7. Happiness
Introduction free act of choice, and the other passive, where it is the recipient of its own act. Now according to Aristotelian terminology, everything is said to desire or will its own perfection, where "desire" and "will" refer not to elicited acts, but rather to an ontological relationship or innate inclination towards what perfects the nature or agent as such. In this sense, even primary matter can be said to be inclined towards and to desire form, or a heavy body to be naturally inclined to move towards the center of the earth and to remain there when reaching it. See the following selection on the natural will and happiness as well as what I have written elsewhere (Wolter, 1949).
Prior to eliciting any act, the will is naturally inclined towards receiving such an act as something that perfects it as a potency. Hence, this is one sense that can be given to "natural will" and "natural volition." "I say that 'natural will' according to its formal meaning is neither a power nor a will, but rather an inclination of the will, being a tendency by which it tends passively to receive what perfects it." And again, "I say ... natural will is really not will at all, nor is natural volition true volition. For the term 'natural' effectively cancels or negates the sense of both 'will' and 'volition.' Nothing remains but the relationship a power has to its proper perfection."
In a second sense "natural" is contrasted with "supernatural," and refers to the will in terms of what it can do naturally, as distinguished from what it could do when informed by the supernatural gifts of grace.
Finally, there is a third sense in which "natural volition" could refer to a freely elicited act whereby one deliberately seeks one's selfperfection or self-actualization, since this is in accord with one's natural inclination in the first sense. But this would also be using "nature" and "natural" as opposed to freedom in the sense of the "innate justice" Scotus had spoken of earlier. For the free will, which can elicit an act in conformity with either of the Anselmian "affections," is following its affection for the advantageous rather than its affection for justice.
The Latin text I have translated is from the supplement to Ordinatio III, dist. 17, as found in Codex A (f. 160ra-b), with correction where the manuscript has an obvious homeoteleutonic omission. See the Wadding reprint ed. XlV, pp. 653h-55b.
7. Happiness Having pointed out, in the previous selection, the various meanings of natural will and natural volition and their connection with the will's affection or inclination for the advantageous, Scotus raises two further related questions in regard to happiness or beatitude: Do all
The WiU and Its Inclinations
men will happiness necessarily and above all else? And do they will whatever they will because of happiness? Both Aristotle and Augustine seem to argue that man cannot fail to desire happiness, and make this in some sense the ultimate good of man. But how is the ultimate good to be understood? Is "good" simply a general term or universal that is predicable of any good whatsoever, or does it refer to a particular good that de facto is man's ultimate end, namely, the beatific possession of God, as a Trinity of Persons, in the afterlife? Like the medieval theologians generally, Scotus believed that we have been gratuitously elevated to a supernatural order, and-unlike some theologians in a latter age-he was more interested in man's actual end than in what it might have been had man been created and remained in a purely natural state. Hence, Scotus' very first question in the prologues to both the Lectura and Ordinatia was: Does man in his present state necessarily need some revealed doctrine? He points to the controversy between theologians, who insist on the need for such, and philosophers like Aristotle and Averroes, or their followers, who seem to think that the intellect can acquire all the knowledge necessary for man in a purely natural way. As a Christian theologian he refutes this latter claim, but with his usual subtlety points out that if one takes seriously the theologians' claim that grace builds on nature and even the beatific vision does not do violence to, but perfects, man's intellect, then there must be a sense in which man can be said to "naturally desire the supernatural" and yet be unable to attain the happiness this entails without supernatural assistance. (See Wolter, 1950.)
But if man's knowledge of God in the afterlife perfects his intellect, his love of God and the happiness it entails perfects his will as well.
Hence, there is also a sense in which he may be said to naturally desire and be inclined naturally toward supernatural beatitude, even though one has no conscious knowledge of the afterlife or assurance by reason alone that the soul is immortal. This paradoxical situation makes sense if "desire" is nothing more than an ontological relationship towards whatever perfects a thing. Indeed, the example Scotus cites of primary matter desiring form would seem to reduce "inclination" to a mere metaphor.
However, it is clear that if the expression "to desire" or "to will" is obviously an equivocal term, it certainly implies a certain bias or pull when applied to a causal agent or active potency such as the will.
Scotus makes this clear in the present selection when he indicates that a natural inclination is more powerful than any acquired habit of acting, though habits of this sort are often enough referred to as "second nature," and Scotus definitely accords them the status of an active po-
Introduction tency. Referring to Aristotle's claim that "all the arts or productive forms of knowledge are potencies, for they are the originative sources of change in another thing qua other or in the artist himself qua other" (Metaphysics IX, ch. 2, 1046b2-3), Scotus argues these are not just passive potencies capable of receiving what perfects them, as some claim. "A habit that resides in an active power is an active principle, which is what Aristotle wants to say expressly in the above text," he insists. (See his Questions on the Metaphysics, Bk. IX, q. 8; Wolter,
1981 , p. 40.) In discussing the previous selection (6), however, we referred to Scotus' distinction between the will regarded as the passive recipient of its own volition and its role as an active agent in producing that volition. We can regard the desire of something passive to receive such perfection as mostly metaphorical speech, but the same is not to be said for the will as an active potency. To understand the difference here we should keep in mind Scotus' theory of how intellect (with its knowledge) interacts with the will. Originally he believed the will was the sole efficient cause of its action, but could not on this assumption explain why one wills certain things more intensely or in disproportion to their objective value. Eventually he revised his position, according to William Alnwick, and admitted that the intellect, as showing the object to the will, functions as a partial cause enabling it to elicit a positive act in regard to the object in question (Bonansea, 1965).
The relationship between intellect and will in this case is that of two essentially ordered causes, similar to the case of the object and intellect as regards intellection. In the case of volition, however, the will is the principal cause and the intellect with its knowledge the less important cause; for that reason, the elicited act will always be free and not determined by the knowledge in question.
This should be kept in mind when evaluating Scotus' admission, in answer to an objection based on Augustine's claim that we cannot wish to be miserable, that there is some limitation on what the will can will or nill. For, if it is presented with something good, it is free to will it or refrain from willing it, but it cannot elicit an act of hatred towards it. Similarly, when confronted with something evil, it can refrain from hating or nilling it or, as he points out elsewhere, will it under the aspect of an apparent good, but one cannot-it seemslove evil as such (selection 30). To explain why this limitation does not imply that the will is necessitated or determined in eliciting an act or refusing to do so, he appeals to a somewhat obscure example based on a theory of color Aristotle borrowed from Plato (Timaeus 67E), namely, that white, as a piercing color, produces fine particles that di-