Martin Luther and "Proper Objects"
An Aristotelian Interpretation
I’m somewhat fascinated by Luther’s discussion of free decision (or liberum arbitrium). It’s a somewhat technical term; the tough part of understanding what Luther means by the term is that we often translate it as “free will.” This is not so helpful given the various ways we think about free will in contemporary philosophy. So, this is my attempt to discuss a particular aspect of Luther’s understanding of liberum arbitrium according to the natural powers of man. Here, I take liberum arbitrium to be the power of the will which includes its interaction with the power of the intellect.
Luther’s account of natural liberum arbitrium presupposes an Aristotelian psychology in which rational powers are specified and actualized through their proper objects. A “proper object,” is that through which a power is formally specified as this determinate act rather than another. While Luther does not use the specific phrase “proper object,” he clearly utilizes the idea. Perhaps this is most clearly seen in a Christmas sermon from 1515:
Likewise, the appetitive power and the object of appetite are one, and love and the beloved — all of which [claims] understood in terms of substance, are most false. But in this way, because the intellect and the affections, while they desire their own objects, inasmuch as they are desiring in this way, are related just as matter seeking form, and in this respect, that is, inasmuch as desiring — not, however, as subsisting, they are pure potency, indeed, a kind of nothingness, and they become a certain being when they attain their objects, and in this way their objects are their being (esse) and act, without which they would be nothing, just as matter would be nothing without form.1
Luther explicitly denies that the power and its object are “one” substantially. The unity at issue is one of operation and specification. Luther then states the precise mode of this unity: the intellect and affections, insofar as they are desiring, stand to their objects as matter to form. The claim is not that the soul is matter, but that a power, considered under the aspect of its appetitive orientation, is in potency until specified by its object. Thus, Luther can say that the faculty as desiring is “pure potency,” and that it “becomes a certain being” when it attains its object. The object is therefore not merely an external terminus, but the principle by which the faculty is constituted as this kind of act: “their objects are their being and act.”2
In his commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Romans, Luther specifically refers to Aristotle’s De anima to support his claim that the faculty and object become one in act:
And Aristotle in his On the Soul, Book III, says that from the intellect and the intelligible, from sense and the sensible, one thing comes to be,3 and universally from a power and its object. Thus love transfers the lover into the beloved.4
Luther thus adopts an Aristotelian “proper object doctrine” in which rational powers are defined by their relation to proper objects: a power exists in potency with respect to its act, and the object functions as the formal principle by which that potency is actualized. The resulting unity is a unity in act, not a substantial identity.5
This proper-object structure is not incidental for Luther, it is what allows him to affirm real natural powers while denying that the ungodly can will God as God. Luther’s engagement with Gabriel Biel’s standard question about whether the wayfarer can love God above all by natural powers is revealing. Biel sets up the dispute by distinguishing natural appetite from free appetite:
On account of those two reasons,6 some have said that the nature of man does not suffice to love God above all things without an infused habit, since he cannot love more than himself.
But those reasons prove nothing. For they argue concerning the natural appetite. The present question inquires concerning the appetite as free, which as such is not determined to one, but can [turn] to either of the opposites and to diverse objects even if they are not opposed. And therefore, inasmuch as it is free with respect to willing or not willing anything, it can, by an elicited act, will its own non-being.7
Biel’s move is to detach free appetite from natural determination. Luther’s marginal gloss refuses that detachment, insisting instead that the free appetite is natural to rational nature and therefore already ordered to objects as apprehended by reason. Luther comments on Biel’s statement that “those reasons prove nothing. For they argue concerning the natural appetite”:
They prove it very well, because the free appetite is natural to rational nature, by which it naturally desires to be. Hence also the first reason says: ‘The intellectual nature.’8
When Luther says, “They prove it,” he is referring to those philosophers who use Aristotle to prove that the free appetite is not something completely distinct from rational nature. For Luther, then, the free appetite is part of rational nature, and rational nature is inclined to seek its own welfare, its own good or being. This means it cannot be ordered per se to God as its final object unless formally restructured by grace.
At this point, someone may object: if the will is specified by an object or form, doesn’t that mean it no longer acts freely? In other words, doesn’t the form necessitate the will? Aristotle offers an answer in the very text that Luther refers to above, De anima III. Aristotle explicitly distinguishes the potentiality that precedes the acquisition of form from the potentiality that remains after it. Using the intellect as an example, Aristotle notes that once the intellect has received its form, it is no longer merely capable of knowing, but possesses knowledge as a habit, such that it is now able to exercise the power “on its own initiative.” Although the intellect remains potential with respect to the exercise of the act, this potentiality is of a different kind: it is the capacity for self-initiated operation. Formal specification, therefore, does not eliminate free will (or free decision) but grounds it. Luther’s gloss, which argues that the free appetite is natural to the rational nature, can be read as an approval of natural teleology such that the will requires specification by its object; yet this does not undermine freedom. Rather, it excludes Biel’s model in which the free appetite is severed from the rational nature.
Luther, Sermo Lutheri: In natali Christi (1515), WA 1, 29:20-27.
Cf. Aristotle, De anima, trans. W. D. Ross, in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 1, Bollingen Series LXXI, 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), III.4, 430a3-5: “For in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks and what is thought are identical….” Hereafter, De anima. For the sensible and sensible object, see De anima III.2, 425b26-27: “The activity of the sensible object and that of the sense is one and the same activity.”
Aristotle, De anima III.7, 431a1-7, trans. R. D. Hicks (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1965): τὸ δ᾽ αὐτό ἐστιν ἡ κατ᾽ ἐνέργειαν ἐπιστήμη τῷ πράγματι. Translation: “Now actual knowledge is identical with the thing known.” Aristotle’s claim that “actual knowledge is identical with its object” expresses the doctrine that cognition is an actuality (entelecheia), not a change (kinesis). A cognitive power exists as potency toward its proper object and is actualized when it receives the object’s form immaterially. This unity is formal rather than substantial: the knower does not become the object as a thing, but the form of the object becomes the act of knowing. Because potency is defined by act, actual knowledge is metaphysically prior to potential knowledge, even if temporally posterior in the individual. Knowing therefore involves no alteration or coercion of the faculty but its perfection. This account grounds a powers ontology in which acts are specified by objects and provides the metaphysical framework Luther presupposes when he describes love as the formal union of lover and beloved.
Luther, Die scholien: Epistola ad Romanos (1515), WA 56, 374:12-14. Cf. Aristotle, De anima III.1 (425b26); III.2 (426a15); III.5 (430a19); III.7 (431a1).
Cf. Aristotle, De anima III.5, 430a10-13: “Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors involved, a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul.”
Biel gives two Aristotelian arguments that are used to support the claim that one cannot love God above all by natural powers alone. The first is from natural teleology: every nature is determined to one primary inclination, and for an intellectual nature this inclination is toward its own being. Therefore, the will cannot naturally will its own non-being nor subordinate itself to another as a higher good unless both goods coincide. The second argument is from the priority of self-relation: a natural appetite is first ordered toward that which is fitting to it, which is the subject itself. Thus, the will is first ordered toward the good of the self, not another. The will, then, cannot by nature alone love another more than itself.
Biel, Collectorium, III, d. 27, q. un, art. 3, dub. 2.
Luther, Randbemerkungen zu Gabriel Biel, WA 59, 45:29-31.