Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists examine the will and its pathologies from theoretical and empirical perspectives, offering a conceptual overview and discussing schizophrenia, depression, prefrontal lobe damage, and substance abuse as disorders of volition.

Modern readers and writers find it natural to contrast the agency of realistic fictional characters to the constrained range of action typical of literary personifications. Yet no commentator before the eighteenth century suggests that prosopopoeia signals a form of reduced agency. Andrew Escobedo argues that premodern writers, including Spenser, Marlowe, and Milton, understood personification as a literary expression of will, an essentially energetic figure that depicted passion or concept transforming into action. As the will emerged as an isolatable faculty in the Christian Middle Ages, it was seen not only as the instrument of human agency but also as perversely independent of other human capacities, for example, intellect and moral character. Renaissance accounts of the will conceived of volition both as the means to self-creation and the faculty by which we lose control of ourselves. After offering a brief history of the will that isolates the distinctive features of the faculty in medieval and Renaissance thought, Escobedo makes his case through an examination of several personified figures in Renaissance literature: Conscience in the Tudor interludes, Despair in Doctor Faustus and book I of The Faerie Queen, Love in books III and IV of The Faerie Queen, and Sin in Paradise Lost. These examples demonstrate that literary personification did not amount to a dim reflection of “realistic” fictional character, but rather that it provided a literary means to explore the numerous conundrums posed by the premodern notion of the human will. This book will be of great interest to faculty and graduate students interested in medieval studies and Renaissance literature.

It is widely accepted in science that the universe is a closed deterministic system in which everything can, ultimately, be explained by purely physical causation. And yet we all experience ourselves as having the freedom to choose between alternatives presented to us -- 'we' are in the driving seat. The puzzling status of volition is explored in this issue by a distinguished body of scientists and philosophers.

Individuals from diverse disciplines, including neurology, physiology, psychology, mathematics, and engineering have contributed to this volume. Their scientific investigations of volitional action are part of the resurgence of interest in the psychology and physiology of volition which has taken place in recent years. The book comprises a significant sample of their observations, both rational and empirical, which have new practical implications for our understanding of human conduct. The book was designed to serve a threefold purpose: a) to consolidate the gains of the various scholars, relatively isolated in their respective disciplines, b) to foster and help focus future research on conation and self-control and c) to provide practitioners in applied psychology with a broad-based tutorial.

This book presents a history of the volitional theory of causation—the philosophical proposal that volition, or will, of the same or broadly the same stamp as that which we experience in our own deliberate and voluntary doings, should be taken as the basis for all causality. Few today know much about the volitional theory of causation, and even fewer have given it any serious attention. But if current opinion regards this suggestion as an unusual one, of minor importance, the historical record shows otherwise, revealing that it is a theory which has been proposed and developed again and again throughout the modern era. Its obscurity is only a recent phenomenon. Starting at the beginning of the Early Modern period and progressing right up the modern times, the historical discussion takes in both supporters and critics, as well as both famous and less well-known figures, to tell the story of a long-running debate which contemporary history of philosophy has forgotten. The principal figures discussed are Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Maine de Biran, Schopenhauer, Mansel, Mill, Martineau, Alexander Campbell Fraser, Borden Parker Bowne, and G.F.Stout, although many other philosophers are also considered. The book ends with a consider of the philosophical merits of the theory.

Essays examining foundational metaphysical and epistemological issues concerning Descartes, moral philosophy, and philosophical anthropology.

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