Voluntarism is "any metaphysical or psychological system that assigns to the

will Will may refer to: Common meanings * Will and testament, instructions for the disposition of one's property after death * Will (philosophy), or willpower * Will (sociology) * Will, volition (psychology) * Will, a modal verb - see Shall and will ...

(

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

: ''voluntas'') a more predominant role than that attributed to the

intellect Intellect is a faculty of the human mind that enables reasoning, abstraction, conceptualization, and judgment. It enables the discernment of truth and falsehood, as well as higher-order thinking beyond immediate perception. Intellect is dis ...

",Voluntarism (philosophy)
– Britannica.com or equivalently "the doctrine that will is the basic factor, both in the universe and in human conduct". Voluntarism has appeared at various points throughout the history of philosophy, seeing application in the areas of

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

political philosophy Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and Political legitimacy, legitimacy of political institutions, such as State (polity), states. This field investigates different ...

and

theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

. The term voluntarism was introduced by

Ferdinand Tönnies Ferdinand Tönnies (; 26 July 1855 – 8 April 1936) was a German sociologist, economist, and philosopher. He was a significant contributor to sociological theory and field studies, best known for distinguishing between two types of social gro ...

into the philosophical literature and particularly used by

Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and biology, was t ...

and

Friedrich Paulsen Friedrich Paulsen (; ; July 16, 1846 – August 14, 1908) was a German Neo-Kantian philosopher and educator. Biography He was born at Langenhorn ( Schleswig) and educated at the Gymnasium Christianeum, the University of Erlangen, and the Uni ...

. In the context of

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

thought, voluntarism is the use of human will and effort to overcome material limitations to advance development in the absence of advanced technology and economic resources.

Theological voluntarism

Medieval theological voluntarism

Associated with

Duns Scotus John Duns Scotus ( ; , "Duns the Scot"; – 8 November 1308) was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is considered one of the four most important Christian philosopher-t ...

and

William of Ockham William of Ockham or Occam ( ; ; 9/10 April 1347) was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, apologist, and theologian, who was born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medie ...

(two of the foremost medieval scholastic philosophers), medieval theological voluntarism (not to be confused with

meta-ethical In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or Value_(ethics), values. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others ...

theological voluntarism Divine command theory (also known as theological voluntarism) is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determi ...

) is generally taken to be the philosophical emphasis on the divine will and human freedom over and above the intellect (). For example, Scotus held that morality comes from God's will and choice rather than his intellect or knowledge. Accordingly, God should be defined as an

omnipotent Omnipotence is the property of possessing maximal power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as ...

being whose actions should not and cannot be ultimately rationalized and explained through reason. As such, voluntarism is usually contrasted with

intellectualism Intellectualism is the mental perspective that emphasizes the use, development, and exercise of the intellect, and is identified with the life of the mind of the intellectual. (Definition) In the field of philosophy, the term ''intellectualism'' in ...

, championed by the scholastic

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas ( ; ; – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest, the foremost Scholasticism, Scholastic thinker, as well as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the W ...

Theological voluntarism as an approach to natural philosophy

Theological voluntarism also refers to theological commitments—that is, specific interpretations of doctrines of Christianity—arguably held by certain early modern natural philosophers such as

Pierre Gassendi Pierre Gassendi (; also Pierre Gassend, Petrus Gassendi, Petrus Gassendus; 22 January 1592 – 24 October 1655) was a French philosopher, Catholic priest, astronomer, and mathematician. While he held a church position in south-east France, he a ...

Walter Charleton Walter Charleton (2 February 1619 – 24 April 1707) was a natural philosopher and English writer. According to Jon Parkin, he was "the main conduit for the transmission of Epicurean ideas to England".Jon Parkin, ''Science, Religion and Politi ...

Robert Boyle Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, Alchemy, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the foun ...

Isaac Barrow Isaac Barrow (October 1630 – 4 May 1677) was an English Christian theologian and mathematician who is generally given credit for his early role in the development of infinitesimal calculus; in particular, for proof of the fundamental theorem ...

and

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

. It resulted in an empirical approach associated with early modern science. Voluntarism therefore allows that faith or belief in God can be achieved by will as opposed to requiring a prior divine gift of faith to the individual. This notion holds at least in so far as it has found favor among some historians and philosophers (e.g. the historian Francis Oakley and the philosopher Michael B. Foster). A 20th-century theologian of voluntarism was

James Luther Adams James Luther Adams (November 12, 1901 – July 26, 1994), an American professor at Harvard Divinity School, Andover Newton Theological School, and Meadville Lombard Theological School, and a Unitarian parish minister, was the most influential t ...

Metaphysical voluntarism

A proponent of metaphysical voluntarism is 19th-century German philosopher

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the Phenomenon, phenomenal world as ...

. In his view, the will is not reasoning, but an irrational, unconscious urge in relation to which the intellect represents a secondary phenomenon. The will is actually the force at the core of all reality. This putting out of the drive–intention–vital dynamics later influenced

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...

(

will to power The will to power () is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The will to power describes what Nietzsche may have believed to be the main driving force in humans. However, the concept was never systematically defined in Nietzsche's ...

Philipp Mainländer Philipp Mainländer (; 5 October 1841 – 1 April 1876) was a German philosopher and poet. Born Philipp Batz, he later changed his name to "Mainländer" in homage to his hometown, Offenbach am Main. In his central work, (''The Philosophy of Re ...

(will to die),

Eduard von Hartmann Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (23 February 1842 – 5 June 1906) was a German philosopher, independent scholar and writer. He was the author of the influential '' Philosophy of the Unconscious'' (1869). Von Hartmann's notable ideas include the ...

Julius Bahnsen Julius Friedrich August Bahnsen (30 March 1830 – 7 December 1881) was a German philosopher. Bahnsen is usually considered the originator of characterology and a real-dialectical method of philosophical reflection which he laid down in his tw ...

and

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

(

will to pleasure In Sigmund Freud, Freudian psychoanalysis, the pleasure principle () is the instinctive seeking of pleasure and avoiding of suffering, pain to satisfy biological and psychological needs. Specifically, the pleasure principle is the animating forc ...

Epistemological voluntarism

epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...

, epistemological voluntarism is the view that belief is a matter of the will rather than one of simply registering one's cognitive attitude or degree of psychological certainty with respect to a stated proposition. If one is a voluntarist with respect to beliefs, it is coherent to simultaneously feel very certain about a particular proposition P and assign P a very low subjective probability. This is the basis of

Bas van Fraassen Bastiaan Cornelis "Bas" van Fraassen (; ; born 5 April 1941) is a Dutch-American philosopher noted for his contributions to philosophy of science, epistemology and formal logic. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco Stat ...

reflection principle In set theory, a branch of mathematics, a reflection principle says that it is possible to find sets that, with respect to any given property, resemble the class of all sets. There are several different forms of the reflection principle depending ...

. See also:

Doxastic voluntarism Doxastic voluntarism is a philosophical view that people elect their own beliefs; that is, that subjects have a certain amount of control over what they believe, such that a subject may choose whether or not to believe a certain thing. This philoso ...

Political voluntarism

Political voluntarism, or

voluntaryism Voluntaryism (,"Voluntaryism"
. '' Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan (Hobbes book), Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. He is considered t ...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Republic of Geneva, Genevan philosopher (''philosophes, philosophe''), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment through ...

and many members of the

German idealist German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...

tradition understands political authority as emanating from a will.

In socialism

Marxism

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

discourse, voluntarism was used to designate a connection between a philosophical commitment to metaphysical voluntarism (especially Machism) and a political commitment to extreme revolutionary tactics, particularly associated with

Alexander Bogdanov Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov (; – 7 April 1928), born Alexander Malinovsky, was a Russian and later Soviet physician, philosopher, science fiction writer and Bolshevik revolutionary. He was a polymath who pioneered blood transfusion, a ...

. The Soviet Union promoted shock work during the First Five-Year Plan period in an effort to increase productivity through human effort in the absence of more developed machinery. The Cuban Revolutionary Offensive sought to encourage voluntary labor in the countryside both to accelerate development of the socialist economy and to encourage the development of the socialist New Man ethos.

Other socialist thought

As part of his view of

ujamaa Ujamaa ( in Swahili language, Swahili) was a Socialism, socialist ideology that formed the basis of Julius Nyerere's social and economic Economic development, development policies in Tanzania after it gained independence from Britain in 1961. Mor ...

as an

African socialism African socialism is a distinct variant of socialist theory developed in post-colonial Africa during the mid-20th century. As a shared ideological project among several African thinkers over the decades, it encompasses a variety of competing inte ...

, Tanzanian President

Julius Nyerere Julius Kambarage Nyerere (; 13 April 1922 – 14 October 1999) was a Tanzanian politician, anti-colonial activist, and political theorist. He governed Tanganyika (1961–1964), Tanganyika as prime minister from 1961 to 1962 and then as presid ...

contended that socialist subjectivity could itself be a force for economic development. Nyerere stated that "the people, and the people alone are the motive force in the making of world history rather than technological capacity or historical logic.

Critical voluntarism

Hugo Dingler's critical voluntarism in the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

is a form of

conventionalism Conventionalism is the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on (explicit or implicit) agreements in society, rather than on external reality. Unspoken rules play a key role in the philosophy's structure ...

which posits that theorizing in the sciences starts with an unavoidable free decision of the will. Peter Janich, ''Protophysics of Time: Constructive Foundation and History of Time Measurement'', Springer, 2012. The successor school of Dingler's critical voluntarism is the methodical

constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in the Soviet Union in t ...

of the

Erlangen School Neo-Lutheranism was a 19th-century revival movement within Lutheranism which began with the Pietist-driven '' Erweckung,'' or ''Awakening'', and developed in reaction against theological rationalism and pietism. The movement followed the Old Lu ...

(cf. also the methodical culturalism of the

Marburg School In late modern philosophy, neo-Kantianism () was a revival of the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The neo-Kantians sought to develop and clarify Kant's theories, particularly his concept of the thing-in-itself and his moral philosophy. ...

Notes and references

External links

Voluntarism
entry in th
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* {{Catholic philosophy footer Epistemological theories Free will Theology Scotism Occamism Criticism of rationalism