Den frie viljens opphav hos Clemens av Alexandria

Fredrik Nilsen

doi:10.7557/13.8375

Authors

Fredrik Nilsen UiT The Arctic University of Norway

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.8375

Keywords:

free will, prohairesis, non-Western philosophy, Western philosophy, Clement of Alexandria

Abstract

In her latest work, The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt claims that Augustine must be considered “the first philosopher of free will”. In my doctoral dissertation, I argued that Arendt was largely right in her claim, although there are also, as Michael Frede has demonstrated, traces of a conception of free will in Epictetus. In this article, however, I argue that Arendt’s claim is wrong, as we already find a concept of free will in Clemens of Alexandria. Clemens uses Aristotle's term “prohairesis” in a non-Aristotelian way, which lays the foundation for the first conception of free will in the history of philosophy; where Aristotle advocates that the “weak character”, who is characterized by acting in line with desire and against reason, also acts against the decision (prohairesis), Clemens rather takes as a starting point that such a choice is precisely made by the decision (prohairesis). Given that this interpretation is correct and right to describe the Athens-born Clemens of Alexandria as a non-Western philosopher, we must therefore leave the history of Western philosophy behind to find the origin of one of history’s most important and most debated concepts, namely “free will”.

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