Anselm's Willing Unwillingness

In "On Free Will," Anselm, in answering the age-old question of whether somebody can do something willingly against their will (can temptation force one to will unwillingly?), says "[He] cannot will unwillingly because one cannot will to will against his will. Every willing person wills his own willing."

Therefore, according to Anselm, it is impossible for a person to say they unwillingly "sinned," for such a person willed to sin by first willing to be an unwilling automaton that is helpless to "stop themself." The very unwilling state the person refers to was in fact the result of an act of volition (even if antecedent) - a willing unwillingness. In the same way a person can choose to die by using their own will and life to abolish will and life.

Perhaps then the willing unwillingness is like a temporary "theliticide." A person can only be forced to do something against their will by way of another will, as in the case of somebody being bound or killed by another.

This is a powerful argument. Anselm is trying to say that doing something against the will is inherently contradictory and ontologically impossible, like saying that one sees what one does not wish to see.

For if in man the presence of the volition function is what truly moves man to choose between one choice and another, from where does proceed in man the function to choose to do that which is contradictory to the volition?

Whereas Anselm saw this, no doubt, as an air-tight argument, the seeds of its failure is already there. For as Anselm admits, acting unwillingly is possible in the presence of a stronger will as in another human being. What if man does not truly have only one will or if, at least, the development of a contradictory, secondary will is possible? Anselm assumes that man is montheletic. Why? We can say man has one mind perhaps but it is a well known problem in man to be "of two different minds," to say nothing of the physiological bicameral mind. It is also a well known problem that man can feel indecisive or feel like Buridan's Ass.

If there is a single will could there truly be indecision? Could there truly be guilt and regret? See also Socrates belief of Non Akrasia - that no one does wrong willingly. Also, see the thoughts of St. Paul in Romans 8 and the concept of demonic possession.

Gnosticism -vs- Neoplatonism

Stephan A. Hoeller has distilled 12 central points that all Gnostics agree to, regardless of their specific dogmas. Being of neoplatonic, not gnostic persuasion, and recognizing that Plotinus himself attacked gnosticism (and never attacked Christianity), I will give my response as follows. Given time, I hope that we can further discuss and perhaps better understand what exactly the differences are between neoplatonism and gnosticism.

Hoeller's points are in bold.

The Gnostics posited an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality.

KH: I see it more as an inversion rather than a "split". The One cannot be split nor diminished and all duality is ultimately resolved in the ground and goal of unity which is eternal and indivisible.

As a result of the precosmic division the universe was created. This was done by a leader possessing inferior spiritual powers and who often resembled the Old Testament Jehovah.

KH: This is obviously delusional. First of all, this completely denies such foundational principles as "Best of All Possible Worlds", the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the Principle of Parsimony. It also continues the false understanding of creation as ex nihilo and the literalist interpretation of the Old Testament teachings while actually corrupting the idea of the Demiurge and descending into a pathetic Manicheanism.

A female emanation of God was involved in the cosmic creation (albeit in a much more positive role than the leader).

KH: By what possible logic? This is just more delusion and creative imagination that cannot be derived at by a priori rationalism. Whatever Gnosticism is it is most certainly not rationalistic and if it is intuition it is contradictory to the Perennial Philosophy.

In the cosmos, space and time have a malevolent character and may be personified as demonic beings separating man from God.

KH: How do these people sleep at night? Space and Time are rational concepts which necessarily exist as attributes of existence for to exist is to exist in space and time. Furthermore, separation from God is inherently impossible.

For man, the universe is a vast prison. He is enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by such moral laws as the Mosaic code.

KH: Then there really wouldn't be any way to get out would there? There is a failure here to distinguish between the universe/world soul and the world system. Also, the emphasis on Mosaic code reduces Gnosticism to a reaction to Abrahamic religion, as opposed to its desire to be a universal system. The Chinese and Indians never lived under any Mosaic Law.

Mankind may be personified as Adam, who lies in the deep sleep of ignorance, his powers of spiritual self-awareness stupefied by materiality.

KH: This one is certainly agreeable. I will grant them this one but it will be required of them to explain how the gnostics know this to be true for they are also of Adam but with a malevolent cosmos and evil creator the gnostic is hard-pressed to explain how he knows he is in ignorance, otherwise it fails the performative test.

Within each natural man is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the divine substance. Since this exists in each man, we have the possibility of awakening from our stupefaction.

KH: Actually, the "inner man" IS the natural man - there is no actual distinction for as a man thinketh so is he. The outer man is not a real man but simply a form of thought to a perceiver, its corpse being the perception of an existence in space and time to other perceivers.

What effects the awakening is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge.

KH: I agree with the primacy of knowledge but what "awakens" us to it? Is not the knowing that one is asleep a form of knowledge? Why do so few seek this knowledge which Christ says will be found when it is sought? Is it really true that there is only one path for all humans or is the way of Jnana, knowledge, for some and not others? Is not this knowledge obtained through hard work, devotion, and purification which clouds the mind and creates confusion? It seems to me that denigrating obedience, faith and good works is infelicitous and dangerous, leading to arrogance and to rebellion against the better wisdom of the great teachers of mankind.

Actually, being is even higher than knowledge and this comes about only by grace, as a gift. The Platonists teach that true knowledge is true being. For to know it is to be it.

Before the awakening, men undergo troubled dreams

KH: Not sure what this means exactly but I see no reason for Gnostics to make this assumption for religious experience is very subjective and unique. Why elevate "troubled dreams" to an enlightenment prerequisite? Is not the waking state trouble enough?

Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition but through revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not information but a modification of the sensate being.

KH: How do you distinguish "revelatory experience" from cognition?

The awakening (i.e., the salvation) of any individual is a cosmic event.

KH: Ok - i will accept that. The only of the 12 points I can accept unconditionally.

Since the effort is to restore the wholeness and unity of the Godhead, active rebellion against the moral law of the Old Testament is enjoined upon every man

KH: There IS NO EFFORT required to "restore the wholeness and unity of the Godhead" since it is not broken but perfect always - only our attitude and understanding is too low - and if effort was required, how would it even be possible by human effort alone to bring about such unity? Further, the "active rebellion" is contrary to the essential teachings of Christ who said that he came to fulfill and not abolish the Law and to Resist Not Evil. It is also against the Way of the Tao. To take upon oneself rebellion against anything is to become a rebel not a knower, contrary to the very definition of gnosis.

The Problem of Addiction

By addiction we refer not only to alcohol, tobacco, and drugs but to television, video games, pornography, complaining, gossip, sleep, food, worrying, resentment and anything by which the person finds themselves at odds with their true self and innermost desire.

Clearly, one is not addicted to a substance but to the experience of the effects of the substance on the subject. Thus, a person is not addicted to cocaine but to the experience of the effects of cocaine on the person. These effects are not merely biochemical but encompass the entire subject: body, mind, and soul. Since it is not the substance but a powerful experience that is sought after, we can honestly say that addiction is addiction to experience. All addictions, whatever the favored substance or object, are addictions to experience. Though the addiction is putatively a self-coping, self-medicating mechanism it paradoxically reduces the overall ability of the person to cope.

Is there a general form of this experience that we can categorize? The experiences, though varied, essentially removes the need for the individual to face squarely the natural anxiety and tension he or she feels in regard to their existence and for the higher purposes of life to seek meaning, understanding, and love. One turns to their favored addictions in order to reduce tension; in order to stop the train of Reflux and to shut off their higher calling. Whatever the addiction may be, it stands against and in opposition to the obtaining of higher levels of being, deeper levels of understanding, and to the most truly powerful and pure of all experiences - love.

Thus, an addiction is a decision to say No: no to understanding, no to love, no to freedom and a saying of Yes to stagnation, yes to ignorance, yes to superficiality. Most of all, addiction is an aversion to work - hard work. For one must go through the night to get to the day and must wrestle with angels to receive the blessing. We can not truly go around the mountain to bypass it - we must go through it; becoming one with it through realization that the mountain is within and not "out there." If you have faith (unshakeable knowledge) as small as a mustard seed, you can say (actualize) to this mountain move and it will surely move.

With a better grasp now of what addiction entails, we can see that it encompasses far more than what is typically considered an addiction, for it encompasses virtually every activity under the sun that does not lead to progress. What is more, we can witness that the addiction is contingent, not necessary, and even counter-productive to the truest, purest, and most elemental desires of the human being.

Instead of nutrition, the person desires junk food
Instead of knowledge, the person seeks junk entertainment
Instead of beauty, the person seeks pornography
Instead of satisfying thirst, the person consumes alcohol
Instead of intuition, the person engages in gossip
Instead of worship, the person seeks a concert of bad music

Had the person fulfilled the original desire the process would stop, the circuit close, the tension relax. With addiction, the desire becomes infinite and insatiable. For the eyes never see enough; the ears hear enough. There is always more money to be made, more games to play, more things to collect, more women to look at. Experience is not an object so it cannot be taken and put on a shelf and told to shut up. You are fused to the experience and the experience is you. Eventually, the experience has a life of its own, an artificial intelligence using heuristics to run the show; a demonic entity of your own creation.

No longer will it be a Person seeking to have an experience but Experience seeking to be a Person. The person taking the drugs becomes Drug Addict. The person gambling his paycheck away becomes Gambler. The person becoming obsessed with having money Miser. We can go on but the point is hopefully well made.

Since man is moved by desire and even defined by desire, if we may be so bold, there are really only two modes of being - addiction and freedom; One is either defined by their most salient addiction or is undefinable. The closer one moves to The Source of All, the more unified one becomes and the more one can say "neither/nor". The Dialectic progress exists only in the Reflux, never the Efflux.

Another aspect of Addiction is that there is no actual desire for fulfillment though prima facie it appears to be so; there is no actual end desired. For it is the sustaining of the experience - experience for experience sake - that is the kernel of addiction. Addiction is Pursuit. Pursuit of what you say? Pursuit of newer experiences, more novelty, more offspring. Just as Nature does not concentrate her greatest attention in maintaining what exists, but in breeding more offspring to sustain itself. Addiction is Samsara.

The person is freed, at least momentarily, from the burden of being free and the task of understanding. Although we can point to the natural depressors of alcohol and narcotics, this effect is not mutual among all addictors. Lust, for instance, has a contrary effect that excites rather than depresses.

In further consideration of the ostensible phenomena of multiple wills observed in addiction, we come to a seeming impasse. For the man has willfully made the first steps leading to an addiction yet not necessarily (and unlikely) the addiction itself. The addiction thus seems the result of poor choice and yet the addiction itself is not a choice. If the addiction is not a choice how can it be unchosen?

The person wills to be free of addiction but continues to will the addiction by making wrong choices as if the left hand builds up and the right hand tears down. In other words, even if the addiction has deteriorated the man's ability to choose, he still has a will whereby he sincerely chooses freedom and thus takes steps to free himself from addiction, yet often failing miserably despite his own will. This phenomena then appears to point in the direction of multitheletism, or multiple wills. For if the function of choice in man is identified with the Will in man then it appears that only by the presence of multiple wills can there be any such conflict, even if we admit that not all wills are of human origin. If there is any sense by which a man does something that he did not "really want to do" then there is a conflict of will, and thus multiple wills.

Yet if there is a true conflict of wills in man (such as an Id and Superego) what is the arbiter of ultimate choice in man? Is there another will or another function of man that can arbitrate between the various wills? This can then lead to the problem of an infinite regress.

What if there really is only one will in man but it can be inversed? So that bad choice is really not a choice at all for the inverse of will is a deterministic automaton. Thus, the will in man can function either as a Pneumatos or a Thanatos and that all wrong choices are really choices for death, and thus addiction and a comatose state of unknowing. Furthermore the only real choice is a choice for life so that Socrates' Anti-Akrasia - that no man willingly does wrong - seems incredibly brilliant. Since the Thanatos, like evil, is not a "real thing" but an absence of the real, then the Thanatos inverse of will is not really will and not really choice but a failure to choose so that the apparent phenomena of multitheletism is in actuality the distinction between choosing that which is good and true and failing to choose. All goodness and truth flow from one source only and yet it seems that Man must constantly say 'YES' to this stream and flow or die. So then Will implies Not Willing or Failure to Will and only he wills that wills rightly.

If reality is truly One and this reality is Omnibenevolent, then it would appear that there is no possibility of good proceeding from anything other than the original source of all there is. There is also no possibility of this good failing so there can be no second will that wills wrongly.

This revelation has many important ramifications. If no man truly wills wrongly then there is no problem of sin. The problem is not with man's behavior but with man's knowledge. To tell a sinning man that he should stop sinning is like telling a corpse to stop lying on the ground. Restore health by choosing life and the disease will be gone. Restore truth by choosing knowledge and the error will be gone. Restore freedom by choosing spirit and the addiction will be gone. Do not fight against disease, error, or addiction for then you would be creating monsters out of chimeras and boogeymans out of darkness.

So addiction is to the will what disease is to the body and what error is to the mind.