1. Whenever we quote a text we give a reference to the critical edition
Anselm's account of freedom
On the other hand, an incompatibilist might flatly refuse to be convinced that anyone in a situation in which he cannot do otherwise is free. It might not move him at all to hear that one is selfconsciously, and without compulsion, acting on a choice that one initiated oneself. It might not move the incompatibilist to know that there is nothing else the person is inclined to do and that a million alternatives would not change his action at all. Some people are just resistant to Frankfurt-style stories.
Once again, however, the Anselmian has a promising line of response. The whole motivation behind incompatibilism, after all, is the intuition that if external causal factors are responsible for our actions, then they are not really our actions in the sense that matters, and we are not (either causally or morally) responsible for them. The idea of alternative possibilities comes in only because people wrongly conclude that if there is no causal determination, there is nothing to narrow down the options to one. Anselm's theory saves the real motivation for incompatibilism by preserving the agent's own causal and moral responsibility for his actions, but without making the unwarranted leap to alternative possibilities, since it shows that there can be cases where it is the agent's own action-initiating power (will and reason, operating together) and not any external causal power that narrows the options down to one. notes This paper is reprinted, with some additions and adaptations, from the Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (2001): 221–44. We are grateful for the Journal's permission to use that material here. We are also 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.
Whenever we quote a text we give a reference to the critical edition of F. S. Schmitt, identified as "S"; and to the English translations in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R.
Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), hereafter Major Works, or to those in Three Philosophical Dialogues, trans. Thomas Williams
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
sandra visser and thomas williams (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2002), hereafter Dialogues. All translations are our own.
2. Anselm uses libertas arbitrii and liberum arbitrium interchangeably.
We shall translate as "freedom of choice" and "free choice," respectively, with no distinction in meaning.
3. De Lib. Arb. 3 (S i, 212; Dialogues: 36). At De Lib. Arb. 13 this definition is endorsed as complete (perfecta): that is, as stating a necessary and sufficient condition for freedom of choice.
4. See De Lib. Arb. 1 and 14.
5. De Ver. 1.
6. See our discussion of Anselm's account of truth in chapter 9 of this volume.
7. De Ver. 4 (S i: 181; Dialogues, 8–9).
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, Major Works, 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. De Ver. 12 (S i: 192; Dialogues, 21).
10. De Ver. 12 (S i: 193; Dialogues, 22).
11. De Ver. 12 (S i: 194; Dialogues, 24).
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
Anselm's account of freedom
12. De Ver. 12 (S i: 194; Dialogues, 24).
13. See the preface to De Ver. (S i: 173–74; Dialogues, 1–2).
14. De Lib. Arb. 1
15. Notice that Anselm's assumption here, namely that moral praiseworthiness and blameworthiness require free will, is commonly made in the contemporary debate as well.
16. De Lib. Arb. 1 (S i: 208; Dialogues, 32).
17. "Spontaneously" 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 sponte are contrasted with actions done as a result of necessity; there is no connotation of impulsiveness or lack of premeditation. We discuss Anselm's conception of necessity on pp. 192–94.
18. De Lib. Arb. 2 (S i: 209; Dialogues, 33).
19. De Lib. Arb. 2 (S i: 209–10; Dialogues, 33–34).
20. De Ver. 12; see p. 181 above. Anselm makes a similar argument in De Lib. Arb. 13.
21. De Lib. Arb. 4; cf. De Lib. Arb. 12.
22. The same restriction applies to the discussion in De Concordia itself, where Anselm notes more than once that he is relying on the account of freedom developed in the earlier works, applying it to show that freedom is compatible with divine foreknowledge, predestination, and grace. Other than some helpful distinctions and examples, which we discuss in this chapter, De Concordia contributes little of substance to the account of freedom. It does, however, offer important discussions of necessity, the relation of time and eternity, and (especially) grace and justification. These discussions are beyond the scope of the present paper.
23. De Lib. Arb. 5 (S i: 214; Dialogues, 39).
24. 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 (De Lib. Arb. 1 and 14).
25. De Casu Diab. 5 (S i: 242–43; Dialogues, 64).
26. De Lib. Arb. 2 (S i: 209; Dialogues, 33–34).
27. De Casu Diab. 12 (S i: 254; Dialogues, 78).
28. De Conc. 3.11.
29. De Ver. 12 (S i: 194; Dialogues, 23). On pp. 194–96 we examine some implications of this feature of Anselm's view.
30. De Casu Diab. 13 (S i: 256; Dialogues, 79).
31. De Casu Diab. 13 (S i: 257; Dialogues, 81).
32. De Casu Diab. 13 (S i: 257; Dialogues, 81).
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
sandra visser and thomas williams 33. De Casu Diab. 13 (S i: 257; Dialogues, 81).
34. 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 De Conc. 1.6). If the angel's only motivational disposition is toward 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.
35. So Anselm's view requires 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.
36. McInerny's translation (Major Works, 228–30) generally leaves out the "if," making the dilemma all but inescapable for anyone reading De
Casu Diaboli in his version.
37. De Casu Diab. 25 (S i: 273; Dialogues, 97).
38. Anselm commendably refrains from indulging in speculative angelic psychology and tells us that he has no idea what the something extra could have been. Scotus, who read De Casu Diaboli attentively, is somewhat less circumspect. See John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio 2, d. 6, q. 2.
39. De Casu Diab. 6 (S i: 243; Dialogues, 66): "adhærentes iustitiæ nullum bonum velle possint quod non gaudeant." In McInerny's translation (Major Works, 204), 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.
40. De Casu Diab. 24.
41. 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."
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006