Associated with Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, medieval theological voluntarism is generally taken to be the philosophical emphasis on the divine will and human freedom. For example, Scotus held that morality comes from God's will and choice rather than his intellect or knowledge. Accordingly, God should be defined as an omnipotent being whose actions should not and cannot be ultimately rationalized and explained through reason. As such, voluntarism is usually contrasted with intellectualism, championed by the scholasticThomas Aquinas.
Theological voluntarism also refers to theological commitments—that is, specific interpretations of doctrines of Christianity—arguably held by certain early modernnatural philosophers such as Pierre Gassendi, Walter Charleton, Robert Boyle, Isaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. It resulted in an empirical approach associated with early modern science. Voluntarism therefore allows that faith or belief in God can be achieved by will as opposed to requiring a prior divine gift of faith to the individual. This notion holds at least in so far as it has found favor among some historians and philosophers. A 20th-century theologian of voluntarism was James Luther Adams.
In epistemology, epistemological voluntarism is the view that belief is a matter of the will rather than one of simply registering one's cognitive attitude or degree of psychological certainty with respect to a stated proposition. If one is a voluntarist with respect to beliefs, it is coherent to simultaneously feel very certain about a particular proposition P and assign P a very low subjective probability. This is the basis of Bas van Fraassen's reflection principle.
Political voluntarism
Political voluntarism, or voluntaryism, is the view that understands political authority to be will-based. This view which was propounded by theorists like Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many members of the German idealist tradition understands political authority as emanating from a will. In Marxist discourse, voluntarism was used to designate a connection between a philosophical commitment to metaphysical voluntarism and a political commitment to extreme revolutionary tactics, particularly associated with Alexander Bogdanov. Today, most self-identified voluntaryists are libertarians.
Critical voluntarism
's critical voluntarism in the philosophy of science is a form of conventionalism which posits that theorizing in the sciences starts with an unavoidable free decision of the will. The successor school of Dingler's critical voluntarism is the methodical constructivism of the Erlangen School.