EleutherIA — Defined term

Libertas Indifferentiae (Liberty of Indifference)

libertas indifferentiae

Early Modern

Liberty of indifference is a family of later scholastic and early modern views on a will that is not necessitated to one alternative; it should not be defined uniformly as choice without reasons. Medieval accounts of synchronic contingency may be treated as antecedents only with explicit attribution. In the Fourth Meditation (AT VII 57–58), Descartes calls reasonless indifference the lowest grade of freedom, while his later correspondence with Mesland distinguishes this negative state from a positive two-way power of the will. Descartes therefore cannot be cited as endorsing indifference as the highest degree of freedom.

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