Friday, September 20, 2024

A Quote From Duns Scotus About the Will (Nothing Too Heavy Per Theology)

"Nihil aliud a voluntate est causa totalis volitionis in voluntate" (Duns Scotus).

I don't totally agree with this Latin saying, but it just sounds so cool when pronounced. :-)

14 comments:

Terence said...

Translation? I'm thicko plebean naturalis. :-)

Edgar Foster said...

Nothing other than the will is the total cause of volition in the will. The preposition "a" can also mean by or from.

Terence said...

Thanks!

Philip Fletcher said...

Too bad you don't have a recording of it.

Edgar Foster said...

I'm okay/fair with Latin pronunciation, but my former classics professor is way up the scale in that respect.

I was taught to pronounce the 'v' like a 'w' as happens in German, but later Latin pronounced the 'v' like it looks.

Edgar Foster said...

Here's some added information from my Yahoo Notepad:

I'm sorry that I cannot provide more context for the quote, but Scotus does appear to be talking about the rational agent doing the willing. I recently came across the quote from Scotus in a book by Solovyov. But the first time that I encountered it was in Hannah Arendt's work titled _The Life of the Mind_ in that book's section on willing.

Arendt appears to explain the words of Scotus in terms of the will not being determined by external forces. She argues that Scotus makes a distinction between the "natural will" (the voluntas that follows natural inclinations) and "free will" (ut libera) or the will as it pursues freely designed ends "for their own sake" (Life of the Mind, "Willing" section, page 132). Arendt supplies another related quote from Scotus: "for the will produces its own act" ([voluntas] enim est productiva actum).

Roman said...

I think I kind of agree with Scotus, although not entirely, for me the most helpful (although extremely difficult) philosopher for the concept of freedom was Schelling, and more recently Maurice Blondel.

Edgar Foster said...

Schelling is extremely difficult. I have not read Blondel, but just reading about him reminds me of Mikhail Bakhtin. He's another difficult one to read.

Nincsnevem said...

In German, you pronounce W exactly like V in English, because you pronounce V as F in German. In Classical Latin, there was no separate letter for V and U, because they were mostly pronounced like the English W as it functioned as a quasi-consonant. The initial R was trilled just like in Spanish.

Edgar Foster said...

I'm in agreement with what's been said about LAtin/German pronunciation, but see also https://jlong1.sites.luc.edu/L101pron.htm

An example of how I was taught to pronounce classical Latin is for words like via in Latin, which is pronounced like a 'w'. But I studied ecclesiastical Latin as well, which does not follow this practice and says words like ecce (behold, look, check it out!) quite differently.

Anonymous said...

I believe German is somewhat based on Latin, tho I may be misremembering a quote I read a while back. ( paraphrasing the quote FYI)

Nincsnevem said...

In the Middle Ages, there is said to have been a dialogue when the German bishops joked at a synod that for the Spanish "living" (vivere) is the same as "drinking" (bibere) due to their betacism, and they retorted to the Germans that they could not distinguish the "true God" (Deus verus) from the "wild God "(Deus ferus).

Nincsnevem said...

"Beati Hispani quibus vivere bibere est"

"Beati Germani quibus Deus verus Deus ferus est"

Edgar Foster said...

Thanks, Nincs.