Freedom, Ability and Knowledge

Abstract

In my account of the three negative conditions of voluntary action to which Aristotle is committed in Ch. 1, I remarked that each of these conditions has a corollary which is a part of Aristotle’s positive account of voluntary action. In Ch. 2, I begin my exegesis of that positive account by examining the positive corollaries of the negative conditions about (i) compulsion and (ii) ignorance. For treatment of the corollary of condition (iii), about irrationality, v. Ch. 3.

It seems clear, at the outset, that Aristotle analysed voluntary action in terms of efficient causality and knowledge… These two elements are central to Aristotle’s account: neither causation nor knowledge alone is sufficient to analyse the concept; both causal and teleological considerations may play a role in it without inconsistency. Most recent work [e.g. Anscombe (1957), von Wright (1971), Stoutland (1970, 1976)] has sought to analyse voluntary action in terms either of causation or of knowledge and teleology (but not both). Aristotle’s theory (if it proves defensible) may avoid those difficulties which undermine contemporary accounts which take one of these features alone as the analẏsans; for it would yield a (partially) causal account of intentional action and the basis for a (partially) causal analysis of freedom to act.

David Charles, Aristotle’s Theory of Action, p. 59