Phl 349

Lecture #23

Scotus and Ockham on Free Will and Ethics

I. Scotus on the Freedom of the Will

On the nature of the will and its freedom, Scotus stakes out a highly original position. He develops one of the most
sophisticated theories of the extreme free-will position in history. There have been a number of defenders of a so-
called “libertarian” position (not to be confused with the political “libertarianism” of the Libertarian Party, Ron

Paul, and the Cato Institute) in the twentieth century, including those of Keith Campbell, Austin Farrer, and
Roderick Chisholm, but these represent a small advance, if any, beyond Scotus’s well thought-out account.

As you may recall, Aquinas sees human willing as simply one part of a uniform natural phenomenon, that of

teleology. Everything in creation has a natural end to which it is constantly moving or tending to move by its
natural powers. Elemental matter is moving toward its natural place, plants and animals are moving toward a state

of complete growth and successful reproduction, and human beings are of necessity seeking true happiness. In each
case, the kind of movement involved depends on the kind of creature: material bodies move blindly toward their
natural place, animals are guided by sensation and instinct, and human beings use their intellect and will to choose

the best course. The ultimate end of human action is not up for grabs: no one can choose whether to seek
happiness, only how to do so (only means, not the ultimate end, are matters of choice).

Since human beings move themselves intellectually and voluntarily, there is more that can go wrong in the case of

human beings, as compared to blind matter or instinct-driven animals. A human being requires a sufficient degree
of self-control over his appetites, and a reasonably clear understanding of what, in detail, true happiness consists in,

if he is to succeed in reaching his natural goal. Since almost every choice we have to make occurs in the midst of
ambivalence and ambiguity, we often choose badly, or less well than we might. We can violate secondary
principles of the natural law, if we fail to see how they follow from the primary axioms. We can even violate what

we know to be valid positive laws, if we fail to grasp that obeying such laws is really required by the natural law.

However, according to Aquinas, it is impossible for us to choose willingly and deliberately the worse course of
action over the better. If we see that action A is required by the natural law (seek the good and avoid evil), then we

are unable to fail to choose A. All sin, therefore, is caused, at least in part, by ignorance or intellectual confusion.
In some cases, we may be responsible for the confusion: our ignorance might be the consequence of earlier bad

choices we made. However, at the very beginning (e.g., the choice of Adam and Eve in the garden), it is an
apparently innocent ignorance that is causally responsible for the wrong choice.

Scotus objects to this account on several grounds. First, he thinks it is simply a matter of everyday experience that
our will is absolutely free. We are free to choose the worse option over the better, if we please. We are free not to

will happiness. Second, Scotus appeals to Scriptural support for his position, especially Paul’s autobiographical
remarks in the seventh chapter of Romans. There, Paul writes that he delights in God’s law in his inner man, but

finds his choices enslaved to a law in his “members”. The good he would do, he fails to do, and the evil he would
not do is just what he does. It’s not very clear that Scotus’s interpretation of this passage is correct: it could be
taken to support the opposite conclusion, that in our fallen condition we lack anything like free will.

Third, Scotus that moral responsibility requires that the originof evil lie in the misuse of the will, not in the

innocent fallibility of the human intellect. It seems harsh for God to punish Adam and Eve, and all their
descendants, for the fact that, due to a fallible and finite intellect, they failed to see that eating the fruit was the

wrong choice.

Scotus argues that a free will is undetermined by anthing, including the person’s nature or the state of his intellect.
To be free is always to be free for opposites. That is, in the very act of doing one thing, I must remain free to do the
opposite. A free agent is a self-mover. Whether a free agent chooses anything at all at a given point of time is

entirely up to that agent. A free agent can refrain from acting even when all the causaly necessary conditions for
its action are present. Nothing can determine or necessitate the free will’s choice in advance.

This immediately raises a problem: Scotus seems to be describing the will as a completely random factor within
the soul. How can he explain the fact that when we act freely, we always act for some reason or other? Won’t it

always be the case that our reasons explain why we do what we do? If so, isn’t the will in some way or other
determined by the reasons that we have?

Scotus’s answer is to agree that a rational motivation is always required for any free choice. How, then, can he

guarantee that the will is always free? What if I have only one rational motivation available, as, for example,
Aquinas assumes to be true for the saints in heaven? If I have only one rational choice, how can my will remain
free to do the opposite?

Scotus’s response is to hypothesize that there is always present within each human being two independent sources

of motivation: the affectio commodi (the love of one’s own happiness or fulfillment) and the affectio iustitiae (the
love for objective justice, for what is right and proper in itself). In each situation, we can always choose whether to

act according to the one motivation or the other. Even when the two sources of motivation agree (e.g., both tell me
to eat a healthy diet), we can choose whether to act from one motive or the other, or both together. (Moreover, we

can also always choose to choose nothing at all. To make sense of this ever-present possibility, it seems to me that
Scotus should have proposed a third fundamental source of motivation: an affectio inertiae, or love of inactivity.)

Thus, whenever we choose, we always choose for a reason, but our reasons can only incline our will to various
courses of action: they can never necessitate that we do some one thing. There are always two distinct sets of

reasons to choose from, a self-interested set, a disinterested, moral or altruistic set.

II. Scotus’s Complex Theory of Morality

Like all Jews, Muslims, and Christians, Scotus believes that God can create new duties for His creatures by issuing
positive commands to them. These duties can go above and beyond what is required (or would, in the absence of
the command, be required) for the fulfillment of our created nature.

A so-called divine command theory goes beyond this, by making two further claims:

• God is capable of commanding us to do anything whatsoever.

• Nothing can be morally obligatory unless God actually commands it.

By this standard, Scotus does notoffer a divine command theory of morality. As we shall see, however, his view
could be described as a partial divine command theory.

First, Scotus does not think that God could command us to hate Him, or to treat Him with disrespect. Scotus thinks
that it is a necessary truth of morality, discoverable by human reason, that God is to be loved above all things. God

could not contravene this obligation.

It is easy to see, I think, why Scotus imposes this limit on God. Suppose God did command us to hate Him.
Suppose He commanded us to break all of His other commands, including the Ten Commandments. What then
would be the right thing for us to do? To keep the Ten Commandments, or to break them? It seems that a full

divine command theory would have to give contradictory answers.

Second, Scotus thinks that there the duties a creature owes to God are morally obligatory for the creature, evenif
God didn’t command them. We are morally obliged to love God, even if God didn’t command it. In addition, we

are morally obliged to obey God, even though God hasn’t commanded that we obey Him (which would be a very
odd command, indeed).

However, when we turn from the “first tablet” of the Ten Commandments (“Thou shalt have no other Gods, Thou
shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, Thou shalt hallow the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy”) to the

“second tablet” (“Honor your father and mother, do not murder, steal, etc.) the situation changes radically,
according to Scotus. First, God could command us to do anything whatsoever to our fellow creatures. If God were

to command us to murder each other, refraining from murder would have been morally wrong.

Scotus gives several reasons for thinking this. First, he argues that God owes us absolutely nothing, since He has

given us everything and we have given Him nothing. If God owes us nothing, then He violates no obligation to
command us to treat one another badly. Second, Scotus argues that God’s will must be absolutely free with respect

to His creatures, although not with respect to Himself. God cannot will that He Himself should not receive the
respect He deserves, but He can will absolutely anything with respect to the vicissitudes of His creatures.

Consequently, He is capable of commanding any kind of creature-to-creature treatment.

So far, this sounds like a divine command theory, limited to creature-to-creature relations. However, even here

Scotus does not go all the way to a full divine command theory. He doesn’t claim that if God hadn’t issued any
commands, there would be no moral truths about how we must treat each other. In the absence of God’s

commands, there are certain things that it would be appropriate (“conveniens”) for us to do to each other. Given
human nature, it is inappropriate for us to murder each other or steal from each other. If God were to issue us no

commands on these subjects, it would be wrong to murder or to steal. Moreover, we could use our natural reason to
discern these moral principles.

However, according to Scotus, it is not a necessary truth that murder or stealing is wrong. God is free to
contravene these rules. Should God command us to murder, then murder would become obligatory, and no longer

wrong. The principles of appropriateness (convenientia) are what we might call “default rules”: they constitute the
substance of morality in the absence of any divine commands to the contrary, but they can be cancelled by God’s

order.

Is it just a lucky chance that God’s actual commands to us concerning our relationships to other creations happen to
accord with what is naturally appropriate? Not exactly. Scotus admits that God’s natural justice “inclines” Him

toward issuing commands that are in accordance with what is naturally appropriate, but He is not necessitated to do
so. However, this is a puzzling position. What motive in God could possibly conflict with His natural inclination
toward justice? Is God afflicted with an affectio commodi, or some other motivation potentially in conflict with

His ethical knowledge?

As we shall see, the question of the freedom of God’s will with respect to the moral law becomes an increasingly
central question in late medieval philosophy. We can understand, I think, why a theist is pulled in two different

directions. On the one hand, if God were really capable of commanding horrible things, like murder and torture,
and it is only a kind of happy chance that in fact He commanded us not to murder or steal, then it would seem that

God is not really trustworthy, and an untrustworthy God would not be a fit object for faith and adoration.

On the other hand, if God was compelled to issue good commands by His own immutable nature, then it might

seem that the moral law is superior to God, and God is no longer the supreme being. Moreover, one could argue
that in this case God would not deserve our gratitude, since He had no real alternative to acting as He did.

Scotus’s position seems to have the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, on the question of the first tablet of the

Law, there is a moral principle above God, that is binding on His will as well as on ours. On the other hand, on the
question of the second tablet of the Law, Scotus takes the implausible position that murder could be right, and that
there are no constraints on what a good and just God might command.

III. Ockham’s views on Will and Ethics

Went beyond even Scotus: liberty of indifference. We can knowingly will the bad and nill the good.

Denied natural teleology. So human will, agency are not part of a universal phenomenon.

Nonetheless, accepted that there were moral principles discoverable by “right reason”. An ethical dualist, like G. E.
Moore, Kant, John Stuart Mill.

The first principle of right reason: God is to be loved. From this follows the ethical necessity of obeying God’s

commands, which can override any other principle of right reason.