The subject of passion (6)

The second hour continued the philosophical clarification of the Gethsemane problem, analyzing it in two distinct but correlated elements: P1a): can two different things be willed at the same time? P1b): can we want two different things without wanting two contrary things? and P2): what prevents us from wanting opposites at the same time? We recalled the answers mobilized in the Monothelist controversy: the " principle of (subjective) consistency of willing " (PCV), alleged by Pséphos: "It is impossible that for one and the same subject(heni kai tô autô hupokeimenô), two contrary wills (duo thelèmata) should subsist at the same time and under the same relation(hama kai kata tauton)" and its source, Aristotle's "principle of non-contradiction" (PNC), of which Apollinaris of Laodicea gives a "psychological" version, explicitly involving a psychic"subject". We then began examining theDisputatio cum Pyrrho (645), Maximus the Confessor's dispute with Pyrrhus ^I, Sergius' successor to the patriarchate of Constantinople. We focused on one of Maximus' arguments against Pyrrhus' use of PCV, namely that two different wills do not make a conflict of wills.