philosophy
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

Print
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

Related Topics:
free will

voluntarism, any metaphysical or psychological system that assigns to the will (Latin: voluntas) a more predominant role than that attributed to the intellect. Christian philosophers have sometimes described as voluntarist: the non-Aristotelian thought of St. Augustine because of its emphasis on the will to love God; the post-Thomistic thought of John Duns Scotus, a late medieval scholastic, who insisted on the absolute freedom of the will and its supremacy over all other faculties; and the position of the French writer Blaise Pascal, who in religion substituted “reasons of the heart” for rational propositions. Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative as an unconditional moral law for the will’s choice of action represented an ethical voluntarism. A metaphysical voluntarism was propounded in the 19th century by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who took will to be the single, irrational, unconscious force behind all of reality and all ideas of reality. An existentialist voluntarism was present in Friedrich Nietzsche’s doctrine of the overriding “will to power” whereby man would eventually re-create himself as “superman.” And a Pragmatic voluntarism is evident in William James’s reference of knowledge and truth to purpose and to practical ends.