Tobias Hoffmann

From the early reception of Thomas Aquinas up to the present, many have interpreted his theory of liberum arbitrium to imply intellectual determinism: we do not control our choices, because we do not control the practical judgments that cause our choices. In this paper we argue instead that he rejects determinism in general and intellectual determinism in particular, which would effectively destroy liberum arbitrium as he conceives of it. We clarify that for Aquinas moral responsibility presupposes liberum arbitrium and thus the ability to do otherwise, although the ability to do otherwise applies differently to praise and blame. His argument against intellectual determinism is not straightforward, but we construct it by analogy to his arguments against other deterministic threats. The non-determinism of the intellect’s causality with respect to the will results from his claims that practical reasoning is defeasible and that the reasons for actions are not contrastive reasons.

Medieval authors generally agreed that we have the freedom to choose among alternative possibilities. But most medieval authors also thought that there are situations in which one cannot do otherwise, not even will otherwise. They also thought when willing necessarily, the will remains free. The questions, then, are what grounds the necessity or contingency of the will’s acts, and – since freedom is not defined by the ability to choose – what belongs to the essential character of freedom, the ratio libertatis. This article studies medieval theories of freedom without choice from William of Auxerre to William of Ockham and their background in Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux.

This paper intends to show that Aquinas gives a non-deterministic account of free decision. Angelic sin is the eminent test case: ex hypothesi, angels are supremely intelligent and not subject to ignorance, passions, or negatively disposing habits. Nothing predetermines their choice; rather it ultimately depends on their freedom alone. All angels acted based upon reasons, but why certain angels acted for an inadequate reason whereas others for an adequate reason cannot be fully explained. Thomas's action theory allows him to explain angelic choice as contingent and selfdetermined. The salient features of this explanation are transferable to human free decision

Some medieval authors defend free choice by arguing that, even though human choices are indeed caused by the practical judgment about what is best to do here and now, one is nevertheless able to freely influence that practical judgment’s formation. This paper examines Peter Auriol’s account of free choice, which is a quite elaborate version of this approach and which brings its theoretical problems into focus. I will argue in favor of Auriol’s basic theory, but I will also propose an emendation to his theory in order to respond to some problems he leaves unresolved.

This book studies medieval theories of angelology insofar as they made groundbreaking contributions to medieval philosophy. The discussion of angels, made famous by the humanist caricature of ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin’, was nevertheless a crucial one in medieval philosophical debates. All scholastic masters pronounced themselves on angelology, if only in their Sentence commentaries. The questions concerning angelic cognition, speech, free decision, movement, etc. were springboards for profound philosophical discussions that have to do with anthropology and metaphysics no less than with angelology. Angels qua separate substances were of central importance in medieval metaphysics (with questions on universal hylomorphism, the esse- essentia composition of creatures, and those regarding individuation of material and immaterial substances). The doctrine of angels has not been the subject of much study in the history of medieval thought, and the volume fills an important gap in the literature. The chapters offer a well-rounded, if not encyclopedic discussion in the chronological or doctrinal sense. They cover the history of debate from Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius until the later middle ages, but instead of an author-by-author approach, focus rather on seminal ideas with demonstrable relevance to “secular” and modern philosophical concerns.

Are there subjective or objective conditions under which human life is not worth living? Or does human life itself contain the conditions that make it worth living? To find answers to these questions, this paper explores Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Richard of Mediavilla, and John Duns Scotus, who discuss whether the damned in hell can, should, and do prefer non-existence over their existence in pain and moral evil. In light of Aristotle’s teaching that there is a certain pleasure inherent to life itself, I shall argue that even a life that is in important respects painful and unpleasant is still worth living.

Most acts of the will have a complex structure, i.e. wanting A in relation to B . Duns Scotus makes the innovative claim that the will itself is responsible for the order of this complex structure. It does this by causing its own will-dependent relations, which he construes as a kind of mind-dependent relations . By means of these relations, the will can arrange the terms of its will-acts independently of any arrangement proposed by the intellect. This not only allows the structure of one's will-act to diverge from the structure proposed by the intellect's final practical judgement; the structure of the will-act need not even have been considered by the intellect at all. One could, therefore, even will an inconceivable state of affairs. I argue that this theory, which scholars have virtually ignored, is fundamental to Scotus's account of divine, angelic, and human freedom, and that it follows necessarily from his voluntarist understanding of freedom. For Scotus, if the will could not structure its acts independently of the intellect, it would not be free

The paper investigates Aquinas’s explanation of how the incontinent can make moral progress. The incontinent cannot be healed by moral instruction, because they already know what is best, but fail to act accordingly. Their moral knowledge has to be interiorized. Thus by attaining prudence and the moral virtues, moral knowledge becomes practically effective knowledge. Yet these virtues are no remedy for the incontinent, who are still struggling to attain them. By reason and will they can resist individual acts of incontinence, but in order to resist incontinence consistently, they need the assistance of grace.

This article studies Walter Chatton 's account of the connection of the virtues and its relation to the teaching of Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus. Chatton 's position with regard to the connection of temperance, fortitude, and justice is influenced by Henry and yet importantly different from him. Chatton 's teaching on the connection between prudence and the moral virtues closely follows Scotus's view. Both Franciscans frame this problem in terms of the connection between intellect and will. They both deny that having prudence implies possessing the moral virtues on account of the freedom of the will. Furthermore, they deny that prudence presupposes the moral virtues, because they consider it impossible that the will induce the intellect to err.

In this book Tobias Hoffmann studies the medieval free will debate during its liveliest period, from the 1220s to the 1320s, and clarifies its background in Aristotle, Augustine, and earlier medieval thinkers. Among the wide range of authors he examines are not only well-known thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham, but also a number of authors who were just as important in their time and deserve to be rediscovered today. To shed further light on their theories of free will, Hoffmann also explores their competing philosophical explanations of the fall of the angels, that is, the hypothesis of an evil choice made by rational beings under optimal psychological conditions. As he shows, this test case imposed limits on tracing free choices to cognition. His book provides a comprehensive account of a debate that was central to medieval philosophy and continues to occupy philosophers today.

According to Henry of Ghent, akrasia (incontinence or weakness of will) does not presuppose, but rather produces a cognitive defect. By tracing akratic actions and other evil actions to a corruption in the will rather than to a cognitive defect, Henry wants to safeguard their freedom. Though the will is able to reject what the intellect judges as best here and now, strength and freedom of the will increase to the degree that one adheres more firmly to the good. What strengthens the will are the moral virtues, which are essentially virtues of the will.

The most controversial aspect of the interpretation of Scotus’s modal theory concerns the question of whether things are possible because God knows them to be possible, or whether they are possible independently from God. I argue that Scotus thought that the possibles are possibles because of God’s knowledge of them. I adduce a number of relevant texts that previous 20th century discussions of this interpretational problem have not taken into account. In addition, I discuss the modal theory of Francis of Meyronnes (14th century) as well as the reception of Scotus’s modal theory by two Scotists of the 17th century, i.e., John Punch and Bartholomew Mastrius.

While it is unproblematic that someone evil causes further evil, it is difficult to explain how a good person can cause his or her first evil act. Augustine, denying that something good can be the cause of evil, concludes that the first moral evil has only a ‘deficient cause’, not an efficient cause, which is to say that it has no explanation. By contrast, Aquinas and Scotus hold that the first moral evil has a cause, that the cause is something good, and that it is an efficient cause: the will. For Aquinas, the will can cause its first evil act only if it is momentarily non-culpably deficient, in that it does not make the intellect actually consider the moral rule relevant to the choice. For Scotus, no such occurrent deficiency is presupposed in the will causing its first evil act; the will’s freedom suffices. Yet there is surprising agreement: at bottom, Aquinas and Scotus both trace the first moral evil to the will’s ability for alternatives and no further. Thus their view converges with Augustine’s claim that evil ultimately has no efficient cause.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is the text which had the single greatest influence on Aquinas's ethical writings, and the historical and philosophical value of Aquinas's appropriation of this text provokes lively debate. In this volume of new essays, thirteen distinguished scholars explore how Aquinas receives, expands on and transforms Aristotle's insights about the attainability of happiness, the scope of moral virtue, the foundation of morality and the nature of pleasure. They examine Aquinas's commentary on the Ethics and his theological writings, above all the Summa theologiae. Their essays show Aquinas to be a highly perceptive interpreter, but one who also brings certain presuppositions to the Ethics and alters key Aristotelian notions for his own purposes. The result is a rich and nuanced picture of Aquinas's relation to Aristotle that will be of interest to readers in moral philosophy, Aquinas studies, the history of theology and the history of philosophy.

Later medieval theories of free choice differ fundamentally as to the importance they assign to deliberation. Some thinkers hold that the will's choices necessarily agree with the intellect's judgment, obtained by deliberation, of what is most worth choosing in a particular circumstance. They thus think that deliberation provides the object of choice. In addition, they take the control that is essential to free choice to be rooted in deliberation. Others object that deliberation cannot ground free choice since it is itself not originally in our control. They think that one can choose differently from what appears most choiceworthy upon deliberation, and so they deny that the object of choice is exclusively given by deliberation. This paper considers theories of the role of deliberation in free choice held by prominent thirteenth and early fourteenth-century thinkers. It will be shown that there are significant theoretical difficulties on both sides.

The Questions on Aristotle’s Metaphysics is Duns Scotus’s most important philosophical work. While Scotus’s obscurity is proverbial, that work adds additional layers of impenetrability, so much so that its fifteenth-century editor spoke of a chaos metaphysicum. In the last twenty-five years, scholars have brought a lot of clarity to this chaos, which is partly due to the difficulty of Scotus’s thought and writing style, and partly to the complicated textual tradition of this work. A further contribution to greater readability of the Metaphysics commentary is being made by a research team under the direction of Olivier Boulnois, which is undertaking its French translation, enriched by valuable introductory material....

Selon Thomas d’Aquin, l’obéissance consiste à suivre les ordres d’un supérieur. La personne obéissante agit donc selon la raison d’un autre. Cet article étudie les fondements et les conditions d’une obéissance raisonnable. Il est montré que, pour Thomas, le caractère raisonnable de l’obéissance se fonde d’un côté sur un ordre objectif entre les personnes qui sont investies d’une autorité légitime et leurs subordonnés. À cet égard, il sera éclairci par rapport à qui et sous quelles conditions l’obéissance est soit nécessaire, soit non nécessaire, soit illégitime, d’après Thomas. D’un autre côté, l’obéissance raisonnable exige que la personne obéissante discerne la légitimité de l’autorité du supérieur et de l’ordre donné et qu’il le mette en pratique en utilisant sa propre prudence, plutôt que de s’appuyer entièrement sur la prudence du supérieur. Selon Thomas, cela est nécessaire aussi pour les religieux qui font un vœu d’obéissance. Ils renoncent à leur propre volonté en suivant les ordres des supérieurs, mais ils ne renoncent pas à leur intelligence par laquelle ils les évaluent et les mettent en pratique.

This chapter reviews major accounts of free decision of the second half of the thirteenth century, from St. Bonaventure to Duns Scotus. A clear divide between intellectualists and voluntarists is observable beginning in the early 1270s, when the question of whether free decision is founded upon reason or will becomes central. Intellectualists stress the causality of the object apprehended as good at the expense of the will’s self-determination, whereas the reverse emphasis can be observed among voluntarists.

Certain traits of the magnanimous man of the Nicomachean Ethics seem incompatible with gratitude and humility. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas are the first commentators of the Latin West who had access to the integral portrayal of magnanimity in the Nicomachean Ethics. Surprisingly, they welcomed the Aristotelian ideal of magnanimity without reservations. The paper summarizes Aristotle’s account of magnanimity, discusses briefly the transformation of this notion in Stoicism and early scholasticism, and analyzes Albert’s and Thomas’s interpretation of Aristotle. Thomas is found to be a more faithful and ingenious interpreter than Albert. He addresses and solves a number of philosophical problems of Aristotle’s account that still puzzle contemporary interpreters.