In neither case can it give us ends or goals. Reason, he argued, is concerned entirely with demonstrations (deduction) or with the relations of cause and effect (induction). Hume in particular maintained that no sense can be made of the idea, so central to Plato's philosophy, of reason directing the passions, or even of its ever conflicting with them. Ends and goals, according to these theories, become such only because they are willed they are not first perceived as ends and then willed. Voluntarist theories reject this general picture as the reversal of the truth. Descartes, similarly, supposed that the understanding first grasps certain ideas or presents certain ends to the mind and that the will then either assents or withholds its assent, thus following rather than directing the understanding. The corruption of a man was for Plato precisely the dominance of the will, that is, of a man's appetites or desires, this being a deviation from what human nature ideally should be. Thus in the Symposium he traced the ascent of the soul toward higher and higher ends, the supposition being that these ends are apprehended first by the senses and then ultimately by the pure or unfettered intelligence, which enlists the will or desire for their pursuit. This is why he thought no man could knowingly will evil. Plato thought that men ideally perceive certain ends or goals by their reason and then direct their wills to the attainment of these ends or goals. The point of all such theories can best be appreciated by contrasting them with the more familiar theories of rationalism found, for example, in Plato's dialogues or Ren é Descartes's Meditations. Hume maintained that reason has no role whatever in the promptings of the will that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." Schopenhauer, the outstanding voluntarist of them all, believed that the will is the very nature or essence of man and indeed of everything, identifying it with the "thing-in-itself" that underlies all phenomena. Hobbes, for example, thought that all voluntary human behavior is response to desire or aversion, which he brought together under the name "endeavor" he based his ethical and political theories chiefly on this claim. The outstanding classical representatives are Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and Arthur Schopenhauer. Voluntaristic theories of psychology represent men primarily as beings who will certain ends and whose reason and intelligence are subordinate to will. Such theories may be psychological, ethical, theological, or metaphysical. More generally, voluntaristic theories interpret various aspects of experience and nature in the light of the concept of the will, or as it is called in certain older philosophies, passion, appetite, desire, or conatus. The term voluntarism (from the Latin voluntas, "will") applies to any philosophical theory according to which the will is prior to or superior to the intellect or reason.
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