Roczniki Filozoficzne

G.E.M. Anscombe put her finger on an inconsistency in Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics: Aristotle seems to claim that whatever results from deliberation is the object of choice, and he admits that the akrates deliberates at times quite successfully, yet he denies that the akrates makes a choice. She provides a solution: A choice (she thinks Aristotle should have said) is not just whatever results from deliberation but only if the goal at which the deliberation aims was itself chosen, which she interprets as constituting object of the agent’s will (βούλησις [boulēsis]). I examine this Anscombian solution, point out its diverse shortcomings (infinite regress, the inscrutability of the lineage of choices, the unachievability of the primordial goal) and yet I attempt to improve upon it. To this aim I put up for consideration whether such (post-)primordial choices as Anscombe seems to require are not, after all, sometimes made, viz. in the light of one’s idea of living well, and if they are not at least in principle translatable into goals that we can reasonably hope to achieve.

In the text, I discuss the metatheoretical aspects of a history of the origins and development of the notion of free will. I begin with the notion of a speculative concept. Since the will is a speculative concept there is no unequivocal definition of this notion. For this reason the study of the history of this notion is particularly difficult, since ancient authors have operated on different theories of willing and freedom, which were not always mutually compatible. Next, I discuss the theories of willing and action of select authors, that had a significant influence on the later development of the theory of the will. I discuss the notion of choice in Plato, the notions of wish and choice in Aristotle, the notion of assent in the Stoics, the theory of freedom of Epicurus, the theory of choice of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the concept of will in Augustine of Hippo, and the theory of will in Maximus the Confessor.

Artykuł podejmuje próbę scharakteryzowania trzech kluczowych kontrowersji doktrynalnych w epoce renesansu karolińskiego, mianowicie: sporu o Eucharystię, sporu o tzw. trina deitas oraz o predestynację. Trzon artykułu stanowi kontrowersja o predestynację, której głównym bohaterem był Gottschalk z Orbais. Artykuł referuje cztery węzłowe kwestie związane z tym problemem: (i) pojęcie Boga, (ii) rozumienie łaski, natury i wolnej woli, (iii) relacji przedwiedzy do predestynacji, (iv) nauki o Odkupieniu, tj. w szczególności stosunku sprawiedliwości do miłosierdzia. Tekst w przeważającej mierze jest próbą interpretacji tekstów z epoki, głównie Gottschalka z Orbais i jego adwersarza Hinkmara z Reims. We wnioskach artukuł wskazuje na trudności w dyskutowanym problemie i przedstawia perspektywę rozwiązania problemu w wiekach następnych.

De praedestinatione Eriugeny miało być jego głosem w kontrowersji wywołanej przez Gott- schalka z Orbais wokół predestynacji. Dzieło to, choć odrzucało poglądy Gottschalka na temat podwójnej predestynacji, spotkało się z ostrą krytyką i potępieniem. Jednym z powodów takiego stanu rzeczy było niewątpliwie Eriugeny specyficzne rozumienie wolności woli, czemu przyjrzę się w innym tekście. Tutaj chciałabym się skupić na drugiej, istotnej przyczynie odrzucenia dzieła Eriugeny, którą był — jak sądzę — jego prescholastyczny projekt racjonalizacji wiary w duchu św. Augustyna, ale z zastosowaniem „metody” Boecjusza i Capelli. Wydaje się, że współcześni Eriugeny nie byli jeszcze gotowi na przyjęcie jego idei vera philosophia, która zarazemjest vera religio. Mistrzami Eriugeny byli tutaj Ojcowie Kościoła i jego intencją było kontynuowanie na swój własny sposób ich drogi zrozumienia wiary.

A starting point of this paper is a consideration and confrontation of the various meanings of the term “will” formulated and discussed in twelfth century anthropology. A significant part of this historical research is devoted to such issues as the characteristics and specific activity of the human will, its relation to the whole domain of the desire, particularly that of the sensual desire, and especially the mutual — functional and hierarchical — relationship between will and reason as the cognitive faculty. On the ground of the critical and comparative analysis of the text-sources (including the works of Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of Saint-Victor, as well as the collections of sentences of known and unknown authors), author of the paper explores the views of just mentionnned and other thinkers of this time on the belonging of the will to the domain of human rationality, on the participation of the intellect in the will’s decisions and choices, one the one hand, and on will’s autonomy and its possibility of self-moving, on the other. He focuses his scrutiny on how the twelfth century thinkers try to explicate a phenomenon of free choice or free decision and to answer to a questions concerning a proper subject, source, efficient cause or necessary and sufficient condition of the human freedom in the context of the medieval disputes between voluntarism and intellectualism in the domain of anthropology.

The paper deals with the fourteenth century theological discussion on the God’s and human free will. The dramatis personae are William of Ockham and Thomas Bradwardine. In his opus magnum entitled De causa Dei contra Pelagianum... Bradwardine recalls a quarrel between St. Augustine and Pelagius concerning free will, free choice and predestination. Considering yourself as the true Augustinian, Bradwardine accuses Ockham of being the Pelagian. The paper presents opinions of both English theologians against the background of Bradwardine critics of semi- pelagianism.

Harry Frankfurt’s concept of autonomy that has been acknowledged as one of the most important theories of autonomy underlines the essential role of a moral agent’s ability to reflect on herself and her life. The core element of the concept is the ability of a moral agent to formulate first as well as second order desires. Intriguing seems the fact that we can find the concepts referring to the complexity of the will and its first and second order acts already in medieval thought. In this paper I examine the development of the terminology and argumentation employed in these medieval concepts which analyze first and second order acts of the will as well as the subtle difference between various acts of the will. I focus on the concepts formulated until the first half of the 13th century pointing out to the terminology and arguments which became the point of departure for late medieval theories of the will.

The aim of the article is to present some aspects of Paul Ricreur’s thought, especially his reflection on the servile will. Firstly I present Ricreur’s philosophy of will (in the context of phenomenology of the voluntary and involuntary) and the concept of fallibility. Then I demonstrate the main aspects of Ricreurian rethinking and enlarging of Husserl’s phenomenology what leads to hermeneutic formula: the symbol gives rise to thought. Eventually, I argue that Ricreur’s hermeneutic phenomenology creates a specified anthropological view and understanding of the human condition. This understanding will later become a part of the ‘hermeneutics of the self.’

The aim of the article is to present and to compare the view on human freedom called hard incompatibilism with the contemporary Christian doctrine on human free will. Hard incompati- bilism claims that human free will understood both in a libertarian and compatibilist way does not exist. One stresses in the paper that there is a similarity between hard incompatibilism and Christian wisdom rooted in the Bible and this similarity consists in the fact that humans are deeply dependent in their existence on external conditions. Hard incompatiblism identifies that conditions simply as the external or physical world and Christian wisdom points to God as an ontological and axiological foundation of human being and prospects. However, one argues in the paper that the doctrine of human freedom and responsibility for sin and moral evil is a crucial part of the Christian theology and philosophy. Thus, the Christian doctrine is incoherent with hard incompatibilism. There is a proposal, put forth in the last part of the article, how one can reconcile metaphysical indeterminism — which is coherent with hard incompatibilism — with the libertarian doctrine on the human free will, which is coherent with the Christian view on the nature of human freedom.