Abstract
This chapter outlines some of the components of the ‘free will’ as presented in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. The ‘free will’ can be said to incorporate three qualities: thumos, meaning an aggressive, unstoppable desire for honor; reason; and also a specifically practical or ‘calculative’ mode of reason, one that focused on deliberation and making prudent choices. Aristotle proposed the example of the Athenian leader, Pericles, as the sort of person who combined all three of these qualities. In his discussions of free will, Aristotle also created a precedent for seeing free will in a political context.
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Notes
- 1.
Erasmus , “On the Freedom of the Will,” 79. It should be noted that Erasmus’s entire humanist project was premised on the power of rhetoric to convert people to God; if the free will could not move humans in this direction, rhetoric’s efficacy would be considerably lessened.
- 2.
“Council of Trent -1545–1563: Session 6,” in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Tanner , 2:672. It should also be noted that the Catholic position was not uncomplicated. The extensive series of events involving the Controversy de Auxiliis (1582–1607) showed Catholic theologians (specifically Jesuits and Dominicans) debating human free will in relation to the will of God. The Jesuits, who made a larger space for free will, accused their opponents of thinking like the Protestants Luther and Calvin. The Dominicans, for their part, said the Jesuit position was Pelagian. For an extended study, see R.J. Matava , Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Báñez, Physical Premotion, and the Controversy de Auxiliis Revisited (Leiden, Netherlands : Koninklijke Brill NV, 2016).
- 3.
Luther, “On the Bondage of the Will,” 139.
- 4.
Bullinger, Fiftie Godlie and Learned Sermons, 591.
- 5.
Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.7, 264.
- 6.
Theodore Beza, A Briefe Declaration, 28.
- 7.
Perkins, “A Treatise of Gods Free Grace and Mans Free-Will,” in Workes , 1:730.
- 8.
“Formula of Concord” (1577), 492.
- 9.
Qtd. in Baird Tipton , Hartford Puritanism, 168. Probably the Reformer who made the greatest allowances for the power of human free will was Melanchthon who, as Gregory Graybill shows, revised the Augsburg Confession in 1540 (the Augsburg Confession Variata ) to highlight the role played by free will in the process of prevenient grace. Evangelical Free Will, 229. Graybill also argues that Melanchthon’s position can be termed:
evangelical free will—that is, free choice in conversion combined with a soteriology of forensic justification. The free operation of the human will in choosing to have faith in God was instrumental rather than causative for salvation . It was the passive means by which salvation was received rather than the active means by which it was earned, 222 (emphasis in original).
As Melanchthon cleverly put it, what was provided by the human subject in the process of cooperating with grace was not an acceptance or rejection of the offered grace, but a ‘trust’ in it. See Graybill , 268. That Melanchthon was so careful with his language and that both Calvin and the Lutheran theologian, Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520–1575), challenged Melanchthon points to the non-normativity of his belief on this point in relation to other Protestants.
- 10.
Luther, “On the Bondage of the Will,” 140.
- 11.
Perkins, “A Treatise of Gods Free Grace and Mans Free-Will,” in Workes , 1:737.
- 12.
Augustine, Confessions, 244 (10.36).
- 13.
Robert G. Hunter , Shakespeare and the Mystery of God’s Judgments (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1976), 165.
- 14.
See Albrecht Dihle , The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982); Charles H. Kahn , “Discovering the Will from Aristotle to Augustine,” in The Question of ‘Eclecticism’: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, eds. J.M. Dillon and A.A. Long (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 234–59; and Michael Frede , A Free Will: Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011). For an overview of the development of ‘free will’ as a concept in early Western philosophy, see Richard Sorabji, “The Concept of the Will from Plato to Maximus the Confessor,” in The Will and Human Action: From Antiquity to the Present Day, eds. Thomas Pink and M.W. F. Stone (London and New York: Routledge, 2004): 6–28.
- 15.
T. H. Irwin suggests that ‘intentional’ is a good translation for hekousion. The Development of Ethics, A Historical and Critical Study, Volume I: From Socrates to the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 162. For a discussion of automatoi, see Monte Ransome Johnson, “Nature, Spontaneity, and Voluntary Action in Lucretius,” in Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science, eds. Daryn Lehoux , A.D. Morrison , and Alison Sharrock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 99–130. Johnson suggests, reasonably, that automatoi is analogous to the Latin term sponte, 99, 115. Both terms have been translated in the past as ‘free will,’ but that translation is now considered inaccurate.
- 16.
For instance, Aristotle noted, “it is only voluntary actions for which praise or blame are given.” Nicomachean Ethics, 117 (3.1.1; 1109b) and also 143 (3.5.2–5; 1113b). For a discussion of ‘free choice’ in Aristotle, particularly as it relates to the voluntary, eph’ hemin, and conceptions of praise and blame (and which focuses specifically on this passage), see Susanne Bobzien, “Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 11113b7-8 and Free Choice,” in What is Up to Us?: Studies on Agency and Responsibility in Ancient Philosophy, eds. Pierre Destrée, Ricardo Salles , and Marco Zingano (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2014), 59–74. Bobzien concludes that Aristotle is not expressing views on ‘free will’ in the passage, at least to the extent that Aristotle does not imagine the possibility of an agent making choices opposite to the ones actually made.
- 17.
As Charles Chamberlain explains, prohairesis is often translated as ‘choice,’ but the term might be best thought of as a ‘process,’ proceeding “from the selecting from deliberation to the point at which desire and reason concur.” “The Meaning of Prohairesis in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 114 (1984), 153–4. Chamberlain suggests ‘commitment’ as a proper translation of the term, 157. Anthony Kenny translates it as ‘purposive choice’ in his Aristotle’s Theory of the Will (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 69. Wei Liu argues for ‘decision.’ Wei Liu , “Aristotle on Prohairesis.” Labyrynth 18.2 (2016), 54. For a discussion of prohairesis in Aristotle, who she says was the first “to put the noun prohairesis to systematic use,” see Karen Margrethe Nielsen, “Deliberation and Decision in the Magna Moralia and Eudemian Ethics,” in Virtue, Happiness, Knowledge: Themes from the Work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin, eds. David O. Brink, Susan Sauvé Meyer , and Christopher Shields (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 197–215.
- 18.
Risto Saarinen, Weakness of the Will in Medieval Thought: From Augustine to Buridan (Brill: Leiden, New York, Köln 1994), 11. Karen Margrethe Nielsen writes that, “Instead of translating ‘akrasia’ as ‘weakness of will,’ generations of scholars have been taught to prefer alternatives such as ‘incontinence,’ [or] ‘lack of self-mastery.’” ‘Aristotle,’ in The Routledge Companion to Free Will, eds. Kevin Timpe , Meghan Griffith , and Neil Levy (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 230.
- 19.
See, for instance, Diehle, Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 133.
- 20.
Giovanni Reale proposes Seneca who, “for the first time in classical thought … speaks of the will as a distinct power apart from knowledge.” A History of Ancient Philosophy, trans. John R. Catan . 4 vols. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985–1990), 4:64. Michael Frede suggests Epictetus in his survey, A Free Will, 44, 77. Kathleen Gibbons explores the case for Origen in her “Human Autonomy and its Limits in the Thought of Origen of Alexandria.” The Classical Quarterly 66.2 (2016), 673–90. She concludes that “early Christian preoccupations with soteriology injected a new set of concerns into ancient discussions of self-determination and moral responsibility,” 690.
- 21.
Sorabji, “The Concept of the Will,” 6. Susanne Bobzien argues convincingly for Alexander of Aphrodisias (born c. 200) in “The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem.” Phronesis 43.2 (1998), 133–75. Bobzien says that Alexander was the first thinker to provide a “full and unambiguous statement of freedom” in relation to what could be called the will, 143. This is because of his introduction of the concept of “freedom to do otherwise,” 143.
- 22.
For some brief comments on this possibility in Plato, see Sorabji, “The Concept of the Will,” 23 (footnote one).
- 23.
Saarinen, Weakness of Will in Renaissance and Reformation Thought, 7. In the “Republic,” Plato referred to the tripartite soul and its specific components several times. For example, see Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1072, 440e; and 1188, 580d–581c. Aristotle’s division of the members of the polis into three groups (the “Life of Enjoyment … the Life of Politics, and thirdly, the Life of Contemplation”) at the start of the Nicomachean Ethics provides a similar breakdown of social categories expressed in terms of psychology, reason, and ethics. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 13, 15 (1.5.2–3; 1095b).
- 24.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works 1071, 439d–e.
- 25.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1071, 439e–440b.
- 26.
Shirley Darcus Sullivan , Aeschylus’ Use of Psychological Terminology: Traditional and New (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 95. See also Shirley Darcus Sullivan, Psychological and Ethical Ideas: What Early Greeks Say (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 54–67; and Caroline P. Caswell, A Study of Thumos in Early Greek Epic (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990).
- 27.
Koziak maintains that the “Republic” “severely narrows the Homeric conception of thumos” into one that “concentrates almost exclusively on the experience of anger.” Barbara Koziak , Retrieving Political Emotion: Thumos, Aristotle, and Gender (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 40, 39.
- 28.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1050, 414b, 415a.
- 29.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1188, 581a.
- 30.
Gordon Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition: Anger’s Privilege (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 12. Braden also notes that the “thymoeides is the proud white horse of the soul’s chariot” in the Phaedrus.
- 31.
Angela Hobbs , Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 8.
- 32.
Kenneth Dorter , “Weakness and Will in Plato’s Republic,” in Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present, ed. Tobias Hoffmann (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 11.
- 33.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1172, 561b–c.
- 34.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1109, 486b.
- 35.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1161, 549c.
- 36.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1161, 549d–e.
- 37.
The explicit political reference is to Laconia or Sparta . Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1157, 545a.
- 38.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1061, 429b.
- 39.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1061, 429c–d.
- 40.
Epictetus , “Arrian’s Discourses of Epictetus,” in Epictetus: The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments. 2 vols. Trans. W. A. Oldfather (Cambridge, MA: Loeb-Harvard University Press, 1926, 1929), 1:12–3.
- 41.
Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition, 17.
- 42.
Richard Sorabji argues that for Epictetus , unlike Aristotle (from whom Epictetus generally borrows his use of prohairesis and his attentiveness to it), the prohairesis became less the process of deliberation itself than a quality within the person which “no one can force.” Richard Sorabji, “Epictetus on Prohairesis and Self,” in The Philosophy of Epictetus, eds. Theodore Scaltsas and Andrew S. Mason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 91. Gordon Braden cites two additional examples of Stoic thumos that lead him to conclude that Stoic philosophy may be “less a less a philosophy of its announced themes of reason or virtue than a philosophy of the will.” Braden notes both Seneca’s remark in De Beneficiis (6.23.1) that “no external will commands the gods, but their own will is their eternal law,” and Marcus Aurelius’s claim (8.48 and phrased in militaristic metaphors) that the hegimonicon “does nothing that it does not will, even if it refuses irrationally.” Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition, 20.
- 43.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1061, 429c.
- 44.
Plato, “Republic,” in Plato, Complete Works, 1073, 442b. This point is made implicitly by Aristotle when he talks of the political class aiming merely for the goal of ‘honour,’ but being able to elevate this quest into one for a nobler ‘virtue,’ presumably under the influence of finer men who represent the higher reason. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 15 (1.5.4–6; 1095b–1096a).
- 45.
Indeed, Giles Pearson writes that if thumos really meant only ‘anger’ to Aristotle, this would make its purview considerably narrower than that of the epithumia or the boulesis. The implication is that thumos in Aristotle might be better perceived in a broader fashion (an approach that would have strong support in the very wide variety of meanings of thumos in early Greek writings). See Giles Pearson, Aristotle on Desire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 220–1. For instance, Barbara Koziak argues that in Aristotle’s Politics, “thumos is not primarily the seat of anger but the seat of affection … affection to a generous view of the other, not as an enemy but as a potentially related stranger.” Retrieving Political Emotion, 109.
- 46.
Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Loeb-Harvard University Press, 1932; rpt. 1950), 565–7 (7.6.1; 1327b). Aristotle describes them as being ‘psuchos’ or cold, in opposition to the traditionally ‘hot’ thumos.
- 47.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 168–9 (3.8.11; 1117a) and 330–1 (6.2.5; 1139a).
- 48.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 166–7 (3.8.11; 1116b) and 163 (3.8.3; 1116a). For a reading of such passages that presents thumos in a less flattering light, see William V. Harris who sees them as Aristotle’s praise for the “quasi-courage of the barbarians.” Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 98.
- 49.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 128–9 (3.1.27; 1111b) and 406–7 (7.6.1; 1149b).
- 50.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 168–9 (3.8.12; 1117a).
- 51.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 331 (6.2.5; 1139b). In his discussions of Aristotle, Aquinas referred to this passage often. In the Summa Theologica, he wrote that “the word choice (electionis) implies something belonging to the reason or intellect, and something belonging to the will (voluntatem): for the Philosopher says … that choice is either ‘intellect influenced by appetite or appetite influenced by intellect.’” “Of Choice, Which Is an Act of the Will with Regard to the Means,” in Summa Theologica . 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:643 (First Part of the Second Part; Q13. A1). Aquinas concludes that, for Aristotle, “choice is principally an act of the appetitive power.” Thus, for Aquinas , it follows that “free-will is an appetitive power.” “Of Free-Will,” in Summa Theologica . 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:420 (First part; Q83. A3). Yet Aquinas also follows Aristotle in stressing that the free will is part of the ‘intellectual’ appetite and not the lower ‘sensitive appetite’ which included only the ‘concupisciple’ passions (i.e. the epithumia ) and the ‘irascible’ passions (i.e. the thumos). Thomas Aquinas , ‘Of the Power of Sensuality,’ in Summa Theologica. 3 vols. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947 [1911–1925]), 1:411 (First part; Q81.A2).
- 52.
Aristotle wrote: “children and the lower animals as well as men are capable of voluntary action (hekousion) but not of choice (prohairesis).” Nicomachean Ethics, 129 (3.2.2; 1111b).
- 53.
For this sensible definition of boulesis, see Pearson, Aristotle on Desire, 140–69. The other two, lower, desires are, as with Plato, the thumos and the epithumia . Pearson’s definition allows one to stress the close connection between the three parts of Plato’s soul in the “Republic” and Aristotle’s three-part formulation of the nature of desire in the Nicomachean Ethics.
- 54.
F. E. Peters translates dianoia as ‘understanding’ (perhaps in a mathematical sense), nous as ‘intelligence/mind’ (capable of intuitively grasping first principles), and sophia as “wisdom/theoretical wisdom” (in contrast to phronesis or practical wisdom). Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon. New York: New York University Press, 1967), 37, 132–3, 179.
- 55.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 326–7 (6.1.4–6; 1139a).
- 56.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 131 (3.2.7–9; 1112a). But Giles Pearson notes that Aristotle “does not explicitly claim in either the NE [Nicomachean Ethics] or the EE [Eudemian Ethics] that boulêsis is rational.” Aristotle on Desire, 189.
- 57.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 326–7 (6.1.5; 1139a).
- 58.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 67 (1.13.20; 1103a).
- 59.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 339 (6.5.6; 1140b). It is true that Aristotle referred to prudence as an intellectual rather than a moral virtue (Nicomachean Ethics, 67–9 [1.13.20; 1103a]), but he also tied the two terms very closely together, concluding “it is not possible to be good in the true sense without Prudence, nor to be prudent without Moral Virtue.” Nicomachean Ethics, 373 (6.13.6; 1144b). Aquinas too called the will an intellectual rather than an appetitive function and, at least at some points, claimed Aristotle had done the same: “And in this way Augustine puts the will in the mind; and the Philosopher, in the reason (De Anima iii. 9).” Thomas Aquinas, “Of the Intellectual Powers,” in Summa Theologica, 1:397 (First Part; Q 79. A1. R2).
- 60.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 343 (6.7.3; 1141a); 619 (10.8.1; 1178a).
- 61.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 11 (1.4.1–2; 1095a).
- 62.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 339 (6.5.5; 1140b).
- 63.
Sullivan, Aeschylus’ Use of Psychological Terminology, 96.
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Gleckman, J. (2019). The Three Components of Free Will in Plato and Aristotle: Thumos, Reason, and Deliberative Reason. In: Shakespeare and Protestant Poetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9599-5_12
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