Thomas of Sutton’s Intellectualist Doctrine of the Will’s Self-Motion

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-220
Author(s):  
Michael Szlachta
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Will ◽  
Self Motion

Thomas Aquinas famously draws a distinction between a potency in the will to the specification of its act and a potency in the will to the exercise of its act. He also thinks that the will is moved to the specification of its act by the good apprehended by reason and to the exercise of its act by itself. Although Aquinas’s distinction has many attractive features, his explanation of how the will moves itself to the exercise of its act (namely, by moving reason) is not adequate; it does not really explain how the will’s potency to the exercise of its act is actualized. I argue that, by distinguishing between three modes of self-motion, effective, accidental, and consecutive, and two types of potency, essential and accidental, the early Oxford Thomist Thomas of Sutton (ca. 1250–1315) presents a plausible development of Aquinas’s distinction that addresses this problem; the will, by willing some end, actualizes its accidental potency to willing some means to that end, thereby moving itself consecutively. Although I think that Sutton does give us the means to clear up some of the confusion surrounding Aquinas’s view on the will, I also motivate some doubts about whether he really succeeds in preserving what makes Aquinas’s distinction so attractive in the first place.

Predestination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George I. Mavrodes
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Other ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Equal Condition ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Determining Factor

Predestination appears to be a religious or theological version of universal determinism, a version in which the final determining factor is the will or action of God. It is most often associated with the theological tradition of Calvinism, although some theologians outside the Calvinist tradition, or prior to it (for example, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas), profess similar doctrines. The idea of predestination also plays a role in some religions other than Christianity, perhaps most notably in Islam. Sometimes the idea of predestination is formulated in a comparatively restricted way, being applied only to the manner in which the divine grace of salvation is said to be extended to some human beings and not to others. John Calvin, for example, writes: We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death. (Institutes, bk 3, ch. 21, sec. 5) At other times, however, the idea is applied more generally to the whole course of events in the world; whatever happens in the world is determined by the will of God. Philosophically, the most interesting aspects of the doctrine are not essentially linked with salvation. For instance, if God is the first cause of all that happens, how can people be said to have free will? One answer may be that people are free in so far as they act in accordance with their own motives and desires, even if these are determined by God. Another problem is that the doctrine seems to make God ultimately responsible for sin. A possible response here is to distinguish between actively causing something and passively allowing it to happen, and to say that God merely allows people to sin; it is then human agents who actively choose to sin and God is therefore not responsible.

Thomas Aquinas and the Will

1990 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-134
Author(s):  
Frederick E. Crowe ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Will

scholarly journals The will and the need for interpretation of Thomas Aquinas

2013 ◽  
pp. 115-123
Author(s):  
Natalia Kovtun
Keyword(s):  
Social Activity ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The World ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
High Level

Fundamental social changes in any society are impossible without the formation of a high level of social activity of the individual in particular and society as a whole. In the context of this important role plays the study of the correlation of will and need as an important precondition of social activity. Actually, it is the will as a creative impulse to action not only the basis of awareness of needs, but also the ascending position of the daily choice of man. On the basis of awareness and focus on the choice of the direction of activity in the individual and public consciousness formed a holistic image of the purpose of the practical transformation of the world of nature and the world of culture. In the act of will, the subject legitimizes and authorizes the subjective desire, which is constituted in this process as objectively directed meta activity.

scholarly journals Human Will, Human Dignity, and Freedom: A Study of Giorgio Benigno Salviati's Early Discussion of the Will, Urbino 1474-1482

Vivarium ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-114
Author(s):  
Amos Edelheit
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Prolific Author ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theology And Philosophy ◽  
Early Discussion

AbstractThis article presents the first detailed account of Giorgio Benigno Salviati's discussion of the will written in Urbino during the mid-1470s and the early 1480s. A Franciscan friar and a prominent professor of theology and philosophy, Salviati was a prolific author and central figure in the circles of Cardinal Bessarion in Rome and of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence. This article focuses on his defense of the Scotist theory of the will. It considers its fifteenth-century context, in which both humanist and scholastic thinkers dealt with the question of the intellect and the will. While basing himself partly on authorities such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, Salviati is clearly aware of the novelty of his theory, and its important implications for ethics and theology.

scholarly journals Teorii despre dreptul natural în Antichitate și Evul Mediu

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 540-566
Author(s):  
Arthur Mihăilă ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Will ◽  
Will Of God

Natural law philosophers believe that human laws must be defined by moral principles that have origins in human nature or the will of God. In this paper the author analyzes the most important natural law theories from Antiquity and Middle Ages. Natural law tradition has its roots in the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. That philosophy was resuscitated in the twentieth century after the Holocaust and continues to be influential to the present day.

The Inner Cathedral: Mental Architecture in High Scholasticism

Vivarium ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter King
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
William Of Ockham ◽  
John Duns Scotus ◽  
Psychological Experience ◽  
Faculty Psychology ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
The Will ◽  
Personal Agents

AbstractMediaeval psychological theory was a “faculty psychology”: a confederation of semiautonomous sub-personal agents, the interaction of which constitutes our psychological experience. One such faculty was intellective appetite, that is, the will. On what grounds was the will taken to be a distinct faculty? After a brief survey of Aristotle's criteria for identifying and distinguishing mental faculties, I look in some detail at the mainstream mediaeval view, given clear expression by Thomas Aquinas, and then at the dissenting views of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. I conclude with some reflections on why the mainstream mediaeval view was discarded by Descartes.

scholarly journals Funciones normativas y voluntad de signo

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (44) ◽  
pp. 27-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto J. Vernengo
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Empirical Expression ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Relationship

Legal philosophers and logicians study problems related to the syntactical and semantical aspects of norms, without worrying about the ilocutionary aspects of their use. With Kelsen 's posthumous work, the Allgemeine Theorie der Normen, and the new preoccupations of deontic logicians, it seems that what is called the "normative functions" of norms are becoming a central point of the discussions between logicians and philosophers of law and moralists. Traditionally, the ilocutionary aspects of norms has been construed as the question of the empirical manifestation of the will, as it is suppossed that every norm expresses somebody's will. Nevertheless, that thesis -although traditional in legal and moral thought- implies some metaphysical presuppositions concerning the ontological status of what is called "the will" which must be brought to light if jurisprudence is going to attain a modern scientific approach. In Kelsen's work it seems clear that the relationship between das Sollen and das Wollen is where that old metaphysical idea regains strength. It can be found in Thomas Aquinas -and the c1assicalscholastics- a sort of theory on the empirical expression of acts of will, know as signa voluntatis, which keeps close and analogy with the normative functions of modern jurisprudence. Perhaps the theory of positive law, as manifestation of signa voluntatis, would establish a bridge between modern legal positivism and some forms of classical natural law.

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