Single Question. Whether anything other than the Will is the effective Cause of an Act of Willing in the Will

Scotus, Sent.2 d.2r q.1
Aquinas, ST Ia q.77 & ;IaIIae q.9 & IIIa q.32

1. About the twenty fifth distinction the question asked is whether the will is passive with respect to volition, or whether something other than the will is the effective cause of an act of willing in the will.

2. That it is: the Philosopher On the Soul 3 sets down an order of eternal motions: that the desirable thing is an unmoved mover, the appetite is a moved mover, and the act is a moved non-mover; therefore appetite or will is moved by the desirable thing.

3. You will say that this is metaphysically true only as to idea of end.

4. But on the contrary, for then the Philosopher would be equivocating, because it is certain that the second in fact moves the third as to idea of efficient cause.

5. Again Metaphysics 5.17, an active power is a principle for changing something other insofar as it is other;     therefore every active power has an act that passes over into another; but the will does not; therefore the will is not active but passive with respect to volition.

6. Again, an indifferent and indeterminate power is not determined to act save by some agent; but the will is indeterminate as to willing and not willing; therefore it is determined by the object as by what acts on volition; therefore etc     .

7. To the contrary is Augustine, Retractions 1.11, when he says that nothing is so in our power as the will is. But it is plain he is not talking about the will, which is a power, but about volition, which is an act. Then the argument goes as follows: if the whole of volition were from the object and the will were passive, volition would not be in our power; for what is passive undergoes necessarily, and the object acts naturally, and the acting of the object cannot be in the power of the will, for the prior, as prior, is not in the power of the posterior, but the active, as active, is naturally prior to the passive;     therefore etc     .

8. Again, the will is the noblest power; therefore it cannot be purely passive.

To the Question

9. Reply. One opinion says that the will does not cause volition but that the known object causes volition in the will. Confirmation comes from the Commentator, Metaphysics 12 com.36, when he says that the baths in reality move the sensitive powers, but the baths in the soul, that is, in the intellect, move the intellective appetite.

10. If it be said to the contrary that what is not a being cannot move the will, but the intellective object can be a non being,     therefore etc     ., the response is made by saying that the understanding of a non existent object is not a non being; they say well that the intellect along with understanding of the object causes intellection in the will.

11. Another opinion says that the agent intellect neither moves the possible intellect nor does it move the will; and neither does the intellective object move the will. Rather a phantasm actually given in imagination immediately moves the intellect first and then moves the will. The reason is that in everything there must be a mover and moved, and that these are always distinct in subject; but in the intellective part of the soul nothing can be distinct in subject from the will. Therefore the mover must be something outside the intellective part, namely the phantasm that is in the imagination. The proof of the minor here is multiple.

12. The first proof is as follows: To say that mover and moved are not distinct in subject is to say that the same thing moves itself; but it is impossible that the same thing should move itself, because then the same thing would be at once in potency and in act with respect to the same thing.

13. The second proof is thus: In Physics 2 text 70 it is said that matter and efficient cause do not combine in the numerically same thing;     therefore the same thing does not move itself, because they would combine in the same thing.

14. The third is: In Metaphysics 5 text 20 it is said that the mover is relative to the movable; but there cannot be a real relation of the same thing to itself, primarily because the extremes of a real relation are opposite, but the same thing is not really opposed to itself; therefore etc     . The minor of this reasoning is manifest of itself.

15. Against the conclusion of both opinions I argue in common thus: A natural agent cannot be a per se cause of contraries about the same passive subject (so as to exclude an objection about the dissolving of ice and the hardening of mud, which come about from the same natural agent, namely the sun, but not about the same passive subject); willing and refusing are opposite acts, and the will can have them about the same object; therefore these acts do not come effectively from a phantasm or an intellective object, since these are precisely natural agents. There is a confirmation in that, if refusing comes from the object, then it comes from a bad object, because the will has an act of refusing only ever about an object under the idea of evil; but evil, since it is a privation, cannot be a positive act.

16. To the consequent of the first opinion [n.9], I say that if one holds that volition is not naturally but partially from the will, then the whole argument can be conceded; for then it is true that the baths as actually understood move the will by partially causing volition. But if one holds that volition is totally from the will, then it can be said that the baths as actually understood move the will metaphorically under the idea of end, just as the baths outside in reality move the sensitive appetite.

17. As to the argument for the second opinion [n.11], I deny the major and say that it is altogether false in the case at least of spiritual things. For if an angel exists in a state of pure nature without any species or habit, he would still understand himself; but he does at least understand himself when he has species and habit co-created with him, and so mover and moved are in that case not distinct in subject; and I say similarly that angel and separated soul can move themselves locally to diverse ‘wheres’.

18. To the first proof [n.12], then, I say that act and potency are, in one way, differences of being; in another way they divide active and passive principle in the case of univocal things; and in another way they do so in the case of equivocal things. I then say that in the first way act and potency are incompossible in the same thing. For it is incompossible that a piece of wood be actually white as long as it is potentially white. Act and potency are also incompossible in the second way, for it is impossible that fire, which is formally hot, should make itself formally hot by causting heat in itself. In the third way act and potency are compossible, for what is virtually and eminently such can make itself to be formally such. Hence the will, which is virtually and not formally willing, can make itself to be formally willing by causing volition in itself. The thing is plain in the case of water when heated to the maximum, which is not formally but virtually cold. And so, when heating by the external heating agent ceases, the water makes itself to be formally cold, for it returns to coldness, as is plain; and it is certain that this return is from some agent, because a new effect is not without a cause, as is plain. But the effect is not from the heavens and the like for it happens whatever condition the heavens are in; therefore the effect would be from the water itself.

19. On the contrary: What is universally such and eminently such can[not] now be really and formally such. An example: the sun cannot be formally hot, nor can God be formally stone, although they are virtually and eminently such.

20. I reply that in such cases there is a fallacy of putting non-cause for cause; for it is not because the sun is virtually and eminently hot that it is unable to make itself formally hot. The proof is that if the given premise is cause of the given conclusion, then the opposite premise is cause of the opposite conclusion; therefore Saturn, which is not virtually hot, will be able to make itself formally hot, which however is false. The correct reason then is that, since heat is a sensible quality, it cannot be received save in an elementary or mixed body, and the sun is not of this sort. God too cannot be formally stone, not indeed because he is virtually such, but because he is pure act, infinite, simple and the like.

21. To the second proof [n.13] I say that the Philosopher is speaking there about prime matter, which is the subject of real change, and since it excludes every idea of perfect act it cannot have belonging to it any acting.

22. To the third proof [n.14] I say that a real relation is found in a threefold difference: some are between things that are essentially dependent, as caused on cause; some are between things that are not essentially or accidentally dependent, as are relations of origin in divine reality; some are between things that are only accidentally dependent, as moved on mover - for the whole of what is subject to motion is presupposed to the accident of motion as prior to it, and so the moved does not depend on the mover save by reason of this accident, which is motion.

23. I then say that the first two opposite relations are not mutually compatible, either in the same nature or in the same supposit; for no single univocal and numerically the same thing causes itself in the same unlimited nature, as is plain there, nor in the same supposit, because the same thing does not produce itself. But relations said in the third way are mutually compatible in the same nature and in the same subject, for it is not unacceptable that the same thing should depend on itself accidentally by reason of some accident really added to it; and so it is in the case at issue. Hence opposite relations are not incompossible in the same thing as opposites but only as they make for essential dependence. And then also I say that if there was in the case at issue a real relation between the extremes, yet not simply so but because it is not founded on altogether the same thing; rather it is between the will absolutely taken and the will as formally willing in actual volition. Or it could perhaps be said, and better said, that there is only a real opposition between the extremes of the relation and not between the substrates; for it does not follow that if a thing is active therefore it is not passive, but rather it follows that if it is action then it is not passion, or that if it is active motion then it is not passive motion (in the third way).

To the Arguments

24. To the first principal argument [nn.2-4], if one holds that the will causes volition, not totally, but partially, there will be no difficulty there in the argument, as is plain. But if one holds that the will causes volition totally, I say that the desirable thing is a mover metaphorically in idea of end and not properly in idea of efficient cause. And when you say that then the Philosopher is thereby equivocating, I say that it is not true, because when where is a combination of diverse causes, as are the beings of different genera, they cause in different ways. Hence too it is commonly said that the end moves the efficient cause and the efficient cause introduces the form, and the latter is said properly and the former metaphorically.

25. To the second argument [n.5] I concede it insofar as it doubles the formal idea and need not always double the subject, as is plain there in the Philosopher’s example: a doctor heals himself insofar as he is a doctor but is healed insofar as he is sick; and so there is a doubling there not of the subject but of the formal idea, because the formal idea of the doctor, which is insofar as he is a healer, is different from the formal idea of him insofar as he is healed; and so it is in its own way in the case at issue, as is plain from what has been said. There is no need, then, that every active power have an act passing over to another, thought there is such a need in the case of a making power, for nothing makes itself. Hence some commentators say that what the Philosopher is defining there is the power of making.

26. To the third argument [n.6] I say that a free, perfect, active power, which is the will, is so in potency to both sides of a contradiction that it can determine itself of itself to action, and for this reason is it said to be free; for otherwise it would not be free, as is plain upon consideration;     therefore etc   .