I Intellectualism and Voluntarism John Henry Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Related Topics Descartes · Leibniz · Laws of nature · Omnipotence · Theodicy · Providence · Miracles Synonyms Intellectualist theology , Intellectualism; Necessi- tarian theology , Theological necessitarianism; Rationalist theology , Theological rationalism; Voluntarist theology , Voluntarism Introduction The subjects of this entry are theological volunta- rism (which holds that God’ s Creation could not have been shaped or directed by any previously existing principles – logical, moral, or natural – with which God had to comply, but was executed by his completely free and unconstrained will) and theological intellectualism (which holds, by contrast, that at the Creation, God had to conform to various coeternal principles, such as good and evil, or supposed essences of natural beings). There are alternative uses of the terms voluntarism and intellectualism, but they are not discussed here. So, there is no consideration here of the metaphysical view, first developed by Arthur Schopenhauer in his The World as Will and Rep- resentation (1819), that the world is defined and shaped by the human will; no discussion of the epistemological or psychological view that belief is more dependent upon the will than on any supposed objective reality; and no attention paid to political views designated as voluntarism, such as that authority is ultimately based upon the will of an individual or the “will” of the people, or that public action should only be conducted on a vol- untary basis. Similarly, this entry does not con- sider intellectualism as the view which regards knowledge as something which can only be acquired through the use of the intellect; nor as the view that the intellect should always take precedence over the emotions. The underlying theological problem which led to the formation of the voluntarist stance on the one hand, and an opposed intellectualist theology, was prefigured in Plato’ s(c. 428–348 BC) dia- logue known as Euthyphro. The problem is summed up when Socrates asks Euthyphro: “Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?” (Euthyphro 10a). In monotheistic Christian theology, this ethical problem, about the nature of goodness and God’ s relationship to it, became bound up with an issue arising from another Platonic work, Timaeus. Describing the creation of the © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 D. Jalobeanu, C. T. Wolfe (eds.), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_5-1