voluntarism
- noun
- /ˈvɑːlənˌtɛrɪzəm/
- Formal
:
voluntarismo
- It meant the promotion of decentralization, encouragement of pluralism—including religious pluralism, federalism, and voluntarism—and support of international economic and political integration.
Examples
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The defeats suffered by many popular movements during the past few years bring to the fore a question ignored by those who base their research and political practices on the hypothesis of popular autonomy associated with political voluntarism.
Academic text (1996) -
Voluntarism fits neatly with a simple version of divine command theory in which what is good or bad is so merely because God commands or condemns it.
Academic text (1998) -
His focus on the "margin of manipulable choice" was an effort to steer a middle course between the excesses of voluntarism and determinism.
Academic text (1990) -
It smacks of the kind of complacent voluntarism that pays little heed to the limits of discursive practice.
Academic text (1996) -
Labor leaders who adopted the doctrine of voluntarism recognized that an effective organizational strategy that would enhance both the possibility of achieving their labor-related goals and their own political survival was labor's strict separation from politics.
Academic text (1992) -
Between the excessive voluntarism of those who believe any future is possible and the excessive involuntarism of "those who believe in appeasement at any cost or in an unending struggle with the forces of darkness," Fox advocated his pragmatic meliorist position.
Academic text (1990) -
We find in it the extraordinary confluence of several important strands of thought: the justification of theism; probability theory and decision theory, used here for almost the first time in history; pragmatism; voluntarism (the thesis that belief is a matter of the will); and the use of the concept of infinity.
Blog text (16) -
His pragmatic meliorist position emerged from his critiques of the excessive voluntarism of "utopian internationalists" on the one hand and the "simplistic determinism" of political realists on the other.
Academic text (1990) -
Many philosophical debates contrast voluntarism with determinism, emphasizing the role of will in decision-making.
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In religious discussions, voluntarism highlights the belief that God's will supersedes human logic and reason.
Surface Forms
Morphology
voluntarism = voluntary (semi-transparent) = voluntar + ism
Formed from the voluntar- stem plus -ism, but the philosophical meaning ('doctrine prioritizing will') is a specialized sense that is not directly inferable by average learners from 'voluntary'.
Etymology
Voluntarism comes from the Latin root voluntas, which means 'will' or 'choice'. You can see the same root in volunteer and voluntary. In philosophy, voluntarism is the idea that 'will' (human or God's) is more important than reason, so the word is about the power of will.
