The concept of human will occupies a contested and generative position across the depth-psychology corpus, traversing ancient philosophy, Christian theology, existential psychotherapy, and contemplative traditions. Albrecht Dihle's historical scholarship establishes the foundational tension: whereas Greek thought subsumed volition under cognition — the Greeks possessing no single word for will as pure volitional act — the Biblical and Augustinian traditions elevated will to the primary locus of moral evaluation, responsibility, and the human response to divine commandment. Augustine's synthesis, in which will becomes coextensive with all affective movement and is defined by its orientation toward or away from God, proved the pivotal transformation. Within existential psychotherapy, Yalom maps the clinical stakes: the eclipse of 'will' by 'motive' in psychoanalytic discourse has systematically absolved patients of responsibility, and the recovery of will — as 'trigger of effort,' 'mainspring of action' — is inseparable from the recovery of genuine agency and self-authorship. Easwaran, drawing on Upanishadic sources, reframes the problem through the relationship between desire and will, arguing that volitional energy is never absent but is habitually captured and redirected by desire. The neuroscientific challenge posed by Libet's experiments haunts the entire discussion, suggesting that conscious volition may be an afterthought to neural preparation. The field thus holds in productive tension will as moral center, will as therapeutic lever, and will as possible epiphenomenon.
In the library
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Good or ill will as the decisive point of reference in the evaluation of human behavior, for instance, became a favorite topic of ethical speculation... The Greeks had no word of this kind in their language to denote will or intention as such.
Dihle establishes the foundational historical thesis that the concept of will as pure volition, separable from reason and emotion, has no Greek linguistic equivalent and is a distinctively post-classical development in European moral thought.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis
The will of man as a phenomenon of religious or moral relevance and subject to evaluation according to the standards of good and evil comes to existence in consequence of the commandment of God. It is only the very act of will that determines the moral value of the ensuing action.
Dihle argues that the Biblical tradition makes human will the exclusive moral determinant, constituted relationally through God's commandment and evaluated solely as obedience or disobedience.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis
Motivation can influence but cannot replace will; despite various motives, the individual still has the option of behaving or not behaving in a certain fashion.
Yalom insists that the psychoanalytic substitution of 'motive' for 'will' dissolves responsibility, and that genuine agency requires the reinstatement of will as an irreducible clinical category.
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980thesis
Augustine connects the will with freedom, for the choice (arbitrium) that the will makes is free... the will is present in all these movements. Rather, they are all nothing other than acts of will (voluntates).
Sorabji documents Augustine's identification of will with freedom, responsibility, and all affective movement, marking the Augustinian synthesis as the decisive moment in the Western theory of human will.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Intention that leads to right action has to be determined by a good will rather than true knowledge. Good will, as distinct from the right cognition of the given case, can be measured according to accepted standards without special reference to the aim of action.
Dihle identifies the structural argument for privileging good will over cognitive correctness as the basis of moral evaluation, anticipating the Kantian formulation and rooting it in late antique ethical debate.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis
If you have only 'will' and no 'wish,' you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan man. If you have only 'wish' and no 'will,' you have the driven, unfree, infantile person.
Yalom articulates the clinical dialectic between wish and will, arguing that pathology arises from the dissociation of these two faculties and that therapeutic work must integrate both.
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980thesis
Every desire draws vitality away from the will. If that desire can be resisted, the power caught up in it begins to flow into our hands... There is will in every desire. If the desire is self-centered or conditioned, our will is turned against us.
Easwaran, drawing on Upanishadic psychology, argues that will and desire share the same vital substrate and that willpower is not absent in the undisciplined person but is merely captured and misdirected by desire.
Easwaran, Eknath, Essence of the Upanishads: A Key to Indian Spiritualitythesis
There is will in every desire. If the desire is self-centered or conditioned, our will is turned against us; we do what it commands. As Spinoza observed, in such a life there are no decisions, only desires.
This parallel passage reinforces the Upanishadic claim that enslaved will produces a life without genuine decision, invoking Spinoza's determinism as corroboration.
Man partakes of divine nature or reality by his intellect alone... the goal of human life, under this presupposition, was assimilation to God by intellectual activity... and no human will was
Dihle diagnoses the Neoplatonist presupposition that intellectual assimilation to the divine excludes any constitutive role for human will, setting up the contrast with Augustine's voluntarist alternative.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
They very often located the center of the person in her capacity for willing and choosing, which, however vaguely understood, is the locus of choice and action and, therefore the nexus
Sinkewicz documents the Desert Fathers' identification of the volitional capacity as the anthropological center of the person, irrespective of whether that will was theorized as fully free.
Sinkewicz, Robert E., Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, 2003supporting
The act of will precedes the acquisition of knowledge on which salvation depends... the way towards salvation or immortality is described as 'the ability to know and to wish and to hope is a straight road.'
Dihle traces in Hermetic literature the same voluntarist priority — will initiates the turn toward saving knowledge — that characterizes Biblical and Augustinian anthropology.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
Even though traditional analytic thought views human behavior as completely determined... still it seems necessary to include a core that is not determined... 'how can a part be free without the whole being free?'
Yalom exposes the internal contradiction of psychoanalytic determinism, which tacitly reinstates a free volitional core even while officially denying it, pointing toward the necessity of a genuine theory of will.
Yalom, Irvin D., Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
The brain's activity began about 500 milliseconds before the person was aware of deciding to act. The conscious decision came far too late to be the cause of the action. It was as though consciousness was a mere afterthought.
Levine presents Libet's neuroscientific evidence as a radical challenge to the assumption that conscious will initiates action, suggesting that volitional awareness may be retrospective rationalization rather than genuine causation.
Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting
Only menos comes indeed very near to the modern notion of will, which is defined by one psychologist of our own time as 'energy for acting at the disposal of consciousness' (C. G. Jung). Menos, however, does not belong to the normal or natural equipment of man according to Homeric psychology.
Dihle, citing Jung's definition, identifies the Homeric concept of menos as the closest Greek approximation to modern will, while noting it is a divine intrusion rather than an inherent human capacity.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
Man, however, is capable of refusing and performing this act, which is the basis of his religious and moral responsibility. Even the righteous man can turn away from his righteousness in that way, but also the wicked can become righteous.
Dihle traces the voluntaristic dimension of Biblical anthropology, in which the capacity to accept or refuse the divine command grounds both moral responsibility and the possibility of moral transformation.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
Irenaeus, in restricting salvation to its cosmic dimension, thus disregarding the freedom of both divine and human will.
Dihle identifies freedom of both divine and human will as the central anthropological commitment that separates orthodox Christianity from Gnostic determinism.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
This metamorphosis in critical opinion coincides in time with the dominance of a moral philosophy that speaks of the incorruptibility of the good will, sharply distinguishing the sphere of contingent happenings from the domain of the moral personality.
Nussbaum links modern critical neglect of a tragic text to the Kantian doctrine of the incorruptible good will, which insulates moral personality from contingency in ways that tragedy fundamentally contests.
Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
Our freedom to run against the impulses that either the good or the bad angels of our natures attempt to impose on us is certainly limited, but the fact remains that in many
Damasio concedes a limited but real human freedom to override natural algorithmic impulses, positioning conscious feeling as the faculty through which the will can qualify biological determinism.
Damasio, Antonio R., The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018supporting
The person who remains within the bounds of nature is saved if he abandons his own will and fulfils that of God; but to the person who transcends these bounds God will give the crown of endurance and glory.
The Philokalia presents renunciation of one's own will in conformity to divine will as the soteriological path, with those who transcend nature entirely receiving a higher spiritual reward.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
The supreme goal, whose energy, as we know, is compound of intellection and willing, endows each particular energy with a specific form, which may be used for either good or evil.
St. Maximos articulates a synthesis in which the highest spiritual energies are compounded of both intellection and willing, neither faculty alone being sufficient for the supreme good.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside
The three functions of that spiritual substance, that is to say memory, intellect, will, are individually attributed to Father, Logos, Spirit.
Dihle notes that Augustine's triadic psychology maps memory, intellect, and will onto the Trinitarian persons, elevating will to a constitutive dimension of the imago Dei.
Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982aside