“Resolution is an act of the agent. Is it a form of opinion or of desire? At the outset, is resolution an opinion or a belief (doxa), for example the opinion that ‘this is to be done’? No, for three reasons.”
“1. Opinions are vaster objects: we have opinions about eternal truths and about impossible things; but we only resolve to act on the real and the temporal. What is more, opinions are true or false, but not resolutions. We care about whether an opinion is true, but about whether a resolution is just. It is precisely in the character of resolution that what is proper to ethics, the difference between theory and practice, comes into play.”
“2. Having a true opinion is not the same thing as taking the good resolution. An agent can believe precisely that she should do something without acting in accordance with this opinion: ‘Some have good opinions, but by reason of their malice, choose what they should not’. The agent can be intelligent, informed about the truth, and make a bad choice, because her choice is affected by her emotions, themselves concretized in habitus. When she is affected by vices, her resolution is not the better.”
“3. The more a thing appears to us as good, the more we resolutely aim for it. Our degree of engagement in a resolution is proportional to our certitude that it is a good, while opinion is concerned with what we do not know in a sure way. Otherwise said, opinion goes together with incertitude, but resolution does not. We can hesitate over what is uncertain, but we resolve without difficulty on what appears to us as risky” (Boulnois, Généalogie de la liberté, pp. 141-142, my translation throughout).
“From this the fundamental principle of ethics: ‘It is by our resolution for the good or the bad, and not by our opinion, that we become good or bad’. This principle is radically anti-intellectualist; contrary to what Plato says in the Protagoras, it does not suffice to know the better to be able to do it. Our moral character does not depend on our theoretical attitude, but on the ensemble of our resolutions, where repetition constitutes our disposition to act, indeed our aptitude for performing good actions” (p. 142).
“Resolution draws closer to affective dispositions. Aristotle, following the Platonic tripartition of the soul, distinguishes three forms of desire (orexis): appetite (epithumia), spiritedness (thumos), and rational wish (boulesis); the first two are not deliberated, while only the third presupposes logos. Is resolution a form of appetite or spiritedness? No, for three reasons. 1) Animals without language have appetite and spiritedness, but not resolution, which characterizes the human. 2) Humans can aim resolutely at an object without appetite or spiritedness. The one who masters herself (the ‘continent’) indeed aims at an object contrary to her appetite by resigning herself to it, even though she has no appetite for it. 3) In contrast to desire, resolution is not concerned with pleasure: ‘The object of appetite is pleasure and pain; that of resolution is neither the one nor the other’. Certainly pleasure accompanies every virtuous life, worthy of being aimed at by a resolution, and some (the intemperate) make pleasure itself the end of their existence. But what Aristotle wants to insist upon is that every resolution is not in its essence determined by the representation of a pleasure” (pp. 142-143).
“Resolution can be dissociated from sensible desires, appetite and spiritedness. Can it be identified with the third term, boulesis? And to begin with, what does boulesis mean? — Since Cicero, the boulesis of the Stoics has been translated to Latin by voluntas: [quote from Cicero:] ‘As soon as the image of something that appears to be good is presented, nature moves us to obtain it’. Nonetheless, the Stoics affirm that such a mastery of impulse is found only in the sage: only the sage wants what he does; the others are obstructed and tossed around by their passions. It is much later, with Augustine, that this prerogative of the sage will become a faculty accessible to all. Our concept of will, as capacity to consent or not to our representations, carries all this history. — But in Aristotle, boulesis always designates the desire that pertains to the part of the soul gifted with speech (logos). It is an enunciable, intelligible form of desire. The translation by ‘will’ does not agree with this: will is the triggering principle of action, while boulesis can rest without an effect. Boulesis is a wish: the wish does not require the existence of a will; it is the form that desire takes in the discursive part of the soul; like all desire, it is moved by its object, whereas the will is an active principle; finally, we can wish for what does not depend on us, even for what is impossible” (p. 143).
“Thus resolution cannot be identified with a wish. Aristotle cites three reasons for this. 1) We do not take the impossible as a resolution, but we can wish for it (say, to be immortal). 2) No one resolves to do what is not in her power, but we can wish for it (say, the victory of our city at the Olympic Games). 3) We wish to attain an end, but we resolve to take up the means that lead to it (if we wish for health, we decide on the means to achieve it). The first two reasons prevent seeing in boulesis a concept of will (efficacious, trigger of action): we cannot will the impossible, or will on someone’s behalf. As a consequence, boulesis designates a wish more than a willing: we wish to obtain what appears to us as good. Like resolution it is a form of desire, but resolution and wish are distinguished by their objects: the wish can concern the end, the action of another, and even the impossible, while we only resolve on a means that we can accomplish ourselves” (pp. 143-144).
“Thus proairesis is neither desire nor opinion. It is the conjoint act of these two faculties, for there is no ‘intentional faculty’, no power distinct from resolution. Resolution results from the complex conjunction of many operations. Medieval authors tried to express this phenomenon in their metaphysical language: Thomas Aquinas, in affirming that freedom has the will as its subject but the intellect as its cause; Duns Scotus, in holding that the act of the will results from the concurrence of two partial causes, the intellect and the will. But this only serves to obscure the concept again, in the absence of an adequate ontological elucidation” (p. 144).
“If all proairesis bears on an action accomplished willingly, all willing action is not for all that a proairesis: children and animals act willingly, but without deliberation. Since they do not possess the power of anticipating and organizing an action, their movement depends on them, but they have no resolution. Within our desires, resolution results from a deliberation, which is deployed by means of language: ‘we desire because we have deliberated’, and not the inverse; otherwise said, ‘the principle and the cause’ of our resolution ‘is deliberation’. This point is decisive against all the empiricist, mechanist, or naturalist explanations: it is not the mere brute presence of the desirable object that provokes our resolution; the principle that triggers it is situated at the level of discourse (logos). The conjunction of an opinion and a desire is not sufficient, again it is necessary that the resolution comes from a reasoning. The true principle of our resolution is of the order of language and thought. Like all living beings, the human is necessarily moved by what appears to her as desirable, but in contrast to the other living beings, it is by speech that the desirable appears to her. Deliberation discerns as good the object that our resolution entails, and triggers our desire” (pp. 144-145).
“For we deliberate neither about that which is necessary and immutable, nor about an unforeseeable hazard, nor about the impossible, but solely about that which depends on us. Resolution concerns action that can be accomplished by us, ‘what can come to be through us (di’ hemon)’, that of which we can be the cause. We deliberate on that which no one can do in our place. — As a result, we do not deliberate on the end that we pursue, but on the means for attaining it. No more do we deliberate when it comes to following a rule, respecting orthography, or following a recipe. There is only a place for deliberation when many lines of action are possible. — It is necessary to underline: Aristotle does not say precisely that resolution depends on us. What depends on us is the action that is the object of this resolution, and not the anticipative resolution in itself. And if there is a choice of one means among many, from this point of view it is accidental. Aristotle indeed proposes a theory of decision, or of resolution, but not a theory of freedom of choice, or of free arbitration” (pp. 145-146).
“For what depends on us is ambivalent. Resolution concerns actions that we have the power to accomplish, on the condition that we also have the power to not accomplish them. ‘Where it depends on us to act, it also depends on us to not act, and there where there is a place for the “no”, there is a place for the “yes” ‘. The principle of mastery applies to all our willing actions, including those that are resolved upon or deliberated. It would be too easy to affirm that only beautiful actions depend on us because we accomplish them, while ugly ones do not depend on us, as if beliefs and the emotions they evoke prevent us from being the source of them; this would be to shirk our responsibility. As Chisolm used to say, we are responsible not for all we have done, but for what it depends on us to do or not do: ‘that which can be or not be’. This is why we can resolve to execute them or not. The touch stone of ‘what depends on us’ is the power to say no. It is the possibility of negation that reveals that a statement is implicitly an affirmation. But precisely, this does not imply the existence of a common power, anterior to affirmation and negation, to pursuit and to flight. Aristotle does not feel the need for a third instance, consent, preliminary to the yes and no. Every action coming from me is implicitly a yes. But I could have not done it” (p. 146).
“Such actions are ontologically contingent: they could also not be. The metaphysical tradition, in deducing the existence of a power of choice, of a will or a free arbitration: ‘the rational is equivalent to the fact of having in oneself the principle [that allows] the choosing or rejection of a thing’ (Alexander of Aphrodisias); ‘this is proper to the will, by which a substance is the mistress of her act, because it depends on her to act or not act’ (Thomas Aquinas). — But in the alternative between acting and not acting, Aristotle does not specify whether he speaks of actions in the generic sense (in general, the human can laugh or not laugh), or of singular actions (at this instant, can this human walk or not walk?). And precisely, the absence of supplementary characterization obliges us to understand actions in a broader (generic) sense. If the agent walks, she is responsible for having walked, because she also has the faculty of not walking. This does not imply that in a given situation, taking into account her beliefs and desires, she can act or not act, and act in one way or another way. — On the other hand, contingency is not indetermination. Nothing obliges us to understand this contingency in an absolute manner, and as subject to our power. Aristotle has in mind the ensemble of actions that depend on us (eph’ hemin) in general (in the sense of a collectivity: the humans, the agents, the citizens), but not those that depend on me here and now. It is a matter of actions that are imputed to us, if we are not prevented by an exterior constraint” (pp. 146-147).
“The contingency of our action is simply generic, it does not necessarily signify that the action has no determining cause: the human has in general the capacity to act or not act, to do x rather than y. But Aristotle never claims that an agent has, all things being equal otherwise, at a given instant, the capacity to do a thing or its contrary, to act and to not act. ‘What depends on us is a generic capacity, proper to the human, and not that of this particular individual, here and now. Reciprocally, in insisting on the idea that deliberation is the cause of our resolution, Aristotle holds that at the interior of this bivalence, we aim more often at what the logos presents to us as desirable. He does not claim that at a given instant, the state of the universe being given, the human has the choice between committing such an action or not. Aristotle quite simply mentions neither determinism nor free choice, because he does not debate about choice or about destiny, and he has no need to explain or responsibility for an action” (pp. 147-148).
“The principle of our resolution is not an exterior cause, but the conclusion of a reasoning. The agent ceases to ask herself about the good way of acting when there is in herself the point of departure of the action, ‘when she brought back the principle to herself, and within herself to the part that leads, because that is what resolution means’. In effect, deliberation starts from the end that we desire, and investigates the means to achieve it. It is complete when the last means that we have found corresponds to a gesture in which we have the initiative. For Aristotle, the principle of movement is analogous to the principle in geometric analysis, which signifies precisely that the relation between deliberation and action is necessary” (p. 148).
“In ourselves, resolution initiates movement, and action that depends on us consists in this, of which we have to give an account: ‘We all agree that in actions that are willing and in conformity with a resolution (kata prohairesin), each of us is responsible (aition), and that in actions accomplished in spite of ourselves, we are not responsible’. Can we with Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire translate: ”with respect to the causes that are voluntary and which result from free arbitration, each is the cause and is responsible’? — Precisely not. Is this a matter of a ‘libertarian’ conception? That would be to presuppose what is in question: the existence of an indeterminate will in Aristotle. All we can say is that for Aristotle, by anticipatory resolution the agent becomes herself the responsible one who can justify what happens (as with the political action of Demosthenes)” (pp. 148-149).
“According to R. A. Gauthier, we have here a ‘draft of the theory of free arbitration’. But we must reject the retrospective illusion that consists in attributing to Aristotle the conclusions of his successors. Why does an analysis that does not speak of free arbitration become an analysis that almost speaks of it, and that already speaks of it? Aristotle in no way seeks to resolve the problem of free arbitration, because it is not posed in his ethics: [quote from Pierre Aubenque:] ‘Approaching the notion of proairesis from the perspective of “freedom of the will” is to condemn oneself to looking in the Aristotelian texts for what is not there, and neglecting what is there. What is not found there is a doctrine of freedom and responsibility. What is found there is a new contribution to an ontology, and to an anthropology of action’ ” (p. 149).
“An action is implicitly ours when we are in sum its principle, except when there is a constraint, in the same way that a statement is implicitly an affirmation, except when the signs indicate a negation. It is not necessary to have a principle of choice that allows passage from the one to the other. At the same time, our action is called willing when it is entailed by an internal principle, that is to say that it is necessarily caused by our deliberation: given the premises, the conclusion of a practical reasoning is necessary. In brief, what characterizes a willing action is spontaneity, and what characterizes a resolved action is the intervention of language. In the one case as in the other, this does not prevent its depending necessarily on its conditions” (pp. 149-150).
“In this context, what is the principle of action? If resolution is entailed by deliberation, what triggers action is the directive part of the soul. ‘Three things are mistresses (kuria) of action and of truth: sensation, intellect, and desire’. — Is sensation sufficient? It determines the particularity of circumstances, because it perceives the concrete singular in a practical reasoning (‘here is a drink’), but it is not the principle of action, because it is not the beginning of a causal chain that leads there. Is thought sufficient? No more so: it is not thought alone that is the origin of action, but practical deliberation. — Is it necessary to hold to desire alone? Not any more so. It is not necessary to confound the origin of an action and its control, the principle (arkhe) and the master (kurios). Only an articulation between desire and thought constitutes the moving principle of human action. This is operated by practical reason, which starts from an aim, the object of desire, and researches the means to attain it” (p. 150).
“The principle of action is indeed resolution (proairesis), ‘ and the principle of resolution is desire and reason — that which pursues an aim’. Resolution is a principle, but it has principles of its own, desire and practical reason. all the better suited to join forces because they are analogous: ‘What affirmation and negation are in thought, pursuit and flight are in desire; […] for the resolution to be good, it is necessary at the same time that the discourse be true and the desire just: it is necessary that the latter pursue what the first affirms’. Resolution concerns what is presented to us as desirable in language, so that the object of desire corresponds to the object described as feasible by a reasoning. The affirmation that concludes discourse and the pursuit that animates desire concur in one sole and same act. Thus the principle of properly human action is resolution, that is to say the conjunction of desire and of the logos in pursuit of an aim” (pp. 150-151).
“Resolution is not the only principle of the conduct of humans, but it is its principle par excellence: no action can be fully good if it is not decided upon intentionally, resolved. Indeed more so than action, resolution reveals the virtues of character. For we judge the moral character of the agent not according to her intelligence, but according to the quality of her resolutions” (p. 151).
“If the quality of resolution makes the quality of moral character, the trajectory of ethics consists in passing from desire, which concerns the apparent good, to resolution, which concerns a good determined by a deliberation. When we pursue what appears to be a good, how do we know whether what we pursue is an ‘absolute’ or an ‘apparent’ good? The Sophists affirm that whatever anyone desires is good; Plato, that we can only will the true and absolutes good. Aristotle leaves this alternative behind by referring to the honest man, the man of the good (spudaios): ‘That which is in truth the object of a wish is the object of the wish of the man of the good […] For the man of the good judges correctly about each sort of thing, and in each the truth is what appears to him […] Without a doubt the most important difference between the man of the good and the others is that he sees the truth in each sort of thing, for he is the rule and the measure of each of them’ ” (pp. 151-152).
“This passage has been taken as a sort of relativism tempered by the prudence of the man of the good: with the incapacity of discovering the truth about the good, it is necessary to trust the honest man, and to universalize his subjective judgment. But even as he reprises the sophism (Protagoras: ‘man is the measure of all things’), Aristotle rejects the relativism that it implies: certain humans can see ‘the truth in each sort of things’ — simply, the condition for achieving this is not just theoretical (it does not suffice to know the good in order to desire it), it is also affective or practical (it is necessary to have acquired the habit of finding pleasure in choosing acts that are worthy). While the Sophists identify freedom with the capacity to act as we want, and Plato with sole adherence to the Good, Aristotle proposes a third way: ethical freedom is the art of deciding well, of taking the resolution required by the circumstances” (p. 152).
“The good human like the vicious desires what is pleasant, for pleasure is the phenomenon of good. But the good human reasons correctly and desires justly, and this is why her choice bears on that which is truly good, while the vicious holds tight to the form of the apparition, that is to say to pleasure, and can associate it with any object whatever. Vicious resolution concerns the uncontrolled pursuit of agreeable objects; virtuous resolution to pursuit of the correct middle term. The good human’s ethical virtue ensures that she will make good choices, and her prudence ensures that she deliberates correctly. The resolution taken by the good human is indeed a point of coincidence between the apparent good (which all seek) and the true good (which she discerns). In order to leave behind the confrontation between Sophists and Platonists, Aristotle has recourse neither to a relativism of appearances nor to an objective norm; in the element of virtue (and of desire), he aims at a coincidence between the phenomenon of the good and its truth. There are certainly degrees, but they mark a progression: each perceives the measure of good of which she is capable” (pp. 152-153).
The Postmodern Peripatetic 