is to be conceived as some form of will (or conation). This theory is
contrasted to intellectualism, which gives primacy to God's reason.
The voluntarism/intellectualism distinction was intimately tied to
medieval and modern theories of natural law; if we grant that moral or
physical laws issue from God, it next needs to answered whether they
issue from God's will or God's reason. In medieval philosophy,
voluntarism was championed by Avicebron, Duns Scotus, and William of
Ockham. Intellectualism, on the other hand, is found in Averroes,
Aquinas, and Eckhart. The opposing theories were applied to the human
psychology, the nature of God, ethics, and the heaven. According to
intellectualism, choices of the will result from that which the
intellect recognizes as good; the will itself is determined. For
voluntarism, by contrast, it is the will which determines which
objects are good, and the will itself is indetermined. Concerning the
nature of heaven, intellectualists followed Aristotle's lead by seeing
the final state of happiness as a state of contemplation. Voluntarism,
by contrast, maintains that final happiness is an activity,
specifically that of love. The conceptions of theology itself were
polarized between these two views. According to intellectualism,
theology should be an essentiall speculative science; according to
voluntarism, it is a practical science aimed at controlling life, but
not necessarily aimed at comprehending philosophic truth.In the modern
period Spinoza advocates intellectualism insofar as desire is an
indication of imperfection, and the passions are a source of human
bondage. When all things are seen purely in rational relations, desire
is stilled, the mind is freed from the passions and we experience the
intellectual love of God, which is the ideal happiness. According to
Leibniz, Spinoza's interpretation of the world as rational and logical
left no place for the individual, or for the conception of ends or
purposes as a determining factor in reality. Voluntarism is seen in
Leibniz's view of the laws which govern monads (individual units of
which all reality is composed) in so far as they are the laws of the
conscious realization of ends.
19th century voluntarism has its origin in Kant, particularly his
doctrine of the "primacy of the practical over the pure reason."
Intellectually, humans are incapable of knowing ultimate reality, but
this need not and must not interfere with the duty of acting as though
the spiritual character of this reality were certain. Freedom cannot
be demonstrated speculatively, but whenever a person acts under a
motive supplied by reason, he is thereby exhibiting the practical
efficiency of reason, and thus showing its reality in a practical
sense. Following Kant, two distinct lines of voluntarism have
proceeded which may be called rational and irrational voluntarism
respectively. For Fichte, the originator of rational voluntarism, the
ethical is primary both in the sphere of conduct and in the sphere of
knowledge. The whole nature of consciousness can be understood only
from the point of view of ends which are set up by the self. The
actual world, with all the activity that it has, is only to be
understood as material for the activity of the practical reason, as
the means through which the will achieves complete freedom and
complete moral realization. Schopenhauer's irrational voluntarism
asserts a more radical opposition between the will and intellect. For
him, the will is by its very nature irrational. It manifests itself in
various stages in the world of nature as physical, chemical, magnetic,
and vital force, pre-eminently, however, in the animal kingdom in the
form of "the will to live," which means the tendency to assert itself
in the struggle for means of existence and for reproduction of the
species. This activity is all of it blind, so far as the individual
agent is concerned, although the power and existence of the will are
thereby asserted continually.
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