dimanche 9 septembre 2012,
I want to discuss the idea that faith is voluntary. This is a traditional teaching, at least in the catholic tradition that I know better. Many things can be meant by such a general statement, but one privileged interpretation, offered by Thomas Aquinas, has received a very large welcome, and is given as an expression of the Magisterium in the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church. There, Aquinas is quoted for this quasi-definition of the act of faith : « Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace. » (Ipsum autem credere est actus intellectus assentientis veritati divinae ex imperio voluntatis a Deo motae per gratiam) . The voluntariness of faith is then the voluntariness of the act of believing (credere) the divine revelation. Now, though this sentence is not exactly Aquinas’s definition, nor his main statement about what faith is, it certainly contains what Aquinas thinks is necessary and sufficient for the existence of faith.
Version préliminaire du texte paru dans D. Lukasiewicz & R. Pouivet (eds.) The Right to Believe. Perspectives in Religious Epistemology. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt, Paris, Lancaster, New Brunswick, 2012
Professeur. Métaphysique, philosophie de la religion, philosophie médiévale.
Courrier électronique : Cyrille Michon
Philosophers’ Imprint - Vol. 10, N°17, May 2017
Thobias Hoffmann and Cyrille Michon
Klesis 35, 2016, « Lectures contemporaines d’Elizabeth Anscombe  » (dirigé par V. Aucouturier)
Encyclopédie philosophique en ligne
Texte paru dans A. Giavatto et F. Le Blay (eds), Autour de la Consolation de Philosophie de Boèce, Atlande 2015, p. 127-163
publié dans le European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7/1 (2015)
Sous la direction de Laurent Jaffro
Collection « Analyse et Philosophie  »
,Sous la direction de Cyrille Michon et Denis Moreau, aux éditions du Seuil
Judaà¯sme, christianisme, islam
,Perspectives cavalières sur la thèse de Duhem