The invention of the modern subject (continued) : will and action (8)

The second hour showed how the δυνάμενον, that which has "power to act", taken as substance - subject of attribution of the δύναμις -, became through the mediation of successive translators or interpreters of Nemesius, "subject of acting". To this end, we recalled the Thomasian principle of "the knowledge of the soul by its acts"(anima cognoscitur per actus suos; the soul is known / knows itself by its acts) ; then we explained the meaning of the expression ἐν οὐσίᾳ in the text where Nemesius posits that action proceeds from a faculty that is ἀπὸ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ ἐν οὐσίᾳ ("of substance and in substance"). After distinguishing between physical inherence and psychic immanence - an Aristotelian-Brentanian theme explored in the March 3 seminar - we picked up the thread of the February 10 lecture, returning to the principle of "alternative possibilities" and the Hobbesian critique of the "ordinary definition of a free agent". We thus opened the file on Hobbes' controversy with his most bitter opponent, the Anglican theologian John Bramhall (1594-1663), Bishop of Derry, author of The Capture of Leviathan. Hobbes' argument, set out in Of Liberty and Necessity , is that the "ordinary definition" envelops a contradiction, namely that a cause could be said to be "sufficient" without producing its effect : if a cause is sufficient to produce an effect, it cannot not produce it, since if it does not produce it, it is because it was not sufficient to produce it. Hence the Hobbesian thesis: as produced, voluntary actions are necessary. In his reply to Hobbes(A Vindication of True Liberty From Antecedent and Extrinsecal Necessity), Bramhall resorts to what I've called the "suspension argument": the will can will, it can not will, but it can also abstain from willing. This point, illustrated by an exegesis of Mt 22:2-4 ("I have prepared My dinner, My oxen and My fatlings are killed, all things are ready, come unto the marriage"), leads to a thesis that can be summed up in two formulas: no freedom to do without freedom not to do; no freedom to do without freedom to defer.