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ARISTOTLE and AUGUSTINE on FREEDOM This Page Intentionally Left Blank Aristotle and Augustine on Freedo11t ARISTOTLE AND AUGUSTINE ON FREEDOM This page intentionally left blank Aristotle and Augustine on Freedo11t Two Theories of Freedom, Voluntary Action and Akrasia T. D. J. Chappell Lecturer in Philosophy University of East Anglia ©T. D.J.Chappell1995 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1995 978-0-333-62537-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Totten ham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in Great Britain 1995 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Hound mills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Librarv ISBN 978-1-349-39323-7 ISBN 978-0-230-37951-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230379510 Transferred to digital printing 1998 02/780 First published in the United States of America 1995 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-12467-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chappell, T. D. J. (Timothy D. J.) Aristotle and Augustine on freedom : two theories of freedom, voluntary action, and akrasia I T.D.J. Chappell. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-12467-0 1. Free wiil and determinism. 2. Aristotle-Views on free will. 3. Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo-Views on free will. B105.lA5C45 1995 123'5'0922-<lc20 94-38184 CIP In memoriam Gillian Patriciae Chappell 30.4.1937- 13.12.1989 Quia fecisti nos ad Te et inquietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat in Te This page intentionally left blank By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may. Now this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every­ one who is not a prisoner and in chains. Here, then, is no subject of dispute. David Hume: An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1775), VIII.l It does not seem to be self contradictory to suppose that [the acceptance of determinism could lead to the decay or repudiation of participant reactive attitudes] ... But I am strongly inclined to think that it is, for us as we are, practically inconceivable. The human commitment to participation in ordinary inter-personal relationships is too thoroughgoing and too deeply rooted for us to take seriously the thought that a general theoretical conviction might so change our world that, in it, there were no longer any such things as interpersonal relationships as we normally under­ stand them. Peter Strawson: 'Freedom and Resenhnent', Proceedings of the British Academy, 1962 This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface xi Part I Aristotle 1 The Limits of the Voluntary 3 1.1. 'Positive' and 'Negative' Theories of Freedom 3 1.2. Compulsion, Duress, Persuasion and Free Action 6 1.3. The Varieties of Ignorance 18 1.4. Irrationality 25 2 Freedom, Ability and Knowledge 32 2.1. Function, Process and Ability to Do Otherwise 32 2.2. Aristotle's Epistemology 47 3 Practical Reasoning 55 3.1. Proairesis 56 3.2. The Difference between Action on Proairesis and Voluntary Action 61 3.3. Deliberation 66 3.4. Practical Reasoning and the 'Practical Syllogism' 71 3.5. Conclusion 86 4 The Varieties of Akrasia 88 4.1. How to Solve the Problem of Akrasia 88 4.2. Aristotle's Account 98 4.3. The Varieties of Akrasia 112 Part II Augustine 5 Voluntariness and Responsibility in Augustine 121 5.1. Introduction 121 5.2. The Linking of Voluntariness and Responsibility 122 5.3. Two of Augustine's Conditions of Voluntary Action 125 5.4. Ignorantia and Difficultas 130 5.5. From the Earlier to the Later Theory 134 5.6. Conclusion 139 ix X Contents 6 Voluntas and the Voluntary 140 6.1. Introduction 140 6.2. The Nature of Voluntas: Two Requirements 141 6.3. Ability to Do Otherwise 144 6.4. The Cause(s) of Voluntas Again 149 6.5. A Reflexive Will? 150 7 The Good Will and the Good Life 154 7.1. Introduction 154 7.2. Practical Reason and Practical Wisdom in Augustine 155 7.3. Aristotle and Augustine on the Directedness of Action 160 7.4. Felicitas 162 7 5. Good Will and the Order of the World 172 8 Bad Will and the Mystery of Evil 176 8.1. Introduction 176 8.2. Bad Will 178 8.3. An Incomplete Account? 184 8.4. A Necessarily Incomplete Account? 187 8.5. Manichaean Dualism and Privatio Boni 193 8.6. Incompleteness Again 197 8.7. Augustine and Voluntarism 198 8.8. From Augustine's Rationalism to Augustinian Voluntarism 202 8.9. Conclusion 206 List of Works Cited 208 Index of Names 213 Preface Aristotle and Augustine probably seems like an incongruous pairing to many readers. As I hope this book will show, it is not as odd a conjunction as it may look at first sight. To instance one straw in the wind (though it is no more than that): for all his professions of Platonism, we know that St Augustine read Aristotle's actual words, but we do not know that he ever read Plato's actual words. He tells us in the Confessions that he read the Categories at school; but the nearest we get to evidence that he had read Plato is the famously unspecific phrase in platonicis libellis, also in the Confessions. (However, of course, Augustine did not find the Categories an inspiring read; and it is perhaps also worth pointing out that Augustine, in the City of God, remarks casually that Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies were virtually identical in content!) More seriously, what I hope to show is that Aristotle and Augustine develop theories of freedom and the voluntary which are in many ways strikingly analogous. Both are more concerned to describe freedom than to prove its existence. Both describe freedom of action by describing voluntary action. Both conclude that aban­ doning belief in freedom means abandoning belief in voluntary action too - which very few are willing to do. Again, it is striking that both their descriptions of voluntary action show that voluntary actions must be (i) uncompelled; (ii) not ignorant; and (iii) done in pursuit of perceived attainable goods. But don't agents sometimes act voluntarily in pursuit of perceived attainable evils? Aristotle says not: any such actions would be inexplicable as voluntary actions. Augustine, agreeing that such actions are inexplicable, still insists that they can occur. This- as I argue -is the true place, in Augustine's theory of free­ dom, of his famous 'theory of will'. It is also the real point of con­ trast between Aristotle and Augustine. This book had its origins in an Edinburgh University doctoral thesis supervised by James Mackey and David Wright, to both of whom I am grateful for the benefit of their wisdom, scholarship and advice. xi xii Preface I have also learnt much from a number of others who have listened patiently to my heterodoxies, and done their best to straighten them out: David Bostock, David Charles, Willie Charlton, Roger Crisp, Brian Davies, John Divers, Steven Everson, Philippa Foot, Peter Geach, Justin Gosling, Dave Horner, Mike Inwood, Fergus Kerr, Christopher Kirwan, John Lucas, Christopher Martin, Stephen Priest, David Pugmire, Hayden Ramsay, Dory Scaltsas, Richard Sorabji, Richard Swinburne, Charles Taliaferro, Lubor Velecky. If I have sometimes resisted their good sense, that is hardly their fault. In another way, I am indebted to the Whitefield Institute, Oxford, for their generous support, both financial and moral, during my postgraduate research; to Wolfson and Merton Colleges, Oxford, for electing me to a Junior Research Fellowship and a Lectureship in philosophy respectively, the tenure of which posts has facilitated the metamorphosis of thesis into book; and to the University of East Anglia, for repeatedly believing my claim that the book really was about to come out. I am also grateful to my daughter Miriam, for being herself, and to my parents for their love, support and encouragement during my studies; I am sad that my mother did not live to see them bear fruit. But my biggest debt of all is to my wife Claudia, without whom this project could never have been begun, let alone finished. T. D. J. CHAPPELL Wolfson College, Oxford Merton College, Oxford .
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