Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

As one of the three sources of the moral act in Aquinas’s philosophy, intention is fundamental to the understanding of his ethics. And while intention’spsychological and linguistic dimensions have been appreciated recently, after the appearance of Anscombe’s Intention, the Aristotelian physical framework ofAquinas’s thought on the issue has been neglected. Taking only the end of the agent into account in intentional analysis has led to incorrect interpretations of moral action, particularly among new natural law theorists. In this paper, I propose an understanding of intentio and praeter intentionem in Aquinas that elucidates his distinctions regarding justified killing, as well the bearing of intention in intentional action and moral acts.

The Arabic tradition knew Alexander’s treatises On Fate and On Providence. Alexander criticizes the Stoic determinism with some peripatetic arguments. In those treatises we can find, at least, two positions: the peripatetic and “libertarian” position represented by Alexander, and Stoic determinism. A very similar discussion can be found in Islamic tradition. As S. Van den Bergh has insisted, Islamic theological schools had some Stoic influences. One of the issues in which we can find some common views is, precisely, the problem of determinism and free will. The aim of this paper is to show that the kasb (acquisition)doctrine of the Islamic theologians Asharites is very similar to Stoic determinism in its compatibilist version: both, Stoics and Asharites, conceive a causal network established by the fate or the providence. From this point of view we have to discuss which is the true agent of the natural and human acts that happen in this world. If the providence guides every act, the natural causality and the free will should be denied. On the one hand, I will present some arguments from the most representative Asharite theologian, al-Ghazali, to support a kind of compatibilist determinism; from the other hand, I will evaluate Averroes peripatetic arguments against determinism. Is Averroes more consistent than Alexander or do we have to conclude that al-Ghazali and the Asharites have stronger arguments in order to support the kasb doctrine?

The Aristotelian Ibn Sīnā places Necessary Being as the world’s Efficient Cause. Unlike “the standard” Muslim cosmogony of ex nihilo creation, however,his emanative scheme does not seem to grant Necessary Being freedom the exercise of which may cause the world to exist or not to exist. This paper will focus on Ibn Sīnā’s conception of the efficacy of Necessary Being in his emanative cosmogony. If Necessary Being does not have freedom, how does Ibn Sīnā maintain the causal explanation of the contingent being’s (be)coming into being?

Human ability to freely choose requires knowledge of human nature and the final end of man. For Aristotle, this end is happiness or full flourishing, whichinvolves various virtues. Modern scholarship has led to debate over which virtues are absolutely necessary. Taking into account the hierarchical nature of the soul and the fact that relationships with the divine and with others are necessary for human flourishing, it can be seen that human flourishing requires contemplation, phronesis and all the moral virtues, as perfections of the various parts of the soul. The truly happy person has actualized all of his faculties and potential relationships. Rather than taking one of the standard exclusivist or inclusivist viewpoints on this ‘problem of the two lives,’ this paper argues that a holistic reading of Aristotle’s ethical works requires a hierarchical and relational view of the virtues, with all of them necessary for human flourishing.

This paper explores a possible Platonic grounding of human freedom in the Philebus. The Philebus presents a particularly intruiging account of the humangood and freedom alike in terms of the right relation of nous and pleasure. Through a close analysis of key passages in this dialogue I show how Plato conceives of freedom in terms of the intellect’s ordering and directing of desire and pleasure to genuinely fulfilling ends. The greatest fulfillment of desire comes together with the purest pleasure in the highest actualization of reason in lifelong philosophic activity: the mixed life and good life for human beings.

The aim of this paper is to explain Scotus’s transformation of the Aristotelian view on the difference between rational and irrational potencies. In Metaphysics 9, 2 Aristotle establishes the distinction between rational and nonrational powers and explains their difference in terms of their being ad opposita and ad unum, respectively. In his interpretation Scotus concludes that the most basic division between active principles is the difference between nature and will, rather than the difference between univocal and equivocal agents. Thus, the Aristotelian distinction between rational and non-rational powers has now become a distinction between nature and will. And the criterion for such a difference no longer lies in the contrast between ad unum and ad opposita, but rather is based on the twofold way the potencies can elicit their acts. Therefore, according to Scotus, the key difference between nature and will is the distinction between autonomy and heteronomy.

It is commonly assumed that human beings are free because they have minds and, since they are the only creatures we have encountered that have minds, itis further assumed that they are the only creatures that are free. Elizabeth Anscombe, on the other hand, maintains that freedom, in the sense in which it is identified with the ability to do otherwise, is required for intentional action and, since even thoughtless beasts perform intentional actions, these beasts are also free. She does not deny that humans exercise this freedom in a unique way. But by situating human freedom in a broader context and detaching it from any robust concept of mind she makes the claim that human beings are free that much easier to defend.

A persistent worry in the ethical literature on care and empathy is that the agent is prone to self-sacrifice by the requisite state of engrossment in or engagement of the other. Addressing this worry particularly as expressed in feminist philosophy, I argue that the standard conceptions of self-sacrifice conflate four distinct relations of the self to its autonomous will: self-immolation (destroying one’s own autonomy), self-abnegation (disowning one’s autonomy), self-effacement (devaluing one’s autonomy) and self-donation (dedicating one’s autonomy). The latter, far from being vicious, is from an ethical standpoint the highest realization of autonomy; this claim finds echoes in Robin Dillon’s work on self-respect as well as the personalist philosophy of John Paul II. Self-immolation, self-abnegation, and self-effacement, on the other hand, are characterized by detachment from responsibility, corruption of the boundaries between self and other, and suppression of self-understanding.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ontological character of amicitia in Aquinas. The originality of Aquinas’s theory is found in the ontological foundation expressed by Neoplatonic concepts (unio, unitas, communicatio). By integrating such Neoplatonic concepts with his analysis on the transcendentals (aliquid, unum), I made a new ontological foundation to the theory of amicitia.In order that a man is a one (unum), he must establish himself as something different (aliud quid) in the midst of the relationship with others and then has to return to himself. So long as he stays self-contained without moving outward, he cannot constitute himself as an independent being which is different from other beings (aliquid). The ontological oneness (unitas) as an independent rational substance makes it possible for a man to form the mutual relationship of unity (unio) without losing himself in the midst of the deep relationship with someone else.

The following is a now popular argument for free will skepticism:1. If free will exists, then people make themselves.2. People do not make themselves.3. Thus, free will does not exist.It would make no sense to hold someone responsible, either for what he’s like or what he’s done, unless he has made himself. But no one makes himself. A person’s character is imposed upon him by Nature and others. To rebut, I intend to lean on common usage, according to which 2 is false: the vernacular provides a clear sense in which we do make ourselves. It is the sense in which we speak of a cake being made from ingredients or a statue out of clay.Self-formation sufficient for a free will occurs along these lines. I shall discuss a Compatibilist and a Libertarian version of this project.

Anselm of Canterbury is the first Christian philosopher, perhaps the first philosopher, to offer a systematic analysis of libertarian freedom. His work prefigures that of Robert Kane, and looking at the two philosophers together is helpful in understanding and appreciating the work of each of them. In this paper I show how Anselm adopts a view of choice that foreshadows Kane’s doctrine of ‘plural voluntary control.’ Kane proposes this doctrine as an attempt to answer the ‘luck’ problem. Alfred Mele criticizes this approach, arguing that, unless the agent’s competing desires ultimately originate with the agent himself, he cannotbe considered autonomous. It is true that on both Kane’s and Anselm’s analysis, agents have only a limited area of autonomy. However, an appreciation of theradical implications of this limited autonomy in Anselm’s system shows that plural voluntary control gives the agent significant freedom.

Over the past three decades, I have been developing a distinctive view of free will motivated by a desire to reconcile a non-determinist (incompatibilistor libertarian) view of free will with modern science as well as with recent developments in philosophy. A view of free will of the kind I defend (called a “causalindeterminist” or “event-causal” view in the current literature) did not exist in a developed form before the 1980s, but is now discussed in the philosophical literature as one of three chief options an incompatibilist or libertarian view of free will might take. As such, this view has been the subject of much recent discussion. In this paper, I explain and defend my view of free will, and answer recent criticisms of it. Some of these criticisms are made by Robert Allen in his paper “Self-forming Actions,” a contribution to the seminar of which the present paper is a part. I also respond to Katherin Rogers’ contribution to this seminar “Libertarianism in Kane and Anselm.” Her book, Anselm on Freedom (forthcoming from Oxford), argues that Anselm defended a unique libertarian view of free will, avoiding both Pelagianism and Augustine’s later compatibilism, a view that she argues has affinities to my view of free will. I also discuss these affinities to Anselm in my paper and their theological and well as philosophical implications.