John Duns Scotus · Theology
Scotus’s voluntarism - the will, not the intellect, is the highest and freest power; it is self-determining, able to choose otherwise even given the intellect’s judgment; the created moral order is contingent on God’s will; and the love of God for his own sake is the noblest of all acts.
You learned that Scotus, against the intellectualism of Aquinas, held the will to be the superior and genuinely self-determining power - a rational appetite with a two-way freedom - and that he distinguished the affection for advantage from the affection for justice, making free, disinterested love of God the highest…
Leads to Augustine of Hippo.
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