257. Martin Pickavé on Henry of Ghent and Freedom

Hi Peter,

Thanks for another great interview, and thanks to Martin Pickave for discussing Henry of Ghent on Freedom!

I thought Martin did well in representing Henry's position on freedom, though I'd add one caveat regarding the obscure case of God the Father and God the Son's voluntary production of God the Holy Spirit.  (My D.Phil. (Oxford) was on Henry's Trinitarian Theology.) As Martin pointed out, Henry holds that the Holy Spirit is freely produced, but necessarily. From this Martin inferred that alternative possibilities is not a feature of Henry's account of freedom. This is true. But so far as I understand things, it is not true if we are talking about Henry's account of free choice. Free choice, for Henry, requires alternative possibilities (to will, to nil, or to reject a cognized object). You can find this in Henry's Quodlibet 13, question 11 in which he discusses Anselm at some length and offers his own replies to Giles of Rome on behalf of the view that free choice requires alternative possibilities in the will itself.  Of course, Henry concedes that for the exercise of free choice there must be a cognized object, but the will can choose to will the object, nil the object, or reject the object. In a book I'm working on I'll get into the details of Henry on freedom in the case of the voluntary production of the Holy Spirit. I think it is misleading to take this obscure case and put it into the context of Henry's account of free choice. Of course, freedom is involved in the Trinitarian case. It's just that Henry's distinguishing freedom and free choice allow him to claim that the Holy Spirit is necessarily voluntarily produced (i.e. no alt. possibilities), and that creatures with free choice have alt. possibilities in choosing with regard to some cognized object. Later, William of Ockham doesn't buy Henry's distinction between freedom and free choice and so has reason to reject Henry's theological claim that God the Father and God the Son voluntarily produce the Holy Spirit, on the assumption that the Holy Spirit is metaphysically necessary. 

Another interesting case is that of the blessed saints in heaven. They are supposed to freely and necessarily enjoy the beatific vision according to theologians like Henry and Duns Scotus. Their solution to this involves an appeal to a distinction between freedom and free choice - though Henry and Scotus differ on the details in such a case.

I am looking forward to the next podcast on the Trinitarian issues! It's a topic I've worked too much on with regard to Henry of Ghent.

Hello Peter,

I'm having a bit of trouble visualising how Henry sees the will here. This is an objection you mentioned in the podcast but I'm still a bit hazy on it. I'll try to elaborate my confusion with a thought experiment.

Let's say there's a person who goes to lunch. His options are either fish or chicken. He picks chicken. We then repeat the day, over and over, and observe what choice he makes each day. The person has no knowledge that the day is being repeated and all variables are exactly the same each time.

Either the person picks chicken every time, in which case his choice is indistinguishable from the case where everything is casually determined, or he sometimes picks fish, in which case his choice is random (since it does not seem to depend on any reason since all variables are the same) and no choice at all.

Where, exactly, does the will come in? I'm having trouble  understanding how we can coherently talk about the will in a manner which makes it neither deterministic nor random.

I feel like saying that there are necessary reasons but no sufficient ones doesn't solve the problem either. At the end, when the will has a host of reasons and must make a choice, either it makes the same final choice everytime (in which case things are deterministic) or it sometimes makes a different choice (in which case things are random).