Choice

Use in the book

The Aristotelian report distinguishes chance within the sphere of action and choice from the wider range of spontaneous occurrence. Theophrastus is reported to distinguish choice as a cause alongside nature, chance, and necessity. A compressed Epicurean notice likewise lists necessity, choice, and chance. These classifications show the term’s explanatory role without supplying a single shared theory of freedom.

Places to read

1. I.6.17a.1Choice helps distinguish chance from spontaneous occurrence.
2. I.6.17cChoice appears in two reported classifications of causes.
3. I.7.9aChoice is distinguished from other ways in which events occur.

Translation in this edition

“Deliberate choice” makes the action-related sense clear where needed. The word alone does not establish freedom from every causal condition.

Use in the book

The political sentence joins a people’s preference with a necessity that makes it choose its government; the grammar refuses an easy opposition between choice and necessity. For the writer, selection is both important and painful, not an effortless consequence of abundance. In pleasure, merely limiting quantity is insufficient: choice is also required. The following fragment, The permissible, points toward a further question but is not expanded into an explicit rule absent from the sentence. These brief witnesses link selection with different kinds of responsibility without turning them into a comprehensive theory of free will.

Places to read

1. I, p. 234, entry 1, ¶1Preference and necessity are joined in choosing government.
2. I, p. 375, entry 2, ¶1Writing involves a difficult and painful selection.
3. I, p. 455, entry 9, ¶1Moderation alone does not replace choice among pleasures.

Translation in this edition

The English translation renders embarras du choix as the difficulty of choosing. It retains the separate nominal fragment after the pleasure maxim. The damaged day attached to the writing note is not completed from a separate date in Beaunier’s apparatus.

Use in the book

The world's disorders arise partly from a mistake in the choice of riches: scarce inventions are selected instead of freely available gifts. The narrative of study then supplies a concrete counter-choice, preferring a modest income with time for inquiry over an estate requiring consuming labour. More fundamentally, God makes people free agents for their own dignity, though this entrusts them with the ability to do what He hates. Choice matters because a freely performed duty can become the person's own glorious action. The divine choice mentioned in the meditation on eternity belongs to a different level: it stands eternally before God rather than occurring as human deliberation passes from uncertainty to a later decision.

Places to read

1. I.33Mistaken choice of riches generates social and moral disorder.
2. III.46A chosen life of study is preferred to the burdens of a large estate.
3. IV.42Free agency is granted for creaturely dignity despite its possibility of evil.
4. V.8Divine choice and determination are eternally present within the account of eternity.

In this edition

Do not treat every “choice” as a contest between commercial options, or divine choice as simply an enlarged human sequence of deliberation.

Use in the book

Ficino rejects the suggestion, attributed to an Epicurean objection, that producing many things would burden God with planning and work. Divine being is already sufficient for action; no separate deliberative mechanism must be added to it. His argument begins with activities occurring without choice: fire heats, the sun illuminates, and soul gives life to the body. Choice itself also arises from the soul's being without another preceding choice, since an infinite series of choices before every action would prevent action from beginning. Ficino orders deliberative operation below operation through essential power and, finally, operation through pure being. This is not a denial of divine intelligence or all willing. In II.9.13 he explicitly identifies God's operation with voluntaria cognitio. The distinction concerns laborious or supplementary deliberation and God's simple intelligent activity. Consilium also means counsel in the reported account of mind as signifying God's nature and intentions, a broader sense than a laborious psychological process.

Further passage references. II.2.14; II.6.20; II.8.1–52345; II.9.13

Places to read

1. II.8.1The Epicurean objection about burdensome divine labour is rejected.
2. II.8.5Deliberative action is distinguished from action through essential power and pure being.
3. II.9.13Voluntary cognition and operation are identical in the simple God.

Translation in this edition

Read II.8.1’s denial of need for consilium and electio beside II.9.13’s voluntaria cognitio. These are distinct descriptions of divine action, not an unnoticed shift from wholly unwilling action to willing action.

consilium

consilium. Printed forms: consiliique; consilio; consilium.

Counsel, plan, or deliberation, with context deciding the sense. Mind signifies divine counsel, while the later argument denies a separate laborious planning process in God. References: II.6.20, II.8.1, II.8.4. See Choice and deliberation.

consilium / propositum

consilium / propositum. Printed forms: consilio; proposito.

Deliberative counsel; purpose or plan. Inward imaginative formation needs no laborious deliberation, while the maker's universal purpose and Euclid's route-plan direct differentiated effects. References: IV.1.11, IV.1.91, IV.2.14. See Choice and deliberation.

electio / eligere

electio / eligere. Printed forms: electio; electione; electionem; electiones; electionis; eligendo; eligunt.

Choice or choosing, contrasted with activity through natural being. Choice itself cannot require an endless series of prior choices, so some activity precedes deliberative selection. References: II.8.1, II.8.3, II.8.4. See Choice and deliberation.

vagari / consultare

vagari / consultare. Printed forms: consultando; vagatur.

To wander; to deliberate or consider. Cosmic wisdom does not wander in action because it does not err in its counsel; regularity is interpreted as rational success. References: IV.1.84. See Choice and deliberation.

Epicurus and the Epicureans (authorities and cited works)

Epicurus and the Epicureans. Appear at the bodily stopping point of the ascent, in the objection that divine activity would entail burdensome deliberation, and in the polemic about divine knowledge of lowly things. I.1.3; I.2.8; II.8.1; II.9.20. See Body and bulk; Choice and deliberation; Universals and individuals.

Use in the book

Choice is the selection of a particular action or means; free judgment is the rational capacity that weighs alternatives. Ficino differentiates this freedom from the basic orientation toward the good. Souls necessarily desire the good as such, yet God leaves their judgment free to deliberate about actions, assess which alternative is better, and choose what they consider more suitable. Consequently, the text's necessity of desire does not mean that only one concrete option is available to a human agent.

The application of choice to God is qualified. God produces some possible things and not others, so Ficino speaks of free election, but adds that divine election does not differ from divine essence. God is not a composite decision-maker whose choice is an additional accidental state. Providence likewise preserves human modes of acting: divine foreknowledge includes both what a person does and that person's voluntary, free manner of doing it. Ficino's argument is that a conditional necessity of foreknown events confirms rather than eliminates their mode. This is Ficino's proposed reconciliation of foreknowledge and freedom.

Further passage references. II.12.17–212345; II.13.24–30234567

Places to read

1. II.12.15–1723God’s willing is not exhausted by the creatures that actually exist, and effects are not absolutely necessary.
2. II.13.25–262Foreknowledge includes voluntary mode and governance preserves each nature.
3. II.13.30The soul deliberates, compares alternatives and chooses means judged apt for attaining good.

Translation in this edition

“Freedom of judgment” preserves a specified faculty and mode. II.13.30’s comparative melius and aptius concern the agent’s assessment, not an assertion that every freely selected option is objectively best.

eligo

eligo. Printed forms: eligeremus; eligimus.

To select or choose. Choosing smaller evils is used against the hypothesis that magnitude or number alone attracts appetite; the word does not establish infallible practical judgement. References: I.2.14. See Choice and free judgment.

iudicium / censere

iudicium / censere. Printed forms: censuerit; iudicet; iudicium.

Judgment / deem or assess. Soul compares proposed actions, judges one better, and chooses what seems apt for the good; necessity of the general end leaves this judgment free. References: II.13.30. See Choice and free judgment.

pro arbitrio

pro arbitrio. Printed forms: pro arbitrio.

At will or according to one’s choice in thought. The mind extends bounded bodily quantities and conceives countless objects; this mental possibility is one premise in a further metaphysical argument. References: I.5.24. See Choice and free judgment.

At will or according to one’s choice of continuation. Human thought can continue numerical series, used in the dilemma against a fixed upper bound of divine knowledge. References: II.10.7. See Infinity.

Persuasion rather than fear (Greek quotation)

πατὴρ οὐ φόβον ἐνθρῴσκει, πειθὼ δ’ ἐπιχέει

Ficino attributes the saying to Zoroaster and glosses it as the father not striking in fear but introducing persuasion. The contrast belongs to the account of how higher causation preserves the characteristic mode of a rational nature. It should be read with the next passage’s carefully qualified language of compelling souls toward the universal good.

Place. II.13.27. See Choice and free judgment.

Republic (authorities and cited works)

Republic. The tenth book is cited concerning providence's preservation of free judgment. II.13.24. See Choice and free judgment.