The invention of the modern subject (continued) : will and action (14)

The second hour, which opened with a return to Scot's hypothesis of the will reduced to the instant, continued with a reminder of Kierkegaard's notion of the instant of decision, illustrated by the Danish theologian's reflections on Andersen's poem "Agnes and the Triton"(Agnete og Havmanden). We then turned to the question of the relationship between will, want and the principle of non-contradiction (PNC), as presented in medieval literature: 1) Are all mental states subject to PNC: sensations, desires, affects, wills, representations, concepts, judgments? 2) Can V and NV, Velle and non-velle, which are contradictories, V and VN, velle and nolle, which are opposites, coexist psychically? The "common thesis" at the end of the ^15th century was that the will is free in contradictories because it is free to will (V) or not to will (NV), and free to knot (VN) or not to knot (NVN), but not in contraries, because it is not free to will (V) a known or apparent evil, or to knot (VN) a known or apparent good, nor to accept a known or apparent evil or to refuse a known or apparent good. On these points, we have presented the theses of Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen (1464-1532) and Jodocus Trutfetter (1460-1519), Martin Luther's Buridan masters of logic, who maintain that the basis of human freedom is the possibility of suspending assent. Does Scotus' Formula imply a duality of wills? Is it necessary to place two wills in each human being in order to allow two opposing wills to coexist? The problem of the freedom of the will poses the problem of the unity of man: a problem of philosophical anthropology.