In what began as a due diligence exercise, I had begun to wonder if I should be swayed by the arguments of Wolter and Ingham on the issue of Scotus’s voluntarism.
There has been a significant dispute about this among recent scholars of Duns Scotus. The received view has been that Scotus is a radical voluntarist about both God’s will and human will. In the late 20th century, however, Wolter and Ingham both argued that this presumption is refuted by Scotus’s approach to ethics, about which I knew nothing until very recently. And it seems beyond dispute that however we explain it, Scotus’s ethics involve criteria of love and right reason and interpretation of situations, and do not stress simple obedience.
But voluntarism as I understand it is radical by definition, because it is the doctrine that whatever appearances we may encounter, the way things really are is really determined exclusively by divine and/or human will. In the early 20th century, C. R. S. Harris reportedly concluded that there is an unresolved antinomy in Scotus, between his voluntarist theology and psychology on the one hand, and his rational ethics on the other. More recently Thomas Williams, the translator/editor of the newer anthology of Scotus’s ethical writings, has argued in numerous journal articles that Scotus is a radical voluntarist after all, and that there is a deep systematic consistency in his work. In this he is supported by Richard Cross, another leading contemporary scholar of Scotus. Williams says
“Scotus is notorious for occasionally making statements that, on their face at least, smack of voluntarism, but there has been a lively debate about whether Scotus is really a voluntarist after all. Now the debate is not over whether Scotus lays great emphasis on the role of the divine will with respect to the moral law. No one could sensibly deny that he does, and if such an emphasis constitutes voluntarism, then no one could sensibly deny that Scotus is a voluntarist. As I am using the word, however, voluntarism is the view that (i) the goodness of almost all things, as well as the rightness of almost all acts, depends wholly on the divine will and (ii) what God wills with respect to those things and those acts is not in turn to be explained by reference to the divine intellect, human nature, or anything else. This is the view that Scotus’s critics decry and his defenders disclaim. Thus, his critics have seized on these passages and accused Scotus of believing that the moral law depends simply on ‘the arbitrary will of God.’ His most sympathetic interpreters, however, have devoted great ingenuity to showing that Scotus did not mean anything unpalatable by these statements.”
“What the critics and defenders apparently have in common is the view that voluntarism is an implausible and even discreditable doctrine. Interpreters who read Scotus as a voluntarist intend thereby to damn his moral views; interpreters sympathetic to his moral views feel compelled to mitigate his voluntarism. I wish to argue for a different approach. I agree with his defenders that Scotus’s moral philosophy ought to be taken seriously. But I think the best way to take any philosopher’s view seriously is to let him speak for himself, not to decide in advance that he must not have held a view that we find implausible.”
“Let me suggest an analogy that will make my position clearer. Very nearly everyone finds immaterialism implausible, paradoxical, and utterly untenable. But we would hardly be taking Berkeley seriously if we insisted on denying that he was really an immaterialist. We can take him very seriously indeed, examine what he says and what reasons he gives, and then, if we cannot bear to follow him into immaterialism, reluctantly part company with him” (“The Unmitigated Scotus” (1998)).
This analogy could be a good one. Williams pretty much exactly captures my attitude toward Berkeley.
“Scotus was as convinced of his brand of voluntarism as Berkeley was convinced of his brand of immaterialism. He asserts it outright. He gives arguments for it. He cheerfully embraces the very conclusions from which his defenders have tried to save him. I propose to take a fresh look at what Scotus says, to marshall the textual evidence and present Scotus’s arguments. And since many interpreters have tried to mitigate Scotus’s apparent voluntarism, I shall also deal in some detail with the best of the mitigating interpretations and show why it fails. Perhaps my readers, having examined what Scotus says and what reasons he gives, will not wish to follow him into voluntarism, and will reluctantly (or otherwise) part company with him. But we will at least have taken an unprejudiced look at the unmitigated Scotus” (ibid).
The Postmodern Peripatetic 