I was surprised and intrigued to learn that Augustine in various works seems to more or less identify will with love. Of course it is not surprising that a Christian theologian would write about love. I count 65 occurrences of the word “love” in Augustine’s famous early treatise On the Free Choice of the Will. But my quick scan of all 65 passages did not find this identification. Nor is this identification mentioned in the introduction to the Cambridge edition, or in a great many discussions of free will by other writers who mention Augustine. I have confirmed, however, that this surprising identification of will with love does appear in a number of Augustine’s other works, and is considered by some to be an important theme. I first encountered this identification of will with love quite recently, in secondary literature on Scotus. Then I found references back to Augustine.

Scotus reportedly makes this identification too. He also seems to hold that all virtue is virtue of the will. I think of virtue more generally as virtue of something like character or emotional disposition. Once a separate faculty of will and decision is posited in the human, I can see how it might seem plausible to locate virtue in the will. But I don’t think there is such a separate faculty, and Plato and Aristotle did not think so either.

We make judgments and decisions based on varying combinations of thinking and feeling. The particular drift or orientation of our judgments and decisions could reasonably be described as some definite will, but this does not justify the assumption that choice and decision should be attributed to a separate faculty that is independent of all our thinking and feeling, as well as of all external circumstance.

What is clear is that we want some things, and don’t want others. Plato and Aristotle call this desire. Our desires count as ours by Aristotle’s criterion of willingness. We are responsible for the whole of our desire, even though there are things we desire without choosing to do so. There is a whole spectrum of desires, some of which are ethically beneficial and highly rational, while others may be completely irrational and ethically harmful.

Greek philosophers may attribute some things to love that some moderns attribute to will. In this vein, we may be said to “love” all that we prefer or seek. Some of Augustine’s references to love have a rather similar sound.

In any case, Augustine and Scotus both emphasize the role of love in their trinitarian theology. Sometimes this is called an ordered love, to distinguish it from animal passion. This ordered love is what they call caritas, or charity. One of Boulnois’s numerous books on Scotus that is out of print and expensive has a title that translates to The Rigor of Charity. An introductory book on Scotus by Thomas Ward is called Ordered by Love. If there is a non-evil voluntarism, this emphasis on love might help explain it.

I believe that in recent browsing I saw a passage in Scotus arguing that the best love, which he calls theologically meritorious, is freely given with no thought of advantage, and therefore the will is free. Unlike all the other arguments for free will that put it in the register of power and efficient causality, love freely given is something I too hold dear.