William King on election, reason, and desire : a reply to Kenneth Pearce
Abstract
William King’s De Origine Mali has recently started to attract some attention in early modern scholarship. In a recent paper devoted to King’s theory of free will, Kenneth Pearce identifies a “lacuna” in his text, namely the fact that King “never explicitly describes the process whereby election leads to action” (Pearce, “William King on Free Will”, 4). In this paper, I analyse King’s theory of ‘election’ (roughly, free choice) and Pearce’s interpretation of it. I discuss his claim that there is a lacuna in King’s account and argue that the text provides us with important suggestions on how election generates action. Therefore, no speculative proposal to fill the lacuna is needed. This, in turn, allows me to develop a reading of King’s text that avoids a textual puzzle unsolved in Pearce’s interpretation: while he maintained that every election is “with reason”, my account can take King’s text at face value and explain how some elections are reasonable while others are not.
Citation
Galvagni , E 2024 , ' William King on election, reason, and desire : a reply to Kenneth Pearce ' , British Journal for the History of Philosophy , vol. 32 , no. 1 , pp. 194-206 . https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2023.2214187
Publication
British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0960-8788Type
Journal article
Description
Funding: This work was supported by St Leonard's Postgraduate College and the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities [grant number AH/R012717].Collections
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