Anselm of Canterbury was known as the founder or Scholasticism and originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God. (A perfect being must exist.)
He developed a theory for the freedom of the will in his
De Libertate Arbitrii (On Freedom of Choice) somewhat different from that of
Augustine (De Libero Arbitrio), in that he combined two of Augustine's senses into one. These are theories on the freedom of the will and not compatibilist notions that we call "freedom of action" or
Isaiah Berlin calls "negative freedom."
It is convenient to refer to them by
Mortimer Adler's three kinds of freedom. In
The Idea of Freedom, vol.I, Adler classifies all freedoms into three categories:
- The Circumstantial Freedom of Self-Realization
- The Acquired Freedom of Self-Perfection
- The Natural Freedom of Self-Determination
Self-realization is freedom from external coercion, political end economic freedom, etc.
The freedom we have identified as circumstantial is variously called "economic freedom," "political freedom," "civil liberty," "individual freedom," "the freedom of man in society," "freedom in relation to the state," and "external freedom." It is sometimes referred to negatively as "freedom from coercion or restraint," "freedom from restrictions," or
"freedom from law," and sometimes positively as "freedom of action," "freedom of spontaneity," or "freedom under law."
(The Idea of Freedom, vol I, p.127)
The
Acquired Freedom of
Self-perfection is the idea from Plato to Anselm to Kant that we are only free when our decisions are for reasons and we are not slaves to our passions (making moral choices rather than satisfying desires).
This is the acquired or learned knowledge to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, true from false, etc. Anselm calls this
libertas, in which man is only free when following a divine moral law. Sinners, says Anselm, do not have this kind of free will, which is odd because sinners are presumably responsible for evil in the world despite an omniscient and omnipotent God.
Instead, Anselm says that those who have the ability (
posse) to sin or not to sin have what he calls
liberum arbitrium, this is the ability to choose from among
alternative possibilities, some of which may include self interest.
For Anselm, thanks to God's grace, only God and the angels have pure
libertas.
Anselm cites the example of an agent who is given the choice to lie or to die. Shall he do the right thing and tell the truth, in which case he dies, or do what is in his self-interest and lie? Compare
Robert Kane's example of the businesswoman who has to choose between aiding a victim in an alley or going on to her business meeting.
This is Adler's
Natural Freedom of
Self-Determination.
According to G. Stanley Kane, Anselm combines
libertas and
liberum arbitrium. This makes sense, because pure freedom (
libertas) is to live a perfect life in God's grace, whereas a more normal sense of free will (
liberum arbitrium) involves judgment, decisions between alternatives (including moral decisions).
In the intellectual tradition that he received, Anselm inherited two distinct notions of freedom. In one, freedom is thought of as the state in which a person is exempt from all possibility of sin or corruption—the state of sinless perfection. Here freedom is the ability to fulfill completely the will of God. The only way to possess this freedom is to attain it or merit it (which, of course, cannot be done without the grace of God). In this notion, while "freedom" designates a state or condition, it also designates a subjective power or capacity. Freedom is the state of sinless perfection and the power to maintain that state. The antithesis of this kind of freedom is sin or the ability to sin.
The second kind of freedom is the property of will by which it is able to choose any one of a set of two or more alternatives. This kind of freedom does not have to be attained; it is a natural property of the human will. Having this kind of freedom entails having the ability to sin along with the ability not to sin. The antithesis of this kind of freedom is determinism—any kind of compulsion or necessity that so conditions a person's choices that he cannot do otherwise than he actually does.
G. Stanley Kane, Anselm's Doctrine of the Freedom of the Will" (1981), p.152
On God's Omnipotence and Omniscience
In the first edition of
my book on Free Will (p.5), I argued that God could not logically be both omnipotent and omniscient. I thought I had discovered this logical contradiction. But reading Richard Sorabji's excellent book
Necessity, Cause, and Blame. I was mistakenly led to believe that Anselm had considered this contradiction. I wrote this in 2011.
On Omniscience, Omnipotence, Benevolence
In passing, it is worth noting that the idea of God as an
omniscient and omnipotent being has an internal logical
contradiction that is rarely discussed by the theologians.1
If such a being had perfect knowledge of the future, like
Laplace’s demon, who knows the positions, velocities, and
forces for all the particles, it would be perfectly impotent.
Because if God had the power to change even one thing
about the future, his presumed perfect knowledge would
have been imperfect. Omniscience entails impotence.
Omnipotence some ignorance.
As to benevolence, Archibald MacLeish said in J.B, “If
God is Good, He is not God. If God is God, He is Not Good.”
1 Anselm was an exception. See Sorabji (1980). p. 126.
A careful rereading of Sorabji, as well as Anselm's
Concordia Praescientiae et Praedestinationis et Gratiae Dei cum Libero Arbitrio tells me that Anselm did not in fact reach my 2011 conclusion.
First, Sorabji wrote (p.126),
Anselm had earlier been worried by the determinist objection that what is eternal cannot be changed.
Sorabji might here have understood Anselm saying that since God's knowledge is eternal, the deterministic future cannot be changed destroying God's omnipotence.
But Anselm has no such clear logical thinking. Sorabji tells us so on his next page 127.
He [Anselm] replied that the very same thing, which, as eternal, is immutable, is also in time, and hence mutable.
Does Anselm think God's eternal (omniscient foreknowledge) is compatible with God's omnipotent power to change the future?
And in Anselm's
Concordia we find examples of Anselm believing blatant logical contradictions in defense of God's powers, for example God's omniscient foreknowledge and human free will.
I think I have demonstrated with the help of God’s grace that no impossibility is involved in the coexistence of God’s foreknowledge and our free choice and that no unsolvable objection can be raised if someone carefully weighs my words.
Anselm, The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics) (p. 449). OUP Oxford.
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