Being, Goodness and Truth [1 ed.] 152753765X, 9781527537651

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part One
Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues
The Virtual Presence of the Cardinal Virtues
Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between Infused and Acquired Virtue
Part Two
The Good as Telos in Cajetan, Banez and Zumel
Hylomorphism and our Knowledge of Value
Appendix
Contributors

Citation preview

Being, Goodness and Truth

Also available in the series: TheImmateriality of the Human Mind, theSemantics of Analogy, and the Conceivability of God Volume 1:Proceedings of theSociety for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Categories, and WhatIs Beyond Volume 2:Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Knowledge, MentalLanguage, and Free Will Volume 3:Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Mental Representation Volume 4:Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Universal Representation, and the Ontology ofIndividuation Volume 5:Proceedings of theSociety for MedievalLogic and Metaphysics MedievalSkepticism, and the Claim to Metaphysical Knowledge Volume 6: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Medieval Metaphysics; orIslt "Just Semantics"? Volume 7:Proceedings of theSociety for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics After God, with Reason Alone-Saikat Guha CommemorativeVolume Volume 8:Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics The Demonic Temptations of Medieval Nominalism Volume 9:Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Skepticism, Causality and Skepticism about Causality Volume 10:Proceedings of theSociety for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Metaphysical Themes, Medieval and Modern Volume 11:Proceedings of theSociety for MedievalLogic and Metaphysics Maimonideson God and DunsScotusonLogic and MetaphysicsVolume 12: Proceedings of theSociety for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics The Metaphysics ofPersonalIdentity Volume 13:Proceedings of theSociety for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Consciousness andSelf-Knowledge in MedievalPhilosophy Volume 14:Proceedings of theSociety for MedievalLogic and Metaphysics Hylomorphism and Mereology Volume 15:Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Being, Goodness and Truth Volume 16:Proceedings of theSociety for MedievalLogic and Metaphysics

Being, Goodness and Truth (Volume 16: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics) Edited by

Gyula Klima and Alex Hall

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Being, Goodness and Truth

Series: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics Edited by Gyula Klima and Alex Hall

This book first published 2019

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing

in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright© 2019 by Gyula Klima, Alex Hall and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any fonn or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior pennission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-3765-X ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-3765-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

..............................................................................................

vii

Alex Hall

Part I: Acquired Virtues in the Christian? Revisiting the Question Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues: Lessons from Thomas Aquinas on Dead Faith

.............................

3

William C. Mattison, III The Virtual Presence of the Cardinal Virtues

...........................................

17

Lloyd Newton Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between Infused and Acqinred Virtue

.......................................................................

35

Angela Knobel

Part II: Being and Goodness: The Metaphysical Grounding of Value The Good as Telos in Cajetan, Banez and Zume!...

..................................

51

Thomas M . Osborne If. Hylomorphism and our Knowledge of Value

...........................................

61

Robert C. Koons Appendix: Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Book III, Distinction 33, Translated by Lloyd Newton Contributors

............

............................................................................................

77

113

INTRODUCTION ALEX HALL

The

Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics

(PSMLM) collects original materials presented at sessions sponsored by the Society for Medieval Logic

and Metaphysics (SMLM).

SMLM

was

founded in 2000 by Gyula Klima (Director), Joshua Hochschild, Jack Zupko and Jeffrey Brower, in order to recover the profound metaphysical insights of medieval thinkers for our own philosophical thought. The Society currently has over a hundred members on five continents. Alex Hall took up the position of Assistant Director and Secretary in duties

passing

to

Timothy Keams

publication appeared online in

2001

in

2014.

2011,

The

with secretarial

Society's

maiden

and the decade that followed saw the

release of eight more online volumes. In 201 1 , PSMLM transitioned to print and republished volumes

1-8

as separately titled editions. Sharp-eyed

readers of these volumes will note the replacement of our (lamentably copyrighted for commercial use) lions, who guarded the integrity of the body of an intellectual tradition thought to be dead, with the phoenixes that mark this print rebirth. Volumes format. With Volume

11,

9

and

10

appeared in a dual print/online

PSMLM switched to print only. Friends of the

lions will be happy to note that they remain at their post, protecting the first ten volumes of the PSMLM at http://faculty.fordham.edulklima/SMLM/, where interested readers can also keep up with SMLM activities and projects.

Being, Goodness and Truth (the sixteenth volume of the PSMLM) collects papers presented at SMLM-sponsored sessions in 2017. The papers take up various topics in the virtue-ethics tradition as it develops out of the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The essays that make up Part I were read at the International

Congress

on

Medieval

Studies

at

Western

Michigan

University, where a SMLM panel discussed whether cultivated virtues exist in a Christian who has received grace and its attendant, infused virtues. Part II discusses whether and how values may be grounded in real essences (conceived as truth makers), presenting papers read at the SMLM satellite session of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, hosted by Baylor University and the University of Dallas. Volume

17

of the PSMLM

viii

Introduction

(forthcoming) presents a

2018,

author-meets-critics workshop on Robert

Pasnau's After Certainty (OUP 2017), sponsored by Sorbonne Universit6 and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. Volume 1 8 (forthcoming) is on the thought of William of Ockham, including a panel on Magali Roques' L'essentialisme

2017 author-meets-critics, de Guillaume d'Ockham.

Part I: Acquired Virtues in the Christian? Revisiting the Question The virtue ethics tradition that shapes the thought of S1. Thomas Aquinas dates to the fourth-century Be works of Plato and Aristotle, who believe that knowledge of the good of a thing is tied to what it is, i.e. its essence.1 A thing's essence detelTIlines its capacities and capacities dictate perfections relative to kinds. Humans are essentially rational, hence the human good lies in a well-lived rational life. Aristotle telTIlS this good

'eudaimonia', the

defmitive quality of a life well-lived, a product of education, character, virtue and chance.2 Aquinas distinguishes between eudaimonia (Latin:

'felicitas')

and the perfect happiness

('beatitudo')

of the blessed in the

afterlife: 3 "It is impossible for man in this life to be entirely happy

esse felicem)."4

(totaliter

Again, Aquinas suspects that Aristotle also thinks of our

happiness as a relatively limited type:

Felicity in its perfect character cannot be present in men, but they may participate somewhat in it . . in this life . . This seems to have been Aristotle's view . . . where he asks whether misfortunes take away happiness, having sho"Wll that felicity consists in the works of virtue . . . He concludes that those men for whom such perfection in this life is possible are happy as men (beatos ut homines),5 as if they had not attained felicity absolutely, but merely in hllillan fashion (SCG 3.48.9). Beatitude, in tum, requires grace:

lSee Republic Books 1 and 4 and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (NE) Book 1, chap. 7 (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (ST) 1.5.5; 76.1c). 2NE 1 .8-9; 2 . 1 . 3See Brain Davies, "Happiness," in The Oxford Handbook ofAquinas, Edited by Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (Oxford University Press, 2012), 227-37. 4Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG) 3.48.7. 5Here and elsewhere, Aquinas uses ' beatitudo' and 'felicitas' to refer to mere hllillan happiness and beatitude, respectively. However, he generally intends the sense of the terms the other way around (see Davies, 231-32).

Being, Goodness and Truth

ix

It is necessary for man to receive from God some additional principles, whereby he may be directed to supernatural happiness, even as he is directed to his connatural end, by means of his natural principles . Such like principles are called "theological virtues": first, because their object is God, inasmuch as they direct us aright to God: secondly, because they are infused in us by God alone: thirdly, because these virtues are not made known to us, save by Divine revelation, contained in Holy Writ (ST I-II.62.1c). Aquinas construes Aristotle as having set out the moral and intellectual virtues that characterize merely human happiness.6 The theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, on the other hand, direct us to our supernatural end, exceed our natural capacity and are infused by God along with grace. Also had by grace and in service to the same supernatural end, are infused moral and intellectual virtues, counterparts to the cultivated virtues (e.g. infused temperance). Aquinas's account raises the question as to whether the infused virtues somehow coexist alongside the acquired. Coexistence (or compatibilist) theorists contend that Christians in a state of grace possess both acquired and infused virtues; transfonnational (or incompatibilist) accounts deny this. A transfonnationalist, William C. Mattison III nevertheless recognizes in

Chapter

1

that

the

coexistence

thesis

finds

support

in

several

considerations that would seem evident to Aquinas. First, the advent of infused virtues should not result in the loss of a good, here an acquired virtue. Again, by mortal sin, a Christian who falls from grace loses the infused virtues. But fallen Christians may yet exercise virtues cultivated prior to the reception of grace. Were these virtues there all along? Mattison

6Aristotelian psychology is hylomorphic, i.e. Aristotle conceives of hlUllan beings as matter-form composites (De Anima (DA) 2 . 1 ) . The formal element is the soul. (An intellectual aspect of soul is separable from body and persists after death. Nevertheless, Aristotle leaves little or no room for personal immortality (see DA 3.5).) The soul has three broad classes of flUlction: vegetative (autonomic), appetitive and rational (NE 1.7). The semi-rational, appetitive aspect cannot reason, but can be habituated by the rational element, lUllike the autonomic (or vegetative) aspect responsible for things such as digestion and growth. Corresponding to the appetitive and rational elements of the soul are moral (or ethical) and intellectual virtues that optimize their respective functions (NE 1 . 1 3 ; 2.6; 6.1). Cutting across these two categories of virtue are the cardinal virtues: prudence (an intellectual virtue); andjustice, fortitude and temperance (moral virtues). As prudence concerns how we ought to act, Aquinas states that "in some way (quodammodo)" it too is a moral virtue and concludes that the cardinal virtues may therefore be classed as moral virtues (ST I-II 6 1 . 1c). The moral virtues are reducible to the cardinal virtues as to their subject and formal principle (ST I-II 61.2, ad 3).

Introduction

x

addresses these issues with a study of Aquinas on dead faith. By faith, the intellect qualified by charity assents to supernatural truths. Dead faith 7 involves the same disposition, but as exercised by one who lacks charity. 8 These habits are cospecific, distinguished as perfect and imperfect, i.e. in their end or mode of acting. 'Whereas living faith directs us to our supernatural end, dead faith does not. That is, living and dead faith differ only in mode, not species. Hence, the case of dead faith does not involve any habit that coexists with living faith, but the transformation of a living faith as regards its end or mode. So too, it may be that the gain or loss of infused virtues merely tranSfOlTIlS a habit. There is neither the loss of a good habit in the infusion nor a puzzle over why earlier, acquired virtues persist (albeit in a different mode) absent grace. In Chapter

2,

Lloyd Newton takes issue with a transfOlmationalist account

that Mattison advances in an earlier work, 9 where Mattison notes that an individual may be ordered

to

either merely human or supernatural 0

happiness, but not both, since every human person has one last end.1 Because acquired and infused

virtues direct us to either human or

supernatural happiness (respectively), a Christian directed to supernatural happiness wouldn't have acquired virtues, which would, in effect, steer her u the wrong way. Newton objects that Aquinas recognizes multiple, essentially ordered last ends corresponding to various aspects of our nature as corporeal, living, sentient beings. Hence nothing prevents the coexistence of various acquired and infused virtues that are directed variously toward these various ends. Despite

their

differences,

coexistence

and

transfOlmational

readings

generally agree that a Christian in a state of grace produces one, unified kind of moral action, i.e. does not sometimes cultivate acquired and at other times infused virtues.

In Chapter 3, Angela Knobel challenges this consensus and

argues that the early Aquinas held a coexistence thesis on which Christians possess two sets of virtues, e.g. acquired and infused temperance, that produce two different kinds of act, ordered to our natural and supernatural ends, respectively.

7Scriptum Super Sententiis III d. 23, q. 3; ST II-II 4.4-5, 5.2-3, 6.2, 7 . 1 ; De Veritate (DV) 14.5-7. See also James 2 : 1 9-20. 8DV 14.7; ST II-II 4.5, ad. 3 . 9"Can Christians Possess the Acquired Cardinal Virtues," Theological Studies, 72 (20 1 1 ), 558-85. lOlbid. p. 564 (cf. ST I-II. 1 .4-5). llMattison, 565.

Being, Goodness and Truth

xi

Part II: Being and Goodness: The Metaphysical Grounding of Value In ST

(ratio)

1.5.4,

Aquinas defends the proposition that the good has the aspect

of the final cause. Thomas M. Osborne If. notes in Chapter

5

that

Aquinas's account has given rise to several questions. Does the claim that the good has the

ratio

of the [mal cause entail that the two are in no way

distinct? And if they are distinct, how so and what does it mean to say that the

In an account (1528-1604) and Francisco Zumel (d. 1607), Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1535) appears to argue that the good has the ratio of the [mal cause in two senses: (1) (in signata) as the

ratio

of goodness and the final cause are the same?

criticized for its obscurity by Domingo Banez

good is the principle that renders the final cause final (i.e. good, and hence an end), and this whether or not the final cause is setting in motion some agent (hence God is good whether or not creatures exist to desire God); and

(2) (in exercito)

inasmuch as the good as good exercises final causality.

Banez and Zumel, by contrast, think that the good is the cause only in understood

actu signata,

apart

from

inasmuch as the

final

causality

ratio

(which

ratio

of the final

of the good can be

they

fear

(2)

carmot

accommodate), simply as the principle by which an end is able to move the agent. In later thinkers such as Zume!'s student Diego Alvarez (ca.

1635)

1550-

and the seventeenth-century Carmelites of Salamanca we see the

emergence of a Thomistic synthesis that dO\vnplays the differences between

(1)

and (2) and is immune to the criticisms of Banez and Zume!.

In Chapter

6

Robert C. Koons takes up the Aristotelian theory of Formal

Identity to which Aquinas subscribes. The Formal Identity Thesis maintains that understanding is a mental grasp of a thing's fOlTIl or essence. The fOlTIl that exists for our understanding (described as an intelligible species) is co­ 12 specific with the fOlTIl that exists outside of the mind in some thing. A corollary to this is the immateriality of the intellect, as physical composition would impede the potential to know all forms. Koons defends the Formal Identity Thesis based on our ability to grasp necessary truths, especially knowledge of value or the good, which is always of the particular good ofa type based on its fOlTIl. The question remains as to the nature of the connection bet\veen these forms and the human mind. Platonist accounts think of the forms as self-subsistent efficient causes of understanding. Koons rejects the Platonist thesis, as it either threatens the immanence of understanding or undelTIlines the per se unity of the person into whose

12De Anima 3.4.

xii

Introduction

composition a universal substance (the fmm) enters. But Aristotelians struggle to explain how the same type of form can be both a qualitative act of understanding for the intellect and either a substantial or a non-qualitative accidental fOlTIl in an instance of the species

(as when we grasp something

other than a quality of a thing). How can a qualitative form be of the same species

as a non-qualitative

or a substantial fOlTIl? Koons suggests that the

intelligible species is intrinsically a fOlTIl of a non-qualitative sort whose informing of the mind produces an intellectual quality. This form is received differently in various instances, in the immaterial mind in matter

as a substance or accident.

as a qualitative act,

PART ONE:

ACQUIRED VIRTUES IN THE CHRISTIAN? REVISITING THE QUESTION

REVISITING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFUSED AND ACQUIRED CARDINAL VIRTUES: LESSONS FROM THOMAS AQUINAS ON DEAD FAITH WILLIAM C. MATTISON III

Over the past decade there has arisen a lively discussion concerning the ' possibility of acquired cardinal virtues in the Cliristian. Though this topic is referenced in the work of St. Thomas, and in the centuries since has been treated in varying degrees of detail, it may be the case that it is never been given as much focused and technical attention as it has in the past decade. As evidence of this I offer the recent outstanding volume of essays from the Thomistic Instituut in Utrecht, entitled The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological Nature a/Moral Virtues. Roughly half the contributions,

lPor an article that takes on this question directly and surveys prior scholarship addressing it, see William Mattison III "Can Christians Possess the Acquired Virtues?" Theological Studies 72 (201 1), 558-585. For scholarship in the past decade addressing this question directly, see: Angela Knobel, "Can Aquinas's Infused and Acquired Virtues Coexist in the Christian Life?" Studies in Christian Ethics 23 (2010): 381-96, "Two Theories of Christian Virtue," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2010): 599-618, and "Relating Aquinas' Acquired and Infused Virtues: Some Problematic Texts" Nova et Vetera 9.2 (20 1 1 ): 41 1-43 1 ; David Decosimo, "More to Love: Ends, Ordering, and the Compatibility of Acquired and Infused Virtues," 47-72 in The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological Nature ofMoral Virtues, Harm Goris and Henk Schoot, editors (Leuven: Peeters, 2017) and Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014), 190-197; Andrew Pinsent ""Who's Afraid of the Infused Virtues? Dispositional Infusion, HlUllan and Divine," 73-96 in The Virtuous Life; and, Nicholas Austin, S.l, Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading (Washington, D.C.: Georgetmvn University Press, 2017). Even more recently, three articles on this topic appeared in the Journal ofMoral Theology 8.2 (2019). See William C. Mattison III, "Aquinas, Custom, and the Coexistence of Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues," pp. 1-24; Angela Knobel, "Elevated Virtue?" pp. 2529; and, Jean Porter, "Moral Virtues, Charity, and Grace: Why the Infused and Acquired Virtues Cannot Coexist," pp. 40-66.

4

Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues

including those from all four keynote speakers, address this topic 2 The purpose of this essay is to contribute to that debate by examining St. Thomas' writings on a topic that is rarely referenced - if at all - in recent scholarship on the possibility of acquired virtue in the Christian.3 The topic is dead faith. It would help at the outset to offer a brief sketch of the recent debate on the possibility of acquired cardinal virtue in the Christian. All participants agree on the following. It is possible for people to possess virtues, variously called by St. Thomas "acquired" or "natural" or "political" or "social" virtues, which enable one to act in a manner oriented toward and indeed constitutive of natural human flourishing as one's last end.4 There are a host of such moral and intellectual virtues, but they are typified by the cardinal virtues, which for St. Thomas "cover" all natural virtue in a sense.5 Thus this debate

2The Virtuous Life, Hann Goris and Henk Schoot, editors (Leuven: Peeters, 2017). The keynotes are the essays by DeCosimo, Knobel, Mattison and Pinsent. 3Participants in this debate rely so heavily upon Thomas Aquinas' "Writing on virtue that it is reasonable to ask whether the question at hand is whether acquired cardinal virtues can exist in the Christian, or whether St. Thomas' work supports one position or the other. In other words, are we asking what is in reality the case, or what Thomas said in his corpus? The focus here is the former, but St. Thomas' work is relied upon heavily given that he offers the most robust account of graced virtue in the Christian tradition. As I argue in a forthcoming book (Aquinas on Habit, Graced Virtue, and the Last End), there is significant lack of clarity as well as possible development in what St. Thomas says on this topic throughout his corpus. However, as Jean Porter argues in her "Moral Virtue, Charity, and Grace: Why the Infused and Acquired Virtues Cannot Co-Exist," forthcoming in the Journal a/Moral Theology, one can identify a position most compatible with Thomas' work on grace and virtue, and indeed even more so a position that is incompatible with central commitments of his work on grace and virtue. Porter's title makes her stance clear. 4For more on these four terms as functional equivalents, and Thomas' various categorizations ofvirtue more broadly, see William Mattison, "1bomas' Categorizations of Virtue: Historical Background and Contemporary Significance," The Thomist 74 (2010): 1 89-235. 5Thomas often distinguishes, on the basis of object, the theological virtues from the "moral and intellectual" virtues. Thus scholars commonly speak of the theological virtue vs. moral virtue distinction in Thomas, which is accurate. But since in Thomas' work "moral" virtue is at times distinguished from theological virtue, and at other times distinguished from intellectual virtue (e.g., I-II 58), "cardinal" virtue is used here in reference to both the moral and intellectual virtues that are distinguished from the theological virtues. In other words, it includes prudence. This terminological practice is not only adopted in certain contemporary scholarship [e.g., Michael Sherwin, "Infused Virtue and the Effects ofAcquired Vice: A Test Case for

William C. Mattison III

5

is not about the possibility of pagan virtue; all in this debate affirm its possibility 6 All participants also agree that through God's grace people are oriented toward supernatural happiness as last end, and God gives graced 7 virtues to enable action oriented toward that end. Such virtues are infused. They include the theological virtues, which have God as their object. 8 They also include the infused cardinal virtues, which incline people to act well with regard to the material activities common to both acquired and infused cardinal virtues, but in the case of infused virtues in a marmer specified by

reference to the supernatural end and the concomitant divine rule.9 All agree on this account of virtue thus far.

The question is whether or not a person, oriented toward supernatural happiness by God's grace, and who therefore possesses the theological and infused cardinal virtues, also possesses the acquired cardinal virtues. It is a yes or no question and thus there are two sides, though some recent work has helpfully identified significant differences within at least one of the 0 sides.1 These sides go by various names. On the one hand there are a set of

the Thomistic Theory on the Infused Cardinal Virtues," The Thomist 73 (2009): 2952], but also employed by Thomas himself at times (e.g., I-II 61) due to his claim that the fOill cardinal virtues "cover," in a sense, all moral virtues (I-II 61,1 & 2). 6For a helpful entry into the topic, which is also part of a thread of scholarly debate on "pagan virtue," see Brian Shanley, O.P, "Aquinas on Pagan Virtue" The Thomist 63 (1999): 553-77. Shanley responds there to Borlllie Kent's "Moral Provincialism,'" Religious Studies 30 (1994): 269-85, which is itself a response to the work of Alasdair MacIntyre on virtue in Thomas and Augustine, esp. his Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). Shanley in turn is responded to by Thomas Osborne, Jr., "The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory," The Thomist 67 (2003): 279-305. Osborne is responded to by Angela McKay, "Prudence and Acquired Mortal Virtue," The Thomist 69 (2005): 535�55, to which Osborne replies again in "Perfect and Imperfect Virtues," The Thomist 71 (2007):39-64. Knobel makes further contributions to the debate in both "Aquinas and the Pagan Virtues, "International Philosophical Quarterly 5 1 . 3 (20 1 1 ): 339-354 and "Ends and Virtues," Journal a/Moral Theology 3 . 1 (2014): 105-117. For a recent monograph treatment of the question see David DeCosimo's Ethic 's as a Work o/Charity. 7Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 63,3. I use the term "Christian" as a stand in to refer to such a person in possession of virtues given through God's grace. 8Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 62, 1 . 9Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 63,3 & 4 . A complete accOlUlt of the habits infused by God's grace would also include the gifts of the Holy Spirit. See Summa Theologiae I-II 68. lOpor excellent treatments of the different ways that each position may be held, see Knobel, "Can the Infused and Acquired Virtues Coexist," "Two Theories of

6

Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues

positions which claim that a Christian can indeed possess both acquired and infused cardinal virtues. This group of positions is coined "coexistence" (by Knobel), or "compatibilist" (by DeCosimo). I'll use Knobel's "coexistence" here. On the other side there are a set of positions which claim that a person with the infused virtues carmot possess the acquired cardinal virtues. This group

of positions

is

called

the

"transfOlmational"

by Knobel,

or

"incompatibilist" by Decosimo. I'll again use Knobel's tenn, transfonnational. That name comes from the claim by this camp that should a person's natural capacities be qualified by acquired cardinal virtues but then receive the grace of God and its concomitant qualities called infused virtues, say, at conversion, then the specification of the natural powers by those qualities called

virtues

would

be

"transformed"

or

re-qualified

toward

the

supernatural end.11 One commonly raised issue in this debate is how to explain the impact of the bestowal or arrival of infused virtue. All in this debate agree tbat people who live lives ordered toward supernatural happiness with God can cease to live toward that end.

In the Catholic tradition this is called mortal sin. When

this occurs, one no longer possesses the virtue of charity, which is friendship with God tbat orients all virtuous activity toward tbat supernatural end of friendship with God. One also ceases to possess infused moral virtues which are informed by charity. But presumably tbe person who had, say, infused temperance by which she lived while in friendship witb God, will not immediately become a glutton,

or

unchaste. To this point all agree. The

question then is how might we describe how such person exercises her natural abilities? Is she rightly said to possess the virtue temperance? If so it would of course be acquired temperance. Does that mean the acquired temperance was there all along, "underneath," if you will, the infused temperance? This would be a claim in support of the coexistence position. Or would the loss of charity somehow engender the acquired temperance? It certainly would seem odd if a mortal sin were to cause the acquisition of a previously unpossessed virtue. A similar problem is raised when one receives charity and the infused cardinal virtues. If one had acquired, say, temperance before that reception of grace, does acquired temperance cease to exist? Does it remain, but idle? Does it remain active either in conjunction

Christian Virtue," and especially "Relating Aquinas' Acquired and Infused Virtues: Some Problematic Texts" all cited above. The differences in these arguments on either side are quite significant. However, in the end the question at hand is indeed a yes or no question. l lPor an example of this see Mattison, "Can Christians Possess the Acquired Virtues?" 560 & 584.

William C. Mattison III

7

with infused virtue or on occasion deployed instead of infused virtue (perhaps even by infused virtue)? A helpful resource on this question in Thomas' thought is the topic of dead faith. It has important similarities to the scenario just described. Dead faith is a sort of faith that is importantly lacking because one does not possess charity. It can be ascribed to people who had living faith but through mortal sin no longer possess charity. Such people may continue to affinn accurate things about who God is, and thus are said to have some sort of faith though without charity. The parallel to the above scenario where infused moral virtues are lost with charity should be obvious. But there is an important difference here. There is no such thing as acquired faith. So positing a persistent acquired virtue "underneath" the (now lost) infused faith is not an option. Nor is positing the acquisition of acquired faith after the loss of infused faith. The purpose of this essay is to explore what Thomas says about dead or lifeless faith and its relationship to living faith, in order to illuminate the dynamic of what happens when a person with an infused virtue loses it, and yet continues to perform acts of that virtue. I begin with a brief section explaining the role of charity in the virtue of faith, and then what it is that constitutes dead faith. Section two offers a glimpse at St. Thomas' narration of a debate among other thirteenth century figures as regards dead faith, a debate that is markedly similar to the contemporary debate over the relationship between acquired and infused cardinal virtues in the same person. Section Three presents Thomas' resolution of that debate. In the final section I explain why his resolution pertains directly to the contemporary debate and what his thought on lifeless faith contributes to contemporary scholarship on the possibility of acquired cardinal virtues in the Christian.

Living Faith and Dead Faith The virtue of faith is a habit of acts of belief, belief in true claims about God. The sort of intellectual assent called "belief' is prompted not by the compelling nature of the claims themselves, since unlike with

scientiae

the

truth of the matter at hand does not compel assent, in this case in part because it surpasses the natural capacity of the human intellect. Instead, an act of belief is an act of the intellect assenting to something as true, where the intellect is prompted by the will to such assent.12 All this is true of acts of beliefs more generally. The virtue of faith concerns intellectual assent (to

12Thornas Aquinas, Summa Theo!ogiae, II-II 2,1 .

8

Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues

truths that surpass the capacity of unaided human intellect) about God, in a manner prompted by the will, in this case as the will is qualified by the theological virtue of charity. Faith is thus properly an act ofthe intellect, but with the intellect's act given its "fOlTIl," to use Thomas' term, by the will as

qualified by charity.1 3

What, then, is dead faith? The Scriptural basis for this is James

2: 19-20,

which speaks of dead faith without works, and of the faith of demons, both forms of faith that similarly lack charity even as they differ in other ways. Dead faith, sometimes translated lifeless and most exactly translated "unfonned," is the disposition ofthe intellect to true affinnations about God that are nonetheless not prompted by charity since the one at hand does not

possess charity.1 4 Since charity provides the "fonn" of faith, the habit is "unformed," or dead, or lifeless. Nonetheless it is still accurately called faith because it is a stable disposition to acts that are materially the same as acts of faith, such as affinnations that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or that Jesus Christ is God and man. Indeed Thomas claims lifeless faith is still rightly called a gift from God, since its affirmations are not possible for

unaided human reason aloneY Nonetheless it is not a virtue.16 This is an important point, especially for the final section's comparison of the

transformation of acts of dead faith into living faith through the infusion of charity (or vice versa through its loss), on the one hand, with the transformation of acquired cardinal virtue into infused cardinal virtue through the infusion of charity, on the other hand. Dead faith is not a virtue despite the accuracy of its affinnations, because not only the end but also the object of faith is God. The intellect of a person with dead faith is not

13Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theo!ogiae, II-II 4,2 & 3. 14Thomas' most extensive "Writings on dead faith can be found at: Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III d. 23, q. 3 (http://www.corpusthomisticmn.org/snp3023.htrnl#10563; portions of this are translated into English in On Love and Charily: Readings from the "Commentary on the Sentences o/Peter Lombard," trans. Peter Kwasniewski, Thomas Bolin O.S.B. & Joseph Bolin (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of American Press, 2008); De veritate XIV5-7 (https:lldhspriory.org/thornas/QDdeVer14.hlrn); Summa Thealagiae, II-II 4,4; 4,5; 5,2; 5,3; 6,2 & 7,1; Commentary on the Letter o/SaintPau! to the Romans c. 1 1. 6 [#105-108 in Vol. 37 ofLatin / English Edition o/the Works o/Aquinas, trans. F.R. Larcher, O.P (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012)]. 15Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theo!ogiae, II-II 6,1 (and also II-II 5,2 ad 2) and Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III d. 23, q. 3, a. 2. 16Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theo!ogiae, II-II 4,5 and Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III d. 23, g. 3, a. 1, ga. 2.

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9

being actualized to its fullest reach, to use Thomas' term for how a virtue qualifies a power. It is not moved to assent by tbe will qualified by charity. The intellect is otherwise moved, in the case of the person with dead faith likely by an enduring disposition akin to what Thomas calls consuetudo which we commonly call "habit" (in the non-rich sense of the term) and which is commonly translated "custom.,,17 Thus faitb witbout charity (dead faitb) is not a virtue because it is not moved by (or connected by) either of the principles of human action that enable the powers to attain tbeir highest reach: human reason via prudence in the case of acquired (natural) virtues or grace via charity in the case of infused (supernatural) virtues. In sum, Thomas's account of faith explains how its acts (of belief) are prompted by charity. His account of dead faith depicts how faith can exist without charity, and move a person to acts that are in some sense good and a gift from God despite the fact tbat they are not acts of virtue since tbey do not attain tbe highest reach of tbe power at hand. Having explained what both tbese types of faith look like and how they differ, we turn now to Thomas' explanation of what happens when a person moves from living faith to dead faith, or vice versa. Thomas' Account of a Scholastic Debate

In Summa Theologioe II-II 4,4 Thomas asks whether or not lifeless faith can become living faith.18 He immediately explains the meaning ofthe question by contextualizing it in a debate among his predecessors. The fIrst position he describes is held by William of Auxerre, and tbe second by Alexander of Hales. Though tbey oppose each other, Thomas shows that they hold a crucial common assumption, and Thomas' own view will COnfOlTIl to neither of these thinkers since he denies that underlying assumption. His narration of that debate is succinct and exact enough for our purposes to warrant quoting in full:

17Por more on the ways that custom can generate stable activity, and yet importantly differs from habit, see William C. Mattison III, "Aquinas, Custom, and the Coexistence of Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues." As for the demons, the intellect is moved to assent, not by a will grasping the good, but by persuasive signs that nonetheless do not constitute the essence ofwhat is seen. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 5,2. Once again, the lifeless faith of demons differs from that ofhmnan persons. 18Por parallel treatments see De veritate 14,7 and Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III d. 23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 3 as well as a. 1 qa. 3.

10

Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues Some19 have said that living and lifeless faith are distinct habits, but that when living faith comes, lifeless faith is done away, and that, in like manner, when a man sins mortally after having living faith, a new habit of lifeless faith is infused into him by God.20 But it seems unfitting that grace should deprive man ofa gift of God by corning to him, and that a gift of God should be infused into man, on account of mortal sin. Consequently, others21 have said that living and lifeless faith are indeed distinct habits, but that, all the same, when living faith comes the habit of lifeless faith is not taken away, and that it remains together with the habit of living faith in the same subject. Yet again it seems unreasonable that the habit oflifeless faith should remain inactive in a person having living faith. We must therefore hold differently that living and lifeless faith are the same habit.

Both camps in this debate hold that living and lifeless faith are distinct habits, a claim that Thomas denies. Explaining Thomas' denial bears directly on the debate in current scholarship. Now of course in some important sense living and lifeless faith are indeed distinct habits. So in what way does Thomas mean they are not distinct? In this Summa text he claims that habits are differentiated by what they "directly pertain to.,,22 And faith directly pertains to the intellect, and accurate beliefs about God. In other words, in both living and lifeless faith, the person assents by one's intellect to true claims about God. That activity, which in the Sentences he calls the "natural species" of faith, is the same for both.23 Where they differ is in what he calls in the Sentences "moral

19The Summa Theologiae editor identifies this position with William of Auxerre as found at Summa Aurea III, iii, 15. 2�ecall that even lifeless faith is a gift from God since its acts exceed natural human capacities. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II 6,1 (and also II-II 5,2 ad 2) and Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. III d. 23, q. 3, a. 2 2lThe Summa Theologiae editor identifies this position with Alexander of Hales as found at Summa Theologiae iii, 64. 22Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II 4,4 habitus diversificatur secundum illud quodper se ad habitum pertinent. 23Thomas uses natural species as distinct from moral species early in his career, but these terms are less precise and later abandoned. It should be noted that in mentioning natural species, Thomas is not saying there is a "natural virtue" (or acquired virtue) of faith. As noted below, Thomas eventually uses the term "object" for what he here calls natural species. That object is distinguished from the "mode of acting" in De veritate XIV.? In Summa Theologiae, I-II 63,4 Thomas

William C. Mattison III

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species." Finally, in De veritate Thomas claims there are two sorts of differentiation in habits, by object and in mode of acting. Habits are differentiated "in essence" by their objects, as seeing is a distinct material activity from hearing. As to their mode of acting, habits are not differentiated by essence but in their level of completeness or perfection, as when one sees more or less clearly.24 Thomas concludes: Living faith and lifeless faith do not have different objects, but only different ways of acting .... So, living faith and lifeless faith are not distinguished as two different habits, but as a perfect habit and an imperfect habit.25

Thus they are indeed distinguished, but they are different in their end, or their mode of acting, or their level of perfection, as to the one activity to which they both directly pertain. Thomas' Solution to the Change from Living to Lifeless Faith, or Vice Versa

Having rejected the common assumption by William and Alexander that living and lifeless faith are distinct habits, Thomas can offer his own solution to the question of what occurs when living faith becomes lifeless, or vice versa. The answer is that word "becomes." His Sentences treatment ofthe topic asks "whether lifeless [unformed] faith becomes living [formed] faitli at the coming of charity" and he replies tliat it does. This is the same title of his Summa Theologaie treatment.26 Though there is obviously change between living and lifeless faith, it is not one of addition or subtraction in the subject. It is a matter of one and the same "habit,"27 in distinguishes the "material element" of the virtue from its formal object, whereby a mean is specified according to some rille (e.g., hmnan reason or Divine rule). In his Summa Theolgiae treatment of dead faith he speaks of the acts of faith as good "generically" (ex genere; II-II 6,2, ad 2) and says living and lifeless faith do not differ by species (non different specie) but as perfect and imperfect (II-II 4,5 ad 3). 24De veritate XIV.? 25De veritate XIV.? 26Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 4,4. 27Thomas consistently calls lifeless faith a "habit." Properly speaking a habit is a disposition to a certain sort of activity whose stability is given by its formal element, be it the measme ofhmnan reason in the acquired virtues (as provided by prudence) or the measme of the Divine rule in the infused virtues (as provided by charity). Since lifeless faith is without charity, it lacks the connectivity provided by charity, and in the most proper sense is not rightly called a habit. Thomas does use the terms "habit" and "virtue" at times more broadly to refer to what more precisely are called

12

Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues

terms of the activity the habit directly pertains to, changing as to its (as Thomas describes variously) fOlTIl, or mode, or level of perfection. This is why William was wrong to assume that lifeless faith is "cast away" at the arrival of charity, or arrives when living faith is lost. 'When charity arrives to one who believes with lifeless faith, it "confirms and perfects" that habit of lifeless faith and makes it living, rather than creating a habit anew as when charity arrives in a nonbeliever.28 As Thomas says in De veritate, "folTIlless faith stays when charity comes, and is itself fOlTIled. In this way only the fOlTIllessness is removed. "29 Thomas' consistent language is that lifeless faith is perfected and given a new form by charity (hence the term "transform" for this dynamic). Lifeless faith is not lost; only its lifelessness is.30 It is perfected, or transfolTIled such that the intellectual activity of affilTIling true things about God is now ordered toward the supernatural happiness of friendship with God. Conversely, when charity is lost and living faith becomes lifeless, there is also continuity but a change in fOlTIl. We might even say faith in this case is "de-folTIled." Though it may seem something is "gained" since lifeless faith entails true affilTIlations about God, in reality those affilTIlations were there in the habit (with the same essence) of living faith, yet now they are unformed or defolTIled since bereft of charity. The appearance of a gain in this change is illusory. Thomas' solution also explains why Alexander was wrong in affirming the coexistence of lifeless and living faith. There are not two habits of the same essence but different fOlTIl residing in one person, perhaps with one idle or (though not mentioned by Alexander) with them working together in one action. In the case of faith Thomas says "formed and unformed faith do not differ in species. "31 He clarifies this with a claim that extends beyond faith when he says "it is not possible for two fOlTIls of one species to exist at the dispositions. For this distinction see Summa Theologiae I-II 49,2 ad. 3. For an example of Thomas calling a "virtue" that which is not properly a virtue, see On the Cardinal Virtues pp. 241-277 in E.M. Atkins and Thomas Williams (eds.) Disputed Questions on the Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 2005), a. 2. For a recent in-depth inquiry to the definitions of habits and dispositions, and the relationship between them, see Andrew Whitmore, Dispositions and Habits in the Work of Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Catholic University of America Dissertation, 2018. 28Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 4,4 ad 3. 29De veritate XIV.7. 3 0De veritate XIV.7 ad. 4: "When life comes, it is not necessary for that which is dead to leave, but for death to leave. Hence, not formless faith but only the formlessness is removed through charity." 31Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. 3 d. 23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 3.

William C. Mattison III

13

same time [in the same subject], because forms are diversified in number by reason of diversity of matter or subject."32 This is corroborated in De veritate where Thomas claims "Nor, again, can it be said [of living and lifeless faith] that both acts and habits are there together. . . . "33 Therefore there are not and cannot be in one person two separate habits for activity of the same essence or object.34 Relevance for the Possibility of Acquired Cardinal Virtues in the Christian

Now that Thomas' position on living faith, lifeless faith, and the relationship between them is clear, we tum to apply his thinking to the contemporary debate. First, let me note the reasons why this comparison is warranted. In both cases we have habits that are not charity yet are informed by charity (living faith on the one hand, infused cardinal virtues on the other hand). The habits retain continuity in their immediate activities (and hence in both cases are called faith, or cardinal virtues), yet these habits can be fOlmed by charity. Thus in both cases the "essence," or object, of the habit remains the sarne whether informed by charity or not. Nonetheless they do indeed differ as to the object of the will as end, which is provided by charity.35 Thus their difference is not of essence, but in what Thomas variously calls their fOlTIl, or mode of acting, as imperfect to perfect. Thomas uses the imperfect / perfect distinction consistently to refer to both lifeless faith I living faith on the one hand, and acquired cardinal virtue / infused cardinal virtue on the other hand.36 For all these reasons Thomas' thought on whether or not (imperfect) lifeless faith can coexist with living faith, and on what happens with lifeless faith when charity arrives or departs, is illuminative for the relationship between acquired and infused virtue. The most important difference in the comparison is that whereas lifeless faith is not a virtue, all in the contemporary debate agree that the acquired cardinal virtues are indeed virtues. The reason for this difference is the difference in object between the cardinal virtues on the one hand, and the theological virtues on the other hand. The cardinal virtues concern activities 32Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. 3 d. 23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 3. 33De veritate XIV.? 34This claim provides the backgrOlUld for a crucial article in the debate over acquired and infused cardinal virtues, Summa Theologiae I-II 63,4. 35Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II 4,3. 36 For a particularly clear example of this with regard to the cardinal virtues, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 65,1.

14

Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues

accessible to unaided reason. Thus they can be oriented toward natural human flourishing, with the measure of human reason, which would "fmm" such virtues. When this occurs they are true virtues. Of course, when charity is infused they are then measured by, i.e., given their fOlTIl by, the Divine rule.37 However, the theological virtues have God as their object. To be directed to God (in the sense that God is object of the theological virtues, not in the sense of natural knowledge of God through His effects) is beyond the capacity of unaided human reason and therefore a gift, even in the case of dead faith. What provides the form to theological virtues is charity. Since there is no natural faith (given its object), there is no other measure to provide fOlTIl to faith. Hence it is unfolTIled, and not a virtue. This explains why acquired cardinal virtues can be virtues and dead faith carmot, even while the acts of belief in dead faith are accurate and thus it is rightly called in some sense "gift." Nevertheless, this not insignificant difference does not impinge upon the common dynamic of how in both cases a habit inclining toward acts of one material object is informed by charity. Indeed Thomas' central point in describing this dynamic is that in such situations the new habit is the "same habit," in the sense of object. So what can we learn from this inquiry into lifeless and living faith about the acquired and infused cardinal virtues? First, certain proponents of the coexistence view have a legitimate concern that is very similar to that of William of Auxerre, who rightly claims it would be unfitting if the arrival of charity and living faith were to cast away lifeless faith, or even more if the departure of charity and living faith entailed the "gain" oflifeless faith. Coexistence proponents similarly think it unfitting if the arrival of charity and infused cardinal virtues were to cast off acquired cardinal virtues, since grace should not result in the loss of a good, and since there is such obvious continuity of action before and after conversion in the person who previously possessed acquired cardinal virtues. Coexistence proponents find it even more unfitting if the loss of charity and infused cardinal virtues entailed the "gain" of acquired cardinal virtues. Thomas' solution to this regarding lifeless I living faith applies to acquired I infused cardinal virtues. When charity arrives the acquired cardinal virtues become infused cardinal virtues. There is continuity but change. They are perfected, given a new form ("transformed") by charity.38 These habits are the same in the activity 37Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 63,4. 38This is how Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. 3 d. 23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 1 s.c. 1 is rightly interpreted: "The corning of grace does not take away acquired habits; therefore much less does it take away the infused habit offaith." The whole point of this article (4) is describing the change from lUlformed to formed faith. Since both habits are

William C. Mattison III

15

to which they directly pertain, their object.39 The impact of Thomas' claim that both a lifeless and living faith, tliough importantly different, are in the sense of object the "same habit" is clear here. The same may be said of the infused and acquired cardinal virtues, which, though importantly different, are in the sense of object the "same habit." This is why, say, infused temperance and acquired temperance are both rightly called "temperance." Can botli be said to exist together?40 Thomas' argument against Alexander of Hales against the coexistence of lifeless and living faith in one person applies also to the coexistence of acquired and infused cardinal virtues. Just as Thomas claims "fOlmed and unformed faith do not differ in species" [as in natural species, or object],41 nor do acquired and infused cardinal virtues. Thomas draws from this that it cannot be said of lifeless and living faith "tliat both acts and habits are there together." The same is true of acquired and infused cardinal virtues, for the same reason Thomas offers: "it is not possible for two forms of one species to exist at the same time [in the same subject], because forms are diversified in number by reason of diversity of matter or subject."42 faith, one is not "taken a-..vay." But it is indeed in-formed, or transformed, such that lifelessness is no longer there even though faith remains. Similarly, with the acquired virtues, their lack of being informed by charity "is removed by charity," to apply Thomas' words on faith to cardinal virtue. 390ne might even go so far as to say that the infused virtues can perform the acts the acquired virtues perform, though now toward a different end. This is not an incidental difference, as seen in I-II 63,4. After all Thomas claims "formed faith can perform every act which formless faith performs" (De veritate XIV7). 400ne recent attempt to explain the relationship between acquired and infused virtues in the Christian is to posit the ongoing presence of "virtual" acquired virtues with infused virtues. For an example of this, see W. Scott Cleveland and Brandon Dahrn, "The Virtual Presence of Acquired Virtues in the Christian," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93. 1 (2019): 75-100. This scholarship is an excellent example of trying to accOlUlt for both the formal differences of acquired and infused virtues, and also the seeming residual influence of prior habituation. In the end Cleveland and Dahm's virtually present acquired virtue is "no longer a full habit but now remains virtually in a less-than-habit disposition of a power" (96). This claim means that acquired virtues, qua habits, do not in fact coexist with infused virtues. Despite attempting to chart a middle course this essay appears to fall on what the authors call the "transformation" side of the debate. After all, supporters of the transformation view readily recognize that even contrary dispositions (not habits) are compatible with infused virtues, so smely residual dispositions from prior acquired virtue habituation may persist. 41Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. 3 d. 23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 3. 42Scriptum Super Sententiis 1. 3 d. 23 q. 3 a. 4 qa. 3.

16

Revisiting the Relationship between Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues

In conclusion, Thomas is far more explicit and clear about the ways that lifeless faith becomes living (and vice versa) than he is about tbe ways that the acquired cardinal virtues become infused cardinal virtues (and vice versa). Though there are not insignificant dis-analogies between lifeless faith and acquired cardinal virtues, those differences are not significant for how each sort of habit is informed by charity. Thus we can leam much about the relationship between acquired and infused cardinal virtues in one person from Thomas' thought on the relationship between lifeless faith and living faith. \¥hat we learn is that acquired and infused cardinal virtues cannot coexist in the same person. We also learn how acquired cardinal virtues "become" infused cardinal virtues (or vice versa), a claim that follows from these importantly different habits nonetbeless being tbe "sarne habit" in the sense of their object.

THE VIRTUAL PRESENCE OF THE CARDINAL VIRTUES LLOYD NEWTON

The question before us is whether, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, Christians can possess the acquired cardinal virtues.1 Traditionally, most Thomists affinn that they can possess the acquired cardinal virtues, even though they also possess the infused cardinal virtues .' Yet not all Thomistic scholars agree. Contrary to the traditional reading, William Mattison has recently argued that since Christians have been infused with the cardinal virtues at baptism, they carmot also possess the acquired cardinal virtues.3 Mattison's claim is surprising, given that Thomists have traditionally taught otherwise and given that one passage in Aquinas' Sentence Commentary very clearly indicates that they can: "Infused virtue is together with acquired virtue, which is clear in the adult who, having acquired virtue, approaches baptism, since he does not receive less infused virtue than a child."4

lNot only was the current session, hosted at the annual medieval conference at Kalamazoo, focused on this question, but Mattison's thesis was the subject of an entire conference hosted by the Thomas Institut in Utrecht in 2017. 2Williarn C. Mattison III, "Can Christians Possess the Acquired Cardinal Virtues," Theological Studies, 72 (20 1 1 ), 558-85, p. 559. Although Mattison's article was published 7 years ago, he continues to maintain the view that a person with the infused virtues cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues. 3Ibid. 4In III Sent d. 33 q. 1 a. 2 qc. 4 s.c. 2: 'Praeterea, duaeformae ejusdem speciei non possunt esse in uno subjecto. Sed virtus infusa est simul cum virtute acquisita, ut patel in adulto qui habens virtutem acquisitam ad Baptismum accedit, qui non minus recipit de infusis quam puer. Ergo virtus acquisita et infusa differunt specie.' Admittedly, this passage is in a 'sed contra' argmnent immediately preceding Aquinas' resolution of the broader question. However, the fact that Aquinas does not raise issue with the argmnent is a strong indication that this is indeed his view. I will look at this text and the larger sUlTOlUlding text from his Sentence Commentary in more detail in the second section of this paper.

18

The Virtual Presence of the Cardinal Virtues

So why does Mattison insist on the opposite position, viz., that Christians cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues? Very simply, I think that he misreads a central passage in the Summa Theologica. Thus, in what follows, I propose to accomplish the following three goals. In the first section, I want to focus on the original article in which Mattison argues for the contrary position, showing that this particular article has a false premise in its reasoning. Mattison's argument in this article relies almost exclusively on the shorter, more summative texts on this topic found in Aquinas' Summa Theologica and not on the more extensive treatments of this issue in his Commentary on the Sentences or in his Disputed Questions on the Virtues. Thus, in the second section, I want to examine the relevant passages where Aquinas addresses this issue, both those found in the Summa Theologica as well as the pertinent passages found in his Commentary on the Sentences and the Disputed Questions on Virftte .5 But even without a more detailed knowledge of the longer passages found in the latter two work� I think Mattison fundamentally misreads Aquinas because he fails to consider the broader, psychological and teleological framework within which Aquinas addresses these issues. Thus, in the third section of this article, I wish to sketch Thomas's understanding of human nature within its larger psychological and teleological framework. In doing so, I do not attempt to argue that Christians can possess both the acquired and infused cardinal virtues, since Aquinas clearly indicates that they can. Rather, my goal is to show how Aquinas' treatment of the virtues is part of a larger, more comprehensive view ofthe world, and thus how his treatment ofthe cardinal virtues must be interpreted by the larger framework of his other writings. Let us begin by considering Mattison's claim. Section I

Mattison's recent article addressing this question consists of two main sections, in the first of which he develops two main arguments as to why Christians cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues. Although he gives two distinct arguments, by his 0\Vll admission, those arguments are interrelated. More importantly for this paper, the faulty premise in the first argument is the same for the second argument, and is reiterated several times

5These passages are not, to my knowledge translated into English anywhere. Thus, in an effort to move the debate to the next level and to aid the average reader, I am providing an English translation of four of the questions from his Commentary on the Sentences that address this issue as an appendix to this article.

Lloyd Ne-wton

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throughout the paper. Thus, refuting the first argument will suffice to disprove his overall claim. The first argument is summarized by the author in the following 7 statements: 1 . The human person wills all for an end (STh I-II, q. 1 , a. l). 2. Every human person has one last end (STh I-II, q. 1, a. 4 and 5). 3. The human person wills all that he wills for the last end (happiness) (STh I-II, q. 1, a. 6 and 7). 4. Happiness is twofold, natural and supernatural (STh I-II, q. 62, a. 1). 5. The virtues by which one wills natural happiness as one's last end are always acquired and never infused (DQCV, q. 4, ad. 3). 6. The virtues by which one wills supernatural happiness as one's last end are always infused and never acquired (STh I-II, q. 63, a. 2). 7. Therefore, the human person directed toward the last end of supernatural happiness cannot possess the acquired cardinal virtues.

Since I disagree with his conclusion, it is imperative for me to find fault with one of more of his premises. In this instance, I argue that the author misunderstands the second premise, viz., that "Every human person has one last end." In support of this premise, the author appeals to STh I-II, q. 1, articles 4 and 5.6 Let us look more closely at these two questions. The first question is article 4 of the I-II, q. L The English edition, published by the English Dominicans, phrases the question this way: "Whether there is one last end of human life?" Unfortunately, this is not an accurate translation of the Latin, which reads: utrum sit aliquis ultimusfinis humanae vitae. A more literal translation would be: whether there is some ultimate end of human life? Tellingly, it does not ask whether there is one last end, just whether there is an ultimate end. For what is at issue in this question is not whether there is one ultimate end, but whether the ultimate end is finite or infinite. This becomes clear when one looks at the objections. The first objection argues that: "it would seem that there is no last end of human life, but that we proceed to infinity. For Good is essentially diffusive, as Dionysius states."7 Similarly, the second and third objections each argue that the end is infinite. In reply to this question, S1. Thomas argues that the ultimate end is in fact finite. As he states it: "Absolutely speaking, it is not possible to proceed indefinitely in the matter of ends, from any point of view." 'Ibid. p. 564. 7STh I-II, q. 1, art. 4.

20

The Virtual Presence ofthe Cardinal Virtues

However, one might object that the tenn 'ultimate' implies the notion of singularity or that there can be only one end. Perhaps this was why the English Dominicans glossed their translation ofthis question as to "\¥hether there is one last end of human life?". However, this is apparently not the way St. Thomas understands the question, because the very next article concerns the number of ends that can be had. Again, the English translation reads: "'Whether one man can have several last ends?" In this instance, the English translation is much closer to the Latin, which reads: utrum unius hominis possint esse plures ultimi fines. However, a more literal translation would be: whether there are many last ends with respect to one man. Now, a superficial reading of this question could give the impression that Aquinas thinks there is only one ultimate end for humans. After all, the first objection argues that "It would seem possible for one man's will to be directed at the same time to several things, as last ends." Moreover, the very nature of the Summa is such that Aquinas almost always disagrees with the objections. Thus, one might infer that since the initial objection is wrong, and that the opposite of 'several things' is 'one thing', Aquinas would maintain that there is only 'one' last end. However, we all know that Aquinas does not simply argue that the objections are wrong. Rather, he almost always concedes that the objections are true in some way, and that what is needed is a clarification, or disambiguation of how a particular word in the question is used in more than one way. With this caveat in mind, here is Aquinas' reply in full: I answer that, it is impossible for one man's will to be directed at the same time to diverse things, as last ends. Three reasons may be assigned for this. First, since everything desires its 0\Vll perfection, a man desires for his ultimate end, that which he desires as his perfect and cro\Vlling good. Hence Augustine says (De civ. Dei xix, 1): "In speaking of the end of good we mean now, not that it passes away so as to be no more, but that it is perfected so as to be complete." It is therefore necessary for the last end so to fill man's appetite, that nothing is left besides it for man to desire. "Which is not possible, if something else be required for his perfection. Consequently it is not possible for the appetite so to tend to two things, as though each were its perfect good. The second reason is because, just as in the process of reasoning, the principle is that which is naturally knO\V ll, so in the process of the rational appetite, i.e. the will, the principle needs to be that which is naturally desired. Now this must needs be one: since nature tends to one thing only. But the principle in the process of the rational appetite is the last end. Therefore that to which the will tends, as to its last end, is one.

Lloyd Ne-wton

21

The third reason is because, since voluntary actions receive their species from the end, as stated above (Article 3), they must needs receive their genus from the last end, which is cornmon to them all: just as natural things are placed in a genus according to a common fonn. Since, then, all things that can be desired by the will, belong, as such, to one genus, the last end must needs be one. And all the more because in every genus there is one first principle; and the last end has the nature of a first principle, as stated above. Now as the last end of man, simply as man, is to the whole hlUllan race, so is the last end of any individual man to that individual. Therefore, just as of all men there is naturally one last end, so the will of an individual man must be fixed on one last end.

Let us look at this reply more closely. The opening sentence simply says that: "It is impossible for one man's will to be directed at the same time to diverse things, as last ends.,,8 In keeping with common scholastic practice, Aquinas is not affitming a position, rather he is denying a false one: man's will carmot be directed to diverse last ends. However, to say that one cannot have diverse ends is not the same as to say that he carmot have more than one end. Consider the argument to the contrary in this question: On the contrary, That in which a man rests as in his last end, is master of his affections, since he takes therefrom his entire rille of life. Hence of gluttons it is "Written (Philippians 3 : 1 9): 'Whose god is their belly": viz. because they place their last end in the pleasures ofthe belly. Now according to Matthew 6:24, "No man can serve two masters," such, namely, as are not ordained to one another. Therefore it is impossible for one man to have several last ends not ordained to one another. (Italics added).

As this argument makes clear, it is perfectly possible, and I argue is the case, that there are multiple, essentially ordered last ends. Thus, contrary to the author's initial claim, Aquinas does not say that man has only one last end; what he says is that man carmot have diverse ends. FurthemlOre, the example of eating as an end is particularly instructive. A moment of reflection will reveal that all ends, other than a last end, can simultaneously be a means to a further end. For example, driving to a restaurant is a means to eating at that restaurant, where the end of the immediate action is the activity of eating. But apart from the aforementioned gluttons, eating is, strictly speaking, not a last end. And while it may be the end of driving to the restaurant, it is not a last end, for it is a means to living. Thus, eating is both a means and an end. But living, qua living, is a last end, 8STh I-II, q. 1 , art. 5.

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The Virtual Presence ofthe Cardinal Virtues

and is not a means to any other end.9 For neither the unbeliever, nor even the Christian, chooses to live as a means toward some further end. As such, living can be said to be a [mal end, since it is not chosen as a means to some further end. But a Christian, trusting in the faith that there is an afterlife as well as a judgment, may live in such a way that he orders the final end of living towards the further final end of ever-lasting life. But just because he orders living toward ever-lasting life, that does not make living a means of obtaining ever-lasting life. For according to the Christian faith, all people have ever-lasting life, whether they live another day or another forty years. Thus, it is possible that a person can have a series of essentially ordered last ends. But what does Aquinas mean by a series of essentially ordered ends? I wish to explore this topic more in the third section, but before turning to how it is possible, let us first look at the key texts that address this specific Issue. Section II

Besides his extended, general discussion of the virtues in his Disputed Questions on the Virtues, Aquinas discusses the acquired and infused cardinal virtues in three other places: Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 51, Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 63, and in his Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. 3, Distinction 33. Allow me to briefly summarize each of these questions.lO In Q. 51, Aquinas asks 4 questions about habits in general: 1) whether any habit is from nature?; 2) whether any habit is caused by acts?; 3) whether a habit can be caused by one act?; and 4) whether any habits are infused? To each question, Aquinas responds affimmtively. Thus, some habits are innate, some are acquired by one or more acts, and some are infused, i.e., are divine gifts.

9Granted, living is not the last end ofman qua man, but is simply the last ofman qua living being, that is, it is the last end of his vegetative soul. As we will discuss in the next section, happiness is the last end of man qua man. Readers familiar with Aquinas will recognize the parallel between the will, which is innately oriented toward the highest good, namely happiness, and the free-will, which chooses the means toward that ultimate end, on the one hand, and living and eating, on the other. For while we choose what and when to eat, no one, I argue, simply chooses to live, in the same -way that no one chooses to seek happiness as an end. lOI presmne that most readers interested in this topic are quite familiar with these texts, so I will not restate the texts here. Besides, my argmnent concerns a broader interpretive approach, not dissecting any one particular sentence uttered by Aquinas.

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Having affitmed something true about habit as a genus, twelve questions later Aquinas asks four similar questions, this time about the species of habits, i.e., virtues in particular: 1) whether any moral virtues are innate?; 2) whether any moral virtues are acquired? 3) whether any moral virtues are infused?; and 4) whether acquired and infused virtues are the same in species? Again, Aquinas answers the first three questions affirmatively, such that some virtues are, in a way innate; some are acquired; and some are infused. Not surprisingly, the same four questions about virtue in the Summa Theologica were previously asked in his Commentary on the Sentences. Thus, in Bk. 3, distinction 33, art. 3, Aquinas asks: 1) whether the virtues are in us by nature?; 2) whether the virtues are acquired?; 3) whether the virtues are infused; 4) whether the acquired and infused virtues are the same in species?l1 Once again, Aquinas argues that some virtues are, in a way, innate, some are acquired, and some are infused. Since in each set of questions Aquinas clearly affirms that some habits and virtues are acquired, we are left with a broad interpretive question: how are we to understand Aquinas when he affirms that some virtues are indeed acquired? On Mattison's view, since Christians possess the infused cardinal virtues, and since we can only have one last end, when Aquinas says humans have acquired cardinal virtues, he must be referring to pagans or unbelievers. Indeed, Mattison is adamant that Christians, at least insofar as they are in a state of grace, carmot possess acquired cardinal virtues. But such a view, I argue, encounters three, broad interpretive difficulties. First, following Aquinas, I qualify the answer to the question regarding innate virtues by saying that some virtues are, in a way, innate. 'Why the qualification? As is well known, one common philosophical position is platonism, which argues that knowledge, for instance, is innate, and that all learning is simply remembering. On such a platonic background, all virtues are seen to be innate. Furthermore, although Aquinas, following Aristotle ultimately modifies this view, he does not come out and simply dismiss it or claim that it is \¥fong. Rather, as he almost always does, Aquinas grants that there is some truth in the platonic view. Virtues are innate insofar as there is an innate capacity, or potentiality for virtue.12 These innate virtues l lSumma Theologica I-II, Q. 63 12See his lengthy discussion of this in Disputed Questions on Virtue, Q. 8, where he distinguishes between potencies, or capacities, that are pmely passive and those that are partly passive and partly active. In the same question, Aquinas distinguishes

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The Virtual Presence ofthe Cardinal Virtues

are fulfilled, however, by either activities or infusion. As he says in in Commentary on the Sentences, Some beginning (of virtue) is from nature, as a fonn exists in the potency of matter, and the knowledge (science) of a conclusion exists in lUliversal principles: since what is learned in the particular, is known prior in the lUliversal, and the virtues preexist in the natural order toward the good of the virtue, which is in the reason knowing a good of this kind, and also in the will naturally desiring it; and in some way, it is in the inferior bodily (parts), insofar as those (parts) are naturally subject to reason . . . (however) the fulfillment of the forms, i.e., insofar as they are in act, is from an extrinsic agent: indeed the fulfillment (or actuality) of science is from doctrine or discovery; however, (the fulfillment or actuality) of virtue is from habituation or from infusion. 13

However, nowhere does Aquinas distinguish between the virtues that are innate for Christians versus those virtues that are innate for unbelievers. Rather, virtues in general are, in a sense, innate to humans. Presumably, then, both Christians and unbelievers have innate virtues. But on Mattison's view, we are faced with the following odd position: Christians can have innate virtues, but they can't have acquired virtues, even though innate virtues are, on Aquinas' view, simply the seeds, or passive potencies, of acquired virtues. This last claim brings me to my second general criticism: when Aquinas talks about acquired and infused virtues, he nowhere limits or specifies that acquired virtues only pertain to unbelievers. True, he does say that infused virtues are given to believers, who by God's grace, have been granted more virtues, both theological virtues and infused cardinal virtues. But nowhere in his treatment does he say that Christians can't have acquired virtues, nor does he suggest that when he talks about acquired virtues, he is only talking about virtues that pertain to pagans. Indeed, arguably, it makes little sense for Aquinas to go into such depth about acquired virtues if Christians can't acquire any virtues. Yet, on Mattison's view, one is left to wonder why Aquinas talks at all about acquired cardinal virtues, if those virtues have

between the innate disposition toward virtue that all men share, and the innate dispositions toward virtue that some men in particular share, which is due either to "natural makeup or celestial influence." Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Virtue, trans. Ralph McInerny (South Bend, Ind. : St. Augustine's, 1999), pg. 50. 13Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences. Thus, in Bk. 3, distinction 33, art. 3, q. 1 a. 2 qc. 1 co. Translation mine.

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little or no bearing on the Christian life. 14 By contrast, Aquinas is very clear that Christians are not to follow the ceremonial aspects ofthe Old Testament law. If Christians cannot possess or acquire virtues by their 0\Vll acts, would not one reasonably expect Aquinas to say something along these lines? But the fact that Aquinas talks at length about acquired cardinal virtues brings me to my last, general difficulty: what about the other virtues? Assuming that the telTIl 'cardinal virtues' refer to the four major or general virtues of prudence, courage, moderation, and justice, one is left wondering about all of the specific virtues that Aquinas routinely discusses in other parts of his works. For example, Aquinas recognized the five intellectual virtues of wisdom, science, intuition, art, and prudence. These intellectual virtues are certainly not innate. Thus, they must be either acquired or infused. However, to my knowledge, not even Mattison wants to say that there is a distinctly Christian science or art.15 But on Mattison's view, either they are infused, since Christians carmot have acquired virtues, or they simply cannot be acquired by Christians. Neither alternative looks promlsmg. Similarly, when one turns to the latter parts of his discussion of the virtues in his Commentary on the Sentences, one will notice that Aquinas defends different kinds of courage that Aristotle discusses in his Politics, as well as different species of courage articulated by Macrobius, to say nothing of different kinds of temperance and prudence articulated by Cicero.!6 But if Aquinas defends Cicero's and Aristotle's insights into these virtues and their parts, then we are left wondering either how these pagans gained so much knowledge of infused virtue, or why does Aquinas take so much time articulating and defending types of virtues that have no meaning for Christians. Again, neither alternative looks promising.

14 It has been suggested that perhaps Aquinas discusses the acquired cardinal virtues insofar as they pertain to a Christian who is not in a state of grace. If this is the reason, however, it is not obvious from the text. Moreover, such a scenario would, I think, raise more questions about how a Christian transitions back and forth between possessing acquired cardinal virtues one moment and infused the next. To my knowledge, though, no such discussion exists. 15 The science oftheology being a crucial exception, of course. But this science relies upon accepting the premises on faith, not reason. 16See my translation of the basic outline ofBk. 3, Distinction 33, in the appendix to this article.

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The Virtual Presence ofthe Cardinal Virtues

Thus, one is left with the following, broad interpretive question: when Aquinas affitms the reality of acquired cardinal virtues, as well as other virtues, such as insight, art, science, etc., is he limiting these virtues to pagans, while Christians possess only the infused virtues? Or is it possible for Christians to possess both acquired and infused cardinal virtues? As Mattison admits, scholars traditionally interpret Aquinas in the latter way. To see why this is the more reasonable interpretation and why most Thomists endorse this view, let us tum once again to his Commentary on the Sentences. In the fourth article, Aquinas makes abundantly clear that he is talking about virtues with respect to one and the same person, namely a Christian. In asking whether acquired temperance is the same as infused temperance, the following argument is put forth: "infused virtue is simultaneously together with acquired virtue, as is evident in an adult who, having acquired virtue, approaches baptism, since he does not receive less of the infused virtue than a child. ,,17 In this argument, it is clear that a non­ Christian adult, who possess the moral virtue of temperance, is given the additional, infused virtue of temperance, which differs in species, but subsequently exists simultaneously in the newly baptized believer. In sum, Aquinas does not say what Mattison interprets him as saying namely that Christians have only one ultimate end. Rather, as I shall argue, Christians may have, and indeed often do have, a series of essentially ordered ends differentiated with respect to various aspects of the soul. But what does Aquinas mean by a series of essentially ordered ends? To see what this means, let us tum to the third section of this paper. Section III

To return briefly to Mattison's article, in the second section he rightly notices that Aquinas' ethics presuppose a "requisite psychological structure" which "persists in the life of graced virtue.,,18 However, nowhere does he connect the psychological basis or the political setting with the basic nature of virtues. Likewise, he nowhere in the article mentions the role of natural law, nor specifically the fourfold good that Aquinas articulates in q. 94, art. 2 of the I-II. There, S1. Thomas mentions the following four distinct goods: the first is the good of existence, which we share with all substances; 17In III Sent d. 33 q. 1 a. 2 qc. 4 s.c. 2: "Praeterea, duaeformae ejusdem speciei non possunt esse in uno subjecto. Sed virtus infusa est simu/ cum virtute acquisita, ut patet in adulto qui habens virtutem acquisitam ad Baptismum accedit, qui non minus recipit de infusis quam puer. Ergo virtus acquisita et infusa differunt specie." l8Ibid., p. 570.

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the second is the good we share with other animals (and arguably with all animated beings), namely the preservation of the family or species; the third good is the good of living in society; and the fourth is the good of reason, or knowing the truth. These four basic goods, I argue, are what Aquinas primarily has in mind when he speaks of 'essentially ordered' ends. To see how this is so, let us look more closely at Aquinas' basic view of human nature as it fits in with nature as a whole. i. Corporeal Beings

Although Aquinas does not say so explicitly, this fourfold good is obviously connected to the basic division of kinds as they are traditionally presented in Porphyry's tree, and these goods are arguably connected to the four cardinal virtues as well. Allow me to explain. In Porphyry's tree the highest genus substance is immediately divided into corporeal and incorporeal beings. Unlike the incorporeal beings, which presumably are identified with angels and such, corporeal beings are material beings. That is, they are three dimensional and so take up space. More importantly, as substances, they have a goal, or good, that they seek - namely to stay in existence. As Aquinas says elsewhere, all substances have an end, or good, which they seek, namely the preservation of their 0\Vll being.19 St. Thomas understands this goal as an imitation of the divine, whose essence is to exist, insofar as all corporeal beings strive to stay in existence. As physical beings, though, they are naturally changing - they come into existence and out of existence. That is, since they are not divine, they carmot stay in existence forever, but are governed by becoming. Nevertheless, they are teleologically structured to strive towards being, or remaining in existence, which is their good or end. Moreover, I argue that to stay in existence is a final or ultimate end. That is, existence is not a means to some further end. For no one chooses to exist - it rather is simply a given. ii. Plants - Living Beings

Of course, as we all know, no corporeal beings are simply corporeal - some are inanimate while others are animate or living. These latter beings have a new grade of existence that the others lack. Moreover, this new grade of being bestows new, additional goods to those that they already have as simply corporeal substances. That is, as living things, these corporeal beings are able to reproduce and thus to perpetuate their family or species. Thus, 19STh I-II, q. 94, art. 2.

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The Virtual Presence ofthe Cardinal Virtues

while individuals come and go, the family or species is in some sense eternal, and thus more divine.20 Central to Aquinas' understanding is that living things are hylomorphic composites, where the genus is related to, or taken from, matter and the specific difference is related to, or taken from, fOlTIl. As Aquinas states it, "there is the composition of fOlTIl with matter; and to this corresponds that composition of the intellect, whereby the universal whole is predicated of its part: for the genus is derived from common matter, while the difference that completes the species is derived from the fonn."21 That is, living things have a vegetative soul, which gives them a potency to various acts, such as taking in nutrition, growth, and reproduction. Stated another way, the soul, or form of the body, is both a fOlTIl or act of a prior matter or potency, and also, as such, a potency to new forms. For unlike simple corporeal substances, plants have the ability to reproduce. Before moving on, let me add three corollaries. First, while living things have a perfection that inanimate beings lack, this perfection does not come without a cost. Specifically, in order for the species to reproduce, it is not nOlTIlal for them to produce a mature being at once. Thus, not only do plants have an ability to reproduce, and thus to produce another being like themselves in fOlTIl, but they must also have the ability to grow and transfolTIl the other into themselves. Stated another way, the addition of a new grade of being comes at a price. That is, the introduction of new powers is not an unmixed blessing. The species may reproduce, but this involves a heavy cost. A second corollary is that this cost is offset by the ability to impose new forms. That is, in the process of growth and nutrition, the vegetative soul transforms lower corporeal things into higher things. When plants absorb nutrients from the soil, those nutrients are transfolTIled into living beings. As we will see, this ability to acquire forms will be a recurring theme at each level of being.

20ne species, or family, has a greater participation in divinity both in being more eternal and being alive. See STh I-II, q. 2, art. 5, ad 3, where Aquinas says: "Since the end corresponds to the beginning; this argmnent proves that the last end is the first beginning of being, in Whom every perfection of being is: Whose likeness, according to their proportion, some desire as to being only, some as to living being." 2lSTh I, q. 86, art. 5, ad. 3.

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The third corollary is that these new beings have additional goals, but that the new goals do not simply replace the previous goals. That is, the goal of reproduction and thus the preservation of the family or species does not replace the goal of self-preservation. Animated beings are still corporeal beings, and thus still have the goal of self-preservation. True, at times the individual must sacrifice the lower goal to achieve the higher goal, but that is not the norm. In fact, without self-preservation, the new goals could never be achieved. iii Animals - Sentient Beings

Let us return, though, to the basic view. As we know, not all living things are only such - some are also sentient. Thus, as we see in Porphyry's tree, living beings are divided into sentient and non-sentient beings, that is, into animals and plants. According to Aquinas, animals have an additional specification over and above plants: they have a sentient soul. Stated another way, the division of a genus into its two species is not an equal division, where both species have their 0\Vll proper specifying difference. Rather, what I am arguing for here is that one species that divides a genus has a specifying fonn or difference, which the other species simply lacks. In a moment, we will see how Aquinas describes this in relation to humans. In the meantime, let me restate the three corollaries as they pertain to this new level. First, as we saw before, this new soul or form both elevates the lower beings, but comes at a price. For sentient beings, like all animated beings, can grow and reproduce. But unlike plants, they are not passive in relation to their food or reproduction. That is, plants are entirely dependent and passive in relation to the weather. If the sun shines and it rains, then plants will grow, and ifnot, then they won't. Animals, on the contrary, have the ability to go after their food. They can seek it out, and are not dependent on waiting for their food to come to them, as are plants. Likewise, the ability to go after food entails that there are more choices and kinds of food to pursue. Unlike plants, animals not only depend on water and sunlight, but they also can consume other plants, or lower beings, while some, indeed, can even consume other animals. This last fact points us to the costs that are involved. Not only can animals actively consume other animals, but the reverse is equally and necessarily true: animals can be passively eaten by other animals. Taken together, these new abilities are identified by Aquinas as the capacity to sense the world

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The Virtual Presence ofthe Cardinal Virtues

aroundthem, to desire some objects and be averse to others, and the capacity to move locally.22 The second corollary concerns the way in which animals acquire new forms: animals not only tranSfOlTIl other substances into themselves, as all living things can, but they can also sense the other fOlTIlS too. Unlike plants, animals have a new relation to fOlliS: they are aware of them. 'While plants are able to transfOlTIl or change the fOlTIl of other substances, animals, insofar as they perceive their food, are also cognizant of those fOlTIlS. Here is how Aquinas describes the first two kinds of living beings: Now the powers of the soul are distinguished generically by their objects. For the higher a power is, the more universal is the objectto which it extends, as we have said above (77, 3, ad 4). But the object of the soul's operation may be considered in a triple order. For in the soul there is a power the object of which is only the body that is lUlited to that soul; the powers of this genus are called "vegetative" for the vegetative power acts only on the body to which the soul is lUlited. There is another genus in the powers of the soul, which genus regards a more lUliversal object namely, every sensible body, not only the body to which the soul is lUlited.23

That is, the senses have a more universal object insofar as they are able to perceive their surroundings. The third corollary involves a new set of goals or capacities. Allow me to explain. Another cost to animals is that qua animals, their food supply is limited and now requires cooperation amongst one another. Animals now compete with others for their food. However, this cost also has its remedies or benefits: animals, unlike plants, have the ability to function together socially to meet their needs. Thus there is now a third end over and above the other two: the preservation of the herd or society. Not only can animals reproduce and thus perpetuate their family or species, as all living things can, but they also can now perpetuate their 0\Vll unique group. This is a new end, over and above the other two. It is also another way in which these beings imitate the divine. That is, inanimate things imitate God insofar as He exists, living things imitate God insofar as He is alive and eternal, while animals imitate God insofar as the three divine persons have a communal relationship with one another. Moreover, it is important to realize that this new end does not simply replace the other two ends. A group cannot exist

22STh I, Q, 78, art. 1 . 23STh I, Q 78, art. ! .

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if the individual or species do not continue to exist. Thus we now have an essentially ordered series of ends: self-preservation; preservation of life, preservation of the species, and the preservation of the society. According to my view, each of these ends should be understood as a final end of a major power or capacity of the soul. They are ultimate or last ends because they are the first principle, if you will, of the basic potency or capacity of the various grades of substance.

iv. Humans - Rational Beings Having looked at the first three grades of being, let us return to Porphyry's tree for the final grade: the genus animal is divided into men and brute beasts. What differentiates man from the brute beasts is that he has a rational soul. Once again, we must remember that according to St. Thomas, the genus animal is taken from the matter, while the difference rational is taken from the form. Here is how Aquinas describes this aspect in STh I, q. 3, art. 5: A species is constituted of genus and difference. Now that from which the difference constituting the species is derived, is always related to that from which the genus is derived, as actuality is related to potentiality. For animal is derived from sensitive nature, by concretion as it were, for that is animal, which has a sensitive nature. Rational being, on the other hand, is derived from intellectual nature, because that is rational, which has an intellectual nature, and intelligence is compared to sense, as actuality to potentiality.24

So, as we saw before, the difference is taken from the fOlTIl, whereas the genus is taken from the matter. However, there is something else noteworthy about this quotation. An animal is one type of living thing, having a sensitive nature. But Aquinas simply says that animal is a 'concrete' instance of the genus animal. 'What I take him to be saying here is that animals do not have their 0\Vll specific difference over and above what they have as sensitive beings. In contrast, a human being is related to sensitive nature as act to potency. Stated another way, when a genus is divided into two species, one species has a positive fOlTIl or differentia, which is related to the genus as form to matter. The other species, however, is differentiated by a lack of that fOlTIl. As we will see in the next section, this understanding of

24STh I. q. 3. art. 5.

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The Virtual Presence ofthe Cardinal Virtues

specification will be extremely important as we answer the question of whether or not Christians possess the acquired cardinal virtues.25 Let me briefly say sometbing about the three corollaries as they pertain to this higher grade of existence. Like the otbers, this new grade of being both elevates and has its costs. An obvious benefit for humans is that the range of edible objects is also increased. By this, I don't mean simply tbathumans are onmivores, but that we have the capacity to cook our food and make foods that other animals, qua animals, carmot make, such as bread and wine, to say nothing of our ability to use knives and forks when we eat.26 But just as in the previous examples, these advantages do not come without a cost: while humans have a greater capacity than other animals, that capacity is not instinctively fonned. Rather, it is a raw plasticity that requires a great deal of education. Even when other animals have some learning to do, they do so instinctively. For example, if a carnivorous animal must learn from its parents how to hunt, it does so relatively soon after birth and does so instinctively. Not so with humans. Unlike other animals, at least one fourth of our life is spent learning, and indeed some of us will spend our entire lives learning. This learning is part of what is meant by the term 'virtue'. To repeat, humans have raw capacities that far outstrip the capacities of the other animals, and correspondingly, we have activities that far excel the activities of other animals. But those capacities and their corresponding activities, while part of our nature, are not naturally or instinctively developed. As we saw previously, they are innate in a sense. But only in a sense. This is where virtues enter. A virtue, as is well knO\vn, is what disposes someone to act well. That is, a virtue both perfects the raw capacity or faculty as such and it perfects tbe corresponding activity. Intimately connected to the notion of virtue is the second corollary. Humans have the ability to know their ends in a way that ainmals do not. That is, while animals can and must perceive their food in order to grow, humans can both perceive their food and know it as food, i.e., as an end. Thus, humans both sense food and grasp its intelligible nature. St. Thomas describes this new ability by saying that: "tbere is yet another genus in the powers of the soul, which genus regards a still more universal object 25This is not to say, of COlise, that there is a plurality of forms. Animals only have one soul a sentient soul, but that soul virtually contains all the powers beneath it. See STh I, q. 76, art. 3. 26Por an excellent, modem accOlUlt of this essentially Aristotelian notion, see Leon Kass, The Hungry Soul.

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namely, not only the sensible body, but all being in universal."27 In another place, Aquinas describes it thus: The nature of each thing is shmvn by its operation. Now the proper operation of man as man is to understand; because he thereby surpasses all other animals. Whence Aristotle concludes (Ethic. x, 7) that the ultimate happiness of man must consist in this operation as properly belonging to him. Man must therefore derive his species from that which is the principle of this operation. But the species of anything is derived from its fonn. It follows therefore that the intellectual principle is the proper fonn of man.28

The fact that humans can understand and know universal being leads us to the third corollary, namely that we have another end or goal that animals lack: namely, the preservation of knowledge and what is true, which Aquinas identifies as our ultimate happiness. Once again, we see that this new goal imitates the divine in a new way, namely insofar as God is the logos. Or, as Aristotle might phrase it, insofar as God is self-thinking thought. Moreover, to say that humans have a new end does not mean that they no longer have the lower ends. For in common with all substances, man has the good or end of remaining in existence; in common with all living things, he has the good of preserving his life as well as his kind or family; and in common with many animals, he has the good of living in a community; but beyond these three goods, he has the end oftruth, since only man can know what is true and preserve that knowledge. Finally, while man can know all sorts of things, e.g., from which kinds of substances are edible and which are poisonous, to a knowledge of his 0\Vll family, and who belongs to his community, the highest form of knowledge concerns God himself. Following Aristotle, Aquinas defines this last end as man's ultimate happiness. However, as we all know, the knowledge of God that is available to us on a natural level is extremely limited. For as S1. Thomas famously states in the opening question of the Summa Theologica, "the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be knO\Vll by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture ofmany errors.29 In other words, man's natural desire for happiness is imperfect, and as such, points to the possibility of a more perfect kind of happiness, his beatific happiness. Indeed, Mattison

27STh I, Q78, art. 1 . 28STh I, q. 76, art. 1 . 29STh I, q. 1 , art. 1 .

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The Virtual Presence of the Cardinal Virtues

recognizes this point in his initial argument, when he says that "Happiness is twofold, natural and supernatural (STh I-II, q. 62, a. 1)."30 Now that we've looked more closely at the grades of being as they are presented in Porphyry's tree, I think it is clear that each grade of being has its own ultimate end. Substances have the end of simply staying in existence; animals have the additional end of staying alive and, to the extent possible, preserving the family; sentient beings have the additional end of living in community; while humans have the additional end of knowing the truth and preserving it. However, each grade retains an ultimate end in its O\Vll right, although in some ways, the newer end always subtly tranSfOlTIlS the lower ends as well as preserves them. It is these four basic ends, I contend, that may be essentially ordered ends, with self-preservation being the lowest form and knowledge of the truth being the highest. Conclusion

Contrary to the novel claim put forth by William Mattison, I have attempted to defend the traditional claim that Christians can possess both acquired and infused cardinal virtues. Toward that end, I have argued that Mattison fundamentally misreads a key text on the unity of the last end. According to Mattison, there can only be a single, final end, which must order all of our actions. I have argued that the telTIl 'final' does not mean simply one and only. Or, as Aristotle might say, the telTIl 'final' has many meanings, and that properly interpreted, humans have a series of 'essentially ordered' final ends, culminating in the twofold end of imperfect and perfect happiness, the former attained by acquired virtues, the latter by the infused virtues.

30 Mattison, p. 564.

AQUINAS ' S COMMENTARY ON THE SENTENCES AND THE RELATION BETWEEN INFUSED AND ACQUIRED VIRTUE ANGELA KNOBEL

Aquinas's notion that some virtues are "infused" in man by God along with the gift of grace has garnered renewed attention in recent years. With that attention has come a renewed debate about how the virtues that God infuses are related to the so-called "acquired" virtues - the virtues that Aquinas, following Aristotle, thinks that man can cause in himself via his own repeated good acts. Contemporary interpreters of Aquinas disagree on several crucial questions, not least on whether the individual in a state of grace can still be said to possess acquired virtues, or whether any existing virtues are "transformed" into infused virtues along with the gift of grace. The majority of contemporary scholars who disagree on this question, however, still seem to agree that the Christian in a state of grace perfOlTIlS unified actions: they agree, that is to say, that the Christian does not sometimes cultivate infused virtues and sometimes cultivate acquired virtues. In this paper, I want to argue that some of Aquinas's remarks in his Commentary on the Sentences imply something rather different. In what follows, I will first make some brief remarks about contemporary scholarship. I will then examine two texts, both taken from the first question of distinction 33 of Book III of Aquinas's Sentences. I will argue that these texts, which contain claims not found in Aquinas's later writings, imply that the early Aquinas may have understood the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues very differently than many contemporary scholars do. My aim in making this arglUllent is neither to argue that Aquinas's early view was correct nor to claim that his early view is representative of his mature thought. I raise this point merely as further evidence of a claim I have made elsewhere, namely that it might not be possible to find a single, consistent "theory" of the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues in Aquinas.

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Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between Infused and Acquired Virtue

I. Contemporary Scholarship

Contemporary interpreters of Aquinas disagree about how the gift of grace and the corresponding infusion of the theological and moral virtues affect existing acquired virtues. On one view, the gift of grace tranSfOlTIlS any existing acquired virtues, so that the Christian in a state of grace possesses one and only one kind of virtue, namely infused virtue.1 Other contemporary scholars, however, resist the view that the acquired virtues are simply transformed or otherwise absorbed by the infused virtues. On this latter view, the acquired virtues remain in the Christian in a state of grace. But merely asserting that the acquired virtues "remain" is insufficient, because the acquired virtues might "remain" in different ways. On the one hand, the acquired virtues could remain in such a way that they comprise some essential "core" of the infused virtues: they could provide, as some have proposed, the "matter" which the infused virtues fonn,' or the "psychological structure" that the infused virtues make use of. 3 Still other scholars maintain that individual acts of the virtuous Christian simultaneously contain distinct acts of both infused and acquired virtue 4 Although these two schools of thought seem to diverge dramatically (after all, one side maintains that all the Christian's virtues are infused virtues, while the other mauitauis that the Christian possesses both infused and acquired virtues) there is actually a great deal of similarity between them. Under both interpretations, the Christian in a state of grace produces one,

lThis is the view, for instance of Bill Mattison. See Bill Mattison, "Can Christians Possess the Acquired Cardinal Virtues?" Theological Studies 72 (201 1):558-585. Although he mentions it only in passing, this also appears to have been the view of Etienne Gilson. See Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy o/Thomas Aquinas (New York: Random House 1956): Other contemporary scholars who appear to hold this view include Jean Porter, Henn Goris, Eleonore Stump and Andrew Pinsent. 2This is the view ofRenee Mirkes. See Renee Mirkes, "Aquinas's Doctrine of Moral Virtue and its Significance for Theories of Facility," The Thomist 61 (2): 189-218. 3See Romanus Cessario, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (South Bend: University ofNotre Dame Press 2008). 4See for instance David Decosimo, Ethics as a Work o/Charily (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2014).

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unified, kind of moral action.5 He does not, on either view, sometimes cultivate acquired virtues and sometimes cultivate infused virtues. 6 In what follows, I want to argue that aspects of Aquinas's description of the infused and acquired virtues in his Commentary of the Sentences are difficult to square with this contemporary consensus. In particular, I will argue, Aquinas makes a set of claims, which taken as a whole, imply a very different picture ofthe Christian moral life. In addition to the clear assertion - also made in later texts - that the infused and acquired virtues arise from different principles, are ordered to different ends, and produce different acts, in this early text Aquinas also makes three finther claims about the infused and acquiredvirtues. First, he seems to unequivocally deny the "transfOlmation" view: he asserts that the Christian possesses both infused and acquired virtues. But even beyond that, Aquinas's further remarks mitigate against the view that the infused and acquired virtues cooperate to produce a single, unified Christian act. For Aquinas claims that unlike the infused virtues, which produce acts proportionate to their end, the Christian's acquired virtues are meritorious but only "externally" ordered to supernatural beatitude. Second, Aquinas claims that the infused and acquired virtues perfect man for different kinds of life: the latter for the "active" life, the former for the "spiritual" life. Together, these claims produce a picture where the Christian cultivates different kinds of virtue for different areas of life, and where some of those virtues - the acquired - "merit" supernatural beatitude without being distinctively different than those virtues the pagan might acquire. II. Two Texts from Aquinas's Sentences Commentary

In this section, I want to consider two texts from Aquinas's Sentences commentary, which occur in close proximity to each other. Each of these texts have parallels in later texts of Aquinas, but these early texts differ from the later ones in some crucial respects.

5Some advocates of the second view are willing to entertain the possibility that an act of infused virtue might occasionally occur apart from an act of acquired virtue, but they treat this as the exception rather than the nonn. 6Some scholars do hold this view. It has most recently been defended by John Bowlin. It also appears to be the view of Michael Sherwin. See John Bowlin, "Elevating and Healing," The Journal o/Moral Theology 2014 3(1 ):39-53. See also Michael Sherwin, "Infused Virtue and the Effects of Acquired Vice: A Test Case for the Theory of Infused Cardinal Virtues," The Thomist 2009 73(1):29-52.

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Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between Infused and Acquired Virtue

Sentences d.33 q. l a.2 qaA

Sentences d.33 q. l a.2 qaA asks whether the infused and acquired virtues are specifically different; i.e. whether they belong to different species of virtue. In his Sed Contra Aquinas, in the context of offering a general reason why the infused and acquired virtues must necessarily differ in species, Aquinas directly asserts that the Christian possesses both infused and acquired virtues. The infused and acquired virtues carmot belong to the same species, says Aquinas, because one can possess both types of virtue at once, as is evidenced in the example of adult baptism: many adults already possess acquired virtues when they are baptized. But since one does not receive any less infused virtue merely because one already possesses acquired virtues, it must be the case that both virtues exist together. Since one cannot possess different virtues of the same species, it must be the case that infused and acquired virtues belong to different species. This general response leaves a great deal unsaid. It does not, for instance, explain why one carmot possess two different virtues of the same species. But more importantly, it also should not be taken to offer any clear resolution to the vexed questions mentioned in the introduction. It certainly does seem incompatible with the view that Christians possess no acquired virtues whatsoever; i.e. that all their virtues are only infused virtues. But it does not explain how the infused and acquired virtues are related to each other. It does not indicate, for instance, whether or not the infused and acquired virtues somehow work together to fOlTIl a single, cohesive Christian act. The surrounding article and the fourth article of the same question, however, have clear implications for this thesis. In what follows, I will argue that these texts offer evidence that the early Aquinas envisioned a strong separation between infused and acquired virtue. In the body of the article, Aquinas returns to the topic under discussion: whether the infused and acquired virtues differ in species. He begins by making two assertions. First, he says that "ends are the principles in matters of action" and second, that things that do not arise from (reduce to) the same principles do not belong to the same species. If there were a science, for instance, that did not reduce to naturally knO\vn principles, it would not be of the same species as other sciences. As is innnediately obvious from his subsequent discussion, Aquinas is referring here to a principle that he consistently uses, both in his general account of virtue and in his explanations of how infused and acquired virtues differ from each other.

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When Aquinas addresses whether virtue is natural to man, he consistently compares the acquisition of virtue to the acquisition of scientific knowledge. We do not naturally possess the moral virtues, any more than we naturally possess the intellectual virtues. We do, however, naturally possess the "beginnings" of both: the active and passive principles that allow us to cause such virtues in ourselves.7 We are not naturally virtuous, just as we do not naturally possess the fullness of scientific knowledge. But we all, simply in virtue of our specific nature, do possess natural habitual knowledge of "principles of things to be known and done".8 The "principles of things to be knO\vn" are the first speculative principles - man's natural knowledge of the principle of non-contradiction, that the whole is greater than the part, and so on. The "principles of things to be done" are the first practical principles: man's natural habitual knowledge of the fIrst principles of the natural law.9 These naturally knO\vn principles, says Aquinas, are the "seeds" ofthe intellectual and moral virtues.10 Since all men naturally know these principles, and since they both desire the good of reason and possess powers capable of being disposed by reason, all men are naturally capable of causing virtues in themselves through their repeated good acts. This background helps to explain Aquinas's assertion that "ends are as principles in matters of action." Man's natural habitual knowledge of the first practical principles, in Aquinas's view, gives him an inchoate and incomplete knowledge of and desire for his natural end. The basic moral principles that all men naturally know from their first interactions with the world give man a basic orientation to, and an imperfect grasp of, the good of reason. It is in this way that "ends serve as principles in matters of action". If the very principles that originate action stem from the end to which action is ordered, it would seem to follow that a difference in end would necessarily correspond to a difference in the very principles that give rise to action in the first place. This is precisely Aquinas's view, and why he claims that actions that do not reduce to the same principles cannot belong to the same species. 'When Aquinas explains the difference between the infused and acquired virtues, he consistently insists that the difference in end means that each type of virtue must arise from different principles. This is a claim 7Aguinas, STh I-II g.63 a.I, dVirtComm a.8, and Sent d.33 g.I a.2 ga.I 8Aguinas, STh I-II g.63 a. I, see also the texts mentioned in footnote 1 . 9Agunas, de VirtComm a.8. Scholars disagree, of COlise, about which ofthe precepts of the natural law are naturally knO\vn by man, but that disagreement is outside the scope of our present discussion. lOIbid.

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Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between Infused and Acquired Virtue

that Aquinas makes as consistently in his later texts as he does in his early texts. A virtue ordered to supernatural beatitude cannot arise from man's natural habitual knowledge ofthe first principles of the natural law and his natural desire for the good of reason. Indeed, it is Aquinas's view that the theological virtues play at the supernatural level the role that the first practical principles play at the natural level. When Aquinas discusses the need for the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, he consistently appeals to our need to have principles inclining us to our end. We can't receive a new end unless we are also given some kind of order or inclination to that end: "it should be said that in all things that act for the sake of an end, there must be an inclination to the end and a certain commencing of the end; otherwise they would never act for the sake of the end. "11 We are already inclined to our natural end insofar as we possesses natural habitual knowledge of the first practical principles and insofar as we naturally desire the good of reason. But we (of course) have no such natural inclination to supernatural beatitude: "the end to which the divine liberality has ordered or predestined man, namely the enjoyment of itself, is elevated wholly above the power of created nature. Hence man does not have a sufficient inclination to that end from his natural endowments alone."12 Thus if we are to be ordered to participation in the divine life, we must receive an additional corresponding inclination to the end of supernatural beatitude: "so something additional must be added to man, by which he may have an inclination to that end, as by his natural endowments he has an inclination to the end connatural to him. ,,13 These are the theological virtues, which incline man to supernatural beatitude in the same way that the first practical principles incline man to the good of reason: "these things added over and above his natural endowments are called theological virtues".14 The acts that arise from out of natural first principles will be proportionate to our natural end, while the acts that arise from the theological virtues will be proportionate to our supernatural end. The infused and acquired virtues are specifically different, then, not merely because they are ordered to different ends, but because they arise from different principles and produce acts proportionate to different ends. The natural virtues arise from man's natural knowledge of the first practical principles and his natural desire for the good of reason. The supernatural, l lAguinas, Sent III d.23 g.l a.4 ga.3. See also STh I-II g.62 a.1 12Ibid. 13Ibid. 14Ibid.

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infused virtues arise from the theological virtues, which incline man to his supernatural fulfillment in the same way that the first practical principles incline man to his natural fulfillment. The act of infused and acquired virtue

Since Aquinas holds that the infused and acquired virtues arise from different principles and are ordered to different ends, it is not surprising that he should also claim - as he proceeds to - that each type of virtue gives rise to distinctively different acts. In his response, Aquinas appeals to a key distinction - he says that the acts of infused and acquired virtue differ formally but not materially. Although scholars have interpreted this distinction in different ways,15 Aquinas's use of it here clearly seems to indicate that to say that two different virtuous acts have the same "matter" merely means that the acts are both concerned with materially the same object. The second objection argues that the infused and acquired virtues are not specifically different because habits are specified by their acts and objects. Since both infused and acquired temperance have the same act and object, the objector argues, they caMot be specifically different habits.!6 Aquinas replies by distinguishing acts that are materially the same from acts that are formally the same. Although Aquinas is not precise about what he means by this distinction, its meaning can be inferred from the answer he offers. Infused and acquired virtues, says Aquinas, seek the mean with respect to a different end. Acquired virtue considers only what is proportionate to the civil good, while infused virtue considers what is proportionate "to the good of eternal glory" .17 Because of this, some things that would be excessive according to the standards of acquired virtue will be moderate according to the standards of infused virtue, "as for example that a man fast, and that he offer himself voluntarily to death for the sake of defending the faith."18 If we connect Aquinas's final example with the initial objection and the distinction he offers to resolve it, we arrive at some clear indications of both how Aquinas thinks the acts of infused and acquired virtue differ and of what he means when he says the acts are the same materially but different 15Cessario, for instance, seems to interpret "materially the same" as "outwardly identical". See Cessario, Ch.? 16Aguinas, Sent III d.33 g.1 a.2 ga.4 obj.2 17Ibid. 18Ibid.

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Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between Infused and Acquired Virtue

formally. It is clear from Aquinas's examples that he thinks that because the infused and acquired virtues aim at different goods, each seeks a different mean. This, at a minimum, means that what the acquired virtues require sometimes differs from what the infused virtues require, as the examples of fasting and martyrdom make clear.19 Given Aquinas's initial claim, namely that the acts of infused and acquired virtues are the same "materially," this means that the act of acquired and infused temperance will be "materially" the same, even when the actual actions differ. A reasonable interpretation, then, is that acts of acquired and infused virtue involve the same "matter" insofar as they have to do with the same action type: moderating the pleasures of touch, or standing filTIl in the face of danger, and so on. Acts of both infused and acquired temperance have to do with moderating the concupiscible faculty, just as acts of both infused and acquired fortitude have to do with moderating the irascible appetite, and so on. But they do not moderate those appetites in the same way and hence are not fOlTIlally the same. Thus, contrary to what the objector asserts, the infused and acquired virtues do not have the same act and object and hence are not specifically the same. This is consistent with the claims Aquinas makes in later texts. As is perhaps already clear, nothing about Aquinas's account ofthe specific difference between natural and supernatural virtue is particularly surprising. He bases his account of the specific difference on a claim he consistently makes throughout his career, namely that the very principles that incline man to supernatural beatitude are different from the principles that incline him to the good of reason. The fact that each type of virtue arises from different principles and is ordered to a different end makes Aquinas's repeated assertions (in this text and others) that each type of virtue seeks a different mean perfectly reasonable. But Aquinas's account of the specific difference has interesting implications when read in light of the surrounding article. So far, Aquinas has argued that (1) the infused virtues exist together with or alongside the acquired virtues and that (2) the infused and acquired virtues produce specifically different acts: they arise from different principles, are proportionate to different ends, and seek a different mean. What is moderate by the standards of one virtue might be excessive by the standards of the other. But now Aquinas seems to assert a further claim: one way in which the two types of virtue don 't differ is in being meritorious. 19I have argued elsewhere that the acts will always differ, even if they often appear outwardly identical. See Angela McKay, "Two Theories of Christian Virtue," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 2010 84(3):599-618.

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The End of Infused and Acquired Virtue

The third objection argues that the infused and acquired virtues cannot differ in species insofar as one type of virtue is meritorious and the other is not. This carmot be the case, the objector argues, because whether a virtue is meritorious or not depends on whether it is fOlmed by charity, and being "folTIled" by charity does not cause a difference in the species of virtue.20 This is because the fonn that charity imposes is something "extrinsic," and something extrinsic carmot cause a difference in species.21 In his response, Aquinas simply cedes the main objection. The infused and acquired virtues, he agrees, do not differ insofar as one is meritorious and the other not, though the infused virtues are "closer to merit on account ofthe end to which they are ordered". This rather vague statement is clarified in Aquinas's response to the fourth objection. The fourth objection argues that the last end does not cause a difference in species either. Only the act and object, not the last end, cause a difference in the species of virtue.22 In his response, Aquinas makes !\VO important points. First, he says that even though a similarity of end doesn't make the species the same, a difference in end can cause a difference in species. Second and more importantly, however, Aquinas say that when there is a difference in species, it is caused by the "original" relation to the remote end, not the "actual" relation to it: "it should be knO\vn that an actual relation to the remote end does not make the aforesaid difference, but the original relation to it, inasmuch as a difference of end makes a different proportion in the act and habit." Aquinas's distinction be!\veen a virtue's original relation to the remote end and a virtue's actual relation to the remote end, especially when taken together with his tacit acceptance of the third objection's claim that charity's relation to virtue is an "extrinsic" one, implies something rather striking about his view of the Christian moral life. The acquired moral virtues are not originally ordered to supernatural beatitude. Far to the contrary, they are originally ordered only to man's natural fulfillment. Because ofthis original order, they arise from principles proportionate to man's natural fulfillment (the first practical moral principles) and produce acts proportionate to man's natural good. Charity, Aquinas seems to be saying, "forms" the acquired virtues, but only extrinsically: it gives them a further direction but does not 2°Aguinas, Sent III d.33 g.1 a.2 ga.4 obj.3 2lIbid. 22Aguinas, Sent III

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Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Relation between Infused and Acquired Virtue

change what the virtues are or what kind of acts they produce. Hence, though the acts of acquired virtue are now "actually" ordered to supernatural beatitude and are therefore meritorious, their "original" order to natural beatitude is still what determines tbe act and object and is still what produces the difference in species. What emerges from this article, then, is a bifurcated picture of the moral life. The Christian ordered to supernatural beatitude by God's grace is capable of two rather different kinds of action. He is capable, on the one hand, of the same kinds of virtuous actions pagans are capable of, namely acts of acquired virtue. These acts, it seems, will be more or less the same as the virtuous acts of the pagans, with two differences. First, since the debilitating effects of original sin have been removed, the Christian in a state of grace will be able to make much more progress in the cultivation of acquired virtue than the pagan can. For original sin causes an inherent disorder in the powers of the soul, making it much more difficult for the pagan to order himself to the good of reason. Since tbis disorder will be healed in the Christian, the cultivation of acquired virtue will be easier. Second, the Christian's acts of acquired virtue will "count". Having received a (purely external) direction to supernatural beatitude by charity, his acts of acquired virtue now "merit" eternal life, even though the pagan's identical (or identical, minus tbe purely external ordering of charity) acts of acquired virtue do not. In addition to acts of acquired virtue that now - without any internal change - merit eternal hfe, the Christian is also capable of a second kind of virtuous action, namely acts of infused moral virtue. Since acts of infused moral virtue stem from principles which are themselves ordered to supernatural beatitude, namely the theological virtues, these acts are genuinely proportionate to the end of supernatural beatitude. We are left witb sometbing of a puzzle. Aquinas has thus distinguished two very different kinds of meritorious action. One kind, acquired virtue, receives an ordering to supernatural beatitude from the "outside" - an ordering that does not seem - at least in Aquinas's telling - to actually change the virtue itself. It merely seems to make tbe acts of that virtue "count" towards heavenly beatitude. The acts of infused virtue, on the other hand, are themselves actually befitting supernatural beatitude. Since all the moral virtues are infused along with grace and the theological virtues, we are left with tbe possibility that the Christian in a state of grace can possess two distinct sets of virtues: both acquired courage, which produces one kind

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of act, and infused courage, which produces another kind of act, and so on. Why two different sets of virtues that produce two different kinds of act? Aquinas's answer in this early text seems to be that each is relevant to a distinct arena of life. Sent III d.33 q.l aA

In the fourth article of the same question we have been examining, Aquinas asks whether the moral virtues remain in heaven. In his reply, he makes two different distinctions. He distinguishes (1) the act a virtue has in regard to "its proper matter,,23 from the act a virtue has "when it has reached its end" and (2) the infused and acquired virtues.24 (1) establishes that even if a virtue no longer produces the same act in heaven that it did on earth, that does not mean the virtue is no longer present or operative. But ifthe end to which the virtue was ordered is no longer present, then the virtue will no longer be there. This is the point of distinction (2), and the reason why Aquinas believes the acquired virtues will not remain in heaven. The acquired virtues, says Aquinas, "have the civil good as their end". Since one's earthly citizenship does not remain in heaven, neither will those virtues: they will produce neither of the acts described in (1). But since the infused virtues perfect man with respect to the spiritual life and as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, and this citizenship is not lost but perfected in heaven. The infused virtues, then, will remain, but they will not have the same act.25 The implication of Aquinas's answer, at least as regards the question we are concerned with, is difficult to avoid. In the present life, Aquinas seems to be saying, the Christian can engage in two distinct kinds of activity. He can pursue the civil good, or he can pursue the spiritual good. In order to pursue the civil good, he needs to cultivate the acquired natural virtues, virtues which while (given our earlier discussion) technically meritorious, are properly ordered to man's natural, rather than supernatural, fulfillment. Scholars are well aware, of course, of Aquinas's claim that the acquired virtues are ordered to the civil good. But the ordering ofthe acquired virtues

23It's noteworthy that "matter" here seems to have the same meaning I proposed earlier. 24Aguinas, Sent III g.1 a.4 25Ibid.

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to the civil good is often taken to be a kind of first step in man's progression towards God. For instance, Aquinas frequently cites Macbrobius's division of the virtues into "political," "purgative," and "perfect". This division has been taken by scholars to describe the move from the acquired virtues, which are ordered to a purely natural end, the political common good to the infused virtues, first as possessed by the "wayfarer" and then as possessed by the elect in heaven.26 Indeed, so long as one focuses on the references to Macrobius that occur in texts other than the Sentences, this interpretation seems to be accurate.27 Aquinas's reply to the second objection in q. l aA of the Sentences, however, indicates that he has something rather different in mind. The second objection argues that because the moral virtues only perfect man in the active life, they will not exist in heaven, where there is only contemplation. In his reply, Aquinas indicates that both the acquired and infused virtues are ordered to contemplation. It is just that each kind of virtue is ordered to a different kind of contemplation. The acquired moral virtues are ordered to contemplation too, and are not lost when they attain their end: "the virtues that perfect in the active life, even the acquired virtues, need not be taken away when someone crosses over to the contemplative life. But they have different acts, insofar as they now attain to their proximate end; for the contemplative life is the end of the active life."28 In support of this, Aquinas not only appeals to Macrobius's division, but explicitly indicates that he believes it to apply to progress in acquired virtue. At the first stage of acquired political virtue, man is "made right in civil works". At the second, purgative stage, the man of acquired political virtue, while still "using civil affairs," "longs for contemplative rest." At the third and final stage, the acquired political virtues are thrown off altogether and man "rests in contemplation".29 Even at this last stage, when contemplation has been achieved, Aquinas argues that the acquired political virtues remain. It is merely that, having attained their end, they simply now produce different acts. But it is also clear, given the body of the article, that the end the acquired virtues rest in is a this worldly, natural end. For the

26See for instance Robert Miner, "Non-Aristotelian Prudence in the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae," The Thomist 64 (2000): 401-422. 27In the Summa text, for instance (I-II 61 a.S) Aquinas is explicit that he views Macrobius's first stage as Aristotelian natural virtue and the last as that possessed by the blessed in heaven. This is directly contrary to Aquinas's discussion here. 28Aquinas, Sent III q.1 a.4 ad.2 29Ibid.

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acquired virtues are not ordered to heavenly beatitude and do not remain in heaven. Aquinas's response to the second objection reaffilTIls what the previous article implied. The acquired virtues are relevant to a specific kind of life, namely the "active" life. The end or goal of the active life is the kind of contemplation possible in this world; the kind of philosophical contemplation described by Aristotle. The infused virtues are relevant for a different sphere of life, namely the spiritual life. Since this latter life is ordered to a different kind of contemplation, namely heavenly beatitude, the infused virtues remain in heaven, but simply produce the kind of act appropriate to "resting" in their end. The above text, especially when taken together with the text of Sent III d.33 q. l a.2 qaA, thus seems to imply that the early Aquinas believed that the infused and acquired virtues are relevant to distinctly different areas of life. Far from comprising essential elements of one and the same act - as many scholars imply - or from being something that grace transforms - as other scholars imply - the early Aquinas seems to have believed that the infused and acquired virtues exist together, but perfect man for very different kinds of activity. The acquired virtues perfect man with respect to his natural good, namely to a participation in the political life and ultimately to philosophical contemplation. Conclusion

I have been making the case that the Aquinas of the Sentences not only thought that the Christian should cultivate both the infused and acquired virtues, but that he also envisioned a rather sharp distinction between them. Whether Aquinas continued to hold this view later in his career is a question that I have not engaged in this paper. There are some aspects of the later Aquinas - such as his apparent shift in his view ofthe role ofthe gifts of the Holy Spirit - that lead me to believe that Aquinas's view did change. There are other aspects - such as his obscure claim that acts of infused virtue "mediate" acts of acquired - that lead me to believe he may not have. It might well be the case that there is some truth to both: the later Aquinas may have been gradually beginning to move away from the account he offers in the Sentences. What is most striking about the texts I have examined above, however, is how far the position they articulate is from that articulated by many

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contemporary Thomists. The Aquinas we have examined in this paper clearly seems to ascribe to a bifurcated and compartmentalized view of the Christian moral life, one where the pursuit of natural perfection, even when meritorious, is clearly separated and separable from the pursuit of supernatural union with God. I find such an account of the Christian moral life deeply unpalatable, but I also think that this very fact renders it all the more important for us to acknowledge that it does seem to have been the view of the early Aquinas.

PART Two:

BEING AND GOODNESS: THE METAPHYSICAL GROUNDING OF VALUE

THE GOOD AS TELOS IN CAJETAN, BANEZ AND ZUMEL THOMAS M. OSBORNE JR.

In the Summa The% giae, I, q. 5, art. 4, Thomas argues that the good has the ratio of the final cause.1 This thesis is problematic because there seems to be a difference between the definitions and uses of "good" and "final cause." If Thomas is arguing that the good and the final cause are in no way distinct, then why might we plausibly describe something as good even if it has no causal role? If not, then what does it mean for the ratio of goodness to be the same as that of final causality? Later Thomists disagree over the precise relationship between goodness and final causality, and their disagreement is reflected in their different interpretations of the argument and conclusion of this text. Few hold that Thomas merely means to say that goodness is the fundament of being an end, or that being an end is something like a proper passion of goodness. But they disagree over what the additional connection between the two might be. Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1534) provides an influential but confusing account ofthis article. According to Cajetan, in this text Thomas is not only arguing that the good is the fundament of the final cause, but also for the stronger thesis that the good is the ratio of the final cause in actu exercito. What does Cajetan himself mean by this? Later writers such as the Dominican Domingo Banez (1528-1604) and the Mercedarian Francisco Zumel (d. 1607) note that Cajetan makes this point obscurely .' They provide

lThis text and Thomas de Vio Cajetan's commentary can be found in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter ST), in Opera omnia (Rome: Commissio Leonina, 1 884-), vol. 4, 61-62. Unless otherwise indicated, all texts from Thomas Aquinas are cited from this edition. 2Domingo Banez, In 1, q. 5, art. 4, in Ibid., Scholastica Commentaria in Primam Partem Summa Theologiae S. ThomaeAquinatis, ed. Luis Urbano (Madrid: Editorial F.E.D.A., 1934), 1 86; Francisco Zurnel, In I-II, q. 5, art. 4, in Ibid., Commentaria in PrimamPartem Sancti ThomaeAquinatis, Vol. 1 (Salamanca: Ioannes Ferdinandus, 1585), 139. See also Francisco Suarez, In I-II, tract. 1, dispt. 1, sect. 3, n. 2, in Ibid.,

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a more detailed account of Cajetan's reading and then provide their O\Vll alternative accounts. There are consequently several issues that surround the disagreement over this article of the Summa The% giae, such as the correct interpretation of Cajetan, the correct reading of Thomas Aquinas, and the truth of the different ways of accounting for the relationship between the ratio of the good and final causality. I will show that this controversy sheds some light on this last philosophical issue, and also has some interest for the history of Thomism. Thomas de Vio Cajetan: The Good Is Not Only a Fundament of the Final Cause

In this text from the Summa Theologiae, Thomas clearly is arguing for more than a material identity between the final cause and the good. As both Banez and Zumel note, in the ad 1 of the article Thomas states that the identity between the good and the final cause is greater than that between the beautiful and the good. But the beautiful and the good are materially identical. Consequently, the good and the end must be connected on account of their rationes. Although Thomas' account of the good has a variety of historical sources, he closely follows Aristotle's account of how the good is an end. Thomas thinks that an end is desirable because or perhaps insofar as it is good. Thomists often cite Thomas' In Metaphysicorum, lib. 2, lect. 4, in which Thomas states: Now, with the final cause having been removed, so is the nature and ratio of the good removed, for the ratio of the good and the end is the same: for the good is what all desire, as is said in Book I of the Ethics.3

Opera Omnia, Vol. 4 (paris: Vives, 1 856), 6: "Hanc wtem veritatem per se claram, obscuriorem reddit Cajetanus . 3"Remota wtem causafinali, removetur natura et ratio boni: eadem enim ratio boni et finis est; nam bomtm est quod omnia appetunt, ut dicitur in primo Ethicorum." Thomas, In Metaphysicorum, lib. 2, lect. 4, n. 3 1 7, in In Duodecim libros metaphysicorumAristotelis. 2nd ed., ed. M-R. Cathala and RaymlUld Spiazzi (Tmin: Marietti, 1971), 89. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1 . 1 . 1 094a2-3. For various early modem accolUlts of this issue, including those of Cajetan and Banez, see Jean-Luc Solere, "Une passion de l'etre. Les discussions sur Ie bien transcendantal dans les cornrnentaires de la Somme theologique I, q. 5, a. 1 a la Renaissance," inB. Pinchard, ed., Fine Follie ou la catastrophe humaniste. Etude sur les transcendantaux a la Renaissance (paris: Champion, 1995), 33-52.

Thomas M. Osborne Jr.

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Thomas never states that the end and the good share the same definition. In his commentary on this passage from Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, Thomas denies that desirability is even part of the good's essential defmition 4 Desirability is an effect of goodness. Consequently, "what all desire" is only an a posteriori definition ofthe good, since this being desired is its proper effect. Desirability somehow follows on goodness and is not itself constitutive of goodness. Consequently, being an end or object of desire seems in some way to follow upon being good. Although the formal notion of goodness may entail desirability, it involves something different from or perhaps just in addition to desirability. Thomas in this connnentary on the Nicomachean Ethics and in many of his other works states that the good is desired because it is perfective. 5 According to this account, perfection explains and is consequently prior to desirability. Something is an end because it is a perfection. According to this interpretation, it might seem that the ratio of the good entails the end but does not by itself include a reference to the end. In other passages, Thomas implies that to be an end is part of what it means to be good. For instance, in De Veritate, q. 21, art. 1, Thomas states that a relation to the end must be included in the defmition of goodness. 6 Moreover, in the Summa Contra Gentiles Thomas states that "the good insofar as it is good is an end," which could mean not only that the end depends upon the notion of the good, but that being good depends on being an endJ How should we interpret such statements? Francis Sylvester of Ferrara (1472-1528) interprets this passage from the Summa Contra Gentiles as stating that the end is more than merely materially identical with the good, but not as stating that they are in any way formally identical. 8 According to Francis Sylvester, in this passage Thomas indicates that the good is the fundament of the end, and that the end is like a proper passion that follows from the good. In this way Francis Sylvester preserves a formal connection between the two notions without arguing for an identical ratio, 4Thomas, SententiaLibri Ethicorum (hereafter SLE), lib. 1, lect. 1 (Leonine ed., vol. 47. 1 , 5). 5Thomas, SLE, lib. 1, lect. 1 (Leonine ed., vol. 47.1, 5-6). See Thomas, De Veritate, q. 2 1. , art. 2, resp. (Leonine ed., vol. 22.3, 596); ST, q. 5, art. 1. and 3 . 6Thomas, De Veritate, q . 2 1 , art. 1 , resp. (Leonine ed., vol. 22.3, 594). 7"bomtm inquantum bomtm sit finis." Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (hereafter SCG), 3 . 1. 7 (Leonine ed., vol. 1.4, 40). 8See also Francis Sylvester of Ferrara, In SCG 1.37, nn. 2-4, in Thomas, Opera Omnia (Leonine ed., vol. 13, 1 1 2-1 13).

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and argues that this text is in agreement with passages in which Thomas states that the notion of the good as perfective is prior to its desirability. Cajetan also states that the good is the fundament of the end in his commentary on the Summa Theologiae. But he also thinks that there is more at stake in the title of the article, "whether the good has the ratio of a final cause." According to Cajetan, there are two ways ofunderstanding the "ratio" in this question, namely in actu signata and in actu exercito. Consequently, Thomas' conclusion about their identity can also be understood correctly in both the weaker sense that it is the fimdament of the end and in some stronger sense. Cajetan's understanding of these different senses is somewhat obscurely indicated by the distinction between in actu signata and in actu exercito, which itself is used by late scholastic writers in different contexts. It is best to try to understand the meaning here by looking at Cajetan's particular account. In this context, to assert that the good has the ratio of a final cause in actu signata would simply be to assert that it is the proximate fimdament of the ratio ofa final cause. Consequently, Cajetan states that if the ratio is understood in actu signato, the question posed by the article would mean "Whether a thing, by the fact that it is good, demands this proper to itself that it be 'for the sake of which. "'9 However, if the assertion is understood in actu exercito, the article's question would mean "'Whether the good formally is fOlmally that ratio of the end in actu exercito, that is, it might exercise the final causality."lO In this second sense the good is not merely the fimdament of the end, but the good itself in some way acts as an end. Cajetan thinks that Thomas's conclusion is affinnative according to both interpretations. The first, that it is a fundament, is more obvious, and we have seen that Francis Sylvester discusses the issue in this context. But Cajetan thinks that the second question is what is at stake in this article of the Summa, both because of the way in which the response is argued and because it is fonnal and worthy. u He seems to think that there would not need to be much of an argument for the position that the good is a fundament. Thomas's point is stronger, namely that the good itself exercises final causality. But what does Cajetan mean by this thesis? g''An res, eo quia bonum, vendicet sibi hoc proprium, quod sit 'cuius gratia.'" Cajetan, In ST I, q . 5, art. 4, n. 1 , in Thomas, Opera Omnia (Leonine ed., vol. 4, 61). 1 0