Overview of On Free Will by Anselm of Canterbury and Quodlibetal Questions (on the primacy of the will) by Henry of Ghent
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On Free Will In providing an overview of Anselm’s philosophy I risk being terse, or worse, lazy, thanks to the elaborate and numerous chapter headings he provides in his essay on free will. I will attempt to give a brief synopsis of Anselm’s thought, but his reasoning is methodical so the overview may take a little time. Consider yourself warned, reader. Anselm's goal is to make free will an attractive and necessary philosophy so that people (at least Christians) are well-behaved. Free will banishes the old excuses "the devil made me do it" and "free will is not as powerful as that she-harlot's temptation." Anselm begins by describing free will to “men and angels,” while maintaining that freedom itself is the same (Ch. 1, 338). Sinning is indecent and harmful, so the will’s capacity to sin reduces the will’s liberty. Sinning becomes impossible to impute to a fully free will (Ibid.). Sinning does not dominate the agent and overtake free will. The will is still free until it chooses to sin, but sin does not take away agency in its being chosen. Sinning is despite or because of free will (Ch. 2, 339). “They had free will for the sake of rectitude of will” (Ch. 3, 339). Free will is given to rational nature to self-perpetuate and preserve good will (Ch. 3, 340). To have free will is to be capable of seeing the good. An agent has to will not having good will. Having good will becomes the whole point or goal of having free will (Ch. 4, 340). Like sin, temptation does not subvert free will to its power. Free will is still in control of the agent, even if it is subverted (Ch. 5, 342). The morality game of lying to save a life is used as an example: If to save a life the agent has to lie, then the agent should lie. The agent is willing the goal of the saved life above the willing of the lie for lying’s sake. The will then maintains its power. He will is not conquered by temptation, sin, whatever, but only by itself (Ch. 5, 342-343). Even when lying resistance is possible: “The will is stronger than temptation…even when conquered by it” (Ch. 6, 344). Anselm is just flying along with the tautology that the body does as it wills itself. For example, for the agent to sin, he/she must more strongly will that he sin, than he not sin, hammers home the points from chapter 5 onward (Ch. 7. 345). He only missteps when he moves on to a indeterminate metaphysics of the will: Anselm here compares the will to sight, as if it is a sense organ (perhaps the sensing of God?). The will occurs strongly or weakly, but has no limits defined for its strength. Unlike sight, no glasses are necessary (Ch. 7, 344). Anselm continues defining the will: Even God cannot take away rectitude from will because a just will only wills what God wants it to will. Therefore, God’s hypothetical anti-willing would only be shadowed or mirrored by the agent’s new bad faith (Ch. 8. 345). This seemingly paradoxical statement echoes the pop religion question ‘could God make a hamburger so big that even God couldn’t eat it?’ Anselm seems to be saying here, metaphorically, that the values God’s positive powers over his negative powers, so God could create a hamburger of any size, but he is incapable of failure (except perhaps failing at failing). “There is nothing freer than a right will because nothing can cause it to cheat itself” (Ch. 9, 345). Because the will does not do evil, it is capable of doing anything, whereas a will that promotes evil is incapable of good. Now Anselm starts getting in to the main of his argument: Committing sin then makes the sinner a slave to sin. Only rectitude (good will) as God wills, so a person cannot have rectitude unless God restores it to the agent. A dead person takes nothing away from self that he would not already lose, so better to die before sinning and go on to an eternal reward (Ch. 10, 346). Will without rectitude is both slavish and free. A person cannot be robbed of rectitude, but needs faith to access rectitude (Ch. 11, 346). Free will needs no further definition. It is not free will for preserving rectitude and nothing else—thought it still does that (Ch. 12, 347). Free will is either being accessed or not. If not, because the person is sinful. If there, it may still be recoverable. Rectitude is only irrecoverable for reprobate angels and the evil dead. This all has to do with the definition of liberty, he claims, and not just the belief in God--admittedly, his definition of liberty is the belief in God (Ch. 14, 348).
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On the primacy of the will Henry of Ghent poses the question ‘does will direct intellect or intellect direct will?’ Intellect being reason and contemplation and will being decision making (349). This seems a strange question to us because it is unnecessary outside of a religious context: the intellect and the will ae part of a larger causal beast--this body. If the intellect is the brain being involved in reflection and contemplation and decision then it is a motivation alike to thoughtful willing, but these are just labels we are using for really very similar actions. Here is how Henry's argument breaks down: He proceeds by trying to find the soul through its secondaries: power is defined by habit, act and object (350). Henry argues that will is superior to intellect (Ibid.). The wills habits include the love of God or charity (Ibid.). Its acts manifest as will being the first mover in the soul (Ibid.). Then its object is being good without qualification for the will (351). Intellect’s habits include: wisdom (350). Its acts include likening itself to the reality known, whereas the will transfers itself to the object willed for its own sake, so that it might enjoy it (Ibid.). Its object being the true, which is good only for the intellect. Henry qualifies the universal as greater than the particular (352). This will lead in to his evaluation that will is superior to intellect, because intellect is used at the direction of willing (so the will wills itself, another tautology). Henry claims that intellect always moves for the will. The will commands the intellect. Here Henry uses the example of the master and servant: the master can direct the servant to do his bidding. The servant can direct the master within his bidding, for instance, walking before him with a light (Ibid.).
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Sources: Anselm of Canterbury. "On Free Will." Medieval Philosophy, Essential Readings with Commentary. Blackwell Readings in the History of Philosophy. Ed. Gyula Klima with Fritz Allhoff and Anand Jayprakash Vaidya. Henry of Ghent. "Quodlibetal Questions (on the primacy of the will)" Medieval Philosophy, Essential Readings with Commentary. Blackwell Readings in the History of Philosophy. Ed. Gyula Klima with Fritz Allhoff and Anand Jayprakash Vaidya. |
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