Ricœur on the Concept of Will in Aristotle and Augustine

1In 1967, Paul Ricœur, in one of his academic seminars, addressed the question of the conceptual history of the will. As he explicitly says, his intention was not to pursue his own systematic considerations, developed in his study Philosophie de la volonté I. Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (Paris 1...

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Published in:Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
Main Author: Horn, Christoph (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:French
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Published: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin 2015
In: Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
Further subjects:B Choice
B Desire
B Imputabilité
B Responsabilité
B Décision
B Tendance
B Decision
B Preference
B Responsability
B Accountability
B Choix
B Préférence
B Arbiter
B Tendency
B Arbitre
B Désir
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Summary:1In 1967, Paul Ricœur, in one of his academic seminars, addressed the question of the conceptual history of the will. As he explicitly says, his intention was not to pursue his own systematic considerations, developed in his study Philosophie de la volonté I. Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (Paris 1950), but rather to discuss historical accounts of what we mean by “will” and “voluntariness”. The four main philosophers that Ricœur examines in this seminar are Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and he considers each of these authors within their sociocultural contexts. Given the fact that the conceptual history of the will in Western thought is a highly controversial topic for professional historians of ideas, it is interesting to see how an original philosopher such as Ricœur deals with this matter. In the following essay, I will confine myself to what Ricœur has to say on Aristotle and - through a few observations - on Augustine. , 2The history of the concept of will in ancient philosophy is an important and much debated issue, especially since Albrecht Dihle’s monograph The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (1982). As is well known, Dihle examined classical and post-classical theories of volition up to late antiquity and arrived at the conclusion that there exists no fully developed concept of will before Augustine. This claim has been supported, attacked, modified, and transformed by a considerable number of historians of philosophy [1][1]See especially Ch. Kahn, « Discovery of the Will : From…. Prior to this discussion, two largely different interpretations of the conceptual history of the will have been primarily defended : that of Hegel and that of Ernst Benz. As Hegel famously claimed in the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, the concept of a will is absent in pre-Christian, even in pre-Reformatory times since the idea of subjectivity does not appear before Protestantism ; additionally, Hegel was convinced that what we find in ancient philosophy, especially in Plato and Aristotle, is a somewhat reflected version of the conventional idea of the will - “conventional” in the sense of being based on the traditional normative identity of a given polis. Greek moral theory is, according to Hegel, deeply indebted to êthos or Sittlichkeit. The German scholar Ernst Benz, by contrast, related quite a different story. According to his 1932 monograph, the starting-point of later (i.e. medieval and early modern) voluntarism and decisionism is to be found in Plotinus. In Benz’s eyes, it was Plotinus who first identified God’s substance with divine will and thereby overcame the tradition of what he called “Greek intellectualism” [2][2]E. Benz, Marius Victorinus und die Entwicklung der…. More precisely, Benz thought that Plotinus’ conception combined both intellectualist and voluntarist elements, but only the latter became influential, namely through Marius Victorinus who had a major impact on Augustine’s description of divine personhood. To substantiate this thesis, Benz argued that the Plotinian One, transcendent principle of reality, possessed a will which was its fundamental trait or substantial characteristic, and that it enjoyed absolute power and freedom [3][3]E. Benz, op. cit., p. 289-309.., 3These three positions, that of Dihle, of Hegel, and of Ernst Benz (tracing the concept of will back to Augustine, to Protestantism, and to Plotinus respectively), by far do not cover the entire spectrum of this complicated debate. Let us only mention Michael Frede’s posthumously edited monograph : A Free Will. Origins of the Notions in Ancient Thought (2011) ; Frede sees Stoic philosophy as the crucial context of the concept of will. One of his former students, Susanne Bobzien, in turn tried to identify the Epicurean roots of the concept at stake (cf. 1998 and 2000). , 4It turns out that Paul Ricœur, in his lecture manuscript Le Concept philosophique de volonté (1967), defends a different reading of the ancient conceptual history which shows, on the one hand, some affinity with the Hegelian point of view but is, on the other hand, original to a considerable extent. According to Ricœur, neither Aristotle nor anyone else throughout antiquity possessed a full idea of the will ; indeed, Ricœur seems to think that it cannot be found before Descartes, and that in Aristotle, the treatment of the will is restricted to moral philosophy :, 5, , 6What is said throughout antiquity on the will - as formulated in Plato and Aristotle for example - does, as Ricœur claims, in fact depend on current pre-philosophical ideas (p. 13). This sounds much more plausible in Aristotle’s case than in Plato whose writings are, in fact, highly revisionary regarding conventional opinions - and even the Aristotelian method of taking seriously so-called endoxa (approved opinions derived from the commonsense or from certain acknowledged authorities) does not amount to some sort of conventionalism. Ricœur additionally maintains that Aristotle is highly critical of Plato’s concept of human agency, especially concerning its normative foundation in the form of the Good (idea tou agathou) which Aristotle replaces, according to Ricœur, with a theory focusing on the concept of actuality (energeia). I express some doubt over this crucial point as it seems to me that Plato and Aristotle share (more or less) the same position with regard to a certain element of a theory of volition whereas they do not develop any element beyond it. This does not occur, in my opinion, before Augustine. , 7In order to adequately deal with the account given by Ricœur, it is crucial to give a terminological clarification of what is under discussion. In order to disambiguate the concept of will, I would like to distinguish between three different ways of speaking about the will by first examining the three following paradigmatic sentences :, 8, , 9Perhaps, the usage of “will” in phrase [a] sounds awkward in contemporary English, whereas it is quite a normal use both in Greek (on the basis of the concepts of boulêsis and boulesthai) and in Latin (voluntas, velle), and the same holds true for many modern languages such as French, Italian or German. The meaning here is that of a desire, a striving or a wish, or to put it in classical terminology, an inclination or an appetitive tendency (orexis, appetitus). I refer to this as the appetitive concept of will. According to classical thought, a will in the sense of an inclination can be more or less good, more or less rational, and more or less conscious. It need not be one rather than the other. But what is fundamental for such an inclination is that someone discovers it within oneself, having not created it voluntarily ; an inclination is something perceived, not something generated by the individual [4][4]Therefore, traditional inclination theories typically are…. , 10The usage in phrase [b] is completely different from [a]. It presents the will as an ability to make a decision. This decision can be more or less good and more or less rational, but it can never be unconscious ; a volitional decision must always be consciously made. Hence, by contrast to [a], the decision made by the will in the sense of phrase [b] can never be seen as something found or perceived, but as created or generated precisely by the will of the agent itself. Consequently, a decision brought about by this will must be fully imputable. Another consequence is that a volitional decision can be more or less arbitrary. It is independent of the reasons, interests, and desires involved in a situation. My example [b], namely the last will of a person, might illustrate this point : we usually think one should strictly respect and follow someone’s last will regardless of its possible peculiarity and strangeness. I call the usage in phrase [b] the decisionist concept of will. , 11Finally, there is a usage of “will” in phrase [c]. I mention the meaning illustrated by phrase [c] only to give a more or less comprehensive account : Here, “will” signifies something like a psychic power and a faculty to persevere, e.g. to aim for a valuable end under difficult external circumstances. I call that the dynamic concept of will. As far as I can see, [c] does not really occur in ancient or medieval philosophy, but it seems to be typical of a certain line of modern philosophical thought, especially that of the xixth century [5][5]Will in the sense of an energetic power is meant e.g. in…., 12In the history of ancient philosophy, we can identify one absolutely fundamental use of boulêsis and boulesthai, namely that which is developed by Plato in a famous passage of the Gorgias (466a9-467e5). In this passage, Plato’s Socrates distinguishes between two ways of directing one’s will toward something, through a rational desire on the one hand, and through an arbitrary desire on the other. This distinction is part of Socrates’ rejection of the “art” of rhetoric as practiced and defended by his interlocutors ...
En s’appuyant sur le cours de Ricœur sur Le Concept philosophique de volonté - professé en 1967 - l’article examine la position que le philosophe français assume sur la question très controversée concernant l’histoire conceptuelle de la volonté dans la pensée occidentale et notamment dans la philosophie ancienne. En partant d’une clarification terminologique - centrée sur la distinction entre trois concepts de volonté (appétitif, décisionnel et dynamique) - l’article met en cause la thèse défendue ici par Ricœur, selon laquelle le concept de volonté serait absent dans la philosophie ancienne et en particulier dans la pensée d’Aristote. Toutefois, d’accord avec Ricœur, on reconnaît chez Augustin une approche foncièrement novatrice du concept de volonté, dont on précise le sens et la portée dans la partie conclusive.
ISSN:2118-4445
Contains:Enthalten in: Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3917/rspt.994.0567