Ancient philosophers had a well-equipped repertory of descriptions for human activity, but it was only after Augustine that thinkers, especially in the Latin West, adopted an explicit concept of the will. This allowed them, for better or for worse, to set out a good portion of their philosophical psychology in terms of the interaction of intellect and will (see Chapter 30). Toward the end of the eleventh century, Anselm proposed a distinction within the will between an “inclination for justice” and an “inclination for benefit.” An agent’s “every merit, whether good or evil,” he says, derives from one of these two basic inclinations (De concordia III.12). Two centuries later, citing Anselm, John Duns Scotus adopts the labels but, as we shall see, develops a significantly distinctive account. Pairings of this general sort can be found in ancient philosophy (and will be discussed briefly below), but the developed idea of dual basic inclinations of the will is probably unique to Anselm and Scotus. But while explicit appeal to inclinations of the will is thus rare, the issues raised here by Anselm and Scotus are central even nowadays in the analysis of moral psychology (as in debates about the nature of the moral object or the status of free will) as well as in moral theology (on sin and grace).

ANSELM

Justice is a central concept in Anselm’s moral theory, and it appears in all his writings. In several works – De casu diaboli (The Fall of the Devil) and De concordia – he considers justice in the context of the two basic inclinations of the will. In an earlier dialogue, De veritate, he takes up directly the more fundamental question with which we should begin, the question of what justice is.