Abstract
Following his visit with Imagynatyf, Will encounters a series of characters who respond to his questions in a profoundly distinct way, for example, Anima, Kynde, or Conscience. Their counsel urges Will to consider the affective facets of being and integrate love into his search. Supplanting certain knowledge with this sapiential kind of learning redefines his epistemological expectations. Although love may not possess the same evidentiary type of proof that scientia offers, it holds an epistemic value motivating the individual to take direct action. This value springs from the will and, when properly aligned, should lead one to the divine font of charity. Still, it preserves the individual’s freedom to pursue what he deems most desirable. As a result, Will’s interactions emphasize not only the importance of choice, but also how his eponymous faculty makes the right kind of choices. To explain the will’s ability to draw the necessary distinctions, Scotus posits a theory of dual affections—the affectio commodi (the affection for the advantageous) and the affectio iustitiae (the affection for justice). Because the affectio commodi does not consider possibilities other than its own wants, such as self-preservation and happiness, it cannot govern the other affection. The moderating force exerted by the affection for justice empowers the will with an ethical dimension since it seeks to perform another-centered act, whose goal is not possession or use, but benevolence and charity. These will-acts are not constrained by reason’s dictates and, when channeled properly, produce an inclination to love selflessly. This chapter, therefore, examines how the personified figures in the fifth and succeeding visions refine Will’s intellectual endeavors through charity. The interconnection between these two modes of knowing highlights both the dénouement of his journey and the will’s primacy.
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Notes
- 1.
In medieval terminology, “affective” refers to passive states of feeling, active impulses toward objects, active impulses away from objects, self-determination, and even the inclination of human nature toward its final end. In Piers’ scholarship, see James Simpson, “From Reason to Affective Knowledge: Modes of Thought and Poetic Form in Piers Plowman,” Medium Aevum 55 (1986): 1–23.
- 2.
Zeeman, Discourse of Desire, 87–100.
- 3.
Bowers, Crisis of Will, xi.
- 4.
Scotus, Lectura I, d. 17 in Duns Scotus on Divine Love: Texts and Commentary on Goodness and Freedom, God and Humans, eds. A. Vos et al. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 93.
- 5.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 28; Vos, Divine Love, 45.
- 6.
Bonaventure writes, “Picture in your imagination a tree. Suppose its roots to be watered by an eternally gushing fountain that becomes a great and living river, a river which spreads out in four channels to irrigate the whole garden of the Church. Suppose next that from the trunk of this tree there springs forth twelve branches, adorned with leaves, flowers and fruits. Let the leaves be a most efficacious medicine for preventing or curing any disease: for indeed the word of the cross is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes” (Tree of Life, 98–9).
- 7.
Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 9, a.1,
- 8.
Aquinas, ST I-II q. 109, a. 2.
- 9.
Aquinas, ST I-II q. 15, a. 3.
- 10.
Aquinas, ST I-II q. 6, a. 4.
- 11.
Aquinas, De veritate, q. 22, a. 6.
- 12.
The idea that love depends on knowledge, for we cannot love what we do not know, draws from Augustinian principles. See Augustine, De Trinitate q. 10, a. 1 (PL 42, 971).
- 13.
Aquinas, ST I-II q. 28, a. 2.
- 14.
Michael S. Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 95.
- 15.
Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 151.
- 16.
The idea that the will is rational is not original to Scotus. Henry of Ghent, “whose thought so often provided the springboard for Scotus’ own speculations,” introduces it in his examination the ninth book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Wolter, “Duns Scotus on the Will as Rational Potency,” 64).
- 17.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 46; Wolter, On the Will, 153–4. These affectiones appear first in the writings of Saint Anselm. See On the Fall of the Devil, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, eds. Brian Davies and Gill Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 193–232.
- 18.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 27; Wolter, On the Will, 287.
- 19.
Scotus, Quaestiones in Metaphysicam IX, q. 15; Wolter, On the Will, 142.
- 20.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 46; Wolter, On the Will, 153.
- 21.
Mary Beth Ingham, The Harmony of Goodness: Mutuality and Moral Living According to John Duns Scotus (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1996), 35.
- 22.
González-Ayesta, “Scotus’s Interpretation,” 377.
- 23.
Scotus, Quaestiones in Metaphysicam IX, q. 15; Wolter, On the Will, 148.
- 24.
Cruz González-Ayesta, “Duns Scotus on the Natural Will,” Vivarium 50 (2012): 51.
- 25.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 27; Wolter, On the Will, 277.
- 26.
Scotus, Lectura I, d. 17; Vos, Divine Love, 97.
- 27.
William of Ockham, Sent. I, q. 38 (OTh IV, 581).
- 28.
He believes that right reason is required as a partial object of the virtuous act as well as its partial cause. See Ockham, Quaest. Variae, q. 7, a. 4 (OTh VIII, 394). Scotus also maintains that right reason is necessary to ensure a morally proper act. The difference lies in the fact that Scotus states that right reason must work in conjunction with affectio iustitiae. Both philosophers, however, cite right reason as a means to explain away any natural or necessary connection to the divine.
- 29.
Ockham, Quodl. I, q. 16 (OTh. IX, 87–8).
- 30.
Ockham, Quodl., III, q. 14 (OTh. IX 255–6).
- 31.
Ockham, Sent. I, q. 48 (OTh. IV, 683); Peter King, “Ockham’s Ethical Theory,” The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. Paul Vincent Spade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 238.
- 32.
Ockham, Sent. I. q. 1 (OTh I, 464); Sent. I, q. 1 (OTh I, 447).
- 33.
Lucan Freppert, The Basis of Morality According to William Ockham (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988), 116.
- 34.
Ockham, Quaest. Variae, q. 8, a. 1 (OTh VIII, 410).
- 35.
For scholarly works asserting that Will represents this eponymous faculty, see William Elford Rogers, Interpretation in Piers Plowman (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 132–68, and Bowers, Crisis of Will. Others focus on the fact that Will shares the same first name as the poet to investigate possible autobiographical elements, see C. David Benson, Public Piers Plowman: Modern Scholarship and Late Medieval English Culture (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 1–112; James Simpson, “The Power of Impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman,” William Langland’s Piers Plowman: A Book of Essays, ed. Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith (New York: Routledge, 2001), 145–65. Although each approach illustrates how the text poeticizes, allegorically and historically, the human quest for personal fulfillment, neither one perceives Will’s individuality as a dominant factor in interpreting his import and the poem’s climax.
- 36.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 27; Wolter, 284–5.
- 37.
The full verse of Luke 11:17 reads as follows: But He knew their thoughts and said to them, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and a house divided against itself falls.”
- 38.
Scotus, Lectura I, d.17; Vos, 95.
- 39.
Scotus, Quaestiones Metaphysicam IX, q. 15; Wolter, On the Will, 141.
- 40.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 17; Wolter, On the Will, 154.
- 41.
Mary Beth Ingham, “Did Scotus Modify His Position on the Relationship of Intellect and Will?” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 69 (2002): 88–116; Stephen D. Dumont, “Did Duns Scotus Change His Mind on the Will?” in After the Condemnation of 1277: The University of Paris in the Last Quarter of the Thirteenth Century, ed. Jan Aersten et al., Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 719–94.
- 42.
Simpson, 152. Robert Adams observes that in some manuscripts a non-authorial rubric, “finit dowel & incipit dobet,” appears, which signifies a change in narrative focus. See Adams, “The Reliability of the Rubrics in the B-Text of Piers Plowman,” Medium Aevum 54 (1985): 208–31.
- 43.
Other medieval writers who employ this imagery in depicting the human endeavor to comprehend divine love in this world include Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in Cantica, Patrologia Latina, vol. 183, col. 935; Richard of Saint Victor, Allegoriae in vetus testamentum, Patrologia Latina vol. 175, col. 639.
- 44.
Zeeman observes “the clear-cut oppositions of epistemology, knower and known, are being undone. Will must realize that the eponymous power within ties him inextricably to God” (Discourse of Desire, 266). Also see James Simpson, “Et vidit deus cogitations eorum”: A Parallel Instance and Possible Source for Langland’s Use of a Biblical Formula at Piers Plowman B.XV.200a,” Notes and Queries, 231 (1986): 9–13.
- 45.
For a more complete discussion of this Latin phrase and its import in medieval discussions of the will, see J.B. Karolec, “Free Will and Free Choice,” 629–41.
- 46.
Kent, Virtues of the Will, 99.
- 47.
Odon Lottin, “Libre arbiter et liberté depuis saint Anselme jusqu’à la fin du XIII siècle,” in Psychologie et morale aux XII et XIII siècles vol. 1 (Louvain-Gembloux, 1942), 139.
- 48.
Vernon Bourke employs these terms to ensure that the advances made prior to the condemnation received the proper credit as invaluable contributions to the development of voluntarism. See History of Ethics, vol. 1 rpt. (Mt. Jackson, VA: Axios Press, 2008), 138, 147.
- 49.
Derek Pearsall, ed., Piers Plowman by William Langland: An Edition of the C-Text (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 295.
- 50.
Donaldson, C-Text and Its Poet, 188–95.
- 51.
Bernard of Clairvaux, On Grace and Free Choice, ch. 1:2. trans. Daniel O’Donovan (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1988), 55. Although Bernard uses the term “habit” to characterize Liberum Arbitrium, this term should not be understood in the Aristotelian sense, for this way of acting is in no sense infused or acquired, but only expressed through human action. Bernard does not, however, address the matter of it being a faculty or no not. Rather, he directs his focus upon its relation to the will and reason.
- 52.
Ibid., ch. 3:6–7, p. 61–3.
- 53.
Ibid., ch. 9.29, p.84.
- 54.
Harwood, Problem of Belief, 106.
- 55.
Ibid., 105.
- 56.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 34; Wolter, On the Will, 239: “Furthermore, “superhuman” and “nonhuman” are metaphorical terms, for every act of man is properly speaking human. For just as it is necessary for a right act to be in harmony with its object, end, and other circumstances, so it is also necessary that it be suited to the agent performing it; for it does not suit me to behave like a king, and much less to act like an angel.”
- 57.
Taken from the gospel of Matthew, this Scriptural verse reads as follows: “Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come (Mt. 12:32). The second half of the passage is from an unidentified source. It translates as “he who sins through his free will does not resist [sin, as he should].”
- 58.
For a scholarly overview of this approach, consult Andrew W. Cole, “Trifunctionality and the Tree of Charity: Literary and Social Practice in Piers Plowman,” English Literary History 62 (1995): 1–27. One aspect of Cole’s argument focuses on the legal term “to ferme” as a means of establishing the social significance of this episode (B.16.16). “Coming from the Latin firma, “to ferme,” denotes a lease of land under a fixed yearly money-payment or some other form of rent” (14).
- 59.
Tavormina, Kindly Similitude, 115. Morton Bloomfield, “Piers Plowman and the Three Grades of Chastity,” Anglia 76 (1958): 352–64.
- 60.
Ockham, Quodl. II, q. 13 (OTh IX, 175–6).
- 61.
Simpson maintains that this desire reveals an indebtedness to a voluntarist tradition, privileging the will rather than the intellect as the dominant means of gaining wisdom (“Reason to Affective,” 4).
- 62.
Scotus, Ordinatio III, d. 33; Wolter, On the Will, 229.
- 63.
Ockham, Ord. I, d. 1, q. 3 (OTh I, 421).
- 64.
Ockham, Reportatio III, q. 5 (OTh VI, 158); Reportatio IV, q. 16 (OTh VII, 360).
- 65.
Zeeman, Discourse of Desire, 8.
- 66.
Vesa Hirvonen explains, “it [the will] can have acts of sensory appetite in its power mediately, through its acts” (95).
- 67.
Ockham, Ordinatio I, d. 1, q. 3 (OTh I, 415).
- 68.
Piers is a form of the name Petrus or Peter.
- 69.
Ockham does maintain that precipitate reactions are caused by acts of the will, although not free ones. See Quaest. Variae, q. 6, a. 9 (OTh VIII, 266).
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Strong, D. (2017). The Primacy of the Will and the Love It Produces. In: The Philosophy of Piers Plowman. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51981-4_5
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