Le bivium de Cudworth : l'intelectualisme de Leibniz vs. le volontarisme de Suárez. Deux supposita dans l'âme raisonnable?

MARÍA GRISELDA GAIADA

Hanover

Congreso; X. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress; 2016

Leibniz Universität Hannover / Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft

In this article we will analyse the « problem of freewill », in accordance with the relationship between the understanding and the will. Looking at the history of philosophy, it can be noticed that the concept of freedom has swung from one faculty to the other, according to the priority given to each one of them within the rational soul. The debate of scholastic mark about where to place the formal freedom and the answers to this question, have substantively compromised the meaning itself of freedom; at the same time, it has led to remarkable paradoxes. Our objective is to reveal what we will call the ?paradox of faculties? that may be found in both intellectualist and voluntarist interpretations of freewill. In this respect, we will present two positions concerning the freewill: the ?voluntarism? of Francisco Suárez and the so-called ?intellectualism? of Leibniz. It will be shown that each one of these positions involves their own problems in order to explain properly the human agency. The second half of this work will focus on Ralph Cudworth, who spotted some of these problems and posed largely his criticisms in A Treatise of freewill. In fact, his perspicacity and his elegant arguments set him in a remarkable position, if he is not the judge that solves the controversy, he is one of the few philosophers that hits the target of the problem of freewill.