The invention of the modern subject (continued) : will and action (5)

The February 10 lecture was based on Leibniz's formula, taken by Chisholm from the Lettre à Coste of December 19, 1707. We focused on the question: What is inclination without necessity? We began with The System of Liberty(De Libertate, c. 1692), presenting and commenting on Leibnizian definitions of freedom, spontaneity, contingency, coaction and indifference. Particular attention was paid to two complementary theses: that all actions are determined and that no action is indifferent, since nothing is without reason, and to the fact that the De Libertate 's discussion of the freedom of indifference includes a reference to one of the star animals of the philosophical bestiary: "Buridan's donkey". We then considered the necessitating inclination in the New Essays on Human Understanding, which led to a return to the "two agents" theory. Along the way, we touched on Leibniz's views on the real distinction between the will and the understanding, and the Leibnizian critique of Simon Bischop, alias "Episcopius" (1583-1643), one of the leading figures of the Dutch Remonstrant movement, himself a former student of Arminius (c. 1560-1609). Contrary to what Bischop maintains, the real distinction of psychic faculties does not imply a duality of agents in man, for, as Locke says, "it is not the faculties that act". We then examined the main thrust of the New Essays ' position: the distinction between de jure freedom and de facto freedom, and the analysis of de facto freedom into freedom to do and freedom to will. Referring to freedom of use: use of the body - use of the mind, we recalled the notion of the "subject of khrêsis " (subject of use), evoked in the first lecture. The remainder of the hour was devoted to reflection on the non-necessitating inclination, in particular to discussion of the principle of determination by the best, and to the question of whether the "prevalence of perceived goods" was not incompatible with freedom.