Gassendi: freedom first in the intellect, secondarily in the will, because reason is indifferent in judging
Pierre Gassendi, a man of great renown and provost of the church of Digne in Provence, adopts this view in his treatise on freedom, fortune, and fate, printed at the end of the second volume of his works. There he says freedom seems to him to be in the intellect first and in its own right, and in the will only secondarily and by dependence.
His ground is this. On the more common Roman view, as will shortly appear, freedom lies in a certain indifference and indeterminacy of a free power. Reason is indifferent when it judges what is to be done and can judge it one way or another, so any indifference the will has toward things it desires springs from the indifference in reason.
The will can refuse or accept one and the same object, and pick this or that among many. It can do so because reason can form different judgments of those objects as different aspects of good or evil appear in them.
Latin
V. Ad quam sententiam accedit Petrus Gassendus Vir Celeberrimus Ecclesiae Diniensis in Provincia praepositus, tractatu de libertate, Fortuna & Fato, qui habetur in fine tomi secundi operum ipsius. Ubi dicit sibi videri libertatem in intellectu esse primo & per se, in voluntate autem secundario, & dependenter. Fundamentum autem illius est, quod cum ex communiori Scholae Romanae sensu, ut jam jam videbitur, libertas sita sit in quadam potestatis liberae indifferentia & indeterminatione, ratio indifferens est in judicando de rebus agendis, & de illis potest hoc, vel illo modo judicare; adeoque quicquid est in voluntate indifferentiae in rebus appetendis, ex hac quae in ratione est indifferentia oritur. Quod enim voluntas potest unum & idem objectum respuere, vel amplecti, & inter varia objecta istud, vel illud eligere, inde est quod ratio varia de objectis illis judicia ferre potest, prout diversae boni, vel mali rationes, in iis illi se offerunt.