Voluntas

The word voluntas designated a hermeneutical rather than an anthropological concept in Roman jurisprudence and, we may suspect, sometimes also in general Latin usage. St. Augustine transferred this concept to the field of psychology, thus creating a tool for interpreting and classifying psychological observations

Dihle's central thesis: Augustine did not discover voluntas through introspection but transplanted a juristic hermeneutic into psychology, thereby inventing the concept of will as an autonomous inner faculty.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis

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It makes a difference what a person's will (voluntas) is like. If it is perverted (perversa), these movements will be perverted in him. If it is upright (recta), they will be not just blameless, but praiseworthy. Indeed, the will is present in all these movements. Rather, they are all nothing other than acts of will (voluntates).

Sorabji shows that for Augustine voluntas is not merely one faculty among others but the moral determinant that orients the entire affective life, making all emotions derivative expressions of the will's direction.

Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis

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Roman philosophy, mainly because it depended entirely on the Greek tradition, did not develop the distinct notion of will before St. Augustine. So the impact which philosophy made on the Latin language throughout the imperial period could only weaken rather than reinforce voluntaristic elements in Roman thought.

Dihle establishes the historical-linguistic ground: the Latin word voluntas existed, but the philosophical concept of pure volition distinct from cognition and emotion awaited Augustine to crystallize it.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis

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St. Augustine's doctrine of grace, very much like his Trinitarian theology, can only be properly understood on the basis of the fundamental belief that the direct relation between God and the human soul is prior to and independent of any objectively existing order of being

Dihle argues that Augustine's entire theology of grace required the concept of voluntas because only a non-cognitive, non-ontological category could anchor the personal and unpredictable relationship between God and the soul.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982thesis

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a tripartite soul consisting of the faculties memoria, intelligentia, voluntas (or amor). The soul is where 'the whole man' has come to the fore and where in this way the dimension of wilderness has been entered.

Giegerich appropriates the Augustinian triad memoria-intelligentia-voluntas as the structural formula for the whole soul, insisting that voluntas (or amor) must be engaged if psychological work is to reach genuine depth.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting

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The three functions of that spiritual substance, that is to say memory, intellect, will, are individually attributed to Father, Logos, Spirit. Everything which comes into being in the universe, both immaterial and material, owes its origin and preservation to the intellectual activity of God

Dihle traces how Augustine maps the triadic soul-functions—memory, intellect, will—onto the persons of the Trinity, giving voluntas a theological dignity absent from all prior philosophical psychology.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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Voluntas, velle, 118f, 127ff, 132ff, 141ff

The index entries confirm that Dihle's systematic treatment of voluntas and velle spans the core chapters on Augustine, signalling the term's structural centrality to the entire monograph.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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he had to attain a precise conception and evaluation of what the persons involved really wished or intended (voluntas). This catalogue was formulated by Quintilian late in the first century A.D.

Dihle documents the pre-Augustinian Roman legal usage in which voluntas was a term of interpretive art, denoting the jurist's reconstruction of genuine intention behind words or deeds.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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Memory, cognition, and will, the functions of the soul, are individually attributed to the hypostases of the Trinity.

Dihle confirms Augustine's explicit analogical attribution of will to a Trinitarian hypostasis, grounding voluntas not only psychologically but theologically within Christian metaphysics.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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the Latin words voluntarius impetus and voluntas both occur in Gellius's paraphrase; if the argument given in note 12 is correct, these probably represent prohairetike horme and prohairesis in Chrysippus's Greek.

Graver identifies voluntas as the Latin vehicle through which Gellius renders Chrysippus's prohairesis, illuminating how a Stoic technical concept was absorbed into the voluntas-vocabulary before Augustine systematized it.

Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 2007supporting

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The Greeks had no word of this kind in their language to denote will or intention as such. Professor Dodds, one of my distinguished predecessors in the series of Sather Lecturers, duly stressed this fact

Dihle opens his argument by establishing the foundational linguistic asymmetry: Greek lacked a term for pure volition, whereas Latin possessed voluntas, and this difference made Augustine's conceptual innovation possible.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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the Gnostics are wrong, in the view of Irenaeus, in restricting salvation to its cosmic dimension, thus disregarding the freedom of both divine and human will.

Dihle places voluntas within early Christian anti-Gnostic polemic: the freedom of divine and human will is precisely what cosmic determinism threatens, establishing voluntas as a soteriological category.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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Qui fecerit voluntatem patris mei et eiecerit hunc mundum in mundum, dabo illi sedem mecum in throno regni mei... Haec est voluntas patris mei

Von Franz's alchemical text invokes voluntas in its classical theological register—the will of the Father as salvific imperative—situating the term within the mystical-Trinitarian framework that depth psychology encounters in the Aurora Consurgens.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting

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the progress in knowledge that has been inaugurated by the initial act of will, namely the acceptance of God's mercy and love of one's neighbor, will also come to its end at that point.

Dihle shows that in Paul's anthropology, transposed through Augustine, the initiating act of voluntas—acceptance of grace—is the origin of all subsequent moral and cognitive development.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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It is by such a voluntas that man is supposed to imitate consciously the bonitas and simplicitas of children who have no complete knowledge of sin and vice.

Dihle notes a usage in which voluntas denotes the deliberate, conscious will by which fallen adults aspire to re-attain the pre-reflective goodness of childhood, illustrating voluntas as ethical striving.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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nulla est hie dissensio voluntatum. Dissensio alone would have rendered that idea sufficiently well. But in semi-legal usage, which was familiar to every educated Roman, the decisive factor of voluntas could not remain unmentioned.

Dihle offers a philological example showing that educated Romans instinctively inserted voluntas into quasi-legal formulations, confirming the word's deep roots in Roman juridical culture even outside formal legal texts.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982aside

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Will, human, 18, 76ff, 83, 88f, 109f, 111f, 127f Will, divine, 4f, 17f, 72f, 75, 83, 90ff, 113ff, 117f

The general index of Dihle's monograph documents the dual axis—human will and divine will—around which all discussion of voluntas is organized, confirming the term's systematic bifurcation throughout the text.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982aside

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