Velleity
{{short description|Lowest degree of volition}}
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Velleity is the lowest degree of volition, a slight wish or tendency.{{cite web|title=Velleity|url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/velleity|access-date=4 May 2014}} It is a concept that has been used in philosophy and, to a lesser degree, religion, psychology, and ethics.
Examples of usage
=In philosophy=
The 16th-century French philosopher Montaigne, in his essay On the Force of Imagination begins with the epigraph he cites from a schoolboy textbook, Fortis imaginatio generat casum, or "A strong imagination begets the event itself."{{cite book|url=http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html|publisher=The University of Adelaide|title=The Essays of Michel de Montaigne|first=Michel|last=Montaigne, de|translator=Charles Cotton|editor=William Carew Hazlitt|chapter=20|access-date=November 22, 2019|archive-date=July 2, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180702155944/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html|url-status=dead}} In this essay, Montaigne describes the various ways that the will (or imagination as he calls it) causes people and other animals to do things or to have things done to them, with the barest of initiatives. In said essay, he links (what is now called) the placebo effect to the power of the will. For example, he describes how a certain Germain, was born a female named Mary, who "that by straining himself in a leap his male organs came out" at the age of 22.{{cite book|title=From Queer Rejection of Gender Binaries to Nomadic Gender Corporealisation: A Reconsideration of Spaces Claimed by the Queering Literary Critics of the Late Twentieth Century|first=Karin Johanna|last=Sellberg|publisher=The University of Edinburgh |year=2009|s2cid=160109985}} He also cites the stigmata of Dagobert and Saint Francis, and when the bride Laodice worshipping Venus cured her husband Amasis, King of Egypt of his impotence, among several other examples.
Friedrich Nietzsche describes the velleity of an artist as a "desire to be 'what he is able to represent, conceive, and express'...."
Aaron Ridley, in "Nietzsche, philosophy and the arts," ed. by Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, Daniel W. Conway, at pp. 128-131 (Cambridge University Press, 2002) {{ISBN|0-521-52272-2}}, {{ISBN|978-0-521-52272-4}} (emphasis provided), found at [https://books.google.com/books?id=8GzFg3pH4SIC&dq=Velleity+%2B+philosophy&pg=PA130 Google Book search]. Accessed April 29, 2009.
Ogden Nash named "velleity is what I've got!" as what turns "varying commitment into vanishing commitment."{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HZycCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT166&dq=%22Velleity%22+-wikipedia&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=|title=Inspired Sustainability: Planting Seeds for Action|first=Erin |last=Lothes Biviano|year=2016|isbn=9781608336302|publisher=Orbis Books|access-date=July 15, 2025}}
=In religion=
In the Kabbalah, the number of Ratzon is 1/60 of perfection, which is the minimum level of the Divine will."There are six levels [each one encompassing ten sub-levels] between netzach (eternity) and ratzon (will)." Ask a Rabbi, citing Talmud Tractate Berachot 57b; Midrash Rabbah Genesis 17:7; Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed 2:36; and Zohar Pekudei 254a, found at [https://ohr.edu/ask_db/ask_main.php/195/Q3/ Ask a Rabbi], accessed August 4, 2024.
Thomas Aquinas introduced the concept into Christian ethics. He posited that human thought must use a possibility to act, rather than an impossibility.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wOVY0Y18rXIC&pg=PA197&dq=%22Velleity%22+-wikipedia&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=|pages=223, 225, 233|title=Crucible of Reason: Intentional Action, Practical Rationality, and Weakness of Will|first=Keith David|last= Wyma |year=2004|isbn=9780742535381|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |access-date=July 15, 2025}} Furthermore, command is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for an act: "An imperfect [that is, ineffective] command occurs when reason is moved by opposing motives ...." In this system of ethics, "velleity is a constant aspect of Thomas' teaching," and God wants to save the reprobate, which is impossible for humans but possible for God.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IG77CCWjT20C&pg=PA452&dq=%22Velleity%22+-wikipedia&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=|page=452|title=God's Permission of Sin: Negative Or Conditioned Decree?: A Defense of the Doctrine of Francisco Marin-Sola, O.P. Based on the Principles of Thomas Aquinas|first=Michael D.|last=Torre |year= 2009|isbn=9783727816598|publisher=Saint-Paul|access-date=July 15, 2025}} However, as in the case of suicide, or any other sin, "the natural willing is an act of simple willing and that such an act is not the same as intention."{{cite book|page=82|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PtLyH02x60MC&pg=PA82&dq=%22Velleity%22+-wikipedia&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=|title=The Will and its Acts, in The Ethics of Aquinas|first=David M. |last=Gallagher|editor=Stephen J. Pope|year=2002|isbn=9780878408887|publisher=Georgetown University Press |access-date=July 15, 2025}}