RALPH CUDWORTH Y EL LABERINTO DEL LIBRE ARBITRIO. SUÁREZ, HOBBES Y LEIBNIZ A LA LUZ DE SU TREATISE OF FREEWILL.

This article addresses the problem of free will by examining the relationship between the understanding and the will. The scholastic debate about which of both faculties should be considered free was continued in early Modernity, giving rise to different answers: voluntarists, intellectualists and necessitarians. The first part of this paper presents these three positions in the light of the doctrines of Suárez, Leibniz and Hobbes. The second part is devoted to the Ralph Cudworth's criticisms against them in his Treatise of Freewill. As it will be seen, each of these solutions produces different expressions of what I will call the "paradox of the faculties", which the Cambridge Platonist sought to overcome through an original psychology of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]