Voluntarism

VOLUNTARISM. - In contrast to intellectualism (v.), it indicates in general the superiority attributed to the will over the intellect in the life of the spirit, whether in philosophy or in theology. From the predominantly philosophical point of view, in comparison with ancient thought bound to the conception of uncreated matter and which admitted at most a necessary emanation of beings from the One, Christianity takes the side of v. insofar as it admits creation as the effect of the intervention of God's freedom, which, through Providence (v.), preserves and guides every creature to its own end according to its respective essence.

From the point of view of the dogmatic orthodoxy of the structure of the act of faith, Protestantism (especially Lutheran) affirms the most rigid v., insofar as, by abolishing the regula fidei of the supreme authority of the visible Church, it subordinates the content or object of faith to the individual attitude of the single subject (the reduction of fides quae to fides qua). Within the sphere of Christian thought, v. indicates the affirmation of the absolute contingency of the existential order, both as regards factual reality and as regards the laws or moral precepts concerning material and spiritual creatures: thus Scotus, Occam, and the nominalism that stimulated, more or less directly, the Lutheran conception. In modern thought, insofar as it undergoes in its various directions the often convergent influence of nominalism and Protestantism, v. embraces those systems that give prevalence to action over contemplation understood as conscious or unconscious instinct, as Dionysian energy and impulse over the contemplation proper to the Apollonian moment: in this sense - which remains quite vague - the proponents of v. are Descartes and also Spinoza (theory of conatus), Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Fries, Schleiermacher, Marx, Schopenhauer, Ed. v. Hartmann, pragmatism, modernism, Gentile, Bergson, M. Scheler with the philosophy of values; on the contrary, Malebranche, the English empiricists, Hegel, positivism, neo-Kantianism, Croce, phenomenology, who by virtue of the antithesis must be classified as proponents of intellectualism.

Even more uncertain is the qualification of v. in existentialism (v.), because of the diversity of themes and principles that divide the respective schools: in fact, in polemical confrontation with idealism and positivism, existentialism claims the originality of the individual and the autonomy of individual "choice," thereby taking the side of v. The freedom of existence, moreover, in the various existential schools is oriented in multiple and even mutually opposed senses which require a revision of the very qualification of v., which thus loses any claim to an explicit determination. Indeed, already in the forms of theological existentialism - whether Protestant (Kierkegaard, Gogarten, Bultmann, Brunner, Barth, Tillich), or Catholic (F. Ebner, P. Wust, G. Marcel, Th. Steinbüchel, L. Gabriel, M. Reding), and Jewish (M. Buber) - the nature of v. assumes nuances of decisive importance depending on the orientation and the effective "situation" that are attributed to existence qualified as "being before God." More arduous is the designation with regard to philosophical existentialism: in fact, if in it the preeminence of the Dionysian element and the rupture of every "logos" that claims to give the conclusive formula of truth (Nietzsche) are beyond dispute, one must admit that the theory of the cipher and of shipwreck culminating in the "philosophical faith" of the late Jaspers, Heidegger's insistence on resolving the truth of beings in "being itself" in the sense of unlimited "openness" as expressed by the etymological meaning of truth (ἀ-λήθεια "un-concealment," that is, manifestation, presence, Anwesenheit des Anwesendes, which is precisely being itself), the dissociation in J. P. Sartre's Cartesian phenomenology of being into en-soi (world) and pour-soi (subject), and all similar orientations (Heyse, Abbagnano, Camus, S. De Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty) fall, by a passage to the limit, into intellectualism because they deprive the will of any dominion over being, which is left at the mercy of the situation. Blondel's (v.) own fundamental thesis of a resolution of being into acting and therefore of a priority or determination of the will on the part of the good (theory of natura volentis or élan primitif), insofar as it is explicitly linked to Leibnizian dynamism, conceives the structure of action as a function of a harmony of the principles of being such as is envisaged by rationalist optimism.

In general it may be said that in modern philosophy, insofar as evil is reduced to a purely dialectical moment, the principal ground for an effective opposition or tension between v. and intellectualism is thereby lacking. The contrast becomes instead more explicit in the medieval schools. The doctrinal synthesis of St. Thomas is usually presented as decidedly opposed to v., but his procedure involves certain distinctions of systematic value that must be carefully considered. Posing the problem in its various forms: Urum cognitio sit altior amore (In III Sent., dist. 27, q. I, a. 4); Urum felicitas consistat in actu voluntatis (C. Gent., III, 26; Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵇᶜ, q. 3, a. 4), or more explicitly: Urum voluntas sit altior potentia quam intellectus (De Ver., q. 22, a. 11; Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 82, a. 3), the Angelic Doctor distinguishes the following aspects: a) considering the respective objects as such, the object of the intellect, which is the truth of things (and therefore also the reason of the good) in its presence to the subject, is "simpler and higher" than the good itself - which is the object of the will - which regards things in their physical reality external to the subject. b) But if we consider the relation of the faculties to their own object, then as long as it is a question of sensible things the intellect is still superior to the will; but when it is a question of substances that are higher and nobler than the human soul, such as the Angels and above all God, then it is better to love them than to know them, because things are loved as they are in themselves, whereas they are known according to the adaptation to our limited capacity for knowing: "Unde melior est amor Dei quam cognitio rerum corporalium." However, it remains firm that "simpliciter intellectus est nobilior quam voluntas" (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 82, a. 3). In the supernatural order, the first adherence to God, by faith, is indeed an act of the intellect, but insofar as it is moved by the will, and the summit of union with God is through charity, which is proclaimed "forma omnium virtutum" (ibid., 2ᵃ-2ᵇᶜ, q. 23, a. 8). c) There is more. Although, in deference to Aristotelian intellectualism, St. Thomas affirms that beatitude consists essentially in the "contemplation" of the divine essence (ibid., 1ᵃ-2ᵇᶜ, q. 3, a. 4), he reserves to the will delectatio, fruitio and gaudium. To the therefore customary formula that beatitude consists simpliciter in the acts of the intellect and secundum quid in those of the will (cf. loc. cit., spec. De ver., q. 22, a. 11; Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 82, a. 3), one may prefer as a final formula the more comprehensive one of the Lectura in Matthaeum, also inspired by Aristotle, which attributes beatitude substantialiter to the apprehension of the highest intelligible, which is God, formaliter to the acts of love and delectatio on the part of the will (Cf. Expos. super ev. Matth., 5, 1; ed. R. Cai, Turin 1951, n. 409, p. 66 a). But this formula, particularly felicitous, seems to have left no trace in the Thomist school.

Voluntarism properly so called asserts itself as a characteristic of the Franciscan school: in a still uncertain form in Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, and in systematic form in Scotus, in whom the thesis of the superiority of the will over the intellect seems to derive from Henry of Ghent's direct polemic against the position of St. Thomas and from an exclusive consideration of the third moment of the Thomist position, when it affirms that both "in via" and "in patria" the will is superior to the intellect "in quantum voluntas actu suo movetur ad volendum et diligendum superiora intelligibilia et terminatur ad ea magis quam intellectus" (Rep. Paris, I, IV, d. 49, q. II, n. 18). At n. 20 the conclusion: "Dico igitur... quod beatitudo est essentialiter et formaliter in actu voluntatis, quo simpliciter et solum attingitur bonum optimum quo perfruatur" (terminology that does not seem irreconcilable with the final Thomist terminology indicated above). With the critical edition of Scotus, the close dependence of the Subtle Doctor on the coryphaeus of Parisian antinomianism, Henry of Ghent, is now demonstrated (cf. 1ᵃ q. Ut Theologia sit scientia practica vel speculativa, in Ordinatio, Prologus, part 5ᵃ; Scotus, Opera Omnia, Vatican ed. 1950, p. 152 ff.).

The polemic against the Thomist position in the Franciscan school is already announced in the Correctorium fratris Thomae of G. De la Mare (cf. Le Correctorium corruptorii Quare, ed. P. Glorieux, Kain 1927, artt. 49, 50 and 51, p. 208 ff.) and in the Minister General of the Friars Minor Gonsalvo of Spain, a contemporary of Scotus (cf. his Quaestiones disputatae et de Quodlibet, ed. L. Amorós, Florence-Quaracchi 1935, p. 371 ff.). Voluntarism takes on a precise doctrinal meaning in the primacy of the will that is meant to be introduced also into the divine life and its relations to creatures. Thus for Scotus the precepts of the first table are immutable, but not those of the second table concerning one's neighbor, which are in themselves contingent as is the creature to which they refer and which God could also modify (Op. Oxoniense, I, III, d. 37, q. I, n. 8). On the whole question, v. E. Gilson, J. Duns Scot, Introduction à ses positions fondamentales, Paris 1952, p. 601 ff. and the App. Alphabetum Scoti, theses 64-77, p. 679 ff.). Voluntarism reaches its extreme formula in nominalism, especially that of Ockham and his followers, with the suppression of any distinction among the divine attributes, for example, between intellect and will in God; there then also disappears the Scotist distinction between the precepts of the first and second table, so much so that "odire (sic!) Deum potest esse actus rectus in via et a Deo praeceptus" (this is art. 5 of the condemnation of Ockham; cf. E. Amann, Occam, in DThC, XI, col. 894).

It is in this identifying, first, of "voluntas ut natura" and "voluntas ut facultas" on the part of the first Franciscan school and of Scotus, and then in the identification without residue of intellect and will (in God) on the part of Ockham and nominalism, that the modern conception of spirit as autonomous subjectivity is prepared, drawing from itself at once the content and the norm of its own actualization.

Cornelio Fabro