This volume sheds light on underexplored aspects of voluntarism that were extensively debated in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century philosophy and theology. By charting a map of complex and multifaceted debates on the will, it provides insight into approaches to ethics and moral psychology that sprouted in the later Middle Ages and sparked various arguments and methods for defending the freedom of the will.
Although interest in medieval ethics has increased in recent years, these studies mainly examine the concept of virtues, happiness, the freedom of the will, and the will-intellect interplay. These studies pay little attention to fourteenth-century ethics and largely neglect theories of action, the conditionality of the will, and the will-time issues. The chapters in this volume illuminate new approaches and reveal the multiple facets of the will-debate that emerged in the late medieval period. They address a wide range of topics such as second-order volitions, non-velle and nolle acts of the will, conditionality of the will, increase and decrease in the intensity of willing, the ethics/metaphysics and ethics/physics intersections, and the role the will played in explaining social and political phenomena.
The Will Discourse in Late Medieval Philosophy and Theology will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on medieval philosophy and theology, moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, and action theory.
This volume sheds light on underexplored aspects of voluntarism that were extensively debated in 13th- and 14th-century philosophy and theology. It provides insight into approaches to ethics and moral psychology that sprouted in the later Middle Ages and sparked various arguments and methods for defending the freedom of the will.
Introduction Michael W. Dunne and Monika Michaowska
1. Individual and
Common Intentions: The Role of the Will in the Institution of Human Language
and Sacramental Signs in the Late Middle Ages Claudia Appolloni
2. Marguerite
Porete on the Will Pascale Bermon
3. The Effort of the Will in Richard
Middletons Sentences Commentary Michael Szlachta
4. Instants of Nature and
Formalities: The Structure of the Will according to Francis Meyronnes Sylvain
Roudaut
5. The Power to Do Otherwise in Fourteenth-Century Philosophy: A
First Approximation Martin Pickavé
6. Do I Really Want It? Walter Burley on
Choosing Virtue and Vice in his Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics Marek
Gensler
7. Richard FitzRalph on Whether Cognition Necessitates Volition:
Finding a Middle Way Michael W. Dunne
8. Adam Wodeham on the Joy of Knowledge
and of Being in Different Mental States Lydia Deni Gamboa
9. Richard
Kilvington on Ethical and Theological Objects and Changes: When Ethics Meets
Physics and Geometry Monika Michaowska
10. The Physical Modelling of the
Will in Robert Halifaxs Questions on the Sentences, Question 6 Edit Anna
Lukács
11. To Will or Not to Will, Is That the Question? John Buridans
Theory of the Will, Its Being, and Its Acts Valeria Buffon
12. Power,
Transcendence, and the Trinity: The Formal Distinction between the Will and
the Intellect in John Ripa Andrea Nannini
13. In Perfect Conformity to Gods
Will Lies Our Freedom: Teresa of Ávila Kateina Kutarová
Monika Michaowska is Professor at the Medical University of ód, Poland. Her research focuses on late medieval ethics and theology. She has critically edited Richard Kilvingtons Quaestiones super libros Ethicorum and Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum (2016; 2021; 2023) and Richard FitzRalphs Lectura in Sententias (2025, with Michael W. Dunne). She has coedited (with Edit Anna Lukács) a volume on Calculatory ethics, Calculating Ethics in the Fourteenth Century (2024).
Michael W. Dunne is Professor of Medieval Philosophy at Maynooth University, Ireland. His research has focused on Oxford thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Among his recent publications is Peter of Ireland, Writings on Natural Philosophy (2023), and he has coedited (with Simon Nolan) A Companion to Richard FitzRalph, Fourteenth-Century Scholar, Archbishop, and Polemicist (2023).
