Volume 78, 2004
Reckoning with the Tradition
Bonnie Kent
Pages 59-70
Happiness and the Willing Agent
The Ongoing Relevance of the Franciscan Tradition
Contemporary philosophers who are concerned with the following three philosophical issues can learn much from Scotus: (1) the defense of agent-causal accounts of the will; (2) the search for common ground between ancient and Kantian ethics: and (3) the co-existence of free will and the capacity for sin in heaven.
1) Free Will and Agent Causation: According to Scotus, the will moves itself to act, but does not cause itself. Human actions are done for reasons determined
by the agent; they are not reducible to events (which are themselves necessitated by prior events).
2) Reconciling Ancient and Kantian Ethics: Like Kant, Scotus thinks that creatures cannot be morally responsible for their actions if happiness is their sole
motivation for choosing whatever they choose; Scotus distinguishes between motivations and ends, although less sharply than Kant does. For Scotus, the
desire for happiness includes the desire for self-perfection; thus happiness for Scotus is never reducible to hedonism, nor is happiness our sole motivation.
Our freedom lies in the will’s ability to love good things according to the value they have in themselves, not according to the value that they have for us.
3) Is Heaven a Problem? A familiar explanation of the problem of evil is that evil is permitted because free will is required for moral goodness; without free will
there would be no moral evil, but neither would there be any moral goodness, so the world is better than it would be if God had chosen not to create free
creatures. But if free will is such a great good, then we must retain the capacity to sin in heaven, or else heavenly existence is inferior to earthly existence.
And, if we do retain the capacity to sin in heaven, then heaven is not essentially devoid of evil. Scotus would respond to this problem by stating that love, not
freedom, is the greatest good. Thus, his account of heaven is consistent with what it means to love God above all, for his own sake, and without the motivation
of happiness or any other benefit.