49. Because the enriched descriptive definition is silent about what an

49. Because the enriched descriptive definition is silent about what an

Anselm's account of freedom

42. De Conc. 1.3 (S ii: 250; Major Works, 439).

43. De Conc. 2.3 (S ii: 262; Major Works, 451).

44. Cur Deus Homo 2.5 (S ii: 99–100; Major Works, 319). "Honorableness" and "dishonorableness" translate "honestas" and "inhonestas," respectively.

45. De Ver. 12 (S i: 193–94; Dialogues, 23).

46. De Ver. 12 (S i: 194; Dialogues, 23).

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

48. De Conc. 1.6 (S ii: 257; Major Works, 446).

49. 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 does not realize that 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.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams

Anselm on truth introduction A good place to start in assessing a theory of truth is to ask whether the theory under discussion is consistent with Aristotle's commonsensical definition of truth from Metaphysics 4: "What is false says of that which is that it is not, or of that which is not that it is; and what is true says of that which is that it is, or of that which is not that it is not."1 Philosophers of a realist bent will be delighted to see that Anselm unambiguously adopts the Aristotelian commonplace. A statement is true, he says, "when it signifies that what-is is."2 But the theory of truth that Anselm builds on this observation is one that would surely have confounded Aristotle. For no matter what the topic, Anselm's thinking always eagerly returns to God; and the unchallenged centrality of God in Anselm's philosophical explorations is nowhere more in evidence than in his account of truth. Indeed, we see in the student's opening question in De

Veritate that the entire discussion has God as its origin and its aim: "Since we believe that God is truth, and we say that truth is in many other things, I would like to know whether, wherever truth is said to be, we must acknowledge that God is that truth."3

The student then reminds Anselm that in the Monologion he had argued from the truth of statements to an eternal supreme Truth.

Does this not commit Anselm (the student seems to be asking) to holding that God himself is somehow the truth of true statements? But what definition of truth could make sense of such an odd claim? Anselm is happy to take up the challenge of showing that his description of God as "supreme Truth" is no mere metaphor, but the expression of the deepest insight into the nature

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

of truth. An account of truth is just theology under a different name.

This first distinctive characteristic of Anselm's theory, the centrality of God as supreme Truth, helps to account for a second distinctive characteristic: its strong insistence on the unity of truth.

All truth either is God or somehow reflects God; thus, one simple being provides the norm by which all truth-claims must be judged.

As G. R. Evans rightly notes, "When Anselm makes distinctions, as he frequently does, he intends to show more clearly the underlying unity of what is being subdivided."4 As we shall see, Anselm will deploy the concept of rectitude to assimilate all the various manifestations of truth – in statements, opinions, wills, actions, the senses, and the being of things – to each other and, in the end, to the supreme

Truth. Indeed, it will turn out that truth is so much the same thing in each of its manifestations that it is not strictly correct to speak of the truth of this or that thing. There is just truth, period; instead of speaking of the truth of action a and statement s, we should say that both action a and statement s are in accordance with truth, period. truth and rectitude In their search for a definition of truth, the teacher and student who are the interlocutors in De Veritate begin with the most common sort of truth: the truth of statements. Anselm's account of truth in statements is a sort of double-correspondence theory. A statement is true when it corresponds both to the way things are and to the purpose of making statements. Of course, the purpose of making statements just is to signify the way things are, so the two correspondences cannot pull apart. But Anselm clearly thinks that the function of statements explains why we should call them true when they correspond to reality; their corresponding to reality would not be reason to call statements true unless such correspondence were what statements were for: teacher: For what purpose is an affirmation made? student: For signifying that what-is is.

T: So it ought to do that. – S: Certainly.

T: So when it signifies that what-is is, it signifies what it ought to. – S:

Obviously.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams T: And when it signifies what it ought to, it signifies correctly (recte). – S:

Yes.

T: Now when it signifies correctly, its signification is correct (recta). – S:

No doubt about it.

T: So when it signifies that what-is is, its signification is correct. – S: That follows.

T: Furthermore, when it signifies that what-is is, its signification is true.

S: Indeed it is both correct and true when it signifies that what-is is.

T: Then its being correct is the same thing as its being true: that is, its signifying that what-is is. – S: Indeed, they are the same.

T: So its truth is nothing other than its correctness (rectitudo).

S: Now I see clearly that this truth is correctness.

So for statements, at least, rectitude (correctness) is a fundamentally teleological notion: statements are correct when they do what they were "made for."

But made by whom? Anselm goes on to make a distinction that shows clearly that it is not the one who utters a statement who "makes" it in the sense that is relevant to determining its rectitude or truth. The distinction arises out of a clever observation by the student:

S: A statement . . . has received the power to signify (accepit significare) both that what-is is, and that what-is-not is – for if it had not received the power to signify that even what-is-not is, it would not signify this.

So even when it signifies that what-is-not is, it signifies what it ought to. But if, as you have shown, it is correct and true by signifying what it ought to, then a statement is true even when it states that what-is-not is.5

To this the teacher responds that we do not customarily call a statement true just because it signifies what it received the power to signify: but we could. Statements have two truths or two rectitudes.

A statement's signifying what it received the power to signify is "invariable for a given statement": "It is day," for example, always signifies that it is day, so it has that sort of rectitude "naturally." But a statement's signifying what is the case is "variable": "It is day" does not always signify that what-is is, so it has this second sort of rectitude "accidentally and according to its use." This accidental rectitude is what a statement has "because it signifies in keeping with the purpose for which it was made." And here is where Anselm makes it clear that it is not made by a particular speaker:

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

T: For example, when I say "It is day" in order to signify that what-is is, I am using the signification of this statement correctly, since this is the purpose for which it was made; consequently, in that case it is said to signify correctly. But when I use the same statement to signify that what-is-not is, I am not using it correctly, since it was not made for that purpose; and so in that case its signification is said not to be correct.

Note first that this speech makes it clear that a statement (oratio) is a type, not a token. The token is a use of the type, and such a use is correct – or true – when the speaker uses the type in accordance with the purpose for which the type was made. Now the purpose of every statement-type is to signify that what-is is, so a given statementtoken is correct when it signifies that what-is is. The statementtoken as such has no further purpose, beyond that of the type, by which it can be evaluated as correct or incorrect, true or false.

One might be tempted to think that the token does have a purpose of its own, namely, the speaker's purpose. But Anselm's understanding of truth as rectitude precludes him from identifying the purpose of a statement-token with the speaker's purpose in uttering that token. For if the purpose of the token really is the speaker's purpose, then every token (except perhaps those that involve Freudian slips and other kinds of misspeaking, in which the speaker fails to utter the words he intended to utter) will achieve its intended purpose. Now whatever achieves its intended purpose has rectitude and, therefore, truth. So if the purpose of the token is the speaker's purpose, almost every sentence-token will turn out to be true. Strictly speaking, then, the token does not have a purpose. The tokening (the act of uttering the token) has a purpose, but the token itself is simply an instance or use of the type, and it is the type that has a purpose.

Using the type correctly is using it for its proper purpose.

Of course, the tokening is an act, and as we shall see, acts have rectitude and truth as well. Once again, Anselm cannot hold that the speaker's purpose in uttering the token establishes the purpose of acts of tokening. For in that case, an act of lying would have rectitude if the speaker succeeded in the deception he intended, but an act of truth-telling would lack rectitude if the speaker failed in, say, the persuasion he intended to produce in his audience. Here again, therefore, it seems that action types have purposes (in this case, the purpose of the type tokening statement-types is that of using signification correctly), and particular actions are right when

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams they accord with the purpose of the action-type. Thus, speaker's purpose and agent's purpose do not matter for rectitude. Rectitude is a matter of natures or types, and it is God who makes natures and thus gives them their purpose. Creatures have no genuine power to confer purposes.6

So it is statement-types, not tokens, that were "made" in order to signify that what-is is. We asked earlier: made by whom? By now it has become clear that Anselm's answer is: by God.7 This answer certainly appears strange, since the statement-types that Anselm is talking about here are natural-language statements, not the denatured propositions of contemporary philosophy.8 Indeed, Anselm does not have our notion of proposition, in the sense of whatever it is that is equally "expressed" by the Latin "Dies est" and the English "It is day."

The strangeness of the view lies not in the mere claim that God makes natural-language statement-types. God's making those is in itself no odder than His making any other type. The strangeness lies instead in the teleological element of Anselm's claim. God not only makes the type "It is day" but confers on it its purpose of signifying that it is day (when, in fact, it is day). So if the English language had developed in such a way that we all used "It is day" to express what we now mean by saying "It is obligatory," we would all be misusing that statement-type. We would be violating God's will for our linguistic practices. Since English is not something we are making up, we can get it wrong.

Now there are ways of mitigating the strangeness of this view, but we will not pursue them here, since they all involve a platonism so lush and giddy that even Anselm ought to blanch at them.9

The important point is that there is no need to go to such lengths in order to preserve the teleological notion of truth to which Anselm is committed. One can build the teleology into our God-given power to use language, rather than into the statement-types themselves.

Such a move allows one to recognize the conventionality of natural languages – to acknowledge, in other words, that it is human beings who make natural-language statement-types – but insist that our ability to make and use such languages was given to us by God for the purpose of signifying that what-is is. Thus, we use our power of speech correctly when we use conventional natural-language statement-types in order to signify that what-is is. Unfortunately,

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

Anselm himself cannot take this approach, since it involves conceding that creatures do have a limited power to create natures and confer purposes on them.

In any event, the truth of statements (which Anselm also calls the "truth of signification") is only the first manifestation of truth that the teacher and student consider. They turn next to the truth of thought or opinion, which is also identified with rectitude, again understood teleologically:

S: According to the reasoning we found persuasive in the case of statements, nothing can be more correctly called the truth of a thought than its rectitude. For the power of thinking that something is or is not was given to us in order that we might think that what-is is, and that what-is-not is not. Therefore, if someone thinks that what-is is, he is thinking what he ought to think, so his thought is correct. If, then, a thought is true and correct for no other reason than that we are thinking that what-is is, or that what-is-not is not, its truth is nothing other than its rectitude.10

Scripture also requires that we speak of truth in the will and in action,11 and these are analyzed in the same way. There is truth in a will as long as a rational creature wills "what he ought – that is, that for the sake of which he had received a will";12 there is truth in an action so long as the agent (whether rational or irrational) does what it ought to do, which is whatever it was created by God to do.13

Thus, as the student notes, truth in the will is just a special case of the truth of action.14 There is also a close connection between the truth of action and the truth of signification, as the teacher argues in Chapter 9: "since no one should do anything but what he ought to do, by the very fact that someone does something, he says and signifies that he ought to do it. And if he ought to do it, he says something true; but if he ought not, he lies."

Thus far, Anselm's discussion of truth poses no special philosophical difficulties (apart from the strangeness of the suggestion that natural-language statement-types are created by God). Truth is rectitude – in fact, Anselm defines truth as "rectitude perceptible by the mind alone."15 Rectitude, in turn, is a matter of something's doing or being what it ought to do or be. As applied to statements, thoughts, wills, and actions, this account of truth seems straightforward enough. But two further applications of the account will reveal deep philosophical puzzles beneath the superficial simplicity. When

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams Anselm turns to the truth that is in the being of things, he finds that the notion of "what something ought to be" is unexpectedly complicated. And when he finally turns to the supreme Truth, God, he insists that God is rectitude but denies that we can ever correctly say that God "ought to be" anything whatever. the truth in the being of things Having analyzed the truth that is found in statements, opinion, the will, action, and the senses, Anselm turns in Chapter 7 of De Veritate to a consideration of what he calls "the truth of the being of things."

The teacher asks, "Do you think anything is, in any time or place, that is not in the supreme Truth and did not receive its being, insofar as it has being, from the supreme Truth; or that it can be anything other than what it is in the supreme Truth?" The student replies,

"That is unthinkable." Now "is" and "being" are used very broadly here: Anselm has in mind not merely the existence of things, but their being the way they are, having the characteristics they have, and so forth. On this understanding of "is" and "being," we can identify at least two distinct claims to which the student is agreeing:

(1) Everything that exists (is a certain way, is the case) received its existence (its being that way, its being the case) from the supreme Truth.

(2) Necessarily, everything that exists (is a certain way, is the case) exists (is that way, is the case) in the supreme Truth.

Claim (1) is simply an emphatic affirmation of God's sovereignty and providence. Anselm's formulation is, as always, very careful.

He does not say that God causes the being of all things, but that all things receive their being from God. For there are evils that God permits but does not bring about; but it is nevertheless legitimate, Anselm argues, to say that those evils are received from God.16

What (2) means is less clear. What exactly is it for something to "exist in" or to "be a certain way in" the supreme Truth? By way of an example, suppose John is young. According to (2), John is young in the supreme Truth. This cannot simply mean that God knows that John is young, or even that John's youth exists as an object of Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

awareness for the divine mind. For Anselm will argue that John's being young is correct or right – that it is as it ought to be, and hence is true – because it is in the supreme Truth. Now it would make no sense to say that John's being young is as it ought to be because

God knows that John is young or because John's youth is an object of awareness to the divine mind. The notion seems to be, rather, that John's being young is in accordance with God's plan or purpose. If this is a correct understanding of (2), then there is a close connection between (1) and (2). (1) says that things received their existence and their characteristics from God; (2) says that what they received from God necessarily accords with His plan for them. Thus, according to (2), there is rectitude in all things, because all things accord with God's plan for them. Whatever is, is right.

In Chapter 8 Anselm addresses an obvious objection. Both what God permits and what God causes equally ought to be, according to Anselm, because God in His perfection would not allow or cause anything that ought not to be. And yet among the things that God permits are evil actions. Hence, the student asks, "But how can we say, with respect to the truth of a thing, that whatever is ought to be, since there are many evil deeds that certainly ought not to be?"

Anselm argues that such things both ought to be and ought not to be:

I know you do not doubt that nothing is at all, unless God either causes or permits it . . . Will you dare to say that God causes or permits anything unwisely or badly?

On the contrary, I contend that God always acts wisely and well.

Do you think that something caused or permitted by such great goodness and wisdom ought not to be?

What intelligent person would dare to think that?

Therefore, both what comes about because God causes it and what comes about because God permits it ought equally to be.

What you are saying is obviously true.

Then tell me whether you think the effect of an evil will ought to be.

That's the same as asking whether an evil deed ought to be, and no sensible person would concede that.

And yet God permits some people to perform the evil deeds that their evil wills choose.

If only He did not permit it so often!

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams T:

Then the same thing both ought to be and ought not to be. It ought to be, in that God, without whose permission it could not come about, acts wisely and well in permitting it; but if we consider the one whose evil will instigates the action, it ought not to be.

Anselm's position has some apparently unwelcome consequences.

First, Anselm cannot argue that one of the ways of looking at a situation is privileged and thus mitigate the awkwardness of saying that the same action both ought to be and ought not to be. If there were a privileged way of looking at the situation, it would surely be God's way. But God looks at every situation in at least the same variety of ways that humans do. (To speak anthropomorphically, He must ask "Ought John to kill Samantha?" in one way when assessing His providential plan, and in quite another way when assessing the punishment that might be due to John.) Which way is relevant depends entirely on the circumstances in which, or the reasons for which, we want to know the answer to the question, "Ought S to have done

X?" or "Ought S to do X?"

Since Anselm applies this analysis to "can" statements as well as to "ought" statements, the view has a second unwelcome consequence. Not only whether someone ought to perform a certain action but also whether someone can perform a certain action depends on the way in which one is considering the "can"-statement. It might be true, for example, that Gertrude can both wash her car tomorrow and refrain from washing her car tomorrow, when we ignore God's eternal plan. But when we assess the same thing while considering

His plan, Gertrude can only do one or the other, depending on what God planned to permit.

One might object that Anselm need not embrace these consequences. Contrary to what Anselm seems to think, one might argue, in such cases we are not considering the same action in two different ways. Instead, we are considering two different actions. In the first example, we are not evaluating John's murdering (considered morally) and John's murdering (considered in terms of providence); rather, we are evaluating John's murdering and God's permitting John to murder, which are clearly distinct actions. Unfortunately, Anselm cannot dissolve the apparent paradox so easily. For he is interested in whether these two actions ought to have occurred, and here we cannot assess God's action of permitting without considering what it is that He is permitting, namely, John's murdering of Samantha.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

And since whatever God permits ought to be, then John's murdering of Samantha ought to be.17 Yet, looked at in another way, it ought not to be. The requirement that we assign different truth values to one and the same statement depending on the ways in which the statement is considered cannot be eliminated after all.

So what is it to consider the truth of one and the same statement in different ways? It is to take into account different features or aspects of reality when assessing a sentence. One might want to argue that if this is all that is meant by "ways" of considering the truth of statements, then it is clear that there is a privileged way: the one in which we consider everything about how the world is. But Anselm cannot go along with this suggestion, since it implies that any judgment of the form "X ought not to be" is, if considered in the privileged way, false. For if we consider everything, then we consider God's plan; and if we do that, then whatever is the case ought to be the case. But then there seems to be little sense left in saying that one ought not to have murdered or lied or been spiteful to one's friends, because whatever one did is what God permitted one to do and therefore what – taking everything into account – one ought to have done. And clearly

Anselm is not willing to strip moral judgments of their force in this way. So we are left with a theory of truth according to which one and the same statement is true or false depending on the context of assessment.18

In the end, this odd feature of Anselm's view is almost invisible in De Veritate. He rarely explicitly refers to the context in which he assesses the truth of normative and modal claims – perhaps because it is typically obvious which context is the relevant one given the discussion at hand. When there is ambiguity, Anselm is quick to let us know what the relevant context is. Nonetheless, the view that the truth value of normative and modal statements varies depending on the context of assessment has important implications for other areas of his thought. We do not have space in this essay to pursue those implications, but we will note that there can be no fully adequate account of Anselm's views on human freedom, grace, providence, and divine foreknowledge without a recognition that modal statements do not, for Anselm, have context-independent truth values. Indeed, if Anselm's perspectivalism can be defended, it opens up philosophically promising avenues for discussions of those perennially vexing issues.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams the supreme truth In De Veritate 2–9 Anselm examines a variety of truths and finds that each of them can be identified as rectitude. It is therefore no surprise that when he comes to God, the supreme Truth, at the beginning of Chapter 9, Anselm easily wins his student's agreement that the supreme Truth is rectitude. But Anselm immediately makes it clear that God cannot be rectitude in the same sense as all the other rectitudes:

You will surely not deny that the supreme Truth is rectitude.

Indeed, I cannot acknowledge it to be anything else.

Note that, while all the rectitudes discussed earlier are rectitudes because the things in which they exist either are or do what they ought, the supreme Truth is not a rectitude because it ought to be or do anything. For all things are under obligations to it, but it is under no obligation to anything.19

By affirming that the supreme Truth is rectitude, Anselm completes his assimilation of all truths to rectitude. But by insisting that the rectitude of the supreme Truth is not the same as the rectitude of all inferior truths, he seems to run up against two problems. The first is what we shall call the problem of significance: what can Anselm mean by calling God the supreme Truth or rectitude? He cannot avoid such language, since both Scripture and the arguments of the Monologion require him to call God "Truth," and the earlier arguments of De Veritate require him to identify truth with rectitude.

And yet the earlier sense of rectitude, according to which a thing has rectitude in virtue of its being what it ought to be or doing what it ought to do, cannot apply to God. So it is hard to see what significance Anselm can attach to this language that he now has no choice but to use.

The second problem is what we shall call the problem of unity: by insisting that God is not a truth or a rectitude in the same sense as all other truths or rectitudes, Anselm appears to abandon his stated aim of showing that "there is one truth in all true things." For the truth that we identify with God is not the same as the truth of statements, actions, and the other true things analyzed in the earlier chapters. Now recall the student's opening question: "Since we believe that God is truth, and we say that truth is in many other things, I would like to know whether, wherever truth is said to be, we must

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

acknowledge that God is that truth." It appears that Anselm has now backed himself into such a corner that he must deny that God is the truth "wherever truth is said to be."

We shall begin with Anselm's solution to the problem of significance. Immediately after pointing out that the supreme Truth is rectitude, but a rectitude of quite a different sort from all the others, the teacher continues:

Do you also see that this rectitude is the cause of all other truths and rectitudes, and nothing is the cause of it?

I see that, and I notice that some of these other truths and rectitudes are merely effects, while others are both causes and effects. For example, the truth that is in the being of things is an effect of the supreme Truth, and it is in turn a cause of the truth of thoughts and statements; and the latter two truths are not a cause of any other truth.

This exchange strongly suggests that what we mean when we call God "Truth" is that he is the cause of the other truths.

This suggestion is confirmed by the new spin that Anselm gives to the argument from Monologion 18 with which the student had confronted him at the beginning of De Veritate. Anselm had argued from the truth of statements to the existence of a supreme Truth without beginning or end:

Let anyone who can do so think of this: when did it begin to be true, or when was it not true, that something was going to exist? Or when will it cease to be true, and no longer be true, that something existed in the past? But if neither of these can be thought, and neither statement can be true apart from truth, then it is impossible even to think that truth has a beginning or end.20

Now that the student understands that the supreme Truth is the cause of other truths, Anselm says, he is in a position to appreciate the true force of that earlier argument:

[W]hen I asked, "when was it not true that something was going to exist?"

I did not mean that this statement, asserting that something was going to exist in the future, was itself without a beginning, or that this truth was

God.

Instead, what he meant was that no matter when the statement "Something is going to exist" might have been uttered, it would

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams have been true. Therefore, the cause of its truth must always have existed. And, Anselm continues, The same reasoning applies to a statement that says something existed in the past. Since it is inconceivable that this statement, if uttered, could lack truth, it must be the case that the supreme cause of its truth cannot be understood to have an end. For what makes it true to say that something existed in the past is the fact that something really did exist in the past; and the reason something existed in the past is that this is how things are in the supreme Truth.

So to argue that the supreme Truth is eternal is not to argue that some feature of statements is eternal, but that the cause of their truth is eternal. God is the supreme Truth because He is the cause of the truth of all other true things.

Having thus solved the problem of significance, Anselm turns to the problem of unity: "Let us . . . ask whether there is only one truth in all the things in which we say there is truth, or whether there are several truths, just as there are several things in which (as we have established) there is truth."21 Suppose, for example, that "the rectitude of signification differs from rectitude of will because the one is in the will and the other in signification." It would follow that "rectitude of signification has its being because of signification and varies according to signification." The student replies:

So it does. For when a statement signifies that what-is is, or that what-is-not is not, the signification is correct; and it has been established that this is the rectitude without which there is no correct signification. If, however, the statement signifies that what-is-not is, or that what-is is not, or if it signifies nothing at all, there will be no rectitude of signification, which exists only in signification. Hence, the rectitude of signification has its being through signification and changes along with it.

The teacher quickly rejects this commonsensical position. The rectitude or truth of signification does not have its being through signification, but in fact is altogether independent of signification.

For suppose (the teacher argues) that no one wills to signify what ought to be signified. Then there will be no signification, but "the rectitude in virtue of which it is right for what-ought-to-be-signified to be signified, and by which this is demanded, does not cease to exist." The teacher concludes:

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

So when rectitude is present in signification, it is not because rectitude begins to exist in signification when someone signifies that what-is is, or that what-is-not is not; instead, it is because at that time signification comes about in accordance with a rectitude that always exists. And when rectitude is absent from signification, it is not because rectitude ceases to exist when signification is not what it should be or there is no signification at all; instead, it is because at that time signification falls away from a rectitude that never fails.

Thus, the rectitude of signification does not depend on signification.

And there is nothing distinctive about signification in this regard: rectitude of will does not depend on the will or rectitude of action on action. Rectitude does not depend on the things in which there is rectitude: there is one never-failing, unchangeable rectitude for all things in which we say there is truth or rectitude.

The conclusion that there is only one truth in all true things seems to come too quickly, since it is possible that the never-failing rectitude that makes it right for what-ought-to-be-signified to be signified is distinct from the never-failing rectitude that makes it right for what-ought-to-be-done to be done, and so on for each of the other sorts of rectitude discussed in De Veritate. In other words, the original question about whether there are distinct species of truth, corresponding to the distinct species of true things, is not answered by the teacher's discussion of the rectitude of signification, which seems designed to show that there are not distinct instances of a given species. Nonetheless, given what he has already said in discussing

God as supreme Truth, Anselm is entitled to this conclusion. For we know that God is the cause of all the truths:

Do you also see that this rectitude is the cause of all other truths and rectitudes, and nothing is the cause of it?

I see that, and I notice that some of these other truths and rectitudes are merely effects, while others are both causes and effects. For example, the truth that is in the being of things is an effect of the supreme Truth, and it is in turn a cause of the truth of thoughts and statements; and the latter two truths are not a cause of any other truth.

So the one and only never-failing rectitude, in accordance with which whatever is right in signification, thought, action, or will comes to be, is God. The supreme Truth is in fact the only truth. As the Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams student suggested at the outset, "wherever truth is said to be, we must acknowledge that God is that truth."

But then why, the student asks, "do we speak of the truth of this or that particular thing as if we were distinguishing different truths, when in fact there are not different truths for different things?" The teacher replies that such language is not strictly correct:

Truth is said improperly to be of this or that thing, since truth does not have its being in or from or through the things in which it is said to be. But when things themselves are in accordance with truth, which is always present to those things that are as they ought to be, we speak of the truth of this or that thing – for example, the truth of the will or of action – in the same way in which we speak of the time of this or that thing despite the fact that there is one and the same time for all things that are temporally simultaneous, and that if this or that thing did not exist, there would still be time. For we do not speak of the time of this or that thing because time is in the things, but because they are in time. And just as time regarded in itself is not called the time of some particular thing, but we speak of the time of this or that thing when we consider the things that are in time, so also the supreme Truth as it subsists in itself is not the truth of some particular thing, but when something is in accordance with it, then it is called the truth or rectitude of that thing.

Note that Anselm's solution to the problem of unity is not a standard Platonic maneuver of the sort that we see in his account of goodness. That is, he is not arguing that since various things are true, there must be something that is true in the highest degree and has its truth from itself rather than from another.22 Anselm in fact never argues in this way that God is true, as he argues that God is just, good, and so forth. (The expression "true God" is common in Anselm in Christological contexts, but he seldom uses "true" of God predicatively.) So the unity of truth is not the unity of a property in its various instances, but strict numerical identity. There is one truth because Truth is God, who is one. conclusion We now have a complete picture of Anselm's view of truth. "Wherever truth is said to be" – in statements, opinions, wills, actions, the Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

senses, and the being of things – that truth is rectitude. Something has rectitude because it accords with its purpose. Something receives its purpose from whatever caused it. God causes all things. So whatever is said to be true is true in virtue of being caused by God in accordance with His will, and God is Truth because He causes all things and establishes the standards by which they are to be evaluated.

To a contemporary philosopher, Anselm's commitment to the unity of truth might well seem gratuitous. For one thing, we would not today speak of truth in wills, actions, the senses, and "the being of things," so the effort to try to capture all those uses of the word

"true" in a single theory seems needlessly strained. And even in the cases where we would speak of truth – in statements and opinions – the elaborate theory Anselm develops in the interest of a unified theory of truth adds unnecessary complexity to his promisingly commonsensical observation that a statement is true "when it signifies that what-is is."

But in fact it is not so difficult to see how Anselm's Grand Unified Theory of Truth emerges out of the deceptive simplicity of the Aristotelian commonplace. His first account of the truth of statements is that a statement's truth is its correctness, its getting things right. But its getting things right is not simply a matter of its corresponding to the way things are: it is a matter of the statement's doing its proper job. If a statement had some purpose other than saying that whatis is, its saying that what-is is would not be any reason to call the statement correct. (We call a clock "right" when the time it tells is the actual time, but only because clocks are meant for telling time.)

Once Anselm starts attending to the notion of "getting things right" in this sense, however, it is perfectly natural for him to ask about the proper job of the will, of actions, and of all the other things whose rectitude he investigates in De Veritate. In every case, the proper job is the job assigned by God. All sorts of things can therefore be said to be right or correct or true if they do the job assigned them by God.

Contemporary philosophers would not put it that way, of course; we would prefer to say that things "are as they ought to be," rather than that they are correct or true. But our linguistic conventions should not be allowed to obscure Anselm's fundamental point, which is that the truth we find in statements is not a property limited to the domain of language.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

sandra visser and thomas williams notes 1. Aristotle, Metaphysics 4.7 (1011b 25–28). All translations are our own.

2. De Ver. 2. We will hyphenate "what-is" and "what-is-not" for ease of reading.

3. De Ver. 1.

4. G. R. Evans, Anselm and a New Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 136.

5. De Ver. 2.

6. This is not to say that creatures do not act purposively – some of them obviously do – but that in acting purposively they perform actions, make statements, and so forth, whose genuine purposes are determined, not by their own wills, but by God's creative activity. For example, my purpose in making a statement may be to hurt a colleague's feelings, but it does not follow that that is what the statement is actually for.

7. Although Anselm does not state explicitly that natural-language statement-types were made by God, Anselm describes the powers and purposes of statements using exactly the same sort of language he uses to describe the powers and purposes of creatures generally. Thus, statements "received the power to signify" (accepit significare) just as an angel created by God "received the power to will" (accepit velle).

And a statement's signifying what it received the power to signify is "natural" – Anselm's usual word for what follows from the nature that God gave a thing – just as, if an angel received only the power to will happiness, its willing happiness would be "natural." In De Ver. 5, in fact, Anselm expressly notes that the invariable truth of statements is an instance of the rectitude that actions have when a thing acts in accordance with the nature that God gave it: "For just as fire, when it heats, does the truth, since it received the power to heat from the one who gave it being, so also the statement 'It is day' does the truth when it signifies that it is day, whether it is actually day or not, since it received naturally the power to do this."

8. Anselm's usual word, as we have noted, is oratio. Propositio occurs a few times in De Veritate, but it is not distinguished in sense from oratio.

9. We take the expression "lush and giddy platonism" from William E.

Mann, "Simplicity and Properties: A Reply to Morris," Religious Studies 22 (1986): 343–53, at 348.

10. De Ver. 3. Note that if Anselm thought of propositions as a kind of mental language, as some later medieval thinkers would, then he would have no need to suppose that God creates natural-language statement-types.

For then utterances would express mental language or thought, which is the same in all human beings because it is a function of the powers

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on truth

we were given by God. In this way the truth of statements could be analyzed in terms of the truth of thought or mental language. Unfortunately, Anselm does not think of propositions in this way.

11. For truth in the will the teacher appeals to John 8:44, which says that the Devil "did not abide in the truth." "It was only in his will," the teacher says, "that he was in the truth and then abandoned the truth."

For truth in action the teacher appeals to John 3:21: "He who does the truth comes to the light."

12. De Ver. 4.

13. De Ver. 5.

14. De Ver. 5.

15. The qualification "perceptible by the mind alone" excludes rectitude that can be perceived by the senses, such as the rectitude (that is, the straightness) of a stick.

16. See De Casu Diab. 20.

17. Would Anselm then infer that John ought to kill Samantha? The answer is not altogether clear from the text, but we are inclined to say yes.

Anselm acknowledges that expressions of the form "S ought to φ" do not always imply that S is under an obligation to φ. So he can consistently affirm both that John is not under an obligation to kill Samantha (indeed, that he is under an obligation not to kill her) and that he ought to kill her.

18. It is important not to confuse this claim with the superficially similar (and relatively uncontroversial) claim that the propositional content, and hence the truth-value, of an utterance can change depending on the circumstances of the utterance. Anselm holds the much stronger and more counterintuitive view that one and the same utterance, with just one determinate propositional content and in one determinate set of circumstances, can have different truth-values according to different ways of assessing the utterance.

19. More literally: ". . . the supreme Truth is not a rectitude because it owes something. For all things owe [something] to it, but it owes nothing to anything."

20. Mon. 18, quoted verbatim in De Ver. 1.

21. De Ver. 13.

22. For the argument concerning goodness, see Jeffrey Brower's contribution to this volume.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower

Anselm on ethics There is a real question about whether Anselm developed anything like a systematic ethical theory.1 Indeed, scholars have sometimes suggested that his treatment of ethical matters consists in little more than recapitulation of ethical principles implicit in Scripture or transmitted to him by Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Boethius.2 The truth of the matter, however, is quite the opposite.

Although it is easy to overlook the systematic nature of Anselm's ethical theorizing, as well as its genuine originality, his contribution to medieval ethical theory is considerable. Admittedly, none of his philosophical or theological works is devoted to the systematic presentation of ethical issues; nor is there much novelty to be found in them at the level of specific ethical principles. Nonetheless, it is possible to extract from his works something that moral philosophers today would recognize as a worked-out ethical theory – one that includes a sophisticated moral metaphysics, moral semantics, and moral psychology.3

For purposes of classification, we can divide ethical theories into two main categories, teleological and deontological, each of which admits of further subdivision.4 Teleological (or good-based) theories attempt to explain the moral value of actions in terms of their conduciveness to some ultimate end or good state of affairs (telos in Greek): actions that promote this end are morally good, right, or obligatory, whereas actions that obstruct it, or promote its opposite, are morally bad, wrong, or prohibited. Nowadays the most familiar forms of teleological theory are ones that – like the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill or G. E. Moore – identify the end of morality in terms of the goodness for all sentient creatures or the universe as a whole. During Anselm's time, however, the only prominent

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

forms were those that – like the eudaimonism of Plato and Aristotle – require agents to aim at their own individual happiness or well-being

(eudaimonia in Greek), where this is taken to include the good of others and to involve the possession of the moral and intellectual virtues.

By contrast with teleological theories, deontological (or dutybased) theories attempt to explain the moral value of actions in terms of their rightness or obligatoriness, a property to be distinguished (at least conceptually) from conduciveness to the well-being of any sentient creatures or the universe they inhabit. Because deontological theories place great emphasis on duty or obligation (deon in Greek), they typically also stress the need for proper motives or intentions, requiring agents not only to perform the right action, but also to perform it for the sake of its rightness. Some familiar twentieth-century forms of deontology – such as the intuitionism of H. A. Prichard and W. D. Ross – claim that rightness or obligatoriness is a primitive or unanalyzable property of actions to which we have direct, intuitive access. Others – such as the formalism of Immanuel Kant – attempt to analyze the rightness or obligatoriness of actions in terms of their formal features (e.g. their universalizability). During Anselm's time, there do not appear to have been any worked-out forms of deontology. Indeed, given the prominence of eudaimonism throughout the Middle Ages, deontological theory is often regarded as a late development, associated with the attempts of some late-medieval philosophers to analyze the rightness of certain actions in terms of their conformity to the absolute will of God.

One of the most distinctive features of Anselm's ethical theory is the extent to which it succeeds in combining elements of theories falling in both categories. At bottom, I shall argue, Anselm's theory is deontological in nature: unlike the eudaimonism characteristic of this period, it separates morality from happiness (at least conceptually) and emphasizes the need for agents to be motivated by justice rather than happiness. This, in itself, is historically significant, since it is typically the late-medieval philosopher, John Duns Scotus

(d. 1308), who is credited with being the first medieval thinker to develop a distinctively non-Aristotelian or duty-based conception of morality.5 Despite the deontological orientation of Anselm's ethical views, his account also incorporates central elements of medieval eudaimonistic ethical theory. Like other medieval eudaimonists,

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower Anselm devotes considerable attention to the nature of happiness or the human good, ultimately identifying it with a form of union with God. Moreover, he argues at length that right action necessarily leads to happiness (at least in the long run) and that something like

Aristotelian virtue has an essential role to play in morality.6

The main features of Anselm's ethical theory can all be seen as deriving from his distinctive conception of morality in terms of justice rather than happiness. My discussion, therefore, is organized accordingly. I begin with a brief examination of Anselm's views about the nature of justice, and its place in his theory of value generally.

This examination will provide us with Anselm's answers to some familiar metaethical questions – that is, questions about the nature of moral language and the properties in virtue of which such language applies to the world. With answers to these questions in hand, I then turn to the details of Anselm's normative views and moral psychology – that is, to his views about the conditions under which moral properties are exemplified and the psychology required to explain our motivation with respect to them.7

Because the elements of Anselm's ethical theory are scattered throughout a large number of sources, ranging over a host of topics, and because they seem to me to show no significant change over time, I will draw freely on his entire corpus in my discussion.

Moreover, because his views are interesting, in part, for the extent to which they succeed at integrating aspects of eudaimonistic ethical theory, I will also compare them, wherever appropriate, with a standard medieval form of eudaimonism – helping myself to the succinct formulations it receives at the hands of philosophers such as Aquinas and Scotus, rather than trying to reconstruct it in every case from Anselm's own sources.8 anselm's metaethics Throughout his works Anselm assumes that moral statements, of the form "X is good" or "X is right," are either true or false (and hence have cognitive value), and also that their truth or falsity is independent of the (objects of) beliefs, desires, and other psychological states of individual human beings (and hence that the cognitive value of moral statements is an objective matter). In contemporary terms, therefore, he accepts both cognitivism and objectivism

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

in ethics. In this respect, Anselm does not differ from most other medieval philosophers, who also assume that moral statements are objectively true or false. But there is another respect in which he does differ from most other medieval philosophers: his views about the nature and types of properties that must be appealed to in order to explain the objective truth or falsity of moral statements.

Types of value According to a standard medieval form of eudaimonism, all value is to be explained in terms of goodness, and all goodness is to be explained in terms of being. According to this theory, therefore, the only properties that must be invoked to explain the objective truth or falsity of moral statements are the natural properties in virtue of which things exist or have being.9 Since the distinctive nature of Anselm's views can be brought into relief by contrasting them with this sort of medieval theory, it will be useful to spell out a few of its details.

Eudaimonism, of the standard medieval variety, is grounded in a form of universal teleology. Things belong to their specific natural or metaphysical kinds in virtue of possessing certain natural capacities or dispositions (namely, those that are definitive of their kind). Thus, things belong to the kind plant if they possess all and only the capacities definitive of plants (such as the capacity to take in nutrition, reproduce, and grow); whereas they belong to the kind human being if they possess all and only the capacities definitive of human beings (such as the capacity for rational cognition and volition). Now, to the extent that things have the capacities associated with a specific kind, they are said to exist and hence to have being as members of that kind. Thus, things are said to have being as plants just in case they possess the capacities definitive of plants; whereas they are said to have being as humans just in case they possess the capacities definitive of human beings; and likewise for other kinds of things (e.g. cats, dogs, horses). We might call this sort of being

"essential being," since it is associated with the nature or essence of a thing, placing it within its specific metaphysical kind.

In virtue of possessing their distinctive capacities, things not only have essential being (i.e. existence as a member of some kind); they also have an inclination to a set of further states or activities.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower Moreover, it is the actualization of these further states or activities that constitutes a thing's being fully developed as a member of its kind. Thus, a fully developed plant or animal will possess not only the capacities definitive of its kind, but also the corresponding states or conditions (in the case of human beings, they are called "virtues") that constitute the actualization of these capacities. Because it is typically an "accidental" or contingent matter whether a thing possesses such further states or conditions, medieval eudaimonists conceive of them as Aristotelian accidents – that is, as properties falling within one of Aristotle's nine accidental categories. Moreover, because of their special relationship to the kind-defining capacities of their possessor, medieval eudaimonists also think of such states or conditions as giving their possessor additional being or actuality as members of their specific kinds. Hence, a fully developed plant or animal, they say, not only has existence as a plant or an animal, but also has

"more being" as a plant or animal than other, less developed members of their kind. We might call this second sort of being "kindrelative accidental being" – accidental because it contrasts with essential being, and kind-relative because it contrasts with accidental being (such as hair color or blood type in human beings) that does not directly contribute to something's being an ideal member of its kind.10

As this brief sketch makes clear, medieval eudaimonists conceive of being as involving more than just existence. On the one hand, they think of something as having being in virtue of existing. Like most contemporary philosophers, moreover, they think of this type of being as an all-or-nothing affair: something exists (full stop) just in case it has essential being – that is, just in case it has the capacities definitive of some natural or metaphysical kind. On the other hand, however, medieval eudaimonists also think of something as having being to the extent that it actualizes the capacities associated with its kind – that is to say, to the extent that it has kind-relative accidental being. In this respect, they differ from most contemporary philosophers. For in conceiving of kind-relative accidental being as a type of being – despite the fact that, unlike existence, it is not an all-or-nothing affair, but rather comes in degrees – medieval eudaimonists are led to say that being itself comes in degrees. Even so, it should be clear that the sense in which they think being comes in degrees is quantitative rather than qualitative. Things have being,

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

in the first place, in virtue of existing, and they have "more (or less) being" to the extent that they have quantitatively more (or less) kindrelative accidental being – that is, quantitatively more (or less) of the accidents required to complete them as members of their kind.11

According to medieval eudaimonists, the complete development of a thing is not only an end toward which its nature inclines it, but also the good for things of that kind. Like being, therefore, they regard goodness as kind-relative and degreed: to the extent that a plant (or human being) is fully developed, to that same extent it has both being and goodness as a plant (or human being). In the ideal case, plants (or human beings) will have not only the essential being associated with their specific kind, but also all the kind-relative accidental being it is possible for them to have. That is to say, they will be good as plants

(or human beings) in every respect. In the limiting case, by contrast a plant (or human being) will have only the essential being associated with its kind, and hence be good as a plant (or human being) only in one respect. Finally, in most if not all actual cases, plants (or human beings) will have the essential being associated with their kind and some but not all of the kind-relative accidental being it is possible for them to have, and hence be good as plants (or human beings) in some respects but not others.

Anselm's ethical theory shares much in common with that of the medieval eudaimonists. Like them, he admits a type of value that supervenes on being: things are good, he says, to the extent that they have being (Mon. 1). Like the medieval eudaimonists, moreover, Anselm recognizes two different ways in which things can have being, and hence two corresponding types of goodness. On the one hand, he says, things can have goodness just in virtue of possessing a nature or essence (where a nature or essence is that which accounts for a thing's natural powers or capacities). This sort of goodness appears to be what I called "essential goodness" above. On the other hand, he says, things can also have goodness in virtue of actualizing the capacities or powers associated with their nature (De Casu

Diab. 12). This appears to be what I called "kind-relative accidental goodness."

In ethical contexts, Anselm has little to say about essential goodness, presumably because insofar as it derives from our nature, it is not something over which we have control. The notion of kind-relative accidental goodness receives more attention from him.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower Unlike the medieval eudaimonists, however, he is prepared to distinguish two different types of goodness here too, one of which he refers to as "advantage," the other as "justice":

Setting aside the fact that every nature is called "good," there are two goods, and two evils contrary to them, that we commonly speak of. One good is that which is called "justice," and whose contrary evil is injustice. The other good is that which can be called "the advantageous," or so it seems to me, and the evil opposed to it is the disadvantageous. (De Casu Diab. 12;

S i: 255.4–8) As passages such as this one help to make clear, Anselm recognizes three types of value or goodness: namely, essential goodness and two types of kind-relative accidental goodness, advantage and justice. As we shall see, "advantage" is Anselm's name for the type of kind-relative accidental goodness recognized by medieval eudaimonists – that is, the value associated with a thing's complete actualization – whereas "justice" is his name for a type of accidental goodness peculiar to human beings (or rational agents). Both types of value qualify as "accidental" because whether, and to what extent, a rational agent possesses them is a contingent or accidental matter. From the ethical perspective, moreover, they are the only really interesting types of value – not only because their possession is under the agent's control, but also because they can, at least from the agent's perspective, come into conflict. According to Anselm, an agent possesses justice if and only if that agent does what it ought to do (or fulfills its duty); but duty, he thinks, can sometimes require agents to sacrifice advantage.

We shall see more clearly below how Anselm understands the relation between justice and advantage, when we turn to his normative views concerning the conditions under which each of these properties is possessed (see pp. 234ff.). Before turning to these conditions, however, it will be useful to clarify how Anselm conceives of nature of the properties themselves. Does he think of them as primitive, unanalyzable properties (as moral intuitionists such as Prichard and Ross do)? Or does he rather think of them (in the spirit of a Kant or Scotus) as somehow analyzable in terms of other properties, say universalizability or conformity with divine commands? In order to address these questions clearly, it will be useful to impose some terminological uniformity. Hereafter, therefore, I shall use the term

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

"value" (rather than "goodness") to refer to the genus of which essential goodness, advantage, and justice are species; and I shall use the term "goodness" to refer to essential goodness and advantage, referring to the third species of value simply as "justice." Eventually we shall see that when Anselm himself wants to speak about value in general, and hence about the genus to which goodness and justice belong, he introduces another evaluative term – namely,

"rightness."

The nature of value As we have seen, medieval eudaimonists admit one fundamental type of value, goodness, which is kind-relative and admits of degrees.

Because they regard this type of value as "supervening on," or explicable in terms of, the natural properties in virtue of which things have being, they typically deny that goodness is anything ontologically over and above such properties. In other words, they conceive of goodness as "multiply realizable" – that is, as a functional property realized by the different natural properties in virtue of which different things are completed as members of their kind. In conceiving of goodness in this way, many medieval eudaimonists take themselves to be following Aristotle, who famously rejects the Platonic view that we must admit a Form of goodness in which all good things participate.12

As we have also seen, Anselm too admits a type of goodness that supervenes on being, a type that is both kind-relative and comes in degrees. Unlike medieval eudaimonists, however, he thinks we must recognize a distinct Form or property for such goodness. Indeed, in Monologion, he claims that we must recognize a distinct Form wherever we have a property admitting of degrees, introducing the following anti-Aristotelian (or Platonic) principle:

(P1) Whenever two (or more) things can be said to be F to the same or different degree, we must understand these things as being F by virtue of participating in something like the Platonic Form or standard of F-ness.13

His paradigm example of things satisfying this principle is that of just things:

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower Whenever things are said to be equally just, or more or less just, in comparison with one another, they can be understood as just only through justice, which is not different in the diverse things. (Mon. 1; S i: 14.13–15)

But as he immediately goes on to say, the same principle applies to good things as well:

But, then, since it is certain that all good things, if they are compared with one other, are either equally or unequally good, it is necessary that all good things are good through something understood to be the same in the diverse things. (Mon. 1; S i: 14.15–17) In addition to (P1), Anselm also thinks we must endorse another broadly Platonic principle:

(P2) The Form of F-ness must itself be F – indeed, F through itself – since it is the source of the F-ness of all other things.

Anselm makes (P2) explicit in the case of goodness: "Now who would doubt that this thing, through which all goods exist, is itself a great good?" And since he takes this Form, as well as every other, to reside somehow in God, he concludes that what we say about goodness must be said of God: "Therefore, He is good through Himself, since every good exists through Him" (Mon. 1; S i: 15.4–7). And the same, he says, applies to the Form of justice.

As the foregoing helps to make clear, we must distinguish on Anselm's view the goodness or justice of Forms from the goodness or justice of things participating in them. Unlike some Platonists,

Anselm never shrinks from saying that things other than the Form of goodness or justice can truly be good or just. Nonetheless, he is committed to saying that the goodness or justice of such things is nothing but their standing in a certain relation to these Forms (namely, the relation of participation). But what about the rightness or goodness of the Forms or standards themselves? Anselm does not tell us very much about them, but what he does say – that they are good and just

"through" themselves – certainly suggests that they are good and just, respectively, solely in virtue of being what they are. Moreover, since Anselm says that each of these Forms or standards somehow resides in God, we can infer that God, too, must be regarded as good or just solely in virtue of what he is.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

At this point a question, inspired by Plato's Euthyphro, arises about how Anselm understands the relationship between the standards of goodness or justice and God. In locating these standards in God, does Anselm mean to be articulating some type of divinecommand theory, as his late-medieval admirer, John Duns Scotus, did? That is to say, does he think that things are good or just merely because they conform to God's will, or does he rather think that they conform to God's will because they are good or just?

Anselm is aware of the need to answer this sort of question. As it turns out, he does think that whatever God wills is just or right and whatever He does not will – or wills against – is unjust or wrong.

But as he points out, it does not follow from this that something is just or right simply because God wills it: "When it is said 'what God wills is just, and what He does not will is not just,' this must not be understood to mean that if God were to will anything inappropriate, it would be just because He willed it" (Cur Deus Homo 1.12; S ii:

70.14–17). This passage certainly suggests that Anselm rejects any straightforward identification of justice or rightness with what God wills. Indeed, on the basis of what he says here, it is natural to suppose that he would reject any type of divine-command theory of value, and hence to conclude that insofar as standards of value reside in God, they must reside not in His will or other psychological states, but in His nature, where this is conceived of as utterly distinct from any psychological states.

The picture that emerges from this passage is complicated, however, by the fact that, like other medieval philosophers and theologians, Anselm accepts the doctrine of divine simplicity. According to this doctrine, God is an absolutely simple being, devoid of any distinct metaphysical parts, properties, or constituents. The doctrine leads Anselm not only to deny any real distinction between God and His nature or will, but also to deny any real distinction between God and any of the Forms or standards residing in Him. Thus, comparing

God's justice to the justice of a human being, he says:

A human being cannot be justice, but it can have justice. Consequently, a just human being is not understood as existent justice, but rather as having justice. By contrast, the supreme nature cannot properly be said to have justice, but rather to exist as justice. Therefore, when it is said to be just, it is properly understood as existent justice. (Mon. 16; S i: 30.20–23)

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower Insofar as Anselm's rejection of divine-command theory appears to require a real distinction between the divine nature and will, passages like this one might seem problematic. After all, if God is identical both with His nature and with the standard of justice, and each is in turn identical with His will, then it might appear that He is committed to some form of divine-command theory after all.14 I strongly suspect, however, that Anselm would deny the validity of this last inference. Even if God is identical both with the standard of justice and with His will, there is still a conceptual distinction to be drawn between the two, so that it is not qua participating in God's will that something is right or just, but qua participating in the Form of justice. And this, Anselm may assume, is all that is needed to avoid commitment to any type of divine-command theory.

The assumption that we can distinguish (at least conceptually) which Form a given thing participates in, even if all Forms are identical with God, seems to be required for the success of Anselm's project as a whole. For as we shall see, in the special case of the will

(and the agents who possess it), he wants to maintain that a thing can participate in justice without participating in goodness, despite the fact that God is identical with each. This is not the place to pursue the doctrine of divine simplicity in detail. Nonetheless, it must be recognized as an important element of Anselm's ethical theory, not only for the reason just given, but also because one of its consequences – namely, that God is identical with the standard of justice – will become important later on, when I examine Anselm's views about moral motivation.

In the end, therefore, I think it is fair to say that Anselm's metaethical views commit him to a type of theistic Platonism, which we may summarize as follows:

Anselm's theistic Platonism:

(i) There are Forms of goodness and justice.

(ii) These Forms (like all others) exist in God – or rather, given divine simplicity, are identical with God, though they can be conceptually

(but not really) distinguished from His will and other psychological states.

(iii) These Forms are good or just solely in virtue of being what they are, whereas all other things are good or just in virtue of, and to the extent that, they participate in them.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

Anselm's commitment to (i) and (iii) distinguishes him from those Aristotelians who deny that there are Forms for any fundamental types of value. By contrast, his commitment to (ii) distinguishes him from those medievals (such as Scotus) who attempt to explain at least certain types of value in terms of divine commands. Indeed, the conjunction of all three commitments seems to align Anselm with recent moral theorists, such as Prichard and Ross, who think of the fundamental types of value as irreducible or unanalyzable – though even here there are differences, since Anselm thinks of creaturely value in terms of irreducible relations rather than properties.

Anselm's theistic Platonism leaves unresolved certain questions that we might expect a metaethical account of his sort to answer.

For example, how exactly are we supposed to conceive of the genus of value? What do all species of this genus have in common, and what are the differentiae by which they are distinguished? Anselm does have answers to these questions. But since they emerge only in the context of his normative ethics and moral psychology, I shall hold off presenting them until we have had a chance to see the basic contours of his views in each of these areas. the roots of anselm's normative ethics and moral psychology In the course of examining Anselm's views about justice and goodness, an account of the conditions under which these properties are exemplified has begun to emerge. A thing can be said to exemplify justice if and only if it is doing what it ought to be doing, or fulfilling its duty. By contrast, a thing exemplifies goodness if and only if it is a fully developed member of its kind. Now, since being complete as a member of one's kind is just a matter of actualizing the natural powers or capacities distinctive of that kind – say, the capacity for nutrition in the case of plants, or to be strong and swift in the case of horses (cf. Mon. 2) – the conditions for possessing goodness are fairly clear (or at least as clear as the theory of natural kinds underlying it). But what is involved in a thing's doing what it ought to be doing, and hence in the conditions for possessing justice? As medieval eudaimonists see it, when a human being has done all that is required for it to be complete as a member of its kind, there is a clear sense in which it has done what it "ought" to do. Indeed,

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower this appears to be all there is to the notion of obligation or rightness for medieval eudaimonists.15 Assuming, however, that Anselm really takes justice to be a type of value distinct from goodness, this can not be what he has in mind when he speaks of obligation. But then what does he have in mind? How are we to distinguish the conditions for possessing justice from the conditions for possessing goodness? The rest of this chapter is largely given over to answering these questions. In the remainder of this section, I identify the general form that these answers take; in the following section, I fill them out in further detail.

Rightness, goodness, and justice In order to determine Anselm's views about justice and its relation to goodness, we must turn to his account of rightness in general. As I indicated in the discussion of Anselm's metaethics, "rightness" is the name he gives to the genus of which both goodness and justice are species. Hence, his discussions of the nature of rightness are the natural place to look for an account of the difference between these two species – in particular, the different conditions required for their possession.

Anselm's only extended treatment of rightness, and the conditions under which its various species are possessed, occurs in his

De Veritate. This text is one of three dialogues "pertaining to the Study of Holy Scripture" (De Ver. preface). As its title indicates, the topic of De Veritate is truth, but the dialogue covers much more than philosophers now associate with this topic.

The dialogue opens with a student, perhaps one of Anselm's own students, asking him about the relationship between God and truth:

Student: Since we believe that God is truth, and we say that truth is in many other things, I would like to know whether we ought to acknowledge that, wherever truth is said to be, God is that truth. (De Ver. 1; S i: 176.4–6)

No doubt the student's question is prompted by passages of Scripture such as John 14:6, where Christ asserts "I am the way, the truth, and the life," and the extended reflections on such passages one can find in authorities such as Augustine.16 As Anselm sees it, the student's question must be ultimately answered affirmatively. In the last chapter of the dialogue, he argues that since all true things are true by participating in the Form of Truth, and since this Form resides

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

in God – or given divine simplicity, is identical with God – true things are true by participating in God. Hence, in every case God is their truth or the Form by which they are true (De Ver. 13). Rather than begin the dialogue with an affirmative answer to the student's question, however, Anselm approaches the issue indirectly, attempting to show first that truth is identical with rightness.17 This enables him to introduce an elaborate theory of truth and value, without which he thinks a straight affirmative answer to the student's question would be unacceptable.18 Since the general theory of truth and value will be important for understanding Anselm's views about justice and its relation to goodness, we must begin by examining it.

In order to see the connection between truth and rightness in general, Anselm asks us to consider the case of truth in statements, the most familiar bearers of truth. The key to understanding the truth of statements, he suggests, lies in understanding their purpose. By "purpose" here Anselm appears to mean that end or good toward which a thing's nature directs it. Since to be a statement, on his view, is just to be a certain kind of sentence or proposition – one that has the capacity to be true or false – he says that the purpose of statements is to correspond to reality.19 Thus, the purpose of an affirmative statement, he says, is to signify as being the case what is the case, whereas that of a negative statement is to signify as not being the case what is not the case (De Ver. 2).

Having thus identified the purpose of statements, Anselm proceeds to argue that when they are fulfilling it – that is, when they are actually corresponding to reality – they are doing what they "ought" to do, or what it is "right" for things of their kind to do, and hence possess rightness. But since statements are also true, and hence possess truth, under precisely the same conditions, he claims that their rightness is their truth:

Teacher: For what purpose is an affirmation made?

Student: For the purpose of signifying as being the case what is the case.

So it ought to do that. – S: Certainly.

So when it signifies as being the case what is the case, it signifies what it ought to.

Clearly.

And when it signifies what it ought to, it signifies rightly. – S: Yes.

Now when it signifies rightly, its signification is right. – S: No doubt about it.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower T:

So when it signifies as being the case what is the case, its signification is right.

That follows.

Furthermore, when it signifies as being the case what is the case, its signification is true.

Indeed it is both right and true when it signifies as being the case what is the case.

Then its being right is the same thing as its being true: that is, its signifying as being the case what is the case. – S: Indeed, they are the same.

So its truth is nothing other than its rightness.

Now I see clearly that this kind of truth [i.e. the truth of statements] is rightness. (De Ver. 2; S i: 17.8.8–26) There are obvious problems with the argument that emerges from this passage. For one thing it appears to be of the following form:

(1) A statement has rightness just in case it corresponds to reality (since in that case it is fulfilling its purpose and hence doing what it ought to do).

(2) But a statement is also true (or has truth) just in case it corresponds to reality.

∴(3) The truth of a statement is its rightness.

But this form of argument is invalid. Even if the conditions under which statements possess the properties of truth and rightness are the same, it does not follow – at least without further assumptions that Anselm does not provide here – that their truth and rightness are identical. (Consider the analogous properties of being a creature with a heart and being a creature with a kidney, which are traditionally spoken of as being exemplified under the same conditions.)

But even setting aside the form of the argument, one might be skeptical of the account of truth that emerges from it. According to it, truth (or rightness) is not to be identified with the correspondence that true statements have to reality; rather it is a property or feature that true statements have in virtue of such correspondence. As indicated above, however, Anselm thinks of truth as a Platonic Form (or aspect of God) in which true things participate. Hence, the truth (or rightness) of statements, on his view, is nothing but their standing in an appropriate relation to the Form or standard of Truth, which is

God Himself!

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

If the foregoing argument were all Anselm had to offer on behalf of the identity of truth and rightness, the thesis itself might seem to have very little going for it. I suspect, however, that the argument stated above is not what explains Anselm's sympathy for the general thesis; rather it is his sympathy for the general thesis that explains his acceptance of the argument, along with the consequences that follow from it. But what, then, explains his sympathy? Anselm himself seems to provide the answer when he points out what he takes to be the greatest virtue of this thesis, namely its ability to make sense of the fact that Scripture applies the notion of truth to non-linguistic items such as the will and to action:

The Truth Itself [i.e. Christ] claims that there is truth in the will when he says that the Devil "did not remain steadfast in the truth" [John 8:44]. For it was only in his will that he was in the truth and then abandoned the truth.

(De Ver. 4; S i: 180.21–23) We must equally believe that there is truth in action as well, just as the Lord says: "He who does evil hates the light" [John 3:20], and "He who does the truth comes to the light" [John 3:21]. (De Ver. 5; S i: 181.12–14)

Taken on their own, passages such as these might seem puzzling.

But as Anselm points out, on the assumption that truth is identical with rightness, their sense becomes perfectly clear. Thus, in the case of the will, he says:

If [the Devil] was in rightness and in the truth so long as he willed what he ought to will – namely, that for the sake of which he had received a will – and if he abandoned rightness and truth when he willed what he ought not to will, then we can understand truth in this case as nothing other than rightness, since both truth and rightness in his will were nothing other than his willing what he ought to will. (De Ver. 4; S i: 181.4–8)

Likewise in the case of truth in action:

If doing evil and doing the truth are opposites, as the Lord indicates when He says "He who does evil hates the light" and "He who does the truth comes to the light," then doing the truth is the same as doing good, since doing good and doing evil are contraries. Therefore, if doing the truth and doing good are opposed to the same thing, they are not diverse in their signification. Now everyone agrees that he who does what he ought to do, does good and what is right (rectitudinem facit). From this it follows that doing what is right is

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower doing the truth, since it is clear that to do the truth is to do good, and to do good is to do what is right. So nothing is clearer than that the truth of an action is its rightness. (De Ver. 5; S i: 181.19–28)

In the end, therefore, the identification of truth with rightness seems to be justified, for Anselm, not only – nor even primarily – because of the argument given above, but rather because it provides us with a single, unified account of truth that can be applied to such disparate cases as truth in statements, will, actions, as well as various other cases (cf. De Ver. 3; 6–7).

Be this as it may, the important question for present purposes is what this general account of truth or rightness has to do with Anselm's ethical theory. So far, it does not seem to have helped us make much progress toward answering our original question about the relationship between the two species of rightness, namely, goodness and justice. Indeed, from what we have just seen of Anselm's general account of rightness, it might appear that no such answer could be forthcoming. For what the foregoing account suggests, if anything, is that Anselm's notion of rightness captures nothing more than the eudaimonist notion of goodness. After all, Anselm tells us that something possesses rightness just in case it is doing what it ought to do. But according to the general account this is nothing but its fulfilling the purpose dictated by its nature – which just appears to be the conditions under which the eudaimonist says that a thing possesses goodness.20 What we still want to know, therefore, is whether there is anything in Anselm's discussion of rightness to ground the distinction he draws in his metaethical discussions between goodness and justice.

Anselm provides the beginnings of an answer in Chapter 12 of De Veritate, where he specifically turns to the question of justice. In its ordinary sense, he tells us there, justice is that species of rightness that "deserves praise, just as its opposite, injustice, deserves reproach." He then proceeds to argue that rightness of this sort must be identified with rightness of will:

Since all justice is rightness, the justice that makes praiseworthy the one who preserves it does not exist anywhere at all except in rational natures.

That must be right.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

Where, then, do you think this justice exists in human beings, who are rational?

Either in the will, or in knowledge, or in action.

If someone understands correctly or acts correctly, but does not will correctly, will anyone praise him for his justice?

No.

Therefore, this justice is not rightness of knowledge or rightness of action, but rightness of will. (De Ver. 12; S i: 193.4–13)

Of course, the mere fact that Anselm identifies justice with rightness of will does not by itself show it to be a type of value distinct from goodness. Even the medieval eudaimonists typically allow that the accidental goodness by which rational creatures are completed as members of their kind is under their voluntary control, and hence intimately connected with their will. Indeed, this explains why they think the kind-relative accidental goodness of rational creatures qualifies as moral goodness.21

In order to see why Anselm conceives of justice as a distinct type of value, therefore, we must look beyond its mere connection to will.

Indeed, as I now want to argue, the basis for Anselm's distinction between rightness possessed by the will – that is, justice – and the rightness possessed by everything else, lies in the fact that, in the special case of the will, it is possible for fulfillment of purpose (i.e. the conditions for possessing rightness) to come apart from complete actualization (i.e. the conditions for possessing goodness). In order to see this, however, we must turn from his discussion in De Veritate, to those texts in which he explains the distinctive "purpose" of will in rational creatures.

Will and the purpose of rational creatures In both the Monologion and Cur Deus Homo, Anselm tells us that God created rational beings – which include not only human beings but also the angels – with the intention of making them happy through enjoying Him, the supreme good (Cur Deus Homo 2.1;

Mon. 68). Initially, this might suggest that, like the medieval eudaimonists, Anselm conceives of the purpose of rational creatures in terms of happiness, so that in their case the possession of rightness (or fulfillment of purpose) is to be identified with the possession of their goodness or happiness after all (namely, union with Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower God). But in fact this is not the case. Rational creatures cannot possess, much less enjoy, God unless they first love Him in the right way. "Thus, it is certain," says Anselm, "that rational nature was made for the purpose of loving and choosing the supreme good above all other things" (Cur Deus Homo 2.1; S ii: 97.14–15). Fulfillment of this purpose, however, is not to be understood as that in which happiness consists, but rather as a precondition for happiness. Indeed, to judge by passages such as the following, Anselm regards happiness as an external reward, something that a good God is simply constrained by His nature to bestow on creatures who love

Him.

For if He gives no reward to the one who loves Him, He who is most just does not distinguish between the one who loves what ought to be supremely loved and the one who disdains it; nor does He love the one who loves Him – or else it does no good to be loved by Him. But all those things are incompatible with His nature. Therefore, He rewards everyone who loves Him perseveringly.

(Mon. 70; S i: 80.11–14) We must not be misled by Anselm's way of speaking here. Although it rightly emphasizes that creatures who receive happiness are worthy to receive it, and that their actually receiving it requires some action on God's part, it also obscures the close connection that exists between the fulfillment of rational nature on the one hand and happiness on the other. According to Anselm, happiness partly consists in loving God, since enjoyment is just the possession of an object one loves. Moreover, once the rational creature loves God, and so is in a position to enjoy Him, Anselm thinks that God is finally able to give what He intended to give the creature all along.

Properly understood, therefore, the purpose of rational creatures is to do their part to enter into that loving relationship for which God originally created them. As Anselm sees it, moreover, this is the purpose for which rational creatures received their distinctive powers or capacities – namely, reason (or intellect) and will (or rational appetite). Reason, he says, was given by God to enable rational creatures to "distinguish what is just from what is unjust, what is good from what is evil, and what is a greater good from what is a lesser good" (Cur Deus Homo 2.1; S ii: 97.5–7), whereas the will was given to these same creatures to enable them to respond appropriately to reason's judgments or discriminations – that is, to "hate and Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

avoid what is evil, love and choose what is good, and more greatly love and choose the greater good [over the lesser good]" (Cur Deus

Homo 2.1; S ii: 97.9–11). Moreover, since Anselm thinks the will is the main source of agency and control, and is capable of directing intellect or reason, the fulfillment of the rational creature's purpose depends primarily on it.

Now according to Anselm, justice requires us to love the supreme good above all else (Cur Deus Homo 2). Presumably, this is because justice requires us to give each its due, and hence to love each thing in proportion to its value. As he also tells us, however, loving the supreme good above all else requires us to make it the ultimate object of our pursuit – that is, "loving and choosing it for its own sake, not for the sake of anything else" (Cur Deus Homo 2.1; S ii: 97.15). As he says: "If rational nature loves the supreme good for the sake of something else [such as happiness], it loves not the supreme good, but this other thing" (Cur Deus Homo 2.1; S ii: 97.16). And again elsewhere: "Someone who wills something for the sake of happiness is not willing anything other than happiness" (De Casu Diab. 13; S i:

256.22–23). Evidently, it is this line of reasoning that leads Anselm to break with eudaimonism – that is, to separate morality from happiness and to introduce another end at which agents (and their wills) should be directed, namely, justice. For unless one recognizes on the basis of reason that it is right to love God above all else, and also loves Him in this way because it is right to do so, Anselm thinks it is impossible to love God appropriately (or perhaps even to love God at all). But this is precisely what is required to fulfill the purpose of rational nature.

It might be objected, at this point, that Anselm's introduction of rightness faces the same difficulty that he finds with loving God for the sake of happiness. After all, even if we love the supreme good for the sake of rightness rather than happiness, are we not loving it for the sake of something else? In order to respond to this objection, we need to recall one of the consequences of Anselm's commitment to divine simplicity – namely, that God is identical with the standard of rightness or justice. Thus, when Anselm tells us that we must love what is supremely good or valuable above all else, he is telling us that we must love justice above all else, and hence all other things in relation to it. Since Anselm takes God to be identical to justice, however, there is no danger on his view that in loving rightness

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower above all else we will be loving something other than God – or that in loving God for the sake justice we will be loving Him for the sake of something else.

But can not the same be said for happiness or the human good?

After all, God is identical not only to the standard of justice but also to the standard of goodness. So is not the same sort of reply open to the medieval eudaimonist? No. To love God for the sake of happiness, as Anselm sees it, is not to love Him for the sake of the goodness with which He is identical (i.e. standard of goodness), but rather to love Him for the sake of one's own goodness with which He is not identical. For although one's own goodness (or happiness) participates in the standard of goodness, it is not to be identified with it.

All of this helps to reinforce the conclusion that, for Anselm, justice is fundamentally a different type of rightness than goodness.

As we have seen, Anselm thinks that the will has justice under precisely the same conditions as a thing has rightness – namely, when it is fulfilling its purpose or achieving the end toward which its nature directs it. This just goes to show that justice is a species of rightness.

In the case of all things other than the will, however, the end toward which their nature directs them is their complete development or actualization. This is what gives rise to the temptation to identify all species of rightness with goodness. But as Anselm's discussion of the will shows us, we must resist this temptation. For there is one case in which a thing's nature does not direct it, at least not first and foremost, toward its complete actualization, but rather toward the supreme good, which is justice.

In the end, therefore, Anselm's theory of rightness does, in fact, yield the two distinct kinds of value (namely, goodness and justice) that our earlier discussion of his metaethics led us to expect. In the case of all things other than the will, the end toward which their nature directs them is their own goodness or advantage – that is, their complete actualization. Hence, in the case of all things other than the will, their rightness will be their goodness.22 In the case of the will, however, things are more complicated. Here we must distinguish one species of rightness (namely, justice) from goodness.

And the reason is that, unlike all other things, the will's distinctive nature directs it toward an end beyond itself, namely, supreme good or justice.

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

In the next section, we shall see what it is about the distinctive nature of the will that leads Anselm to explain its "purpose" in terms of justice rather than goodness. Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that we now have an answer to the earlier question about how Anselm conceives of the genus of value and the differentiae that divide it. As we have seen, Anselm conceives of all value in terms of "rightness." But since rightness is a matter of a thing's achieving the end toward which its nature directs it, and there are two fundamentally different kinds of end, it follows that there are two main species of rightness, and hence two fundamental kinds of value – namely, goodness and justice – differentiated by the different ends with which they are associated.23 rightness of will Although I have touched on Anselm's views about justice or rightness of will, and hence on the conditions under which it obtains, I have yet to provide a precise characterization of these conditions.

In this final section, I provide the required characterization, and in the process complete my account of Anselm's normative ethics and moral psychology. It is important to note that, in turning to the precise conditions under which justice obtains, we are turning to what appears to be the heart of Anselm's ethical theory. For it is only when the will – which is the seat of agency and control – possesses rightness that Anselm thinks we get a sort of rightness that deserves moral praise or commendation. Or to put the point in more Platonic terms, it is only when the will participates in the standard of rightness that we have a subject of moral justice or praiseworthiness.24

In order to identify the precise conditions under which Anselm thinks rightness of will obtains, I must begin with his account of the nature of the will itself, which he describes in terms of its two distinctive capacities or dispositions.

The two dispositions of will As we have seen, Anselm conceives of the will as a responsive faculty, its purpose being to respond appropriately to the value judgments of intellect or reason. Not surprisingly, he says that reason is capable of making two main kinds of value judgment or discrimination, one

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower corresponding to each of the two fundamental types of value he takes to exist in the world – namely, goodness and rightness. The will, in turn, is capable of responding to each of these types of value – or better, to objects presented by reason as possessing these types of value. Thus, at one point in De Casu Diaboli, he has his student say:

"we will nothing but what we think is either just or advantageous"

(De Casu Diab. 4; S i: 241.15–16). And he makes the same point in De Concordia, this time speaking in his own voice: "Undoubtedly, the will (in the sense of a tool [or faculty]) wills only what is either advantageous or right. For whatever it wills, it wills either because of its usefulness or because of its rightness, and even if it is mistaken, it considers what it wills as related to these two ends" (De Conc. 3.11;

S i: 281.7–10). Unlike Anselm, medieval eudaimonists admit only one fundamental type of value, goodness, and hence postulate only one source of motivation in the will – the disposition for happiness

(i.e. the disposition to respond to what reason judges to be conducive to one's own goodness). Because Anselm insists, by contrast, that there are two fundamental types of value, and that the will must be capable of responding to both, he thinks we must postulate two dispositions or sources of motivation in the will – the disposition for happiness (or advantage)25 and the disposition for justice. Even so,

Anselm agrees with the eudaimonists that there is a tight connection between the faculty of will and the disposition for happiness. Indeed, he suggests at one point that the will of every rational creature possesses this disposition as a matter of necessity: "Not everyone wills justice, and not everyone avoids injustice. On the other hand, not only every rational nature, but indeed everything that can be aware of it wills the advantageous and avoids the disadvantageous" (De

Casu Diab. 12; S i: 255.8–11).26

Given what we have seen of Anselm's views about morality – that it consists in the pursuit of the supreme good, or justice, for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else (including happiness) – it is not surprising that he denies that there could be any genuinely moral agents, actions, or volitions without the further disposition for justice. What is, perhaps, surprising is that Anselm also denies that there could be any genuinely moral agents without the disposition for happiness.27 After all, why could not God create a rational agent whose will possesses only the disposition for justice?

Part of the reason, I suspect, is that Anselm takes there to be a necessary connection between the possession of a will and the Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

disposition for happiness. In virtue of possessing the capacities definitive of some natural kind, creatures are naturally inclined to the actualization of those capacities – that is to say, they possess the disposition for advantage. In the case of rational creatures, however, the disposition for advantage just is the disposition for happiness

(since "happiness" is just the name Anselm uses for the state of complete actualization of rational creatures). But this is only part of the reason. According to Anselm, the will is also essentially free. But as he argues in De Casu Diaboli 13–14, it would be impossible for God to create an agent with freedom of will without endowing it both with the capacity for happiness and with the capacity for justice.28

For freedom requires the ability to initiate one's own acts of will or volitions. And if God gave a creature only a single disposition, he would be unable to will anything other than the objects toward which it disposed him; indeed he would be unable to refrain from willing them. In such a case, says Anselm, his acts of will would be not his own, but rather "the work and gift of God, just like his life or his power of sensation" (De Casu Diab. 13; S i: 257.27–28). Anselm summarizes the argument of Chapters 13–14 in this way:

One cannot be called just or unjust for willing only happiness or for willing only what it is appropriate, when he wills in that way out of necessity. Again, one neither can nor ought to be happy unless he wills to be happy and wills it justly. For both of these reasons, therefore, God must create both wills in him in such a way that he both wills to be happy and wills it justly. (De

Casu Diab. 14; S i: 258.18–22) As the discussion in De Casu Diaboli makes clear, Anselm thinks that it is the possibility of conflict, to which the possession of both dispositions (or "wills," as he speaks of them here) gives rise, that makes freedom possible (at least in the case of creatures).29 It is the presence of distinct dispositions for action that places the exercise of either disposition in power of the agent itself. Moreover, it is this sort of freedom that makes rightness of will – and hence justice – possible in the case of creatures.

Rightness, happiness, and virtue We are now, at last, in a position to identify the precise conditions under which rightness of will (or justice) obtains. From Anselm's general views about rightness, we know that rightness of will, like

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower that of all other things, is a matter of the will's fulfilling its purpose, where this consists in its doing what it ought to do. Unlike the case of all other things, however, the distinctive capacities of the will – that is, the dispositions for happiness and justice – can be in conflict. And when they are in conflict, the agent who possesses them ought to exercise its disposition for justice and against happiness.

But this, in turn, means that in the special case of the will, fulfillment of purpose or doing what one ought to do, at least as Anselm uses those expressions, requires one to be willing to sacrifice what is to one's advantage. Anselm makes this point clearly in De Casu

Diaboli, when he suggests that it was precisely this sort of sacrifice that the bad angels, who according to Christian tradition fell from grace, were unwilling to make, and that the good angels, who maintained their justice, were willing to make. Speaking of the original sin of the Devil in particular, he says: "He sinned by willing something advantageous that he did not have and ought not to have willed at that time, but that could have served to increase his happiness"

(De Casu Diab. 4; S i: 241.19–20). In the case of the good angels, by contrast, Anselm says: "The good angels willed the justice that they had rather than that additional something which they did not have.

As far as their own will was concerned, they lost that good, as it were, for the sake of justice" (De Casu Diab. 6; S i: 243.17–18). It might be wondered why Anselm inserts so many qualifications into the last sentence of the second passage – "as far as their own will was concerned," "as it were." The reason is that, immediately after "sacrificing" their happiness, Anselm says that God saw to it that the good angels received, "as a reward for justice," precisely what they thought they had permanently lost (De Ver. 6; S i: 243.19–20).

Indeed, by giving to them this one thing they lacked, Anselm says that God made the angels perfectly happy, and thus removed the possibility of their ever sinning again – since one can sin only by acting against justice, but one could never act against justice except by willing something advantageous that one does not already have.

Since their will for justice, however, was initiated by them, Anselm claims that God did not thereby remove their freedom – rather He insured the continued uninterruption of their self-initiated will for justice.

From everything we have seen, it appears that rightness of will is a matter of the will's willing the right thing – the supreme good – for Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

the right reason. This is in fact how Anselm characterizes rightness of will in De Veritate 12. There he argues that the will has both a "what" and a "why" – that is, an object and a motive – and that rightness of will requires the correctness of both: "just as everyone must will what he ought, so also everyone must will it because he ought, in order for his will to be just" (De Ver. 12; S i: 194.9–10).

Moreover, he also emphasizes here that in order to will something for the right reason, the rightness itself must be what motivates one's willing:

When the just man wills what he ought, he does not – insofar as he deserves to be called just – preserve rightness for the sake of anything other than rightness itself. But someone who wills what he ought only because he is compelled, or because he is bribed by some extraneous reward, preserves rightness not for its own sake, but for the sake of something else – if he deserves to be said to preserve rightness at all. (De Ver. 12; S i:

194.18–22) It is easy to get the impression from passages such as this one that Anselm thinks rightness of will is a property that wills (and derivatively, agents) have when and only when they are occurrently willing the right thing for the right reason. In this respect, it might appear that Anselm accepts a form of deontology sometimes associated with Kant and his followers. The appearance, however, is misleading. And seeing why will bring to light an aspect of Anselm's ethical theory that is not always emphasized by Kantians – namely, the importance of virtue.30

When Anselm speaks of the just person as having the will for justice, or as willing what is right for its own sake, he is not talking about occurrent volitions. As he himself points out, the term "will"

(voluntas) and its cognates are often ambiguous between three possible meanings: (1) a faculty or power of the soul (i.e. the will); (2) a particular act of that power (such as a choice or volition); (3) any kind of state or disposition of that power (such as an intention, attitude, want, or desire). In the same context, moreover, he claims that it is only will in the third sense that is relevant for understanding rightness of will: "A just man is said to possess – even while he is asleep and not thinking at all – the will to live justly. And an unjust man is denied to possess – even when sleeping – the will to live justly"

(De Conc. 3.11; S ii: 283.5–7) Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

jeffrey e. brower A just person who is asleep, says Anselm, does not differ from an unjust sleeping person in having either a faculty of will or an occurrent volition. For both possess the former and lack the latter

(provided they are not dreaming). He concludes, therefore, that the just person must differ from the unjust person in having a disposition that the unjust person lacks. Now the disposition in question can not merely be the natural disposition for rightness. For as we have seen, this disposition is possessed just in virtue of possessing the will, and hence the just and unjust cannot be distinguished in terms of it. Moreover, Anselm makes it clear that rightness of will can be lost (see pp. 249–50 below). Evidently, therefore, the disposition in which rightness of will consists must be the sort of disposition that the medieval eudaimonists have in mind by virtue – that is, a stable disposition or habit for choosing what is right for the right reason.31 Indeed, we might characterize it as the disposition that gives to the just person's will its overarching or dominant bent, that single desire or intention which is unifying or architectonic in the just person's life.

In the final analysis, therefore, rightness of will appears to consist not in any particular volition, or series of volitions, but rather in an enduring state of the will in which justice is valued over happiness.

Speaking of a creature in this state, Anselm says the following:

[J]ustice governs his will for happiness in such a way as to restrain its excess without eliminating its power to exceed. Thus, since he does will to be happy, he can exceed the limits of justice, but since he wills it justly, he does not will to exceed them. And thus, having a just will for happiness, he both can and ought to be happy. By refraining from willing what he ought not to will, even though he could will it, he deserves to be unable ever to will what he ought not; and by always retaining justice through a disciplined will, he deserves not to lack happiness in any way. (De Casu Diab. 14; S i:

258.22–29) As this passage makes clear, a just will is one in which the distinctive capacities of will are properly ordered or balanced, with the disposition for justice or rightness regulating the disposition for happiness – though not in such a way as to extinguish freedom of choice.

By this point the main contours of Anselm's ethics will be clear.

According to him, a right action is one that possesses rightness, which, given his theistic Platonism, means that it participates in the Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

Anselm on ethics

Form (or lives up to the standard) of rightness – that is, God under a certain description. Even so, it is not actions, but agents, on Anselm's view, that are the primary locus of moral evaluation. Thus, a moral agent, as Anselm characterizes it, is one that possesses rightness of will (or justice) – that is, the habit or virtue of will that disposes one to choose the right action for the right reason, even if it means

(temporarily) sacrificing one's own happiness.

Although I think this description of Anselm's ethics is correct as far as it goes, I cannot close without calling attention to certain of his theological commitments, which affect the way he thinks of the just person and of the disposition or virtue by which such a person is just.

The preservation of rightness and theological virtue Rightness of will, as Anselm conceives of it, is not something that rational creatures, at least in the first instance, are responsible for acquiring; rather it is something they are responsible for preserving once it has been given. In this respect, rightness of will, on Anselm's view, is more like what Aquinas and other medieval eudaimonists would call a theological virtue than it is like one of the traditional moral or intellectual virtues – that is to say, it is something supernaturally infused as opposed to acquired by repeated action.32 Indeed, according to Anselm, God created rational nature – both angels and the first human beings – with rightness of will precisely because they could not be happy without it. This explains, moreover, why he prefers to characterize rightness of will in terms of preserving (rather than merely willing) rightness for its own sake:

When a will was initially given to the rational nature, it was, at the same time as that giving, turned by the Giver Himself to what it ought to will – or rather, it was not turned but created upright. Now as long as that will remained steadfast in the rightness in which it was created, which we call

"truth" or "justice," it was just. But when it turned itself away from what it ought to will and toward what it ought not to, it did not remain steadfast in the original rightness (if I may so call it) in which it was created. (De Casu

Diab. 9; S i: 246.26–247.1)33 According to traditional Christian doctrine, the first human beings and certain of the angels fell from grace by sinning. Anselm explains their sin in terms of their abandoning, or failing to preserve,

Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006 Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006

↑ Back to top