4. Coercion and free will
The Will and Its Inclinations
4. Coercion and free will Some philosophers interpret free will as freedom from external coercion and nevertheless maintain a certain causal determinism rules even the human will, in terms of its natural dispositions, habits of mind, etc. They assert that freedom and necessity are not incompatible notions. While this may be true in the case of God's inner love life, and for very special and sophisticated reasons Scotus discusses in Bk. I, dist. 39, he is equally firm in asserting that even God could not violate the will or force its consent, for the simple reason that this is a contradiction in terms (Ord. II, dist. 37, q. 2: "Voluntatem violentari includit contradictionem"; Codex A, I36vb). In the present selection, he mentions this fact in passing, and then goes on to explain how and why psychological pressure can be brought to bear on persons so that they are forced to make certain choices they would not otherwise make, and do so even according to right reason.
The original text is taken from Ord. IV, dist. 29, where Scotus is concerned to explain in what sense one can speak of forced consent and why it does not suffice to contract a valid marriage.
PART II: THE WILL AND ITS INCLINATIONS
5. The will and its inclinations Following St. Anselm of Canterbury Scotus accepts the fact that the will has a twofold inclination or bias, one described by Aristotle and Plato before him as "natural" in the sense that it inclines one to seek whatever perfects the nature of the agent, either as concretized in this individual or as conserving the species to which it belongs. This inclination towards self-perfection or self-actualization Anselm refers to as an "affection for the advantageous," or affectio commodi. In virtue of this natural inclination, will can be called an "intellective" or "rational appetite," i.e., an appetite guided in its quest for self-perfection by intellect and reason. As Scotus notes in the subsequent selection about natural will and natural volition, this inclination is not an elicited act, but a tendency or bias to act in a particular way when the will freely elicits some act.
Every elicited act of the will is free in the sense of its being an act of self-determination elicited contingently and not deterministically, as the preceding selection indicated. However, there is a prior sort of "liberty" or "innate freedom" possessed by the will, a liberty that frees it from the need to seek self-perfection as its primary goal, or as a supreme value. It consists in free will's congenital inclination towards