Will (philosophy)

The Will, generally, is that faculty of the mind which selects, at the moment of decision, the strongest desire from among the various desires present. Will does not refer to any particular desire, but rather to the capacity to act decisively on one's desires. Within philosophy the will is important as one of the distinct parts of the mind, along with reason and understanding. It is considered important in ethics because of its central role in enabling a person to act deliberately.

One of the recurring questions discussed in the Western philosophical tradition is that of free will - and the related but more general notion of fate - which asks how the will can be truly free if a person's actions have natural or divine causes which determine them. This in turn, is directly connected to discussions on the nature of freedom itself and also the problem of evil.

The classical treatment of the ethical importance of will is to be found in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, in Books III (chapters 1-5), and Book VII (chapters 1-10). These discussions have been a major influence in the development of ethical and legal thinking in western civilization.

In Book III Aristotle divided actions into three categories instead of two:

It is concerning this third class of actions that there is doubt about whether they should be praised or blamed or condoned in different cases.

Virtue and vice according to Aristotle are "up to us". This means that although no one is willingly unhappy, vice by definition always involves actions which were decided upon willingly. Vice comes from bad habits and aiming at the wrong things, not deliberately aiming to be unhappy. The vices then, are voluntary just as the virtues are. He states that people would have to be unconscious not to realize the importance of allowing themselves to live badly, and he dismisses any idea that different people have different innate visions of what is good.

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