Anselm of Canterbury, Saint: De Voluntate

The De Voluntate is a short analytical piece, printed by Migne among the works of Anselm of Canterbury, on the different senses of the word ‘will’. It begins by observing that the term is used equivocally: for the instrument of willing, as sight is the instrument of seeing; for the disposition or affection of that instrument, illustrated by a mother’s constant love for her child; and for the act of willing something. It then distinguishes two chief affections, the will for one’s own advantage, which is always present, and the will for justice, which may be absent, as in the unjust, or held inseparably, as in the elect angels and the saints.

The same distinctions appear, more fully worked out, in the third question of Anselm’s De Concordia, and this brief text is useful as a compact statement of them. Little is known of its origin, and its terse form suggests notes rather than a finished treatise. It sets out clearly the Anselmian view that happiness depends on the love of justice and that the will for advantage alone, without justice, can only make a creature miserable.