Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias Hoffmann

Abstract

Reviewed by: Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias Hoffmann Richard Cross Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy. By Tobias Hoffmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xiv + 292. $99.99 (hard). ISBN: 978-1-107-15538-1. This excellent book achieves at least two interrelated goals, both suggested by its title: it gives a thorough account of theories of free will as found in the thirteenth century, continuing as far as Ockham (with backward glances to Anselm, Bernard, and Lombard); and it gives a detailed account of the question of the origin of evil in the morally bad choices of (as Hoffmann’s authors supposed) a being who was initially not subject to intellectual error. Both topics are hard, the second especially so. But Hoffmann is an expert guide, and is able both to cast new light on the more-or-less well-known material that constitutes the first part of his project, and to give a clear and compelling account of the largely novel material that can be found in the second part of it. Hoffmann begins with a discussion of the ways in which Aristotle’s thinking on choice was incorporated into Western discussions, starting with the translation of John of Damascus’s eclectic De fide orthodoxa (which included a great deal of Aristotelian psychology with the addition of the notion of a rational will), and continuing with the direct access to relevant parts of the Nicomachean Ethics. This latter coincided with, and partly contributed to, what Hoffmann labels the “psychological turn” around the 1220s. Earlier medieval accounts of will were fundamentally theological in character. But Hoffmann notes that thinkers of the early thirteenth century suddenly became interested in action theory and moral psychology as objects worthy of study in themselves. (In this he follows, with due acknowledgement, his former student, Jamie Spiering, who has worked on the topic in Philip the Chancellor and others.) And what immediately followed the psychological turn was a largely intellectualist account, according to which free agency is explained (in Hoffmann’s helpful definition) “mainly with reference to the intellect” (5). The story follows a familiar trajectory: intellectualism prevails until it gets condemned (in Paris at least) by Stephen Tempier in 1270, and again with greater force in 1277. Specifically, as Hoffmann notes, the core issue was what he helpfully labels “judgment-volition conformity” (61): that the will automatically wills in accordance with judgment. The worry, of [End Page 671] course, was that judgment-volition conformity entails some kind of determinism. Now, even the most ardent intellectualists generally allow that the judgment of means (to an end) is in some sense contingent: the output, the judgment, is not determined by the input (reasons in favor of this or that means). So, one of the primary problems for the intellectualist lies in determining how the intellectual process of deliberation is contingent. According to Hoffmann, for instance, Aquinas claims that “one wills in proportion to one’s judgment,” and Hoffmann follows by noting that “the fact that this rather than that cognitive judgment actually becomes a judgment of choice depends on an affective commitment” (47). Aquinas is therefore a “moderate intellectualist” (54). But as Hoffmann notes, there is no explanation within Aquinas’s system for the activity of the will here. The year 1277 in fact saw two distinct condemnations, both in March: 219 errors of the arts masters, and 51 propositions from Giles of Rome’s Sentences commentary. In terms of long-term significance, article 24 of this latter list (that “there is no evil in the will unless there is error in reason”) turned out to be particularly important, since in 1285, when Giles appealed to the new pope, the Parisian theology masters conceded the previously condemned proposition—the so-called propositio magistralis. This odd chain of events allowed the initial imposition of some kind of voluntarism to be somewhat tempered. A key figure here is Henry of Ghent, one of the movers behind the first of these 1277 condemnations: the will is a self-mover (else it would be determined ab extra). The remarkable Franciscan Peter Olivi allows, in line with this...