here to Olivi’s ideas about the higher soul. One of his main purposes in isolating the thinking and willing soul from the body is that bodies are incapable of this kind of self-initiating activity which is not moved by anything else. A stone can’t just get up and roll on its own. It needs some other cause to set it in motion. By contrast, humans are self-movers, and according to Olivi, if we are searching for the source of this spontaneous action, we should look to the will’s irreducible capacity for choice, not to reason’s ability to perceive things as choiceworthy.
