HoP 261 - To Will or Not to Will - Scotus on Freedom

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Peter Adamson

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Society & Culture:philosophy

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2016

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

Scotus develops a novel theory of free will and, along the way, rethinks the notions of necessity and possibility.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Fennie pray a cost in the news
0:05.0	and there's to all of physical
0:08.0	and bless you all of physical.
0:10.0	He bless you, Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at Kings College London and the L.MU in Munich. online at
0:28.0	www History of Philosophy.net. Today's episode, To Will or Not to Will, Scotus on Freedom.
0:37.0	Hamlet Act 3, Scene 3.
0:42.2	We find the Prince of Denmark doing what he does best, hesitating.
0:46.8	He has an apparently perfect opportunity to revenge his father's murder at the hands of his
0:51.4	Uncle Claudius, having found him alone praying.
0:55.0	Hamlet has Claudius at his mercy, but then realizes that killing him now might be too merciful.
1:01.0	If he slays Claudius while he prays for forgiveness, then Claudius will go to heaven.
1:06.0	Am I then revenge, asked Hamlet, to take him in the purging of his soul when he is fit and seasoned for his passage, he decides to wait for a better opportunity.
1:18.0	And thus, as Hamlet puts it elsewhere, the native hue of resolution is cyclied oar with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of
1:26.1	great pith and moment with this regard, their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.
1:35.0	I could hardly have put it better myself. And we've all been there. Well, perhaps not quite in this situation, but we've all been
1:40.6	uncertain how to act or certain how to, but uncertain whether the time for action
1:45.0	has come.
1:46.5	At such moments, we feel vividly that we have a genuine power to choose, whether or not to act. Hamlet is not like a Greek tragic hero, carried inevitably
1:56.3	forward by his own character the tide of events and the will of the gods. He is a quintessentially modern tragic hero, blessed or perhaps cursed with the power and responsibility to shape the present and the future.
2:11.0	He must choose whether it is right to kill or not to kill and famously whether to be or not to be.
2:18.0	As philosophers nowadays would put it, these choices seem to be characterized by the presence of alternative possibilities.
2:26.0	Hamlet can kill Claudius as he prays or refrain from doing so.
	...

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