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Anselm's Account of Freedom1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Thomas Williams  and
Sandra Visser
Thomas Williams
Affiliation:
The University of Iowa, Iowa City, lA55242-1408, USA
Sandra Visser
Affiliation:
Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN46383-6493, USA
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Extract

According to Anselm's official definition, freedom of choice is ‘the power to preserve rectitude of will for the sake of that rectitude itself.’ From the point of view of contemporary metaphysics, this is one of the most unhelpful definitions imaginable. Does such freedom require alternative possibilities, for example? Is it compatible with causal determination? Is the exercise of such freedom a necessary and sufficient condition for moral responsibility? The definition sheds no light on these questions.

And so we need to move on from Anselm's definition to Anselm's account of freedom. Here, though, we encounter the opposite problem. Where Anselm's definition seems not to answer these questions at all, Anselm's account seems to answer all these questions, sometimes with a yes and sometimes with a no. Consider the question about alternative possibilities. In De libertate arbitrii, Anselm seems clearly to deny that freedom involves alternative possibilities. God, the good angels, and the blessed dead cannot do otherwise than preserve rectitude, but they are still free- freer, in fact, than those who are capable of abandoning rectitude.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 2001 , pp. 221 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2001

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Footnotes

1

References to Anselm are given as follows: DV=De veritate, DLA=De libertate arbitrii, DCD=De casu diaboli, DC=De concordia, and CDH=Cur Deus Homo. Whenever we quote a text we give a reference to the critical edition of SchmittF.S. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Friedrich Fromann Verlag1968), identified as ‘S’; and to the English translations in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works,DaviesBrian and EvansG.R. eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press1998), identified as ‘O.’ All translations are our own.

References

2 Anselm uses libertas arbitrii and liberum arbitrium interchangeably. We shall translate these as ‘freedom of choice’ and ‘free choice,’ respectively, With no distinction in meaning.

3 DLA 3 (S 1:212, 0 179). At DLA 13 this definition is endorsed as complete (perfecta): that is, as stating a necessary and sufficient condition for freedom of choice.

4 See DLA 1 and 14.

5 ‘Correctness’ is the word rectitudo, which appears in Anselm's definition of freedom as ‘rectitude.’ We translate it here as ‘correctness’ to emphasize that rectitudo is merely the abstract noun corresponding to the adjective rectum ('correct’) and the adverb recte (‘correctly’).

6 DV 2 (S I:178, O 154). The Oxford translator, Ralph McInerny, translates ‘veritatem hanc’ as ‘its truth’ rather than ‘this truth,’ but we take it that the student is here drawing a conclusion about what truth is in statements generally (hence ‘this truth,’ the truth being investigated in this chapter), not about what truth is in some particular statement (‘its truth’).

7 DV 4 (S I:181, O 156)

8 Thus, in the passage cited above, the student says that the devil ‘voluit quod debuit, ad quod scilicet voluntatem acceperat.’ The construction admits of two different readings; and while the difference appears slight at first, we think it is important. On one reading, the last ‘quod’ has the same referent as the preceding ‘quod’; on the other, the last ‘quod’ refers to the whole clause ‘voluit quod debuit.’ On the first reading, Anselm's meaning is ‘he willed that which he ought to will — in other words, he willed that for the sake of which he had received a will.’ On the second reading, his meaning is ‘he willed what he ought to will—which is the very reason why he had received a will.’ (McInerny's translation, O 156, adopts the second reading; our translation above is deliberately ambiguous but is perhaps more naturally taken in the first way.) The first reading suggests a material, the second reading a purely formal specification of the will's end. The parallels to the account of truth in statements give some warrant to the first reading. Anselm offers a material specification of the end of statements (statements are for signifying the way things are), not a purely formal one (statements are for signifying what they ought to signify). More important, however, the philosophical barrenness of a purely formal specification tells decisively in favor of the first reading. Anselm cannot sensibly say that God gave us a will so that we could will what God gave us a will to will—we would get either an empty circle or an infinite stutter (‘we should will what God gave us a will to will, which is willing what God gave us a will to will, which is willing … ’).Fortunately, the first reading makes for better Latin as well as better moral philosophy.

9 DV 12 (S I:192,O 166-167)

10 DV 12 (S I:193, O 167)

11 DV 12 (S I:194, O 169)

12 See the preface to DV (S I:173-174,O 151).

13 Notice that Anselm's assumption here, namely that moral praiseworthiness and blameworthiness require free will, is commonly made in the contemporary debate as well.

14 DLA 1 (S I:208, O 176)

15 ‘ Of their own doing’ translates ‘sponte,’for which there is no good English equivalent. ‘Of their own free will’ would ordinarily be a good translation, but in this context it would obviously be confusing. As the context makes clear, actions done sponteare contrasted with actions done as a result of necessity. We discuss Anselm's conception of necessity in Section V.

16 DLA 2 (S I:209, O 177)

17 DLA 2 (S I:209-210, O 177)

18 DV 12; see Section II above. Anselm makes a similar argument in DLA 13.

19 DLA 4 (S I:214, O 181); cf. DLA 12 (S I:224, O 190)

20 Note that in DC 1.6 (S II:255-256, O 444-445) Anselm explicitly restricts the scope of the discussion in De veritate and De libertate arbitrii to morally significant freedom, i.e., the freedom necessary for salvation. He recognizes that we might speak of, for example, freedom either to speak or to be silent; but his own discussion of freedom is not concerned with that sort of usage because he finds it to be of little consequence.

21 DLA 5 (S I:214, O 181)

22 We have not yet been told why this is not possible — that explanation is delayed until chapter 6 of De casu diaboli — merely that it is not possible (DLA 1 and 14).

23 DCD 5 (S I:242-243, O 203)

24 DLA 2 (S I:209, O 177)

25 DCD 12 (S I:254, O 213)

26 DC 3.11 (S II:279-80, O 467 -8)

27 DV 12 (S I:194, ) 168). In Section VI we examine some implications of this feature of Anselm's view.

28 DCD 13 (S I:256, O 214)

29 DCD 13 (S I:257, O 215)

30 DCD 13 (S I:257, O 216)

31 In correspondence, Eleonore Stump raised the following objection: ‘Why shouldn't we suppose that what God gives an angel is the power to initiate anything the angel takes to be good, where it is up to the intellect to determine what counts as good, in any sense of “good”? Then the angel could initiate an action for happiness or for justice, and it would really be his own will which did the initiating, even though the angel had only one will and not two.’ The answer is that God has given the angel a properly functioning intellect, so he will always see justice as better than mere happiness (see DC 1.6). If the angel's only motivational disposition is towards willing what his intellect takes to be good, he will of course will what has greater goodness (Justice) in preference to what has lesser goodness (happiness). In that case, the angel's willing justice has its ultimate origin not in the angel but in God, who gave him the motivational disposition and the properly functioning intellect that together guarantee his willing justice.

32 So Anselm's view entails that God, who receives nothing from outside himself, never needs alternative possibilities in order to be free. We take up this issue at the end of this section.

33 McInerny's translation (0 228-30) generally leaves out the ‘if,’ making the dilemma all but inescapable for anyone reading De casu diaboli in his version.

34 Anselm commendably refrains from indulging in speculative angelic psychology and tells us that he has no idea what the something extra could have been.

35 DCD 6 (S 1:243, 0 204): ‘adhærentes iustitiæ nullum bonum velle possint quod non gaudeant.’ In McInerny's translation, the good angels ‘can enjoy all the goods they will.’ This not only gets the Latin wrong, it gets Anselm's point wrong. The point is not that they are capable of enjoying whatever they will, which is consistent with their asking so little out of life that Simon Stylites would look like a hedonist by their side. The point is that God has showered them with every good thing they could possibly want.

36 Anselm uses necessitas, necessarium, and necesse in a variety of ways, and a thorough analysis of his use of modal terms would require a paper in itself. Here we are considering only what is involved in affirming or denying of actions that they are necessary in the sense in which ‘necessary’ is the opposite of ‘free.’

37 DC 1.2-3. At DC 2.3 (S II.262, O 451) Anselm further insists that what God predestines does not happen ‘by that necessity which precedes a thing and brings it about’ (ea necessitate quae praecedit rem et facit).

38 CDH 2.5 (S ll.99-100, 0 319). ‘Honorableness’ and ‘dishonorableness’ translate ‘honestas’ and ‘inhonestas,’ respectively.

39 DV 12 (S I:193-4, O 168) 40 DV 12 (S I:194, O 168)

40 DV 12 (S 1:194, 0 168)

41 We call it ‘enriched’ because it makes explicit certain requirements Anselm takes to be implied by the original descriptive definition, not because it actually adds something new.

42 DC 1.6 (S II:257, O 446)

43 Because the enriched descriptive definition is silent about what an agent's goals are or should be, and hence says nothing about the content of the agent's ‘knowledge,’ it is ultimately merely Anselmian, not Anselm's. Anselm insists that we have only two motivations—one for happiness, the other for justice. The only sorts of choices that are of interest to him are ones that involve a conflict between the two. Any other decisions require a conflict among intermediate goals and their potential to make a person happy. Mistakes in this regard are all due to lack of knowledge or lack of rationality. Anselm wants to be able to say that a person is most free when his motivation for action is justice (preserving rectitude for its own sake). Thus, the person who believes (and acts on the belief) that a base hedonistic life leads to happiness, but doesn't realize it is inconsistent with justice, is less free than the person who knows that they are inconsistent, but chooses happiness over justice (not realizing that ignoring justice will preclude ultimate happiness), and he in turn is less free than the person who once chose justice over happiness, now realizes that they lead to the same place, and maintains his desire to uphold justice for its own sake. By contrast, if we refrain from building a substantive moral theory into the enriched descriptive definition, there will be no such hierarchy of degrees of freedom. If, say, a person foolishly believes that smoking combats colds, then the smoker can smoke as freely as the non-smoker refrains.

44 Anselm, of course, is not worried about a person's lacking good motives because he thinks that ultimately there are only two—the desire for happiness and the desire for justice—and they are God-given.

45 We are grateful for the helpful comments of Eleonore Stump and of audiences at the University of Notre Dame Philosophy Department Colloquium, the Conference on ‘Saint Anselm: His Origins and Influence’ held at Saint Anselm College, the Calvin College Summer Conferences in Christian Scholarship, and the Cornell University Summer Colloquium in Medieval Philosophy.