Joseph Romano

Will, Subjectivity, and Contemplative Practice in the Cloud author and Walter Hilton

Functions and psychology of the will (voluntas) in Augustine

• Principle of motion in the soul (motus animae). More precisely, the efficient cause of
action in both body and “mind,” mens/animus, the non-material and rational aspect
of the human soul. The will itself belongs to “mind.”

• Moral accountability: we are responsible for our actions because the will cannot be
compelled externally. It acts as a “hinge” (cardo) between virtue and vice, and bodily
and spiritual inclinations.

• Intention/attention: as intentio the will links faculties of perception with their objects,
and in intellectual vision the will directs attention (aciem recordantis), calling up the
image/thought stored in the memory.

• Affectivity: the will is in the passions, and the passions are nothing other than
instances of willing: “omnes [affectus] nihil aliud quam voluntates sunt” (Civitate Dei
14.5).

• Seat of love/charity: the faculty which is moved by the immanent presence of the
divine through the person of the Holy Spirit. Charity is nothing other than “a will
(uoluntatem) fully aflame with divine love (diuino amore)” (On Grace and Free Choice
17.340.

• Subjectivity: the will has an “intimate” (intime) relationship with the self: our acts are
our own insofar as we will them (Lib. Arb. 3.1.3).

Scholastic distinctions: sensitive appetition v. rational appetition; passion v. affect of

the will

Aquinas on love as a passion vs. love as an affection of the will (SCG 2.81.15).:

As for the other operations of the soul, such as loving, rejoicing, and the like, we
must beware of equivocation. For sometimes such operations are taken inasmuch as
they are passions of the soul, and in this sense they are acts of the sensible appetite
appertaining to the concupiscible and irascible powers, entailing some bodily change.
And thus they cannot remain in the soul after death, as Aristotle proves in the De
anima. Sometimes, however, such operations are taken for a simple act of the will, in
the absence of all passion…Now, since the will is a power employing no organ, as
neither does the intellect, it is plain that these things of which we are speaking
remain in the separated soul, so far as they are acts of the will.
 Parallels, verbal and conceptual
Hilton, Scale 1
“scharp smytyng of loue” (1.32)
“that oure soule myght be reformed, as it were
in a schadewe, bi grace to the
ymage of the Trinité” (1.45).
2nd part of contemplation: “lower” often the
domain for “actives,” higher for
contemplatives
-Means to contemplation: lectio, meditatio,
oratio
-Discernment of good and evil w/ regard to
sensory aspects of contemplative practice:
visions, sensations, etc.
-Augustinian doctrine of recollection and
introversion; “inward” self-knowledge) as
necessary pre-requisite to the highest levels of
contemplative. (Cf. Clark, Introduction to the
Scale of Perfection, p.25).
“a hool and a stable entencion, that is for to
seie, an hool wille and a desyre oonli to plese
God. For that is charité…” (1.22)
Cloud of Unknowing
Imperfect/perfect humility (chs. 13-14)
Apophatic darkness/unknowing: “thou fyndest
bot a derknes, and as it were a cloude of
unknowing… savyng that thou felist in thi wille
a nakid entent unto God” (Ch.3)
Cloud of Unknowing
“Smyte apon that thicke cloude of
unknowyng with a scharp darte of longing
loue” (ch.6)
“ And oure soule, bi vertewe of this
reformyng grace, is mad sufficient at the fulle
to comprehende al Him by love” (Ch. 4).
“No wonder thof a soule, that is thus nigh
confourmyd bi grace to the ymage and the
licnes of God” (Ch. 38)
Higher part of active life, lower part of
contemplative life: Passion meditation
“another man’s work”
“the substaunce of this werke is not elles bot
a nakid entente directe unto God for
Himself” (Ch. 24).
Hilton, Scale 2
Imperfect/perfect humility (2.37)
“though thi soule be in this resteful
myrkenesse…it is not yit there it schulde
be; it is not yit clothid al in light… He
formeth oonli bi Hymsilf, but He reformeth
us with us; for grace goven, and appliynge
of oure wille to grace, werketh al this”
(Scale 2.25, 28)