basis of these intellectually cognized
alternatives that the will chooses. Medieval theorists recognized that
it is the human being who thinks and who acts, but it is in virtue of
having an intellect and having a will that human beings are able to do
what they do. Talk about what the intellect thinks or what the will
does is a kind of shorthand for what the individual does in virtue of
those capacities In light of a common theory of human psychology, the
medieval debate centered upon whether human beings act freely
primarily in virtue of their wills or in virtue of their intellects.
Those who argue that freedom is primarily a function of the intellect
are known as intellectualists while those who argue that freedom is
primarily a function of the will are known as voluntarists, from the
Latin word for will, voluntas.
2. Individual Theories – the Early Middle Ages
a. Augustine
Augustine was interested in the topic of human action and freedom
because he needed to explain how it is that God is not responsible for
the presence of evil in the world while at the same time holding that
God sustains and governs the world. On his view, human beings do evil
things when they give in to their desires for the temporal things
instead of pursuing eternal things such as knowledge, virtue, and God.
His theory of human nature is rather rudimentary, but it helps to
establish the foundation for later more elaborate accounts. Human
beings possess the rational capacities of intellect and will as well
as sensory capabilities and desire. Human beings perceive the world
around them, including what things are available to be pursued,
through their senses. Such data can also stimulate basic desires. This
information is fed to the intellect, which makes judgments about the
contents of perception and desire. Choices as to what to do are made
in virtue of the will. Augustine argues that desire can never
overwhelm an agent; because they have intellects and wills, agents are
not determined by basic bodily desires. Rather, an agent gives in to
desire in virtue of the will, which operates freely and never under
compulsion. In fact, if a will were ever coerced, Augustine says it
would not be a will. Thus, human beings commit sins freely by giving
into the desire for temporal things, which the intellect and will
could disregard in favor of the eternal things that human beings ought
to pursue. Since human beings act freely, Augustine argues that they,
and not God, are responsible for evil in the world.
Early in his career, Augustine was very optimistic about the human
ability to resist temptation and sin. He argued that all one had to do
in order to avoid sin was simply to will against it. This got him into
a bit of trouble with a particular heresy of the time – Pelagianism.
Pelagius was a contemporary of Augustine's who held that human beings
are able to bring about their own salvation and do not require grace
from God. This position contradicts the traditional Christian view of
the Fall of Adam and Eve and the need for the Incarnation of Jesus and
grace from God. Not surprisingly, Pelagius took Augustine's early
writings to be favorable to his own position. Augustine argued that
Pelagius misinterpreted his early views, and in his later writings, he
was much more careful to insist upon the pernicious effects of sin
upon human behavior and the need for God's grace in order to avoid sin
and achieve salvation. This sets up a tension with his insistence upon
free will that exercised the minds of later theorists and one that
Augustine himself did not entirely resolve.
b. Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm's account of action and freedom reflects a broadly Augustinian
framework. Like Augustine, Anselm describes human action in terms of
the workings of intellect and will. Anselm also accepts the view that
unless human beings act freely, they cannot be held responsible for
their actions and God will be blamed for sin. Worries over the effect
of sin and grace also help to structure his account.
Anselm rejects the notion that one must be able to act in ways other
than they do in order to be free. If freedom had to be defined in
these terms, then God, the good angels, the blessed in heaven, the bad
angels, and the damned in hell could not be free since they lack this
ability to do otherwise. God, the good angels, and the blessed cannot
bring about evil while the bad angels and the damned cannot bring
about the good. In the medieval theological tradition, God is
perfectly good so it is not possible for God to will or perform evil.
Medieval theologians also argued that rational beings (human beings,
angels) admitted into heaven are confirmed in the good in such a way
that they are unable to choose what is bad, while rational beings who
are sent to hell are confirmed in evil in such a way that they are
unable to chose what is good. But Anselm believes that all of these
individuals act freely even though they cannot act in ways other than
they do. This is especially the case for God, who is the freest of
them all. Therefore, Anselm argues freedom cannot consist in the
ability to do otherwise; another account of freedom must be developed.
The question, then, is how does Anselm understand the notion of
freedom?
Anselm presents two different accounts of freedom, which nevertheless
are related. In De libertate arbitrii (commonly translated as On
Freedom of Choice), he defines freedom as "the ability to preserve
uprightness of will for its own sake." He argues that rational beings
have this ability insofar as they possess intellects by which they
come to understand how to preserve uprightness of will and insofar as
they possess the will itself in virtue of which they will to preserve
that uprightness. This might seem like a strange definition of
freedom, but given the connection to moral responsibility, Anselm
understands freedom not in terms of being able to act differently than
one does. Rather, he understands freedom in terms of whether one has
the ability to do the right thing for the right reason. It is obvious
that God, the good angels, and the blessed in heaven all possess this
ability, but what about sinners in this life, who from the Christian
perspective are now slaves to sin in virtue of their sin? One can
raise an analogous worry about the demons and the damned in hell, both
of whom are confirmed in evil. Anselm needs to explain how they retain
the ability to do the right thing given that they are unable to do the
right thing.
Anselm explains this seemingly contradictory situation by drawing upon
a distinction between possessing an ability and exercising that
ability. Because sinners, demons, and the damned all possess intellect
and will, they retain the ability to preserve uprightness of will.
They are, however, unable to exercise that ability because of the
hindrance of sin. Anselm explains this by analogy with sight. One
retains the ability to see a mountain even though on a cloudy day, one
cannot in fact see it due to the hindrance of the clouds. Similarly,
one who is a slave to sin or who is confirmed in evil retains the
ability to maintain uprightness of will even though one cannot
actually maintain that uprightness because being a slave to sin or
confirmation in evil hinders one from doing so. Thus, Anselm agrees
with Augustine that it takes an act of God to restore the sinner to a
state of grace, although human beings are capable of losing that grace
by their own evil (and free) choices.
Anselm's second account of freedom can be called the "two-wills
account." In his treatise, On the Fall of the Devil, he develops a
thought-experiment in which he imagines that God is creating an angel
from scratch. At the point where God has given the angel under
construction only a will for happiness, the angel cannot act freely.
For at this point, the angel is necessitated to will happiness and
those things required for its happiness and is not able to refrain
from willing happiness. Thus, the angel's act of willing happiness is
not free, for the angel could will nothing but happiness. Anselm then
asks whether the situation would be any different should God give the
angel only a will for justice, In this case, Anselm insists that the
angel does not will justice freely since the angel is necessitated to
will justice and is not able not to will justice. Only when God gives
the angel both a will for happiness and a will for justice does the
angel will freely. For now the angel is not necessitated to will
happiness, for he could will justice; nor is the angel necessitated to
will justice, for he could will happiness.
There are several questions that come to mind about this second
account of freedom. First, there is the worry that Anselm is now
relying on a principle that he rejected in the first account of
freedom, that is, the idea that freedom requires the ability to do
otherwise. Secondly, one can ask about the relationship between the
two accounts. This second issue is easier to address than the first.
One can see in Anselm's two-wills account of freedom a further
development of how the will of the first account is able to maintain
uprightness of will for its own sake. If the will had only the will
for justice, it would will justice, not because it is the right thing
to do, but because it must do so. If the will had only the will for
happiness, then it could not will justice at all. Thus, it is only
when the will has both the will for justice and the will for happiness
that the will has the ability to maintain uprightness for the sake of
uprightness. That is to say that the will has the ability to will the
right thing (that is, justice) for the right reason.
The first issue is harder to resolve. Anselm implies that having the
will for happiness means that one need not will justice and vice
versa. Thus, one who has both wills is able to will justly or not, as
it pleases the agent. This implies that the one who follows the will
for justice could have abandoned justice to follow the will for
happiness and vice versa. But this implies the ability to act
otherwise and also implies that God and the blessed could abandon
justice for happiness while the demons and the damned could abandon
happiness for justice, both of which Anselm denies. The answer to this
conundrum lies in Anselm's reply to a third issue raised by his
discussion.
This third issue addresses the apparent implication that the pursuit
of justice could require an agent to sacrifice her own happiness. For
in following the will for justice, the agent turns away from the will
for happiness and vice versa. This implies that an agent could be in a
situation where doing what is right will make her unhappy. Anselm
responds by arguing that genuine happiness never conflicts with
justice. When agents are struggling between the demands of morality
and happiness, the happiness in question is only apparent. For
example, consider the college student who is tempted to spend the
scholarship money, not on her tuition, but rather on a new car.
Obviously she ought to pay the tuition bill, but she really, really
wants the car and thinks she'll be much happier with it. Anselm would
argue that in the long run, the education will make her happier; for
one thing, the hope is that it will lead to a better paying job that
will enable her to get the car. Thus, doing the right thing in the
long run will coincide with her happiness, regardless of whether she
recognizes this in the short run. Anselm characterizes the will for
happiness as a will for our own benefit, what we think will be
advantageous to ourselves, what appears desirable to us, regardless of
whether it in fact will make us happy. What actually makes us happy is
pursuing happiness in the right way, that is, by doing what is in fact
the right thing to do. Thus, for Anselm, there is no actual conflict
between happiness and justice.
This answer helps him to resolve the first issue. The agent who acts
justly simply because it is the right thing to do de facto satisfies
the will for happiness. Those who act justly for its own sake
recognize the connection between justice and happiness and so would
not forsake justice for the sake of happiness; it would be
inconceivable to them to do so. But they act freely insofar as they
are not necessitated to justice in virtue of having both wills. Thus,
they act freely even though they cannot act otherwise. Those who are
confirmed in evil fail or failed to take seriously the connection
between justice and genuine happiness. They have chosen to follow the
will for happiness and, by pursuing the will for happiness in an
unjust manner, forsake justice. Because they are fixed upon their own
happiness, it would be inconceivable to them to pursue the will for
justice even though they realize that they would be better off to do
so. But they act freely insofar as they are not necessitated to
happiness in virtue of having both wills. Thus, they act freely even
though they cannot act otherwise.
c. Bernard of Clairvaux
Bernard (1090-1153) is not often thought of in connection with
philosophy; he was an abbot and an important religious reformer as
well as a prominent promoter of the First Crusade. But he wrote a
short treatise titled On Grace and Free Will that was rather
influential during the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth
centuries. Although Bernard is mainly concerned with theological
worries such as the influence of grace upon human freedom, he
contributes to the voluntarist climate of the Middle Ages. He moves
the discussion even further than either Augustine or Anselm, for he is
one of the first medieval theorists to define the will as a rational
appetite, that is, an appetite that is responsive to reasons. Such an
idea is merely nascent in Anselm.
Like Augustine and Anselm before him, Bernard acknowledges that moral
responsibility requires that human beings perform their actions
freely. He argues that human beings act freely primarily in virtue of
the will. The intellect is not entirely irrelevant; Bernard claims
that only those who have an intellect and are capable of engaging in
thought are capable of acting freely. Thus, children, non-rational
animals, and the mentally handicapped do not act freely. As they
mature, however, children become more able to do so, as do those who
recover from mental illness. Nevertheless, the intellect is merely an
instrument by which the will is able to exercise its primary activity,
which is to choose. The will depends upon the intellect to identify
what choices are available from which the will can choose. We cannot
choose what we are not aware of. But once the intellect has made
apparent potential alternatives for action, its job is finished. The
will makes the final choice of what is to be done. Thus, it is
ultimately in virtue of the will that human beings perform free
actions. Furthermore, on Bernard's account, the will is so free that
nothing can determine its choices, not even the intellect. He argues
that the will is free to will against a judgment of the intellect. For
example, the intellect could judge that some action is against God's
decrees, and therefore not to be done, yet the will could still choose
this action. Such cases, of course, happen all the time, and Bernard
argues that if the will were not free to will against a particular
judgment of the intellect, that would in essence destroy it. This idea
that the will is able to will against a judgment of intellect will be
an important claim in the late thirteenth century debates.
3. Individual Theories – Sentences Commentaries
a. Peter Lombard
Peter Lombard was a twelfth-century bishop of Paris and a theologian
at what was to become the University of Paris. The final edition of
his most famous work, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, was released
for circulation somewhere around 1155-57. This book became the
standard theological textbook at universities throughout Europe from
the thirteenth into the sixteenth centuries. It is divided into four
books, the first of which has to do with God; the second, with
creatures, both human and angelic, and their fall from grace; the
third, with the incarnation and redemption of Jesus; and the fourth
with the instruments of redemption, that is, the virtues and the
sacraments. Writing a commentary on the Sentences became a standard
student practice at universities during the Middle Ages.
Although use of the Latin phrase, liberum arbitrium, goes all the back
to Augustine, Lombard provides a definition for it that dominates the
discussion of freedom in the first half of the thirteenth century:
liberum arbitrium is a faculty of intellect and will. This term, for
which there is no satisfactory English translation, refers to that
power or capacity that enables human beings to perform their actions
freely. Lombard's definition appears to be fairly straightforward, but
theorists in the first half of the thirteenth century very much
disagreed over how it was to be interpreted. Part of the problem is
that Lombard himself did not discuss the meaning of the definition in
any great detail. Instead, he went on to discuss the place of liberum
arbitrium in a larger theological scheme, addressing such questions as
whether God has liberum arbitrium, the status of liberum arbitrium
both before and after the Fall, and the effects of grace upon liberum
arbitrium.
Although later theologians make note of Lombard's discussion of these
topics, they are far more interested in what he didn't discuss, that
is, the basic definition of liberum arbitrium. In the first half of
the thirteenth century, there occurs a lively discussion on how to
interpret this definition. As far as the participants in this
discussion are concerned, there are four possibilities, and there are
texts from this period defending each of these possibilities. To say
that liberum arbitrium is a faculty of intellect and will could mean
1) that freedom is a function primarily of the intellect and only
secondarily of the will 2) that freedom is a function primarily of the
will and only secondarily of the intellect 3) that freedom is equally
a function of both intellect and will and 4) that freedom is a
function of a third capacity independently of intellect and will but
with both cognitive and appetitive abilities. Because the fourth
interpretation is the most implausible (and the rarest and possibly
for those reasons the most interesting) and because it was held by one
of the foremost scholars in the medieval period (Albert the Great), it
warrants a further look.
b. Albert the Great
Outside of scholarly circles, Albert the Great is largely a forgotten
figure or, at best, is known merely as the teacher of Thomas Aquinas.
In the thirteenth century, however, he was in fact one of the most
famous and respected scholars of the period. He published a wide
variety of writings in philosophy, theology, and especially in what we
would call natural science. He wrote a number of commentaries on the
works of Aristotle and argued for his importance at a time when many
of Aristotle's texts were banned from study at Europe's universities.
Albert's theory of action is one of the most distinctive parts of his
philosophy and one of the most innovative theories of the Middle Ages.
Albert takes as his starting point Lombard's definition of liberum
arbitrium and argues that it should not be interpreted too narrowly.
He describes four distinct stages in the production of free human
action. First, the intellect identifies viable alternatives for action
from which to choose and makes a judgment about what to do. Secondly,
the will develops a preference for one of the alternatives identified
by the intellect and inclines toward it. Third, a choice is made
between the alternative judged by the intellect and the alternative
preferred by the will. The capacity for choice is exercised by a power
separate from both intellect and will, which Albert calls liberum
arbitrium. Finally, the choice is carried out by the will, which
inclines the agent to perform the action chosen by liberum arbitrium.
One might worry that the aforementioned description of action implies
that human beings are "at the mercy" of their capacities and so are
not in charge of their own actions. This is a mistaken judgment.
Albert is aware that it is human beings who think, judge, prefer,
choose and finally act. What Albert is attempting to explain is how
human beings are capable of engaging in all of these activities. He is
providing what we might call a microscopic explanation for what
happens at the macroscopic level. This is analogous to, say, the
neuroscientist providing an explanation for why someone raises her arm
in terms of what is happening on the level of the nerves firing and
the muscles contracting. We of course assume that such an explanation
does not negate our judgment that the agent has control over whether
she moves her arm; it is the same in the case of Albert's explanation.
Albert argues that this account is compatible with Lombard's
definition of liberum arbitrium. He argues that on his account,
liberum arbitrium is a faculty of intellect and will, not because it
consists of intellect and will, but because it works with intellect
and will. Unless the intellect makes a judgment about what to do, and
unless the will inclines toward a particular alternative (whether it
be the same or different from the intellect's judgment), there is no
choice made by liberum arbitrium. Intellect and will make possible the
activity of liberum arbitrium. Thus, liberum arbitrium is a power of
intellect and will, not because it is composed of intellect and will,
as one might think, but because it operates on the basis what goes on
beforehand in intellect and will.
Recall that the whole purpose of liberum arbitrium was to frame the
discussion of human freedom. Liberum arbitrium is a placeholder for
whatever it is that enables human beings to act freely. Albert argues
that liberum arbitrium must be a power distinct from intellect and
will because of certain deficiencies or constraints in both intellect
and will. The intellect cannot be the source of human freedom, for it
is the power by which human beings cognize the world and come to
understand truth. Thus, its judgments are constrained by the way the
world is; we are not free to decide what we will and will not believe
if we want to have truth as our goal. A reality that is not of our own
making intrudes. By and large, that is how we want our intellects to
operate. Our success in the world depends upon our being able to make
accurate judgments about how the world is and what options are open to
us. We will return to this view because it has certain implications
for Thomas Aquinas's account of freedom, which implications John Duns
Scotus explicitly draws on in his criticism of Aquinas's account. But
for now, we want to see what use Albert makes of this observation.
According to Albert, the constraints found in the intellect make it
the case that the intellect cannot be the source of human freedom.
But then neither can the will. Albert notes that what distinguishes
the actions of human beings from that of other animals is the human
ability to contravene felt desires. To take a medieval example, if a
sheep is hungry and spies a lush field of grass, the sheep eats in
response to a brute felt desire for food. If the sheep is not hungry,
the sheep does not eat even if it is standing in the pasture. What
determine the sheep's activities are the sheep's desires and appetites
over which the sheep has no control. It is different in the human
case. A human being can feel hungry but not act on that hunger because
she can judge that she has compelling reasons not to eat, say because
she is waiting for her blood to be drawn for a fasting glucose level.
Thus, she has a choice; she can choose either to eat or not to eat
depending upon her reasons for doing one thing over the other. This
ability to act on the basis of reasons, which confers freedom of
action on human beings, is a cognitive ability. Since the will is an
appetitive power, it cannot have this ability. The intellect is a
cognitive power but is constrained by the way the world is and so
cannot be the source of this ability. Albert concludes therefore that
human beings must have a third power that enables them to have this
ability, which power he identifies with liberum arbitrium.
4. Individual Theories – the High Middle Ages
a. Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas developed one of the most elaborate and detailed
accounts of action in the Middle Ages. It is a testimony to his
account that not only scholars of medieval philosophy but also
non-historically oriented philosophers remain interested in the
details of his view.
Aquinas's account is roughly Aristotelian in character. Like
Aristotle, Aquinas argues that human beings act for the sake of a
particular end that they see as a good. Furthermore, he thinks that
all human actions aim (directly or indirectly) at an ultimate end.
This ultimate end is the final goal or object that human beings are
trying to achieve. Aquinas follows Aristotle in arguing that the
ultimate end of human life, that which human beings want most of all,
is happiness. But Aquinas parts company with Aristotle in arguing that
what in fact makes human beings happy is to know and love God.
Aquinas recognizes that such a definition of happiness is highly
controversial. He concedes that not everyone agrees that the ultimate
goal of human life is union with God. But he takes it as
uncontroversial that all human beings desire happiness regardless of
whether they agree with him with respect to what in fact constitutes
happiness. Given Aquinas's theological commitments, it is not
surprising that he would think that what in fact will make human
beings happy (whether they know it or not) is to be in a relationship
with the creator and sustainer of the world.
Aquinas presents a detailed account of what goes on when human beings
perform a particular course of action. This account reveals a close
interaction between intellect and will in bringing about the action.
In considering this account, one must keep in mind that although the
description that follows is put in terms of a series of steps, these
steps have only logical priority and not necessarily temporal
priority. For example, Aquinas cites deliberation and choice as
distinct steps, but he is willing to grant that one might not spend
time deliberating over what to do. One might simply recognize what the
situation calls for and choose to do it. In that case, the judgment or
recognition of what to do and the choice come about simultaneously.
However, Aquinas would insist that the judgment has logical priority
insofar as one cannot choose what one is not at least on some level
(and perhaps very quickly) cognizant of.
In bringing about a human action, first, human beings have some goal
or end in mind when they think about what to do. Without that goal or
end, they would in fact never act. Human beings don't act for the sake
of acting; there is always something they are trying to achieve by
their actions. In other words, human behavior is always motivated. So
human beings think about what they want to accomplish and settle upon
a goal. This they do in virtue of their intellects in light of their
fundamental desire for the good, which is built into the will. Next
they feel an attraction or desire for that goal or end; their will
inclines them toward it. Then they begin to think about how to achieve
this goal or end; that is to say, they engage in the activity of
deliberation. They then make a final judgment about what to do and
choose what to do on the basis of that judgment. Aquinas argues that
choice is a function of the will in light of a judgment by the
intellect. In other words, the will moves the agent towards a
particular action, an action that has been determined by the
intellect. The will then moves the appropriate limbs of the bodies at
the command of the intellect, thus executing the action. Finally,
human beings feel enjoyment at their accomplishment or achievement of
the end in virtue of the will.
Another aspect of human nature influences human action, and that is
what Aquinas calls the passions. Passions are somewhat akin to our
conception of emotions. That is, they are felt motivational states
such as anger or joy that can have either a positive or a negative
effect upon what we do. For example, fear and love for a child can
move an otherwise timid individual to push the child out of the way of
a speeding car. On the other hand, anger can move an otherwise
peaceful person to road rage. Nevertheless, on Aquinas's account, even
though passions are very powerful influences upon actions and can make
things appear to us as good that ordinarily would not seem good, the
passions cannot simply overwhelm a (properly functioning) intellect
and will and thereby determine what we do. Aquinas argues that it is
always possible for us to step back and consider whether we should act
on our passion as long as we possess a functional intellect and will.
It might be difficult to do, since passions can be very strong, but it
is always open to us to do so.
This of course is a very brief and succinct description of an account
to which Aquinas devotes a significant portion of his texts. What it
illustrates though is the complexity of what goes on in the course of
producing an action and the ways in which the intellect and will
interact with each other in producing a human action. We of course are
not necessarily conscious of all of this activity, but Aquinas's
account does not depend upon our being so. He relies on the principle
that if a human being is able to do something, there must be some
power or capacity that enables her to do so. He then considers what
goes on in the course of human action and postulates the kinds of
powers or capacities that he thinks human beings must have in order to
account for what goes on. So while from a strictly empirical or even
scientific viewpoint, Aquinas's account might seem rather quaint,
still from a heuristic perspective, Aquinas's account remains quite
powerful.
One of the ways in which its power is revealed is in Aquinas's account
of good and bad action. He uses his basic framework for action to set
up the account. Recall that action is ultimately a function of
intellect and will with the potential influence of the passions. Bad
action for Aquinas comes about in light of a breakdown of one of these
capacities. Because the intellect has to do with knowledge and
judgment, sins of the intellect have to do with mistakes in judgment
due to ignorance (that is, a lack of knowledge). Aquinas also
recognizes that wrongdoing can come about under the influence of
passion. Although on his view, the passions are not able to overwhelm
a properly functioning intellect and will, still the intellect can
give in to passion under inappropriate circumstances (road rage is an
obvious example). And finally, because the will is a type of
(rational) desire, sins due to the will arise when one's desire for
the good is disordered, leading one to prefer a lesser good, forsaking
a greater good that ought to be preferred.
For an action to count as a good action, it must satisfy several
conditions. First, it must be a morally acceptable type of action. For
Aquinas, such acts as murder, lying, stealing, or adultery are never
right, regardless of, say, the circumstances or the end. They are in
themselves disordered acts insofar as they, by their very nature, do
not promote human flourishing. Secondly, the action must be performed
for an appropriate end. Ordinarily, alms-giving is a good act, but it
would be a bad action if one were to give alms for the sake of
vainglory. And finally the act must be performed in the appropriate
circumstances. Ordinarily one would be praised for taking a walk in
order to maintain one's health, but not if there is a blizzard raging
outside. Under ordinary conditions (for example, no one's life is at
risk), it would be more appropriate under those circumstances to skip
the walk.
For Aquinas, although some acts might be morally neutral in nature
(that is, neither promoting nor detracting from human flourishing by
their nature), because there are no neutral ends or circumstances, in
the final analysis, no actually performed actions are truly morally
neutral. Ends are either good or bad for Aquinas. Circumstances are
either appropriate or not. Thus, for Aquinas, the range of actions
that are candidates for moral appraisal is much broader than one often
supposes. Even actions ordinarily considered rather innocuous, such as
eating a candy bar or raking leaves, have moral significance for
Aquinas.
Finally, although Aquinas is not a utilitarian, he does think that
consequences can have an effect on the moral appraisal of an action.
What matters is whether the consequences that result from performing
the action are the typical consequences associated with an action of
that type and whether the agent was in a position to know this. If the
agent could have foreseen those consequences, then bad consequences
increase the agent's blameworthiness and good consequences increase
the agent's praiseworthiness. If the agent could not have foreseen
such consequences, then they have no effect on the moral appraisal of
the action.
Aquinas is interested not only in how human action comes about, but
also in what enables human beings to act freely. Given his emphasis on
the intellect in his account of action, it is not surprising to find
Aquinas arguing that the intellect plays the larger role in the
explanation of freedom. This is in contrast with the tradition he
inherits, which, as we have seen so far, places the emphasis on the
will in the majority of theories. For Aquinas, the fact that the
intellect is able to deliberate, consider, and reconsider reasons for
choosing various courses of action open to the agent enables the agent
to act freely. The will is free but only insofar as the intellect is
free to make or revise its judgments. Had the agent decided
differently than she did, she would have chosen differently. Thus,
freedom in the will is dependent upon and derivative upon freedom in
the intellect. As we shall see, this position raises certain potential
worries for Aquinas.
b. John Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus was born in the town of Duns near the
English-Scottish boarder sometime in the 1260s. Educated both in
England and at the University of Paris, he died in Cologne, Germany in
1308. Known for the complexity of his thought, he was referred to in
the Middle Ages as the Subtle Doctor.
Scotus argues that if Aquinas is correct, human beings do not act
freely. This is because in Scotus's view, the intellect is determined
by the external environment, a position we saw earlier in Albert the
Great. Scotus argues that the content of our beliefs and judgments is
a function of the world around us and not within our control. If I see
a table in front of me and I am functioning normally, I cannot help
but believe that there is a table in front of me. I have some control
over my beliefs; I can choose to acquire beliefs about quantum
mechanics that I did not have before simply by choosing to read a book
on the subject. I can take the table out of the room so that I no
longer believe that there is a table in front of me. But even here my
beliefs are fixed once I finish my manipulations of the world;
ultimately then, I have no control over their content. Once I read the
book, I have beliefs based upon what I have read and I am not in a
position to alter their content unless I read something further. Once
I move the table, the world as it exists at that point structures my
belief about the table. As we mentioned before, this is how we want
the world and our beliefs to function. If we could not arrive at
beliefs that accurately reflected the state of the world around us, we
would not survive. Scotus argues that this feature of our beliefs and
their relationship to the world means that the intellect is not free.
Thus, if Aquinas is correct that the movement of the will is
determined by activity in the intellect, then if it is true that the
intellect is not free, the will is not free either, and human beings
would not act freely.
Scotus denies Aquinas's tight connection between the intellect and the
will, arguing that the will is not determined by a judgment of the
intellect, a position we first noted in Bernard of Clairvaux. Scotus
draws upon our ordinary experience to defend this claim. We have all
been in situations where we know what we ought to do and yet we are
not moved to do it. The student knows she ought to study for her
exams, but she is so comfortable lying on the couch that she does not
get up to study. She will get up to study only insofar as she really
wants to do so, and no judgment will move her to do so in opposition
to her desire. Scotus describes this kind of case as one in which the
will, the source of her desire to remain on the couch, wills (or in
this case fails to will) in opposition to the judgment of the
intellect. Thus, the will is free of determination by the intellect.
Scotus agrees with Aquinas that the will depends upon the intellect to
identify possible courses of action from which the will chooses, but
he rejects Aquinas's view that the intellect's judgment determines the
will's choice. For Scotus, the intellect makes a judgment about what
to do, but it is up to the will to determine which alternative–out of
all those the intellect has identified as possibilities–the agent acts
upon. Scotus also agrees with Aquinas that human beings cannot will
misery for its own sake, but he denies that this implies that human
beings are necessitated to choose happiness. On Scotus's account,
human beings choose happiness if they choose anything at all and they
cannot will against happiness, but they nevertheless can fail to will
happiness.
5. Conclusion
Thinkers throughout the Middle Ages found the topics of action and
free will compelling for many of the same reasons why they remain of
perennial interest today. Philosophers find them interesting in their
own right as well as recognizing their implications for moral
responsibility, the concept of personhood, and such important
religious issues as the problem of evil and the tension with divine
omniscience. The general character of many medieval theories of free
will is voluntarist in nature, with the views of Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas the most significant departures from this trend.
The accounts of Thomas Aquinas and of John Duns Scotus are useful
paradigms to illustrate some of the advantages and disadvantages of
voluntarist and intellectualist approaches to action and its freedom.
We have seen that the determinant nature of our beliefs raises a
problem for Aquinas's location of freedom in the intellect. Aquinas
also has a harder time explaining cases of weakness of will (that is,
cases where an agent recognizes the better choice but chooses the
lesser one). These cases are tough for Aquinas to explain because they
seem to involve a judgment that a particular action is the better
thing to do, yet the agent chooses not to perform that action.
Instead, the agent chooses some other action that the agent is willing
to grant is worse. Scotus has a much easier time accommodating these
cases, since for him, the will is never necessitated by a judgment of
intellect. Yet his theory faces an important objection: the
arbitrariness objection. Because there is no tight connection between
intellect and will on Scotus's account, the will is never determined
by the judgment of intellect. Therefore, it is always possible for the
will either to will in accordance with the intellect's judgment or
against it. This situation raises the question: why does the agent
choose as she does? It can't be because the intellect made a
particular judgment, for the will is not determined by that judgment.
Scotus argues that there is no further explanation for the will's
choice; the will simply chooses. But then the will's choice and the
agent's subsequent action become very mysterious. Thus, Scotus loses a
rational grounding for understanding why an agent acts as she does. He
can no longer appeal to an agent's reasons for acting one way rather
than another, for those reasons do not determine the agent's choice.
Because Aquinas maintains a tight connection between the intellect's
judgment and the will's choice, he does not face this particular
objection and can maintain what is known as a reasons-explanation for
action. In the end, what is an advantage for the one theory becomes a
difficulty for the other, and vice versa.
See also the article Foreknowledge and Free Will in this encyclopedia.
6. References and Further Reading
a. Primary Sources
Albert the Great. Opera Omnia. Augustus Borgnet, ed., Paris: Vives, 1890-9.
Unfortunately, the works of Albert the Great are not yet widely
available in translation.
Albert the Great. Opera Omnia. Bernhard Geyer et al, eds. Bonn:
Institum Alerti Magni, 1951-.
A newer and currently incomplete edition of Albert's works.
Anselm of Canterbury. Three Philosophical Dialogues. Thomas Williams,
trans. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2002.
This book includes Anselm's treatises, On Freedom of Choice and On the
Fall of the Devil.
Anselm of Canterbury. Truth, Freedom, and Evil. Jasper Hopkins and
Herbert Richardson, trans. New York: Harper and Row, 1965.
This book includes Anselm's treatises, On Freedom of Choice and On the
Fall of the Devil.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa theologiae. Fathers of the English Dominican
Province, trans. Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981 (reprint).
Aquinas, Thomas. Treatise on Happiness. John A. Oesterle, trans. Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964.
This book consists of the twenty-one questions from Summa theologiae
that have to do with the human ultimate end, and human action and its
freedom.
Augustine. On Free Choice of the Will. Thomas Williams, trans.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993.
Bernard of Clairvaux. On Grace and Free Choice. Daniel O'Donovan,
trans. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1988.
Lombard, Peter. Sententiae in IV libris distinctae. Ignatius Brady,
ed. Grottoferrata: Editiones Colegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas,
1971-81.
The question on liberum arbitrium is found in book two, distinction
24. Unfortunately, this text is not yet translated into English.
Scotus, John Duns. Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Allan B.
Wolter, O.F.M., trans. William A Frank, ed. Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1997.
This is a reprint of an earlier (1986) edition in which the Latin text
found in the 1986 edition has been removed. In addition to primary
texts, it contains commentary by Wolter.
b. Secondary Sources
Alexander, Archibald. Theories of the Will in the History of
Philosophy. New York: Scribner, 1898.
Bourke, Vernon J. Will in Western Thought. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964.
Chappell, T.D.J. Aristotle and Augustine on Freedom: Two Theories of
Freedom Voluntary Action, and Akrasia. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1995.
Colish, Marcia. Peter Lombard. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994.
Davies, Brian, ed. Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: Critical Essays.
Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.
Contains some essays on action and freedom.
Matthews, Gareth B., ed. The Augustinian Tradition. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999.
A collection of essays on Augustine, some of which deal with his
theory of will and freedom.
Matthews, Gareth B. Augustine. Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
McCluskey, Colleen. "Intellective Appetite and the Freedom of Human
Action." The Thomist 66 (2002): 421-56.
A defense of Aquinas's theory of freedom against criticisms raised by
Thomas Williams in the article listed below from The Thomist.
McCluskey, Colleen. "Worthy Constraints in Albertus Magnus's Theory of
Action." Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (2001):491-533.
MacDonald, Scott, and Stump, Eleonore, eds. Aquinas's Moral Theory:
Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1999.
This book includes essays on Aquinas's theory of the passions as well
as his account of practical reasoning.
Pope, Stephen J., ed. The Ethics of Aquinas. Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2002.
This book contains essays on Aquinas's theory of action and freedom as
well as his ethics. It is organized around the specific questions in
Summa theologiae that deal with these issues.
Rogers, Katherin. "Anselm on Grace and Free Will." The Saint Anselm
Journal 2 (2005): 66-72.
Stump, Eleonore. Aquinas. London: Routledge, 2003.
A broad discussion of Aquinas's views, including his theory of action
and freedom.
Westberg, Daniel. Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and
Prudence in Aquinas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Williams, Thomas and Visser, Sandra. "Anselm's Account of Freedom."
Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (2001): 221-244.
Williams, Thomas. "The Libertarian Foundations of Scotus's Moral
Philosophy." The Thomist (1998): 193-215.
This article also contains a criticism of Aquinas's theory of freedom.
Williams, Thomas. "How Scotus Separates Morality from Happiness."
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 69 (1995): 425-445.
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