The invention of the modern subject (continued) : will and action (15)

The lecture on April 14, the last lecture of the year, addressed the question of the relationship between philosophical anthropology and Christology. The history of the problematic of will and action is illuminated archaeologically by following the dogmatic elaboration of the problem of the human freedom of the Son of God. Its horizon is the theory of the hypostatic union (ἕνωσιϛ ὑποστατική) of the two natures, human and divine, in the hypostasis or Person of Christ, and the theory of the union of body and soul in man. To grasp the problem of articulating the will and the will-to-know in the moment of decision, we need to go back to the beginnings of the monotheistic controversy, and the complex question-and-answer (Q&A) structured by the founding document of Byzantine monotheism: the Pséphos of Sergius^I, Patriarch of Constantinople from April 18, 610 to December 9, 638. To do this, we began with a reminder of the lesson of January 6, using the quadrilaterals of will and agency in John of Damascus and in the Latin translation by Burgundio of Pisa. We then introduced the protagonists of the controversy: Patriarch Sergius^I ; Emperor Heraclius^I; Pope Honorius^I, and the documents involved: the Pséphos (633) and theEkthèsis (638). Sergius' aim was to defuse the conflict between Chalcedonians and Monophysites, without lapsing into Nestorianism, and thus, in the face of the Arab peril, to restore the Empire's lost unity. The theme of Pséphos is the prayer of Gethsemane and the episode of the "refusal of the cup" (evoked in the lecture of March 31, second hour), a central piece in the theology of Christ's agony. Everything revolves around the exegesis of Mt 29:36 and 42: "My Father, let this chalice pass from me, if it is possible; nevertheless, let it be, not as I will, but as you will" and "My Father, if I cannot avoid drinking this chalice, your will be done".Reading Mt 26:39 and 42, it seems that there are two wills in Christ: that of the Incarnate Word, who wants the Passion, and that of the assumed man, who rejects it or rather would prefer to avoid it (the "nollity of death", also evoked in the March 31 lecture). To avoid controversy, the Pséphos forbids any mention of Christ's "two operations". Admitting two operations means positing two contrary wills in Christ at the moment of agony, i.e., positing two wills in Christ, "which is ungodly", because impossible by virtue of a psychological application of PNC: the principle of (subjective) consistency of the will, which I note PCV, namely: "It is impossible that for one and the same subject, two contrary wills should subsist at the same time and under the same relation." The Psephos, via PNC and PCV, offers the first inscription of the will and acts of volition in the register of subjectivity. There are others. From this point of view, we have briefly examined a second principle of subjectivation in the realm of will and action: the "subjective principle of action" (PSA): " actiones sunt suppositorum ", " actions belong to suppositors", starting from Leibniz and Bossuet's controversy on monotheism. After examining PSA, we turned to the sources of PCV in Sergius. In particular, we evoked Plato and the "principle of opposites" in the Republic, related to, but not confused with, PNC. Finally, we presented a first sketch of a conclusion to the analyses of the "Aristotelian model". The birth of subjectivity is conditioned by the reign of the principle of non-contradiction, in philosophy as in theology. The modern notion of the subject is built on the framework formed by PNC, PCV and PSA, in the Aristotelian episteme. Aristotelianism resolves the question of the synchronicity of the will and the will-to-be by placing over it the lock of the principle of non-contradiction. The result comes at a cost: it runs counter to our experience. Another model is needed to account for the reality of psychic life.