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Richard Kilvington’s Concept of Will from his Quaestiones super libros Ethicorum. Quantification of Ethics in 14th Century England






English thinkers in the fourteenth century were the vanguard of European philosophical thought. One of the most influential philosophers and theologians of the English School was Richard Kilvington, who was also one of the founding members of a group of scholars called the ‘Oxford Calculators’. The Oxford Calculators have already been recognized as innovators in the field of logic and natural philosophy mostly due to their original analytical approach based on quantification and the calculus of compounding ratios.

It has been already acknowledged that the ‘Oxford Calculators’ have significantly contributed to the development of logic and natural philosophy. Their ideas in the field of logic and physics are thought to have paved the way for early modern science (mostly on the concepts of Galileo, Newton and Leibniz). Also, some aspects of the use of the logical tools in theology have attracted some attention of the historians of philosophy as well as the historians of science. It has been shown that the application of logic to the field of theology allowed the ‘Calculators’ to foster a new perspective in analyzing some of the theological dilemmas.

There has been, however, little research on the application of these new methods to the field of practical philosophy, and especially to ethics. Thus, it seems interesting to examine whether the application of logic to ethical propositions could be considered as significant as it is in the case of physics and theology. The insight into this approach adopted in fourteenth century ethics becomes even more important given the fact that Kilvington was the only fourteenth century thinker who, in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, extensively and consistently employed the tools from logic and natural philosophy to the analyses of ethical issues.

This paper will concentrate on Kilvington’s new ideas and methodology in ethics, taking into account the application of the new analytical tools to ethics. It will show how he managed to go far beyond the main interests of the Calculators’ that were logic and mathematical physics and successfully include ethical and theological problems into the areas of the topics he studied as well as far beyond the standard approach taken in ethical commentaries at this time. This wide spectrum of Kilvington’s interests has not been so far taken into consideration by the researchers who limited their analyses only to his innovations in logic and mathematical physics. However, his focus on other philosophical and theological problems as well as his original way of providing arguments and conducting his analyses reveal that he took into account the whole range of domains where the new calculating methodology could be used. In fact, it was a matter of high importance for Kilvington to investigate whether the same analytical tools could be employed successfully to investigate, calculate, and measure all the objects of the world.

To shed light on Kilvington’s approach adopted in his ethical considerations I will concentrate on his concept of will. I will investigate different meanings and levels Kilvington distinguishes in his analysis of will. I will examine:

1) Kilvington’s structure of will presented in two perspectives (epistemological and ontological one);

2) three-dimensional theory of will that involves will’s three states, namely, willing, nilling, non-willing (velle, nolle, non-velle); I will analyze the approach with respect to the concepts of necessitas respectiva and necessitas simpliciter;

3) the importance ascribed to non-willing − the state allowing hesitation and doubts as well as providing the time and space for the will to postpone its decision;

4) in what sense will can err and whether it can intentionally follow false reasoning and fully voluntarily choose an evil act recognizing it as such.

 

[28] Magdalena Pł otka

University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyń ski, Warsaw, Poland


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