VOLUNTARISM. — In opposition to intellectualism (v.), this generally indicates the superiority attributed to the will over the intellect in the life of the spirit, both in philosophy and in theology. From the predominantly philosophical standpoint, in comparison with ancient thought, which was bound to the conception of uncreated matter and 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, who, through Providence (v.), preserves and guides every creature toward its proper end according to its respective essences.
From the standpoint of dogmatic orthodoxy concerning the structure of the act of faith, Protestantism (especially Lutheranism) asserts the strictest v., since, abolishing the regula fidei of the supreme authority of the visible Church, it subordinates the content, or object, of faith to the individual subject’s personal attitude (the reduction of fides quae to fides qua). Within Christian thought, v. denotes the affirmation of the absolute contingency of the existential order, both with regard to factual reality and to the moral laws or precepts concerning material and spiritual creatures: thus Scotus, Occam, and the nominalism that they 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 precedence to action over contemplation, understood as a conscious or unconscious instinct, as Dionysian energy and élan over contemplation, which belongs to the Apollonian moment: in this sense—which remains very vague—Cartesio and also Spinoza (the theory of conatus), Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Fries, Schleiermacher, Marx, Schopenhauer, Ed. v. Hartmann, pragmatism, modernism, Gentile, Bergson, and M. Scheler with his philosophy of values are proponents of v.; conversely, Malebranche, the English empiricists, Hegel, positivism, neo-Kantianism, Croce, and phenomenology, which by virtue of the antithesis must be classified as proponents of intellectualism.
The classification of v. is still more uncertain in existentialism (v.), because of the diversity of the themes and principles that divide the respective schools: in fact, in its polemical confrontation with idealism and positivism, existentialism asserts the originality of the individual and the autonomy of individual “choice,” thus taking the side of v. The freedom of existence, moreover, is oriented in the various existentialist schools in multiple and even mutually opposed directions, which require a revision of the very designation v., thereby depriving it of any claim to explicit determination. Indeed, already in the forms of theological existentialism—both Protestant (Kierkegaard, Gogarten, Bultmann, Brunner, Barth, Tillich), 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 according to the orientation and the actual “situation” attributed to existence, characterized as “being before God.” The designation is more difficult with regard to philosophical existentialism: for although the pre-eminence of the Dionysian element and the rupture of every “logos” that claims to provide the final formula of truth (Nietzsche) are beyond dispute in it, one must admit that the theory of cipher and of failure culminating in the “philosophical faith” of the later Jaspers, Heidegger’s insistence on resolving the truth of being into “being itself” in the sense of unlimited “openness,” as expressed by the etymological meaning of truth (δ-λόβεια “non-concealment,” that is, manifestation, presence, Anwesenheit des Anwesendes, which is precisely being itself), J. P. Sartre’s Cartesian phenomenological dissociation of being into en-soi (world) and pour-soi (subject), and all similar orientations (Heyse, Abbagnano, Camus, S. De Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty) revert, by a passage to the limit, to intellectualism, because they deprive the will of any dominion over being, which is left at the mercy of the situation. Blondel’s same fundamental thesis (v.), concerning the resolution of being into action and therefore the priority, or determination, of the will by the good (the theory of natura volentis or élan primitif), insofar as it is explicitly connected with Leibnizian dynamism, conceives the structure of action as a function of a harmony among the principles of being, as envisioned 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 consequently disappears. The contrast becomes more explicit, instead, in the medieval schools. The doctrinal synthesis of s. Tommaso is usually presented as decisively opposed to v., but his procedure entails 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 concerns things in their external physical reality, outside the subject. b) But if we consider the relation of the faculties to their proper object, then, as long as sensible things are concerned, the intellect is still superior to the will; but when the substances that are higher and nobler than the human soul are concerned, 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 their adaptation to our limited capacity for knowing: “Unde melior est amor Dei quam cognitio rerum corporalium”. It nevertheless remains certain that “simpliciter intellectus est nobilior quam voluntas” (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 82, a. 3). In the supernatural order, the first adherence to God, through 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 attained 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, s. Tommaso affirms that beatitude consists essentially in the “contemplation” of the divine essence (ibid., 1ᵃ-2ᵇᶜ, q. 3, a. 4), he reserves delectatio, fruitio, and gaudium to the will. Thus, to the customary formula that beatitude consists simpliciter in acts of the intellect and secundum quid in those of the will (cf. loc. cit., especially De ver., q. 22, a. 11; Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 82, a. 3), one may prefer, as the final formula, the more comprehensive one found in the Lectura in Matthaeum, likewise inspired by Aristotle, which attributes beatitude substantialiter to the apprehension of the highest intelligible, which is God, and formaliter to acts of love and delectatio on the part of the will (Cf. Expos. super eo. Matth., 5, 1; ed. R. Cai, Torino 1951, n. 409, p. 66 a). But this particularly felicitous formula seems not to have left any 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 systematically in Scotus, for whom the thesis of the superiority of the will over the intellect seems to derive from Henry of Ghent’s direct polemic against St. Thomas’s position and from an exclusive consideration of the third moment of the Thomistic position, when he 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 ed ea magia quam intellectus» (Rep. Paris, I, IV, d. 49, q. II, n. 18). At n. 20 comes the conclusion: «Dico igitur... quod beatitudo est essentialiter et formaliter in actu voluntatis, quo simpliciter et solum attingitur bonum optimum quo perfruatur»—a terminology that does not seem irreconcilable with the last Thomistic terminology indicated above. With the critical edition of Scotus, the close dependence of the Subtle Doctor on the leading figure of Parisian antinomianism, Henry of Ghent, has now been demonstrated (cf. 1ᵃ q. Ut Theologia sit scientia practica vel speculativa, in Ordinatio, Prologus, part 5ᵃ; Scotus, Opera Omnia, Vatican edition 1950, p. 152 ff.).
The polemic against the Thomistic position in the Franciscan school is already announced in G. De la Mare’s Correctorium fratris Thomae (Cf. Le Correctorium corruptorii Quare, ed. P. Glorieux, Kain 1927, arts. 49,
50 and 51, p. 208 ff.) and in Gonsalvo Hispano, Minister General of the Friars Minor and a contemporary of Scotus (cf. his Quaestiones disputatae et de Quodlibet, ed. L. Amorós, Florence-Quaracchi 1935, p. 371 ff.). Voluntarism assumes a precise doctrinal significance in the primacy of the will that it seeks to introduce also into divine life and into its relations with 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 contingent in themselves, just as the creature to which they refer is contingent, and which God could even modify (Op. Oxoniense, I, III, d. 37, q. I, n. 8). For the entire question, V. E. Gilson, J. Duns Scot, Introduction à ses positions fondamentales, Paris 1952, p. 601 ff., and the Appendix Alphabetum Scoti, theses 64-77, p. 679 ff.). Voluntarism reaches its extreme formulation in nominalism, especially that of Ockham and his followers, with the suppression of every distinction among the divine attributes, for example, between intellect and will in God; the Scotist distinction between the precepts of the first and second tables then also disappears, so much so that «odire (sic!) Deum potest esse actus rectus in via et a Deo praeceptus» (this is art. 5 of Ockham’s condemnation; cf. E. Amann, Occam, in DThC, XI, col. 894).
It is in this initial identification of «voluntas ut natura» and «voluntas ut facultas» on the part of the early Franciscan school and Scotus, followed by the unqualified identification of intellect and will (in God) on the part of Ockham and nominalism, that the modern conception of the spirit as an autonomous subjectivity is prepared—one that derives from itself, at the same time, the content and the norm of its own actualization.