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.