Descartes on Free Will and Moral Possibility

Abstract

There is a long-standing debate about whether Descartes was a libertarian or a compatibilist about free will. This debate is occasioned by some apparently contradictory claims made in Descartes’s discussions of free will. Sometimes Descartes says that free agents can always do other than what they do; other times he says that free agents cannot but affirm (or pursue) a clearly and distinctly perceived truth (or good), implying that we cannot always do other than we do. To the extent that one emphasizes Descartes’s claims that we can do other than we do, Descartes looks like a libertarian; to the extent that one emphasizes Descartes’s claims that we cannot but affirm a clearly perceived truth, Descartes looks like a compatibilist. In a letter (allegedly) to Mesland (AT IV, 173 / CSMK 245) Descartes claims that in the face of a clear and distinct perception, “absolutely speaking” we are able to refrain from pursuing the good or affirming the truth perceived, but “morally speaking” we are not able to so refrain. Commentators have seen in this text the key to resolving the apparent contradiction in Descartes’s theory of free will. But it is unclear how we are supposed to understand moral possibility. In this paper I show that ‘moral possibility’ was a technical concept in sixteenth and seventeenth-century scholasticism. I show that scholastics introduce the notion of moral possibility in order to solve a puzzle structurally identical to the puzzle generated by Descartes’s apparently contradictory commitments. Scholastic theologians wanted to maintain two apparently conflicting commitments: (i) we can always avoid sinning, and (ii) we cannot avoid sinning over the course of a lifetime. Scholastic theologians resolve the apparent inconsistency between (i) and (ii) by reading (i) in terms of absolute possibility and (ii) in terms of moral possibility. The scholastics I focus on understand moral possibility in probabilistic terms. I explain this conception of moral possibility and show how it reconciles their apparently conflicting commitments. I then show that the same notion of moral possibility resolves the tension between Descartes’s conflicting commitments about free will. I argue that my reading has significant advantages over competing readings. The result is philosophically interesting, historically grounded, yet completely unexplored reading of Descartes’s theory of free will.