Giles of Rome's theory of the will

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis examines Giles of Rome's theory of the will. Regent Master in Theology from 128-1291, Giles was one of the leading figures at the University of Paris in the period between Aquinas and Scotus. He not only witnessed, but also was deeply involved in the debates out of which the notion of the will as a free power emerged. I examine Giles's contribution to this debate in an effort to determine whether his moral psychology is, at root, voluntarist or intellectualist. Against the accepted view that Giles was a follower of Aquinas and therefore intellectualist, I argue that this claim must be qualified. Specifically, I establish that although Giles inherits several key principles from Aquinas's moral psychology, he ultimately develops them in a voluntarist direction. On the self-motion of the will I show how Giles adopts Aquinas's distinction between specification and exercise and develops it into a defense of a voluntarism of specification, that is, a defense of the claim that the will can determine itself independently of the intellect. I then show how Giles's theory of self-motion governs his account of the Socratic Paradox such that, although wrongdoing involves ignorance at some level, it is nonetheless seen by him to be a voluntary ignorance. In this way, the will rather than the intellect becomes the source of wrongdoing. In the final two chapters I take up the issues of the primacy of the will and the foundations of freedom, respectively. I show that Giles, along with the voluntarists of the period, defends the nobility of the will over the intellect and the related claim that happiness consists in a union with God that is achieved primarily through the will's act of love. Finally, I examine Giles's discussion of the foundations of freedom, showing the way in which Giles incorporates the moderate voluntarism of thinkers such as Aquinas's contemporary Walter of Bruges in order to defend the view that the will, rather than the intellect, is the formally free power. I conclude that, overall, Giles's theory of the will, although drawing on several sources, including Aquinas, must ultimately be regarded as a voluntaristic moral psychology.Ph.D