Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics 9780823293551

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WI SDO M, L AW, AND V IRT U E

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WISDOM, LAW, AND VIRTUE

ssays in Thomistic Ethics

LAWRENCE DEWA N, O.P.

ordham niversity ress new york 2008

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Copyright 䉷 2007 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [[Data to come]] Printed in the United States of America 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

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Contents

Previous Publication

ix

Abbreviations

xv

Introduction

1

Universal Considerations Chapter 1. Wisdom and Human Life: The Natural and the Supernatural

7

Chapter 2. Wisdom as Foundational Ethical Theory in St. Thomas Aquinas

32

Chapter 3. St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Human Dignity

58

Chapter 4. Truth and Happiness

68

Chapter 5. Antimodern, Ultramodern, Postmodern: A Plea for the Perennial

85

Chapter 6. Is Thomas Aquinas a Spiritual Hedonist?

99

Chapter 7. Is Liberty the Criterion in Morals?

117

The Will and Its Act Chapter 8. The Real Distinction between Intellect and Will

125

Chapter 9. St. Thomas, James Keenan, and the Will

151

Chapter 10. St. Thomas and the Causes of Free Choice

175

Chapter 11. St. Thomas and the First Cause of Moral Evil

186 v

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Natural Law Chapter 12. St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order

199

Chapter 13. Jacques Maritain and the Philosophy of Cooperation

213

Chapter 14. Natural Law and the First Act of Freedom: Maritain Revisited

221

Chapter 15. Jean Porter on Natural Law: Thomistic Notes

242

Legal Justice Chapter 16. St. Thomas, the Common Good, and the Love of Persons

271

Chapter 17. St. Thomas, John Finnis, and the Political Good

279

Chapter 18. Thomas Aquinas, Gerard Bradley, and the Death Penalty

312

Chapter 19. Death in the Setting of Divine Wisdom: The Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas

326

Chapter 20. Suicide as a Belligerent Tactic: Thomistic Reflections

336

Various Virtues Chapter 21. Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas, and the Philosophy of Religion

349

Chapter 22. Philosophy and Spirituality: Cultivating a Virtue

358

Chapter 23. St. Thomas and the Ontology of Prayer

365

Chapter 24. St. Thomas, Lying, and Venial Sin

374

Chapter 25. Communion with the Tradition: For the Believer Who Is a Philosopher

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Contents vii

Methodological Postscript Chapter 26. ‘‘Obiectum’’: Notes on the Invention of a Word

403

Chapter 27. St. Thomas and Moral Taxonomy

444

Notes

479

Bibliography

653

Index

669

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This book is a collection of papers that have been previously published or presented at conferences. Chapter 1: Wisdom and Human Life: The Natural and the Supernatural Read at the Colloquium on the Christian Idea of Man, University of Navarre, Pamplona, Spain, in October 2001, and originally published only in Spanish translation as ‘‘La sabiduria y la vida humana: Lo natural y lo sobrenatural,’’ in Idea Cristiana del Hombre: III Simposio Internacional Fe Cristiana y Cultura Contemporanea, ed. Juan Jesus Borobia, Miguel Lluch, Jose´ Ignatio Murillo, and Eduardo Terrasa (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 2002), 303–338. Reprinted in English with permission of the publisher. Chapter 2: Wisdom as Foundational Ethical Theory in St. Thomas Aquinas Originally published in a slightly different form as ‘‘Wisdom as Foundational Ethical Theory in Thomas Aquinas,’’ in The Bases of Ethics, ed. William Sweet, Marquette Studies in Philosophy 23 (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2000), 39–78. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 3: St. Thomas, Metaphysics, and Human Dignity Prepared for a colloquium on ‘‘Christian Philosophy and Human Dignity,’’ held at Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei, Taiwan, in December 2002. Chapter 4: Truth and Happiness Presidential address to the American Catholic Philosophical Association, delivered March 27, 1993, in St. Louis, Missouri. Originally published in a ix

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slightly different form in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 67 (1993): 1–21 and reprinted in Eleutheria (Ottawa) 7 (1995): 3–15. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 5: Antimodern, Ultramodern, Postmodern: A Plea for the Perennial Originally published in a slightly different form in E´tudes maritainiennes– Maritain Studies 9 (1993): 7–28. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 6: Is Thomas Aquinas a Spiritual Hedonist? Originally published in a slightly different form as ‘‘Leslie Dewart and Spiritual Hedonism,’’ Laval the´ologique et philosophique 27 (1971): 25–39. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 7: Is Liberty the Criterion in Morals? Originally published in a slightly different form as ‘‘Punzo on Ethics,’’ New Scholasticism 58 (1984): 464–470. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 8: The Real Distinction between Intellect and Will Originally published in a slightly different form in Angelicum 57 (1980): 557–593. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 9: St. Thomas, James Keenan, and the Will Originally published in a slightly different form in Science et esprit 47 (1995): 153–176. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 10: St. Thomas and the Causes of Free Choice Originally published in a slightly different form in Acta philosophica 8 (1999): 87–96. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 11: St. Thomas and the First Cause of Moral Evil Originally published in a slightly different form in Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, ed. B. Carlos Baza´n, Eduardo Andujar, and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, vol. 3 (Ottawa: Legas; Turnhout, Belgium: Brepds, 1995) 1223–1230. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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Chapter 12: St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order Originally published in slightly different form in E´tudes maritainiennes– Maritain Studies 2 (1986): 59–92 and reprinted in Angelicum 67 (1990): 285–307. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 13: Jacques Maritain and the Philosophy of Cooperation Composed for a colloquium held at the Dominican University College, Ottawa, in the autumn of 1984, on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the college and originally published in a slightly different form in Alterite´, Vivre ensemble diffe´rents, ed. Michael Gourgues and Gilles D. Mailhiot (Montreal: Bellarmin; Paris: E´ditions du Cerf, 1986), 109–117. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 14: Natural Law and the First Act of Freedom: Maritain Revisited Presented on October 28, 1995, at a meeting of the Canadian Maritain Association and originally published in a slightly different form in E´tudes maritainiennes–Maritain Studies 12 (1996): 3–32. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 15: Jean Porter on Natural Law: Thomistic Notes Originally published in a slightly different form in Thomist 66 (2002): 275–309. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 16: St. Thomas, the Common Good, and the Love of Persons Prepared for a meeting of the Canadian Maritain Association held in Ottawa in October 1988, and originally published in a slightly different form as ‘‘Concerning the Person and the Common Good,’’ E´tudes maritainiennes–Maritain Studies 5 (1989): 7–21. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 17: St. Thomas, John Finnis, and the Political Good Composed for a symposium on human rights sponsored by the Canadian Maritain Association and held in Ottawa in June 1998, and originally published in a slightly different form in Thomist 64 (2000): 337–374. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 18: Thomas Aquinas, Gerard Bradley, and the Death Penalty Originally published in a slightly different form in Gregorianum 82 (2001): 149–165. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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Chapter 19: Death in the Setting of Divine Wisdom: The Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas Composed in connection with the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Faculty of Philosophy, Laval University, Quebec City, October 2–5, 1985, and originally published in French and in a slightly different form as ‘‘La Mort dans la perspective de la sagesse divine, selon saint Thomas,’’ in Urgence de la philosophie, ed. Thomas De Koninck and Lucien Morin (Quebec: Presses de l’Universite´ Laval, 1986), 571–579, and reprinted in English in Angelicum 65 (1988): 117–129. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 20: Suicide as a Belligerent Tactic: Thomistic Reflections Composed for a colloquium on just-war theory at the Dominican University College, Ottawa, on November 12, 2004. Chapter 21: Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas, and the Philosophy of Religion Originally published in a slightly different form in University of Ottawa Quarterly 51 (1981): 644–653. 䉷 University of Ottawa Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 22: Philosophy and Spirituality: Cultivating a Virtue Originally published in a slightly different form in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, November 1993, 25–30. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 23: St. Thomas and the Ontology of Prayer Originally published in a slightly different form in Divus Thomas 77 (1974): 392–402. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 24: St. Thomas, Lying, and Venial Sin Originally published in a slightly different form in Thomist 61 (1997): 279–299. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 25: Communion with the Tradition: For the Believer Who Is a Philosopher Originally published in a slightly different form in Science et esprit 40 (1988): 315–325. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Chapter 26: ‘‘Obiectum’’: Notes on the Invention of a Word Originally published in a slightly different form in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litte´raire du Moyen Aˆge 48 (1981): 37–96. 䉷 Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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Chapter 27: St. Thomas and Moral Taxonomy Originally published in a slightly different form in E´tudes maritainiennes– Maritain Studies 15 (1999): 134–156. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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Abbreviations

CM

CP

DV

EV PG PL RSV Sentences

Sentences (1947)

SCG

Thomas Aquinas, In Metaphysicam Aristotelis commentaria [Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics], ed. M. R. Cathala (Turin: Marietti, 1935). Thomas Aquinas, In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis expositio [Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics], ed. M. Maggiolo (Turin: Marietti, 1954). Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, ed. A. Dondaine, in Opera omnia (Leonine ed.), vol. 22, bk. 3 (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1976). John Paul II, Evangelicum vitae (encyclical). J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca, 161 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1857–1866). J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–1864). Revised Standard Version (of the Bible). Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi [Commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard], ed. P. Mandonnet and M. F. Moos, 3 vols. (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929–1933). Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi [Commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard], ed. M. F. Moos, vol. 4 (Paris: Lethielleux, 1947). Thomas Aquinas, Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium seu Summa contra gentiles, ed. Peter Marc, Ceslas Pera, and Peter Caramello (Turin: Marietti, 1961). xv

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ST VS

Abbreviations

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Ottawa: Commissio Piana, 1941). John Paul II, Veritatis splendor (encyclical).

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Introduction

This is a collection of papers on Christian philosophy. Although philosophical considerations are central, the presence of Christian revelation and its truth constitutes the all-enveloping context. The very first paper stresses the need for grace for the actual existence of virtuous living. What I hope will be found of value in them pertains to ‘‘the perennial philosophy.’’ These papers view the history of philosophy as the development of basic doctrines long discerned and taught, a development by way of deepening appreciation as opposed to constant replacement of one worldview by another. Thus, the idea is to see one’s forebears in Socrates and Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, and most especially in St. Thomas Aquinas. Accordingly, for both philosophical and Christian reasons, these studies are mostly reflections on Thomas Aquinas, his sources, and those who have interpreted and commented on his doctrines. The present collection comprises contributions to the discussion of morals: how human beings should live their lives. The papers are arranged in systematic rather than chronological order. Since the practical use of intellect finds its perfection in particular consideration, in dealing with the nitty-gritty, I begin with more general themes and end with more particular problems. Of course, ethics, as a scientific discipline, still remains at a general level. Prudential judgments are something else. These studies were written over a period of more than thirty years; the earliest, chapter 6, was published in 1971, and the latest, chapter 20, was presented orally in 2004. However, if they ever had value, they have it 1

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still. Their contention is that the principles whereby human actions are to be judged are perennial. The first set of studies I have labeled ‘‘Universal Considerations.’’ Of these, the first two speak of ‘‘wisdom,’’ and might well be called ‘‘metaethics.’’ The need to set human behavior in a larger context, a vision of universal reality, has never been more apparent. In fact, much of what goes on in university discussions labeled ‘‘ethics’’ consists in asking questions about the very possibility of objectivity and certainty in the domain of human life. There is no possible adequate substitute for the sapiential foundation. The first paper was written for an explicitly Christian conference for which I had been asked to speak of the natural and the supernatural, whereas the second was designed for a more narrowly philosophical symposium. Still looking at the ‘‘universal,’’ I have next placed a short essay on human dignity. This, again, was written for a symposium whose declared theme was ‘‘Christian philosophy and human dignity.’’ ‘‘Dignity’’ is a word that counts for much in contemporary rhetoric, but the vision of the human being that can give that rhetoric substance needs stating. I here sketch the metaphysical grounds required for that vision, the ‘‘hylomorphic ontology.’’ Next in the universal considerations, since ‘‘every agent acts for an end,’’ I have placed a paper on the vision of truth as ultimate human happiness, the goal of human life. It is followed by a paper on somewhat the same theme, but taking its occasion from the intellectual phenomenon styled ‘‘postmodernism,’’ particularly as represented by Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard. Last among these ‘‘universal considerations,’’ are two papers. That on ‘‘spiritual hedonism,’’ the earliest published of all the items in this book, serves to underline the Thomistic doctrine that it is natural to love God, by a friendly love, more than one loves oneself. This is the fundamental inclination of the human being as seen by Thomas, because it is the fundamental inclination of the whole of created reality. The last paper in this group, again highlighting the quest for beatitude as the vision of truth, counters the tendency to see freedom as something of an ultimate end, and stresses the need for an appreciation of hierarchy among the ends of human life.

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The second section I have entitled ‘‘The Will and Its Act.’’ Morals exist because of the voluntary nature of our actions. Will and intellect are intimately linked, so much so that the question of their distinction requires close attention. The first paper addresses this issue. The second shows the difficulty that some have in giving the intellect its proper priority over will. This, in a somewhat different way, is also the problem faced in the third paper, on free choice. Last, the condition of the very possibility of immoral choice is considered: Thomas’s discussion of the presuppositions for a bad act of the will. Next I have placed four papers on ‘‘Natural Law.’’ The first, and most fundamental, of these papers aims to suggest how ‘‘ought’’ derives from ‘‘is,’’ as well as how knowledge of God relates to knowledge of natural law. The second stresses the priority of knowledge relative to inclination within the natural-law setting. The third, more concrete, relates knowledge of natural law to our very first step in the moral life. The last, through criticism of a contemporary writer, sees the very adequacy of human nature as a moral guide benefiting much from the support of revelation and grace. Under ‘‘Legal Justice’’ I have grouped five papers. The first of all laws commands us to love God (and the highest form of justice is religion). Thus, the first paper presents our love for God—God considered as the common good of all—as a love for a supreme personal existent. The second considers the political community as meant to cultivate virtue. The third views the death penalty in its relation to our view of human dignity. The fourth was occasioned by the phenomenon of suicide as a tactic in a so-called holy war (thus, pertaining to religion and charity). The last revisits this suicide-tactic issue. Next, we have a group that includes reference to the acts of ‘‘Various Virtues.’’ The virtue of religion is prominent. The section begins with an essay on the difference between charity and religion, love of God and justice toward God. Next comes one on the virtuous life and the virtue of religion in particular. This brings us, in the third paper in this group, to prayer as one particular act of the religious person: is prayer a reasonable activity? We then move to veracity, that is, to the failure in veracity that is lying: how bad is it to hide victims from the gestapo by lying? I contend that the most common philosophical discussion of such a problem is infected by an unsound Kantian outlook. The tradition of St.

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Augustine and St. Thomas provides a much more human answer. And at the end of this group I have placed a paper that has to do with the intellectual life and education: it concerns the importance of metaphysics in Christian intellectual life. Last, there is what might be called a ‘‘Methodological Postscript,’’ a section on the notion of the object. There are two papers. The first is a study of the formation of vocabulary for a doctrine that has obvious roots in Plato’s Republic, namely, the thirteenth-century invention of the use of the word ‘‘obiectum.’’ I have also included a study of Thomas’s general doctrine of moral taxonomy, as a sort of companion piece. I wish to thank Karen Schoen and Nicholas Frankovich of Fordham University Press for their help in the preparation of this book.

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Chapter 1

WISDOM AND HUMAN LIFE: T HE NATURAL A ND THE S UPERNATURAL

Let us consider the foundations of morals or ethics. Those of us who live by faith in Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, find in him the best possible source of direction for our action.1 However, more so in modern times than ever before, people are exposed to nihilist ideology that presents each individual as a designer of what it is to live a human life. This kind of thinking is supported by materialist ideologies linked to scientific method, ideologies that dissociate moral values from objective reality. All of this is a source of confusion and temptation for the Christian, and it is the responsibility of Christian theologians and philosophers to do all they can to eliminate that confusion. Saint Thomas Aquinas I wish to meditate on the conception of reality that situates the human being in the world of morals. I maintain that that conception is best envisaged by St. Thomas Aquinas. In that sense, I am resorting to history to provide the answer. However, one must be careful of one’s idea of the ‘‘history of thought.’’ We are very prone, in the present culture, to view the history of philosophy as a series of ‘‘creative conceptions,’’ ‘‘stories,’’ ‘‘founding narratives,’’ provided by ‘‘thinkers.’’ I would encourage a return to a more realist conception of the history of thought, one that we still find somewhat as regards the history of science. We can conceive of the human observer in earlier times as truly knowing reality, but knowing it vaguely; then, as we advance through the years, with more experience and discoveries, we gain a more penetrating grasp of reality. In short, it is 7

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not merely one picture replacing another but one picture perfecting the previous one. Thus, when we consider Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, we do not find the successor merely jettisoning the former teaching but, while correcting, retaining and improving the view of things previously seen. All three of the mentioned wise men grasped reality as the foundation of authentic human living, but one better than another. We go to Thomas Aquinas not to find out merely what Thomas Aquinas thought but to find help in our attempt to see reality.2 We turn to Thomas, of course, because of our experience in reading his work, but also and especially because he comes so well recommended by the Church. Pope John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical Fides et ratio, echoing his predecessors, reminded us of the unique status of Thomas as an ‘‘apostle of the truth.’’3 Natural and Supernatural My title speaks of ‘‘the natural and the supernatural.’’ This distinction between what is proportionate to the nature of human beings and what surpasses human nature is essential if one is to have some appreciation of the greatness of the gifts of God through Christ. The entire Christian life is ordered toward entry into eternal life with God, eternal life taking the form of a participation in God’s knowledge and love of his own divine goodness. For this to take place, our nature must be elevated into a divine condition, a condition thus surpassing human nature, a supernatural condition.4 However, this is not something that happens only at the end, in the next life. Rather, the life of the baptized person is and must be, already, an elevated life, a life divinized by grace. The virtues of faith, hope, and charity pertain to this elevated life of grace.5 The distinction between the natural and the supernatural, it is most important to realize, is not between two domains wholly alien to each other. Both are from God, and one prepares for the other: the natural prepares for the supernatural. If we are to have a right consideration of the supernatural, we must have a right consideration of the natural. The relation between the two is spoken of by Thomas Aquinas, for example, in connection with philosophical demonstration that a god exists. An objector argues against the demonstrability of a god’s existence, on the

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grounds that it is an article of faith that God exists, and faith is about things we do not see intellectually. Thomas replies: That a god exists, and other things of this sort, which can be known by natural reason about God, as is said in Romans 1:19, are not articles of faith, but rather preambles to the articles: for faith presupposes natural knowledge, in the way that grace [presupposes] nature and a perfection [presupposes] something perfectible. Nevertheless, nothing prevents that which in itself is demonstrable and philosophically knowable from being accepted as believable by someone who does not grasp the demonstration.6 Indeed, not only does grace presuppose nature, but its role is to elevate nature in a direction already pointed to by nature.7 Thus—and here I refer to a doctrine of Thomas that, as I will insist, is absolutely seminal for his conception of the domain of morals—the human will is naturally such that it loves God more than it loves its own self; that is, it has more at heart God’s interest than its own private interest. In making the case for this, Thomas asserts: ‘‘Otherwise, if one naturally loved oneself more than God, it would follow that natural love was perverse and that it would not be perfected by charity but rather destroyed.’’8 (‘‘Charity’’ here refers, of course, to the supernatural love of God.) This being the case, nature itself can teach us something about the supernatural, which it prefigures. Thus, in discerning what preference to give people if one is to be truly charitable, Thomas says: ‘‘Grace and virtue imitate the order of nature, which has been established by divine wisdom.’’9 And he continues by considering the natural order and modeling the order of charity upon it. I say all this to make it clear that although I will be talking primarily about the natural domain in order to present the idea of morals, my project is essential for the discussion of the supernatural order. Inversely, as we shall see, the fully natural can be found only as crowned by the supernatural. Thomas Aquinas, of course, in the Summa theologiae (ST) is writing as a teacher of revealed truth. Accordingly, his vision of morals is primarily the vision of our journey to the beatific vision, that is, the supernatural vision of God. Still, there is an essential natural background to what he is saying.10

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The Moral Order What do I mean by ‘‘the moral order’’? Some philosophers begin from a minimalist (and truly degrading) conception of the human agent. They take for granted private self-interest and a recognition on each person’s part of the need to enter into cooperation with others, if only to protect oneself from more powerful individuals. Society, or the political realm, is thus born of a ‘‘contract’’ or nonaggression pact by individuals with enlightened self-interest. Politics, or lawmaking and enforcing, becomes a kind of calculus of the interests involved in a society. The vision of reality we find in Plato’s writings takes its start from the intuition of absolute values. As we live our lives, we are more or less able to turn our souls toward the vision of the absolute realities—and ultimately to what goodness is. This makes it possible to determine what to do in particular situations to be in communion with the divine and the good.11 Aristotle saw the need for a practical doctrine that could make a wide appeal, and thus, in his Nicomachean Ethics he keeps to a minimum the description of the vision of reality that is at the base of the true moral order.12 Still, the outline of ethics is there. Aristotle makes it clear that human nature (‘‘the function of man’’)13 is the key to true morality. There is the need for a conception of the goal of human life; there is the conception of virtue as a formation of the person to make the life of reason not only acceptable but enjoyable. And elsewhere Aristotle makes clear what he sees as the goal of human desire: ‘‘Every human being, by nature, desires to know,’’ and this means ultimately, desires to know the highest cause.14 This is developed most fully by St. Thomas in the second part (secunda pars) of the Summa theologiae. We should take note of the two ways he presents the moral part of the ST. In presenting the plan of the entire Summa theologiae, he says: Therefore, because the principal intention of this sacred teaching is to communicate knowledge of God, and not merely as he is in himself but also according as he is the principle of things and their end, and especially [the principle and end] of the rational creature . . . intending to set forth this teaching, firstly we will treat of God, secondly of the movement of the rational creature toward God,

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thirdly of Christ who, as man, is our means of access [via] for tending toward God.15 God being the end of the rational creature, Thomas presents what is called ‘‘morals’’ as a journey, an approach, a movement, that takes us right to God.16 We notice how, in this plan, the entire third part of the ST is seen as crowning the second part: the movement of the rational creature that Thomas has in mind is rightly conceived only when seen in the light of the economy of grace in Jesus Christ. However, there is a second presentation of the ST’s moral part. At that part’s outset Thomas writes a magnificent prologue. We read: Because, as [St. John] Damascene says, man is said to be made in the image of God, according as by ‘‘the image’’ is signified intellectual and free as to judgment and intrinsically powerful, after what has now been said about the exemplar, namely, about God, and about those things that proceed from the divine power in virtue of his will, it remains for us to consider his image, that is, man, inasmuch as he too is the principle of his own works, as having free judgment and power over his works.17 Here, although we are still concerned with the ‘‘movement’’ or operation of the rational creature, it is impressed upon us that the properly theological interest in the human free agent is his being godlike.18 Morals and knowledge of God go together, but the connection passes through our knowledge of nature. Let us recall a teaching of St. Thomas concerning the atheist’s argument that the existence of evil proves the nonexistence of a God. Thomas replies that the true argument is rather that the existence of evil proves the existence of a God. The reason is that if there were no God there would be no order of goodness; and if there were no order of goodness, there would be no evil.19 This teaches us how to see the connection between God and morality. It is not that we simply posit a god who decrees actions to be done and actions to be avoided. Rather, if we consider the world in which we live, we observe a hierarchy of goodness; this hierarchy of goodness leads us to conclude to the existence of a being that is the source of all good and whom we call ‘‘God.’’20 God is known to us in such a way that we can

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see that his existence and the existence of goodness in things are indissociable. And since what we mean by ‘‘the bad’’ or ‘‘evil’’ is precisely something missing that pertains to the proper goodness of things,21 it follows that the bad can exist only if God exists. That, of course, does not yet answer the question, why does the bad exist?22 However, it does take together God and the order of good found in things. It is only when we see the place of the human being in this order, and the human relation to God, that we come to understand morality rightly. Wisdom What do I mean by ‘‘wisdom’’? I mean knowledge that says whatever is possible about God and the relation of other things to God. The conception of wisdom is presented by Thomas Aquinas at the beginning of the Summa contra gentiles23 and at the beginning of the Summa theologiae.24 This is because Thomas himself holds that the work he is undertaking in them, namely, the theology that pertains to revealed Christian religion, is the highest form of wisdom.25 Later on in the ST, he discusses philosophical wisdom as the highest of the intellectual virtues.26 As I said, I am proposing that ethics has as its proper foundation the consideration of the relation between the human being and God, the Creator and Providence. The idea is that without the doctrine of God, morality will be possible as to particular acts,27 but in a weakened condition that leaves it prey to error and disorder. Thomas, in discussing the ascendancy of wisdom over all the other intellectual virtues (among which is ethics),28 points to the excellence of its object, as compared with the objects of the others: The greatness of a virtue, as to its species, is considered from the object. But the object of wisdom has priority of excellence among the objects of all the intellectual virtues: for it considers the highest cause, which is God, as is said in the beginning of the Metaphysics. And because it is through the cause that one judges concerning the effect, and through the higher cause concerning the lower causes, hence it is that wisdom has judgment over all other intellectual virtues, and it belongs to it to provide order [ordinare] for them all, and it itself is architectonic with respect to them all.29

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Wisdom is the knowledge of God, the highest cause, inasmuch as it is ontology, that is, the science of being as being. This is because being as being, that is, being, taken formally, is the proper effect of the highest cause.30 No wonder, then, that we look to metaphysics as the foundation of ethics. It is architectonic with respect to all the sciences. Faith presupposes natural knowledge, just as the supernatural in general presupposes the natural. What is the natural knowledge of God and his plan? The human mind is most naturally at home in the consideration of material nature. The mind’s ability to search higher than that stems from the fact that even when considering material reality, the mind discerns laws that pertain to the nature of being. The result is that material reality becomes for the mind a sort of spiritual trampoline, allowing us to draw conclusions about immaterial things.31 This is why human beings, for the most part, tend to affirm the existence of a god. As St. Thomas puts it, in arguing that it pertains to natural law that the human being offer sacrifice: ‘‘Natural reason declares to man that he is subject to some superior, because of the deficiencies that he experiences within himself, regarding which he needs to be aided and directed by a superior. And whatever that is, this is what among all [humans] is called ‘a god.’ ’’32 Thomas is talking about a reasoning process that any human being spontaneously carries through. The premises are that a deficient being depends on a greater and that I, man, find myself to be a deficient being. It is our ability to appreciate that one being can depend for its being on another that is crucial here. We are able to see dependence, that is, that this is actually the case only because that is actually the case. This is the vision of the being of things as divided by what, just in itself, only potentially is, and what has the character of actuality. We see what can only be an effect, and what has the status of cause relative to that effect.33 Thomas, in another place speaking of the knowledge that everyone has of a God, stresses its imperfection. He says: ‘‘By natural reason man immediately can come to some sort of knowledge of a god. For men, seeing that natural things proceed according to a definite order, since there is no order without an orderer, perceive, for the most part, that there is some orderer of the things that we see. But who or of what sort or whether there is only one orderer of nature is not immediately had

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from this general consideration.’’34 In fact, Thomas considers anyone who rejects this judgment that there exists a god to be morally blameworthy.35 Everyone is a budding metaphysician. And this is so because we catch sight, within material beings, of laws that pertain to the nature of being wherever found. Still, the work of the full-fledged metaphysician is to sculpture the arguments that lead the mind to a god in the most certain way, to knowledge that there is only one God, and to some appreciation of what sort of being God is. Since by ‘‘a god’’ one means a first cause, the task of metaphysics is to catch sight of things as effects of the highest cause. It is one thing to see a particular effect of some particular cause. It is something else to catch sight of that in things that must link them to the highest and most universal cause. The Hierarchy of Goodness One of the greatest of all intellectual spectacles is to be found in the first part of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. There we see the presentation of God in his own nature and as source and goal of all reality. This is done in such a way as to make clear the fundamentals of metaphysics, since it is these fundamentals that serve the theological project. Therein, we have a doctrine of reality from the viewpoint of being, but also from the viewpoint of the notions of perfection and goodness. It is important to learn about goodness as something pertaining to each kind of thing, each in its own way. Then, one learns similarly of the bad as relative to these different types of good. Only then does one look at the good and the bad related to human life as one case among many (though a most important one not only for us humans but in the whole scheme of things). Let us consider Thomas’s presentation of the point that the corporeal creature36 has its reason for being in its representation of the divine goodness. What we are given here is a presentation of things in function of finality. Goodness is seen to be found primarily in what has the role of goal or end—that which stands at the head of any group of merely useful things and has no need to plead its ‘‘usefulness’’ because it is loved for its own sake, intrinsically worthwhile. Secondarily, to be ‘‘good’’ is to be ‘‘useful’’ or ‘‘helpful.’’37 My car is useful, since it provides all sorts of services for my family; my family, on the other hand, is just plain lovable:

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it is unqualifiedly good. The vision of a hierarchy of goods is, then, a vision of things as themselves meriting to be considered as ends, with other things considered worth pursuing or providing for their sake. The idea of Thomas’s discussion of the goodness of the corporeal creation is to show (1) that it has intrinsic goodness, (2) that it furthermore serves the greater goodness found in spiritual reality, but (3) that it also has the character of serving the divine goodness.38 Here is what he says: The universe in its entirety is made up of all creatures [corporeal and incorporeal], as a whole [is made up] out of parts. Now, if we wish to indicate the purpose [Latin: ‘‘finem,’’ end] concerning some whole and its parts, we will find, firstly, that the particular parts are for the sake of their acts: as the eye for seeing. And, secondly, that the less noble part is for the sake of the more noble: as the senses for the intellect, and the lungs for the heart. Then, thirdly, all the parts are for the perfection of the whole, the way the matter is for the form: for parts are, as it were, the matter of the whole. But going even further, the complete human being is for some extrinsic end, as that he find fulfillment in God.39 Having proposed this approach, Thomas applies it to the entire universe: So also, then, in the parts of the universe, each creature is for the sake of its own proper operation and perfection. Secondly, the less noble creatures are for the more noble, as the creatures that are below the human being are for the human being. But, going further, particular creatures are for the sake of the perfection of the universe as a whole. Further still, the entire universe, with its particular parts, is ordered toward God as toward an end, inasmuch as in them, through some [measure of] imitation, the divine goodness is represented, for the glory of God (though the rational creatures in a special way, over and above that, have God as an end, whom they can attain to by their operation, knowing and loving [him]). Thus, it is clear that the divine goodness is the end [i.e., the raison d’eˆtre] of all corporeal things.40 In the passage above, St. Thomas is especially interested in relating the being of bodily things to the manifestation of the divine goodness. They

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are good in themselves, good for other creatures, and good as mirroring, however weakly, the divine goodness.41 On the other hand, my interest in presenting the text is to provide an example of a vision of things, through the eyes of Thomas Aquinas, that sees goodness in them and levels of goodness. Consideration of the human being is used as a first step, and the first step in the presentation of the human being is to look at one bodily organ relative to its operation. This is in accord with the Aristotelian presentation of the proportion of potency to act.42 So also, we are encouraged to consider the proportion of all the parts to the whole: parts are to whole as matter to form, the latter being the prime case of potency to act.43 Again, we are expected to grasp the greater goodness, the greater intrinsic lovableness, of mind in comparison with sense, and of the human animal over the lower animals and the plants.44 What I wish to insist upon in all this is that the vision of reality as a hierarchy of goodness is not a vision merely of moral goodness (which is goodness in the domain of free choice),but primarily a grasp of each sort of thing as intrinsically lovable, and of the many kinds of thing as possessing, this one more, this one less, what makes a thing worthy of actual existence.45 Saying that a thing is ‘‘worthy of actual existence’’ might lead one to judge that goodness is merely the approval expressed by the human being (or even a more exalted observer). The only cure for this ‘‘subjectivist’’ conception of the situation is an understanding of the role of approval, that is, of inclination or appetite or love, in the schema of being. Goodness is what is approved of, yes, but it is not good because it is approved of; it is approved of because it is good.46 To call the good ‘‘good’’ is to speak of it as something that, for us, has light thrown upon it by its ability to elicit approval. If we wish to get at it more as it is in itself, then we should speak of the perfection of the thing.47 Thus, Thomas Aquinas presents a discussion of perfection in question 4 of ST 1 and in fact, presents questions 5 and 6, the discussion of goodness both in general and in God, as extensions of the question on perfection. This doctrine of goodness invites us to see what is meant by ‘‘perfection’’ in things and to see that tendency or appetite is universal. Such a tableau presents order, proportion, tendency, not as something ‘‘outside of being,’’ ‘‘outside of goodness,’’ such that we see the natures of things but do not see why appetite aims at those natures, but rather as part of

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nature, as the counterpart, within being, of goals or perfections. As Thomas says: ‘‘Some inclination attends upon every form.’’48 Thus, the truth that nature acts for an end is crucial for the existence of ethics. Only in seeing this do we see goal and tendency as belonging together in being as being. And it is thus that we see the rightness of our seeking certain things in life and avoiding certain things. Our pathway in arguing against naysayers for the truth that nature acts for an end starts with the self-evidence of our own acting for an end in our daily lives. We then see that nature acts for an end inasmuch as we see the same kind of order, the same kind of proportion, that we establish between a goal and the steps toward it, but see that order as found in things considered as existing prior to, that is, independently of, the human mind and its works.49 We see that there exist in nature goals and instruments for bringing about those goals. The natures of things are themselves goals, and the lives50 of natural beings have an order toward those goals. We see in being, as prior to human intervention, the nature of ‘‘the unqualifiedly lovable’’ and ‘‘the qualifiedly lovable,’’ the ‘‘bonum honestum’’ and the ‘‘bonum utile.’’ Not only goodness but love as well belongs to being.51 When one says that ‘‘nature’’ acts for an end, this might be understood as merely about subhuman reality. The human being would be conceived as above nature and as a sort of pure liberty. The truth is rather that although man possesses free choice regarding the means of reaching the goals, the goals of human life are already determined.52 Thus, we have a ‘‘nature,’’ and we have natural knowledge and natural love. These are the most noble perfections in us, and they make it possible for us to be further perfected through divine influence, that is, by further natural perfections and supernatural perfections. Having taken note of the teleology found in nature, we are well positioned to see ourselves not merely as choosers but as having a natural inclination. Not merely as part of corporeal reality but also as intellectual beings, we have a nature. That nature has a kind of infinity relative to corporeal reality.53 We have a capacity to know that is ordered toward being in its universality: ‘‘all things.’’ Moreover, we have a natural desire that is proportionate to that universal capacity to know.54 It is the human being as a nature with a natural goal, a natural perfected state of fulfillment, that governs the entire conception of ethics.55 Here, of course, I am

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echoing Aristotle: ‘‘To say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is is still desired. This might perhaps be given if we could first ascertain the function of man.’’56 And Thomas Aquinas comments: Since man is something existing by nature, it is impossible that he be naturally idle, as [a thing] not having a proper operation. There is, therefore, some operation proper to man, just as there is of those [techniques] that are added to him. The cause of this is that each thing, whether natural or artificial, has being [est] through some form, which is the principle of some operation. Hence, just as each thing has its proper being [proprium esse] through its own form, so also it has its proper operation.57 Once we approach man as a nature, with a proper operation and a proper natural goal, then we can understand the usefulness of free choice and the nobility of free choice. Much is made of liberty not only in the modern world but also throughout history. The modern worship of liberty makes it a supreme goal, and the exercise of that liberty becomes a kind of self-creation of an atheist man. However, liberty in the sense of free choice is a good, but not the supreme good. An indication of this is that once we attain to the beatific vision, we do not have the option of looking at it or not looking at it, nor would we want that option.58 The Human Natural Inclination Thomas distinguishes three levels of inclination in reality. We see them set forth, for example, when he presents angels as beings that have the sort of inclination called ‘‘will.’’ In fact, Thomas presents the inclinational dimension of things as resulting from the fact that all things are caused not merely by God but by the divine will (which he had already presented). All involve some imitation of their cause and thus exhibit inclination. He begins: It is to be considered that, since all [things] proceed from the divine will, all are inclined by appetite, each at its own level, toward the good, but in diverse measures.59 For some are inclined toward the good by mere natural order, without knowledge, such as plants and inanimate bodies. And such inclination toward the good is called ‘‘natural appetite.’’

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But some are inclined toward the good with some knowledge; not, however, such that they know the very idea of the good, but they know some particular good; thus, the sense, which knows the sweet and the white and such things. The inclination attendant upon this knowledge is called ‘‘sensitive appetite.’’ But some are inclined to the good with a knowledge by which they know the very idea of the good, which [knowledge] is proper to intellect. And these are most perfectly inclined toward the good; not, indeed, merely as directed to the good by another, as in the case of those things that lack knowledge; nor merely toward a particular good, as in the case of those things in which there is only sensitive knowledge; but as inclined toward the good in its universality [in ipsum universale bonum]. And this inclination is called ‘‘will.’’ Hence, since the angels know through intellect the universal idea of the good [ipsam universalem rationem boni], it is evident that in them there is will.60 Thus, we see reality as shot through with tendency toward the good, but those beings that have intellect or mind have inclination in its most perfect realization, as beings that experience the appeal of goodness as such. First of all, I might underline that the just-mentioned text applies not only to angels but to human beings as well, since the human being has intellect.61 Second, one might conceive of the will so described as a source of free choice. Now, although the will is the power that exercises free choice,62 that is not its only nor its primary function. Thomas makes this clear in the next question,63 concerning the angelic act of love, love being the primary operation of appetite.64 Once again, a reading of these texts makes it clear that they apply to the human will just as much as to the angelic. The very first article asks whether there is natural love in angels, and in article 2 this natural love is contrasted with elective love, that is, choice: indeed, we learn that all the angel’s elective love, love by choice, must causally flow from its natural love. What is this natural love, and why must it exist? We read: It is necessary to locate within the angels a natural love. So that this may be evident, one must consider that, always, the prior is saved in the posterior. But nature is prior to intellect, because the nature

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of each thing is its essence [natura cuiuscumque rei est essentia eius]. Hence, that which belongs to the nature must be saved even in those things having intellect. But this is common to every nature, namely, that it have some inclination, which is natural appetite or love. Nevertheless, this inclination is found in diverse modes [diversimode] in diverse natures: in each according to its own mode. Hence, in the intellectual nature the natural inclination is found in function of will [secundum voluntatem]; in the sensitive nature in function of sensitive appetite; in the nature lacking knowledge, according to the mere order of the nature toward something. Hence, since the angel is an intellectual nature [est natura intellectualis], it is necessary that in its will there be natural love.65 Notice that this natural love is within the will66 and in keeping with its being a will. This means that just as will in general follows upon intellectual knowledge, the natural love pertaining to the will presupposes natural understanding of the good.67 In the following article, we see that there is elective love in the angel, but that it flows from the natural love: It is to be said that in angels there is a certain natural love and a certain elective [love]. And the natural love in them is the principle of the elective, because, always, that which pertains to the prior has the role of principle; hence, since the nature is what is first in each thing, it is necessary that that which pertains to the nature be the principle in any one. And this is apparent in the human being as regards intellect and as regards will. For the intellect knows the principles naturally; and from that knowledge there is caused in the human being the science of conclusions, which are not known naturally by man, but by discovery or by teaching. Similarly, in the will, the end has the position that the principle has in the intellect, as is said in Physics 2 [9.200a22]: hence, the will naturally tends toward its ultimate end, for every human being naturally wills happiness [beatitudinem].68 And from this natural willing, all other willings are caused, since whatever a man wills, he wills because of the end. Therefore, the love of the good that the man naturally wills as an end is natural love; the love derived from this, which is of the good that is loved because of an end, is elective love.69

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My interest today is in the natural love that Thomas attributes to the human being. This natural inclination of our will must be understood if we are to have the right idea of ourselves, the sort of beings we are, and the sort of behavior that befits us. In the rest of question 60, Thomas presents the objects, that is, the targets, of natural love—the things that are loved on the basis of such love. One does not merely love goodness. One does not merely love happiness. In fact, ‘‘object of love’’ is ambiguous. Thomas, earlier in the ST, had already pointed out a duality and so an ambiguity in saying that one ‘‘loves’’ a being: ‘‘The act of love always tends toward two items, namely toward the good that one wills for someone, and toward the one for whom one wills the good: for this is properly to love someone, namely, to will good for him.’’70 Here in article 3 of question 60, he makes this clarification once more: Since love is of the good, and the good is [found] in substance and in accident, as is clear from Ethics 1 [1096a19], something is loved in two ways: in one way, as a subsisting good thing; in the other way, as an accidental or inhering good. Now, that is loved as a subsisting good which is loved in such a way that someone wills good for it; whereas that is loved as an accidental or inhering good which is desired for another: the way one loves knowledge, not that it be good, but that it be possessed. This latter mode of loving some people call ‘‘concupiscence,’’ whereas [they call] the first [mode] ‘‘friendship.’’71 Now, we have seen that the natural love is primarily for happiness, but that is loving something as what we wish for someone (‘‘concupiscence’’).72 Now we ask, for whom does one wish the happiness? Article 3 asks whether the angel loves its very own self by natural love; article 4 asks whether it naturally loves other angels as it loves itself; and article 5, supremely important, asks whether it naturally loves God more than it loves its own self. Since my time is limited, I propose to concentrate on what seems to me the most remarkable and oddly-little-noticed doctrine of Thomas in this realm of natural inclination of the human being, so absolutely fundamental and primary for the reality of morals, namely, that it is natural to love God more than one loves one’s own self. Thomas presents this doctrine

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carefully in three different places in the ST. He does so first of all in the treatise on angels. Then, in the prima secundae, he presents it in the treatise of grace, and again in the secunda secundae in the treatise on charity.73 In ST 1.60.3, Thomas does not argue that we love ourselves. He takes that as something evident from our experience. We do in fact seek for ourselves our own good and our own perfection. The point at issue is whether such love is natural or chosen. Thomas argues on the basis of the inclination found in beings whose nature does not include cognitive capability. Each such being has a natural appetite to attain to what is good for it.74 And he accordingly concludes that the tendency so to act in intellectual creatures, that is, angels and human beings, is likewise a natural inclination. We naturally seek certain goods that pertain to our own perfection.75 He adds that we do also love some goods for ourselves on the basis of choice.76 In ST 1.60.4, asking whether one angel loves another as oneself by a natural love, Thomas begins by repeating that both man and angel naturally love themselves. He then argues that what is one with a thing is that thing and concludes that one loves what is one with oneself. If the union is natural, the love is natural, and if it is nonnatural, then the love is nonnatural. One loves one’s blood relations naturally, because the union is natural; one loves one’s fellow citizens by a love that is not natural but rather pertaining to political virtue. Thomas notes that specific or generic unity is natural. Thus, he concludes that an angel loves another inasmuch as they have a natural unity, though on the basis of other sorts of unity there will be other modes of love.77 We come now to the most important point of all. Is it natural for the angel, and for the human being, to love God more than one’s own self ? Thomas’s reply begins with an account of answers given by some other professors of theology, answers Thomas will reject, but knowledge of which helps us see exactly what it is we wish to say. We read: Some people have said that by natural love the angel loves God more than itself by concupiscible love, because it has appetite for itself to have the divine good even more than to have its own good; and also, in a way, by friendly love, inasmuch as it wills a greater good for God than for itself: for it naturally wills that God be God, whereas it wills for itself to have its own proper nature. Nevertheless,

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speaking unqualifiedly, by natural love it loves itself more than God: because it loves itself more intensely and more principally than it loves God. Thomas immediately rejects this: But the falsity of this opinion will manifestly appear if one considers in natural things toward what a natural thing is moved: for the natural inclination in those things that are without rationality demonstrates the natural inclination in the will of the intellectual nature. Now, each thing among natural things that is such by nature that its very reality is for another is more principally inclined and more inclined to that for which it is than toward its own self. And this natural inclination is demonstrated by actions naturally performed, since ‘‘each thing, as it naturally acts, just so is it naturally constituted to act,’’ as is said in Physics 2 [199a9]. For we see that naturally the part exposes itself for the sake of the conservation of the whole body: as the hand is exposed to the blow, without deliberation, for the conservation of the whole body. And because reason imitates nature, we find this sort of inclination in the political virtues: for it belongs to the virtuous citizen to expose himself to the danger of death for the conservation of the entire republic; and if the man were a natural part of this particular city, this inclination would be natural to him. Thomas is now ready to make his point: ‘‘Because, therefore, the universal good is God himself, and under this good are contained the angel, the human being, and every creature, because every creature naturally, by its very reality, is for God, it follows that by natural love, also, the angel and the human being love God more principally than themselves.’’ And Thomas adds a supplementary argument: ‘‘Otherwise, if naturally one loved oneself more than God, it would follow that natural love was perverse and that it would not be perfected by charity but rather destroyed [by it].’’78 This position of St. Thomas is the fruit of his metaphysical vision of reality. The entirety of creation has its ratio existendi, its raison d’eˆtre, as representative of the divine goodness.79 Thus, all creatures stand, relative to that divine goodness, as more for it than for themselves. Their primary inclination merely expresses that order.

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Thomas makes this more explicit in the reply to one of the objections. The objector based his argument on the previously seen doctrine that one’s love for others is based on the extent of their union with oneself. The objector says: ‘‘As has been said, natural love is based on natural union. But the divine nature is maximally distant from the nature of the angel. Therefore, the angel, by natural love, loves God less than itself or even another angel.80’’ To this, Thomas provides a careful and full reply: That argument works for the case of those things that are divided on an equal basis, one of which is not for the other the very reason for being and goodness; for in such things each naturally loves itself more than another, inasmuch as it is more one with itself than with another. But in the case of those things one of which is the entire reason for existing and goodness of the other, such an other is more loved than the thing’s own self: as, for example, it was said that each part naturally loves the whole more than itself. And any singular thing naturally loves more the good of its own species than its own singular good. Now, God is not merely the good of one species, but is the unqualifiedly universal good. Hence, each thing naturally loves God more than itself.81 Thomas makes very clear the state of soul of the rightly constituted human being when, in the presentation of divine grace, he asks whether man can love God more than himself without grace. We read: ‘‘Man in the state of integral nature was able to effect by virtue of his own nature the good that is connatural to him, without the addition of a gratuitous gift, though not without the help of God as mover. . . . Hence, man in the state of integral nature related his love of his own self to the love of God as to an end, and similarly the love of all other things. And thus he loved God more than himself and above all.’’82 We should stress this vision of the natural human being, which is the vision of our own nature. On it depends all ethics. What should we be? In the light of ST 1.60.5, all things have appetite in favor of their own specific being even more than for their individual being, and still more again they have appetite in favor of the divine goodness. And thus elsewhere, stressing how unnatural it is to come to hate God, Thomas says: ‘‘That which is maximally and primarily natural to man is that he love the good, and especially the divine good and the good of the neighbor.

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[Id autem quod est maxime et primo naturale homini est quod diligat bonum, et praecipue bonum divinum et bonum proximi.]’’83 St. Thomas says this in discussing whether hatred of God or of our neighbor is a ‘‘capital’’ sin. The answer is that it is not, because a capital sin is the sort of sin from which other sorts of sins usually have their origin. Since we fall into sin by gradually departing from what is connatural to the rational nature, the capital sins are those that are least contrary to that nature. Hatred of God and neighbor is most contrary to the rational nature!84 The Effects of Sin In ST 1–2.85 Thomas speaks of the effects of sin as regards the goods of our nature. Sin diminishes the good of nature but does not wholly do away with it. In the first article he distinguishes three levels of the good of the nature: (1) the principles constituting the nature, together with the properties caused by them, such as the powers of the soul; (2) the inclination to virtue; and (3) the gift of original justice. By sin, the third is completely lost, the first is not at all lost, but the second, the inclination to virtue, is diminished.85 The second article explains this diminution as never completely eliminating the inclination to virtue. It is based on our rational nature, which always remains in us, and so it is never eliminated; but it is ordered toward the virtues, and on that side it is more and more impeded from reaching the goal. The third article explains a set of wounds to the nature enumerated originally by St. Bede: weakness, ignorance, wickedness, and concupiscence. Thomas says: It is to be said that by original justice reason perfectly contained the lower powers of the soul, and reason itself was perfected and subjected to God. But this original justice was removed through the sin of the first parent, as has already been said. Thus, all the powers of the soul remain in some measure bereft [destitutae] of their proper order, by which they are naturally ordered toward virtue. And this poverty [destitutio] itself is called the ‘‘wound’’ [vulneratio] of nature. Now, there are four powers of the soul that can be the subjects of virtue, as was said earlier, namely, reason, in which there is prudence; will, in which there is justice; the irascible appetite, in which

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there is courage; and the concupiscible appetite, in which there is temperance. Therefore, inasmuch as reason is bereft of its order toward the true, there is the wound of ignorance; inasmuch as the will is bereft of order toward the good, there is the wound of wickedness; inasmuch as the irascible is bereft of its order toward the difficult, there is the wound of weakness; inasmuch as concupiscence [could read: the concupiscible; but see ad 3] is bereft of its order toward the pleasant moderated by reason, there is the wound of concupiscence.86 Thomas goes on to say that these wounds are not exclusively the result of original sin but are increased by our actual sins.87 The point here is simply that by original sin we no longer have the natural inclination to love God present in us in its original strength.88 Thus, as we will see, Thomas speaks of man, in his present state, as needing grace even to love God in the way that he originally did naturally. The Need for Grace My title includes the term ‘‘supernatural.’’ I am not confining myself to the natural dimension of ethics. One should even ask if it is possible to do so realistically. There is, doubtless, an account of ethics at the level of our natural powers, but the question is whether such an account is satisfying practically. Jacques Maritain famously spoke of ‘‘moral philosophy adequately taken,’’ contending that because moral philosophy was intended to be directive of action in the real world, and given that the real world of action was that of the human being as fallen and redeemed, moral philosophy itself needed the completion of the doctrine of revelation.89 Certainly, an adequate account of ethics and the ethical domain requires the teaching of revelation concerning the real situation of the human agent. Here I think of Thomas’s ST 1–2.109, on our need for grace. Thomas first asks whether the human being can know any truth without the help of grace. He presents objections that take the negative line. His sed contra and his own main response take quite firmly the positive line. The human being can know some truth without grace. If we consider the strategy in the main response, we see that the first thing Thomas notes is that to know a truth is a use or act of intellectual

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light. He then explains the role of God as the source of such operation, and indeed of any operation of any creature, in two respects. God is the source of all movement or operation (and Thomas stresses that unlike the causality of the celestial bodies, God’s causality is providential, i.e., stemming from intellect and will), and God is the source of every formal perfection. He thus can say: ‘‘Thus, therefore, the action of the intellect and of any created being depends on God in two respects: in one way, inasmuch as it has from him the perfection or form by virtue of which it acts; in the other way, inasmuch as it is moved by him to perform the action.’’90 Next, Thomas introduces the limitation of creaturely formal perfections, the very grounds of the distinction between natural and supernatural: ‘‘But each form inserted by God in created things has efficacy with respect to some determinate act of which it is capable in function of its own wherewithal; beyond that it cannot go save through some added form: for example, water cannot heat [things] save inasmuch as it is rendered hot by fire.’’91 This is applied to the case of the human intellect: Thus, therefore, the human intellect has some form, namely, the intelligible light itself, which is by itself sufficient for knowing some intelligibles, namely, those to knowledge of which we can come through sensible things. However, the human intellect cannot know higher intelligibles unless it be perfected by a stronger light, such as it the light of faith or prophecy, which is called ‘‘the light of grace,’’ inasmuch as it is added to nature.92 And Thomas concludes: ‘‘Thus, therefore, it is to be said that for the knowledge of any truth, man needs divine help in order that the intellect be moved by God to its own act. However, he does not need, for knowing truth in all matters, a new illumination added to the natural illumination; but only in regard to some things that exceed natural knowledge.’’93 The point of the article is to make clear the role of God in everything, but to circumscribe what pertains to the supernatural domain. Is God’s movement of things a grace? The answer seems to be that it can be so termed if the act to which the creature is moved is one that surpasses its natural power. Thus, later, the movement toward acting ‘‘well’’ is called ‘‘grace’’ (especially where ‘‘well’’ suggests something aimed at eternal life).94

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The second article asks whether the human being can will and do the good without grace. Here Thomas begins by distinguishing two states of human nature: in its integrity, as it was in the first parent before sin; and inasmuch as it is corrupt in us after the sin of the first parent. In both states, the human being needs the help of God as first mover in order to do or to will any good. However, he continues: But in the state of integral nature, as regards the sufficiency of the operative power, the human being was able by his natural wherewithal to will and to do the good proportionate to his own nature, such as is the good related to acquired virtue; but not the surpassing good, such as is the good related to infused virtue. But in the state of corrupted nature man fails even as regards that of which he is capable according to his nature, such that he cannot fulfill the whole of such good by his natural wherewithal. Nevertheless, because human nature is not totally corrupted by sin, such that it be deprived of the entire good of the nature, it can, even in the state of corrupt nature, by virtue of its own nature, accomplish some particular good, such as building houses, planting vines, and other such things; not nevertheless the entire good that is connatural to it, such that it fail in no respect. . . . Thus, therefore, man needs a power gratuitously added to the natural power, in the state of integral nature, as regards one thing, namely, for doing and willing the supernatural good. But in the state of corrupt nature [he has such a need] as regards two things, namely, that he be healed, and further, that he accomplish the good pertaining to supernatural power, which is meritorious. Beyond that, in both states he needs the divine help in order that he be moved by it to acting well.95 As I understand this, the person of partially corrupted nature will sometimes build the needed house for the family, but will sometimes not do so when one is needed, for example, because the money is spent on drink.96 The point most important for our present consideration is ST 1– 2.109.3, discussing whether a man can love God above all things, based on his natural wherewithal alone, without grace. Thomas, after recalling the doctrine of ST 1.60.5, continues:

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By natural appetite or love each particular thing loves its own proper good for the sake of [propter] the common good of the entire universe, which is God. Hence, also, Dionysius says in the book On the Divine Names that God turns all things toward the love of himself. Hence, man, in the state of integral nature referred the love of his own self to the love of God as to an end, and similarly the love of all other things. And thus he loved God more than himself and above all. But in the state of corrupt nature man fails in this respect, as regards the appetite of the rational will, which because of the corruption of the nature pursues the private good, unless it is healed by the grace of God.97 And so it is to be said that man in the state of integral nature did not need the gift of grace, added to the natural goods, in order to love God naturally above all things; though he needed the help of God moving him to this [act]. But in the state of corrupt nature man needs even for this the help of grace healing the nature.98 Thus, ST 1–2.109.3 is strictly about natural love, and about loving God as the author of nature.99 I wish to stress the picture of our corrupt nature and the help it needs even to be natural. Our quest for the foundations of ethics must focus on the natural love for God above all else, as proper to the nature of man. Thomas is saying that since the sin of Adam, one can really have natural goodness only in the household of grace.100 In ST 1–2.109.7 Thomas speaks of the need for grace in order to return from the state of sin to the state of rectitude. He tells us: Since sin, [even] having ceased to be actually, remains as to guilt [reatu][1–2.87.6], to rise up [resurgere] from sin is not the same thing as [merely] to cease sinning actually. Rather, to rise up from sin is for a man to be repaired as regards those things that he lost by sinning. Now, in sinning, a man incurs a threefold detriment, as is clear from things already said [1–2.85.1, 1–2.86.1, 1–2.87.1], namely, blemish, corruption of the natural good, and punishability [reatum poenae]. He incurs a blemish inasmuch as he lacks the beauty of grace through the deformity of sin. But the good of nature is corrupted inasmuch as the nature of the man is disordered, the will of the man

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not being subjected to God: for, that order being eliminated, the consequence is that the entire nature of the sinning man remains disordered. But [one’s] being worthy of punishment is that by virtue of which the man, sinning mortally, merits eternal damnation. But it is evident, as regards each of these three, that they cannot be repaired save by God. For since the beauty of grace comes from the illumination by divine light, such beauty cannot be restored to the soul save by God newly illuminating; hence, there is required the gift in the mode of habit, which is the light of grace. Similarly, the order of nature cannot be restored, so that the will of the man be subjected to God, save by God drawing the will of the man toward himself [God], as has been said [1–2.109.6]. Similarly, the being deserving of eternal punishment cannot be remitted save by God, against whom the offense was committed and who is the judge of men. And therefore the help of grace is required in order that a man rise up from sin, both as regards the gift in the form of a habit and as regards the interior motion [coming] from God. Conclusion I have presented a meditation aimed chiefly at the natural foundation of the moral life. In order to do so, I have necessarily been drawn into discussion of revealed truth, in particular the doctrine of the effect on human nature of the sin of Adam. The conception we have of human nature affects in the most fundamental way what we ask of the human being. The true human being has at heart, by nature, the interests of God, the author of nature, even more than his own private good. Sound metaphysics indicates this and, indeed, constitutes a sort of indication that man as we know him is fallen.101 I do not recall these doctrines of St. Thomas to suggest that all one needs to do is remind people of their true nature and all will be well. On the contrary, I have stressed the need for divine grace if true human nature is to be seen fully exhibited. My aim has been more one of eliminating both a certain optimism and a certain pessimism. The optimism would stem from catching sight of human dignity and thinking that nature suffices for ‘‘all to go well.’’ The pessimism would stem from the experience of ‘‘man’s inhumanity to man’’ and would attempt to make do with a contractarian individualism.102

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On the one hand, true morality requires an appreciation of the true human natural inclinations. On the other hand, it is necessary to take account of the concrete situation in which human action occurs, the situation of fallen and redeemed man. The call to ‘‘be natural’’ must be a call to seek healing through Christ.

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Chapter 2

W I S D O M A S F O U N D AT I O N A L E T H I C A L T H E O RY I N S T . T H O M A S A Q U I N A S Only five days ago, in a gathering here, principally of ladies, he solemnly declared in argument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbors. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality. Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That’s not all. He ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who do not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become, not only lawful but even recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even honorable outcome of his position. —Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov’s doctrine as given by another character, Miusov1

Introduction One problem for the foundation of ethics is the question of the reality of nature. Is there any such thing as nature?2 Much prevailing scientific orthodoxy suggests that the coherence and order of reality is ultimately accidental.3 Another problem focuses on the move from being to goodness-for-me (from ‘‘is’’ to a decisive ‘‘ought’’). Even given that things have natures, and that natures are interesting and beautiful, what relevance has the appeal that they make to one’s appetites? The sapiential response to both of these problems is to present the appetite as pertaining to the nature 32

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of the thing. The human appetite is appetite for the fullness of being proper to the intellectual nature: to be, in a way, all things. Things have more the nature of goals, just to the extent that they participate in or pertain to such fullness. The ultimate happiness must be beyond the grave, a knowledge of God, the source of being as such, beyond what is possible in the present state.4 In this present state of life, the contemplative operations have most of all the nature of the goal. The next highest line of operation is that which orders the will regarding the whole community, that is, governmental felicity, which brings rational order to the realm of choice.5 Below this are domestic and individual reasonableness. The task of wisdom is simply to present the ordered vision.6 Action itself is always the domain of freedom. What can ethics be but an appeal to reason?7 And what can its foundation be, save the foundation of such an appeal? Wisdom What do I mean by ‘‘wisdom’’? I mean the philosophical knowledge that says whatever is possible about God and the relation of other things to God. The conception of wisdom is presented by Thomas Aquinas at the beginning of the Summa contra gentiles (SCG)8 and at the beginning of the Summa theologiae (ST).9 This is because Thomas himself holds that the work he is undertaking in them, namely, the theology that pertains to revealed Christian religion, is the highest form of wisdom.10 Later on in the ST, he discusses philosophical wisdom as the highest of the intellectual virtues.11 I am proposing that ethics has as its proper foundation the consideration of the relation between the human being and God the Creator and Providence. The idea is that without the doctrine of God, no morality is possible.12 In this connection, I might note that in present-day vocabulary, the word ‘‘religion’’ often means exclusively the revealed religion that is the object of faith.13 I am working with a philosophy that claims to prove the existence of a god and contends that the ethical theater of action really follows upon this viewpoint. Thus, I am speaking about natural ethics associated with a metaphysics of divine order in things. St. Thomas distinguishes, as I said, between philosophical wisdom and the wisdom that

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pertains to revealed religion. Although I believe that the real well-being of humanity requires the latter,14 it would seem both possible and desirable to isolate for consideration the philosophical wisdom. Different names are given to the supreme philosophical science. It is called ‘‘metaphysics,’’ ‘‘ontology,’’ and simply ‘‘wisdom.’’ As the science of beings as beings, it is called ‘‘ontology.’’ What do we mean by calling this same science ‘‘wisdom’’? The right pathway to an answer starts from Aristotle’s observation that ‘‘wisdom’’ is associated with judgment and putting things in their proper order.15 Now, the judgment concerning an effect is made in the light of its proper cause. And the judgment concerning secondary causes is made in the light of the supreme cause. Thus, as Thomas says: That [person] is called ‘‘wise’’ in any particular domain who considers the highest causes in that domain. For example, in the domain of construction, the technician who considers the design of the building is called ‘‘wise’’ and the ‘‘architect,’’ in comparison with the lower technicians. . . . And again, in the domain of the entirety of human life, it is the prudent [person] who is called ‘‘wise,’’ inasmuch as he orders human actions to their due goal. . . . He, therefore, who considers the highest cause, unqualifiedly, which is God, is called ‘‘wise’’ maximally: hence, wisdom is said to be ‘‘knowledge of divine things,’’ as is clear in Augustine, On the Trinity 12 [chap. 14, in PL 42:1009].16 Thomas goes on to distinguish between the science that knows the highest cause merely on the basis of knowledge of creatures (what the philosophers know) and the science that knows that cause as to what God alone knows about himself and chooses to reveal. It is this latter science that Thomas is occupied with.17 However, inasmuch as metaphysics or ontology is knowledge of God, it is wisdom. Thomas, in discussing the ascendancy of wisdom over all the other intellectual virtues (among which is ethics),18 points to the excellence of its object, as compared with the objects of the others: The greatness of a virtue, as to its species, is considered from the object. But the object of wisdom has priority of excellence among the objects of all the intellectual virtues: for it considers the highest

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cause, which is God, as is said in the beginning of the Metaphysics. And because it is through the cause that one judges concerning the effect, and through the higher cause concerning the lower causes, hence it is that wisdom has judgment over all other intellectual virtues, and it belongs to it to provide order [ordinare] for them all, and it itself is architectonic with respect to them all.19 Wisdom is the knowledge of God, the highest cause, inasmuch as it is ontology—the science of being as being. This is because being as being, that is, being, taken formally, is the proper effect of the highest cause.20 Ethical Theory What do I mean by ‘‘ethical theory’’? Human action is voluntary, and voluntary action needs rational direction.21 Since actions are performed in things with individual being, the knowledge that directs action must extend to the consideration of things as individual.22 Thus, this knowledge cannot be merely a series of general considerations, but must study things as individual. The ultimate knowledge pertaining to action is associated with the virtue of prudence or practical wisdom. However, the theater of human action has certain universal or typical features, and this makes possible a science of human conduct.23 This is ‘‘ethics’’ or ‘‘moral philosophy.’’ Ethics, the science of human conduct, is not to be confused with psychology or anthropology or sociology. These are all merely observational rather than directive. They look at the human being as manifesting certain common tendencies, and thus their view is focused on human nature24 rather than on human freedom. They typically try to say whom you (the typical ‘‘you’’) will vote for, whereas ethics tries to say whom you (the personal ‘‘you’’) should vote for (though only in a somewhat general way). Neither should ethics be confused with technical knowledge.25 Technical knowledge certainly directs human action. Whether you are building bridges or building a society or merely seeking to stay alive, there is ‘‘know-how’’ that you will need. There is ‘‘political science’’ in the modern sense, which often means ‘‘how to acquire and keep office,’’ ‘‘how to stay on top.’’ However, technique is something the human being has in common even with other beings that do not have mastery over their

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actions. Ants exhibit technique. So do bees.26 For the human being, particular techniques constitute a realm of acquired knowledge, because reason is a kind of universal technique that can supply what the ant can do and what the bee can do and so on ad infinitum.27 Technique (in its universal mode) pertains to the human being as rational, but not precisely as a voluntary agent.28 Our concept of ethics cannot be fully exhibited until we have provided a conception of the will and its ‘‘proper object.’’29 So much, for now, for ethics. But what do I mean by ‘‘ethical theory’’? ‘‘Theory’’ here is being taken in the sense of ‘‘the vision of reality as given.’’ Other expressions would be ‘‘observational knowledge,’’ ‘‘objective knowledge,’’ ‘‘contemplative knowledge.’’ The sciences pertaining to human action or conduct or behavior that I mentioned above— psychology, anthropology, sociology—are all ‘‘theory’’ in this sense. They aim ‘‘to get a good look’’ at the given. They do, as said, seek to predict what a human being will do, but even then it is inasmuch as the future is somehow ‘‘already given’’ in its roots or principles.30 However, when I say that a theory or theoretical science is presupposed as foundational by ethics, one must not assume that such a science will be something like psychology. It is going to have to be a science that knows what to say, in a primary way, about the human will. That science, I am going to say, is not psychology, but rather is metaphysics, the science of beings as beings.31 I am aware that this line of thinking has long had its adversaries. John Rawls32 is not, of course, the first to advocate an independence of ethics vis-a`-vis metaphysics. The only answer to such critics is to explain oneself as carefully as possible.33 Ethics itself must be taught before one studies metaphysics, but the starting point for ethics is some grasp of a less probing sort than the sapiential.34 Nevertheless, like all the sciences, ethics has its true wellbeing when it basks in the light of metaphysics. Wisdom is in a commanding position, even as regards prudence itself.35 God and Ethics When I say that a God is required for ethics, this could easily be misunderstood. I do not mean exactly that we must start our ethical vision with a god (and I certainly do not mean that ethics will be primarily a ‘‘divine command’’ doctrine).36 We should remember that for Thomas Aquinas,

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the existence of a god is something that, scientifically speaking, requires a reasoned proof from necessary principles.37 Among the proofs that he presents, the fourth way begins, ‘‘There is found in things something [that is] more and [something] less good, true, noble, and so on with other things of this order.’’38 This is to say that we are supposed to be able to recognize goodness, and even a hierarchy of goodness, prior to concluding to the existence of a god. However, it is precisely from such a vision of things that the existence of a god becomes manifest, where the term ‘‘a god’’ means ‘‘a maximal [in the order of] being [as such],’’ which is ‘‘the cause of being and goodness and every perfection for all beings.’’39 Thus, the end product of our reasoning is a vision of reality in which to deny the existence of a God is to rob all else of its goodness. Accordingly, there is a remarkable argument in the SCG, at the end of a chapter on divine providence: Through these [foregoing arguments] is excluded the error of some who, because bad things are seen to happen in the world, said that there is no God. Boethius, in On the Consolation of Philosophy 1 [prose 4], introduces some philosopher asking, If God is, whence comes the bad? One ought to argue in contrary fashion: if the bad is, God is. For there would not be the bad if the order of the good were done away with. But this order would not be if God were not.40 The order of the good and God stand and fall together. Thomas contrasts the movement of thought of revealed theology and philosophical theology, the former moving from God to creatures and the latter from creatures to God.41 Accordingly, I will begin with creatures, and, more specifically, I will focus on their goodness. The Goodness Tableau It is notable that an early work by John Dewey touching on the foundations of morals begins with ‘‘the good,’’ a topic that indeed occupies over half the book. The candidates passed in review in the discussion are all meant to designate the human good. Although obviously that is the item one seeks ultimately to designate, one must instead begin with a discussion of goodness as a universal form,42 coextensive with being. Only in

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that way does one stand a chance of getting the right perspective on human action.43 In the first part of the Summa theologiae, reality is presented as hierarchical in structure. Most notably, as already mentioned, in ST 1.2.3, on the existence of a God, the fourth way begins: ‘‘There is found in things something more and [something] less good, true, noble and so on with other things of this order.’’ Eventually in the fourth way, it is seen that being is also one of the items belonging to ‘‘this order,’’ and God is ultimately presented as ‘‘maximally a being, which is the cause of being and goodness and of every perfection whatsoever for all beings.’’ It is this picture of things, this understanding of things, that we require. The fundamental outlook is of things as beings, taking ‘‘being’’ both as it is divided by the categories and as it is divided by act and potency.44 That is, one takes seriously the particular natures of things, and primarily substances, as they reveal a hierarchy of perfection: elements, vegetative life, animal life, human life—all so many modes of substance. Furthermore, one takes seriously causal hierarchy, the need that beings have for higher beings: the priority of act over potency. My plan, then, is to begin with natures and finality, then to consider hierarchy in such finality of natures, and ultimately to place the rational or intellectual nature in the hierarchy. Rather than plunge immediately into the step-by-step presentation of the nature of goodness or perfection, I think one needs first of all to have a sample of the vision of hierarchy of goodness.45 Here, as always, my ambition is to present the mind of Thomas Aquinas. Do we find him providing us with an example anywhere? One text that seems relevant occurs in his discussion of the corporeal creature in general and the reason God created it. We might recall that in Thomas’s time there were influential groups who maintained that God was not the creator of corporeal reality, on the grounds that corporeal reality as such was something bad. We thus find him first arguing that God is the cause of corporeal reality and that it is good.46 However, another idea that was abroad was the somewhat Platonic conception of corporeal reality as something designed to imprison and punish spiritual beings who had sinned. This too was viewed by Thomas as at odds with the text of Genesis, which concludes the account of the production of each species of creature with the statement ‘‘God saw that

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it was good,’’ as though to say that for each species to be was itself something good.47 Thus, Thomas goes on to explain the many dimensions of the goodness of things, culminating in the view that the raison d’eˆtre of corporeal reality is to manifest the divine goodness. What we are given here is a presentation of things in function of finality. Goodness is seen to be found primarily in what has the role of goal or end—that which stands at the head of any group of merely useful things and has no need to plead its ‘‘usefulness’’ because it is loved for its own sake, intrinsically worthwhile. Secondarily, to be ‘‘good’’ is to be ‘‘useful,’’ or ‘‘helpful.’’ My car is useful, since it provides all sorts of services for my family; my family, on the other hand, is just plain lovable: it is unqualifiedly good. The vision of a hierarchy of goods is, then, a vision of things as themselves meriting to be considered as ends, that is, things for the sake of which other things are considered worth pursuing or providing. The idea of Thomas’s discussion of the goodness of the corporeal creation is to show (1) that it has intrinsic goodness, (2) that it furthermore serves the greater goodness found in spiritual reality, but (3) that it also has the character of serving the divine goodness.48 Here is what he says: The universe in its entirety is made up of all creatures [corporeal and incorporeal], as a whole [is made up] out of parts. Now, if we wish to indicate the purpose [Latin: ‘‘finem,’’ end] concerning some whole and its parts, we will find, firstly, that the particular parts are for the sake of their acts: as the eye for seeing. And, secondly, that the less noble part is for the sake of the more noble: as the senses for the intellect, and the lungs for the heart. Then, thirdly, all the parts are for the perfection of the whole, the way the matter is for the form: for parts are, as it were, the matter of the whole. But going even further, the complete human being is for some extrinsic end, as that he find fulfillment in God. So also, then, in the parts of the universe, each creature is for the sake of its own proper operation and perfection. Secondly, the less noble creatures are for the more noble, as the creatures that are below the human being are for the human being. But, going further, particular creatures are for the sake of the perfection of the universe as a whole. Further still, the entire universe, with its particular parts, is ordered

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toward God as toward an end, inasmuch as in them, through some [measure of] imitation, the divine goodness is represented, for the glory of God (though the rational creatures in a special way, over and above that, have God as an end, whom they can attain to by their operation, knowing and loving [him]). Thus, it is clear that the divine goodness is the end [i.e., the raison d’eˆtre] of all corporeal things.49 In the passage above, St. Thomas is especially interested in relating the being of bodily things to the manifestation of the divine goodness. They do not have to have their existence justified through their making life difficult for intelligent creatures who are worthy of punishment. They are good in themselves, good for other creatures, and good as mirroring, however weakly, the divine goodness.50 On the other hand, my interest in presenting the text is to provide an example of a vision of things, through the eyes of Thomas Aquinas, that sees goodness in them, and levels of goodness. Consideration of the human being is used as a first step, and the first step in the presentation of the human being is to look at one bodily organ relative to its operation. This is in accord with the Aristotelian presentation of the proportion of potency to act.51 So also, we are encouraged to consider the proportion of all the parts to the whole: parts are to whole as matter to form, the latter being the prime case of potency to act.52 Again, we are expected to grasp the greater goodness, the greater intrinsic lovableness, of mind in comparison with sense, and of the human animal over the lower animals and the plants.53 What I wish to insist upon in all this is that the vision of reality as a hierarchy of goodness is not merely a vision of moral goodness (which is goodness in the domain of free choice) but primarily a grasp of each sort of thing as intrinsically lovable, and of the many kinds of thing as possessing, this one more, this one less, what makes a thing worthy of actual existence.54 Saying that a thing is ‘‘worthy of actual existence’’ might lead one to judge that goodness is merely the approval expressed by the human being (or even a more exalted observer). The only cure for this ‘‘subjectivist’’ conception of the situation is an understanding of the role of approval, that is, of inclination or appetite or love, in the schema of being. Goodness is what is approved of, yes, but it is not good because it is approved

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of; it is approved of because it is good.55 To call the good ‘‘good’’ is to speak of it as something that, for us, has light thrown upon it by its ability to elicit approval. If we wish to get at it more as it is in itself, then we should speak of the perfection of the thing. Thus, Thomas Aquinas presents a discussion of perfection in question 4 of ST 1 and in fact, presents questions 5 and 6, the discussion of goodness both in general and in God, as extensions of the question on perfection. This doctrine of goodness invites us to see what is meant by ‘‘perfection’’ in things and to see that tendency or appetite is universal. Such a tableau presents tendency, order, proportion, inclination, not as something ‘‘outside of being,’’ ‘‘outside of goodness,’’ such that we see the natures of things but do not see why appetite aims at those natures, but rather as part of nature, as the counterpart, within being, of goals or perfections. As Thomas says: ‘‘Some inclination attends upon every form.’’56 Nature and Teleology Thus, the truth that nature acts for an end is crucial for the existence of ethics. Only in seeing this do we see goal and tendency as belonging together in being as being. Our pathway in arguing for that truth against naysayers starts with the self-evidence of our own acting for an end. But our own acting for an end cannot, in itself, constitute ethics. All technique acts for an end.57 The defense of ethics passes through the understanding of nature and the ends proper to diverse natures.58 We see that nature acts for an end inasmuch as we see the same kind of order, the same kind of proportion, that we establish between a goal and the steps toward it, but see that order as found in things considered as existing prior to the human mind and its works.59 We see that there exist in nature goals and instruments for bringing about those goals. The natures of things are themselves goals, and the lives of natural beings have an order toward those goals. We see in being, as prior to human intervention, the nature of ‘‘the unqualifiedly lovable’’ and ‘‘the qualifiedly lovable,’’ the ‘‘bonum honestum’’ and the ‘‘bonum utile.’’ Not only goodness but love as well belongs to being.60 Having started with human technique, and understanding the teleology found in nature, we are well positioned to see ourselves not merely as

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choosers but as having a natural inclination. Not merely as part of corporeal reality but also as intellectual beings, we have a nature. That nature has a kind of infinity, relative to corporeal reality.61 We have a capacity to know that is ordered toward being in its universality: ‘‘all things.’’ Moreover, we have a natural desire that is proportionate to that universal capacity to know.62 It is the human being as a nature with a natural goal, a natural perfected state of fulfillment, that governs the entire conception of ethics.63 Here, of course, I am echoing Aristotle: ‘‘To say that happiness is the chief good seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is is still desired. This might perhaps be given if we could first ascertain the function of man.’’64 And Thomas Aquinas comments: Since man is something existing by nature, it is impossible that he be naturally idle, as [a thing] not having a proper operation. There is, therefore, some operation proper to man, just as there is of those [techniques] that are added to him. The cause of this is that each thing, whether natural or artificial, has being [est] through some form, which is the principle of some operation. Hence, just as each thing has its proper being through its own form, so also it has its proper operation.65 Goodness This leads us to the question, what is goodness? It is significant that Thomas, in the first part of the ST, presents first the divine simplicity (question 3), then the nature of perfection (question 4), and then the notion of goodness(question 5).66 Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, in his commentary on the article that asks whether God is perfect, carefully presents the idea of perfection as pertaining not to the nature itself of a thing but to that nature’s mode (or level or grade or intensity) of being. The perfect is the best mode of being pertaining to a nature. He illustrates this: For a thing can be understood and can be [intelligi et esse] under several modes of being [sub modo essendi multiplici], one of which is better than another: for example, the nature of plants and animals has in the seed a certain mode of being, and it has another mode of being in the generated individuals, and again in the same things once grown, and so on. And it is clear that the first is, and is called,

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‘‘imperfect,’’ because the specific nature is there in potency only; but the second is ‘‘somewhat perfect’’ [aliqualiter perfectus]; whereas the third is unqualifiedly perfect [simpliciter perfectus].67 I notice that ‘‘best’’ enters into Cajetan’s conception, but I think this merely testifies to the difficulty of expressing these primary notions. Thomas himself does not use the notion of the best. Rather, he says that what is perfect is what is not lacking [de-esse!] what pertains to its own level of perfection.68 That is, he did not use ‘‘best,’’ but only at the cost of having to use the notion of ‘‘perfection’’ itself. Obviously, we are close to a primary notion. Thomas immediately associates it with ‘‘being in act.’’ So does Cajetan. And this is, as he says, a mode of being. Remember that Thomas includes ‘‘act and potency’’ among the naturally known, the first known, intelligibilities. Thus, it is explained that act is among the first simple and thus indefinable notions and that through seeing proportions in particular examples, one comes to know what act is and what potency is: ‘‘And thus, proportionally, from particular examples, we can come to know what act is and [what] potency [is].’’69 We see the vision of perfection as a hierarchy of reality in the same ST article on God’s being ‘‘maximally perfect.’’ Being perfect is seen as associated with efficient causality. This is because being in act [esse in actu] is what pertains to the agent, the efficient cause, as such. We see, then, that our grasp of things as in act or in potency is one with our understanding of efficient causal relationship.70 God has been reasoned to as the primary efficient cause, and thus is maximally in act. Then it is pointed out that something is called ‘‘perfect’’ inasmuch as it is in act. That is perfect, to which nothing is lacking [deest], as regards its own mode of perfection.71 One sees from the example used by Cajetan how our conception of the good (which is the perfect) is being generated by our grasp of the proportion between the seed and the immature thing, the immature thing and the mature thing. In the same schema, we see the relevance of movement from the earlier to the later stage, the place of development and tendency in the theater of the good.72 If we move now from perfection to the actual presentation of the good, the first point is that every good is a being, or rather, that to call a being ‘‘good’’ does not involve talking about some further real item but is a new way of talking (and thinking) about the same item, already called ‘‘a

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being’’: the good does not differ in reality from the being. It does, however, add a new notion to our description of the being. The notion it adds is relation to appetite.73 Thomas begins74 with the notion of ‘‘a good.’’ It consists in this, namely, that something is appetible, an object of (or precise opposite number vis-a`-vis) appetite. The word ‘‘appetible’’ is here used in a way analogous to such words as ‘‘audible,’’ ‘‘visible,’’ ‘‘tangible,’’ ‘‘desirable.’’ The audible or hearable is the ‘‘object’’ of the power of hearing, and Thomas is speaking of the appetible as the object of the power of appetite. Thus, calling a thing ‘‘a good,’’ we are using the notion ‘‘object of appetite.’’ Now, Thomas takes another step. A thing has the character appetible, according as it is perfect; if we wish to envisage things ‘‘the way we want them,’’ then we should envisage them the way they are when they are all there, that is, lacking in nothing that pertains to their own proper nature. If we have been planning some event, for example, a family party, and do not know whether some much-loved member can get there, and if, when the party is in progress that person suddenly arrives, then we say, that makes it perfect—it’s just the way I wanted it! Thus Thomas says that a thing is the object of appetite insofar as that thing is perfect, for ‘‘all things have appetite for their own perfection’’ (this is nothing less than a law of beings as beings, a law Thomas believes the human mind can grasp through its experience with natural things; it also comes about as close as one can to a definition of appetite).75 In the sequence of the first part of the ST, as we have seen, there has already been a discussion of perfection and the perfect (in question 4). Having moved, in his argument, from good to appetible to perfect, Thomas takes a further step. It is to this extent that a thing is perfect, namely, to the very extent that it ‘‘is, actually’’; and this brings us to our calling a thing ‘‘a being.’’ We call a thing ‘‘a being’’ when it is something having ‘‘being’’ [esse, i.e., the Latin infinitive of the verb is used]—‘‘esse,’’ or ‘‘being,’’ is the ACT-uality of every real item whatsoever. Hence, to call a thing ‘‘a good,’’ which is to call it ‘‘an object of appetite,’’ is to refer to its being perfect and so to its being ‘‘in act’’ (in the sense of ‘‘actually’’) and so to its act of being. Thus, what we are naming is the precise item we call ‘‘a being.’’ But we are expressing, by the word ‘‘good,’’ the notion ‘‘object of appetite,’’ which the word ‘‘a being’’ does not express.

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Thomas, in question 5, establishes not only that every good is a being but also that every being is a good.76 Also, the aspect of goodness expresses final causality, but it presupposes the perfection that makes a thing an efficient cause and, first of all, the form that makes the thing a being.77 The factors—form, measure, and order—all pertain to goodness.78 The proper division of the good as good is into the intrinsically lovable [honestum], the enjoyable, and the useful.79 This metaphysics of goodness, applying the term ‘‘good’’ in every domain whatsoever and not merely from a human point of view, relates directly to the doctrine that nature is a cause that acts for an end. This doctrine, presented by Aristotle in Physics 2, makes appetite something that pertains to every being inasmuch as it is a being. This is why Thomas regularly presents inclination as including ‘‘natural inclination’’ as well as ‘‘animal inclination’’ and ‘‘will.’’80 And he teaches, as has been said, that ‘‘some inclination accompanies every form.’’81 One can speak, thus, of transcendental inclination. In the presentation of the order of natural law in the prima secundae of the ST, the first mode of inclination is that which all substances have in common, namely to preserve their own being.82 This is why Thomas chides those who judge a thing as ‘‘bad’’ merely because it is harmful for the human being. He says: The corporeal creature, as regards its nature, is good; but it is not the universal good, but is some particular and limited good; and in function of that particularity and limitation there is accordingly contrariety in it, by virtue of which one [corporeal creature] is contrary to another, though each in itself is good. However, some people, judging things not on the basis of their nature but on the basis of their own comfort, regard whatever is harmful to themselves as unqualifiedly bad, not considering that what to one is harmful in some respect, to another, or even to the same thing in some other respect, is beneficial. And this would nowise be if bodily beings, just in themselves, were bad and harmful.83 It is this viewpoint, which uses the vocabulary and conceptions of goodness universally, that constitutes the setting for morals. We have the presentation of goodness in question 5, explaining that it is being in act, it is esse, that constitutes goodness. A thing is perfect inasmuch as it has esse;84 and all have appetite for their own perfection.

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Thus, goodness is perfection, since goodness is the object of appetite. We should note this conception of substance (or selfhood) as such, aiming at perfection. It is closely tied to the doctrine of nature acting for an end. Appetite In the above, the notion of appetite mediates between perfection and goodness. Thomas says that each thing has appetite for its own perfection. This is really the doctrine of ST 1.19.1,85 1.80.1, and other such texts. There we move from being and form to inclination, and from inclination to the good. It seems as if we are being asked to see the goodness of things by seeing the difference between the perfect and the imperfect (act and potency), and then seeing the ‘‘move’’ of things, issuing from within themselves, from the imperfect to the perfect. This is the manifestation of inclination, tendency, appetite. Each thing has appetite for its own perfection; this is very close to ‘‘some inclination accompanies every form.’’ Perhaps the presentations by Thomas of the way will follows upon intellect would best serve to bring out this doctrine. The notion of being, taken just by itself, rather naturally suggests a static tableau. And the notion of knowledge, as mirroring being, is still rather static.86 Consider, however, how Thomas introduces the divine will. Is there what we call ‘‘will’’ in God? Thomas has already introduced the reader to intellect in God.87 Accordingly he says: ‘‘It is to be said that in God there is will, just as in him there is intellect: for will accompanies intellect.’’ It is this accompaniment of intellect by will that Thomas undertakes to make evident, leading the reader from more observable to less observable things. We have here nothing less than a doctrine of being, a fundamental ontology, which introduces us to the thing called ‘‘inclination.’’ We read: For just as the natural thing has being in act [esse in actu] through its own form, so also the intellect [has] understanding in act through its own intelligible form.88 Now, any thing whatsoever has this order toward its own natural form, that when it does not have it, it tends toward it; and when it does have it, it reposes in it. And it is the same concerning any

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natural perfection whatsoever, which is the natural good [bonum naturae]. And this order toward the good, in things lacking knowledge, is called ‘‘natural appetite.’’ Hence, so also, the intellectual nature [natura intellectualis] has a similar order toward the good apprehended through the intelligible form; namely, that when it has it, it reposes in it; but when it does not have it, it seeks it. And both [attitudes] pertain to the will. Hence, in anything whatsoever having intellect, there is will; just as in anything whatsoever having sense, there is the ‘‘animal appetite.’’89 This presentation focuses on the ‘‘being in act’’ that follows upon form and thus presents a tendency that accompanies form. The ‘‘movement toward’’ form and ‘‘repose in’’ form are related to form’s conferring ‘‘being in act’’ [esse in actu]. In this light, form whether substantial or accidental will be perfection and goodness.90 Also, we note that we do not speak merely of ‘‘intellect’’ when the time comes to make the comparison but of ‘‘intellectual nature.’’ It is as if we are to view the intellect as a new dimension of natural being, expanding the meaning of ‘‘tendency,’’ ‘‘inclination,’’ ‘‘order toward the good.’’ Following a reading of this, one should read ST 1.59.1, on will in angels. A text that presupposes that one has seen that there is a God who wills all the rest of reality, it presents all the levels of inclination in the universe as a manifestation of divine will. However, the philosophical reader can ‘‘read it upward,’’ beginning with the universe as our means of forming a conception of the divine will. The text aims to establish that there is will in the angels, that is, the already envisioned created intellectual substances, but what it is saying about them can just as well be said of the human soul. It begins with the notable premise, ‘‘it is to be considered that since all [things] proceed from the divine will . . .’’ Thus, the whole of reality is being envisioned as the expression of a will, that is, the appetite that accompanies understanding. Let us begin again: It is to be considered that since all [things] proceed from the divine will, all are inclined by appetite, each at its own level, toward the good, but in diverse measures.91

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For some are inclined toward the good by mere natural order, without knowledge, such as plants and inanimate bodies. And such inclination toward the good is called ‘‘natural appetite.’’ But some are inclined toward the good with some knowledge; not, however, such that they know the very idea of the good, but they know some particular good; thus, the sense, which knows the sweet and the white and such things. The inclination attendant upon this knowledge is called ‘‘sensitive appetite.’’ But some are inclined to the good with a knowledge by which they know the very idea of the good, which [knowledge] is proper to intellect. And these are most perfectly inclined toward the good; not, indeed, merely as directed to the good by another, as in the case of those things that lack knowledge; nor merely toward a particular good, as in the case of those things in which there is only sensitive knowledge; but as inclined toward the good in its universality [in ipsum universale bonum]. And this inclination is called ‘‘will.’’ Hence, since the angels know through intellect the universal idea of the good [ipsam universalem rationem boni], it is evident that in them there is will.92 Thus, we see reality as shot through with tendency toward the good, but those beings that have intellect or mind have inclination in its most perfect realization, as beings that experience the appeal of goodness as such.93 Notice that the above text sees the inclination in things as a result and a manifestation, an imitation, of the divine inclination. The premise unspoken appears to be the often-mentioned doctrine that an agent produces something like itself.94 God is productive as inclined to the good, and the beings, as such, that he produces are imbued with inclination to the good. It does not merely happen to a being that it is active and seeks goodness. Let us go back to question 19, on the divine will. The article following ‘‘does God have will?’’ asks whether he wills things other than himself. The presentation in article 1 is not only correct but fundamental for the idea of inclination; Thomas will always use as a first principle in discussions of inclination that each thing has appetite for its own perfection—that is, inclination is very directly related to the perfection of, or perfecting of, the being it is in.95 Nevertheless, inclination is not limited to one’s own

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self. And it is instructive to see Thomas’s reply to the question, does God will things other than himself ? People have sometimes thought that it would be an imperfection for God to have a mind that considers things other than himself, and similarly one might think that to will another was an imperfection.96 Thus, Thomas presents God as willing things other than himself, and does so by continuing the comparison he used in article 1: The natural thing does not merely have a natural inclination with respect to its own good, to acquire it when it does not have it, or to repose in it when it has it; but also to diffuse its own good into other things, according as this is possible. Hence we see that every agent, inasmuch as it is in act and perfect, makes something similar to itself. Hence, this also pertains to the character [rationem] of the will, that the good that one has, one communicates to others, according as this is possible. And this pertains especially to the divine will, from which, by a certain likeness, all perfection is derived. Hence, if natural things, inasmuch as they are perfect, communicate their good to others, much more does it pertain to the divine will that it communicate through likeness its goodness to others, according as this is possible.97 I wish to highlight the view of all beings as so many (in some degree) perfect things, which thus have a communicability and an inclination to communicate. Each being is not merely a thing in itself but a ‘‘broadcaster’’ of its own perfection. Each being, inasmuch as it is perfect, is an imitation not merely of ‘‘God’’ but of the divine will. The model for beings is the reproducing plant or animal, one might say: the robin is a thing that produces robins, radiating ‘‘robinhood’’ (pardon the pun). One should not regard ‘‘willing things other than oneself ’’ as merely added on accidentally or arbitrarily to having a will. The unity of the doctrine is especially clear in the discussion of whether it is natural (for the rational creature) to love God more than oneself. When an objector says that nature is turned back toward itself, and that thus it would not be natural to love something else more than oneself, Thomas’s answer is to signal the ampleness of being of various ‘‘selves.’’ By nature, we love

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our own specific being, our own specific self, more than our individual self; and all the more do we love the universal good that is God more than all else.98 In the article, he explained that our own being is intrinsically dedicated to the service of God, as one of our limbs is dedicated to the service of the whole body. My point is that in a causal hierarchy of natures, the higher natures will have it as pertaining to their own perfection99 that they radiate that perfection.100 The intelligent being is thus a being that if it must develop from imperfection to perfection,101 tends to do so willingly and also tends to radiate the perfection it achieves. Hierarchy My discussion so far might give the idea of a random broadcasting of a chaos of diverse particular natures. That there are particular natures, the development of one of which is opposed to the development of another, is quite clear.102 However, there is a hierarchy of natures, some having more comprehensive or systematic roles than others. In Thomas’s presentation of the universe of goodness, he begins with the human being, where the eye has as its end the act of seeing. However, as he goes on to say, the senses are for the intellect, and all the parts are for the whole. Thus, looking at the eye, one sees, ‘‘superimposed’’ as it were, several levels of inclination. The eye not only is perfected with the power to see but is given a certain place, namely, in the head, and given a certain musculature for revolving. These things pertain to its service to the whole. So also, as we saw, Thomas says, looking at the universe: ‘‘In the parts of the universe, each creature is for the sake of its own proper operation and perfection. Secondly, the less noble creatures are for the more noble, as the creatures that are below the human being are for the human being. But, going further, particular creatures are for the sake of the perfection of the universe as a whole.’’103 His whole point is that in order to size up a thing from the viewpoint of goodness, it will not do to take only its most immediate aspect. One must see it as a member of an ordered hierarchy of goodness. The lowly corporeal creature then reveals its being ‘‘because of the divine goodness.’’ It is remarkable that Thomas begins his question on homicide with the article on the killing of brute animals. If we look at the objections to the

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killing of animals, we notice the second. Is not homicide forbidden because it is a taking of life? Should we not then ban the killing of animals, which is also a taking of life? Thomas specifies that what is forbidden is the taking of rational life, which is a source of events. Animals are more moved than movers, a sign that they are for the use of others.104 And in the body of the article, once it is established that by virtue of the ontological hierarchy, the plants and animals are meant for human use, it is then further argued that use as food requires killing. Thus, one comes to the licitness of killing. We read: No one sins by the fact that he uses some thing for that for which it is. But in the order of things the less perfect are for the more perfect, just as also in the pathway of generation nature proceeds from imperfect things to perfect things. And thus it is that just as in the generation of man the living thing is prior, then the animal, and lastly the man; so also those things that merely live, such as plants, are generally for the sake of the animals, whereas all animals are for the sake of man. And so if man uses the plants as a utility for the animals, and the animals as a utility for man, this is not illicit, as is clear from the Philosopher in Politics 1 [1256b15]. If Thomas’s particular example concerning the order of human generation is outmoded, nevertheless his general picture, that the nonliving preceded the living, and the plants the animals, and the animals man, is held generally by present-day science.105 I think at this point one should fill out the conception of reality, and its hierarchy of goodness, with a consideration of the distinction between what things pertain to the universe as intended by its author just by virtue of themselves and what things pertain to the universe as useful for those primary things. The familiar group of the nonliving, the vegetative, the animal, and the human does not give us enough sense of this being a hierarchy of being as such. Two great avenues of consideration seem available. One is the general distinction between the cognitive (in its perfect mode, the intellectual) and the noncognitive. This is a sort of static contrast between levels of reality, what Cajetan calls ‘‘orders.’’106 To see it as a contrast between higher and lower modes of being, one should remember the word of Aristotle, that ‘‘the soul is in a way all beings’’;107 that is, the intellectual being is in a way all being. It possesses the nature of being

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in a way that contrasts sharply with the merely particular being of the noncognitive nature. Higher and lower natures act for ends, but the intellectual nature envisages and approaches action from the viewpoint of being, and so of goodness.108 The other avenue is that of efficient causality. In fact, we appreciate efficient causality primarily because of our own causal power, and that has its roots in our intellectual power. We can envisage opposites, and so make choices.109 However, this leads us to a fuller conception of nature. It is not merely true that lower nature acts for an end. It is also true, and we can see it, that lower nature does so only because it is under the influence of higher nature, that is, of intelligence.110 Our first step was that nature acts for an end. Our present step is to consider that the work of nature is a work of intelligence. To be sure, there are many examples even in lower nature of one kind of thing serving another, and thus of a hierarchy of goodness. Still, the primary schema affirms that nature presupposes the causality proper to will. At present, we have a rather truncated philosophy of the physical world and hardly speak of ‘‘intelligence higher than the human,’’ save occasionally to speak of a God. The ancient doctrines of intermediate cosmic intelligences no longer apply. However, this line of conjecture remains an honorable one. Of course, subhuman nature affords a theater for the development and expression of the human mind, but it may not be merely that. It may also express higher subdivine minds.111 The foundational point is that the rational creatures are provided for just on account of themselves, in contrast to the rest of creatures, which are ordered to the rational creatures. Here, I will note two arguments from among many. The following one gives, as it seems to me, a good idea of the sort of distinction that is involved: Whenever some things are ordered to some end, if any among them cannot attain to the end by themselves, it is necessary that they be ordered to those that attain to the end, which are ordered to the end because of themselves: for example, the end of the army is victory, which the soldiers attain by their own act, that is, by fighting, which soldiers alone are sought after because of themselves [propter se] in the army; but all others, assigned to other jobs, for example, looking after the horses, caring for the arms, are sought after because

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of the soldiers in the army. But it is clear from the foregoing that God is the ultimate end of the universe, whom the intellectual nature alone attains to in himself, knowing and loving him, as is clear from what has been said. Therefore, the intellectual nature alone is sought because of itself in the universe, but all others because of it.112 As one sees, this argument supposes that God is the end of all. It is difficult to leave him out. One’s very conception of the nobility of the rational creature emerges from the intensity of that creature’s ‘‘Goddirectedness.’’ A second argument gives a remarkable presentation from the viewpoint of being, one that serves more as an approach to the existence of God, in the line of the fourth way: It is evident that all the parts are ordered to the perfection of the whole: for the whole is not because [propter] of the parts, but the parts are because of the whole. But intellectual natures have a greater affinity with the whole than do the other natures: for each intellectual substance is somehow all [beings] [unaquaeque intellectualis substantia est quodammodo omnia], inasmuch as it is inclusive [comprehensiva] of the whole of being [totius entis] by its intellect, whereas any other substance has only a particular participation in being [entis]. Suitably, then, the others are provided for by God because of [or for the sake of] the intellectual substances.113 The Image of God I have said that our vision of goodness should come before our concluding to the existence of God, in keeping with the procedure of the fourth way. However, this hierarchy of natural goodness does not complete our introduction to the moral order. Although we can see things as inclined toward ends, and even see the human being as so inclined, we do not have the complete moral setting until we bring God into the picture as the transcendent summit of being and goodness.114 A primary reason for this is that God comes into the picture precisely as the ultimate end. As Thomas says: ‘‘All things have appetite [appetunt] for God as the goal [finem], in having appetite for any good whatsoever,

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whether by intelligible appetite or sensible [appetite] or the natural [appetite] that is without cognition; because nothing has the aspect of the good and the appetible, save according as it participates in the likeness of God.’’115 Clearly, goodness and God pertain to a single intelligible schema. Secondly, it is because once we have God in the picture, we can present the human being as the image of God and consider the properly human way of moving toward the end. The moral order is precisely that properly rational way of moving toward the divine goodness.116 The presentation of man as the image of God refers to an effect that imitates the nature of the cause. All God’s effects imitate him, though he infinitely surpasses even the highest of them. What the concept of image suggests is that the imitation is as close to the species of the cause as possible. We do not call a thing an ‘‘image’’ on the basis of mere generic likeness or of some accidental feature. The closest resemblance to God in creatures comes through intellectuality: It is evident that the likeness of the species is approached in function of the ultimate difference. Now, some things are assimilated to God, firstly and most commonly, inasmuch as they are; but secondly, inasmuch as they live; but thirdly, inasmuch as they wisely consider or understand [sapiunt vel intelligunt]. . . . Thus, therefore, it is evident that only intellectual creatures, properly speaking, are in the image of God.117 Thus, the last step in my presentation is to bring God on the scene and to present the human being, or more generally, the intellectual creature, as made in the image of God.118 It is this that gives us the true face of ethics.119 It envisages, as goal, a perfect state of such a creature, contemplating the divine and operating in full cooperation with God. It envisages a need for a developmental stage in which such a being moves from immaturity to maturity in such contemplation and cooperation. It is remarkable the way the texts on morals speak of society with God, and the treating of the natures of things, including our own human nature, as intended by the author of nature.120 How does the human being fit in, in the reality created by God? Here, we add to nature the dimension of intellectuality (and accordingly, of will). But the human being does fit in! I remember regularly seeing, in

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my student days in France, posters for discussions of the topic ‘‘L’homme est-il nature ou liberte´?’’ Is man nature or liberty? The suggestion of the question was ‘‘Never the twain shall meet!’’ What I mean to insist on here is that liberty has its place in nature. Thomas significantly speaks of the ‘‘intellectual nature’’ in introducing both intellect and will.121 That the human intellect is a part of nature might be argued from the unity of the human being and the need we have to use the senses and imagination in order to understand.122 The will and liberty might be more of a problem. It is significant that people who are not sure they can establish the spirituality of the human soul on the basis of its mode of knowing sometimes turn to human freedom as a surer basis.123 However, I am here asking what is, I believe, a more general sort of question. I grant that there is a remarkable difference between the things that have intellect and the things that do not. The intellectual nature is characterized by an ampleness, to be contrasted with the narrowness, the limitation, of the nonintellectual. The intellectual nature, through knowledge, is in a way all beings. The entirety of being can somehow be found in one thing.124 My question would be, What is the meaning of this difference? Why are there these intellectual beings? They are not uncaused. They reveal this by the need to learn, as well as by a ‘‘passivity’’ in the face of beings as beings.125 In this line of thinking, we reason to the existence of a cause of lower and higher nature, a cause in which there is absolute simplicity, and thus in which there is identity of natural being and intellection. Notice I do not say merely ‘‘intellectuality,’’ for that is the name of a nature. I say ‘‘intellection,’’ which is what is highest in the order of operation.126 The conception of the human being that we must pursue is as made ‘‘in the image of God.’’ What does this mean? It is a line of thinking that sees man as having mastery over his own acts, through intellect and free will,127 but also (unlike God) as having a distinction between substance and operation, between being and understanding, and indeed between understanding and willing. Not only do we have an intellect that requires development. We also have a will that requires development.128 To be like God but not to be God. Thus, our lives are occasions to perfect this likeness. And it is a likeness that cannot be merely preprogrammed. The ‘‘space’’ for our development is not within nature as ‘‘already given,’’ but is the space of infinite option made available to intellect

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and will.129 Our intellects and wills transcend finite nature, going in the direction of the divine nature.130 Does this mean that ‘‘anything goes’’? No, only for God does anything go, and that is because he is and acts in view of the very essence of goodness. We have a nature that merely participates finitely in goodness.131 We do have a goal of our endeavor that is naturally given. The ends of human life are already given. This is to say that there is a ‘‘right use’’ of all we have. The goal of the created intellect is knowledge of God. We must take seriously the tableaux of human reality with contemplation as giving meaning to everything, even the political realm.132 The passivity of the human mind is of great importance here. It is a ‘‘guest’’ in the theater of being and is nourished, perfected, by the contemplation of being as given. Moreover, there is the distinct dimension of will and agency. Intellect by itself is not a source of events.133 Intellect as such is far less a domain of development than is will.134 The will needs the intellect as a guide, because the intellect is, in a way, ‘‘already there’’: it is the ‘‘eye’’ of the will.135 Will is the principle of coming to be. The movement of the appetite is from being in the mind to being in reality.136 Only because the intellect has a vision of the good, that is, what a thing might be if it were all there, does the will seek to bring the good about.137 Being that is other than God can be a representation of God only by means of a variety of contributions. Fundamentally, there are the contributions of substance, of intellect, and of will. When the will is satisfied, created being is complete. Only when created being is complete is the will satisfied. The developable created intellect is complete only when it has the fullest possible knowledge of God. Or we should say that the substance is satisfied (according to will) when the substance has fullest possible knowledge of God (according to intellect).138 Conclusion Obviously there are many features of this doctrine of foundations upon which we have hardly touched. There is the metaphysics of freedom, of divine providence, of evil. The above is meant to suggest only a pathway. I have said that it is necessary to present the rational creature as the primarily intended creature, with other things for its sake. In ethics, we

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present all use of things in accordance with their own purpose as good and reasonable. Thus, all creatures lower than man are for the sake of man, and are well used in being put at his service. But what about the ‘‘human use of human beings’’? What is our right order with respect to ourselves? Ethics is of secondary importance. We must not let ourselves be caught in the spell of ‘‘the sanctity of ethics.’’ In some ways, this is a sort of substitute for religion. In a society that has become increasingly secularized, the absence of morals leads to a kind of glorification of ‘‘values.’’ In the face of this, we must assert the primacy of contemplation and the role of ethics as in the service of contemplation. Ethics is essential, but is not what is best.139 I conclude with a repetition of the fundamental point to be made, concerning the objectivity of goodness. ‘‘Goodness is in things.’’140

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Chapter 3

ST. T HOMAS, META PHYSICS, AND HUMAN DIGNITY What separates us irreparably from [modern science] is the Aristotelian (and common sense) notion of Substantial Form. . . . Descartes rid nature of it. They understand nothing anymore since they forgot Aristotle’s great saying that ‘‘there is no part of an animal that is purely material or purely immaterial.’’ It is not the word ‘‘philosophy,’’ it is the word ‘‘nature’’ that separates us from our contemporaries. Since I do not have any hope of convincing them of the truth (which yet is evident) of hylomorphism, I do not believe it is possible to propose our hypothesis to them as scientifically valid. —Etienne Gilson speaking of ‘‘la science moderne’’ in a letter to Jacques Maritain, September 8, 19711

Introduction The Christian does not depend on philosophy for his conception of human dignity. That is too serious an issue to be left to mere philosophy. As the common doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, teaches in the very first article of his Summa theologiae (ST), there is need for a doctrine over and above philosophy, a doctrine revealed to us by God. The primary reason for this need is the very goal that God has in view for the human being, a goal that surpasses the human mind’s capacity to conceive.2 The magnitude of human dignity is properly grasped only in the light of that destiny.3 Thomas further teaches that even as regards what philosophy can tell us about God and our relation to him, we need divine revelation of the truth, because the philosophical truth is so difficult of access.4 Still, there is philosophical access to the natural dimension of our relation to God, and to the natural dimension of our dignity. That access is 58

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metaphysics or ‘‘primary philosophy.’’ In 1967, Mortimer Adler published a book entitled The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes.5 He did so because the distinction between the human being and the rest of animal reality was becoming blurred. If that was so in 1967, it is even truer today, when Peter Singer, from his Princeton chair in bioethics, can advocate infanticide and champion ‘‘animal liberation.’’6 In this situation, the Christian believer and all humankind have a right to as much help from natural knowledge as can be supplied. In the present chapter, I wish to suggest something of the importance of metaphysics as a mode of knowledge that provides a basis for judgment concerning fundamental human dignity. Historical Background By ‘‘metaphysics’’ here, I mean the consideration of things from the viewpoint of their being beings.7 So to know things is one of the great achievements of the human mind, one that we can observe having been carried out historically in different cultures, but that has been most fully accomplished in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, following in the tradition of Aristotle.8 A conception of the human being is very much a part of the metaphysical endeavor.9 The early Greek philosophers developed a materialist conception of the human being. They held that although we ordinary folk take death very seriously and give it a special name, still it is really just an alteration in what is the true substance of things. For example, the philosopher Empedocles of Acragas10 posited four fundamental ‘‘roots’’—earth, water, air, and fire—which Aristotle interpreted as having the status of smallest particles.11 Empedocles says: ‘‘There is no birth of any of mortal things, nor any end in baneful death, but only a mixing and an exchange of the things that have been mixed.’’12 And: ‘‘But men, when these have been mixed in the form of a MAN and come into the light, or in the form of a species of wild animals, or plants, or birds, they say that this has ‘‘come into being’’; and when they separate, this men call sad fate. The terms that Right demands they do not use; but through custom I myself also apply these names.’’13 The conception developed by Plato, as we see in his Phaedo, focused on the mind of man. Indeed, it did so to such an extent that the presence

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of the mind in the human body was seen as a form of punishment, the body being adjudged an unsuitable environment for the mind.14 Intellectual cultivation, the life of philosophy, was seen as a preparation for, indeed a sort of foretaste of, death, conceived as the liberation of the intellectual principle, the mind, from the body.15 Aristotle appreciated the unity of natural substances, including the unity of the human being, body and soul.16 His question, regarding the soul as principle of substantial unity of the soul-body composite, was whether any soul had the sort of being or existence that permitted it to survive death. He found in intellection the sort of operation that revealed the separability or subsistence, and so the possible immortality, of the human intellectual soul.17 Aristotle’s teachings concerning the human intellectual soul are presented in a very elliptical way and have given rise to much controversy on the part of subsequent commentators. The conception of the human being that Thomas Aquinas presents best incorporates, in my judgment, the many different sides of the Aristotelian picture. Thomas Aquinas’s Conception of the Human Being Thomas, as I said at the outset, was working in the context of Christian doctrine, based on revelation. One of the primary points of that doctrine is the resurrection of the human body. The Christian does not merely affirm an afterlife based on a doctrine of immortality of the human soul, something that any Platonist would endorse. Rather, the Christian holds that the soul is immortal, but that at the end of the present phase of universal existence, there will be a restoration of the human body (once and for all)18 to those immortal souls. The Acts of the Apostles records St. Paul’s preaching of that doctrine to a gathering of Athenian philosophers, who for the most part rejected the idea.19 Thus, the Christian doctrine is one that, like the doctrine of Aristotle, regards the present state of the human soul as normal and the human body-soul composite as a coherent substantial unit, a thing that ‘‘makes sense.’’ What is one to make of a human soul existing without a body, as in the case of the immortal soul after a person’s death? Although there is no insuperable difficulty in envisaging a new mode of intellectual life supplied by God for such a being, the fact remains that such a soul is a sort of ‘‘fish out of

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water’’; that is, it really is originally designed to be the perfection of a body.20 Furthermore, the Christian affirms not only an eventual resurrection but also an original fall from grace of the human being, the doctrine of an original sin.21 This includes the view that the human being was not originally intended to die.22 Thus, Thomas, presenting the original condition of man, explains the sort of immortality then conferred on man. Though the human being is naturally mortal, it was appropriate that such a being have a gift of immortality, precisely because of the nobility of the human intellectual soul. He says of God’s bestowing such a gift: ‘‘This was reasonably done. For since the rational soul exceeds the proportion of corporeal matter, as has been explained, it was fitting that, in the beginning, a power was given to it through which it could preserve the body beyond the nature of corporeal matter.’’23 Indeed, there is a question as to whether death is natural for the human being. As Thomas teaches: Though every form intends perpetual being as much as it can, nevertheless no form of a corruptible thing can achieve its own perpetuity, save the rational soul, by the fact that it [the rational soul] is not altogether subjected to corporeal matter, as are the other forms: indeed, it has as proper operation [an] immaterial [operation], as was established in the first part. [1.75.2, 1.75.5] Hence, on the side of his form incorruptibility is more natural to man than to other corruptible things. But because he too has matter that is composed of contraries, from the inclination of the matter corruptibility follows in the thing as a whole. And, in that way, man is naturally corruptible in virtue of the nature of the matter left to itself, but not according to the nature of the form.24 Thus, we have a doctrine that affirms the unity of the body-soul composite but affirms also the transcendence of the soul, the unifying principle of that composite. No wonder, then, that the resurrection of the body is anticipated with joy.25 The point I seek to highlight here is the unity of the human being, body and soul, even while stressing the spirituality, the immateriality, of the human soul. We are very far from the ‘‘dualism’’ of a Descartes or a Plato. This shows itself in the teaching that the human soul, just in itself, is not a person. One might think that the classical definition of the person

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as ‘‘an individual substance of a rational nature’’26 would apply. The human soul is an individual being and can survive the death of the composite of soul and body; moreover, its rationality is evident. Where it falls short regards what is expressed by the word ‘‘nature.’’ It does not have the completeness that that word signifies.27 The complete, coherent sort of unit meant by a ‘‘human nature’’ is such a soul perfecting such a body.28 Thus, the resurrection of the body marks the restoration to existence of the person.29 Indeed, far from diminishing the unity of the human being, the soul’s nobility entails greater unity in the human being than in other corporeal substances.30 Metaphysics and Human Dignity I wish to suggest that metaphysics is needed to bring out the authentic dignity of the human being. This may seem unlikely, for most people have some awareness of that dignity, and yet do not consider themselves metaphysicians. However, we are all metaphysicians in embryo.31 Metaphysics, like all our scientific knowledge,32 begins with evident truths about the things with which we live. Indeed, because of its ambition to attain complete universality, it must begin with the most commonly known and certain truths of experience.33 To exhibit fundamental human dignity appropriately, we must locate the human being in the hierarchy of being, the entirety of which is measured by proximity to the cause of being as being. As St. Thomas says: ‘‘Always, the cause is stronger than the effect; and, among effects, one is stronger to the extent that it is closer to the cause.’’34 That is why he says: ‘‘The divine goodness is . . . the measure of existents, because on this basis it can be known how much each of the existents has of nobility of being, that is, that it approaches it or is remote from it.’’35 Now, the human being reveals its proximity to the divine goodness, the highest cause, precisely by its possession of mind. The human mind conceives of being and of goodness in their universality, that is, what it is for something to be and to be good.36 This makes it possible to know God and to order one’s existence to God in friendship. Indeed, in so doing, one is bringing to perfection the deepest tendency of human nature itself.37 This also leads to the view that divine providence cares for the human, rational creature for its own sake, whereas its care for lesser creatures is for the sake of the rational creature.38

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However, all of the above are so many conclusions, drawn from the ontological analysis of human beings and the corporeal beings with which we most immediately live. How are these conclusions arrived at? A global sketch is easy enough. Metaphysics so grasps the things of our experience as to discern their origin in a cause of beings as beings. The cause is grasped as creator and providence. Nobility of creatures is seen as participation in the nature of the universal cause: a hierarchy of participation according to the more and the less. However, as beings at home in the world of material, corporeal things, we humans have a mind that finds its nourishment in the consideration of such corporeal things.39 Our conception of nobility or dignity arises from our contemplation of the material world. We see ourselves as having dignity or nobility inasmuch as we have intelligence and free choice,40 but such a judgment finds its roots in considerations of substantial being, operation, and finality. Knowers, Nonknowers, and Dignity One of the clearest principles of hierarchy among substances is the presence or absence of knowledge, and particularly of intellectual knowledge. Perhaps the best approach to the subject is through consideration of the value of cognition. One can see that cognition’s value is really an indication of the value of being and of modes of being. Consider Thomas Aquinas’s question, does God possess knowledge? Thomas presents cognition as related to perfection, to that fullness of being that he calls ‘‘immateriality.’’ We read: Things that know are distinguished from things that do not know in [precisely] this [respect], that things that do not know have nothing but their own form alone, whereas the thing that knows is of such a nature as to have the form also of another thing: for the specific likeness [species] of the thing known is in the knower. Hence, it is obvious that the nature of the nonknowing thing is confined and limited; whereas the nature of knowers has greater fullness and extension [amplitudinem et extensionem]. For this reason the Philosopher [Aristotle] says, in De anima 3 [431b21], that ‘‘the soul is in a way all things.’’41 Now, the confinedness of form stems from matter; and so we said earlier [1.7.1]42 that forms, according as they are more immaterial, attain more to a measure of infinity.

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Hence, it is clear that the immateriality of a thing is the factor that renders it cognitive; and according to the grade of its immateriality is the grade of its knowing.43 Thus, in De anima 2 [424a32-b3], it is said that plants do not know, because of their materiality. Sense is cognitive, because it is receptive of forms [specierum] without matter;44 and intellect is still more cognitive, because it is more separated from matter and ‘‘unmixed,’’ as is said in De anima 3 [429a18]. Hence, since God is at the summit of immateriality, as is clear from things previously said [1.7.1], it follows that he is at the summit of knowing.45 From this we see how important is the analysis of the substances we most readily know in terms of form and matter if we are to understand ontological hierarchy, and so dignity. The Hylomorphic Ontology as Fundamental There are two key doctrines for the conception of the human being—the immortality of the soul46 and the need for the operation of the imagination—if human intellection is to occur in this present life.47 One relates to the possibility of an eternal destiny, the other to the normality of our presence in corporeal nature.48 Both of these doctrines are rooted in the ontology of matter, form, and act of being: the ‘‘hylomorphic ontology.’’ How is the doctrine of the immortality of the soul related to the hylomorphic ontology? The argument for the immortality of the soul has two premises: (1) the intellective soul is a subsisting form and (2) a subsisting form cannot be subject to corruption. Consider the second of these two premises. It in turn is the conclusion of an argument that runs as follows: (1) that which possesses something just in virtue of its own nature cannot lose that something, and (2) the act of being belongs to form just by virtue of what form is. This last premise is clearly a point central to the hylomorphic ontology.49 However, if we consider the other premise in the doctrine of immortality, namely, that the intellective soul is a subsisting form, we see once again the importance of that ontology. How is that premise arrived at? It requires the consideration of the nature of cognition and within that discussion, the distinction between sense and intellect. Already, in the

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doctrine of cognition in general, one sees the need for distinguishing between matter and form, as well as the doctrine that form is principle of being.50 This is carried further in the consideration of intellect as superior to sense: the doctrine of modes or degrees of immaterial being.51 It is no accident that cognition can be adequately dealt with only in a doctrine of being and modes of being. Supposing that we have established that the intellective soul is a subsisting form, and therefore immortal, incorruptible, what importance has the doctrine that human intellection in this life does not occur in dissociation from the act of imagination? It is this realization that does much to bring us to an adequate conception of the unity of the human soul-body composite, namely, that the human being is by nature hylomorphic.52 Thus, both human immortality and human ‘‘this-worldliness’’ flow from the hylomorphic analysis. But what is this doctrine of hylomorphism? It is not just the making of the distinction between matter and form and act of being but the appreciation of the roles.53 Reference to the distinction between matter and form may lead us back to the first book of Aristotle’s Physics, especially the last three chapters (chapters 7–9). There we certainly have an important presentation. It is an analysis of the changeable, and ultimately of changeable substance. It is a most important discussion, but it is far from the whole story. In the first place, in that setting the explanation is not primarily in terms of being as divided by act and potency (though that is mentioned for various reasons). One has deeper exploration in the Metaphysics, especially in books 7–9. It is at the end of book 7 and in book 8 that form is presented as the principle of being. The doctrine is well worked out and presented in the works of Thomas.54 The conception of the respective roles of matter and form in ontology is crucial. How can one understand Thomas’s presentation of knowledge if one fails to appreciate the role of matter? What will ‘‘immaterial’’ mean? However, understanding the roles of matter and form is not easy. The Difficulty of the Hylomorphic Ontology One must pay attention especially to the doctrine of matter as confining or limiting or pinning down form. This is linked to the difficulty in knowing matter. It is known only by analogy. Thomas says:

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And he [Aristotle] says that the nature that is firstly subjected to change, that is, the primary matter, cannot be known through itself, since everything that is known is known through its form; but primary matter is seen as the subject of every form. But it is known through analogy, that is, through proportion. . . . Therefore, that which so stands relative to natural substances themselves as the bronze to the statue and the wood to the bed, and any material and unformed item to the form, this we say is primary matter. This, therefore, is one principle of nature, which is not one in such a way as is a ‘‘this something’’ [hoc aliquid], that is, as is some indicated individual [aliquod individuum demonstratum], such that it have form and unity in act; but it is called ‘‘a being’’ and ‘‘one’’ inasmuch as it is in potency to form.55 Aristotle later remarks in what is almost an aside that both matter and form are difficult to know, pertaining to the highest study, in that they have to be viewed together. They are ‘‘at the very apex of speculative thought,’’56 ‘‘altissimam habent speculationem’’ in the translation commented upon by Thomas.57 And in De generatione et corruptione, Aristotle shows how difficult it is to conceive of unqualified coming to be, precisely because of the difficulty of conceiving of primary matter, that which is potentially a substantial actuality.58 Only when it is realized that such matter never does and cannot exist separately is there a satisfactory solution to what Aristotle describes as the ‘‘wondrous difficulty.’’ Primary matter exists only as part of the composite of form and matter.59 Aristotle is thus very far from treating his primary items of analysis as ones that are familiar to all.60 As regards his predecessors, one of his main points was their failure to conceive of the causes properly. While it was most especially the formal and final causes that were seen as difficult, none of the causes was seen as adequately spoken of.61 Concerning the formal cause in particular, we are told: ‘‘The essence [to . . . ti en einai], that is, the substantial reality [ten ousian], no one has expressed distinctly. It is hinted at chiefly by those who believe in the Forms.’’62 Especially regarding the physical philosophers, he says: ‘‘They err in not positing the substance [ten ousian], that is, the essence [to ti esti], as the cause of anything.’’63 If we fail to understand the form as cause, we will also not understand the true nature and role of matter. How will we appreciate

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that matter stands opposed to cognition and that form is the principle of cognition? Conclusion My message, then, is simply that there is no substitute for the ontological analysis of generable and corruptible substance if one is to present in fullest visibility for the human mind the dignity of the human being. That analysis must include appreciation of the doctrine of being as divided by act and potency if we are to attend to causal hierarchy in nature.64 I have put the stress on hylomorphism because I believe it is crucial for metaphysics and yet neglected even by those who think to speak of metaphysics as regards the nature of knowledge. How often have we heard a would-be Thomist speak of knowledge in terms of ‘‘intentionality,’’ yet how seldom in terms of ‘‘immateriality’’! Matter and form, understood in the light of being as divided by act and potency, are the keys.65

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Chapter 4

TRUTH A ND HAPPINESS

Introduction In proposing ‘‘The Importance of Truth’’ as the theme for this year’s convention, I had it in mind to provide a topic that would lend itself to contributions both theoretical and practical. However, as far as my own contribution was concerned, I was thinking about issues that straddle the borderline between the ethical and the metaphysical. I was thinking of my own education and the extent to which it took place in a milieu that brought home to students the primacy of contemplation. And I was asking myself to what extent the institutions in which I have since taught have succeeded in conveying that same view of human life, a view that I myself consider capital ‘‘T’’ true. And that led me to more universal considerations. If it is really true that human life finds its meaning in knowledge of the truth, and if a society, a culture, be it a nation or a global village, fails to acknowledge that fact, what does that do to the society? Could it not affect the ‘‘will to live’’ of the entire human race? If so, the work of the philosopher ought to include the effort to present knowledge of the truth in such a light that as many people as possible will experience its appeal and, perhaps, live their own lives and guide others in accordance with that ideal. The present study, accordingly, will be on the truth as the goal of human life, that is, on the truth as happiness, according to Thomas Aquinas. Why ‘‘according to Thomas Aquinas’’? I almost always give papers presenting what I take to be the doctrine of St. Thomas. Usually they get placed in the ‘‘history of philosophy’’ category. Generally my aim is 68

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philosophical, and with Thomas, I insist that ‘‘the study of philosophy is not in order to know what it is people have thought, but what is the truth about reality.’’1 However, agreeing as I do with my teacher Etienne Gilson that ‘‘great philosophers are very scarce’’2 and that the soundest approach in philosophical education is to live a sort of apprenticeship with a great philosopher, I have lived an apprenticeship with Thomas Aquinas. That at this relatively late date in my life I am still presenting his views, as well as I can, simply means that I am still an apprentice. But there is another reason I think of Professor Gilson. He focused in his career on the problem of Christian philosophy. Otherwise said, he kept in view the question raised by Thomas Aquinas in the very first article of the Summa theologiae (ST), namely, is there need for a teaching that transcends philosophy? An affirmative answer to that question cannot but affect one’s outlook on philosophy itself. One of Thomas’s considerations in that article is the perennial state of the philosophical mind. When, echoing Moses Maimonides, he speaks of how few attain to philosophical truth and how long it takes them to do so, and when he adds that even then many errors remain involved in the result, he provides grounds for thinking that present-day turmoil in philosophical inquiry is not altogether new.3 The Catholic philosopher surely has reason to welcome guidance from divine revelation.4 And if we ask whence comes that turmoil, we cannot fail to notice that revelation presents us with human nature as a wounded nature. The natural inclinations of the human being are still present, but in a weakened condition. Intellectual judgment is affected, especially in the moral order.5 We should not be surprised if there is deep division among philosophers as to questions about the purpose of human life. Moreover, moral issues dividing philosophers will cast their spell on the contemplative mind itself. As the same Professor Gilson pointed out in The Unity of Philosophical Experience, very often our problems in speculative philosophy have their real roots in moral questions.6 The idea is that were it not for our inclinations, we might be readier to recognize theoretical principles more spontaneously. This was long ago maintained by St. Augustine, speaking of the Manicheans concerning the metaphysics of good and evil. Augustine remarked that what he was saying hardly needed the support of argument, so evident was it, had it not been

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an issue that touched upon human conduct, or morals, thus spawning controversy.7 Indeed, if we move outside the domain of revelation, and open the Republic of Plato, we see presented there a condition of human society in which the lower inclinations form society, and where the youths who have the highest natural aptitude for philosophy, that is, for a mind turned toward being, are the very persons whom the public, the greatest of all sophists, converts to its own interests.8 This situation Plato could ‘‘account for’’ only by means of the myth of the metals and an error having crept into the mixture involved in human nature.9 Aristotle contented himself with talking morals with those whom there was hope that reason could sway, and pointing the way toward contemplation of truth for those who would listen.10 All of this I say to assure the reader that although I am going to assert that certain things pertain to the primary human natural inclinations— though, with Aristotle, I am going to repeat that the human being, by nature, desires to know11—I still seek to avoid the scandal of suggesting that all human beings, as regards the desires of which they are most reflectively aware, recognize in themselves how fundamental this desire is. Yet woe to him who locates our ultimate happiness anywhere else than in the life of the contemplative mind: no desire launches us unto such sublime heights as does the desire to have intellectual vision of the truth. That desire is never at peace until it arrives at God, as the summit and author of all things.12 That truth is the goal of human life, according to Thomas, it is easy to document. Many impressive texts are available.13 It is, in a way, doubly easy to say, in that God is identified as the first truth, and the highest truth.14 However, such a doctrine ‘‘hits home’’ only to the extent that we have explored the nature of truth, and we do not do that by starting with God.15 Our ambition then is to present the nature of truth in such a way that it reveals itself to be the goal of human life. Happiness in General Since we are discussing truth as happiness, we should see what the requirements of happiness are and what meaning of ‘‘truth’’ most suitably fits the role. A very direct presentation of happiness is that employed by

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St. Thomas in presenting the happiness of God himself. There, it is said that happiness is the perfect good of the intellectual nature. Notice that I am translating ‘‘beatitudo’’ as ‘‘happiness.’’ Although other terms, whether on the Latin or on the English side, might be suggested, this procedure will serve our purposes. Here is the presentation by Thomas: ‘‘For nothing else is understood under the name of ‘happiness’ but the perfect good of the intellectual nature, to which it belongs to know its own sufficiency in the good that it has; and to which it belongs that something happen to it for well or for ill, and that it be mistress of its own operations.’’16 What I take as most important here is the intellectual being’s ‘‘knowing its own sufficiency in the good that it has.’’ This suggests that happiness pertains very much to the intellect’s ability to know itself and to know what is present in or to the intellectual nature. Is happiness, then, a matter of self-satisfaction? We should remember how primary a principle it is for St. Thomas that each being has appetite for its own perfection.17 Is this a principle that closes a being in upon itself, or that condemns one to exploit everything else entirely and exclusively in one’s own interest? Not at all. As Thomas explains: It is plain that even those things that lack [the capacity] to know can operate for the sake of a goal, and have appetite for the good by natural appetite, and have appetite for the divine likeness, and for their own perfection. It makes no difference whether one or the other [of these things] be said: for by the fact that they tend toward their own perfection, they tend toward the good: since each thing is good just to the extent that it is perfect. But according as it tends toward its being good, it tends toward the divine likeness: for something is assimilated to God inasmuch as it is good. However, this or that particular good possesses desirability just to the extent that it is a likeness of the primary goodness. Therefore, it is because of this that a thing tends toward its own proper good, that is, that it tends toward similarity with God, and not the other way round. Thus, it is clear that all desire the divine likeness as the ultimate goal.18 Thus, even though in seeking to be happy we seek our own perfection, we seek a perfection that is in accordance with our status in being, as

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beings ordered to a higher being, beings whose perfection consists in admiring the perfection of another.19 Let us remember that according to Thomas, our reverence for God increases with the experience of authentic happiness and abides for eternity.20 Human Happiness When Thomas undertakes to speak of human happiness in particular, he carefully locates it, as to both the object that it requires and the operation relative to that object. The object can only be God, and the operation can only be intellectual vision. Clearly, as in all of sacra doctrina, Thomas is making his judgments according to what has been revealed to the believer. Nevertheless, in accordance with the truth that grace perfects nature, and indeed that virtue and grace imitate nature,21 Thomas provides us with an exploration of the reflective philosophical pathway to the nature of happiness, an exploration that carefully scrutinizes human experience. He first sets out to present the thing the possession of which will make us happy. The search quickly sets aside riches, honor, fame, and power, all of which in one way or another presuppose a prior recognition of something else as really worthwhile.22 It is when one comes to such candidates as human-bodily well-being that more attention must be paid. Such goals as health and survival cannot be ultimate. The reason is that the human being itself is a being having the metaphysical status of a thing ordered to something else beyond itself: It is impossible, in the case of a thing that is ordered to another as to its end, that its ultimate end be the preservation of its own being. Hence, the steersman does not intend, as ultimate end, the preservation of the ship given into his charge, because the ship is ordered to something else as to an end, namely, to voyaging. But as the ship is committed to the steersman for direction, so man is committed to his reason and will. . . . But it is evident that man is ordered to something [else] as to an end, for man is not the highest good. Hence, it is impossible that the preservation of human existence be the ultimate end of human reason and will.23 We see, already, in a statement like this, how important for happiness is a sense of our own secondariness.24 Human corporeal existence is

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viewed as an opportunity rather than as something that is its own justification. What is such existence the occasion for? Thomas’s consideration of the hedonistic position takes us closer to an answer. After pointing out that delight or pleasure itself is more of an accompaniment to experience than the very essence of the experience, Thomas teaches that the experienced good directly connected with bodily pleasure cannot constitute happiness. Such pleasure is had when we apprehend some good befitting the body, a good apprehended by means of our senses. The rational soul, inasmuch as it surpasses the body, has an infinity as compared to the body. Thus, the good apprehended by the sense is singular, particular, whereas the good apprehended by intellect is universal. The good befitting the body is something minimal as compared to the good of the soul. Here, we are already considering acts of reason and will as our access to a domain of goodness that really befits human existence. When we consider not only the society in which we live but all we know of human history, we can appreciate the audacity of the claims being made here: human health, human survival, and bodily pleasure are secondary in authentic human living! And one sees here how important is knowledge of the universal, in contrast to knowledge of the singular, in this judgment concerning what is primary in human life.25 Are we then to find our happiness in the ‘‘goods of the soul,’’ that is, in paying due respect to the human soul, or else in cultivating the intellectual and voluntary life of the human soul? Is culture the goal? Is liberty the goal? Here, the nature of the situation requires that a distinction be made between the word ‘‘goal,’’ as meaning the thing whose possession will make us happy, and the word ‘‘goal’’ as meaning the very use or possession of that thing. The thing itself in which we are to find delight is not to be located in even so noble a being as the human soul, that spiritual and immortal reality. The soul shows this by its intrinsic incompleteness. It is meant to be perfected through cultivation. Nor, again, can any of the soul’s perfections be the ultimate goal. It is not free action or science or art or contemplation that constitutes our goal. As Thomas argues: ‘‘The good that is the ultimate goal is the perfect good, completely satisfying the appetite for good. Now, the human appetite, which is the will, is for the universal good. And any good inhering in the soul is a participated

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good, and consequently a particular good. Thus, it is impossible that any of them be the ultimate goal of man.’’26 We should underline that contemplation itself is not the goal. Our primary loved good is not knowledge itself; it is not in such a sense that ‘‘contemplation is an end in itself ’’; it is an end, a goal, precisely in the sense of the operation by virtue of which we attain to the goal. Completing this line of thinking, Thomas concludes that the happiness of man cannot be found in any created good. And it is fundamentally the same reason that is in play. The good is the object of appetite. The human appetite, the will, has as its object the universal good, just as the object of the intellect is the universal true. Since all created good is participated good, the universal good, which alone will satisfy the human appetite, is to be found in God alone. The good for which man has a capacity, after the manner of an object extrinsic to him and transcending him, is an infinite good.27 Thus far, it is remarkable to what extent the capacity of the mind to know and will the universal is governing the judgments about human happiness.28 In the same inquiry, Thomas goes on to specify happiness from the side of human use or possession or attainment of the universal, uncreated good that is God. Here, he locates it in an operation, since it is to constitute man as in a condition of ultimate perfection: it must be the thing actually operating that is the ultimate.29 Also, it must be the sort of operation that remains in the agent, since only such operation constitutes the perfection of the agent itself.30 Here, Thomas makes a very important distinction, namely, between the promised perfect happiness to be had in a future life and the share in happiness possible to us in the present life. Even though our happiness here is imperfect, still, to the extent that it is available, it consists in the operation by which man is conjoined to God.31 In his further exploration, Thomas rules out the operations of the sensitive part of the soul, limiting the sought-after operation to the intellective part. Moreover, although both the act of the intellect and the act of the will are required for happiness, it is the act of the intellect that is the substance of the experience, so to speak, the act of the will having the role of appropriate concomitant.32

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And it is the intellect as speculative, as theoretical, as contemplative, that performs the operation that is being happy. I will limit myself to the first reason Thomas gives for this, namely, that we are seeking the most perfect operation, and this must be that of the most perfect power with respect to its most perfect object. The most perfect power is the intellect, and its most perfect object is the divine good (bonum divinum). This is not an object of practical intellect, but rather of speculative intellect.33 This conception of contemplation—the act of the speculative intellect—as the domain of happiness depends on the sort of union that obtains between knower and known, stemming from the very nature of knowledge, but it depends first of all on the nature of the object of such an operation. One sees something of this in ST 1.14.16, on whether God’s knowledge of things is speculative. Thomas discusses three points on the basis of which knowledge can be speculative. The first and most commanding of these is the things known. Knowledge is called ‘‘speculative’’ as bearing upon things that are not doable (operabiles) by the knower: such is human science concerning natural or divine things. Now, God’s knowledge of himself is speculative. This seems to me worth stressing, lest it be thought that speculative knowledge is something that pertains to created intellects merely because of their finitude, their being surpassed by the whole of reality and by God himself.34 Speculative knowledge might be conceived as essentially passive. This is not true. It is passive in the finite intellect, precisely because of the nobility of the object, which is infinite.35 However, in God we find speculative knowledge par excellence, and in him it is pure actuality, the most lively of activities.36 Indeed, Thomas, speaking of God’s knowledge of operables, points out that because he knows them in his knowledge of himself, this knowledge does not lose anything of the nobility of speculative knowledge: he has speculative knowledge of himself, and in his speculative knowledge of himself he has speculative and practical knowledge of all others.37 My point here is that speculative knowledge is knowledge most noble because of the ontological status of its object, namely, something intrinsically worth seeing. That object is primarily the being that is the source of all being. Truth What meaning of ‘‘truth’’ is relevant to the doctrine that happiness consists primarily in the contemplation of truth? Would it make any

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difference if we were to say merely ‘‘the knowledge of God’’ or ‘‘the knowledge of being,’’ instead of ‘‘the knowledge of truth’’? Particularly when we consider that God is the truth and the highest truth, might we not simply write ‘‘knowledge of God’’? And even if we were to say that there is a difference between calling God ‘‘God’’ and calling him ‘‘the truth,’’ still, if the truth meant in speaking of our happiness is precisely God, this will be a different point than if the truth we are speaking of is the truth that is found in our minds regarding whatever it knows. Let us recall that when we speak of happiness, we are speaking of the operation of the intellect of the happy being. And we are speaking of its most perfect operation. As Thomas says, in speaking of God’s own happiness, happiness is the perfection of the intellectual nature that can know its own sufficiency in the good which it has. This is to say that it is essential that our own knowledge of truth enter the picture of our happiness. Thus, we are very much in the picture. Still, we are in the picture precisely insofar as we are in the picture of our knowledge of the truth respecting the object. Our way of being in the picture is not the same as God’s way of being in the picture in his contemplation of the truth. He is the direct and completely satisfying object of that act of contemplation. On the other hand, our act of perfect happiness, in accordance with the passive nature of our understanding, has as its object a comparison, and one in which God (and in lesser acts, the being of creatures) is the primary object and we are entirely secondary. In that sense, knowing the truth, like knowing our own act of knowing, is not knowing anything great.38 Such an act, even though involving reflection on ourselves, is rightly described as the consideration of God just in himself. That act is, indeed, the cognitive principle of our act of love for God just in himself. This secondary but crucial role of our own selves in the picture of knowledge of truth is interestingly developed in St. Thomas’s successive presentations of the doctrine that truth is in the intellect’s act of composing and dividing. In the Sentences explanation, in a quite Avicennian framework, composition and division is seen as the act in which our knowledge goes beyond quiddity to attain to the esse rei, the thing as it actually exists.39 In the De veritate, the doctrine is explained in terms of the need for duality in order to have ‘‘adequation’’: there must be in the intellect something of its own, as distinct from what pertains to the thing

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known, and this something is the intellect’s own judgment concerning the thing.40 Finally, in the Summa theologiae, a new principle is introduced, namely that ‘‘truth’’ names primarily truth as known, and that this means that truth is to be found primarily in the knowledge of the comparability of what we have in mind to the being of things.41 Truth is in the apprehension of the object ‘‘oneself understanding that-which-is’’ (se intelligere ens).42 The way in which the knowing self figures in the scene is entirely dependent on the way in which the human intellect stands with respect to universal being, that is, its passive character. This chimes in entirely with the understanding of the ‘‘proportion’’ of created being to uncreated being; we are meant to represent the divine being and goodness. What emerges from this is how great is the primacy of being, ens, that which is, in the appreciation of the nobility of knowledge of universal truth (or truth about universal being). Ultimately, it is knowledge of God, the being who is the source of all being, that constitutes the most noble of human operations. We, however, only have such knowledge to the extent that we appreciate the being that is found in God’s effects. Knowledge of Being It is with regard to this that I see the importance of Thomas’s discussion of the question, does happiness consist in the consideration of the speculative sciences? He begins it by distinguishing between perfect happiness (which cannot be had in this present life) and imperfect happiness, which is a participation in a particular likeness of perfect happiness. He will ultimately conclude that though the speculative sciences had in this life cannot be perfect happiness, they do indeed constitute a participation, an approach to perfect and true happiness. Now, this is of great importance. If, from the viewpoint of sacra doctrina, looking down from the divine heights, science is seen as a mere participated likeness of happiness, still, from the point of view of the human mind, acting in accord with its own nature and its own pathways of investigation, it is in our experience of speculative science (including, of course, metaphysical wisdom) that we catch sight of and partake in some measure of happiness. Indeed, the presentation of science by Thomas, with a view to showing that it cannot be perfect happiness, is at one and the same time a view of its being a particular likeness of happiness.

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Thomas teaches that the limits of science are determined by the investigative power possessed by the principles of the science. The principles of science are obtained through sense experience. Hence the entire consideration that is found in science cannot extend farther than the point to which knowledge of sensible things will take one. Thomas argues that such knowledge will not take us far enough to arrive at perfect happiness. He says: The ultimate happiness of man, which is his perfection, cannot consist [or be found] in the knowledge of sensible things. For something is not perfected by something inferior [to itself], except insofar as in the inferior there is a participation in something superior. But it is evident that the form of the stone, or of any sensible thing whatsoever, is inferior to man. Hence, the intellect is not perfected by the form of the stone inasmuch as it is that sort of form [talis forma], but inasmuch as in it there is a participation in something similar to something that is above the human intellect, namely, intelligible light, or something of that order. But everything that is through another is to be traced to [reducitur] that which is by virtue of itself. Hence, it is necessary that the ultimate perfection of man be through knowledge of some thing that is above the human intellect. But it was shown earlier that through sensible things one cannot come to a knowledge of separate substances, which are above the human intellect. Hence, the conclusion is that the ultimate happiness of man cannot be in the consideration of the speculative sciences.43 Notice how here we are catching a glimpse in sensible things themselves of something beyond them and beyond our own mind, but seeing it only through its likeness. That is, in seeing form as form, and the act of being that is its necessary associate, we are seeing the divine likeness, or, to limit ourselves to this text, the likeness of something above our minds. And we thus reason to what it is, above our minds, that is providing the limited perfection that the human mind is already obtaining through the consideration of sensible things. Thus, the above argument brings out the grounds for saying, as St. Thomas does, that since in sensible forms there is a participation in a

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likeness of the higher substances, the consideration found in the speculative sciences is a participation in true and perfect happiness. In the same context Thomas says that we have a natural desire not only for perfect happiness but for any likeness or participation in its nature: this with reference to the first sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.44 And in presenting the superior nobility of the theoretical intellectual virtues over the moral virtues, Thomas points out that the reason the theoretical virtues are not ordered to something else as what is useful is ordered toward a goal is precisely that in them we have inchoate beatitude or happiness, which consists in the knowledge of truth.45 What this suggests to us is that only when seen in a certain light does our scientific knowledge reveal why it is a source of happiness. It does, in fact, cause us joy, just by virtue of itself, and not merely as making life safer or leading to pleasure. But why it does so can be properly appreciated only when it is seen that it leads, however dimly, to a knowledge of God, the source of all being and goodness. Not all scientists see this. In a 1993 article, Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, making a plea to the Clinton administration for the funds to support the Superconducting Supercollider, brushed aside the supporting arguments of those who held out the promise of technological spin-offs and new high-tech jobs. Instead, he made his stand on the basis that the supercollider would make possible research leading to a ‘‘final theory,’’ a theory ‘‘that incorporates gravitation with the other forces of nature.’’ This quest for the final theory he presented as ‘‘one of the noblest efforts of humankind.’’ In an effort to shed light on the nobility of the endeavor, he held out the following hope: ‘‘News that nature is governed by impersonal laws will percolate through society, making it increasingly difficult for people to take seriously astrology or creationism or other superstitions.’’46 I should add that he went on to assure us: ‘‘Knowledge of the final theory will not mean the end of science. There will be countless complicated phenomena, from turbulence to thought, that will still need to be explained.’’ I must first greet here this recognition of the nobility of scientific theory. Second, the search for a final theory strikes me as a wholesome human inclination. With others, I welcome Professor Weinberg’s realism regarding laws to be found in nature. He tells us in his book Dreams of a Final Theory: ‘‘It certainly feels to me that we are discovering something

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real in physics, something that is what it is without any regard to the social or historical conditions that allowed us to discover it.’’47 Moreover, I agree with him in his hope to eliminate the sort of ignorance manifested in such things as astrology, creationism (at any rate, what I mean by that term), and indeed all forms of superstition. ‘‘Evolutionism,’’ in one sense of ‘‘-ism’’ (suggesting the fanatic), should also be banished. However, in reading such a book, I am reminded of Socrates’ account in the Phaedo of his experience in the schools of the ancient Greek physicists. When one hears from a practitioner of elementary particle physics that thought is a ‘‘complicated’’ phenomenon (though, I am sure, he sees it as covered by the final theory), one cannot help but call to mind those who asked, ‘‘Do heat and cold, by a sort of fermentation, bring about the organization of animals, as some people say? Is it the blood, or air, or fire by which we think? Or is it none of these, and does the brain furnish the sensations of hearing and sight and smell, and do memory and opinion arise from these, and does knowledge come from memory and opinion in a state of rest?’’48 That ‘‘nature is governed by impersonal laws’’ I would not have thought was ‘‘news.’’49 ‘‘Impersonal’’ suggests to me, however, precisely the absence of thought. And one might well wonder how thought ever appears on the scene, as it obviously does in the noble human being.50 And, still further, what are we to make of the presence of laws that ‘‘govern,’’ even if in a thoroughly impersonal way? Socrates’ first glimpse of the answer was the doctrine of Anaxagoras, that a mind must be at the origin of nature, that the work of nature is a work of intelligence. And Socrates’ own solution was the primacy of form. And it is this focus on form that I would hope for in the approach of present-day scientists to their findings. However, Aristotle criticized the approach to form as found in Plato. Plato himself had characterized mathematics as still merely ‘‘dreaming about being,’’51 and Aristotle found the Platonic conception of form and nature still too mathematical.52 Weinberg is struck by mathematical form in nature,53 but it certainly does not suggest to him a divine mind at its origin.54 Is it being too optimistic to look for more awareness of form and its metaphysical implications in years to come? Writing in 1971, Etienne

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Gilson, in a letter to Jacques Maritain, lamented the inability of contemporary scientists to grasp the importance of form. Speaking of ‘‘la science moderne,’’ he wrote: What separates us irreparably from it is the Aristotelian (and common sense) notion of Substantial Form. . . . Descartes rid nature of it. They understand nothing anymore since they forgot Aristotle’s great saying that ‘‘there is no part of an animal that is purely material or purely immaterial.’’ It is not the word ‘‘philosophy,’’ it is the word ‘‘nature’’ that separates us from our contemporaries. Since I do not have any hope of convincing them of the truth (which yet is evident) of hylomorphism, I do not believe it is possible to propose our hypothesis to them as scientifically valid.55 Nevertheless, it seems to me that with the great advances that continue to be made in the techniques of observation, the reality of form is being brought to our attention as never before. Although there is no essential incompatibility between the doctrine of evolution and the reality of form, it seems to me that the popularity of evolution has worked on the imagination in the direction of flux schemas that tend to have us overlook the reality of form; this is especially true with gradualist imagery. From that point of view, it is helpful to have underlined the reality and importance of stability in nature. To take only one example among countless recent discoveries, I will refer to the find of George O. Poinar, Jr., and Benjamin M. Waggoner. To quote a report: The oldest preserved soft-bodied creatures ever found, single-celled microorganisms that lived at the dawn of the age of the dinosaurs, have been identified in fragments of amber from a sandstone deposit in Germany. The creatures—protozoa, bacteria, algae, pollen and spores—are strikingly similar to present-day species. . . . Evolution seems scarcely to have changed these microorganisms in more than 220 million years. . . . The discovery . . . ‘‘opens up a whole new world for us, a new field of micropaleontology,’’ Dr. Poinar said in an interview. . . . ‘‘It’s hard to say why these organisms underwent so few evolutionary changes over the last 230 million years, unless their genes just hit on a winning formula and found no reason to

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change,’’ he said. ‘‘Perhaps there is some factor in nature that accelerates evolutionary change only in response to environmental pressures, which these organisms didn’t experience.’’56 What we mean by ‘‘form,’’ after all, is a principle of being, of endurance.57 And that brings us back to the question, how does being impress us? What considerations will reveal ‘‘the good side’’ of being to us? Jacques Maritain insisted on the intuition of being, an experience of the intrinsic wealth of being as being. Whatever name one gives to this experience, can a recipe be provided as to how to awaken the mind to the intrinsic wealth of the nature of being? The entire curriculum proposed by Plato in the Republic was aimed at this.58 Aristotle’s review of his predecessors, to see to what extent they had caught sight of the types of causal explanation, surely was intended to awaken the minds of his hearers to the wealth of being.59 St. Thomas sketches levels of investigative curiosity that he sees as typical of the human mind in its historical encounter with reality: the scientific project having as its focus beings as beings comes only as the result of seeing beyond earlier ‘‘final theories.’’60 We are endowed, from the start, with a share in the light of the first and highest truth.61 We know from the start the intelligibilities: being, act, potency, and the like. In company with those who have gone before us, we must set out the distinctions between substance and accident, form and matter, natural being and being in the mind; we must present efficient causal hierarchy and the act of being. Some will see. But we must not expect the battle to be over in this world. Plato, in The Sophist, was right in speaking of a battle that is always being waged concerning what being is, as between the partisans of sensible, corporeal reality and partisans of the objects of mind: an adequate theory must include both.62 Why Survive? However, I am most anxious to avoid the idea that forms and natures are good as mere recipes for survival. This would leave us with a valuing of things in function of a ‘‘clinging to existence.’’ What is so good about existence? Are things good because they are survivors, or have they been provided with the wherewithal to survive because they are considered to be

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of such a nature that they merit to survive? We must go beyond the conception of being as the answer to the question, does it exist?63 We must come to being as the act of the essence.64 An essence is such that it ought to be. But how do we see beings as goals, that is, as intrinsically lovable? Inasmuch as the species is more immaterial than the individual, we see more clearly form as the goal in nature. The spectacle of a species of animal, an insect for example, and the way it dominates a milieu, converting all comers to serve its nature, lets us glimpse ‘‘a power of being.’’ Form has as its proper effects being and operation,65 and the operation is turned back toward that form.66 The operation, ‘‘pragmatic’’ as it may be, still serves to reveal the presence of a nature, that is, a radical unity, a being. We admire form just in itself. We see in it, as present in matter, a product of mind. And so, in it, we are loving the nature of mind. But why is mind lovable? Is it not the fullness of being of the object of mind that we are catching sight of and admiring? And that object is being as being; and being just is lovable. We see more of it in a thing that has a form such as to be an efficient cause, relative to some other form or nature. As cause, a thing reveals ampler being than another, that is, than its effect. Mind is always secondary with respect to being, as regards the object. It is the fullness of being, as seen in form and act, form and act as transcending matter and potency, causal hierarchy, which just is the spectacle of being; and only as sharing in the all-ness, the universality, of being does mind show its lovability. As such, it can be seen as permanent and as meant to be permanent and as having a raison d’eˆtre. Or have we forgotten the significance of the primacy of contemplation? It is the operation that is most of all intrinsically worthwhile, and so it is the operation that characterizes the being that is most of all intrinsically worthwhile; that is, it is we ourselves, as knowers, who manifest the goodness of form and being. And we do so as ourselves secondary beings, mirroring the divine being. Thus, it is God who is primarily intrinsically worthwhile: it is his being that primarily has the quality of being. Our being is of interest as like his. Things lower than man are not merely ‘‘survivors,’’ ‘‘existence machines.’’ As each having a form, as each revealing ‘‘the light of mind,’’ they are intrinsically good; and as fitting in, in the universal order, they have an even higher mode of goodness and being.67 Things lower than man have a further value insofar as we humans

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have a mind that comes to a vision of ourselves and God through such things.68 Once more, it is form that strikes us. And that is the being of the thing. It is only inasmuch as the thing requires an efficient cause that we see that its own proper form is participating in what is proper to a higher nature, and thus see form and ‘‘act of being’’ as distinct, and form as participation in higher form, in what has more of the nature of being; as St. Thomas says: ‘‘Esse is most formal of all.’’69 And our mind is valued as giving us access to universal form, and so to ‘‘all things,’’ and so to God, the being who is the origin of being. And we ourselves, as possessing mind, have a special mode of form, meant to live contemplatively forever. Our worth is our kinship with supreme being. The desire to survive is reasonable, but the lovability of our life and operation of contemplation derives from the goodness of the object, which is divine being. God’s own happiness is contemplation having as object his own being and all other things in himself. We find things ‘‘interesting’’ not merely because they reveal a mind at work originating them but because that mind at their origin produced them while contemplating himself, that is, the fullness of being. Conclusion I do not believe I can overstress the importance of the practice of contemplation if one is to ‘‘get the idea of life.’’ We are living in an atmosphere soaked with interest in survival. We do not ask often enough, ‘‘survival to do what?’’ We have made magnificent progress in developing the means of observation. We have hitherto unimaginable ability to study nature. And we have the means of communicating very widely such access to things. However, our mentality, in these endeavors, remains lamentably pragmatic. Knowledge of new species will reveal new medical possibilities. Quite true. But there is a more important dimension to the situation. Knowledge of natural beings is a perfection of the mind, of the human person.70 It makes a human being happy. It makes life worth living. It is an introduction to God. It is an anticipation of eternal life.

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Chapter 5

ANTIMODERN, U LTRAMODERN, POSTMODERN: A PLEA FOR THE PERENNIAL The study of philosophy is not ordered toward knowing what people have thought, but toward knowing how the truth of things stands. —Thomas Aquinas, In Aristotelis libros De caelo et mundo1

Introduction The present paper is ethical. That is to say, its aim is to affect the actions of people. I will be discussing the goal of human life and the appropriate course of conduct required if we are to arrive at such a goal. It will be, so far as possible, an appeal to reason, not directly to the passions. It supposes that we are somewhat free to shape our own behavior and can be persuaded by reasons to do so. One of the fruits of the invention of computers is poll taking and great masses of statistics. Such information, when carefully provided, furnishes precious materials for the formation of prudential judgments: what chance has this or that course of persuasion or action in a given society? Still, there is a danger that in the face of such information we may become, as it were, mesmerized, that is, become mere observers and puppets with respect to matters where we ought to be agents striving to affect the social trend, drift, or mood. We must keep in mind not only the question, What is happening? but also the questions, What should be happening? What do I want to happen? and What can I do to make its happening more likely? I say I wish to make a plea for the perennial. Thinking back on my own education, and the milieu in which it took place, what strikes me is the extent to which the primacy in life of contemplation was communicated to me. And I ask myself to what extent we are fighting to provide 85

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such a milieu for those with whom we live. Moreover, what has been borne in upon me more and more through the years is the nature of the objects of contemplation as permanent things. What is primarily of interest is what exists of necessity. What is primarily of interest is the eternal and what deserves to be eternal. Thus, when I say I make a plea for the perennial, I do not mean merely to talk about certain teachings that have endured, and endured for good reasons. I do not mean to talk only about enduring knowledge. I mean to talk also and primarily about the objects of that knowledge, the perennial things that solicit from us enduring interest. Do things continue in existence merely because they have found the right strategy whereby to endure, or do they possess that strategy because they deserve to endure, that is, are intrinsically worth preserving? Do we seek to understand things merely in order to devise a strategy for survival, or is the understanding of things itself what makes life worth living? Most of my studies have been historical, that is, in the domain of the history of philosophy and to some extent, of theology. One becomes very much aware of the personal differences among the philosophers and of the important effects on human life those differences have had. One also becomes aware of the extent to which doctrines are constant throughout history and how the same difficulties appear and reappear through the centuries. Thus, one is led to ask, Are there absolutely universal constants? Are there constant battles in ideas, constant differences that show themselves? Is there such a thing as intellectual progress? and regress? I think here of Etienne Gilson’s The Unity of Philosophical Experience.2 I think of Jacques Maritain and his presentation of philosophy as a domain of genuine progress, and how such progress differs from progress in the special sciences.3 But I also think of Plato’s Republic and the presentation of modes of social organization that contain the seeds of their own corruption, modes of social organization that are based on principles that are flawed from the viewpoint of reason or intelligence: here, we have something of a theory of regress4 (and, of course, the Republic also contains a recipe, a plan, for the advancement of learning, a philosophy of philosophical education, a plan for progressive liberation of the mind, indeed a ‘‘phenomenology of mind’’). There is much discussion in present-day Western intellectual circles about modernity. The general idea is that by ‘‘the modern’’ we choose to

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characterize a certain phase in human social, cultural, and intellectual history, and the question is raised, Has that phase of history played out all its cards? Have we in fact already passed into another phase? Is the modern outmoded? In keeping with a possible positive response, many have installed themselves or been tagged by others as ‘‘postmodern.’’ Of course, to answer such questions, one must propose the features of our life that epitomize modernity, and one must indicate how these features have been rather fundamentally set aside for some other fairly distinct trend in human affairs, that is, a trend that goes to the heart of what it is to live a human life today. Seventy years ago, Jacques Maritain published a book called Antimoderne. As he said in its preface, he was aiming to put forward the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, not as the philosophy merely of some one man at some one time, but as a public philosophy, a timeless science of reality. He might have said, as G. K. Chesterton did some years earlier about the views expressed in his book entitled Orthodoxy, ‘‘I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.’’5 In calling his work ‘‘antimodern,’’ Maritain meant by ‘‘modern’’ a definite line of thinking that set the human thinking subject above the entire field of its objects, and that amounted, in his eyes, to a deification of the human individual. In such a modern setting, philosophies succeeded each other in time, in a series of replacements, each new philosophy taking over the scene by displacing what had gone before. In contrast to this, Maritain presented philosophy as having arrived at permanently acquired positions, though this permanent foundation was to be seen as in permanent growth and progress. There was, of necessity, philosophical progress, but by way of deepening and growth, not by way of replacement. Above all, there was submission of the human mind to the necessities discoverable in being. In championing this refocusing of perennial philosophical energy, Maritain did not concede to his adversary all rights to the claim of being ‘‘modern.’’ He said he might have called his own work ‘‘ultramodern’’ just as well as ‘‘antimodern.’’ He meant that to judge that something is ‘‘up to date,’’ one must have the right idea of the thing itself and of what constitutes progress for such a thing. In the preface written for the English translation of another of his books, The´onas, he notes that the earlier editions of that book had prompted some ‘‘honest critics’’ to see him as

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‘‘a systematic adversary of progress,’’ whereas he himself holds that it is ‘‘a privilege of Thomism . . . to be an essentially progressive philosophy, and to love movement while honoring stability, and to inspire in us a correct estimation of the renewals necessary in human affairs.’’6 And he continues: ‘‘And will we even add that in our view it [Thomism] contains germinative energies sufficiently powerful to burst the outmoded encasings of ‘bourgeois’ or ‘anti-bourgeois’ thinking?’’7 So also, near the end of the same book, he says: The philosophia perennis is a living philosophy, and aims to enliven us, with a life which is above time, like the truth. And we would not be living things, we would be dead things, if we did not reject the formal determinations in which is expressed the spirit of division, of anthropocentrism, of indocility with respect to being, which characterizes what is called ‘‘modern philosophy,’’ and if we refused to see that the ultimate term toward which it tends is definitely the claiming for man of aseity, of the absolute independence proper to God alone.8 He goes on to insist that although what is formal in these modern philosophies must be rejected, a living philosophy must assimilate constantly ‘‘the other and the new.’’ Maritain distinguishes between the formal principle of the various systems of the philosophers styled ‘‘modern’’ and the many particular insights that are included. He sees perennial philosophy as absorbing these particular contributions. Thus, there is, and must be, a very considerable communication between the many philosophers and the perennial philosophy. He sees this as regards both their insights and their errors: I do not at all wish to arrest the development of philosophy at Aristotle or at St. Thomas. I merely think that their principles are true, and run through the real in every direction, and that consequently all new truth must necessarily agree with [those principles], and finds itself at home in Thomism. In my view, what ends with Aristotle is not philosophy, but is rather the embryonic generation, the formation, of philosophy, so that after Aristotle, being formed, it will be able precisely to develop without limit.9 In subsequent writings, notably in A Preface to Metaphysics, Maritain repeated this view of philosophical progress, and it is very well set out and

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developed in The Peasant of the Garonne. What is to be remarked there is the extent to which it is stressed that there is an advance in metaphysics in Thomas Aquinas relative to Aristotle. Lyotard and Postmodernity Somewhat in the spirit of Maritain, then, let us turn to what is being called ‘‘postmodern’’ and consider it from the viewpoint of philosophical constants. ‘‘Postmodernity,’’ I would say, is a term meant to have a certain shock value. It can be used in a game of ‘‘one-upmanship,’’ just as in popular music one speaks of ‘‘postfunk.’’ The shock value comes largely from the fact that modernity is part of the ‘‘folklore of industrial man,’’ to use Herbert Marshall McLuhan’s expression.10 ‘‘Postmodern,’’ like ‘‘avantgarde,’’ expresses the claim, to use the advertising slogan, to be ‘‘just slightly ahead of our time.’’11 The retiring editor of the magazine Vanity Fair recently declared it to be ‘‘the quintessential post-modern magazine.’’ As a tag, at any rate, ‘‘postmodern’’ has all the marks of a passing fancy. But what of the serious thinkers who have used the tag or whom others have so tagged? What are the traits that are being indicated, and what is the ‘‘modernity’’ that is seen to be bygone? For over twenty years people have been using the term ‘‘postmodern’’ to characterize a condition of human culture in the twentieth century. Although such a label is notoriously subject to ambiguity, I am going to use it tonight the way it is used in a book with a Canadian (or at any rate, Quebecois) connection. I am speaking of the work by the French philosopher, Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, entitled La condition postmoderne.12 It carries the subtitle Rapport sur le savoir. Published in 1979, it is a report on ‘‘le savoir’’ in ‘‘more developed societies,’’ presented to the Council of Universities of the Government of Quebec, a report requested by the president of that council. I hesitate to translate the word ‘‘savoir’’ here, because in the book it is used in a rather global way. It cannot be reduced to science (la science) nor even to knowledge (la connaissance.) One has to consider its use in such expressions as savoir-faire, savoir-vivre, savoir´ecouter. Thus, it is called by Lyotard ‘‘une compe´tence,’’ a competence. It is a report on what constitutes competence, perhaps we might say ‘‘professional acceptability,’’ in more developed societies.

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This condition of competence in such societies Lyotard has decided to call ‘‘postmodern,’’ thus bringing in a term, he tells us, now in use ‘‘on the American continent’’ by writers in sociology and criticism. The term designates the state of culture after the transformations that have affected the rules of the game in science, in literature, and in the arts, since the end of the nineteenth century. In his book, Lyotard proposes to relate these transformations to what he calls ‘‘la crise des re´cits.’’ He tells us that at its origin science is in conflict with the stories, the tales. Measured by science’s own (scientific) standards, most tales turn out to be fables. However, to the extent that science is not limited to stating useful regularities, but rather seeks the truth, science must render acceptable (le´gitimer) the rules of its game. At that point, it proposes a discourse aimed at establishing its own legitimacy. This discourse is called ‘‘philosophy.’’13 When this ‘‘metadiscourse’’ has recourse to one or another ‘‘big story,’’ such as the dialectic of the Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational subject or worker, the development of wealth, it is decided to call ‘‘modern’’ the science that finds its legitimacy there. Speaking of the story for the Enlightenment, where the hero possessing competence (savoir) worked to bring about a good ethico-political result, universal peace, Lyotard remarks that in legitimizing competence with a metastory that implies a philosophy of history, one is led to question the institutions that govern the social bond. Justice is thus related to ‘‘the big story’’ just as truth is.14 Lyotard tells us that, put most simply, postmodernity is disbelief regarding the all-encompassing accounts, the big stories. This disbelief is both an effect of scientific progress and a presupposition for such progress. To the outdated character of the legitimizing overall story setup, there corresponds ‘‘the crisis of metaphysical philosophy’’ and the crisis of ‘‘the university,’’ that is, the institution that depended on that philosophy. The narrative function loses its key features: the great hero, the great perils, the great expeditions, the great goal. It is scattered into clouds of narrative lingual elements, but also of denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, elements, each comporting its own pragmatic combinatory properties. Each of us lives at the intersection of many such lingual elements. We do not necessarily form stable lingual combinations, and the properties of those we do form are not necessarily communicable.

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Thus, the coming society, he claims, pertains less to a Newtonian anthropology (such as structuralism or the theory of systems) and more to a pragmatic approach involving lingual particles. There are many different language games, a heterogeneity of elements. They do not provide the occasion for an institution save in a patchy way; that is, there are local rather than global setups. Of course, the decision makers still try to manage the clouds of sociality, using input-output matrixes, in accordance with a logic that implies the commensurability of the elements and the manageability of the whole. We find our lives dedicated by them to the growth of power. Legitimization as to social justice as well as to scientific truth lies in bringing to an optimum the performances of the system, that is, efficiency. The application of this criterion to all our games is not without its terror, gentle or harsh: be effective, that is, fit in or disappear. There is inconsistency, he argues, from many points of view, in this logic of greater efficiency. For example, it requires both less work (to lower the cost of production) and more work (to lighten the social burden of an inactive population). However, disbelief is henceforth such that we no longer look to the inconsistencies to give rise to a saving result (as did Marx). Still, the postmodern condition is a stranger to disenchantment, as much as to the blind assertiveness of delegitimization (the process of ceasing to believe). Where is legitimacy to be found, after the departure of the overall accounts? The criterion of doability is ‘‘technological’’; that is, it is not pertinent for the judgment about the true and the just.15 How about consensus (as Ju¨rgen Habermas thinks)? It does violence to the heterogeneity of the language-games. Also, discovery always comes about in dissent. Postmodern ‘‘savoir,’’ (i.e., authentic discourse?), is not merely the tool of powers (as ‘‘consensus’’ would suggest). It heightens our sensitivity as to differences, reinforces our capacity to bear the heterogeneous. It does not find its ‘‘raison,’’ its sense, in the agreement of the experts, but in the surprises of the discoverers. What remains an open question, Lyotard tells us, is this: Is a legitimizing of the social bond, a just society, possible by a paradox analogous to that of scientific activity (i.e., that the bond would arise from a capacity for dissent)? And in what would it consist?

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I have followed as closely as possible what I take to be Lyotard’s own summary of his position. Let me now make some critical observations concerning Lyotard’s thought as here presented. The social phenomena he describes are real. There is a crisis as to institutions, and all long-term commitment is avoided. And although disenchantment is widespread, there are also those who continue to work on their particular projects with a wondrous enthusiasm. But there is also much searching for overall accounts, new total pictures. What I would criticize in Lyotard’s case is his acceptance of, and even urging of, the impossibility of an overall account, and of a metaphysics. He imprisons us in a cloud of language-games, compatible among themselves only up to a point. His reduction of all experience to ‘‘discourses’’ and language-games is itself an account doomed to fail from the outset. Such notions as ‘‘discourse’’ and ‘‘game’’ are intrinsically secondary. They make no sense in the absence of a primary encounter with reality, with being. Lyotard himself notes, at one point, the increase in the use of quotation marks in discussions, indicative that one is only reporting what is being said; no unqualified affirmation is being made. But Lyotard himself, with his language-games, seems to me to have reduced all that is said to the status of the merely ‘‘said.’’ What is encouraging in a thinker such as Lyotard is the fact that he is promoting the quest for truth and justice. Though he rejects the ideology that calls for ‘‘development’’ without a goal, he recognizes a call from the roots of reality (the unfinished, ready for anything, openness of infancy) to carry on in particular endeavors the striving for justice and truth. He is surely a person who loves to be surprised.16 One can agree with him that there are fatal flaws in the metaphysical systems of modern times, and yet reject his blanket condemnation of metaphysics. One can ask him, as with all skeptics, to reexamine the wellsprings of his own philosophical vitality. What makes Lyotard run? What is that love of justice and truth that we find in his heart? Ultimately, one must go beyond the quest for legitimation of discourses, the quest for justifying accounts. One must return to what we all in fact see—that on the basis of which, in the light of which, we are able to mount discourses, whether constructive or skeptical. I am reminded of a statement of Maritain’s: ‘‘If I . . . am a Thomist, it is in the last analysis because I have understood that the intellect sees.17

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The Primacy of Contemplation What vision of life are we offering our youth? And prior to that is the question, what vision of reality and of human life are we encouraging in ourselves? In that sense, I am issuing a call for a self-assessment that might affect our political judgment, ambitions for the society in which we live, and so on—I am in somewhat the same business as Chesterton in What’s Wrong with the World. (I was interested to see that this was the book of Chesterton’s that had a profound effect on the life of Marshall McLuhan.)18 In it, Chesterton begins with a discussion of ‘‘The Medical Mistake’’: in our determination of social ills and how to fix or improve society, we treat society as we treat the individual human organism. We act as though the state of health were something well known, and so also then what constitutes disease, and we take the known steps that will serve to remedy the situation. The goal is clear, and thereby the problem of judging the appropriate treatment is solvable. Chesterton’s point is that the good condition of society is not something that we all agree on. Thus, what one proposes as a treatment appears as a disaster to another, since the treatment would destroy the society, as envisioned by the second person. Therefore, said Chesterton, we must first present a vision of society, as a basis for the judgment of proposed treatments.19 But does not the proposing of a social ideal, that is, a good to be aimed at (I do not wish to propose something impossible of even ‘‘imperfect’’ attainment: I wish to be practical; I wish to recruit real participants in the endeavor; I do not present what I take to be a purely fanciful item), raise all the questions of ‘‘whose vision’’? Are there not as many versions of the social ideal as there have been notable social thinkers in history? In a way, this is simply the question of philosophy: objective or subjective, public or personal? However, it adds the special dimension that when we speak of human action, we encounter the reality of human passions: that these passions, though they can color all our judgments, theoretical as well as practical, are especially troublesome the closer one’s discourse comes to telling someone how one should behave. Nevertheless, if one sees that there is a perennial public philosophy, even as regards the good human life and goals of social endeavor, then giving that view publicity, reminding the members of society, is a clear responsibility. The good life requires promotion if it is even barely to hold its own against perennial perversity.

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The social ideal I wish to recall, sketch, and promote is that of the primacy of contemplation. There is some reason to claim it is the perennial ideal. We think of Plato’s Republic and the primacy of knowledge of being, and primarily of the Idea of the Good. (The good is first in the order of causes.) We think of the beginning of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and of the doctrine that is sketched there, but is worked out in the entirety of Aristotle’s treatises. Contemplation, which Aristotle asserts to be the object of universally human natural desire (‘‘Every human being, by nature, desires to know’’), is something that has its rationale in the very nature of being, knowledge, and action. To assert its primacy is not arbitrary. There is no lack of desire for mastery of the material world among the Greeks.20 There is an obvious human appeal in knowledge viewed as a key to business success.21 But these things do not ultimately satisfy human desire. We see that our question pertains to the inquiry into what constitutes beatitude, happiness. Is it in riches, power, health? We ask society: Where is your heart? Where have you situated your treasure? An alarming number of our youth commit suicide, or are ready to ‘‘waste’’ people who get in their way. What sort of nobility have they been encouraged to discern in the human being? What is their vision of accomplishment, success? In this connection we might note that McLuhan was asking the most classical of questions: What songs, what stories are suitable for the formation of youth? What does exposure to this or that mode of poetry (in the very widest sense) do to the human outlook? These are questions raised by Plato in the Republic. They are even more relevant today. I have said that I wish to insist on the primacy in human life of contemplation. I could have said, just as well, of ‘‘observation,’’ or of ‘‘theoretical science.’’ I want to say that reality is a spectacle, that beings are spectacular, that is, worth seeing, and that the goal of human life is ‘‘getting a good look at things.’’ In this same line of thought, I wish to call attention to that in things on which we ought to focus, and which I will call ‘‘form.’’ The perennial call to focus on form might take us back, for example, to Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo, when he speaks of his ardent desire to know the causes of being, and ultimately fixes on the method of looking toward form.22 Or, again, we might look to Aristotle in his treatise On the Parts of Animals,

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in the famous passage in which he encourages the study even of those animals whose appearance we might find distasteful: For if some have no graces to charm the sense, yet even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistry of Nature, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links of causation, and are inclined to philosophy. Indeed, it would be strange if mimic representations of them were attractive, because they disclose the mimetic skill of the painter or sculptor, and the original realities themselves were not more interesting, to all at any rate who have eyes to discern the reasons that determined their formation. . . . In all natural beings there is something amazing. . . . We should venture to the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful. Absence of haphazard and conduciveness of everything to an end are to be found in Nature’s works in the highest degree, and the resultant end of her generations and combinations is a form of the beautiful.23 As is clear, what I am calling for is the fixing of attention on the interesting, the amazing, the beautiful. Anyone who follows the reports of progress in observation of nature in these present times knows that it is immeasurably more possible now than it was in Aristotle’s time to observe the beauty of which he speaks (I think of recent reports on the electric motors that drive the flagella of some bacteria, and also of studies of the social life of bacteria).24 However, I have in my own life listened most of all to Thomas Aquinas, as regards this call to look toward form. He sees the human mind as finding its primary nourishment in the study of natural beings. This study leads us to an appreciation of the nobility of our own minds and ultimately, to a knowledge of God, the highest of minds, the creative source of all nature and all mind. While every natural thing is noble, that is, has its own intrinsic nobility, the human being is more noble than other animals, and still more noble than plant life. Indeed, the greatest glory of animals and plants and the rest of sensible reality is its being intended as nourishment for a mind, the human mind.25

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I have been speaking of form, but I have not related it to necessity and permanence. That relationship can be presented both from the side of the thing known and from the side of the knowledge itself and the quality of our knowing. However, what I am most concerned with at this point is the thing known. Our biological scientist focuses on the species of things. The individuals come and go, are born and perish. It is the species that persists through time. And the principle of that specific nature is form. That is the root of perpetuation, that which is communicable from generation to generation. Catching sight of the specific form, we see that which nature intends, the very raison d’eˆtre of the individuals. Still, what is most important is form itself, not merely its being perpetual. The goal is not mere ‘‘survival,’’ but the survival of what is worth perpetuating, the survival of what ought to survive. In that respect, I might have called this talk ‘‘a plea for the beautiful, for the good, for the interesting, for form.’’ The following is a passage that I think provides a good idea of a defense of the principle of the primacy of contemplation. (I might say that that is what I see myself here as doing, defending a principle. It is the task of the metaphysician and the wise man to defend the first principles. I would say that the contemplative nature of primary human happiness is a first principle of human action.) St. Thomas presents a hierarchy of goods in the realm of human life itself. He is arguing that the purpose of every intellectual substance is to know God intellectually. He says: What is lovable merely on account of something else, exists for the sake of that which is lovable simply on account of itself: for one must not go to infinity in the realm of natural appetite, because the desire of nature would be frustrated, since it is not possible to traverse an infinity. But all the practical sciences and arts and powers are lovable merely on account of something else: for, in them, the goal is not knowing [just in itself] but operation. Theoretical sciences, on the other hand, are lovable on account of themselves: for their goal is the very knowing. Nor is there found any action in human life that is not ordered toward some other goal, except theoretical consideration. For even playful actions, which seem to be carried out without a goal [beyond themselves], have some fitting goal, namely that through them our minds are somehow refreshed, so that subsequently we are more able to carry out studious activities: otherwise one might be always at play if the game were pursued

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just for its own sake, and that is certainly inappropriate. Therefore, the practical arts are ordered to the theoretical, and similarly all human action to intellectual theorizing, as to a goal. Now, in all ordered arts and sciences, to that one [art or science] the ultimate goal is seen to pertain which provides instructions and has an architectonic role vis-a`-vis the others: for example, the naval art, to which the purpose of the ship pertains, [the purpose of the ship being] its employment or use, is instructional and architectonic relative to the art of shipbuilding. Now, that is the sort of relation that prevails between primary philosophy and the other theoretical sciences; for all the others depend on it, as obtaining their principles from it, and obtaining guidance against those denying [their] principles; and primary philosophy itself is entirely ordered to the knowledge of God, as to an ultimate goal, so that it is called ‘‘the divine science.’’ Therefore, divine knowledge [i.e., to know God] is the purpose of all human knowledge and operation.26 Here we have a hierarchical presentation, made in function of the conceptions proper to the division of the good according to priority and posteriority, or the more and the less, that is, what has more of the nature of a goal (or the ‘‘honorable good,’’ bonum honestum), and what has more of the nature of something ordered to such a goal, (the good in the sense of the ‘‘useful,’’ bonum utile.)27 It is a division of all human activity or operation or life. Is the idea of such a society that we want everyone to be a metaphysician? No, that is neither possible nor desirable. We do not want everyone to be even scientists involved in the more special or particular sciences. We see the appropriateness and the need for the service occupations and the life of politics. It is much more a question of what we honor and reward, what we proclaim as more valuable. Do we value the sciences only or even primarily for their possible application to techniques serving human corporeal ease and pleasure? Are the primary awards in our society the rewards of business and sport? We should distinguish carefully between theoretical science and technology, for it is the former that is lovable for its own sake. Science is always a genuine good, but so also is technique. It is, as I have said, a question of two modes, two grades, of goodness, the intrinsically lovable

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and the useful. However, some technical devices, viewed not merely as works of art but as expressions of total human appetite, can be the very embodiment of perversion. Technology can be put in the service of virtue, but it can also be put in the service of vice—greed, unscrupulous power, the lascivious life, massive injustice. All the things we do not want to see can be ‘‘swept under the rug.’’ Gabriel Marcel used to speak of ‘‘the spirit of abstraction, maker of war.’’28 He meant that when you do not have to look your victim in the face, when all you have to do to wipe out entire peoples is push a button, total war becomes much more possible. In the comic strip Pogo, by Walt Kelly, the character Mr. Howland Owl observed concerning the hydrogen bomb, the so-called clean bomb, that ‘‘there was nothing to sweep up.’’ Doubtless we will soon come to clean abortifacient pills and contraceptives with no undesirable side effects. Technology, by virtue of the very richness it has achieved in our time, forces us to face up to the essence of morality, to ask what questions we should really be asking. Should we merely consider, is the undertaking feasible? will it work? Or will we be the sort of people who ask whether it is a procedure that accords with a noble idea of humanity? In the end, the issue will not be, can we save the human race? but do we really consider the human race worth saving? Is life worth living? Unless we have something to live for, saving the human race will not be ‘‘worth the cost.’’ Without vision, the people perish.29 This is true, not merely in the sense that people need to see where they are going if they are not to fall into an abyss. It is even truer in the sense that unless vision, that is, contemplation of being and goodness, is present, we will have no sense of what one ought to do (Socrates against Thrasymachus),30 and we will continue on the path of mass destruction and ultimately of mass suicide. Modern times find us living in the midst of good things. And our society presents good inclinations: the interest in nature, in ecology, in technique, in the natural sciences, in social justice. However, to get the greatest good from these things we need the guidance of true wisdom. We need to learn to fix our attention of the being and goodness of things.

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Chapter 6

IS THOMAS AQUINAS A S PIRITUAL HEDONIST?

In The Future of Belief, by way of general introduction to the problem of religion in our time, Leslie Dewart refers to Freud’s view of religion, and particularly of belief in a god, as a case of an infantile illusion that has outlasted infancy.1 He then goes on to maintain that Freud himself was still under the spell of the older, primitive worldview and showed himself to be so by sadly concluding that man cannot attain to happiness.2 Professor Dewart suggests the possibility of rejecting both the obsolete illusion and the Freudian substitute: If reality is experienced as reality, if the world is envisaged as man’s home, and if the purposiveness of conscious existence is conceived as being and not as being happy, the future forecast by Freud for the religious illusion might well come true—but in the form of a further development of Christian theism, not in that of its disappearance. If we transcend the inadequacies of the position represented by Freud, the assumption of its truth should lead us more adequately to envisage the future of belief.3 One can see readily enough the coherence of this view with the overall task sketched in the rest of the book. That task is the ‘‘dehellenization of dogma, and specifically that of the Christian doctrine of God.’’4 This involves, among other things, a philosophical doctrine of man different from that of earlier times: for example, whether men regard themselves as pursuers of happiness will inevitably affect their view of what it is to be a god. 99

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Having in the above-explained qualified way assumed the truth of Freud’s position, Professor Dewart seeks to confirm its validity with some observations about Christian belief and practice. The general point is that it has been and is characterized largely (at least as regards ‘‘Western Christendom’’) by ‘‘the belief that the most consequential fact of life was the ultimacy, irrevocability, and absoluteness of the alternative possibilities open to man in the world beyond the grave: eternal and utter bliss, or eternal and utter suffering.’’5 In the course of presenting this point, Dewart speaks of popular preachers, present-day Thomists, St. Thomas Aquinas himself, Scholasticism, and finally ‘‘the origins of that spiritual hedonism whose fountainhead . . . antedates St. Thomas by a thousand years, and which Scholasticism merely canalized.’’6 Still, his main interest is not in those origins. ‘‘What must be stressed above all is that this spiritual hedonism exists, not indeed as an isolated phenomenon, not as heresy, not as deviation from the norm, but as characteristic of the current form of our faith.’’7 Dewart is not even saying that it was always a bad thing, but only that it will no longer do.8 Now, it could not be denied that something of hedonism affects the spiritual life of most people, indeed that the Christianity of most Christians lives in a kind of bondage to a hedonism of sorts. Nor would one hesitate to say that integral Christianity is preached all too rarely. However, it is of considerable importance that, in making our diagnosis of Christianity today, we isolate truly undesirable features and not confuse them with similar but essential features of Christianity. And the question of the source of the hedonistic element in much religious understanding and practice is of great importance for one’s conception of that element, the extent to which it is subject to elimination, and the way one would go about eliminating it. I am sure Professor Dewart would agree with this. He sees what he calls spiritual hedonism as part of our Hellenic heritage, and he himself advances under the flag of ‘‘dehellenization.’’ The reason he can set aside for another occasion9 the question of sources is that he thinks he knows (and indeed, has just sketched) enough of the answer to make headway. It is not as unessential to his view as one might think that he is able to present the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas as a spiritual hedonism (in principle). Thomas need not be the original source. He serves as a witness to the intelligible grounds of that spiritual hedonism, and in his doctrine

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the Greek background is evident enough. The case of Thomas makes it possible to say that this hedonism is no merely superficial malady of ‘‘Western Christendom,’’ and that it is, in its primary intelligibility, Hellenic. If this assessment of Professor Dewart’s position is sound, it will be of some service to ask the question, is his judgment of St. Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine adequate? I hope to show that it is not, that is, that St. Thomas’s theory of the Christian life is not, in principle, a spiritual hedonism. In speaking of St. Thomas, Dewart first establishes that, for him, man’s fulfillment consists in happiness, that is, in the attainment and enjoyment of the last end. Second, the distinction between happiness and the necessarily concomitant delight is introduced, in an attempt to save the doctrine from an accusation of ‘‘classical hedonism.’’ Third, this distinction (however true) is seen not to be entirely adequate to the aforementioned task; that is, St. Thomas is not altogether absolvable of the charge of hedonism. Fourth, St. Thomas is seen to have been also an advocate of truly Christian views, but this was only by virtue of inconsistency.10 I will deal first, then, with Dewart’s argument about the inadequacy of the distinction between happiness and delight to save the doctrine of St. Thomas from a charge of hedonism. After that, the charge of inconsistency will be faced. Dewart’s criticism of the distinction between happiness and delight moves through several phases. We will look first at what he puts second. He says: Moreover, the distinction implies that there would be nothing basically wrong (though there would be something Christianly imperfect) with seeking ultimate delight for its own sake. This must be admitted not only in deference to common sense, but also theoretically. The delight taken in the acquisition of the object of happiness is a necessary concomitant of happiness. One cannot avoid taking delight in the attainment of self-fulfillment. It is natural for man to seek happiness with all his might.11 There is in this passage a preliminary difficulty of interpretation to be faced. What is meant by ‘‘delight in the attainment of self-fulfillment’’? Is the delight taken in attainment, or in the thing that is attained through

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the self-fulfilling act? The self-fulfillment under discussion is seeing God. Are we delighted with the seeing or delighted with God? There is no doubt that St. Thomas, in the passage to which Dewart refers us concerning the ‘‘concomitant delight’’12 is speaking about being delighted with God. There is also no doubt that there would also be present a delight in the seeing, in the attaining, since it too, that is, the seeing, is a loved and longed-for good that has now been attained. But just as the love by which we love the seeing is a secondary sort of love, so the corresponding delight will be secondary.13 However, Dewart, in his previous discussion, has moved from the uncreated object of happiness, namely God, to the very essence of happiness as something created, and on to a discussion of delight as ‘‘the delight we take in happiness,’’ seeming to mean by ‘‘happiness’’ in this last expression, the created operation.14 This meaning also seems indicated by the formula, cited above, ‘‘delight taken in the acquisition of the object of happiness.’’ There is then a very real question as to whether he has succeeded in envisaging what St. Thomas would call ‘‘ultimate delight’’ at all. Still, it may not matter all that much which delight Dewart is talking about, in view of the sort of argument he presents. Let us reserve judgment. The procedure being considered is ‘‘seeking ultimate delight for its own sake.’’ Dewart says that in the light of St. Thomas’s doctrine, such a course of conduct would not be ‘‘basically wrong.’’ However, it would be ‘‘Christianly imperfect.’’ The supporting argument stresses the inevitability of having the delight. And one might think that on that basis, there could be nothing wrong with it. One can hardly be blamed, however slightly, for the inevitable. The point, rather, is that there would be something less than perfect in seeking the ultimate delight not as something secondary and concomitant but ‘‘for its own sake.’’ What does St. Thomas say about ‘‘seeking delight for its own sake’’? In the very same series of questions to which Dewart is referring for his information about St. Thomas—Summa theologiae (ST) 1–2.2.6— Thomas shows that the beatitude of man cannot consist in pleasure (voluptas), whether this word is being used in an extended sense to mean delight in intelligible goods or in its primary (bodily) sense. The very first

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objection is as follows : ‘‘It seems that the beatitude of man might consist in pleasure: for beatitude, since it is the ultimate goal, is not sought after because of something else, but other things because of it. This, however, belongs most of all to delight: ‘for it is ridiculous to ask someone because of what he wanted to be delighted,’ as is said in Ethics, book X. Thus, beatitude consists, most of all, in pleasure and delight.’’ To this St. Thomas replies: It belongs to the same intelligibility that the good be sought after and that delight be sought after, [delight] being nothing else than the appetite’s repose in the good: just as it is from the same natural force that the heavy thing is borne toward the lower place, and that it remains at rest there. Thus, just as the good is sought after by virtue of itself, so also delight is sought after because of itself, and not because of something else, if the ‘‘because of ’’ expresses the final cause. But if it expresses the formal cause, or better, the moving cause, in that way delight is seekable ‘‘because of ’’ something else, that is, because of the good, which is the object of delight, and consequently is its origin and gives it form: for it is by virtue of this that delight has [the role of] being sought after, namely, that it is rest in the desired good. The point here is that the good, and delight in the good, are diverse intelligible features of one intelligible goal. There is only one act of seeking by which they are sought. Hence, the delight is not sought ‘‘for the sake of something else,’’ as though it were a step on the way to a further goal. It is sought ‘‘for its own sake,’’ inasmuch as it is an aspect of the goal that, necessarily, is sought for its own sake. Since, however, the goal is not simple but composite, including as it does the good and delight in the good, it is the good that gives to the delight the quality of ‘‘belonging to the goal’’ and so the quality of being ‘‘something sought after for its own sake.’’ In accordance with this doctrine, if Dewart means by the expression ‘‘seeking ultimate delight for its own sake’’ a seeking of that delight as a goal, then such a formula does not and cannot imply any diminution of the truth that the good (which is other than the delight) is being sought after for its own sake and not for the sake of something else. If one were

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to attempt somehow to desire the ultimate delight in any sort of preference over the ultimate good, and if one actually proceeded to desire a delight in this attempt, though of course one would desire it under the intelligibility ‘‘ultimate delight,’’ still of necessity one would fail to desire the true ultimate delight, since the latter, by definition, is ‘‘rest in the desired (ultimate) good.’’ For St. Thomas, then, ‘‘seeking the ultimate delight for its own sake’’ is not merely not basically wrong. Rather, it is Christianly perfect. Nor does this convict St. Thomas of any sort of ‘‘hedonism.’’ It might be added that it does not really matter whether Dewart is speaking of the higher or the lower of the two delights mentioned earlier, as long as the true hierarchy of values is preserved. Delight in the very act of seeing God is not the ultimate delight, but it will be a thoroughly good delight to the extent that it corresponds to the sort of self-love that pertains to charity, or to the sort of self-love that is not at odds with charity.15 To the extent that what is not absolutely ultimate, whether a good or a corresponding delight, is ‘‘sought for its own sake,’’ it will necessarily be so sought. Let us look now at the first phase of Dewart’s criticism of the distinction between happiness and delight. He says: One can understand the philosophical distinction between ‘‘happiness’’ and its ‘‘concomitant delight’’ and nevertheless sympathize with those who have to translate it into pastoral advice. This sympathy would have nothing to do with anyone’s lack of subtlety or with anyone’s excess of it. It is simply that, if nothing else, the concomitance of happiness and delight logically implies that the attainment of delight (of the right sort, to be sure) can provide a practical criterion for the moral conduct of life. The adequacy of man’s endeavor towards acquiring his due perfection and self-fulfillment can always in practice be judged by the adequacy of his search for ultimate and true bliss.16 It will be noted that Dewart in some way takes into account the fact that there are various sorts of delight, some ‘‘right’’ and others not. He acknowledges that a delight would have to be of the right sort in order to provide an adequate moral criterion. Nevertheless, he clearly regards this as a questionable approach to the problems of moral life.

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The sort of thing he suggests seems to be quite in accord with the doctrine of St. Thomas: that man is good and virtuous who rejoices in virtuous activity.17 Of course, understood in one way, the doctrine that the attainment of delight in a task could provide a moral criterion would be ludicrous. If ‘‘delight’’ is taken in the sense of ‘‘feeling good,’’ that is, in the sense of some bodily pleasure, then it is obvious that some people derive delight from the most unjust and inhuman sorts of activities. So taken, ‘‘delight’’ signifies a particular corporeal thing that remains somewhat the same though experienced in conjunction with a variety of undertakings. Thus, it provides no clear principle for the judgment of the moral worth of those undertakings.18 However, if we understand ‘‘delight’’ as applicable to the acts of intellectual appetite, the types of delight will vary in accordance with the good that the intellect apprehends. And thus there is no danger of mistaking good delight for bad or indifferent delight. And then it is true that the delight constitutes a moral criterion. Good delight is recognizably good, because to be good it must be possessed intelligibly, that is, understood in relation to some apprehended good thing. This point is made, as regards its fundamental principle, by St. Thomas at ST 1.87.4. There he asks whether the intellect of man understands the act of the human will. In answer he says that the act of the will is nothing other than an inclination accompanying understood form, just as natural appetite is an inclination accompanying natural form. Second, he says that a thing’s own inclination is present in the thing itself whose inclination it is, and present there in accordance with the conditions of being proper to that thing. From these points he concludes that natural inclination is naturally in the natural thing; and again, that the inclination proper to the sensitive appetite is sensibly present in the sentient thing as such; and thus, similarly, that the intelligible inclination, which is called the act of the will, is present intelligibly in the one who understands, as in its principle and as in its proper subject. The conclusion is thus that since what is intelligibly present in someone understanding is, as a result, understood by that someone, it follows that the act of the will is understood by the intellect. And we may add that since delight is an act of the will, the good man understands the goodness of his delight. I might add that as regards our supernatural life, we can never be certain of ourselves, since our supernatural life has to do with objects of

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love that lie beyond our clear vision. But even to form a conjecture of our situation in the spiritual life, we rightly consider whether we find ‘‘delight in God.’’19 In this phase of his criticism, then, Dewart seems to do nothing more than look askance at delight as a moral criterion. He seems to take into consideration the notion of ‘‘sorts’’ of delight, and yet this evidently does not satisfy him. Nevertheless he insists that his criticism is not merely as regards practical difficulties. But where is the theoretical difficulty? It would seem that for Dewart, to make delight a moral criterion is to fall into a kind of ‘‘hedonism.’’ But is that so? In the other phase of his criticism, which we examined earlier, he was seen to suppose it possible, according to the doctrine of St. Thomas, not to seek the ultimate delight for its own sake. Seeking the ultimate delight for its own sake, on Dewart’s reading of St. Thomas, would be ‘‘Christianly imperfect.’’ I believe we are now in a position to suggest a flaw in Dewart’s thinking. First of all, he shows skepticism, it would seem, as regards the possibility of identifying the right sort of delight. That would be a healthy skepticism if by ‘‘delight’’ one meant bodily delight, ‘‘feeling good.’’ Second, he sees it as a real possibility that a person might show a preference for the delight experienced in the ultimate end, in comparison with the ultimate end itself; indeed, someone might seek that delight for its own sake—by which Dewart clearly means, seek it without considering the concomitant good. This too would be possible if the delight under consideration were bodily delight. My suggestion is, then, that Dewart makes use of a notion of delight that restricts it to acts of sense-appetite. It is peculiar to the order of senseappetite that activities have as their goal a delight aimed at while there is obliviousness to the associated good. This arrangement is quite understandable inasmuch as sense-cognition grasps particular goods, not the intelligibility ‘‘goodness’’ itself; the particular good that sense grasps is the delightful. To the extent that one conceives of the role of delight in activities according to this plan, one will tend to regard the delight as pursuable in relative independence of the de facto goodness in being that may result. Thus, for example, the child may pursue the sweet because it is sweet, and by this action will in fact be nourished by the honey.

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Professor Dewart seems to be saying St. Thomas’s doctrine implies that it is possible to pursue the sweetness for its own sake, a pursuit that is not totally unacceptable, but further implies that it is the property of the perfect to pursue the goal not for its sweetness but for its goodness. This is why I say Dewart is conceiving of delight on the model of sense-appetite. Even though he seems to be taking into account precisions about ‘‘the right sort’’ of delight, even though he seems to be keeping in view the object of the delight, as when he speaks of ‘‘the delight taken in the acquisition of the object of happiness,’’ the type of difficulty he then goes on to suggest clearly shows that his conception of delight is formed according to the notion of sensual delight, not intelligible delight. It is little wonder, then, that Professor Dewart can accuse St. Thomas of covert hedonism. The reason is that Dewart never allows into the discussion any notion of ‘‘the sweetness’’ of beatitude other than a sensual one; that is, he projects the hedonism into the doctrine by restricting the notion of delight to a hedonistic one.20 Let us come now to Dewart’s charge that though St. Thomas also proposed truly Christian views, these could not be reconciled with the ethical views expressed in his more fundamental speculative work—the charge of inconsistency. At this stage of his discussion, the complaint against St. Thomas seems to be not merely that his doctrine is hedonistic but that it is selfish. He focuses on the statement that ‘‘to desire happiness is nothing else than to desire that one’s will be satisfied.’’21 In reflecting on this, Dewart says that this is not the whole of St. Thomas’s doctrine and is thoroughly qualified by much else: But I am not aware of any other doctrine of St. Thomas which retracts this position, nor indeed, of any other doctrine which he offers under the guise of a theoretically more basic nature. The last point is to be emphasized, because there is no reason to believe that in his own personal life St. Thomas, any more than those who have agreed with him, actually abided by this hedonism. One can only suppose that he lived an integrally Christian conception of morality, the sort ‘‘which seeketh not her own.’’22 If I understand Dewart, he is saying that the doctrine that happiness is the satisfaction of one’s own will is incompatible with the doctrine that the Christian must not seek his own. Does the doctrine of happiness as

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satisfaction of one’s own will require ‘‘retraction’’ in the face of the doctrine that charity seeks not her own? Is there any other doctrine of St. Thomas theoretically more basic than this doctrine of the primacy in human action of happiness as satisfaction of one’s own will? I would suggest that it is too much of an understatement to say that the doctrines of self-satisfaction and selflessness are ‘‘compatible’’ as explained by St. Thomas; the truth rather is that he has a thoroughly uniform or unitary doctrine in which both thoroughgoing selflessness and thoroughgoing self-satisfaction are quite at home. In order really to examine an expression such as ‘‘to desire that one’s will be satisfied,’’ one must consider such questions as who ‘‘one’’ is,23 and what a ‘‘will’’ is. We will focus more on the latter question. The will of the creature is presented in the Summa theologiae for the first time (in any detail) at 1.59–1.60. In question 59, will is seen to be found in angels, inasmuch as they are inclined toward goodness considered in its very goodness (article 1). In question 60 the act or motion of the will is investigated, and it is there we will find the solution to our problem. The basic motion of the will is called ‘‘love.’’ This love is found in two modes, natural (article 1) and elective. However, the natural love is primary and original, the elective secondary and derivative (article 2). Subsequently, in articles 3–5, St. Thomas exposes the natural love that is the primary motion of the will, by considering it in relation to its various objects. How does this natural love stand with respect to one’s own self, one’s fellow, and God? Thus, in these five articles of question 60, we are presented with a doctrine of the primary operation of the will of the creature (angelic and human).24 In article 1, we should note especially that we are dealing with a natural inclination, which nevertheless is an act of the will: ‘‘In the intellectual nature, the natural inclination is found as a willing [secundum voluntatem].’’ We should also be careful to note the priority of nature over intellect. This is important as establishing the primacy of this whole discussion for an understanding of human willing. This is brought out more fully in article 2, wherein we see that the natural willing we do is the principle of the willing we do through choice. In article 3 (‘‘whether the angel loves itself by natural love?’’), we have, first of all, another distinction of meanings of ‘‘to love.’’ This is necessary in order to make clear what is meant by ‘‘to love oneself,’’ and it also

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establishes the nature of the act that is being investigated primarily in this whole series of articles; that is, we are speaking about being ‘‘friendly’’ with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God; we are not speaking of ‘‘loving’’ things merely in the sense of seeking to annex their goodness for our benefit. This is a doctrine of the primacy of natural friendship. Second, apropos article 3, we should note that what is in question here is not whether angels and men love themselves. It is rather manifest that men love themselves. The question is, rather, whether self-love has the intelligible status of something natural and thus primary. Here in article 3, St. Thomas merely says that it is clear that in things that lack the perfection of knowing, each one naturally seeks to attain to that which is good for itself: as fire seeks the higher place. And from this he concludes that men and angels, when they seek their own good and their own perfection, are acting naturally. St. Thomas is very brief in this article on self-love, probably considering that the naturalness of self-love stands in minimal need of demonstration. He says more about his general procedure in article 5, in arguing the more subtle point that to love God more than oneself is natural. He reports that some people have actually held that to love God more than oneself is not natural, and he then counters: ‘‘But the falseness of this opinion is manifestly apparent if one considers, in natural things, toward what a thing is naturally moved: for natural inclination, in those things that are without [the power of] reason, points to the natural inclination in the will of the intellectual nature.’’ The general method, then, is to use the creatures that lack the power of knowing as a means of discerning, among the great variety of activities performed by intellectual creatures, which are to be attributed to nature and which to other principles.25 If one takes articles 3, 4, and 5 as a group, article 3 appears to have the status of a principle in the order of our learning; that is, the fact that one wills good things for oneself surely shows the naturalness of the will, nature being a principle of self-perfection. Thus, ‘‘nature,’’ ‘‘one’s self,’’ and ‘‘will’’ are rather readily linked together. When we come (article 4) to ‘‘loving our fellows,’’ this is less evidently natural because it involves a more intrinsically intelligible meaning of ‘‘one’s self.’’ And this is all the more true in the case of God. A careful reading of these articles leads one

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not merely to an elaborated vision of ‘‘will’’ but to an elaborated vision of ‘‘one’s self.’’ The fourth article asks ‘‘whether one angel loves another as itself, by virtue of natural love.’’ It might be as well to point out, as a preliminary, that St. Thomas understands the formula ‘‘love another as oneself,’’ not as signifying equality of love, but as signifying likeness in the way one loves both—just as one wishes one’s own perfection for oneself, so one wishes their perfection for one’s fellows. The formula thus means that we treat others as friends.26 Also by way of preliminary, we should note that here, as in the other articles, the discussion is a general one, applying to men as well as to angels, indeed seen by us in men and applied generally to ‘‘intellectual creatures.’’ If we come then to article 4, we find that our basis is what has already been established, namely, that ‘‘the angel and the human being naturally love themselves.’’ We now explore the implications of this: ‘‘However, that which is one with a thing is that thing.’’ And the immediate conclusion: ‘‘And so each thing loves that which is one with itself.’’ To bring out the implications of this, various modes of unity are considered, it being taken for granted that natural unity (which itself has many modes) is the primary instance of unity. Thus we read: And if, indeed, [that which is one with the thing] is one with it by natural union, it will love that with natural love; but if it is one with it by a union that is not natural, it will love it with a love that is not natural. For example, a man loves his fellow citizen with a love that pertains to political virtue; but he loves his blood relative by a natural love, inasmuch as he is one with him as regards the natural generative source. This doctrine is applied to things that are one in species: ‘‘Now it is manifest that that which is one with something by genus or by species is one [with it] by nature.’’ And the conclusion: ‘‘And so by natural love each thing loves that which is one with itself according to species, inasmuch as it loves its own species.’’ This is illustrated from things that lack the power of knowing, to leave no doubt about the naturalness of the inclination as found in knowers: ‘‘And this is also apparent in those things that lack knowing: for fire has a natural inclination that it communicate

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to another its own form, which is its good; just as it is naturally inclined to seek its own good, that is, to be above.’’ The point then is that fire manifests a natural inclination to convey its good to others (a love for others),27 and not merely to seek its own good (a love for itself ). Finally St. Thomas concludes that by natural love one angel loves another in terms of those things in which they naturally agree; St. Thomas points out that they may love one another in other ways according to other modes of agreement. This fourth article provides a kind of bridge between the angel’s selflove and its love for God more than for itself. We come now to article 5 on the love of God, namely, whether, by natural love, the angel loves God more than itself. A look at a few of the objections will help us enter into the heart of the doctrine. The first objector takes his stand on the doctrine we have just seen, that natural love is established on natural union. Since the divine nature is maximally distant even from the angelic nature, he argues not merely that an angel does not love God more than itself, by virtue of natural love, but that it does not naturally love God as much as it naturally loves other angels. The second objector cites the maxim ‘‘That because of which, all the more!’’ He then argues that by natural love anyone loves another because of himself, for each one loves something inasmuch as it is something good for oneself. Thus, by natural love, he concludes, the angel does not love God more than itself. The third objector takes as his starting point nature as a principle of selfhood. Nature, he says, is turned back toward itself; thus we see that every agent naturally acts for the conservation of itself. This would not be so if it tended toward another more than toward itself. Thus, an angel will not love God more than itself by virtue of a natural love. We can see readily enough how the very doctrine of the earlier articles is being used to formulate the problem of the naturalness of putting God first in the order of lovability. This might be a good moment to look back upon Dewart’s problem: how to reconcile the primacy of self-satisfaction with the command to seek not one’s own. Surely, as the second objector has said, if each one loves others only as good for oneself, it is hard to see how others can ever come first, and especially how God can come first.

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Coming now to the body of the article, we are first shown that this question has caused some difficulty, and we see the many possible ways in which these love relations can be envisaged. This has some importance, lest one get the idea that little attention was given to these problems in earlier times. Some people have thought, St. Thomas relates, that the angel loves God by natural love more than it loves itself if by ‘‘love’’ is meant concupiscence; that is, the angel seeks to annex for its own benefit the divine good even more than it seeks what is merely its own good. Also, say these people, in a sense it can be said that the angel loves God by natural love more than itself, even taking ‘‘love’’ in the sense of friendship; this is so inasmuch as the angel naturally wills that God be God, while it wills that it itself have its own proper nature. Nevertheless, these people say, speaking in an unqualified way, the angel, by natural love, loves itself more than it loves God, since it naturally loves itself more intensely and primarily than it loves God. As I have suggested, this expose´ helps us see clearly various possible resolutions of the situation under discussion. It helps us to be sure what St. Thomas does and does not mean by his own solution. In rejecting the above view, St. Thomas first of all tells us where to look for a solution and why: ‘‘The falseness of this position is manifestly apparent if one considers among natural things that toward which the thing is naturally moved: for natural inclination in those things that are lacking [the power of] reason shows where natural inclination lies in the will of the intellectual nature.’’ The problem in telling what is natural in intellectual creatures is that there is in them nature plus something else. Thus, the question arises, among the inclinations one finds in them, which have the status of natural inclinations and which the status of elective inclinations? The inclinations found in those things whose only principle of operation is nature provide the grounds for judging what in our willing is natural. Next, then, St. Thomas points out something found in the inclinations of such natural things: Wherever, among natural things, something is naturally constituted as belonging to another, that something is inclined more principally to that other than even to itself. This natural inclination is revealed

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by the actions that are naturally performed, since, as Aristotle says, as a thing naturally acts, just so is it naturally adapted to act. Now, we see that the part naturally exposes itself for the sake of the conservation of the whole body: as the hand is exposed to the spear thrust, without deliberation, in order to save the body as a whole. In order to persuade more fully, St. Thomas next illustrates this kind of inclination by means of political life, that is, a derivative of nature that itself may be expected to echo nature and so help reveal and confirm our judgment about the natural: ‘‘And because reason imitates nature, we find this sort of inclination among the political virtues: for it is the property of the virtuous citizen that he expose himself to mortal peril for the preservation of the republic as a whole; and if a man were a natural part of this society, that inclination would be natural for him.’’ Finally, we come to apply these observations to the problem of our love for God: ‘‘Therefore, because God himself is the universal good, and under this good are contained the angel, the human being, and every creature, since every creature naturally according to its very substance28 belongs to God, it follows that by virtue of natural love even the angel and the human being love God more than they love themselves.’’ And so we see that it is St. Thomas’s conception of the being and goodness of creatures vis-a`-vis the being and goodness of God that allows him to discern the fundamental nature of the love-motions of the human and angelic wills. God is the entire intelligibility of the existence and goodness of creatures. Accordingly, the natural motion of willing is an act of love for God before all else. St. Thomas goes on to point out that if it were not as he has explained, that is, if one naturally loved oneself more than God, it would follow that natural love is perverse and that it would not be perfected by charity but destroyed by it. Thus far in this exposition we may seem merely to be setting down side by side, as it were, the two doctrines that one naturally seeks one’s own perfection and that one naturally loves God more than oneself. One can, of course, see in the above material on the love of God that these two doctrines fit well together or at any rate, show no tendency to clash. However, the replies to the previously noted objections will help us see the integrity of the doctrine, that it is all of a piece.

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The first objector argued that since natural love is based on natural union, one should naturally love oneself first, one’s fellow second, and God third. St. Thomas replies that this argument, that one should love more by natural love what is more one with oneself, holds good where one is speaking about things that have the status of equals, that is, in a situation where one is not the whole ground of being and goodness for the other. In such things (of equal status), each one naturally loves itself more than the other, inasmuch as it is more one with itself than with the other. However, among things one of which is the entire intelligibility of the existence and worth of the other, such an other naturally loves the one more than it loves itself: as the part naturally loves the whole more than itself. So also, St. Thomas adds, each singular thing naturally loves more the good of its own species rather than its own singular good. And God is not merely the good of one species—he is the unqualifiedly universal good. So that each thing, according to its own mode, naturally loves God more than itself. The argument of the second objector was that since it is precisely our own selves that are the cause of our natural love for others, by natural love we love ourselves more than we love others. The ground for saying that in natural love it is our love for ourselves that causes our love for others is that each thing loves something inasmuch as it is something good for oneself. St. Thomas’s reply analyzes this last allegation. Here one is saying that God is loved by the angel inasmuch as or because God is something good for the angel. This statement, says St. Thomas, can be true or false. If the ‘‘inasmuch as’’ or ‘‘because’’ relationship is meant to express a goal, then the statement is false. The angel does not love God naturally for the sake of its own good, because of its own good, but rather for the sake of, because of, God himself. However, if the ‘‘because’’ expresses the intelligible ground for the love, on the side of the one who loves, so taken the statement is true. This is to say that it would not be something appropriate to the nature of a thing that it love God except for this, namely, that each thing depends on the good that is God. It is, then, true that one loves God because God is good for one, but this in no way means that God is made a mere means to our well-being. Rather, it means that we can love God only because he has made us

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relevant to his goodness. We have been given a kinship with the universal good. Again, it is only inasmuch as we derive from God, inasmuch as our goodness comes from him, that the privilege of loving him pertains to us at all. This is important for a conception, to be alluded to later, of the role of supernatural beatitude in the formation of our love for God. New derivations of divine goodness give rise to new possibilities, new ways of being able to love God. The foregoing reply forced us to consider how it is that we have what it takes to love God. The reply to the third objection focuses our attention on the various ‘‘selves’’ that we have within us, and toward which we can turn. The objector contrasted ‘‘reflecting back into oneself ’’ with ‘‘tending to another more than toward oneself.’’ How could the inward directedness of nature, as manifested in the universal phenomenon of selfpreservation, be reconciled with ‘‘loving something else more than oneself ?’’ In reply, St. Thomas himself affirms the doctrine that nature is reflected back into itself, but explicates it in terms of three levels of selfhood. Nature is self-reflective, but this is not to be understood merely as regards that in it which belongs to its singular being. Rather, the inclination is even more intense as regards that in one’s being that is common or universal. Each thing is inclined to the conservation not merely of its own individual being but also of its own species. And even more does each thing have a natural inclination toward that which is without qualification the universal or common good. This last reply shows us most clearly, it seems to me, the unity of the doctrine of the naturalness of self-love and the naturalness of loving God more than oneself. It is one natural motion of the will that encompasses ourselves and God, ourselves with a view to God; indeed, our truest self is that which is most thoroughly ordered to and nearest to God.29 The foregoing survey of question 60 of the first part of the Summa theologiae is, of course, not meant to do anything like justice to the riches of doctrine contained therein. Some things have not been mentioned, others only touched upon. The purpose has been merely to convince the reader that in that place can be found the very doctrine about which Professor Dewart expressed ignorance. There is in St. Thomas’s works a

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doctrine more basic with respect to the doctrine that happiness is selfsatisfaction. It is the doctrine that our own self ’s chief love is for the divine goodness, a friendly love for the divine goodness. Moreover, this doctrine is not a ‘‘retraction’’ of happiness as self-satisfaction. It is, rather, the fulfillment of and the whole truth about self-satisfaction. We have examined Professor Dewart’s presentation of St. Thomas as a ‘‘carrier,’’ so to speak, of spiritual hedonism. What we have found, however, is that Dewart fails to speak of the doctrine of St. Thomas as it truly is. St. Thomas simply does not exhibit the faults spoken of by Dewart. This, of course, raises questions. If the hedonism exists, what is its source? Does it really have anything do to with ‘‘Hellenism’’? Is there as much wrong with the ‘‘pursuit of happiness’’ as a schema of human and Christian living as Professor Dewart seems to think? To conclude I wish to underline the importance of the issues that Dewart has raised. He has attempted to make subject to question the whole orientation of Christian life toward beatitude. He has presented that orientation as a form of hedonism. Now, for St. Thomas, the divine promise of supernatural beatitude is not merely no hedonism. It is that very effusion of divine goodness that makes possible the mode of loving God that we call ‘‘charity.’’ What is meant by this may be suggested by looking just once more at the article of St. Thomas we have been considering, concerning the natural love of intellectual creatures for God. The reply to the fourth objection provides an addendum to the point we saw in the second reply, namely, that the question of how we love God is answered in terms of what capacity for loving him God has given us: In what way is God, who is the common good, our good? Who are we? The objector has complained that to say we naturally love God more than ourselves is to confuse natural love with the divine gift of charity. It is proper to charity to love God more than oneself. Not so, says St. Thomas. There are various modes of love by which one can love God more than oneself. By natural love, God is loved by each one as the universal good upon which each natural good depends. But inasmuch as he is the good who beatifies all, by supernatural beatitude, in that way he is loved by the love of charity.30 If this is true, then Dewart’s confusion of the Christian pursuit of happiness with hedonism strikes a blow against the very possibility of charity.

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Chapter 7

IS LIBERT Y T HE CRITERION IN MORALS?

In a recent issue of New Scholasticism, Vincent Punzo presented his conception of a ‘‘reflective or person-centered ethics,’’ that is, an ethics having its ‘‘normative basis’’ in ‘‘the constitutive role of the reflective intellect in the lives of . . . persons.’’1 Otherwise said, he proposed a view of ethics that makes ‘‘freedom’’ the ‘‘foundational rational norm.’’ He says: ‘‘The decisive consideration involved in the sorting out process [‘‘what ought or ought not to be done’’] is whether a proposed line of conduct confirms and nurtures, or weakens and stunts the character of human beings as free agents.’’2 The unity of these two ways of putting the matter lies in the doctrine, ‘‘Free agency is not an object other than the reflective intellect to which it must submit. It is the life and agency of reflectivity in the world.’’3 If Punzo had limited himself to the view that free agency is a goal, an end, that should serve in the assessment of the good and the bad in human action, I would agree wholeheartedly. One sees an example of this sort of assessment in Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of whether drunkenness is a mortal sin. In his Commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard (dated 1252–1256) and in his Quaestiones disputatae de malo (dated about 1267–1270), somewhat restrained perhaps by a remark attributed to St. Augustine, he teaches that drunkenness in itself is merely a venial sin, for although it makes it impossible for one to turn the mind toward God, one is not obliged always to have a mind so directed; however, frequent drunkenness suggests that one has located the goal more in the pleasures of drink than in God, and so is a sign of a mortally sinful disposition.4 However, with the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae (ST) (ca. 117

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1270),5 St. Thomas flatly states that drunkenness as such is a mortal sin, since it is a willing abdication of reason, the principle whereby man is ordered to God, and the principle whereby he avoids many possible sins—obviously, the latter point refers to man’s freedom of action. And later, in the secunda secundae, making the same point, he speaks of ‘‘reason, whereby he [man] acts virtuously and rejects sins.’’6 Clearly, freedom must be favored as much as possible. However, Punzo makes freedom the primary aspect of agency as regards the distinction between good and evil, what one ought or ought not to do. In this, I think he is wrong. The following observations are put forward with a view to explaining my misgivings. Punzo makes a distinction between the intellect’s acquisitive role and its reflective role, and makes his case by insisting on the primacy of reflectivity. It seems to me that we should insist on the intellect’s passivity, that is, its being essentially a witness to the already given. This passivity obtains because of the universality or community of the object of the intellect—its range or field extends to all being, or to whatever has the aspect of being. Since our intellects (or we ourselves) are particular or finite beings, one among many beings, rather than being ourselves the fontal principle of beings as beings, we have to be passive in our intellectuality. This is indeed a mark of the intellect’s nobility: only God could be active with respect to such an object.7 This is so fundamentally so that even as regards the mind’s knowledge of itself, it has a passivity: to know oneself is not the same as to be oneself, even when the self is a mind. The mind knows itself as ‘‘a being among beings.’’8 I am insisting on passivity in order to cast a somewhat different light on acquisitive intellect. Punzo, in speaking of the intellect’s acquisitive resource, seems to envisage a kind of gathering of facts about the world of things, things being considered in their lesser nobility as compared with reason (reflective reason) itself. I would agree that the natures of material things, as so considered, cannot be a source of perfection for reason itself. As St. Thomas says, it is only the natures of material things, as participating in something higher than the human mind, that can perfect the human mind. It is only the natures of things as manifestations of intelligible light that can perfect the human mind.9 And this discovery (acquisitive intellect) of a higher light, something more noble than itself, is an event that also obtains in the intellect’s vision of itself (reflective intellect). The human mind knows itself as a given nature, and knows

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its own place in the ontological hierarchy. It has the same sort of knowledge of the will.10 The reflectivity of the intellect is certainly important (indeed, more important than freedom), ‘‘reflectivity’’ meaning mind’s activity of knowing its own self and its own operations. However, this self-knowledge is not the best thing about mind, since the human mind is not the best thing there is. Mind as that which has as its object universal being and truth is better. This is its most divine dimension. The mind’s reflectivity, reflectivity of both the intellect and the will, derives from the universality or community of its object, as St. Thomas says: ‘‘Love, by virtue of the power whose act it is, has it that it can reflect on itself. For, because the object of the will is the universal good, whatever is contained under the aspect of the good can fall under the act of the will; and because the act of willing is a particular good, it can will that it will; just as also the intellect, whose object is the true, understands that it understands, because this also is a particular true item.’’11 This universality is likewise the root of the nobility of the will’s mode of being inclined toward the good, as St. Thomas says: Some things are inclined toward the good with a knowledge by which they know the very intelligibility ‘‘good’’; which [knowledge] is proper to intellect. And these are most perfectly inclined toward the good, not merely as directed by another toward the good, like the things that lack knowledge; nor [inclined] merely toward the good taken particularly, like those things that have only sense knowledge; but as inclined toward the universal good itself. And this inclination is called ‘‘will.’’ Hence, since angels through intellect know the universal notion ‘‘good,’’ it is evident that in them there is will.12 In this natural movement of the will toward the good is found all the nobility of freedom, something more noble than mere free choice.13 One must be aware of the nobility of freedom. One must be aware of the nobility of the mind as reflective. But beyond both of these, one must be aware of the nobility of the mind as capable of knowing the intelligible truth. To focus primarily on freedom is to focus on inclination itself as the all-ennobling goal. If this is taken to mean the primacy of inclination over vision, it is unintelligible. Yes, love is the goal of the law, but that hardly ‘‘says it all.’’14 To focus primarily on reflective thought is better,

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but still not enough. Especially is this not enough if one sees reflective thought merely as source of freedom. So taken, mind is being seen as merely practical. Rather, the mind sees objectively that contemplation of the truth is more final, better—that it is indeed the goal of human reason. Practical reason itself, when it is being truly reasonable, asserts the primacy of contemplation over action.15 Punzo’s conception of the intellect as acquisitive seems to me too limited. The intellect objectively sees intellect itself in the hierarchy of being.16 It sees in that hierarchy also the role of nature as nature.17 It sees what inclination is and its variety of modes and their raison d’eˆtre.18 So taken, the intellect objectively sees moral obligation in the world, and why it exists. Moral good is certainly not all the objective good there is, but it is one kind of objective goodness. It is the objective good proper to free human action. And action that interferes with human freedom (drunkenness, for example, but not sleep) is certainly morally bad. But there are other, even worse, aspects of the morally bad than its being destructive of freedom. I am reminded of Gilbert Chesterton’s doctrine: ‘‘There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.’’19 Though the thought that stops thought is bad because it stops thought (destroys freedom), it is even worse because it stops thought (destroys contemplation).20 Punzo, as it seems to me, focused on the natures of material things precisely in their inferiority to human reason. He then rightly said that they could not provide any binding force on human conduct. He turned to reason itself to see reason’s own intrinsic nobility, a noblesse that is the source of obligation, and in so doing, I think he was right. However, I wish to suggest that his discovery or observation (and it is that, an act of the acquisitive intellect) of reason’s nobility leaves much uncovered. He focuses on reason’s reflectivity, but he focuses finally, as on the ultimate beacon, on freedom itself. I submit that one must move from freedom to its source in reason and from practical reason to contemplative reason if one is really to discover reason in all its amplitude as the source of ‘‘ought ‘‘ and ‘‘ought not’’ for human action. It is the goal that is the principle of practical reason, and the goal is contemplation of the truth. Especially helpful, it seems to me, in this regard are St. Thomas’s observations on the greater nobility of the intellectual virtues as compared to the moral

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virtues; for example: ‘‘Indeed, the contemplative intellectual virtues, by the very fact that they are not ordered to anything else the way the useful is ordered to a goal, are more noble. For this comes about because, by virtue of them, beatitude is in some measure [already] begun in us, [beatitude] which consists in the knowledge of the truth.’’21 In these remarks I have been concerned with two points: (1) that the primary principle proposed by Punzo is inadequate and (2) that acquisitive reason, if grasped in all its amplitude of range and depth, will be seen to observe objectively moral obligation as a given. We know certain truths of conduct naturally, and the rest we must work to discover.22 Contrary to what Punzo says,23 moral obligation is simply a discovery on the part of intellect of what nature (as including intellect) demands. It is a fact of nature. It cannot be opted out of. There is no such thing as an ‘‘amoral’’ human being (who is compos mentis). All human conduct is morally good or bad.24 Two other points need stressing. One is that only as derived from the divine mind can nature’s role as moral guide be understood. This is proper to the wisdom of ethics, ethics as borrowing from metaphysics, if one will. We all have natural knowledge and inclinations as basis for conduct, but a sapiential grasp of this situation must see the authority of nature as arising from a natural appreciation, however ‘‘preconscious,’’ of nature’s divine origin.25 The other is that the ultimate end is not the only source of moral norms. Freedom is a moral norm. Anyone shows the soundness of his nature and his intellectual (at least) virtue in proposing it. Freedom is an ‘‘end’’ of human life. It is one of many, and not the least. And it is given. The ends of human life are given.26 As St. Thomas teaches, the Ten Commandments are about ends (values, if you like), because they are more evident than what are ‘‘for the ends.’’27 It is not a good thing to eliminate the sense of the many ends, though they involve an intelligible hierarchy. It is most important, however, to cultivate a sense of their intelligible hierarchy.

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Chapter 8

THE REAL D ISTINCTION BETWEEN INTELLECT AND WILL

Introduction Speaking of the will, its nature and raison d’eˆtre, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, uses the expression ‘‘arduum arcanum,’’ a challenging mystery.1 And anyone who has read Cajetan’s commentaries on the primary texts concerning the will in the Summa theologiae (ST) of St. Thomas Aquinas will be inclined to agree. The study of intellect and will belongs in part to that topmost flight of natural philosophy that considers the human soul,2 but mostly it belongs to metaphysics.3 What this means in terms of the content of our conceptions is that to intellect and will, properly speaking, motion belongs merely metaphorically.4 Such metaphor is necessary but dangerous, for unless we succeed in isolating the proper intelligibilities to which the metaphors point, we may take the metaphors for proper conceptions and thus miss the natures of intellect and will.5 The ultimate discussions of intellect and will must be expressed in such concepts as can be applied properly to immaterial things.6 The sort of thing to which such concepts apply St. Thomas calls a ‘‘metaphysicum,’’ a metaphysical item.7 In this chapter I aim to bring out the metaphysical character of the conceptions that are in play. Our precise point of study is the very distinction between intellect and will. According to St. Thomas, this is a distinction found in things themselves, and not merely one arising from our human way of looking at things. We rightly and truthfully predicate intellect and will of God, but the distinction between the two does not exist in God.8 In creatures, on the other hand, intellect and will cannot be identical.9 125

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Since intellect and will are powers of the soul,10 we may expect that their distinction will arise from the distinction of their respective objects.11 But the objects of intellect and will are beings and truths, on the one hand, and goods, on the other. And these—being, truth, goodness—are distinct only as conceptions of our minds, though admittedly the distinctions have foundations in reality.12 If we are asked to distinguish between being and truth, we may well say that truth involves relation to intellect, and if the good is queried, we may speak of relation to appetite, or even to will.13 The realities to which we are eventually sent are intellect and will themselves. Cajetan, when pushed to present the precise distinction between the respective objects of intellect and will, seems to favor use of the distinction between quiddity and existence, which of course for St. Thomas is a real distinction in creatures. Roughly speaking, Cajetan would make the object of the intellect quiddity, that of the will existence.14 In any case, it should be clear enough that the distinction presents a considerable challenge, falling as it does between two powers neither of which has a corporeal organ through which it operates.15 Let us, then, examine St. Thomas’ ex professo treatments of this issue. Discussions of intellect and will abound in St. Thomas’s writings, and so it is all the more remarkable that when one goes in search of ex professo treatments of the real distinction, one finds so little. In the first part of the Summa theologiae, in the treatise on the angels, article 2 of question 59 asks whether intellect and will differ in angels. The actual discussion expressly applies to all rational creatures, angelic and human. In the Ottawa edition of the Summa theologiae, the parallels indicated for this article are Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (DV) 22.10 and Commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard 1.42.1.2 ad 3. The latter is simply a statement of the fact that in all separate substances (i.e., separate from matter) other than God, will and intellect ‘‘do not seem to be altogether the same thing.’’ It contains no argument supporting what it calls a ‘‘real diversity.’’16 However, DV 22.10 is a full discussion of whether will and intellect are one power of the human soul. Indeed, in the Leonine critical edition of DV, the editor gives as parallel discussion only ST 1.80.1.17 Now, this article in the ST asks whether one is obliged to posit a special kind of power of the soul, called ‘‘appetite’’; that is, the Leonine editor seems not to have thought fit to refer us to ST 1.59.2 because it is primarily

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about angels, though the Ottawa editor of the ST thought fit to refer us from ST 1.59.2 to DV 22.10. But the first point to note is how few the references are! At most we have to do with three articles. Moreover, the inclusion of ST 1.80.1 is not unquestionable.18 Its main point is that it is not enough to make do with appetite as a kind of universal phenomenon that is found in living and nonliving things. Rather, when we come to beings that have knowledge, appetite must be posited as a power of the soul. The contrast made is between universally found or natural appetite and appetite as a power of the soul. The point is that appetite has taken on a new status. Nothing is done to argue the distinction between the cognitive powers and the appetitive powers. Nevertheless, this issue is clearly involved, as one sees by considering the responses to the second and third objections in the article. Accordingly, after considering DV 22.10 and ST 1.59.2, we will discuss ST 1.80.1. Our main attention is thus on two texts, the one dating from about 1258 (DV 22)19 and the other from around 1267.20 And at first sight we must find remarkable how different the approach is in the two discussions. In both texts the diversity of intellect and will is affirmed, but in DV the article takes the form of a presentation of what it is to be an obiectum, the object of a power, whereas in ST the greater part of the article is taken up with showing that the will must be distinguished from the essence of any creature, angelic or other; the point that the same applies to will and intellect, whether of angel or man, that is, that intellect and will are not the same virtus, is added briefly at the end. What are we to make of this difference of approach? Is it a matter of difference of contexts, change of doctrine, or what? Let us examine the presentations. The De Veritate The DV article begins with the affirmation that intellect and will are not merely diverse powers but belong to diverse genera of power. In order to make this point, St. Thomas recalls first the general principle that powers are distinguished one from another in function of their distinctive acts or operations, and that these in turn are distinguished as having diverse objects. Thus, the approach to the question of the distinction between intellect and will is determined. One must consider the object of each.

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In order to do so, St. Thomas first points out that it is not just any sort of difference of objects that reveals a diversity of powers. It must be a difference of objects inasmuch as they are objects, not an accidental difference, that is, not one that merely attaches to the object inasmuch as it is an object. He gives an example of what he means by something ‘‘happening to’’ or merely attaching to the object as an object: to the sensible as sensible it merely happens that it be animated or inanimate, even though these differences are essential differences of the sensed things. Thus, the sense powers are not distinguished in function of such differences. The sense powers are rather distinguished by such differences as the audible, the visible, and the tangible, which are the differences of the sensible inasmuch as it sensible, or by such differences as ‘‘being sensible through a medium’’ and ‘‘being sensible without a medium.’’21 Here, St. Thomas has us taking our start for a judgment on intellect and will from cases of power of the soul where we have a fairly evident experience of what constitutes a distinct object. We see what is meant by difference in the object as an object, and differences that merely happen to the object as an object even though they are essential to the thing that falls under the power. He now advances a step further. When the essential differences of the objects as objects are taken as constituting the division proper to some special object of the soul, on the basis of such division one has diversity of powers but not diverse genera of powers. The example here is that the ‘‘sensible’’ names not merely the object of the soul, taking ‘‘object of the soul’’ in all its generality (objectum animae simpliciter), but a particular object that is divided properly or intrinsically (per se) by the aforementioned differences. Thus, sight, hearing, and touch are diverse special powers pertaining to the same genus of powers of the soul, namely, to sense. Here, once more, with the familiar and relatively observable senses, we see how there is diversity within a kind of family or genus of types of power. Now we come to the decisive step. When the differences considered divide ipsum obiectum communiter acceptum, that is, show a division pertaining to the very idea of ‘‘object,’’ then from such a difference one sees that one has to do with diverse genera of powers of the soul. We see what St. Thomas is driving at here from the way the discussion continues. Something, he tells us, is called ‘‘an object of the soul’’ according as it has

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some relation to the soul. Thus, where we find diverse intelligible types of relations to the soul, there we find a difference properly or intrinsically dividing ‘‘object of the soul’’ as such. And, he explains, a thing is found to have a twofold relation to the soul: one is according as the very thing itself is in the soul according to the soul’s mode and not according to the thing’s own mode; the other is according as the soul is compared to the thing existing in its (the thing’s) own being (rem in suo esse existentem). And he concludes that something is an object of the soul in two ways: in one way, inasmuch as it is naturally apt to be in the soul, not according to the thing’s own mode of being (esse proprium) but according to the mode of the soul, that is, spiritually (spiritualiter), and this is the intelligible type of the knowable inasmuch as it is knowable (ratio cognoscibilis in quantum est cognoscibile). The other way for something to be an object of the soul is for the soul to be inclined and ordered toward it, inclined and ordered, that is, in accordance with the mode of the thing itself existing in itself (inclinatur et ordinatur secundum modum ipsius rei in se ipsa existentis): this in the intelligible type of the appetible inasmuch as it is appetible (ratio appetibilis in quantum est appetibile). In this way, St. Thomas draws the conclusion that the cognitive and the appetitive, in the soul, constitute diverse genera of powers. And he immediately draws the further conclusion that since the intellect is cognitive, whereas the will is appetitive, they are generically diverse powers.22 It is important to note that St. Thomas has built his argument on the contrast between cognitive and appetitive power in general. He has then applied his result to the particular case of intellect and will. From the viewpoint of human cognitive order, since we move from more sensible things to more intelligible things,23 the general conceptions of cognition and appetition are probably primarily envisaged in terms of sense cognition and appetition. Nevertheless, if one considers the notions St. Thomas is actually using, one cannot but be struck by their abstraction from motion and their reliance on pure ontology. Besides the notion of being, there is that of relation. The conception used that seems most closely associable with motion is that of inclination (and tendency). Perhaps that is why St. Thomas uses the expression ‘‘is inclined and ordered,’’ i.e., with a view to eliminating, by means of the notion of order, as much of the motion conveyed by ‘‘inclination’’ as he possibly can. As to what is meant by ‘‘inclination,’’ St. Thomas gives us a comment on this in another

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article in the immediate context. Inclination is the disposition of the mover (or movent, i.e., the source of motion), taking ‘‘mover’’ in the sense that an agent, rather than an end, is called a ‘‘mover.’’24 This does not attribute motion to inclination itself, but it associates it with actual motion more closely than the end, as such, is so associated.25 Certainly, the notion of disposition is again rather abstractive from motion. On the other hand, St. Thomas uses the notion and reality of motion, in the present DV context, to characterize the mode of being of things in themselves, relative to which will is to be conceived. Thus he says: To move things, after the manner of an agent, belongs to the will, and not to the intellect, because the will is related to things according as they are in themselves; but the intellect is related to things according as they are in a spiritual way in the soul: now, to act and to be moved belong to things according to their proper being by which they subsist in themselves, and not according as they are in the soul in the mode of a message [intentio]: it is not heat in the soul that produces heat, but rather heat in the fire. Thus, the relation of the will to things is according as motion pertains to them, but not the relation of the intellect.26 Here, it would seem that if we would envisage thing known and knower, and their interrelation, we ought to do it by placing them both in a sort of ‘‘heaven of immobility,’’ such that they (knower and known) are one, in the communicability of pure form. Knowing is according as the knower is in a way all things, and things are knowable inasmuch as they are apt to be in the knower, that is, inasmuch as they are formulatable. On the other hand, to envisage the appetible and the appetite (or soul having appetite), we must locate both, and their interrelation in the mode of being, which is such that each has its proper being. The will pertains to the agent as an agent. Motion is merely an attendant by which to locate or point out that mode of being. But to better understand our basic text, DV 22.10, on the real distinction, we should consider those preceding DV articles that constitute its most fundamental introduction. St. Thomas presents the will by means of three articles (articles 1, 3, and 4). Article 1 explains natural appetite, which is found in every natural being. Article 3 moves us up to appetite as found in a special way in living things, appetite as a power of the

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soul. Finally, article 4 takes us from the appetite that follows upon sense knowledge to will (following upon rational knowledge) as a distinctive and more noble appetitive power of the soul. In the first article, St. Thomas first establishes the fact that things are directed toward ends. Then, although he refers to things such as man, which have cognition of the end and so are able to direct themselves toward the end, his main interest is in things that are directed toward an end by another. Such direction may be either merely violent—in the thing directed there is mere impulsion, no form is given to the thing whereby the imposed direction is natural to the thing—or else it may be natural, that is, the one directing may give not only direction but also a form according to which the imposed direction befits the thing directed. A violently directed thing is ‘‘inclined,’’27 ‘‘ordered,’’ ‘‘led’’; but a naturally directed thing is not merely led but itself ‘‘goes’’ toward the end: it is rightly said to ‘‘tend,’’ to ‘‘seek’’ the end, these all being expressions that suggest the presence of the inner principle, the form, whereby the direction is the thing’s ‘‘own’’ direction. It is in this sense of natural tendency that St. Thomas says all things seek (appetunt) the good, whether they have knowledge of the good or not. In article 3, we are introduced to appetite as a power of the soul. To explain that appetition, which we have just seen is common to all beings, exists also as a special power of the soul—that is, as something found in a special way in living things—St. Thomas makes a comparison of the cases of appetition and motion (or being moved).28 Motion is also found both in living and nonliving things, but it is found in a special way in living things such that according to motion’s species, namely, local motion, growth, and alteration, we find diverse powers of the soul, namely, motive power, power of growth, and nutritive power. Thus, St. Thomas first explains ‘‘being moved’’ as pertaining to special powers of the soul. A hierarchy is presented with purely spiritual things at the top, purely corporeal things at the bottom, and in the middle, things that have soul. Purely spiritual things have a nature such that they are movers, that is, origins of motion (the motion occurring in something else), and are themselves in no way subject to motion. Purely corporeal things have a nature such that they are subject to motion, and, although they can move one another (in that way they are movers), they cannot move themselves.

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In order to move itself, St. Thomas explains, a thing must have two parts, one a mover and the other a thing moved. In purely corporeal things this cannot occur, because their forms cannot be movers, although their forms can be principles of motion, that is, be that in function of which (principium ut quo) the thing is moved (as gravity is the principle in function of which the thing is moved, but is not the mover). For this condition of the forms of purely corporeal things St. Thomas gives two reasons, one being the simplicity of inanimate bodies, which do not have enough diversity in the parts for one to be mover and the other moved, and the other being the lowliness and materiality of the forms, which, because they are so far removed in nature from the separate (i.e., immaterial) forms to which it belongs to move (active), do not retain power to move, but only that they be principles of motion.29 The things that have soul are composites of the spiritual and the corporeal nature and thus are subject to motion, but (taken precisely as living) to a motion of which they themselves are the movers: they move themselves. Thus, being moved is found in two modes or levels. In nonliving things it is from another, but in things having soul being moved is found as a being moved by oneself. Self-motion is found in living things because their forms are more noble, can have the role of mover and not merely principle by which a movement is natural for the thing. Thus, in things having soul and so self-motion, we get powers of the soul corresponding to the cases of being moved that are self-motions: power of local motion, power of growth, power of nutrition (alteration in the domain of self-motion), power of generation. St. Thomas now uses this whole tableau in order to make his point about appetition. Like (similiter) being moved, appetition (appetere) is found in a special way in things having soul. The requirement for selfmotion was to have one part that is mover and the other part moved. So here, in the case of appetition, in animals there is appetite and the mover of appetite: precisely, the mover of appetite is the apprehended good. Thus, just as animals are moved ‘‘by themselves [ex se]’’ in a fuller way than the rest of things, so also they seek (appetunt) ‘‘by themselves’’ in a higher way than the rest of nature.30 Notice that St. Thomas does not say that appetition in animals is a self-motion. He rather says that its higher way in things having soul is

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comparable to the higher way motion occurs in the vital operations of living things. Of course, the duality of parts (appetite and mover of appetite) just as in the case of self-motion, and the designation of the apprehended good as ‘‘mover’’ suggest strongly the kinship of appetition to motion. Nevertheless, the doctrine is a comparison of motion and appetition, not an identification.31 And thus St. Thomas concludes that just as motive power is a special power of the soul, so also is appetitive power. In article 4 of DV 22, we see how will is distinguished from sense appetite. The distinction is shown by making clear the higher mode of appetite proper to will. Just as we saw sense appetite distinguished from mere natural appetite in terms of grades of appetition, more and less perfect modes of appetition (the notion of appetite itself including the idea that the inclination is one’s own, and so the end or good sought is one’s own, or befits one),32 so now we will see that will is a more perfect mode of appetition than sense appetition. Whereas for the passage from natural appetite to sense appetite St. Thomas made use of a hierarchy that had as topmost member purely spiritual things having the nature of mover and not of thing moved, here in article 4 he presents a hierarchy having its supreme point in God, and considers how things, as they are closer in nature to God, have in a more express way the likeness of the divine dignity. To the divine dignity it pertains that it move and incline and direct all things, itself moved and inclined or directed by no other. St. Thomas thus concludes that the closer a nature is to the divine nature, the less it will be inclined by another and the more it will be such by nature as to incline itself.33 On this basis of ‘‘being inclined by another’’ or ‘‘having one’s inclination in one’s own power,’’ as linked to distance from and proximity to God, St. Thomas proceeds to say that insensible nature, as most remote from the divine nature, is indeed inclined to an end, but in it there is no ‘‘something inclining [the thing]’’ (aliquid inclinans) but merely a ‘‘principle of inclination’’ as previously explained (i.e., a form by which the inclination befits the thing). The sensitive nature, closer to God, has in itself ‘‘something inclining’’ (i.e., a mover of inclination), namely the apprehended appetible. However, the inclination itself is not in the power of the thing, the animal itself, but is rather determined for it from elsewhere. In this way, animals are more acted upon than acting. And the reason for this is that the sense-appetitive power has a bodily organ, and thus is

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closer to matter and bodily nature, such that it is moved more than it moves. Here again, then, the very inclination of the sense appetite, inasmuch as it is determined by a being other than the thing itself that has the inclination, is assimilated to motion, to a being moved. Lastly, the rational nature is the closest approach to the divine nature. It has in its power the very inclination itself, such that it is not necessary for it to be inclined to the apprehended appetible. It can be inclined or not be inclined. Thus, the inclination itself is not determined for it by another but by itself. This belongs to the rational nature inasmuch as it does not use a corporeal organ, and so is more remote from the nature of the movable and approaches more the nature of the mover and agent. St. Thomas adds that to determine one’s own inclination toward the end demands that one know the end and the relation of the end to the things that are for the end; and this knowledge being proper to reason, the sort of inclination described follows upon or attends upon the apprehension proper to reason. In this way the point is made that will is a power distinct from sense appetite, constituting a higher mode of appetite. The distinction of powers is seen in the light of the hierarchy of movers and things moved as manifesting nobility of nature.34 It is against the background of these considerations that we must reexamine our article on the difference between intellect and will (DV 22.10). They have served to turn the mind already to the experience of appetition and its many modes. In so doing, however, they have presented cognition as closely tied in with appetition and its diversity of levels of perfection. Our article now carefully distinguishes between cognition and appetition. It is quite taken for granted that what applies to cognition and appetition in general will apply to intellect and will. The distinction presented to us is between two habitudines, two relations, or types of relation, between the soul and ‘‘things’’ (and here, one is expected to consider primarily corporeal things, one could suppose). Let us review St. Thomas’s presentation. He says that something is an object of the soul according as something has some habitudo, some relation, toward the soul. (The object is the thing, the thing as having a relation to the soul.) He tells us that a thing is found to have two sorts of relation to the soul. However, he does not immediately describe the relation itself. Rather, he first presents the basis for the relation. One relation exists inasmuch as the thing itself is in the

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soul in the mode of the soul and not in its own mode. The other relation exists according as the soul is ‘‘compared [comparatur]’’ with the thing existing in its own being. I say that these are not quite the relations themselves that St. Thomas is presenting. This is clearest for the case of cognition. One can hardly call the thing’s being in the soul its relation to the soul. His remarks are intended to convey that the principle for the conception of knowledge is the mode of being of the thing known in the knower, whereas the principle for the conception of appetite is the mode of being of the appetible thing itself existing in its own proper being. Those principles give the respective relations (or systems of relations) their peculiar form or character. Next, St. Thomas presents the relations and so the objects themselves. Something is an object of the soul in two ways. The first way is inasmuch as the thing is naturally apt to be in the soul, not according to its proper being but according to the mode of the soul, that is, spiritually. This is the intelligible note of the knowable as knowable. That is, St. Thomas is saying that the very thing outside the soul has the character of something ‘‘knowable,’’ precisely as having a relation to the soul, namely the thing’s own aptitude to be in the soul spiritually.35 The second way that something is an object of the soul is inasmuch as the soul is inclined toward that something, ordered toward it, ordered according to the mode of the thing itself existing in itself. Here, once again, with the intelligible note of the appetible as such, it is the thing itself that is ‘‘appetible.’’ It is the thing itself that has some kind of relation to the soul inasmuch as the soul is related to it. The soul, in this picture of appetition, is presumably considered as already having the thing present in it spiritually, and to the soul so considered there is said to belong another habitudo, another determination pertaining to the thing, a determination that must be conceived in function of the thing’s own proper mode of being. According to that mode of being, the soul has a determination with respect to the thing to which it is already related spiritually (by knowledge).36 Let me stress that it is not merely the thing that has this mode of being: the order or inclination that constitutes appetition itself is according to the thing’s mode of being. That is, we must conceive of will as a reality in the soul pertaining to the soul’s own ‘‘concrete being.’’37 This is so even though the soul’s own mode of being is spiritual.

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It seems, then, that the distinction between cognition and appetition, intellect and will, here in DV, ultimately reduces to the notions of one being being in a way all beings, that is, the mode of being called ‘‘spirituality’’ here,38 and the proper being of things (as itself bringing into sight a further dimension of the very being of the soul, namely, the appetitive dimension). In his presentation of the modes of appetite, St. Thomas kept very much to the fore the notions of mover and thing moved. He spoke very little if at all in terms of being and its modes. Was this for reasons of pedagogy, as if he were speaking to those who were more used to natural philosophy? It seems rather to be because he is speaking ultimately of will and agency, because he wishes to focus attention on the mode of being proper to these, and this is the mode of being that befits the things we most readily know (natural sensible things), precisely inasmuch as they are subjects of motion. However, when he comes to make the distinction between cognition and appetition, will and intellect, then the notions of being and its modes are given prominence, precisely inasmuch as we are now forced to consider the contrast between the more abstract and more concrete modes of being.39 The Summa Theologiae Let us now pass to the examination of ST 1.59.2. St. Thomas asks, in angels, does the will differ from the essence or nature, and does the will differ from the intellect? The title of the article in the Ottawa edition asks merely whether the will differs from the intellect, but in the Leonine edition the words ‘‘and nature’’ are to be found. The sed contra of the article speaks only of intellect and will, and so also the second and third objections. However, the article begins: ‘‘It would seem that in angels will does not differ from intellect and nature.’’ Then, the first objection includes both issues. Thus, it must be admitted that the question of the distinction between will and essence is no mere prelude to the discussion of will and intellect. From the point of view of the very query, then, we must expect a rather different approach from the one we saw in DV. Nevertheless, we must ultimately ask why St. Thomas has taken the two issues together. Is it merely a matter of economy and convenience in presentation, or is it a matter of fundamental pedagogy concerning the distinction between the intellect and the will?

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The first objection is of interest. The objector argues that the angel is simpler (i.e., a less composite reality) than a natural body. However, a natural body, through its own form, is inclined to its own end, which is its good. Therefore this will be all the truer of the angel. But the form of the angel is either the nature in which it subsists or the species that is in its intellect. Therefore the angel is inclined to the good through its own nature and through its intelligible species. Now this inclination to the good pertains to the will. Therefore the will of the angel is not other than its nature or intellect. What is to be noted is the way both essence and intelligible form are brought in. The objector fully appreciates the conception of the will as an inclination following upon knowledge. However, he is quite content with a conception of inclination, as attendant upon knowledge, that does not demand the positing of a distinct reality over and above the nature of the intellect. St. Thomas, in answering this objection, will point out that through its substantial form, the natural body is inclined to its own being (esse suum), but toward the exterior it is inclined by something added. Thus, his reply deals with the objection as tending to identify will and essence, but says nothing about the tendency to identify will and intellect. Why he considers this reply adequate we will subsequently see.40 Let us come to the body of the article. The will in angels, St. Thomas asserts, is a particular virtus or potentia,41 to be identified neither with their nature nor with their intellect. He takes first the distinction between nature or essence and will. And he begins by presenting the essence as constituting a basis for distinction: ‘‘The nature or essence of any thing is wholly comprehended [comprehenditur] within the thing itself; therefore whatever extends itself to that which is outside the thing is not the essence of the thing.’’ This doctrine is illustrated by a consideration of natural bodies and their inclinations. In such bodies, the inclination toward their very being (ad esse rei) is not through anything added to their essence but through the matter that seeks being before it has it, and through form, which holds the thing in being once the thing exists.42 However, the inclination to something extrinsic is through something added to the essence: for example, the inclination to place or location through lightness or heaviness, and to making something like itself through the active qualities. We should notice that this means that there is no insurmountable problem in

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identifying form and inclination, or essence and inclination. The conception of the essence or self of natural bodies includes a conception of tendency to be. The identity or unity of such beings is consubstantial with an order, relation, or inclination. True, it is an inclination that finds its terminus precisely in the being of the thing itself; but we should not neglect this identification of some inclination with essence or form.43 Nevertheless, it is not every reality in the thing that constitutes the thing’s essence. Precisely when we find that the thing is not merely directed toward itself but is also outwardly directed, this feature of the thing is something other than the thing’s essence. St. Thomas presents no analysis of this situation beyond the conception of the essence as wholly comprehended within the thing whose essence it is. All he does is refer to the cases of lightness and heaviness, and of the active qualities. It is taken as understood that these are added. We will return to this issue after we have seen the argument. We come now to the consideration of the will. It has an inclination to the good as such, the universal good.44 Accordingly the conclusion is immediately drawn that there alone are will and essence identical where the good is wholly contained in the essence of the one willing. This is the case of God, who wills nothing outside of himself except by reason of his own goodness. It cannot be said of any creature whatsoever, since the infinite good is outside the essence of any caused thing. Hence, the will neither of the angel nor of any creature whatsoever can be identical with its essence. That is the first moment in the discussion, the argument for the distinction of essence and will in creatures. It is the sort of inclination that will is that forces the distinction from essence. The contrast is between the finitude of created essence and the infinity of the object of the will, any will. The will is in the creature, but it is not the essence of the creature. If we look back now on this argument, the first point to consider is the notion of essence or nature. It is ‘‘comprehended within the thing.’’ I take this to mean that it is adequately grasped, understood, by considering only the very thing itself in which it is. This is the doctrine that the essence is what the definition signifies, and that the genuine definition is not expressive of ‘‘this said of that,’’ but is the expression of a primary unity.45 Thus, to find that a nature in a thing is such that its very idea

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includes some other being is to find that that nature is not the essence of the thing but something added. The absoluteness of the notion of substance is such that when a nature presents itself to us as constituting real communication (as distinct from the logical communication of genus and species), its ‘‘reality’’ must be understood in a mode different from that of substances themselves, to wit, the mode of accident. Indeed, among accidents, one would be inclined to think that the modes of accident that most of all reveal to us the existence of the nature of accident are ‘‘the outward going,’’ or those that pertain to communication. The more inherent, more absolute accidents are more likely to be confused with substance. Thus, St. Thomas sees himself on very solid ground in proposing as examples of things added to the essence such relatively ‘‘sensible’’ natures as heaviness, lightness, and the active qualities (heat, wetness, etc.). These are the very natures that constitute our fundamental experience of the communion of substances.46 None of them is conceivable, definable, except in terms of the behavior of one substance toward another. This is precisely why they must be recognized as added to the essence. Of course, the accidents have being only in the substance. They are not to be imagined as traveling. But this does not prevent their being genuine principles of events in other substances.47 The sort of diversity from the essence, and outward-goingness, St. Thomas has in mind might best be imagined by considering a man and his hand. The man as a whole is our theater for viewing the nature we call ‘‘humanity.’’ It, humanity, is a true essence, a substantial nature—it is a principle of absolute unity.48 The man’s hand, however, is a theater for viewing another nature, a principle of ‘‘this with respect to that,’’ for the hand is naturally ordered toward the manipulation of surrounding substances. This nature, caught sight of in the hand considered as such, is called ‘‘the manipulative power,’’ or more generally pertains to the motive power of man. Its unity with humanity is not, of course, ‘‘accidental’’ in the sense of having no natural cause. It is rather a property of humanity, a complementary nature. Its being an accident, a nature added to the substance, with a mode of being different from substance, is seen by considering that its own primary or immediate character is of one substance to another. Now, St. Thomas is arguing that this essence-accident situation must prevail between the essence of any creature and the reality called ‘‘will.’’

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Let us consider the will as presented here in ST. There are some important differences from what we find in DV. First, the conception does not bear as directly on the mode of inclination, as a kind of self-direction, as it did in DV.49 Rather, the focus is on the proper object of the will, the good considered in its very goodness. The inclination of will is seen as the most perfect way of being inclined (and thus the mode of inclination is under consideration), but precisely because it is a being inclined toward the good seen as good.50 Second, in DV, whether as a result of the conception of appetite as ‘‘order of the soul to things in their own being’’ being somewhat physically (as distinct from metaphysically) envisaged, or for some other reason, St. Thomas considers the will as essentially directed outward. One can see this at DV 23.1, on whether God has a will. Will and all appetite are considered as ‘‘order to another thing.’’51 In the ST the conception of appetite and will is such that after St. Thomas has established that God has a will (ST 1.19.1), it remains a question whether he wills things other than himself (ST 1.19.2). The reason is that will is conceived in the ST as having the good as its object, wherever the good be found—in oneself or in others. Thus, in our article (ST 1.59.2), St. Thomas does not take as a premise the outward direction of will and then conclude to its distinction from essence. He rather argues that will can only be the essence where the entirety of the good is contained in the essence. The argument St. Thomas has used here is quite similar to that found in ST 1.54.2, where it is shown that the act of being (esse) of the angel (or any creature) cannot be identified with its operations of understanding and willing. The esse of any creature is determined to, tailored to, something one generically and specifically; only the divine esse is unqualifiedly infinite, including all things in itself. On the other hand, both the act of understanding and the act of willing have infinity in their very nature, their objects being the true and the good, respectively, both of which are interchangeable with that which is (ens), so that by their own nature they relate to all things. Because this article (ST 1.54.2) argues universally that in creatures the act of being cannot be identical with any sort of operation, it discusses not only understanding and willing (and sensing) but also such operations as heating and cutting, operations that really affect things other than the agent who acts. What we should notice is that the treatment of willing is

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not the same as the treatment of action directed toward some external effect, for example, heating and cutting. These latter are immediately distinguished from the esse of the thing acting, since the esse ‘‘is signified as within the agent,’’ whereas such action is a flowing forth into the thing actuated by the agent. This is at bottom the same argument as we have seen in ST 1.59.2 for the essence-accident distinction. The point is that it cannot be directly used for the case of the act of willing (in ST 1.54.2), because the act of willing remains in the agent. Thus St. Thomas makes the further point that willing is an intrinsically infinite action, because it has the good as its object. The difference between ST 1.54.2 and 1.59.2 is that in the former, St. Thomas is content to assimilate the act of willing to the act of understanding, and so to treat both as ‘‘remaining within the agent.’’ This is certainly true of willing, as compared with heating and cutting. In ST 1.59.2, part of an ex professo treatment of will, St. Thomas’s procedure is more closely allied to the proper character of the will, as distinct from the intellect, namely, its being an inclination to something. Thus, he develops a picture of will akin to outward-going action to the extent that the will is the will of a finite essence. In ST 1.54.2, the conclusion concerning the act of willing is based on the mere contrast between that which is finite and that which is infinite. In ST 1.59.2 the infinity of the object of will is presented as facing will outward from the finite essence to which it belongs.52 Let us now come to the point in ST 1.59.2 that is of primary interest for us in this study, namely, its treatment of the distinction between will and intellect. St. Thomas says: ‘‘Similarly, it [the will] cannot be the same as the intellect of angel or man.’’ The word that I have stressed suggests that the argument here will be along similar lines to the one for will and essence. In fact, here is how St. Thomas argues: Knowledge takes place by virtue of this, namely, that the thing known is in the knower. Accordingly, it is precisely by virtue of this intelligible note that his intellect extends itself to what is outside it, namely, according as that which is outside him according to essence is naturally apt to be in the knower in some way. The will, on the other hand, extends itself to what is outside according as by a sort of inclination it somehow tends toward the external thing. Now, it is the property of diverse powers (1) that something have in itself what is outside it and (2) that it itself tend toward the outside thing.

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And he draws the conclusion that in any creature, intellect and will must be diverse, whereas in God, who has in himself both universal being (ens universale) and the universal good (bonum universale), will and intellect are his essence. One cannot but be struck by the brevity of this presentation, after having seen how St. Thomas went about the matter in DV 22.10. Have we here more than a mere assertion of the claim that intellect and will cannot be identical in creatures? The last premise of the argument seems to be what the entire DV article was taken up with showing. But is this really so? Or has the earlier part of the discussion in ST 1.59.2 made a rapid judgment possible? Let us consider St. Thomas’s ‘‘similarly.’’ Is the argument for the distinction between will and intellect really similar to the argument for the distinction between will and essence? Yes, precisely in this, that just as essence was distinguished from will inasmuch as essence was entirely or wholly understood within the thing whose essence it is (whereas, as it turned out, creaturely will had to have an outward-directed character), so also now intellect is contrasted with will inasmuch as intellect’s typical way of encompassing the external is to render it somehow internal. That is, knowledge is super-essence. It is built on the same model as essence, so to speak. This kinship with essence, the fact that in intellect the one being is in a way all things (or that the all are somehow one), demands that the will, which relates to the all in the proper being of the all, be still something else again.53 It is the very gap between the intellect’s merely being in a way all things and the real being of the ‘‘all things’’ that makes possible the other relationship to the all, called ‘‘will.’’ One might say that the very essential diversity of creatures, just as it means that knowledge can only be knowledge—that the thing known can only be by its likeness in the knower, in a way in the knower—so also means that there may be the further relationship, to other things in the measure that they fall outside the union of knowledge. Accordingly, it seems to me no accident or minor convenience that St. Thomas has treated first of the essence-will distinction and then of the intellect-will distinction. The second distinction is best seen as deriving from the first. That we are not reading into the text the unity in treatment of the two issues, not giving to the word ‘‘similarly’’ more importance than St. Thomas meant it to have, is strongly suggested by an early text of St.

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Thomas, one that might very well be put forward as a parallel discussion to those we have seen. In the third book of his Commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard (dating from around 1255–1256, and so somewhat earlier than DV 22.10, dating from 1258–1259),54 there is a discussion bearing on the question, which is superior, knowledge or love? St. Thomas, before comparing cognitive and appetitive power, intellect and will (both terminologies are used in the article), presents his conception of knowledge (cognitio) and will (voluntas). He begins with the general observation that in all things there are to be found two sorts of perfection, one by which the thing subsists in itself, the other by which it is ordered to other things. He considers these two sorts of perfection first in material things. Each of these perfections, as found in material things, is finite and limited, for the thing has one determinate form whereby it is in one species only; and also it is through a determinate power that it has inclination and order to certain things proportionate to itself. Here, we have the two types of perfection, form whereby the thing subsists in itself, and a virtus that is a principle of inclination and order toward others—and both finite, the inclination of material things being a finite inclination proportionate to the finite form through which the thing subsists. Next, St. Thomas moves to the level of immaterial things. In both orders of perfection, that of subsistence in oneself and that of order toward others, immaterial things have infinity in a way. First of all, they are in a way all things. This is true either (for the case of God) inasmuch as the essence of the immaterial thing is the exemplar and likeness of all or (as happens in the case of angels and souls) because the immaterial thing has a likeness of all either actually or potentially. And thus, immaterial things have knowledge. Similarly, also, immaterial things have inclination and order to all things. Thus, in the domain of order to other things, they have what is called ‘‘voluntas,’’ will, and according to this all things please or displease them, actually or potentially. St. Thomas’s presentation continues by referring to the descending grades of participation in knowledge and volition, according to which the animals below man share in them in some way. And he concludes this part of his article with the declaration that it is thus clear that knowledge pertains to the perfection of the knower whereby the knower is perfect in himself, whereas will pertains to the perfection of the thing according to

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order toward other things; that is why, he says, Aristotle says that the object of the cognitive power, the true, is in the soul, whereas the object of appetite, the good, is in things.55 The reader will see why I have thought fit to bring this text forward as background for ST 1.59.2. I have contended that the line of argument in the ST article depends precisely on the doctrine of ontological kinship of cognition with essence and substance. And here in the Sentences we see that point maintained in the most explicit way, and in the very same argumentative context. Nevertheless, there are important differences between the two presentations. In the ST, essence, or the perfection whereby a thing subsists in itself, is clearly affirmed as distinct from the nature of cognition, even in immaterial things. This distinction is much more in the shadows in the Sentences article (though it should be noted that St. Thomas never for an instance drops the ‘‘in a way’’ of ‘‘is, in a way, all things’’; even God is, in a way, all things). Also, in the Sentences will is seen as an order to other things. This, as we saw, is the approach to will in DV 23.1.56 It is no longer the approach in the ST (not merely in 1.19.1, but even in 1.59.1 and 1.59.2, where it is argued that creaturely will must have an object beyond the essence of the creature itself ). Still, once one has, in the ST contrast between essence and will in creatures, established that will in creatures is essentially outward going (not, of course, exclusively outward going: its tendency is toward the good, wherever it may be), then one is in a position to make exactly the same contrast between intellect and will that one finds in the Sentences article— that intellect and cognition have more the nature of the perfection whereby a thing subsists in itself.57 And it is this assimilation of cognition to essence that constitutes the force of St. Thomas’s assertion that it is the property of diverse powers (1) that one have in oneself what is outside and (2) that one tend toward the outside thing. Intellect and will are quidditatively different, since indeed intellect is closer in nature to quiddity itself than will is.58 Let us now, before concluding, turn to ST 1.80.1, which the Leonine editor of DV gives as a parallel to DV 22.10. The point that St. Thomas here seeks to make is that appetite constitutes a special power of the soul. This is how the article is introduced and how it is described in the prologue to question 80. In the actual response in the body of the article, St.

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Thomas’s conclusion is merely that it is necessary to posit a certain appetitive power of the soul. The line of thinking is generally that we recognize the reality called ‘‘appetite,’’ and we ask if we must make this the effect of soul in some particular way. It is true that the argument sed contra refers to Aristotle and St. John Damascene both distinguishing appetite from other powers of the soul such as the cognitive powers. Also, the second and third objections and their replies have to do with the problem of distinguishing the appetitive from the other powers, particularly the cognitive. Still, the basic query is the one we have seen St. Thomas deal with at DV 22.3. However, as will be seen, the approach here in ST is quite different. Where, in DV, soul as principle of self-motion constituted the pathway, in ST it is soul as principle of knowledge that is directly considered.59 Let us consider the body of the article. As I have said, St. Thomas begins by asserting that one must posit an appetitive power of the soul, which may imply a power distinct from the cognitive power (or a will distinct from the intellect), but it is not said. One could take it simply as meaning that appetite cannot be left as a kind of transcendental attendant, an ‘‘other side’’ to every thing: one must rather see it as well as a special effect of soul. The argument begins with the premise that some inclination follows upon or accompanies (sequitur) every form whatsoever. Of this, we are given as examples the way fire by virtue of its form is inclined to the upper place, and also by its form is inclined to generate something like itself. Thus, the focus is on form and inclination and their ontological relation: inclination follows upon form as such. The examples of inclination suggest strongly that it is essentially toward another, but this is not said. So also, one would be inclined to say that form pertains to the thing in itself. We are supposed already, it would seem, to regard form and inclination as differing one from the other. The one follows the other. On the other hand, in ST 1.59.2, we saw that some inclination could be identified with some form.60 Another problem: in ST 1.59.2, in order to distinguish essence and outward-going inclinations, we saw how the proper inclinational contribution of essence is inward going. Here, we are told that such outwardgoing inclinations as lightness follow from the form, as if to say that the

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inclination is an effect of the form (and this is an essential point for the argument St. Thomas is making, since he will say that it is because form is found in knowers in a higher mode that we must have a special, higher mode of inclination to follow from it). To address the last problem first, in fact what we are seeing here is the Sentences doctrine we have just considered, according to which the outward relation of a thing is proportionate to its perfection by which it subsists in itself. That is, ST 1.59.2 concentrated on the diversity constituted by the very distinctive reality that is essence or form. The Sentences text and ST 1.80.1 focus on the proportionateness of the twofold perfection found in each thing, the in-itself and the toward-the-other. As to why primacy is given to form, that is, inclination follows upon form, this is the doctrine of the primacy of substance and essence.61 As for the fact that form is sometimes identified with inclination, the situation seems to be that our experience of things as having inclination is primarily of things as related to other things. Our experience of things as having form is of the things as each having its own proper being. Inclination may be directed toward one’s own being, and form may be the principle of being related to another, but these are not the primary ‘‘faces’’ of form and inclination.62 As to the first-mentioned problem, the fact that inclination here seems essentially outward going, I believe that St. Thomas here in ST 1.80.1 understands the word ‘‘inclination’’ in its metaphysical generality, as signifying the ontological phenomenon that pertains to the gap between merely being in the mind and being in reality (it is not ‘‘toward the other’’ but ‘‘toward the all’’); nevertheless the natural (physical) approach to this reality is the inclination of one thing toward another, somewhat as the natural approach to knowledge is in terms of knowledge of other things (outside the knower).63 Having presented this relation between form and inclination, St. Thomas next proceeds to present two modes of form, first as found in things that lack the power to know, and second in things that have the power to know. Form is found in a higher mode in the latter. The modes or grades or intensities of form are recognized precisely through consideration of the proper role of form as principle of being (esse). In things that lack knowledge, we find form merely in this mode (tantummodo), namely, determining the thing to one proper esse, and this is the esse that is natural

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for the thing. And the inclination that follows this mode of form is natural inclination, called ‘‘natural appetite.’’ In things having cognition, a thing is determined to its proper natural esse by its natural form in such a way that it nevertheless is receptive of the species or forms of other things: as sense receives the species of all sensibles, and intellect of all intelligibles. Thus, the soul of man is all things in a way according to sense and intellect. And in this respect things that know resemble God in a way, in whom all things preexist. Let us note that form, in knowers, still determines the knower to its own proper being. However, it does not do so in such a way as to close the door, so to speak, on the reception of the species of other things. And according to the presence of these species or forms, we have an ampler being of the soul: the soul is in a way all things. Form being principle of being, we thus see that form is present here in a higher mode, precisely inasmuch as being is had more amply by the knower. Again we should note that although knowledge is considered according as the knower has the forms of other things, it is ultimately understood as the soul’s being in a way all things.64 From this, St. Thomas concludes that inclination too must be present in a higher mode than in the things that lack knowledge. It is this mode of inclination that pertains to the appetitive power of the soul, whereby the thing can be inclined toward those things it apprehends, and not merely toward those things toward which it is inclined by natural appetite. Thus, the main thrust of the article is to develop this conception of the higher mode of appetite proportionate to the higher mode of form by which a thing is in a way all things. Nothing is done to argue the distinction between cognition and appetite, or between form and inclination. That is taken for granted.65 My judgment, then, is that this article presupposes a knowledge of ST 1.59.2, very much as such an article as ST 1.79.1, on whether intellect is a power of the soul, presupposes one has read ST 1.54.2. The doctrine of ST 1.80.1 has much in common with our Sentences text. But it is to be noted that it does not define inclination as order toward another, the way the Sentences discussion did (always remembering, nevertheless, that in the Sentences text will is ultimately presented as order toward all things).

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Before leaving ST 1.80.1, let me make a few observations concerning the reply to the second objection. The objector argues that since powers are distinguished according to their respective objects, and since it is the same thing we know and toward which we are attracted, cognition and appetition are not distinct powers of the soul. St. Thomas replies that that which is apprehended and that for which we have appetite is the same as to subject (subiecto) but differs notionally (ratione). It is apprehended according as it is ‘‘sensible being’’ or ‘‘intelligible being’’; we have appetite for it according as it is ‘‘agreeable’’ or ‘‘good.’’ And what is required for diversity of powers is a diversity of notions in the objects, not a material diversity of objects. Such a reply is true, as far as it goes. However, it runs the risk, by itself, of remaining at a level of logical rather than metaphysical understanding. One might take it simply as pointing to the massive fact, in human discourse, of the dividing of our psychic life in function of the notions of truth or being and goodness. The ultimate metaphysical consideration of what is said in the above reply consists in the doctrine of ST 1.59.2, where one sees how the powers proportionate to these objects must be distinct ontologically. There the ontological distinction is carefully worked out, setting off will from essence, and locating intellect between the two. Concluding Reflections The foregoing study could be vastly more extended, treating not only of the real distinction but also of (1) the superiority of intellect over will, (2) the way in which intellect and will can be said to ‘‘move’’ each other, and (3) the way the intellect knows the will. These themes are not only treated by St. Thomas but, more interesting, are each treated several times in the course of his career. Reflection on each theme sheds light on the others. In the present chapter I was concerned to present the two articles, written some nine years apart, in which St. Thomas devotes himself expressly to the question of the real distinction. We have seen similarities and differences. Have we seen change of doctrine, doctrinal progress? In the case of an author like St. Thomas, theorizing as he does so much within a philosophical tradition, it is difficult to discern change of doctrine. For example, obviously from the start of his career St. Thomas says that the good is the object of the will.66 Nevertheless, one can note

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that this way of presenting the will is given a primacy in the first part of the ST that it did not have at the beginning.67 The developments in St. Thomas’s doctrine are seen particularly inasmuch as he reshapes the already given content, thus showing he has caught sight of pathways, priorities. Such development is not to be brushed off as ‘‘mere’’ pedagogy. It pertains to the essence of scientific or sapiential vision. If we take the two articles we have primarily considered, there is a marked difference between them. The DV article is built within the framework of the Aristotelian approach to powers of the soul, as distinguished by operations and objects. Also, the background presentation has formulated a conception of appetite as the property of a self-mover. There is no denying that the ultimate conceptions in play are metaphysical, but it would be difficult to envisage a closer marriage of metaphysics with Aristotelian physics. In DV 22.10, the distinction between cognition and appetite is ultimately a presentation of types of relation between the soul and things. Although the fact that one can, as it were, locate the diverse principles of these relations, the cognitive in the soul, the appetite in things, gives a kind of natural (physical) color to the conception, genuine recognition that one has indeed to do with different types of relation rests rather on the distinction of modes of being, namely, the distinction between the (nonproper) being of the thing in the soul and the proper being of the thing outside the soul. On the other hand, ST 1.59.2 is thoroughly metaphysical. Indeed, I would say it is an excellent place to see something of St. Thomas’s fundamental metaphysical technique. By associating the question of the distinction between intellect and will with the question of essence and will, St. Thomas allows us to see how the nature of essence, itself, is at the source of our metaphysical vision.68 We first note how certain types of accidental nature are seen in their distinction from essence. We then learn that creaturely will must be judged in a way similar to these accidents. And lastly we see how intellect is distinguished from will, precisely as having a nature closer to that of essence. ST 1.59.2 is an improvement on DV 22.10, for it takes us to the principle of judgment that is indeed at work in that latter text. It is likewise an improvement on the Sentences passage, and for the same reason. The Sentences text and ST 1.80.1 have much in common, and ST 1.59.2 is the key to understanding ST 1.80.1. This latter text is ‘‘parallel’’ to DV

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22.3 (i.e., as to the query), but ST 1.80.1 is a metaphysical treatment based on the priority of form over inclination. DV 22.3 ultimately rests on the conception of the apprehended good as mover of appetite, a more physical presentation of the same doctrine. Although I consider that ST 1.59.2 is a most important advance over DV 22.10, it should be clear that we are vastly richer in having both texts. It is most important to see the movement of the human mind from the physical to the metaphysical level. Indeed, because of the economy of the ST treatment, its wealth is best seen as the culmination of the efforts of St. Thomas in such texts as the Sentences and the DV.

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Chapter 9

ST. THOMAS, JAMES K EENAN, AND THE WILL

Introduction James Keenan’s book Goodness and Rightness in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae1 offers us an occasion to reflect on the conception of the will and its relation to intellect. This book favors a distinction involving the use of the words ‘‘goodness’’ and ‘‘rightness.’’ Whereas classical Christian moral theology has spoken of both persons and their actions as ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad,’’ Keenan (following others) proposes that one reserve the vocabulary of ‘‘goodness’’ for persons (persons are good if they strive to do the right thing), while speaking of actions as ‘‘right’’ and ‘‘wrong.’’2 This is thought to be a more adequate description of the situation. We should note the following: Goodness, then, though distinct from rightness is not independent of it. When goodness is seen as independent of rightness, goodness becomes solipsistic. The claim that one is good at this particular moment is the claim that one is striving to realize right activity. The claim is not an empty one. Consider love. Loving parents seek to find right ways for their children to grow. Therefore, parents who simply dote on their children without seeking the right cannot claim to love their children. A claim may be made, but the claim remains empty. Similarly, parents who strive to raise their children well but err through extreme severity or leniency truly love; that is, such parents are good, but their parenting is wrong.3 151

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It is to be noticed that these ‘‘good’’ parents need no exhortation or admonition to correct their behavior; all they lack is information. I cannot help wondering whether we do not have, in this distinction, a confusion between morals and mere technique.4 The task carried out in the book is to investigate to what extent if at all St. Thomas Aquinas, in his writings on ethics, adumbrates this presentday move. Keenan holds that Summa theologiae 1–2.9.1,5 on whether the intellect moves the will, constitutes a momentous ‘‘shift’’ in Thomas’s conception of the will and its relation to intellect, one that chimes in with the conception of goodness Keenan is proposing. It should be noted, moreover, that Keenan is not concerned merely with the first article of question 9; it is the whole of question 9, with its presentation of the will as a self-mover (article 3), and of God as the sole external agent that can move the will (article 6), that interests him. However, Thomas, Keenan tells us, after making this breakthrough, actually did not exploit it in his own subsequent analyses, but fell back into his old ways.6 In order to carry out this task, Keenan first, in chapter 2, undertakes to show that prior to the ‘‘shift,’’ Thomas had at best a doctrine at odds with itself, proposing a conception of the will as dominated by reason and thus not ‘‘autonomous’’ (a key Keenan word), while only saving the autonomy of the will by assertions of the appropriateness of moral exhortation, reward and punishment.7 Second, in chapter 3, he presents the ‘‘shift’’ itself, along with its suitability for the goodness-rightness schema. Then, in subsequent chapters, he considers the specification of acts by objects, the virtues, charity, and sin, to assess the moral part of the ST. Clearly, there are at least two issues involved here: the book as an interpretation of St. Thomas, and the proposed distinction between goodness and rightness. In the present essay I will concentrate on the first of these two issues. I will discuss chapters 2 and 3, which are the fundamentals for the reading of Thomas presented in the book. At the end, I will express an opinion on the proposed distinction between goodness and rightness. My principal questions thus are (1) Are there ‘‘contradictions’’ between the earlier Thomas on the will and the later? (2) Has Keenan the right conception of what Thomas is saying in ST 1–2.9? (3) Is what happens in ST 1–2.9 new in Thomas’s thought in the way that Keenan thinks?

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I might say at the outset that I believe studies of St. Thomas should watch him as he takes up many times over the years one single theme. The chronological study of his presentations brings to light the life of St. Thomas’s mind. Anyone who has done such studies knows that Thomas’s ways of presenting the same point change considerably. However, one is left with many questions. Is this or that change a development in Thomas’s conception of the very things being discussed, or is it a revision in the interests of pedagogy? And one might suggest many other reasons for such variations. In the case of the present theme, the relations between the intellect and the will, there is much obvious variation in Thomas’s presentations as the years go by. I believe that the change noted concerning ST 1–2.9.1 is of importance. However, I do not believe its nature is such as Keenan has conceived it. Thomas in Need of a Theory? Before coming to that, however, we should look at some of the indications Keenan presents of a Thomas deeply in need of a revision in doctrine concerning the will. Let us take one of the charges of ‘‘contradiction.’’ It occurs in chapter 3, where Keenan is explaining the advance made by ST 1–2.9 over earlier work. On page 44 Keenan tells us: ‘‘[Thomas] says that as self-mover, the will is the proximate agent of itself, a contradiction of his earlier assertion in the Summa contra gentiles that the good understood is the proximate agent of the will.’’ The note refers us to SCG 3.88 (no. 2638),8 and the contrast is with ST 1–2.9.4 ad 3. Now, in this latter text, Thomas does indeed call the will as a self-mover the agens proximum. However, in the SCG passage, he calls the good understood the ‘‘proximate motivum,’’ and although that might be taken in some contexts as meaning an ‘‘agent,’’ here, in the very sentence Keenan is speaking of, we are told: ‘‘The proximate motivum of the will is the understood good, which is its object, and it is moved by it as sight by color.’’ Now, is this supposed to be an agent, that is, the object and the way it moves the will? If Thomas meant that, he did not wait till ST 1–2.9.4 to contradict himself. In the very next SCG paragraph (no. 2639), the conclusion is: ‘‘Only God can move the will after the manner of an agent [per modum agentis].’’ Indeed, we were already told that the intellect moves the will in the way

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in which the end moves, whereas the will moves the intellect as an agent moves.9 Although this last text is not in altogether the same line of explanation as ST 1–2.9.1 as regards formal and final causality, all these texts are in agreement as to agent causality. Keenan’s ‘‘contradiction’’ does not exist. Let us take another of Keenan’s examples of a ‘‘reversal’’ by Thomas. In a remarkable paragraph Keenan says: Earlier, in De veritate, Thomas argued against any precedence of reason over the will. Instead, he argued, reason’s presentation of the object is at once the will’s movement: the movement is instantaneous. [Here we have note 22, which is a reference to DV 29.8.c and ad 3.10] Now, in the Summa contra gentiles, Thomas reverses this position: the will must first be moved by reason; no movement of the will precedes reason. In the new argument against any priority of the will over reason, Thomas specifically excludes motivation as prior to reason’s presentation of the object. Thus, he concludes that lacking this priority the will cannot move reason as reason moves the will; reason moves the will primo et per se, but the will moves reason quasi per accidens.11 The SCG references in the passage are all to 3.26 (no. 2092). Is there opposition (‘‘Thomas reverses this position’’) between the two texts? None at all! The DV text is on the topic, did Christ merit in the first instant of his existence? The issue is one of passage of time versus instantaneity. The text explicitly requires cognition prior to the act of the will—prior, that is, not temporally but as the natural presupposition: For the movement of the will there is no prerequisite except the act of the apprehensive power, which movement [i.e., the act of the apprehensive power] is in the same instant as the act of the will, because the apprehended good moves the will, and the motion of the movent and the movement of the mobile are simultaneous; but the very apprehension of the good, in [the case of] Christ, does not prerequire any inquiry in order that there be certainty of judgment concerning the good, because as regards certitude Christ immediately had true judgment about everything.12 It is difficult to imagine a more studied use by Thomas of the priority of intellect as mover of will. It is because it is mover that he can conclude

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to its simultaneity. In fact, were temporal priority of any interest to us, the last part I quote makes the point that in anyone (any human being) but Christ there might be need for passage of time, but that in his case there is not, since he does not need to deliberate to arrive at the appropriate object of choice. Now, in the SCG passage, we are dealing with a discussion of the nature of human happiness: does it consist in an act of the will? Among the arguments for an affirmative reply that Thomas lists (in order to refute them), one claims that the will is a higher power than the intellect, and this on the basis that it moves the intellect. The example is that it is by an act of the will that the intellect actually considers what it habitually possesses. It thus seems higher than intellect, and so seems a better candidate for the role of ultimate goal, which is beatitude. In reply, we get Thomas’s rejection of such ascendancy. The intellect moves the will primo et per se, because the will, as such, is moved by its object, which is the apprehended good. On the other hand, the will’s movement of the intellect is per accidens,13 inasmuch as the very act of understanding is apprehended as a good, and thus is desired by the will, from which it follows that the intellect actually understands. And in this very [process] the intellect precedes the will, for the will would never have desired to understand had not the intellect previously apprehended the act of understanding as a good. Obviously, all this has to do with the natural priority of one power relative to another. Time is not the issue. What is shown is that the movement by the will of the intellect is a derivative of the movement by the intellect of the will. Clearly, there is no ‘‘reversal’’ in the two texts.14 Keenan is not proving to be a dependable interpreter. I would like to say that these examples are atypical. They are not. Although Thomas undoubtedly did strive for greater perfection in his presentations of intellect and will through the years, Keenan has not shown the sort of incoherence he claims is there. The Shift Having examined some supposed changes on Thomas’s part, let us come to the so-called shift. I will deal first with whether what actually happens in ST 1–2.9 is what Keenan thinks happens. Once I have shown that his

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notion of what takes place there is flawed, then we can see whether the real doctrine of ST 1–2.9 is present earlier in Thomas’s writings. Thomas describes question 9 as ‘‘concerning the motivum of will.’’ This term ‘‘motivum,’’ previously summed up in the expression ‘‘a quo movetur,’’15 ‘‘by what it is moved,’’ is deliberately selected by St. Thomas to speak of causality in a very general way. There are six articles, with a noticeable order of presentation: the intellect, the sense appetite, the will itself, some outside principle, the celestial bodies, God. What is the general idea of Keenan’s move? He thinks that prior to ST 1–2.9 Thomas had a doctrine of will so completely dominated by reason (Keenan uses the term ‘‘reason’’ to cover both acts of intellect and acts of reason)16 that the will is robbed of its freedom. Thomas, Keenan tells us, does of course affirm the freedom of the will, as when he says that otherwise exhortations would be fruitless. Nevertheless, his theory of the relation between intellect and will is such that all freedom stems from reason, the entire movement of the will comes from reason, and all sin is reduced to error.17 This conception of the relationship between reason and will has as its heart the doctrine that the intellect has the role of final cause in moving the will. Thus, the agency of the will is dominated by reason.18 The virtue of ST 1–2.9 as a whole, for Keenan, is that it reconceives the relationship, such that the intellect’s causality with respect to the will is downgraded to mere formal causality or specification (which Keenan seems to conceive as particular specification).19 Thomas, in discussing the way the intellect moves the will and the will moves the intellect, in ST 1–2.9.1 distinguishes between the order of exercise and the order of specification. The will, within the human being, is supreme in the order of exercise and is thus the primary agent; the intellect is a mover only as to specification. Keenan goes on to appreciate, according to his lights, the new approach to the will as a self-mover, as he sees it in the article (ST 1–2.9.3, the first ex professo article from St. Thomas on the topic) on the will as self-mover. He then stresses how ultimately only God moves the will, as superior to the will in the order of exercise. What is crucial for Keenan’s interpretation is that the first exercise of the will be prior to any specification, any object. The will is being seen as completely prior to intellect in the order of operation. Thus, we read:

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‘‘Yet insofar as the will first exercises itself, the will is not moved by an object, though it is first moved by some exterior principle.’’20 Thus, Keenan sees Thomas as finally having liberated the will from the intellect. Keenan’s interpretation is incorrect. The meaning of ST 1–2.9.1 is not that first there is exercise by the will and then it accepts or does not accept some specification proposed by the intellect. Rather, the meaning is that intellect and will move each other, but in different orders. The object of the intellect, variously described as ‘‘that which is, universally’’ and ‘‘the true, universally,’’ is supreme in the formal order—and this is the order of the object. Thus, ‘‘the good itself,’’ ipsum bonum, is a special intelligible note contained under the general note ‘‘the true.’’ Accordingly, right from the start, the will only wills under the ‘‘influence’’ of the intellect; that is, although it is said that in the order of exercise the will is first, this is because, being an appetite, its object is the end, the principle of agency: an agent always acts for an end. As soon as ‘‘object’’ is mentioned (and it must come into play to provide the will with its own peculiar dominance), the intellect has already come into play insofar as it is the source of all objectification. This is primarily so when one is talking about will, since will is the appetite that immediately attends upon intellect. Its object is the apprehended good. The only thing one can do here is ask about priorities among factors that are given together simultaneously. Thus, absolutely speaking, all inclination follows upon some form, and the will’s inclination follows upon understood form. The particular understood form upon which it follows is called ‘‘the good.’’ However, inclination, in creatures, is distinct from specification, and itself involves priorities. The will is supreme in the domain of inclination and action because its object is the universal end or goal. Thus, intellection itself, that is, the very operation of the intellect, is a merely particular good or goal, falling under the universal object of the will. The intellect can be in operation or not in operation, according to which option the will wills, inasmuch as it is subject to the will in the order of exercise. Metaphysically, the order of form and specification is prior to the order of exercise.21 In short, there is no such thing as an act of the will that is prior to all specification. To conceive of the will as operative in any way prior to the contribution of intellect is to reduce the will to a subhuman level.

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There is, of course, a natural dimension of the will’s movement. However, the natural love that is the first movement of the will is the consequence of natural intellectual knowledge. This is because natural inclination is found in each thing in accordance with the thing’s own mode of being. Thus, natural inclination is found in the intellectual nature, and is found there ‘‘according to will [secundum voluntatem].’’22 And ‘‘will follows upon intellect [voluntas enim intellectum consequitur].’’23 In the powers of both intellect and will, there is a natural preparation for operation, a readiness for universal being and goodness. However, in both it is only a preparation or ‘‘commencement.’’ In the will, this readiness is identical with the nature of the power; in the intellect, it has to be something over and above the nature of the power, so indeterminate must the intellectual power be just in itself. But neither the intellect nor the will has a fully developed operative capacity (a habitus) even as a natural addition. Everything depends on the acquisition of intelligible determinations from imagination. The intellect, and in its turn the will, must feed on experience.24 A very good text on the inclination following upon knowledge is ST 1–2.62.3 on the three theological virtues: The theological virtues put man in order toward supernatural beatitude, in a way comparable to that by which man is ordered by natural inclination to the end connatural to him. But this comes about in function of two [factors]: firstly, according to reason or intellect, inasmuch as it contains the first universal principles known to us through the natural light of the intellect, from which reason proceeds regarding both things to be contemplated and things to be done; secondly, by the rightness of the will naturally tending toward the good of reason [bonum rationis].25 Thus, here, we see the light of intellect as what we might call the ‘‘eye’’ of natural inclination.26 There is no such thing in Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine as a movement of the will prior to the intellect’s specifying influence. It should perhaps be explained that ‘‘specification’’ does not necessarily mean here determining the will to a specific goal as distinct from a more universal goal. The original intellectual specification is toward the universal: ‘‘being.’’ The original specification of the intellect, as prior to the will and giving

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it its object, is ‘‘goodness.’’ Thus, in ST 1–2.9.1 ad 2, we are told that it is only the apprehension of the true precisely as having the intelligible aspect of the ‘‘good’’ and the ‘‘appetible’’ that moves the will. The intellect, as so considering the true, is the ‘‘practical’’ intellect. Thus, ‘‘determination’’ of the will is not limited to the willing of a specific or particular good. An objector claims that the will cannot be moved naturally toward anything, because nature is determined to some one thing (or outcome), whereas will relates to opposites. Thomas replies: Nature always corresponds to something one that is proportionate to the nature. For to the nature taken generically there corresponds something one generically; and to the nature taken specifically there corresponds something one in species. Therefore, since the will is a certain immaterial power, just as is the intellect, there naturally corresponds to it something one and universal [aliquod unum commune], that is, the good; just as, also, to the intellect there corresponds something one and universal, that is, the true, or that which is, or ‘‘the what-it-is’’ [verum, vel ens, vel quod quid est]. However, many particular goods are contained under the universal good [sub bono . . . communi], to none of which is the will determined.27 The will is a definite nature with a determinate object, always presented to it by the intellect. This conception of will was clearly presented in ST 1.59.1, and is constant in Thomas’s works.28 Will as Self-Mover Having presented the ‘‘shift’’ in ST 1–2.9.1, Keenan tells us that the central issue of question 9 is whether the will can move itself. He says: ‘‘Thomas must now distinguish how the will moves, quantum ad exercitium, in a way other than by reason’s presentation of the object, quantum ad determinationem. He must also prove that the will is the mover of all powers, including itself and the intellect, and that its selfmovement takes precedence over all other movements.’’29 At this point in the text, he inserts a note: ‘‘That precedence had been attributed explicitly to the reason; see esp. I.82.3 ad 2; I.82.4c.; SCG III.26.nr.2092; DV 22.12.c.’’30 First of all, despite what Keenan says, the movement of the will takes precedence over all other movements only in the very line of efficient

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causality or exercise. This is what Thomas shows in ST 1–2.9.1. The question remains, which order has priority absolutely, that of specification or that of exercise? This is the same as the question, which has priority absolutely, intellect or will? Now, in ST 1–2.66.3, that is, after ST 1–2.9.1, we see that the intellect is more noble than the will, as regards the proper object of each; still, as St. Thomas says, if one compares them from the point of view of action (what Thomas calls ‘‘exercise’’ in ST 1–2.9.1), since the will moves all powers, in that department it has priority. What do we find in the texts to which Keenan’s note sends us? The first is to an article (ST 1.82.3) on whether the intellect is higher than the will, and ad 2 affirms the natural priority and nobility of the intellect over the will. The ground for the statement is that it is the understood good that moves the will. That, we know, is not efficient causality. Thus, the text is not giving the intellect precedence in the order of agency or exercise itself. It is true that it describes the relation of intellect to will as motivum to mobile and activum to passivum, but the former terminology is used in ST 1–2.9 for the role of the intellect;31 and the latter hardly suffices to make of the intellect an efficient cause. What about ST 1.82.4? There, it is as clear as can be that will is supreme in the order of agency. What distinguishes the earlier texts from ST 1–2.9.1 is not the treatment of the will as supreme agent, but the way the priority of the intellect is described. In the earlier texts, since the intellect presents the will with the vision of the will’s object, namely, the end, the intellect’s movement is described in terms of final causality. In the ST 1–2.9.1, it is described in terms of formal causality. The issue is subtle enough, since the good can only be an object inasmuch as it falls under that which is supreme in the order of object, namely, the presentation by intellect in the light of being and truth. Earlier, this was described as the intellect presenting the end (which it does) and so having a final causal role (taking the point from the nature of the objected item). In ST 1–2.9.1, the intellect’s role is described as formal, taking the point from the essential task of presenting an object. As for the will, its primacy in the order of agency is affirmed in both texts, and for exactly the same reason: ‘‘In all ordered active powers, that power that relates to the universal end moves the powers that relate to particular ends. . . . But the object of the will is the good and the end universally.’’32 Although in ST 1–2.9.1 the presentation of the will is governed by the principle that every agent acts for an end,

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and this is not expressly said in 1.82.4, still it is implicit in the argument used: in active powers, the one related to the more universal end moves the rest. The arguments are certainly of one mind. Notice also that in the article following the one where we saw the intellect relative to the will characterized as ‘‘active,’’ we have the will as supreme in the order of ‘‘active principles.’’ I suggest that one must learn to read Thomas in a way that gives such terms their proper role in the context.33 What about the SCG reference? As we have seen, it teaches that the intellect presents the will with its object. There is no idea of the intellect as prior to will in agency.34 Again Keenan has let us down. Lastly, what about DV 22.12.c? Once again, we have the very clear distinction of two ways of moving. Once again, the will is given primacy in the line of agency or efficient causality: ‘‘But to bring motion about, after the manner of a cause that is an agent, belongs to the will and not to the intellect.’’35 And there follows a most interesting rationale in terms of the ontological character of the theatre of agency. Thus, we find that the precedence that is attributed to the will in the prima secundae of the ST is attributed to it in all the earlier texts to which Keenan sent us. But let us look more closely at Keenan’s opinions concerning the will as self-mover. In his views, he is associating himself with Klaus Riesenhuber.36 This author had particularly stressed Thomas’s use of reflexive formulas to express the will’s autonomy. Keenan says: ‘‘Riesenhuber, calling these ‘decisive expressions . . . which characterize freedom as reflexive self-disposal,’ cites two forms: se movere and se reducere de potentia in actum. To Riesenhuber’s two I add that the will can will itself to will, potest velle se velle [here, at note 35, we are referred to ST 2–2.25.2].’’37 Having added to Riesenhuber’s formulas, Keenan tells us that the formula ‘‘se movere’’ is not decisive, for it occurs in De potentia 6.6, and in the very same sentence Thomas says that the will is moved by the appetible object understood.38 Keenan reminds us that this text is ‘‘pre-1270.’’39 The really new thing, he says, is that the will can ‘‘se reducere de potentia in actum,’’40that is, reduce itself from potency to act. The expression is in ST 1–2.9.3 ad 1. Keenan tells us: The autonomy of the will is only established when the will can reduce itself from potency to act. Thus, the importance of these

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reflexive forms is precisely the expression se reducere, which is the metaphysical possibility for se movere. The newness of the contribution rests in the fact that prescinding from whether or not se movere existed in earlier writings, the possibility for understanding the expression as indicative of the will’s autonomy is only found insofar as the will is able se reducere de potentia in actum. Thomas did not attribute this power to the will in earlier writings.41 Now, this is not true. We should not limit ourselves to this literal formula. Look at, for example, ST 1.19.5 (certainly ‘‘pre-1270’’). The issue is, Does God’s will, in the sense of his act of willing, have a cause? That efficient causality is meant is clear from the sed contra, which cites Augustine concerning precisely the ascendancy of the efficient cause over its effect. In order to rule out any such causality within the inner life of God’s will, Thomas undertakes to describe the self-causing that goes on within our own acts of willing. The article could easily be presented as the ancestor of ST 1–2.9.3. The parallel with the intellect is used. Ultimately, we get: ‘‘Hence, if someone by one act wills the end, and by another act those things that are for the end, willing the end will be the cause of willing those things that are for the end.’’42 Does anyone think this is anything but the will reducing itself from potency to act? Again, the doctrine of the will as cause of its own willing is present in ST 1.60.2, on whether there is elective will in angels. The will, on the basis of its natural love, moves itself to choices. We read: In the will the end has the role that the principle has in the intellect, as is said in Physics 2. Hence, the will naturally tends toward its own ultimate end: for every human being naturally wills beatitude. And from this natural act of will [voluntate] are caused [causantur] all other acts of the will [omnes aliae voluntates]: since whatever the human being wills, he wills on account of the end. Therefore, the love of the good that man naturally wills as end is natural love; but the love derived from this [ab hac derivata], which is of the good that is loved on account of the end, is elective love.43 Does anyone doubt that this involves the reduction of the will by the will itself from potency to act? But we must look further at this innovation being attributed to Thomas circa 1270. Keenan says:

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Taking this discovery [i.e., that the will, in moving itself, involves reducing itself from potency to act] further, Riesenhuber suggests that the structure for understanding the will as self-mover is exactly parallel to the active and passive intellect. [Here we have a reference to Die Transzendenz der Freiheit zum Guten, 178–179.] The validity of Riesenhuber’s suggestion can be found in Thomas’s own writings. In the earlier De spiritualibus creaturis, Thomas had raised the objection nihil reducit se de potentia in actum, and answered by distinguishing the active and passive intellect. [Here the reference is to Quaestiones disputatae de spiritualibus creaturis 10 obj. 4 and ad 4.] Now, in attributing se reducere to the will, Thomas draws a clear parallel from the active and passive intellect. [Here the references are to ST 1–2.9.3.c.; Quaestiones disputatae de malo 6 ad 20.44 Keenan adds that the inference is especially clear in De malo 6.c.] Though he does not actually establish an active and passive will, Thomas’s only explanation for a power reducing itself from potency to act is from the intellect.’’45 This, once more, is a misunderstanding of texts of Thomas Aquinas, and of his conceptions. Frankly, it had not occurred to me to think someone would have trouble with the will reducing itself from potency to act. The reason is that it is so obviously supposed to be in act in one respect and in potency in another respect. However, to begin with, the De spiritualibus creaturis text is about whether there is only one agent intellect for the entire human race. The objection is that nothing reduces itself from potency to act, and that the possible intellect is reduced to act by the agent intellect. The objector concludes that the agent intellect cannot be ‘‘rooted in the essence of soul’’ as the possible intellect is. Thomas replies with his doctrine of the two different intellectual powers, both facing the imagination. One is in potency to the phantasms as regards their having the likeness of a definite nature; the other, as having immaterial light, is in act relative to the same phantasms. Thus, the two powers of intellect can be located in the same essence of the soul. Now, what do we have in ST 1–2.9.3 or De malo 6? First of all, the distinction between agent and possible intellect is not present. Rather, what we have is the possible intellect doing its work, considering and

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judging the principles, and causing itself to judge the conclusion.46 We do not have here the doctrine of the two intellective powers, but the doctrine of one power that in one respect is in act and in another respect is in potency; it reduces itself from potency to act.47 What we have in De malo 648 is simply the doctrine of ST 1.19.5, that the intellect by principles moves itself to the conclusion, and the will similarly. What does Keenan hope to obtain from an assimilation of the will willing the end (in the doctrine of the will as self-mover) to the agent intellect (in the doctrine of the intellect)? Is this supposed to display for us the new autonomy that the will is said to be acquiring in these texts? Keenan is asserting an ‘‘a priori’’ determination of the will to the last end. Thus he says: ‘‘The only a priori is the will’s inclination to the universal good, and the will in having this inclination already has the last end.’’49 Perhaps Keenan thinks of the agent intellect as a sort of a priori vision in the domain of intellect. Perhaps that is why he wants to make the analogy he does. Perhaps he thinks of it as an intellectual power that does not have to ‘‘submit to the outside world,’’ so to speak, to act. In fact, the agent intellect, as St. Thomas presents it, cannot, by itself, furnish an act of understanding. It is only the combined contribution of the agent and possible intellects that constitutes the act of understanding.50 My question would be, how does the will already have the last end? And my reply is that natural intellectual knowledge precedes the first natural act of the will. The will is a will, not an intellect; and so its visual possession, so to speak, of its object presupposes the peculiar role of intellect. To eliminate this role is to degrade the inclination we are considering. Omnipresence of the Order of Specification One feature of Keenan’s work, in common with Riesenhuber, is the notion that the will is free because it has an operation prior to all objectification. If I am not mistaken, this amounts to giving the order of exercise absolute priority over the order of specification. The way this is presented by Keenan is that the will is primarily and essentially related to the ultimate end, the universal good, that is, God. This is what characterizes its

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own proper movement whereby will stands supreme over all specification, and so is free. In presenting this position, one of the premises of Keenan is that ‘‘reason cannot present the universal good.’’51 Now, it is certainly true that there is a first movement of the will prior to all willing of particular objects or ends. And this movement is the cause of all our choices. However, this movement of the will is not prior to all presentation of an object to the intellect (and so to the will). Rather, the inclination is a willing precisely inasmuch as it flows from natural intellection. As Thomas says: ‘‘Ultimate beatitude consists in the vision of the divine essence, which is the very essence of goodness. And so the will of someone seeing the essence of God necessarily loves whatever it loves in subordination to God [sub ordine ad Deum]; just as the will of someone not seeing the essence of God necessarily loves whatever it loves as falling under the general notion of the good, which it knows [sub communi ratione boni quam novit].’’52 Keenan says that reason cannot present the will with the universal good. Obviously, in this life, the human intellect does not have the vision of the divine essence.53 However, does not the intellect present us with the universal good?54 Keenan makes much of the doctrine that only God, the universal good, can cause the inclination of the will toward the universal good.55 He might have given consideration to the corresponding doctrine concerning the intellect. As Thomas teaches: Only the created rational nature has an immediate order to God. Because the other creatures do not attain to anything universal, but only to something particular, participating in the divine goodness either merely in being, like inanimate things, or else also in living and knowing singulars, like plants and animals; but the rational nature, inasmuch as it knows the universal notion of the good and of that-which-is [inquantum cognoscit universalem boni et entis rationem], has an immediate order to the universal principle of being.56 It is not merely universal inclination that can come only from God. The same is true of knowledge of the universal, and especially of knowledge of universal goodness and being. The Summa theologiae is meant to be a unity, even though it was written over a number of years. Of course, it is not surprising that there are

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changes in doctrine as it progresses. Think of the different ways of presenting the variety of gifts of the Holy Spirit in the prima secundae and in the secunda secundae, a difference to which Thomas himself calls attention.57 Nevertheless, it is to be expected that what is done in the prima pars is a foundation for what is done subsequently. Thus, although the acts and habits pertaining specifically to the human will are not discussed until the secunda pars,58 one cannot neglect what is said not merely in ST 1.80–1.83 on the human power called ‘‘the will’’ but also in ST 1.19, on the divine will, and in ST 1.59–1.60 on the angelic will. Thomas uses these occasions, especially the last mentioned, to provide a general initiation to the human as well as the angelic will. Question 59 presents ‘‘the will itself,’’ that is, the power, and question 60 presents ‘‘its movement, which is love or favoring.’’59 Now, one could not envisage a presentation of the will more closely linked to the nature of intellect than that which one finds in ST 1.59.1. We are presented with a tableau of all things as flowing from the divine will, and so as all having an inclination toward the good, each at its own level. The levels of inclination are conceived precisely in function of their association with knowledge. The lowest are inclined solely through a natural disposition, without knowledge: the plants and inanimate things. The higher level of inclination toward the good is with knowledge, but not a knowledge of the very idea of goodness [ipsam boni rationem]; these things know only the particular good. The inclination following upon such knowledge is called ‘‘sensitive appetite.’’ At last we come to the inclination toward the good based on a knowledge of the very idea of goodness: such knowledge is proper to intellect. To be so inclined, Thomas tells is, is to be most perfectly inclined toward the good; that is, this is ‘‘inclination toward the good’’ at its highest and best. Here, one is inclined toward the good, not merely as steered by another, nor merely as toward the good taken particularly, but inclined toward universal goodness [ipsum universale bonum]. And Thomas solemnly declares: ‘‘And this inclination is called ‘will.’ ’’ And he draws his conclusion concerning whether the angels possess will: ‘‘Hence, since angels through intellect know the universal intelligible: the good [ipsam universalem rationem boni], it is evident that in them there is will.’’60

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Later in the question, at article3, we see free choice [liberum arbitrium] as present in any being that has intellect, precisely inasmuch as it thus knows the universal intelligible: the good [universalem rationem boni].61 The will as following upon intellect as such seems to be Thomas’s teaching not only here but later. Thomas probably thought he was being sufficiently clear on this point later, with his constant insistence on the superiority of the intellect, absolutely considered, over the will. Indeed, ST 1–2.9.1, coming after the presentations of the roles of intellect and will in the questions on beatitude (ST 1–2.1–1–2.1–5), and the presentation of the voluntary in 1–2.6, should clearly be read in their light. Thus, when we read in ST 1–2.5.8 ad 2 that ‘‘will follows upon the apprehension of intellect or reason,’’62 or in ST 1–2.4.4 ad 2 that ‘‘every act of the will is preceded by an act of intellect,’’63 we would anticipate that in ST 1–2.9.1, although there is clearly movement of intellect by will and will by intellect, the meaning of ad 3 is that the intellect moves the will because ‘‘the good itself ’’ (ipsum bonum), the very object of the will as will, is apprehended in function of a special notion (secundum quandam specialem rationem) included under the universal notion ‘‘the true’’ (sub universali ratione veri). The special notion, here, is not some special good, like ‘‘knowledge’’ or ‘‘prayer.’’ Thomas is saying that ‘‘good’’ is an object of intellect inasmuch as it falls within the proper domain of intellect as itself a particular notion. It is particular as compared to ‘‘that which is’’ (ens) and ‘‘the true’’ (verum). If goodness is not seen as a being, it will not be seen at all. The point is that all understanding consists in viewing something in the light of the notions of ‘‘that which is’’ (ens) and ‘‘the true’’ (verum). This is true of the good itself. Thus, I am saying that the teaching of ST 1–2.9.1, in this respect, is exactly the same as that of ST 1.82.4 ad 1 (lines 504b29–40): If the intellect is considered as regards the universality [communitatem] of its object, and the will [is considered] according as it is some determinate power, thus once again the intellect is higher than and prior to the will; because under the intelligibility ‘‘a being’’ and ‘‘the true,’’ which the intellect apprehends, are contained the will itself and its act and its object. Hence, the intellect understands the will and its act and its object, like other special intelligible items, such

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as stone or wood, which are contained under the common intelligible ‘‘that which is’’ and ‘‘the true.’’ And in the last part of this reply, we read: From these [considerations], the reason is evident why these powers include each other in their acts, because the intellect understands the will to will, and the will wills the intellect to understand. And for a like reason the good is contained under the true, inasmuch as it is a particular understood true item [quoddam verum intellectum]; and the true is contained under the good, inasmuch as it is a particular desired good [quoddam bonum desideratum]. I would say that ST 1–2.9.1 ad 3 means exactly the same thing as the above. Thus, there is no act of the will that does not intrinsically involve an act of the intellect presenting it with its object, the universal good. The will must be conceived as having its natural act, natural love. Thomas has carefully presented us with a discussion of this in ST 1.60. The first article, on whether there is natural love (amor vel dilectio naturalis) in the angel, makes the answer depend very much on the intellectuality of the angel. The sed contra argues: ‘‘Love follows upon knowledge: for nothing is loved unless it is known, as Augustine says in De trinitate 10. But in the angels there is natural knowledge. Therefore, there is also natural love.’’64 Thomas does nothing to discourage this line of thought in the body of the article. He says that the prior is always preserved in the posterior and that nature is prior to intellect, because ‘‘nature’’ here means the essence of the thing. Hence, what pertains to nature must be found in things having intellect. And all natures or essences have this in common, that they have an inclination. However, this inclination is found in diverse natures in diverse degrees, to each according to its own level. He concludes: ‘‘Hence, in the intellectual nature, natural inclination is to be found in function of will [secundum voluntatem].’’ Now, I presume that this is to be read in accord with ST 1.59.1, the immediately preceding presentation of what will is. It is the highest level of inclination, according to which one has an intellectual vision of the nature of goodness, and one is thus inclined to goodness on account of its goodness. There is, Thomas is saying, a natural event in this order of willing. Thus, the first objector in ST 1.60.1 argues that the pseudo-Dionysius divided off from each other ‘‘intellectual love’’ and ‘‘natural love’’; and

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since angelic love is intellectual love, it cannot be natural love. Thomas replies: ‘‘Intellectual love is divided off from the natural love that is merely natural, inasmuch as it belongs to a nature that does not add, over and above the note of nature [supra rationem naturae], the perfection of sense or intellect.’’ Obviously, Thomas is here calling the angelic natural love ‘‘intellectual love.’’ So also, in the reply to the third objection, the quality of natural love being ‘‘always rightly ordered’’ (semper recta) is viewed through the lens of natural knowledge being ‘‘always true.’’ Natural knowledge is here set off from infused or acquired knowledge.65 In short, natural love, as Thomas presents it, is the natural companion of natural knowledge. The Real Advance in ST 1–2.9.1 What we have just seen is that every act of the will presupposes specification by the intellect. What I now wish to say is that it is this very doctrine that is taught more suitably than ever before by Thomas’s ‘‘shift’’ in ST 1–2.9.1. The evaluation of the position of St. Thomas prior to ST 1–2.9.1 by Keenan (pages 33–34) seems most unsuitable. In general, it underestimates the power of Thomas’s conception of the will as mover of the intellect. I wonder how much of an advance ST 1–2.9.1 is over DV 22.6 (from this precise point of view), in that we have in the latter the analysis in terms of the indetermination of the will with respect to the object (in the later vocabulary ‘‘specification’’) and with respect to the act (later ‘‘exercise’’). Moreover, it is quite clear that as regards the freedom to act or not to act, the will is free as regards any object.66 This is the freedom one has in ST 1–2.9.1. This is the only ‘‘autonomy’’ of the will one ever has in St. Thomas’s view. Take DV 22.12 in corpore and ad 5. Here, one sees better the advance that there really is in ST 1–2.9.1. It has to do not with the will being or not being an agent but with the mode of causality proper to the intellect as such, vis-a`-vis the will—that it is formal rather than final. The very principles used in DV 22.12 suggest the solution in ST 1–2.9.1, since the powers that reflect on each other are supposed to do so in their own line.

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The ‘‘shift’’ that takes place in ST 1–2.9.1 is from characterizing the role of intellect as final causality (insofar as it presents the end) to characterizing it as formal causality (insofar as it presents the will with the end, but in the mode of intellectual presentation; i.e., as the will’s object). The will, in every presentation, has the role of first in the order of efficiency or as agent. The shift really carries to its proper conclusion the point made in DV 22.12 in corpore and ad 5, that each power dominates the other in its own proper line. One could not be more definite on the will as prime agent than Thomas is in DV 22.12. What is weak in it is the peculiar contribution of the intellect. The intellect is the mere deliverer of the end to the will, and thus has not its own distinctive role expressed in the description. In ST 1–2.9.1, it has its own universal formal character stressed, and thus one can see its omnipresent determination: it penetrates the will precisely the way intellect should. At the same time, the will’s peculiar contribution emerges even more clearly, as the receiver properly influenced by the good as good. The end would not be an object, were it not presented by an intellect. The object would not be an end, were it not being presented to a will. Still, it is the good, that is, the perfect, that is the raison d’eˆtre of the will, and not vice versa. It is impossible, in the doctrine of St. Thomas, to posit an act of the will that is not formed by natural intellectual knowledge of the good. ST 1–2.9 does not undo the doctrine of ST 1.59.1 and ST 1.60.2. Goodness and Rightness Having decided that this is not a book from which to learn the thought of Thomas Aquinas, I will conclude with a few observations concerning the proposal that the vocabulary of goodness be reserved for persons and acts be described in terms of rightness. In his introduction, Keenan tells us: ‘‘The will’s autonomy is a necessary condition for understanding moral goodness; without it, there can be no distinction [between goodness and rightness].’’67 When we consider that the doctrine is to be understood as in harmony with what Keenan thought to find in the ‘‘shift’’ in ST 1–2.9, we already have a decisive reason to reject the proposal. That is, if the distinction depends on a conception of the will’s autonomy such as envisaged by Keenan, I prefer the conception of Thomas: willing is inclination at its highest and best, because it emanates from intellection of the good.

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However, let us look at a few things Keenan says about the proposal. Keenan’s chapter 6 is entitled ‘‘Charity: Moral Goodness?’’ Concerning it, we are told: ‘‘Chapter Six argues that Thomas’s concept of charity parallels our concept of moral goodness and that Thomas envisions an external act as subject to two measures: reason and charity. Whereas the measure of reason pertains to whether an act is right, the measure of charity is whether someone is good. The distinction between goodness and rightness finds a parallel in Thomas’s distinction between charity and the acquired virtues.’’68 Perhaps if we watch the sorts of judgments Keenan makes about Thomas and charity, we will be in a better position to formulate an opinion about the distinction he is promoting. In the charitable will’s commanding he finds the ‘‘good’’ (in his sense) will.69 I am going to suggest that he should have paid more attention to the necessity for there to be faith in order for there to be charity. He needs this to discuss properly charity as a gift from on high. As it is, he sees this role of charity as pertaining to exercise prior to all specification: ‘‘antecedent to any description of a will’s act measured according to specification.’’70 He has not taken sufficiently seriously, it would seem, the necessity that the will exist in conjunction with faith. Keenan tells us that charity, that is, God, perfects the will not according to a created rule and measure. We are sent to ST 1–2.64.4.c and ad 2. However, this is about all the theological virtues. They are all ruled by God himself. You cannot believe in him too strongly or hope in him too strongly (more than you ‘‘ought’’). Clearly, in Thomas’s doctrine, charity has primacy in the moral order. Without it, virtues are not rightly called ‘‘virtues.’’ But this means that virtue retains its integration into the realm of the authentically good. It is quite true that goodness of persons, for Thomas, has to do with goodness of will. As he says: ‘‘Anything having will is called ‘good’ inasmuch as it has good will, because by the will we use everything that is in us. Hence, a man is not called ‘good’ who has good intellect, but who has good will. But will relates to the end as to its proper object; and the statement ‘because God is good, we have being’ refers to final causality.’’71 The question is, however, How is the life of the will, with all its levels, to be adequately described? Charity presupposes faith and involves as necessary consequences the infused moral virtues. I find that in his seeming

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interest in setting off the ‘‘good,’’ striving, autonomous will from everything else, Keenan neglects not only faith antecedent to charity but also the infused moral virtues necessarily consequent upon charity. Looking at the issue of the natural and the supernatural, as presented in the chapter on charity, I cannot think that Keenan has handled it adequately. Although he points to the distinction between the natural acquired moral virtues and the supernatural infused moral virtues, he does not appreciate such a statement as this: ‘‘Only the infused moral virtues are perfect, and are to be called, without qualification, ‘virtues.’ ’’72 He mixes into his presentation of the distinction between the acquired and the infused virtues the distinction between the moral and the theological virtues. Although one cannot understand the infused moral virtues without considering the theological virtues, the infused moral virtues are genuinely moral as distinct from theological virtues. Furthermore, they are very explicitly distinguished, as to their species, from the acquired moral virtues.73 This means that the fully conceived doctrine of moral virtue in Thomas is to be seen primarily in the light of this doctrine of infused virtue. We are not speaking merely of natural prudence and the other natural virtues being finalized by charity. We are speaking of a species of virtue that is, as a species, proportioned to charity; it thus stands ready, in itself, to be part of the group of virtues orchestrated by charity. On page 95, Keenan says: ‘‘The distinct ends of the theological and the human virtues mean, therefore, a difference in objects. Since habits are specifically distinct by the formal difference of their objects, the theological virtues differ from the human virtues in that the object of the theological virtues is God, while the object of the intellectual and moral virtues is ‘something comprehensible to human reason.’ [Here we are referred to ST 1–2.62.2.]’’ Here, Keenan is faithfully reproducing what Thomas says. However, his own interest in the distinction between the theological and the human virtues is not quite the same as Thomas’s. Thomas, in the very next question, will teach us about the infused moral virtues, a set of realities distinct from both the human virtues of which Keenan is speaking and the theological virtues.74 Thomas will go on to tell us, as I have already noted, that these infused moral virtues are the things that ought to be called ‘‘virtue,’’ unqualifiedly, as contrasted with the human virtues. He will tell us also that they form a group with the theological virtues, such that charity is never found save as completed by the

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infused moral virtues.75 This doctrine affects not only the conception of charity but also the conception of the natural virtues, inasmuch as they constitute a natural prelude to the infused virtues. It is the infused moral virtues that make the person who has them good and their actions good. It seems to me that if one looks to them merely to provide ‘‘rightness’’ in Keenan’s sense, one is emptying them of their proper nature as virtue. In fact, Keenan’s ‘‘rightness’’ does not even do justice to the acquired virtues as virtues. It takes them far too much in the direction of mere technique or ‘‘art’’ in the classical sense. All in all, I am concerned about two things. One is that Keenan makes the will, prior to all intellectual specification, the key to goodness, thus robbing the intellect of its role in volition itself. The other is that he oversimplifies the life of the will, not seeing it as having to plunge into the detail of human life, in a panoply of virtues that are properly modes of the appetitive. What advantage does Keenan see in the goodness-rightness distinction? He provides us with a portrait of the moral agent as having a sphere of striving to accomplish certain things, as distinguished from a sphere of accomplishment of those things. He evidently thinks that this corresponds well with what we now mean by ‘‘a good person’’ or ‘‘a bad person,’’ that is, someone who is ‘‘really trying’’ to do the right thing or someone who is ‘‘not really trying’’ to do the right thing. I think he is oversimplifying all that is involved in the good or bad person. I think that one must have infused prudence, justice, courage, and temperance in order to be genuinely charitable. All of these are involved in the good person. Perhaps to top everything off, we might cite ST 2–2.4.7, on faith as first of all the virtues. Reading Keenan on charity, one would never expect that we there read: The ultimate end itself must be in the intellect previously to its being in the will, because the will is not borne toward anything save inasmuch as it is apprehended by the intellect. Hence, since the ultimate end is in the will by hope and charity, but is in the intellect through faith, it is necessary that faith be first among all virtues, because natural knowledge cannot attain to God according as he is the object of beatitude, such as hope and charity tend [strive?] toward him.76

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It is, of course, in the light of such a text that one should read what is said about charity in the secunda secundae.77 In short, I see no reason to accept Keenan’s conception of charity as pertaining to the ‘‘contemporary distinction’’ between goodness and rightness. This is because if charity is presented in the fullness of its presentation by Thomas, it appears as first in perfection in an orchestrated group of virtues, all of which pertain to what makes a person good. It is only through a sort of ‘‘demotion’’ of everything other than charity78 that Keenan forms his judgment. Keenan wants us to understand his distinction between rightness and goodness in the light of certain conceptions of the will and of charity. I do not find those conceptions in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and I believe the reason is that they are very unsuitable conceptions.

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Chapter 10

ST. THOMAS AND T HE CAUSES OF FREE CHOICE

The stimulus to compose this chapter came from my reading of David Gallagher’s ‘‘Free Choice and Free Judgment in Thomas Aquinas.’’1 Gallagher presents Thomas on free choice at considerable length, following the doctrine through Quaestiones disputatae de veritate and Summa contra gentiles (SCG) to Quaestiones disputatae de malo and the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae (ST). Choice is seen as something that follows upon knowledge, but in order for choice to be truly free, the will itself must control that knowledge, that is, must somehow determine what aspect of things the intellect as source of specification of the choice considers. How can this be? Will we not get into an infinite regress of acts of intellect and acts of will?2 Gallagher’s first principle is that the will must be primary in the situation. His ultimate solution is to stress the simultaneity of the acts of intellect and will. We read: It is true that the intellectual activity of deliberation precedes the will’s movement in choice, but the determining consideration of the will’s object is that which arises in the choice itself and which arises through the agency of the will. The will is said to ‘‘follow’’ reason not in a temporal sense, but only insofar as its act receives its formal determination from reason. Thus the ‘‘prior’’ act of the will by which reason is moved from one consideration to another is in fact the act of choice itself. There is no series of acts and so no regress.3 He also stresses the unity of the human being, so that one does not have such a strong picture of one power’s acts causing another power’s 17 5

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acts.4 In the end, he seems to think he has avoided presenting Thomas’s choice as something irrational.5 I am far less sanguine than Professor Gallagher about his success in this regard. For one thing, Thomas himself seems to take great interest in the causal relations among the acts of the powers. Consider, for example, the way he answers an objector who notes that St. John Damascene calls deliberation an ‘‘appetite’’ (Thomas’s own position being that deliberation is substantially a cognitive act): When the acts of two powers are ordered one to another, there is in each something that pertains to the other power; and so either act can be given a name from either power. But it is evident that the act of reason directing as regards things that are for the goal [in his quae sunt ad finem], and the act of the will tending toward those things in accordance with the rule of reason, are ordered to each other. Hence, in [that] act of the will, which is choice, there appears something of reason, namely, the order; and in the deliberation, which is the act of reason, there appears something of will, as matter, because deliberation is about those things that a man wills to do; and also as source of movement [sicut motivum], because by the fact that the man wills the end, he is moved to deliberate about those things that are for the end. And so the Philosopher says in Ethics 6 [1139b4] that ‘‘choice is appetitive intellect,’’ that he may show that both concur for choice; and so also Damascene [De fide orthodoxa 2.22, in PG 94:945] says that ‘‘deliberation is inquisitive appetite,’’ that he may show that deliberation in a way pertains both to will, concerning which and starting from which there is inquiry [circa quam et ex qua fit inquisitio], and to the inquiring reason.6 What I admire and stress in this text of Thomas is his care in distinguishing two different roles of will, one as prior and one as posterior to reason, and the entirely causal nature of the analysis. There is a series and very explicitly so. To back away from this diversity within the human agent seems to me a highly questionable move if the goal is to interpret Thomas. But most of all, I believe that a close reading of Thomas reveals a different line of thinking from that suggested by a reading of Gallagher. My aim in what follows is to suggest that line of thinking.

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Will as Self-Mover through Deliberation Since the writings of Thomas on free choice are so extensive, and since there is even talk (and on Gallagher’s part7) of a development of doctrine in this matter, I will ‘‘begin at the end,’’ so to speak. I will take as my guide the presentation in question 6 of De malo. Here, we have a disputed question on the express issue of human freedom of choice, and one that all see as pertaining to the later writings. Thomas is answering a need during the Averroist crisis of about 1270.8 One would expect that if there has been development, Thomas will have ‘‘gotten it together’’ by this time and will carefully display the key issues surrounding human choice. Still, I will not depend exclusively on De malo 6, but will also use ST 1–2.8–1–2.17, on the will’s elicited and commanded acts. In fact, this study by Thomas of the types and gradation of acts of the will is the primary thing to consider, and I am using De malo 6 only as a kind of key framework for the free-choice issue. The question bears on human choice, ‘‘electio humana’’: whether the human being has free choice of his acts or chooses of necessity. Choice is viewed as an event, a movement, in the human being, and the question bears on the mode of production of that event or movement. In the body of the question, the positive teaching focuses on the principle or source of one’s acts. The principle within the human being is compared with and distinguished from the principle in (1) things that altogether lack cognition, called ‘‘natural things,’’ and (2) brute animals. What is the same in all is that inclination follows upon form; that is, there is a form that is the principle of action, upon which form there follows an inclination: from these the action follows. What is different is the universality of the form in the human intellect, as contrasted with the form individuated by matter in the lower things. Because of this universality of the form, the inclination of the will is indeterminate as regards many; Thomas uses the example of the architect who conceives the form of the house, universally, under which are included diverse shapes of house, so that his will can be inclined to making a square house or a round one or some other shape. This, then, is the first consideration of all: the indetermination of the will’s inclination, based on the universality of the intelligible form. Second, we discuss the movement that can be visited upon the powers of the soul (our interest ultimately being in a movement in the power of

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the soul called ‘‘will,’’ a movement called ‘‘choice’’). There are two aspects under which a power is movable: specification (doing this or that) and exercise (acting well or not so well, acting or not acting at all). Specification, in nature, comes from the object, something that pertains to the formal order. Intellect, having as its object ‘‘that which is’’ or ‘‘the true’’ (the supreme item in the order of form), has the supreme object, and so has the primacy in that ‘‘movement’’ of powers called ‘‘specification.’’ Exercise, in nature, comes from the agent that sets a thing in motion; and since every agent acts for an end, the power of the soul that has as object the end as such is supreme in the order of exercise. This power is the will, which moves even the intellect to act or not act. Indeed, the will, as supreme in the order of exercise, is able to move itself in that order. Third, and, as it seems to me, most important for our purposes, Thomas investigates whether the will, in putting itself into that movement that is a choice, gives itself a necessitated movement or a free movement. This part of the discussion bears upon the exercise of acts. The first thing Thomas points out is the will’s ability to move itself, just as it moves the other powers. This is considered through a sort of possible objection: does not ‘‘moving oneself ’’ mean that one and the same thing will be both in act and in potency, an impossibility? No, says Thomas: just as the intellect knowing principles moves itself to conclude, so the will, actually already willing something in act, moves itself to will something else in act. We get the description of the willing of health, the deliberation about things that can confer health, and ultimately the willing of the swallowing of the medication. The first act of the will Thomas also describes as ‘‘willing to deliberate [ex uoluntate uolentis consiliari].’’9 It is this picture of the will bringing about, itself, the movement of willing, by means of deliberation, that is used to answer the question, Is movement, that is, exercise, of the will free or necessary? The key is the nature of deliberation. Deliberation is not a demonstrative inquiry but one allowing of coming to opposite conclusions. Since this is the proper means by which the will moves itself, the movement that it imparts to itself is not necessarily this or necessarily that (not even ‘‘to choose’’ or ‘‘not to choose’’).10 Here I might digress slightly to note two things. One is the causal structure of producing an act of choice. Just as in ST 1–2.9.3, which asks

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whether the will moves itself, so here we have the insistence on the two roles of the will itself: agent and patient. By means of one act already present (willing the end), it produces another act, a ‘‘moved movement,’’ which is precisely the choice. And this is in harmony with the general doctrine of ST 1.60.2, on the act of love in angels and human beings, that all elective loving is caused by our natural love.11 Second, this focus on the nature of deliberation and its proper object, the contingent, concerning which reason can come to opposite conclusions, is found both in ST 1–2.13.6 (‘‘whether man chooses freely or of necessity’’) and in ST 1.83.1, on whether man has free choice. Indeed, in the prima secundae text, the power of reason to view particular contingents in a variety of ways is made the explanation of the freedom in both the order of specification and the order of exercise. The Need for an Exterior Mover To come back to De malo 6, no sooner is the solution proposed, however, than we are reminded that the will is not always in the act of ‘‘willing to deliberate.’’ Thus, it must be moved to that act, and if by itself, the act of doing so will require a previous deliberation. Thus, Thomas himself sees his solution as in itself insufficient, that is, as in itself leading to an infinite regress. How does he solve this problem? He tells us that the only solution is to posit the first act of the will as coming from some exterior agent (this bestowed first act presumably incorporates willing the end and willing the deliberation to attain it).12 Although some people have thought that this could be a celestial body, Aristotle rightly saw that it must be something superior to will and intellect, namely God. The last touch on this solution is to point out that God moves things in accordance with what befits the nature of the moved thing. It is God who gives light things movement upward in accordance with their form and heavy things downward movement in accordance with their form or nature. Thus, the movement he gives to the will in making it a source of the movement to move itself is the proper act of the will, that is, a movement toward the universal good that remains indeterminate as regards particular goods (‘‘indeterminate se habentem ad multa’’).13 This, then, is Thomas’s general answer as regards the exercise of the act of the will. Because the will gives itself movements by means of deliberation, a nondemonstrative inquiry, the resulting movements are not

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necessitated but optional. And although this requires that there be at the beginning of the will’s acts a movement of which it is not itself the source, that movement from God is of a nature to assure that the resulting selfimposed movements will remain optional. (In ST 1–2.10.4, we have an article devoted especially to the nonnecessitating character of this outside influence.14 In ST 1.82.4 ad 3, it is notable that God as the outside mover of the human willing agent is called the principle not merely of the human acts of understanding but also of the acts of deliberating: ‘‘principium consiliandi et intelligendi.’’) In Gallagher’s presentation of St. Thomas, one escapes from infinite regress by a doctrine of simultaneity of the contributions of intellect (specification) and will (exercise). There is no mention of the need to go outside the human being for a coherent account of human freedom. I wish to pose the question, Can human freedom be understood, according to Thomas, unless it is understood as moved from without? I think not. Freedom of Choice and the Object of Deliberation We come now to what, in my counting, is a fourth step, the examination of the movement of the will as regards ‘‘determination’’ or ‘‘specification’’ of its acts: is there necessitation of the acts of the will from this angle, or are all acts free from this point of view? Not surprisingly, just as the focus in discussing exercise ultimately was on the object of deliberation, so also here the question is, what is the sort of object that moves the will? First, we have the general point that the object of the will is the apprehended good and fitting item. It is not enough for something to be good; it must be fitting. Fitting here seems to mean ‘‘for me,’’ that is, for the subject who does the willing. However, Thomas goes further, reminding us that since actions are with regard to singular and contingent things, ‘‘particulars,’’ it is only the particular good and fitting item that will be an object of choice—what is good and fitting for me here and now. In this way, approaching the objects of choice, we ask whether there can be necessitation of the movement of the will. The answer is yes: if there is presented to the mind an object that in every respect, in all particulars, is good and fitting, the will cannot will its opposite. This is the case with the object called ‘‘beatitude,’’ that is, the state rendered perfect by the assembling of all goods.

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However, Thomas is quick to remind us that this necessity is in the order of specification, the domain of ‘‘this or that.’’ This means that the opposite object cannot move the will to produce a choice. Nevertheless, the will is not necessitated to will beatitude (i.e., ‘‘exercise the act’’), since the human act of willing is a particular good that need not be chosen. Let us notice that once again, it is the nature of the object of deliberation that makes possible this doctrine: reason can come to opposite conclusions about contingent particulars. Having considered the unique case of beatitude, Thomas goes on to all the other particular contingent good and fitting items, as regards specification. If the object under consideration is such a good as is not found to be good as regards all particulars that can be considered, it will not move the will, even as regards determination of the act: someone can will the opposite, even while thinking about it. The opposite can be ‘‘good and fitting’’ in consideration of some other particular: what is good for health is sometimes not good for pleasure. Again, we see that it is the object of deliberation, as regards its very nature, that makes for freedom. (God does not deliberate, but he knows the objects of deliberation without having to deliberate.15) We have not yet finished the issue of specification. Indeed, we come to a most interesting consideration by Thomas. I would say that it bears most directly on the problem that is truly involved in free choice as seen by Gallagher. Deliberation offers us many good particulars. Why does the will (seeking the end) prefer this one to that one? Clearly, it is the will that makes the decision, just as Gallagher contends. However, everything depends on how we see the will placed in making the decision. It is the will as agent in the self-movement—that is, the will, which will confer upon itself the movement toward a means, the will as intending the end and seeking reasonable means (i.e., deliberating)—that is considered.16 It is not the will as undergoing the movement of choice. There is every reason to consider a series of acts of will, and a causal series at that. In any case, Thomas, now considering the resulting movement in the will, the moved movement, the choice, says: And that the will is borne toward [feratur in] that which is offered to it more according to this particular condition than according to another, can happen in three ways.

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In one way, inasmuch as one [particular condition] is preponderant; and then the will is moved in accordance with reason: for example, when the man gives the nod [preeligit] to that which is good for one’s health [id quod est utile sanitati] over that which is pleasant [utile uoluptati]. In another way, inasmuch as one thinks of one particular circumstance and not of another; and this happens mostly through some surprise appearance [occasionem], shown [to him] interiorly or exteriorly, such that that thought occur to that [person]. In the third way, it happens because of the disposition of the man: because, as the Philosopher [Aristotle] says: ‘‘Given that a person is such, the end will appear to that person in such wise’’; thus, the will of an angered person and the will of an untroubled person will be differently moved regarding something, for the same thing is not ‘‘fitting’’ [conueniens] for both; just as food is differently welcomed by a well person and a sick person.17 Here, then, we have what we might call ‘‘the general problem of the disposition.’’ Thomas now goes on to explore its variety as regards the question, what necessitates the movement of the will as regards specification of the act? If the disposition in question is natural, one not subject to the will, then the will prefers that by natural necessity: thus, all human beings naturally desire being, living, and understanding. If the disposition is such that it is not natural, but subject to the will, as for example when someone through habit or passion is so disposed that something seems to him good or bad in its particularity, its moving of the will is not necessary, because he would be able to get rid of the disposition, so that the thing not appear so; for example, when someone quiets the anger within himself so as not to judge the way an angry person would. Thomas notes that it is easier to get rid of a passion than a habit. Thomas concludes that there are some objects by which the will is moved of necessity, but this is not true of all. And his last word is that still, on the side of exercise of acts, the will is not moved of necessity. Thus, all of this last consideration, so close to the Gallagher interest, comes under the heading of the specification of acts. It seems to me that the most important point in this doctrine of the will and its following of deliberation is the first way the will is seen as

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responding, namely, in following that good item that has preponderance from the viewpoint of reason itself. This is will operating as will, that is, as the appetite that accompanies intellect or reason as such, and as desiring the true ultimate end. The other key consideration is the case of the will considering things inasmuch as bad habituation is ruling the deliberation (the nature of an imprudent act). The simple point here is that there is no necessitation since one can eliminate the habit or passion before acting. Of course, this would require a prior deliberation, thus getting one into a regress until one is moved by an outside mover.18 I have now followed out the De malo 6 main reply. What seems to me central is the role of deliberation as the proper instrument of the will as self-mover: the proper object of deliberation and the power of reason to discern it is the key to the doctrine of free choice. Toward an Adequate Account of Deliberation Here I might add two notes of commentary on Gallagher’s paper. One has to do with his conception of a sort of ‘‘gap’’ between the conclusion of deliberation and the performance of the choice. The other is related to that, namely that I think we should give more attention to the doctrine of consent and to the picture of ‘‘superior reason’’ (the domain of ‘‘ultimate deliberation’’) as the ‘‘part’’ of us responsible for consent. Seeking to know how the will controls the consideration of the object of choice, Gallagher eventually comes to deliberation, but only to present it as considering ‘‘all options.’’ Thus he says: ‘‘Nevertheless, consideration of this sort does not specify choice, since the good aspects of only one option actually perform that role. Hence, it is only the consideration in the choice itself which does so, and this can occur only when the will moves itself to the choice; there is no specification until there is exercise.’’19 This is inadequate, in that he should here be going into the distinction between consent and choice (alluded to briefly in his note 58 on page 269). But most of all, he should not cut off the judgment and command operative in the choice from the preceding deliberation. He should bring in all the phases discussed by Thomas in the acts pertaining to prudence: deliberation, judgment, and command.20 All of this is the work of deliberating reason.21 All of it is prior to the act of choice, properly considered.22

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Still, Gallagher’s point that the will must be exercising a control on the deliberation is correct, and relates to the doctrine of higher reason and consent. This is St. Thomas’s picture of consent as falling under the supreme judge within us, the ratio superior that is both reason (or intellect) and will, as turned toward the ultimate end.23 To conclude, I think it is unsuitable that almost nothing is said of the true role of deliberation (consilium), which as a nondemonstrative source of conclusions, is the proper answer for Thomas as regards why the will is free in its choices.24 Nor is the properly Thomistic answer to how the will controls its deliberations given, namely, that it does so by virtue of prior deliberation and so ultimately needs an outside mover. The conclusion of Gallagher’s article strangely speaks of ‘‘simultaneity’’ as a help and warns us against seeing one power as acting on another. Yet that one power acts on another seems of the very essence of the Thomistic discussion.25 One would never know it from Gallagher’s presentation, but the prima secundae of the ST expressly gives us a lineup of acts, some belonging to the intellect, some to the will, with causal interaction as the key to understanding the outcome.26 I wonder if more attention ought not to be given to our rational nature as involving a layering of events, some universal—that is, all-invading— with respect to other more particular acts.27 In a sense, Gallagher’s question is, how do we conceive of the act of ratio superior? It seems that it should be a kind of syllogistic event, an event with an inner cause-effect structure, with the principles being seen as principles of the conclusions. The eye of wisdom includes both principles and conclusions and the relation between them. Appendix I find a most explicit and useful text in In Peryermenias 1.14.28 Thomas is defending Aristotle’s focus on deliberation as a root of contingency (the other root, for contingency in nature as distinguished from human affairs, is matter in potency to both of a pair of opposites29). The objection is posed that if the will has the good as its object, then it will have to opt for what seems good to it, and so choice, as following upon deliberation, will come about of necessity. Thomas answers by focusing on the nature of the object of deliberation as such. We read:

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But particular goods, with which human actions have to do, are not such [as those without which one could not be happy], nor are they apprehended under that aspect that without them there could not be happiness, for example to eat this food or that, or to abstain from it, yet they have in them what it takes to move the appetite, in function of some good considered in them; and so the will is not induced to choose them of necessity. And for this reason the Philosopher designedly [signanter] assigned the root of contingency in those things that are done by us to deliberation [ex parte consilii], which has to do with those things that are ordered to an end and nevertheless are not determinate; in the domain of those things wherein the means are determinate there is no work for deliberation, as is said in Ethics 3 [1112a34–b9].30

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Chapter 11

ST. T HOMAS A ND THE F IRST CAUSE O F MORAL EVIL

Seeking the first cause of moral evil, St. Thomas Aquinas was not content to speak only of the deficiency in the will’s choice, nor again to speak only of the freedom of the will itself, taken as a good thing created by God. Rather, between these two, namely, the privative deficiency and the good nature, he insisted on the necessity to posit in the free operation of the will a pure negation, a non-considering of the rule, that is in no way culpable, nor indeed in any sense an evil, but that is absolutely indispensable for an adequate conception of the first cause of moral evil. Jacques Maritain called this ‘‘a metaphysical discovery of the first magnitude, absolutely fundamental, and without which no philosophy of evil is possible.’’1 In view of such a judgment on the part of so eminent an interpreter of St. Thomas, I have undertaken the investigation here presented. Are we speaking of a discovery that Thomas himself made? It would seem so. The remote background for the discussion is in St. Augustine, but Peter Lombard’s inclusion of the question of the first cause of sin in his Book of Sentences meant that thirteenth-century theologians regularly discussed it. In these discussions as presented by Albert the Great and Bonaventure, and even by Thomas himself in his own Commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard, no mention is made of any such voluntary nonculpable deficiency prior to the act of sin.2 It is in the Summa contra gentiles (SCG) 3.10 that we find the requirement for the first time.3 Then, a second detailed presentation is made in the Quaestiones disputatae de malo 1.3.4 There are more rapid discussions or references to the doctrine in the Summa theologiae (ST), but for the sake of brevity I will here discuss primarily SCG and De malo. 186

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The precise point toward which SCG 3.10 is arguing at the outset is that evil can be caused only by the good. Only later, in SCG 3.13, will it be argued that evil must have a cause. Hence, the argument with which SCG 3.10 begins is to the point that if evil has a cause, that cause cannot be the bad; it must be the good. Having after several arguments so concluded, SCG 3.10 (no. 1939) argues that the good can be the cause of the bad only as a ‘‘per accidens’’ cause, that is, a cause ‘‘through attachment.’’ Also, although up to this point the notion of cause embraced somewhat all four types of cause—final, efficient, formal and material—here in paragraph 1939 we now have a narrowing to efficient causality. The rest of SCG 3.10 is aimed at the investigation of the good as per accidens efficient cause of the bad. First, we consider how the efficient causing of the bad occurs in nature (and art), and then how it occurs in moral matters. In the treatment of nature, St. Thomas says that the accidens, the attachment, by which the per accidens causality can come about, can be found either on the side of the agent itself or on the side of the effect. When the attachment is on the side of the agent, it is a deficiency in its active power. Such a deficiency is precisely something outside the nature of the agent as an agent—hence an accidens—since the agent is an agent precisely in virtue of its active power. It is noted that the deficiency can be either in the agent itself or in its instrument. But it is argued that evil is caused per accidens, from the side of the agent (as distinguished from its effect) on the basis of a defect pertaining to the agent. (The example St. Thomas gives of deficiency in the agent is weakness in the digestive power, so that it does a bad job of digesting the food; thus, the resulting nutrient is bad. His example where the agent has a deficient instrument for its agency is that of the human body’s motive power producing a limping motion—a bad motion—because of curvature in the tibia.) The presentation on the side of the effect looks at two sources of evil, the matter and the form of the effect. The matter can be unsuitably disposed toward the influence of the agent; hence, there are abnormal offspring (this does not reflect on the power of the agent). The form of the effect may have necessarily attached to it the privation, that is, the setting aside, of some other form; thus, the generation of one thing is the corruption of another. The general conclusion, after looking at the cause-effect procession from both sides, is that in nature, the bad is caused per accidens,

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and is so caused by the good. And the same holds, we are told, in the production of artifacts.5 We come now to morals, where things seem to be different. It does not seem that we can reduce the cause of evil to the good causing per accidens. Why not? It does not seem that we can say that moral fault arises from a defect of power. Weakness either eliminates moral fault altogether or at least diminishes it. The reason is that moral fault must be voluntary, not necessary. Thus, we have a rather fundamental problem, which would seem to make a comparison of nature and morals inadmissible. St. Thomas says, however, that a limited comparison holds if we look closely at the situation. As for the dissimilarity (notice that Thomas never completes the pattern by explicitly referring to the similarity), first of all, moral fault is located in action itself, not in a produced effect. Thus, moral evil cannot be traced to the matter or form of the effect. It must arise from the agent. Next, St. Thomas catalogs the four active principles found in moral actions: (4) the executive power, moved by (3) the will, moved in turn by (2) the apprehensive power, moved in turn by (1) the apprehended thing. He eliminates three of these as sources of moral fault, leaving only the will. This seems to fall in line with the aforementioned problem, that deficiency of active power eliminates or reduces moral fault. This is true with respect to three out of the four active principles, but not true of the will. We are left with the will, in which we must discover the root or origin of moral fault. Here, St. Thomas proposes a second problem. Since the deficient act must come about because of a failing in the active principle (this seems to be a universal judgment, first seen in the presentation of the natural), it is necessary to presuppose a failing in the will prior to the moral fault. (We should pause here to greet, in its first appearance, the requirement of a failure in the will prior to the moral fault.) This failing cannot be natural, for then it would always be present, and all acts would be morally faulty. However, if the failing is voluntary, then it is already a moral fault; and we will have to find its cause, thus falling into an infinite regress (this takes it for granted that every moral fault, if not every evil, must have a cause).6 In beginning his answer to this problem, St. Thomas eliminates not only natural failings but also any merely chance failing. He concludes that

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the failing we are seeking must be voluntary. The problem is then precisely, how can this voluntary failing not be itself a moral fault? Thomas begins his explanation with a general consideration of a hierarchy of active principles. The perfection of the power in a lower active principle depends on the higher active principle. While the second agent remains subordinate to the first, it acts without any failing. It fails in its action if it happens to be turned aside from its order to the first. The example referred to is an instrument that fails as regards the movement in it from the principal agent. This general conception is now applied to the will, which is presented as having above it a source of motion proper or appropriate to it, namely the rational apprehensive power. Also, as regards the apprehended thing, the goal that is above the will is not just any goal, but one proper to, appropriate for, the will. Hence, St. Thomas can propose two types of disorder of the will. It may burst into action on the basis of merely sense apprehension; or else it may do so on the basis of reason representing to it some good other than its appropriate good. Then, moral fault results within the action of the will. Thus, St. Thomas concludes, what is found in the will preceding the sinful act is the failure of order relative to reason, and the failure of order relative to the will’s appropriate goal. The two cases are somewhat envisaged in Thomas’s text: a failure of the will’s order toward reason, ‘‘as when, upon the sudden apprehension of sense, the will tends toward the sensibly delightful good; [and] a failure as regards the appropriate good, as when reason in its reasoning hits upon something good, which is not, either now, or in just this way, good—and nevertheless the will tends toward that, as toward its proper good.’’7 Last, St. Thomas professes to show how this picture provides the answer to the problem. This failure in order is voluntary. It is in the power of the will to will and not to will. It is in its power that reason consider actually, or cease to consider, and that reason consider this or that. And this failing is not a moral fault; for reason to consider nothing at all, or to consider any good one likes, is not a sin until the will tends toward an inappropriate end. Then we already have the act of the will (i.e., the sin itself ).8 It is now clear, says Thomas, that both in nature and in morals, the bad is caused by the good only per accidens. From this conclusion, we see

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that Thomas’s interest, in the presentation of morals, was to show that the pattern of per accidens causality, as first seen in nature, does hold up in morals. It is the agent as having a deficiency in the active power that causes the bad.9 This deficiency does not diminish the will’s responsibility, nor does it set up an infinite regress, not being itself a moral fault. Let us come now to De malo. We will look first at the body of the article, and then note anything to our purpose in the replies to objections. Thomas begins by saying that the good is the cause of the bad, in the way the bad can have a cause. He immediately presents three arguments to show that the bad cannot have a per se (an essentially ordered) cause. Then it is argued that the bad must indeed have a cause, as follows. Since evil is not something existing by itself, but rather something that inheres as a privation in something else, it is clear that being bad is something that preternaturally inheres. And such an inherent must have a cause. The conclusion is that every evil has a cause, but per accidens, by the very fact that it cannot have a per se cause. This then is the way the bad has a cause. It is now argued that this cause can only be the good. And Thomas concludes that of any evil, the good is the per accidens cause. However, at this point Thomas admits that it does happen that the bad, which is the defective good, causes the bad. Nevertheless, ultimately one must come to this: the first cause of the bad is not the bad, but the good. Thus, there are two ways in which the bad is caused by the good. In one way, the good is the cause of the bad inasmuch as the good is deficient. In the other way, the good is the cause of the bad inasmuch as it is an agent per accidens. Thus far, De malo is innovative in arguing that the bad must have a cause (something that comes in the SCG only at 3.13). This means that any recourse to the bad as cause of the bad must ultimately give way to the good as per accidens cause of the bad. Notice that Thomas’s introduction of the defective good as cause is under the aspect of the bad as cause. Thus, the defective good as cause seems to be a case that will have to be eliminated. Yet this, as we will see, is only partly true. Here, as we begin the investigation of the two modes of causing the bad, the defective good certainly is secondary and eliminable. Next, Thomas illustrates the two modes of causing the bad, by considering natural things, where they are easily seen. First, there is the case of corruption of water. The cause is the active power of fire. Fire is not aimed

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principally and of itself at the not-being of water, but at the inducing of the form of fire in matter, to which is conjoined the not-being of water. Thus it is per accidens that fire makes water cease to be. Second, there is abnormal birth. The cause is the deficient power of the seed. However, the cause of the defect in the seed is some good that causes the bad per accidens and not inasmuch as it (the agent) is deficient. In fact, the more powerful the cause, the more extreme the defect in the seed. The cause is cause of the bad insofar as the cause is perfect, not deficient. This is rather different from SCG. No longer can one say that an agent is cause of the bad only because of some deficient active power. Here in De malo, cause and effect have not been taken separately, and the agent is seen as bringing about corruption, but per accidens. This consideration of natural things, then, is intended to illustrate the way the defective good as cause of the bad must ultimately be reduced to the perfect good as cause, but per accidens, of the bad. We come now to voluntary matters. The situation, we are told, is in a way similar, but not altogether so. Thomas begins by presenting the case of adultery in a way that parallels, as much as possible, the analysis of a natural event. The sensibly pleasant moves the will of the adulterer and draws it toward indulging in a sort of enjoyment that excludes the order of reason and divine law; and this is the morally bad. Thus, if the situation were such that the will necessarily received the impression of the attractively pleasant, as the natural body necessarily receives the impression of the agent, then the cases of nature and the voluntary would be altogether the same. This is not so, because however much the external sensible may attract, it is in the power of the will to receive or not to receive the influence. Hence the cause of the bad that attaches to accepting the influence is not the enjoyable as mover, but rather the will itself. How, then, is the will the cause of this evil? St. Thomas says it is cause according to both the aforementioned ways, that is, both per accidens and inasmuch as it is a defective good. First, it is cause per accidens. The will hastens toward something that is good in a way, but is conjoined to what is simply bad (this, we might observe, makes the will look something like fire generating fire, to which effect a privation is attached). But it is cause as defective good, inasmuch as it is necessary to presuppose in the

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will some defect before the deficient choice itself, by which latter choice it chooses the qualifiedly good which is simply bad. Here, Thomas has merely stated that there is the need to posit the defect before the choice. He will now explain the need for and the nature of this defect. He says: In all those things one of which ought to be the rule and measure of the other, the good in the ruled and measured is from this, that it is ruled by and conformed to the rule and measure, whereas the bad is from this: not being ruled and measured. (Thus, if some artisan must cut some wood in a straight line, in accordance with a ruler, if he does not make a straight incision, which is to cut badly, this bad cut will be caused by this failing, namely, that the artisan did not have the ruler.)10 The minor premise tells us that pleasure, and everything else in human affairs, is to be ruled and measured according to the rule of reason and divine law. The conclusion is that not to use the rule of reason and divine law is the intelligible presupposition to the disordered choice. Here in De malo, the need to posit a failing (perhaps ‘‘shortcoming’’ would be a good word) in the will is not deduced from the general principle that a failing on the side of the agent must be traced to a failing in the active principle (as it was in the SCG). This is not surprising, since here in De malo that principle is no longer accepted. We saw that in nature, although it does happen that the defective agent is the cause of the bad, the first cause of the bad must nevertheless be the good—in nature, it is the agent precisely according to its perfection as agent. Thus, here in De malo, the positing of a failing in the will, prior to the deficient choice, is directly related to the peculiar nature of the will, as having its rule and measure outside itself. In fact, the will is viewed as a self-mover, thus itself really composite, itself encompassing cause and effect, motor and moved, and such that its higher or motor side be itself subject to a higher principle of measure. Far from being similar to nature, the will, as retaining the aspect of deficient good in its causality of the bad, requires special explanation. The last step in Thomas’s presentation of the causality of evil in voluntary matters is to show that unlike the domain of nature, here there is no need to reduce the cause that is deficient to some other cause that is

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merely per accidens cause (i.e., not itself deficient). There is no need, he says, to look for a cause of ‘‘not making use of the rule.’’ For this way of acting, the freedom of the will suffices—through it, the free will, one can act or not act. Moreover, ‘‘not actually paying attention to such a rule,’’ just in itself, is not something bad: neither a moral fault nor a penal fault,11 because the soul is not obliged, nor in fact is it even able, to be always actually paying attention to such a rule. Rather, it acquires for the first time the note of culpability from this, that one proceeds to such a choice without actual consideration of the rule. Thomas adds that this is why Augustine said that the will is cause of sin inasmuch as the will is deficient, but then compared the deficiency to silence and darkness. The defect prior to the culpable choice is a pure negation, in no way a privation. Looking back over SCG and De malo, we see that the end product of the two discussions is in a general way the same. There is need to go back beyond the culpable defect in the sinful act to a nonculpable defect that is voluntary. However, many changes have been made in De malo that reshape the thinking considerably. For one thing, it is never said in SCG that the defect is a mere negation, in no way something bad. It is said that it is not morally bad—its being such would mean an infinite regress. But the very fact that we had not clearly seen that every evil must have a cause left it unclear that any evil at all in the cause would give rise to an infinite regress. Although in both treatments nature is made to serve as an approach to as great an extent as possible to the problem of moral or voluntary evil, the approaches in the two texts are very different. Nature is used in SCG to show us that a defect on the side of the agent presupposes a defect in the active power. This point becomes crucial in morals, where the whole analysis in SCG is envisaged as corresponding to the side of the agent. This leads us to the point that prior to the sin there must be some defect in the will. On the other hand, De malo’s analysis of nature in general is a reduction of all deficiency to the nondeficient agent as cause per accidens, in keeping with the general conception that since all evil must have a cause, the first cause of evil cannot be bad. Thus, in De malo, the move from nature to the voluntary is quite different from that move in SCG. The retention of the need for a defect on the side of the agent, in the case of the voluntary, makes the voluntary somewhat dissimilar to the natural. On the other hand, since the principle overall is that the first cause of evil

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cannot be evil, we see emerge the requirement that the defect that must be retained in the case of the will cannot be any sort of evil. Thus, whereas in SCG Thomas was employing a conception of natural necessity that provided him with an approach to something he saw the need for in the presentation of the will, in the De malo nature in this respect is of little help. The result is that Thomas is obliged to explain his conception more in terms of what is proper to the will as such. The will in SCG is an ‘‘active principle,’’ inferior to other active principles. It is imagined as an instrument moved by the higher principles, though one that can take itself into a condition of non-order. Its preliminary phase is seen as an order, its terminal stage is seen merely as its act, its tending toward a goal. In De malo, on the other hand, the will is measured and ruled (the proper relation to the mind and knowledge); it is itself compared to an artisan, a self-regulating mover. Its preliminary stage is presented as attention, consideration, the use of reason. Its ultimate phase is a choice (i.e., it is seen as a cause that produces an effect, as a self-mover). The term ‘‘choice’’ was not even employed in the SCG text. Thus, the doctrine of De malo more clearly presents what Thomas had seen the need for, the pure negation prior to sin, as a peculiar part of the analysis of volition. I would say that it likewise encourages us to explore the nature of the preliminaries vis-a`-vis choice, since these preliminaries are the proper subject or locus of this sort of negation. Among the replies to objections in De malo, ad 9 allows a glimpse of the radical ontology at work in the discussion. The good, by the very fact that it is created, ‘‘can’’ (in a certain sense) fail, with that sort of failure whence comes voluntary evil; for from the very fact that it is created it follows that it is subject to another as to a rule and measure. God, who is his own rule, cannot sin. This relates directly to the general theory of culpability presented in ST 1.63.1 (where already we have the example of the artisan). It also reminds us that causal derivation involves a relation of measured to measure of being.12 Clearly, caused will is the only possible subject of the negation of which Thomas is speaking. The other point in the replies I wish to note involves ad 13 through ad 16. Ad 14 is a good place to start. It gives the general explanation of how the good is the per accidens cause of the bad, locating the accident on the side of the effect. This is quite different from SCG, where we sometimes (and always, in morals) located the accident on the side of the agent, that

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is, a deficiency in the active power. Nor does this reply seem limited to the nonmorals case. Thus, ad 15 clearly treats the morals situation as an agent producing an effect with the accident in the effect. So also, ad 16 clearly treats evil as an accident on the side of the effect. This shift I would say is the direct result of the doctrine that evil is ‘‘essentially’’ an effect, that is, must have a cause. This obliges one to distinguish, within the operation of the will, between effect and cause, an election and the phases leading up to the particular election. Where in SCG the image of the will was in the line of pure action, not productive of an effect (‘‘immanent action,’’ if you like), here in De malo there is seen the need to go within immanent action to describe the causal derivation that obtains there. The evil can only be found in the effect as such. So also, we have the challenge to describe the phases prior to the evil choice as apt to give rise to evil choice. Hence, Thomas insists on the free, responsible, nonculpable nonattending to the rule. Why is the inattention not culpable? To appreciate this, the following points should be kept in view. First, we are not speaking of the very first act of choice, but of the first evil choice. The will is already in action, and is choosing. That is why the situation we are speaking of is voluntary. It is not merely in the domain of what we will by nature: it is an event in the domain of elective willing.13 Second, any choice is properly the result of deliberation, an inquiry on the part of reason. However, this work of reason is being carried out by the elective will; it is a use of reason in the preparation of a further choice. Hence, there is earlier deliberation, and this as something taking place voluntarily, throws us back to previous deliberations. In order to avoid an infinite regress, we must come to an outside mover that is the first cause of deliberation and election. This point is often made by Thomas.14 If we consider a deliberating that is being used by the free choice of the human who has not sinned, that deliberation may, at any given moment, be a consideration of only part of the total situation. To be considering only a part of the situation is not, in itself, a bad thing. In fact, given the sort of beings we are, it must sometimes be the case. However, ‘‘not to have been thorough in one’s consideration’’ is bad, and ‘‘not to have been thorough’’ can be a reality as soon as one has pressed ahead, that is, ‘‘made up one’s mind.’’ Now, ‘‘to make up one’s mind’’ is precisely the act of choice. Until it happens, one may be simply ‘‘considering only a

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part of the situation.’’ This latter is precisely the defect, which is neither sin nor penalty, nor something in any way bad. It is a pure negation concerning the created will. And it is the intrinsic character of the deliberation that is the intelligible presupposition of the first evil choice. For the complete intelligibility of this doctrine, one must have in mind the doctrine of God’s permission of evil. If he permits evil, he certainly permits the conditions that make it a possibility. In fact, the real heart of the problem is not the phase we have been here considering, but the actual choosing which is evil. Why does God permit the choosing when the deliberation is inadequate? In this regard, one has to keep in mind that it is the role of providence to treat things in accordance with their own ontological possibilities, that is, their natures. One must also remember that God must be the cause of the act that is the sin, but not of its disordered character; this latter is precisely the focal point of the doctrine of ‘‘permission.’’15 Thus, I would say that the phase we have been considering here is much more an important metaphysical requirement than a part of the passionate issue of the ‘‘problem of evil.’’

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Chapter 12

S T . T H O M A S , O U R N AT U R A L L I G H T S , AND T HE MORAL O RDER

The study of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas draws one into considerations of the distinction and coexistence of reason and revelation, as well as of the divisions, pedagogical sequence and coexistence of the sciences. St. Thomas, in the Summa theologiae (ST), insists from the start on the unity of his theological undertaking, while affirming the inclusion of all the philosophical or scientific endeavors, theoretical and practical, within this unity.1 John Finnis, in his book Natural Law and Natural Rights, calls attention to such issues by the very nature of his project.2 Finnis wishes to present a genuinely ethical discourse, as distinct from a metaphysical reflection on human action and human sciences, and he wishes to do so by making considerable use of the ethical discourse contained in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. This obliges him to say what he takes to be essential to the ethical discourse of St. Thomas and what he takes to be ‘‘speculative appendage added by way of metaphysical reflection to such ethical discourse.’’3 Such judgments obviously comport risks, and in the present chapter I wish to underline some features of St. Thomas’s doctrine of natural law that, I am worried, may be obscured in the Finnis presentation. Finnis, criticizing D. J. O’Connor, rightly says: ‘‘Nor is it true that for Aquinas ‘good and evil are concepts analyzed and fixed in metaphysics before they are applied in morals.’ ’’4 However, our knowledge of natural law,5 and our knowledge of the first principles of speculative reason as well,6 is prior not only to metaphysics but also to ethics. And prior even to our knowledge of those first principles is our knowledge of their terms. Still, the metaphysician does have it as part of his proper task to reflect 199

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on such knowledge, and to judge and defend all the principles.7 That is why so much of what the metaphysician discusses (I am speaking of the metaphysician as conceived by St. Thomas) pertains to what we all know (whether we be scientists, i.e., cultivated persons, or not). What we generally mean by St. Thomas’s ‘‘doctrine of natural law’’ is the metaphysical reflection on the nature of our knowledge of the first practical principles, and is the metaphysician’s description of our original natural knowing of those principles (I do not mean to exclude the theologian: for example, no presentation of natural law in St. Thomas’s writings would be complete without reference to the effects of sin, original and actual, on our natural knowledge of things to be done, as well as on the corresponding natural inclinations).8 Finnis’s aim to present a straight ethical discourse is certainly one that accords with St. Thomas’s doctrine of modes of knowing and sequence of acquired cultural perfections. One is supposed to study ethics before metaphysics.9 However, such a strictly ethical ethics supposes that one gets one’s starting points by some grasp of a less probing sort than the sapiential.10 This is satisfactory as long as agreement among the discussants prevails. A problem arises, however, when as today challenges to ethical starting points have saturated public discussion. Accordingly, Finnis feels obliged to begin his book with a rejection of certain generally held views about natural law. Does it incorporate affirmation of the existence of a god? Does it infer the ‘‘ought’’ from the ‘‘is’’? These are surely questions to be fully treated by the metaphysician as judge and defender of the principles of particular sciences. Finnis tells us that a natural-law ethics does not attempt to derive the ‘‘ought’’ from the ‘‘is.’’11 Now, since the strictly ethical ethics he has in mind starts with indemonstrable ‘‘oughts,’’ he can say this with conviction. Still, I would say it contains a measure of misinformation as regards St. Thomas’s view of things. The metaphysician, faced with someone who denies the first principles, or even with the task of judging the first principles, does no more than call to our attention the more searching eye already present in us all—merely reaches back more searchingly than does the ethician to what we all know. And, in that perspective, the first principles stand exposed as an intelligible hierarchy, a sequence of visions, each flowing from its intelligible predecessor; and in that vision, ‘‘good’’ derives from ‘‘being,’’ or, if one will, ‘‘ought’’ from ‘‘is.’’

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Concerning Finnis’s positions, I will here focus on two points: (1) his view of the first principles of practical reason as underived; and (2) the role of our knowledge of God in natural law. In what follows, I am attempting to express things entirely from the viewpoint of Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas’s Derivation of the First Practical Principle The human being is meant to perfect himself. He is both an agent of his own movement toward perfection and the patient of that movement. Such self-perfective procedure takes place as regards both man’s cognitive side and his appetitive side. What we call ‘‘sciences’’ and ‘‘wisdom’’ are achievements that we bring about in the line of cognition, whereas ‘‘moral virtues’’ are achievements in the line of appetition. In the main, I will be speaking about the cognitive.12 Cognitive self-cultivation is not supposed to be carried out in just any order. The forms of cognitive perfection are determinate, the subject that they perfect has a definite nature, and so one form, that is, one type of cognitive achievement, one type of scientific accomplishment, has a natural priority or posteriority (in the order of generation, or coming to be) with respect to another.13 By one type of science, already achieved, the human mind is disposed to be perfected by another type, a more demanding type, of science.14 Thus, St. Thomas has a doctrine of an order of learning vis-a`-vis the sciences. One learns ethics before learning metaphysics, just as one learns mathematics before physics, and physics before ethics.15 Finnis, as I said, was clearly right to reject the proposition that good and evil are concepts analyzed and fixed in metaphysics before they are applied in ethics. However, there is another side to the story. We are perfective of our own selves. We are self-cultivators. This means that there is in us not merely the perfectible soil but also the active principle of cultivation. We are the agents and not merely the patients. Our ability to be agents in this regard lies in the fact that we have in us, naturally given, beginnings of such development. How do these beginnings have the power to constitute us as the originators of science and virtue? It is that they are themselves more noble, of a higher actuality, than the cultivated conditions they produce. It is by our knowledge of the primary propositions that the

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scientific cultivation of mind is produced. The principles of cognition (both theoretical and practical) and appetition are more noble than the conclusions and moral cultivations.16 This doctrine finds its culmination in St. Thomas’s explanation of how the virtue of wisdom is supreme among all intellectual virtues. An objector argues that the knowledge of principles is more noble than that of conclusions, and that wisdom, like the other sciences, draws conclusions from the indemonstrable principles; hence, the virtue called ‘‘understanding,’’ whereby we know the indemonstrable principles, is more noble than even wisdom. St. Thomas replies that the truth and knowledge of the principles depends on the notions of the terms used in the principles—given the knowledge of ‘‘what a whole is’’ and ‘‘what a part is,’’ immediately it is known that ‘‘every whole is greater than its own part.’’ Now, to know the notion ‘‘a being’’ and ‘‘not a being,’’ and ‘‘whole’’ and ‘‘part,’’ and the others that follow upon ‘‘a being,’’ out of which as out of terms the indemonstrable principles are constituted pertains to wisdom, since ‘‘a being,’’ taken generally or universally or formally, expresses the proper effect of the highest cause, namely God (and knowledge of the highest cause pertains to wisdom). That is why wisdom, unlike the other sciences, does not merely use the indemonstrable principles to conclude from them; wisdom also judges concerning the first principles and argues against those who deny them. Thus, Thomas concludes, wisdom is a greater virtue than the ‘‘understanding of principles.’’17 Here, we see that the nobility of vision, whereby we are self-cultivators, finds its origin in our grasp of the sapiential notions, and that this grasp must be at work right from the start, in its peculiar nobility and active power, so as to be the principle of all human scientific and moral cultivation. In this way we can see that although ethics precedes metaphysics, taking both as fully realized cultivations of the mind, the knowledge of sapiential seeds18 precedes and is the generative cause of all science and even all ‘‘understanding of principles.’’ Now, our knowledge of natural law takes us back to this domain, not of fully developed metaphysics, nor even of ethics, but of the grasp of the original seeds of our intellectual cultivation. Ethics, of course, uses the primary propositions of natural law in its reasoning to the properly ethical conclusions. However, as a particular

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science,19 it is not the job of ethics to judge such starting points or defend its starting points if someone denies them. Such judgment and defense is the work of the metaphysician (not to mention the Christian wise man). Thus, the question as to whether the principles of ethics are themselves derived or underived from anything else is not a question for the ethical scientist. He typically takes certain starting points and, obtaining the sort of agreement ethics requires, goes to work with them. This is, in general, what Finnis is attempting in the core of his book.20 In his introductory chapters, Finnis tells us that the first principles of natural law are underived.21 If that simply means ‘‘not inferred,’’ well and good: after all, they are described as known immediately one understands the terms. However, syllogistic inference or demonstration is not the only sort of derivation recognized by St. Thomas. Speaking of how human law derives from natural law, he speaks of the derivation of conclusions from principles, on the one hand, and of the derivation of the more determinate from the more common, on the other.22 Although in ST 1–2.94.2, as regards natural law itself, the vocabulary of derivation is not used, the entire discussion concerns primacy, order, and foundation as pertaining to our natural apprehension, that is, to our natural intellectual vision. Let us consider the notions ‘‘a being’’ and ‘‘the good.’’ The human being’s possession of these two notions, seemingly as an inseparable pair, is taken by St. Thomas as indicating our being immediately ordered (i.e., not through intermediaries) to the first principle of the universe.23 Moreover, although St. Thomas never ceases to teach that man must advance from what is more intelligible to us but less intelligible in itself (particular sciences like physics and ethics) to what is more intelligible absolutely (wisdom as knowledge of the first principle of the universe),24 he nevertheless teaches that at the beginning of all our intellectual cultivation we know what is both more knowable in itself and to us, namely the sapiential notions pertaining to ‘‘a being inasmuch as it is a being [ens in quantum est ens].’’25 Can there be any doubt that for St. Thomas the knowledge of the one (‘‘the good’’) derives from the knowledge of the other (‘‘a being’’)? St. Thomas teaches, in ST 1–2.9.1, that the practical intellect has its priority with respect to the will, as mover of the will, precisely inasmuch as its (the intellect’s) vision of ‘‘the good’’ flows from its vision of ‘‘a being’’ and ‘‘the true.’’ The practical intellect views goodness under the aspect of

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being and truth, sees what goodness is.26 If goodness were not being viewed under the aspect of being, it would not be being ‘‘understood’’ at all.27 Early in the ST, St. Thomas presents the sequence of the notions: ‘‘It is according to this that something is prior in intelligibility, namely that it occurs previously to the mind. Now, the mind previously grasps ‘a being’; and secondly it grasps ‘itself being intellective with respect to a being’; and thirdly it grasps ‘itself being appetitive with respect to a being.’ Hence, the intelligibility ‘a being’ comes first, and secondly comes the intelligibility ‘the true,’ and thirdly the intelligibility ‘the good.’ ’’28 This is clearly no mere juxtaposition of items, but rather an essentially ordered series. The succeeding notion results naturally from the previous one.29 Notice, first of all, that in the above formulas, ‘‘a being’’ is always being taken formally, as part of the quidditative content of the notions of truth and goodness. The notion of truth, as containing that of intellectual apprehension, depends on the notion ‘‘a being,’’ taken absolutely. For St. Thomas, knowledge is not a primary object, an intrinsically self-sufficient visible item. It is the act of a passive potency, and has visibility only through the visibility of ‘‘a being,’’ of which it is the apprehension. Knowledge is a secondary object, participating in the per se object, ‘‘a being.’’30 So also, it is no accident that the notion ‘‘the good’’ is put in third place. It includes the notion of appetite, which itself is unintelligible without reference to cognition. The notion of appetite presupposes the notion of knowledge. It is not necessary to locate a capacity to know in every being to which inclination is attributed, but it is necessary to presuppose intellectual knowing, and indeed knowledge of the notion ‘‘the true,’’ visa`-vis every inclination as such. As St. Thomas says: ‘‘Those things that do not have cognition do not tend toward a goal unless they are directed by a knowing and intelligent someone, like an arrow by an archer.’’31 The idea of inclination presupposes not just any knowledge but knowledge of knowledge, that is, knowledge of the proportion between the being of a thing in its own nature and the being of a thing in cognition. This is to say that the idea of inclination presupposes the idea of truth. When we know inclination, what we somehow all know is the idea of ‘‘the movement from the being of things in the mind to the being of things in their own nature.’’ ‘‘The good’’ is things in their own being, considered precisely as terminus of that ‘‘movement.’’32

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Notice that our subject is the sequence of natural notions in the intellect. We are not yet talking about the will itself and the actual exercise of its movement, but about the occurring to the mind of the notion ‘‘the good.’’ We are assisting at the mind’s becoming practical. The intellect presents the will with its, the will’s, object, the understood good.33 One might think that when St. Thomas says, in the previously quoted passage, that the mind grasps ‘‘itself being appetitive with respect to being,’’ he means that we first have appetite, and then see ourselves having appetite. This is not what he means. The object, the good, the being toward which appetite is envisaged, must be given in cognition prior to our having actual appetition. Appetition is known prior to appetition occurring. Thus, the notion of the good, as including that of appetite, follows from the notions of being and intellectual apprehension. The notion of the act of the will is in the intellect, because the intellect is the principle, the source, the cause, of the act of the will. The intellect, in conceiving ‘‘the true,’’ already knows itself as terminus of the ‘‘movement’’ from being to the soul; its natural ‘‘next thought’’ is of the ‘‘movement’’ from the soul to being.34 Finnis says: It is true that the natural law theory of, say, Aristotle and Aquinas goes along with a teleological conception of nature. . . . But what needs to be shown [by those who wish to object to natural law as an attempt to use nature as a source of moral norms] is that the conception of human good entertained by these theorists is dependent upon this wider framework. There is much to be said for the view that the order of dependence was precisely the opposite—that the teleological conception of nature was made plausible, indeed conceivable, by analogy with the introspectively luminous, self-evident structure of human well-being, practical reasoning, and human purposive action.35 The pathway, as presented by Thomas Aquinas, starts with ‘‘a being’’ (ens), as found in sensible, natural things;36 becomes not purely introspective but comparative of inner and outer (but always by virtue of the universality of ‘‘a being’’), when it knows ‘‘the true’’;37 and continues this comparison in a more particular act of understanding and truth-grasping, when it understands ‘‘the good.’’ The good is grasped as a particular true item.38 That is, we grasp ‘‘a being’’ (with an implicit, inchoate grasp of

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the proportion of act to potency, and so of finality) first (we could just as well say that we grasp ‘‘a nature’’ first);39 and then truth (turning toward our minds seen as grasping ‘‘a nature’’); and then ‘‘the good,’’—‘‘a nature’’ or ‘‘a being’’ seen as the terminus of movement from being in the mind to being in things. Thus, it seems to me that Finnis does not go far enough. All our knowledge of the good is the fruit of reflection (natural, spontaneous, prerational) on our minds, but a fruit that originally arises from our knowledge of ‘‘what it is to be a being,’’ seen in sensible, natural things.40 And this we all know, not as metaphysicians, nor as ethicians, but as human beings. The Role of Our Knowledge of God in Natural Law Let us come now to the second point, namely, how God fits into the doctrine of natural law. Finnis, in his introductory discussion, raises this issue and points out that although natural law (always as regards its primary principles) is self-evident for St. Thomas, the existence of God is not, but rather requires demonstration.41 When he discusses the matter later, in his metaphysico-theological reflections, Finnis shows confidence that he can demonstrate the existence of an uncaused cause, a being whose essence is identical with its existence, but he is not sure that he can demonstrate that this cause is personal and free.42 On the other hand, St. Thomas presents natural law as a participation in eternal law (identified with God himself ).43 The appropriateness of calling natural law ‘‘law’’ is traced to the situation wherein a higher mind, responsible for the universal common good,44 speaks to subject-minds, capable of intelligently receiving and obeying precepts.45 Indeed, it would seem that one must understand the law to be coming from someone else (‘‘no one, properly speaking, imposes a law on his own acts’’),46 and in the case of natural law, from someone else who is divine.47 Outside such a perspective, one might well ask whether such expressions as ‘‘natural law’’ are not fundamentally misleading. Thus, in introducing natural law as the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law, St. Thomas quotes the psalm to the effect that the light of natural reason, by which we discern what the good is and what the bad is, which pertains to natural law, is an impression on us of the divine light.48 Asking more particularly whether all know the eternal law, he answers that although only God and

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the blessed know it in itself or directly, every rational creature knows its effect, in which its likeness is present, and in that way knows it. All knowledge of truth is such an effect, and all know truth to some extent, at the very least as regards the general principles of natural law.49 Our question thus is, to what extent is natural law known by all as instruction coming from a divine lawgiver? Obviously, this is directly related to our conception of our knowledge of God. Demonstrative knowledge of God’s existence is clearly not available to all; as St. Thomas says: ‘‘The science to which it pertains to prove that God exists, and other such things about God, is put forward to be learned by men last of all, many other sciences being presupposed.’’50 But what about knowledge of God’s existence less perfect than the demonstrative? St. Thomas speaks about such knowledge in at least two places.51 In one he asks whether to offer sacrifice to God pertains to natural law. This article is remarkable for many reasons. For one thing, its way of posing the particular ethical question is not simply, ‘‘should one offer sacrifice?’’ but, ‘‘does it pertain to natural law that one do so?’’ The intention seems to be to present the offering of sacrifice as something extremely fundamental in the moral life. To associate it with natural law is to argue that it has the character of a principle. The sed contra argument, maintaining that it is something belonging to natural law, stresses the universality of the practice: ‘‘In every age, among all nations of men, there has always been some offering of sacrifices, and what is the same with everyone seems to be natural.’’ Clearly, the ‘‘natural’’ here is what is determined to unity, what flows from the very ‘‘nature,’’ meaning the essence of a being. Offering sacrifice, the argument means, is not one of reason’s extensions of the natural, but is a manifestation of our very nature and the natural order of things.52 Certainly the presentation of a practice as natural has ethical significance for St. Thomas, a point I wish to stress since Finnis appears to me at times to be denying such ethical significance concerning nature and the natural in St. Thomas’s moral discourse.53 Thomas says: ‘‘Natural reason declares to man that he is subject to some higher being, because of the deficiencies that he experiences in himself, with respect to which he needs to be helped and directed by some higher being. And whatever that is, it is that which everywhere is called ‘a god.’ ’’54 This is the first step in St. Thomas’s reply. He is not presenting a scientific demonstration of the existence of God, but is reporting and attempting to describe what is

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some universal spontaneous natural inference. Man’s experience of himself is as of a being that cannot stand by itself, without aid, and that cannot survive without steering, without direction, from some source of intelligent direction, moving things along for man’s protection and welfare.55 Here, then, we have a type of natural knowledge—not the fruit of deliberate study and method, but given in the way that eyes and ears are given, and yet a knowledge that is not merely the intellectual insight into starting points, whether of simple terms like ‘‘the good’’ or of propositions like ‘‘the good is to be done and promoted, and the bad avoided,’’ but a naturally occurring, spontaneous reasoning process. That a reasoning process is at work here at all, that we do not have to do with an immediate (no middle term) grasp, as of a principle too clear to allow for clarification, is a judgment pertaining to the metaphysician. Thus, in the Summa contra gentiles presentation of the knowledge of God had by almost all, Thomas recalls that some scholars have judged it to be innate, like an indemonstrable principle. He himself regards it as the result of a natural, instantaneous reasoning process.56 What the common man lacks, we might suggest, is a consciousness of the number of distinct steps that are actually involved in the reasoning. It seems like a simple vision of a total situation. The eventual work of the metaphysician is to show the number and nature of the intermediate steps, knowledge of which serves to certify the conclusion.57 St. Thomas goes on to say, in the ST article on sacrifice, that just as among natural things the lower are naturally subjected to the higher, so also natural reason decrees to man, in accordance with natural inclination, that he show submission and honor to that which is above man, and that he do so in a way that accords with human nature. This involves the manifesting of the human mind’s sentiments through the use of material things and gestures; and thus he concludes that using sensible things as offerings to God, that is, offering sacrifice, is naturally right. Obviously, the reality of natural law here is complex. It includes two views presented by natural reason, plus accord with a natural inclination. Let us limit ourselves to the knowledge of God that is included. It is found in all human beings. It is an example of explicit reference to God within the very content of natural law, thus constituting a clear case of God’s being the object or part of the object of that law. Still, in this instance, God is merely a part of ‘‘that which is materially the known’’ or

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‘‘the material object,’’ whereas our question bears on the extent to which he enters into the formal intelligibility of the object.58 That is, we are asking to what extent natural law is analogous to St. Thomas’s doctrine concerning faith. Faith he presents as formally constituted by a recognition that God is the one who is speaking to us, not merely the one about whom someone is speaking.59 In this regard, we should remember that the supernatural virtues are the supernatural analogue of the natural inclination whereby man is ordered to his connatural end. Within this picture, faith is the supernatural counterpart of the knowledge component of this ‘‘natural inclination,’’ inasmuch as reason or intellect contains the primary, universal principles known to us through the natural light of reason, from which principles reason proceeds in both the contemplative and the active orders.60 On the one hand, we should remember that the order of grace or supernature both imitates61 and perfects nature,62 so that we might expect a resemblance between faith and natural law, that is, between the structure of faith and the conception of our natural knowledge of principles. Indeed, an objector to the very existence of the supernatural (theological) virtues63 argues that man, by the very nature of reason and will, is ordered toward the first principle and ultimate end, so that the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity would seem to be superfluous.64 St. Thomas, replying (and here we begin to see the other side of the situation), says that reason and will are indeed naturally ordered to God, inasmuch as he is the principle and end of nature, but ordered in a way proportionate to nature. The theological virtues are seen as ordering man to God as the object of supernatural beatitude, an ordering for which reason and will according to their nature prove insufficient.65 The object of faith is God himself, speaking as the one who announces and calls to supernatural beatitude. Thomas, in the article on sacrifice, does not present God as the one who speaks to us, but presents natural reason as speaking to us. Reason manifests itself as natural in its universality (what occurs to just about everyone) and presumably, in the quickness (statim) with which we grasp the situation. It is what occurs first to reason. What is first and foundational is nature and the natural, that is, what pertains to the very being of reason. To the extent that the voice appears as natural, it appears as authoritative, as a ‘‘dignitas,’’ an ‘‘axiomatic’’ voice.66

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Still, in St. Thomas’s presentation, it is not God who is directly speaking; it is natural reason speaking to us about God. This accords with St. Thomas’s constant teaching that what we first know is not God. Our knowledge of God is not immediate insight, but a discursive knowledge, a knowledge that starts with one known and is somehow moved by that to another object of knowledge. Thomas relates our need for discursive knowing to the weakness of the intellectual light in us. We must begin with the mode of intelligibility to be found in material things. This intelligibility is itself a weak likeness of God, and demands a certain ‘‘putting things together’’ to make the divine image strong enough to lead our mind to knowledge of God.67 The principles of natural law, the first notions that we all naturally have, are not notions about God, but they are notions of that in things whereby they are his proper effect. Thus, mind as mind,—mind as the power having ‘‘beings as beings’’ as its object—is immediately prone (according to the active power within the knowing subject, itself coming from God) to compare things in such a way as to catch a glimpse of God.68 The first notions, and the corresponding first precept, contain knowledge of God only virtually and implicitly,69 but we are naturally disposed to exploit this virtuality of the notions.70 In accordance with this line of thinking, we may say that natural law has something less of the intelligible aspect ‘‘law’’ in its absolutely first precept than it has when God has entered the picture explicitly.71 We do immediately catch a glimpse of God, and ‘‘to love God more than oneself ’’ is a first and most evident principle of natural law,72 but the mode of knowing this, the natural practical knowing, is reason naturally grasping nature and its natural order, and is thus more a simple grasping of the goodness of being, than the reception of a law from a lawgiver. This is not a measure of the strength of our minds or of the noble liberty of our minds, but of the weakness of our minds. What is in fact law is only inferentially grasped by us as law. It is first grasped by us in a more immediate way, as the goodness of being. This conclusion makes it very important that we underline the role of nature in the doctrine or, if one prefer, the role of being. In searching for reasons why the objection to natural law as an illicit inference from facts to norms has such popularity, Finnis says ‘‘that the very name ‘natural law’ can lead one to suppose that the norms referred

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to, in any theory of natural law, are based upon judgments about nature (human and/or otherwise).’’73 Now, quite apart from what the phrase may suggest, I would contend that the foundations of natural law are judgments about nature (human or otherwise). This is true whether the derivation is inferential or not. First, consider nature in general (before coming to human nature). What is meant by the ‘‘a being’’ (ens), which is the first thing apprehended by intellect? Certainly, it is a thing considered as having a ‘‘nature,’’ an ‘‘essence,’’ a ‘‘form,’’ a ‘‘determination to unity’’; it is a thing seen as a termination of generation.74 The term ‘‘fact’’ as in ‘‘inference from fact to norm’’ hardly conveys the notion ‘‘a being.’’ ‘‘Fact’’ is, I would say, a term heavily laden with materialistic imaginings. ‘‘What it is to be a being’’ is what we first somehow know. The notion ‘‘the true,’’ as we have seen, presupposes the grasp of things as ‘‘beings,’’ and the notion ‘‘the good’’ presupposes the notion of ‘‘beings’’ and ‘‘the true.’’ This means that we do grasp human nature, in its primary feature, contemplator of intelligible truth, right from the start, and it is in the light of that conception of oneself, as a being with such a power, that the original notion of ‘‘the good’’ (the seed of our own and of all other practicality) is born in us. Natural law presupposes a natural knowledge of nature and of human nature.75 In presenting another reason the ‘‘facts-norms inference’’ accusation has been leveled at Thomas Aquinas’s natural-law account, Finnis reminds us that as a theologian, Thomas ‘‘was keen to show the relationship between his ethics of natural law and his general theory of metaphysics and the world order.’’ But, says Finnis, ‘‘Aquinas takes good care to make his meaning, his order of explanatory priorities, quite clear. The criterion of conformity with or contrariety to human nature is reasonableness.’’76 This last statement might lead one to believe that ‘‘human nature’’ is very much in the ethical picture, but Finnis does not think that is the case. He says: In other words, for Aquinas, the way to discover what is morally right (virtue) and wrong (vice) is to ask, not what is in accordance with human nature, but what is reasonable. And this quest will eventually bring one back to the underived first principles of practical reasonableness, principles which make no reference at all to

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human nature, but only to human good. From end to end of his ethical discourses, the primary categories for Aquinas are the ‘‘good’’ and the ‘‘reasonable’’; the ‘‘natural’’ is, from the point of view of his ethics, a speculative appendage added by way of metaphysical reflection, not a counter with which to advance either to or from the practical prima principia per se nota.77 I have already said that I think the notions both of ‘‘nature’’ and of ‘‘human nature’’ are at work in the derivation of the notion of ‘‘the good.’’ I believe the whole imagery here of an ‘‘ethical discourse’’ to which Thomas adds ‘‘speculative appendage(s)’’ is misleading. Even though we grant that ethics is prior to metaphysics in the order of learning, it is an ethics feeding on sapiential seeds, conceived as Thomas conceives them; and the metaphysician does not merely append his observations but is able to tell the ethician what has been feeding his ethical reflections all along, and what the preethical human spirit already has somehow grasped. What does ‘‘reason’’ mean in the Thomistic ethical context? What do we all somehow understand in the natural law ‘‘be reasonable?’’78 As St. Thomas says: ‘‘The principles of reason are those things that are according to nature; for reason, having presupposed the things that are determined by nature, disposes other things in a concordant way [secundum quod convenit]. And this is apparent both in the speculative and in the practical order.’’79 In the very same context, St. Thomas argues that since God is the one who gives nature its order, to violate that order is to act unjustly toward God.80 Reading such a remark, I have been tempted to see reason following the natural order because it sees that order as divinely given. Although such a view of reason’s natural situation is not entirely wrong, we must not ignore the priority, in our knowledge of natural law, of knowledge of natural order itself vis-a`-vis knowledge of God. Reason puts nature first, not precisely because nature reveals its divine origin, but because reason sees ontological priority. Goodness is seen in ontological order, and reason’s giving nature priority is the recognition of that order. The ontologically determinate (i.e., nature) has more of the aspect of being than has the ontologically determinable (the operable or choosable).81

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Chapter 13

J A C Q U E S M A R I TA I N A N D T H E PHILOSOPHY OF COOPERAT ION

I will take as basis for my observations chapter 4, ‘‘The Rights of Man,’’ of Jacques Maritain’s Man and the State.1 Maritain notes that with the Universal Declaration of Rights published by the United Nations in 1948, men ‘‘mutually opposed in their theoretical conceptions’’ have been able to come to a merely practical agreement regarding a list of human rights. This ‘‘last refuge of intellectual agreement among men’’ invites the philosopher to propose its true justification.2 The justification Maritain proposes is the doctrine of natural law: ‘‘The philosophical foundation of the Rights of man is Natural Law.’’3 Eager to rid this doctrine of the conception it has taken on due to ‘‘geometrising reason,’’4 Maritain describes natural law in a two-phase presentation. First, there is the ontological element, and second the gnoseological element. The former is the normality of functioning of human nature. It ‘‘dwells in an ideal order in the very being of all existing men.’’ It ‘‘includes natural obligations or rights of which we perhaps have now no idea, and of which men will become aware in a distant future.’’5 Regarding the second element, gnoseological, Maritain asserts that natural law is ‘‘known to human reason not in terms of conceptual and rational knowledge,’’6 but ‘‘through inclination.’’ ‘‘That kind of knowledge is not clear knowledge through concepts and conceptual judgments; it is obscure, unsystematic, vital knowledge by connaturality or congeniality.’’7 Only the absolutely first principle of natural law ‘‘that we must do good and avoid evil’’ is known to all human beings just by virtue of the concepts involved, and this, Maritain says, is not the law but rather its preamble and principle. The law is what derives from this in necessary fashion, and it is known through inclination. The extent to 213

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which it is known will vary from people to people and from age to age. Maritain sees a progress in humanity’s awareness of the precepts of natural law, a development of moral conscience.8 My general contention is that although at a secondary level the doctrine of knowledge through inclination has an important role in our conception of practical knowledge, including natural law, as the basic doctrine of natural law it obscures unduly the cognitional nature of that law. Maritain represented himself as giving, in the last analysis, a more faithful rendering of Thomas Aquinas’s conception of natural law than was usually presented; and he regarded St. Thomas as the one man who, in spite of certain inevitable limitations of his age, had adequately grasped the nature of natural law.9 My aim here is to criticize Maritain in the light of St. Thomas. St. Thomas applies to the case of the human intellectual soul and its powers of intellect and will a general metaphysical doctrine of a substance and its properties. The properties are not themselves substances but rather accidents, and are caused by the substance in which they inhere, caused in a ‘‘productive’’ sense. The properties flow from the essence of the substance. Accordingly, the intellect and will, which are qualities of the soul, flow, as from a sort of productive cause, from the essence of the soul. Such a flowing forth requires a formal sequence, a likeness, between the source (the essence of the soul) as source, and the resulting quality. Furthermore, properties flow from a substance in a certain order, some being closer in nature to the substance than others. Accordingly, one property (closer to substance) is itself rightly regarded as the source of another. This too is applied to intellect and will. Intellect is prior to will and the cause of will.10 Consider one place where this situation is somewhat spelled out as regards will. The case of will is, in a way, easier to present, because it includes in the tableau a longer sequence of factors with more variety of role. Does the created will will anything naturally? Thomas replies that it does, saying: Always the prior is preserved in the posterior. But nature is prior to intellect, for the nature of each thing is its essence. Hence, what belongs to nature must be retained [or preserved or saved] even in those things having intellect. Now, this is common to every nature,

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that it has some inclination, which is natural appetite or love. Nevertheless, this inclination is found in diverse modes in diverse natures, in each according to its own mode. Hence, in the intellectual nature the natural inclination is found according to will.11 This passage supposes we already appreciate what is the ‘‘mode of the intellectual nature,’’ and as regards this mode vis-a`-vis inclination, what is ‘‘will.’’ St. Thomas in the same context has already said: Some things are inclined toward the good with a knowledge by which they know the very intelligibility ‘‘good,’’ which [knowledge] is proper to intellect. And these are most perfectly inclined toward the good, not merely as directed by another toward the good, like those things that lack knowledge; nor [inclined] merely toward the good taken particularly, like those things that have only sense knowledge; but as inclined toward the universal good itself. And this inclination is called ‘‘will.’’12 We can see that the conception of will is entirely dependent on the conception of intellect as a vision of ‘‘what goodness is.’’13 The mode of inclination that just is ‘‘willing’’ is indissociable from the illumination of reality from the viewpoint of goodness. To say, then, that the natural inclination is found in the intellectual nature ‘‘according to will’’ implies the presence, in such a nature, of a natural knowledge of the intelligibility ‘‘good.’’ And this is indeed St. Thomas’s doctrine. In fact, he regularly refers to natural knowledge when he wishes to make points, by comparison, about natural inclination.14 The doctrine of natural inclination of the intellectual nature can be presented fairly neatly; it is focused on inclination as something that belongs to every nature, and then this is given more specific character when it is viewed as showing up at the level of will, filtered, as it were, through intellectual conception. The doctrine of natural knowledge requires some adjustment of the picture. This is because knowledge is not essentially inclination. It pertains rather to the domain of form.15 Thus, when we wish to conceive of the nature as making its presence felt in our intellectual knowing, we have to think of the nature not so much as a source of inclination but as a source of form or light (taking light as an image of visual power). We can see something of this, for example, in a discussion

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wherein St. Thomas asks whether God moves the created intellect. Pointing out that in the domain of corporeal movers and things moved, ‘‘the mover’’ is that which gives to the corporeal thing the form that is the principle of its motion, Thomas says that so also, that is said to ‘‘move the intellect’’ which causes the form that is the principle of intellectual operation (which operation is called the ‘‘motion’’ of the intellect). Now, there are two principles of intellectual operation in the one who understands: one is the intellectual power or capacity itself, and this principle is found in the one who understands even when he is still only understanding potentially; the other principle is the principle of understanding actually, namely, the likeness of the understood thing. In the foregoing, we see that the two principles are placed under the umbrella of form, principle of operation. St. Thomas goes on to argue (all we need presently consider) that God is indeed the source of that ‘‘form’’ that is intellectual power, and so in that respect he is truly a ‘‘mover’’ of intellect. He says: ‘‘For he is the first immaterial being. And because intellectuality follows upon [or, results from, consequitur] immateriality, it follows that he is the first intelligence. Hence, since the first in any order is the cause of those things that follow [in that order], it follows that from him is all power of understanding.’’16 Obviously, in this passage, the notion of immateriality, a certain ‘‘mode of form,’’17 is of the first importance. And elsewhere we are told that it is the intellective soul, precisely as immaterial, that is a source from which the power of intellect flows. The essence of the soul is immaterial, created by the supreme intellect, and so nothing prevents a power that is a participation coming from supreme intellect, through which power the soul abstracts from matter, to proceed from the essence of the soul, just like the soul’s other powers.18 My general point, then, is that in the case of natural law, both its cognitive features and its inclinative features are viewed as coming forth from the nature of the rational being, from the essence of the intellective soul. However, each comes forth from that essence taken precisely as apt to give rise to that sort of perfection. Hence, there does not seem to be any reason to regard inclination as prior to, and a cause of, our natural knowledge (and thus to speak of knowledge through inclination). Inclination is rather viewed by St. Thomas as something that accompanies knowledge naturally.19

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Is there any reason to adjust this picture on the basis of the notion of practical intellect? Is speculative intellect prior to will, but practical intellect subsequent to will? This does not seem to be St. Thomas’s doctrine. It is practical intellect that ‘‘moves’’ the will, not speculative intellect.20 And it does so as conceiving the good. But the argument for its being a mover of will stems from its being intellect, having ‘‘a being’’ and ‘‘the true,’’ taken universally (ens et verum universale), as its object. This object is described as the ‘‘first formal principle.’’ And it is in this way that the practical intellect gives to the will its specification, its object, namely in the formal line of ‘‘motion.’’21 Thus, practical intellect, one may say, is intellect as naturally prior to will and naturally accompanied by will.22 No doubt, in the lower, that is, more particular, reaches of the activity of practical intellect, it follows upon the activities of the will.23 However, there seems to be no reason to so envisage the first principles and most universal acts of practical intellect. Maritain himself seems to agree somewhat with the view I am presenting, as regards the first and most universal principle of natural law. He says it is known by everyone just by virtue of the concepts involved.24 However, he regards it as merely the ‘‘preamble’’ and principle of the law, not the law itself. It is rather with respect to more particular propositions, the laws themselves as he would have it, that he presents his doctrine of knowledge through inclination. Does this seem justified?25 Clearly, St. Thomas’s procedure in Summa theologiae (ST) 1–2.94.2 has encouraged Maritain to take the direction he takes.26 There, St. Thomas presents the precepts of natural law, the principles of practical reason. Great stress is placed on there being an order of apprehension not merely in the speculative realm but also in the practical realm. As ‘‘a being’’ is first in apprehension, taking ‘‘apprehension’’ unqualifiedly, so ‘‘a good’’ is first in the order of practical apprehension. St. Thomas makes use of man’s natural inclinations and their order, to present the order of the precepts and the apprehensions from which the precepts arise. Do we have here a doctrine of knowledge through inclination? There is no doubt that knowledge of inclination is indissociable from knowledge of the good. Thus, Thomas says: ‘‘The intellect first apprehends ‘a being’; and secondarily it apprehends itself being intelligent with respect to a being; and thirdly it apprehends itself being appetitive with respect to a being. Thus, firstly there is the notion ‘a being’; secondly the

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notion ‘the true’; thirdly the notion ‘the good.’ ’’27 This might lead one to believe that it is by watching itself exercise an act of will that the intellect obtains the idea of goodness. Thus, only subsequent to willing would the very object of willing be apprehended. On the contrary, St. Thomas holds that it is the intellect that presents to the will the will’s own object, the good.28 The correct conception, I believe, can be gathered from St. Thomas’s remarks on how the intellect knows the act of the will. He says: ‘‘Since both [intellect and will] are rooted in the one substance of the soul, and one is in a way the principle of the other, the consequence is that that which is in the will is also in a way in the intellect.’’29 In what way? ‘‘The affections of the soul are in the intellect not merely through likeness, as corporeal things [are in the intellect]; nor through presence as in a subject, as arts [are in the intellect]; but as the ‘principled [principiatum]’ is in the principle, in which is had the notion of the ‘principled.’ ’’30 That is, intellect, as that which naturally gives rise to will, knows the act of willing. Thus, we can envisage a natural knowledge of the good, which natural knowledge is prior to the act of the will and mover of the act of the will. It is knowledge of inclination, but not knowledge derived from observation of already given inclination, and still less is it knowledge through inclination. Somewhat by way of conclusion, I wish to call attention to another aspect of St. Thomas’s presentation in ST 1–2.94.2. Three levels of inclination are presented, beginning with the most universal. This is quite in keeping with the fact that our interest is in order here31 and that we started with the apprehensions ‘‘a being’’ and ‘‘the good.’’ Next, we move to a level of inclination that is more special, and come finally to what is proper to man. I wish to concentrate our attention on the first and most universal level. St. Thomas says: There is, first of all, inherent in man, an inclination toward the good according to that nature in which he has something in common with all substances, according namely as every substance whatsoever has appetite for the conservation of its own being in accordance with its own nature. And according to this inclination there pertain to the natural law those things through which the life of man is conserved and the contrary impeded.32 Since St. Thomas goes on to speak, as regards the other two levels, first of sexual intercourse and the care of children, and second of social life

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and the quest for truth, there is a temptation for the reader to see the first level as having to do merely with the good of the individual as such. This, I submit, would be a mistake. Rather, what characterizes the first level is its universality. It derives most immediately from the highest apprehensions of the mind,33 and thus constitutes a zone of inclination that links everything whatsoever in a communion: in man, such an inclination is present in the mode called ‘‘willing’’ and in the mode of the intellectual nature. I suggest that the most thoroughgoing presentation we have from St. Thomas of this one level of natural law is in the discussions that constitute ST 1.60.1–1.60.5, primarily on natural love as found in the angelic (and human) beings. Thus, consider the following objection, proposed in connection with the teaching that both angels and men naturally love God more than they love themselves: ‘‘Nature turns back toward itself; for we see that every agent naturally acts for the conservation of itself. But nature would not be turning back toward itself if it tended toward another more than toward itself. Therefore, by natural love, an angel does not love God more than it loves itself.’’ And the answer is as follows: ‘‘Nature turns back toward itself not merely as regards what is singular to itself but even more as regards what is common [in it]: for each thing is inclined to conserve not merely its own individual [substance] but also its own species. And much more does each thing have a natural inclination toward that which is the unqualified universal good.’’34 This reply shows well enough what I wish to say about the breadth of the first level of natural law. Our natural ‘‘self ’’ has many dimensions, and these have an order of superiority and inferiority. The deepest level of natural law is that whereby we are in communion with the principle of all being and goodness, naturally in our own mode, which is according to intellect and will. ‘‘Conserving human life’’ has a variety of levels. There is more consensus on the desirability of saving the human race than on more particular issues. There is perhaps more consensus on the necessity of having ‘‘something to live for’’ than even on the desirability of saving the human race.35 Maritain, constantly concerned with the practical issue of cooperation among men, in seeking to present the true philosophy of universal cooperation, rightly focused on natural law. In his concern, lest a too rationalistic picture of such law be envisaged, he stressed the very general character of the ‘‘tendential forms or frameworks’’ concerned,36 but he also stressed

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the unique role of inclination in the very formation of this knowledge. As regards inclination, I wish at least to raise the question, do we not need to face more adequately the authentically cognitive mode of the first principles of natural law? The consensus in which our primary grounds for hope are to be found, that the human race should be preserved, and that human life must be for a purpose that transcends it, is in us as a vision of the good and as a willing love of that seen good. The presence of that knowledge and love in us is explained by the derivation of all beings, including the human being, from a transcendent cause of being and goodness. This is Maritain’s and St. Thomas’s philosophy of cooperation.37

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Chapter 14

NATURAL LAW AND T HE FIRST A CT OF F R E E D O M : M A R I TA I N RE V I S I T E D

My project herein might be called a ‘‘fiftieth anniversary’’ observance. Labeled ‘‘May-June, 1945, at Rome,’’ Maritain’s essay ‘‘La dialectique immanente du premier acte de liberte´ (notes de philosophie morale)’’ was originally published in Nova et vetera in the autumn of that year. Subsequently it appeared in the book Raison et raisons (1948) and in English translation as ‘‘The Immanent Dialectic of the First Act of Freedom,’’ in The Range of Reason1 Maritain himself indicates that this essay is closely tied to two very important texts of St. Thomas, one on the question, Can the human being, by its natural power, without grace, love God above all?2 and the other on the question, Can venial sin be present in someone along with original sin alone?3 He also recommends that we read Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan’s commentary on the latter item. The first act of freedom has not to do only with natural law. The domain of morals includes necessarily both universal knowledge and particular knowledge. Natural law belongs to the realm of the universal. The first act of freedom, however, is a choice, and thus is the conclusion of a practical syllogism, including not only knowledge of the universal but also the knowledge of the particular that is so important for action.4 However, the doctrine of natural law obviously has much to do with how one conceives of such a first moment in the moral life. I intend therefore to recall Maritain’s teaching and to raise some questions about it. I will also look at Cajetan’s comments on Thomas, as Maritain recommended. Maritain, as we shall see, makes knowledge of God a central feature of the first moment in the moral life. It is this that primarily interests 221

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me, and that touches on our conception of natural law. I have previously discussed the question, is natural law truly law if it is not seen as coming from God?5 Thus, in the end I believe that this rereading of Maritain’s essay will help us frame a more adequate conception of natural law, even if we do not altogether agree with Maritain in the matter at hand. Thomas’s Text on Venial Sin We might begin by recalling the text of Thomas that has most to do with this issue. It occurs in the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae (ST), at the very end of the treatment of sin. Thomas is discussing venial sin, just in itself (question 89), and he has a series of articles on the various possible subjects (human souls) in whom such a sin could exist. Is someone in the state of original innocence a possible subject? No. Is an angel, good or bad, a possible subject of venial sin? No. And he eventually and lastly comes to the very concrete and particular question, Can venial sin exist in someone along with original sin alone, that is, without mortal sin? The idea is that when one comes into the world, one has original sin. Can one then proceed to commit a venial sin, prior to the occurrence of either of two other events, namely, elimination of original sin by one’s submission to God, or contraction of mortal sin by turning away from God? If so, one could have original and venial sin, but not mortal. If not, not: rather, either one would have no original, or else one would have original and mortal. Thomas’s reply is that it is impossible that venial sin be in someone along with original sin and without mortal sin. The reason is that before one comes to the age of discretion, the handicap of youth that prohibits the use of reason excuses from mortal sin; hence, all the more does it provide an excuse for venial sin, if it happens that one does something that is venial in its very kind. However, once the use of reason has begun, one is not altogether excused from venial and mortal sin. However, the first thing that confronts the human being at that time, as something that must be given thought, is oneself as an object of deliberation. And if one orders oneself to the appropriate or due end (ad debitum finem), one obtains through grace the remission of original sin. If one does not order oneself to the due end, to the extent that at that age one is capable of discretion, one sins mortally, not doing what it is within one’s power to

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do. And from that moment on, there will not be venial sin without mortal sin unless the whole thing will have been remitted through grace.6 From our point of view, the fascinating thing here is this ‘‘due end’’ for which one is to act. What does it involve? There is also the concession by Thomas (not unrelated to the question of the ‘‘due end’’) to the fact that a young person will not have quite the same command of the situation as an older and more experienced person. What is the ‘‘due end’’ that must be envisaged if one is to be morally good? Some clue (to put it mildly) is given by ad 3. The third objection argues that one can determine the time at which a youth can be the perpetrator of actual sin. Once that time has come, he can refrain, at least for some brief space of time, from sinning mortally, for even in really villainous people that happens. But in that space of time, however brief, he can sin venially. Thus, one can have venial and original sin, and no mortal sin. Thomas replies: From other mortal sins the youth beginning to have the use of reason can abstain for some period of time; but from the aforementioned sin of omission he is not free unless as soon as he can, he turns himself toward God [se convertat in Deum]. Because the first thing that occurs to a man having discretion is that he thinks about himself, toward which [self] he orders other things as to an end: for the end is prior in intention. And therefore this is the time regarding which he is obligated by the affirmative precept of God, in which the Lord says (Zechariah 1:2): ‘‘Turn to me, and I will turn to you.’’7 From this, it seems clear that the ‘‘due end’’ mentioned in the body of the article is God himself. One is ordering other things to oneself as to an end, but one is expected to grasp one’s own inferiority to a higher end, and to put oneself at the service of that higher being. There is an important parallel to ST 1–2.89.6 in Thomas’s Quaestiones disputatae de malo. The objector argues that the obligation actually to turn toward God falls under an affirmative precept, and affirmative precepts, though they oblige always (semper means never do the contrary), do not oblige their being carried out at every moment (ad semper); therefore, someone does not immediately sin mortally if he does not actually turn toward God as soon as he has the use of reason, and can at that time sin

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venially. Therefore, there can be venial sin with original sin and without mortal sin. And we get the important answer: Though affirmative precepts, generally speaking, do not oblige at all times, nevertheless man, by natural law, is obligated to this, that he be primarily solicitous for his own salvation, in accordance with the text of Matthew 6:33: ‘‘Seek first the kingdom of God’’; for the ultimate end naturally occurs in appetite, as the first principles naturally occur firstly in apprehension: for thus all desires presuppose the desire for the ultimate end, just as all speculative acts of knowing presuppose the speculative knowledge of the first principles.8 This makes clear enough that the person is seen either dedicating himself to God, or else taking himself as ultimate. This, I would hasten to add, is only possible if some knowledge of the existence of God is possible for the person. If one commits a sin of omission, the presumption is that the requisite knowledge of God could have been had.9 Moreover, this text makes it clear that it is natural law that directs us here. This relates to the issue being one that bears on oneself: self-love pertains to natural law.10 One of the questions that we are going to have to put to ourselves here concerns the notion of natural love. If the object is an object of natural love, how can we fail to will it, and so how can it possibly pertain to morality, properly so called, which has to do with free choice?11 For the moment, I have said enough to make clear Thomas’s position. The person engaged in performing the first free act, the first event in the realm of morality, is envisaged as taught by natural law to turn to God. The question is, will he do so, or do something else? In this scenario, natural law precepts are presented as spoken by the very voice of God.12 Thus, it is no surprise that it is called ‘‘law.’’ Not only do we have information concerning what is the right thing to do, but we have knowledge of this precisely as known to be coming from the superior who is responsible for the universal common good. This is truly law.13 the maritain reading Let us look over the article from the beginning. I notice the description Maritain gives of ‘‘any first or primal free act.’’14 He says it is the kind of act the theologians relate to the gratia operans: ‘‘In philosophical terms,

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an activation coming from God and through which the will does not make an act proceed from another, but causes a primal act to surge from its own depths.’’15 This is odd in itself. The will can move itself only as regards choice, that is, acts having as their object the ad finem, the thing ordered toward an end. The primary act of the will, with respect to the end precisely as end, is not a case of self-motion. Acts of choice, on the other hand, must be acts that issue from a prior act.16 Maritain must be talking about an act of choice, one that the will produces by having already a willing of an end. Thus, we see in ST 1–2.113.3 that the very reception of grace, which is the justification of the sinner, and which is precisely what Thomas calls the effect of gratia operans,17 necessarily incorporates a movement of free choice on the part of the human person, an act of acceptance of grace. It is God who moves the person’s free choice to accept the grace.18 Accordingly, Maritain must mean that the act is the first coming from the will as regards choices. I only beg to note that to understand such a choice, it is necessary to view it as the effect of an act already naturally present in the will.19 Maritain explains that it is ‘‘for the sake of simplicity’’ that he is considering this first act as ‘‘exercised by a child.’’ One must wonder about this ‘‘simplicity.’’ It is clear from what he says that Maritain could have taken an adult in whom such a moral renewal occurs. By taking a child, he puts before us a case on the borderline between prerationality and fully active rationality, where it is difficult to grasp the psychology of the affair. He himself tells us in his first footnote that ‘‘ ‘first act of freedom’ is not taken, in this essay, as meaning ‘first act in which freedom plays a part’; it refers to a deep-seated determination—a root-act—in which the person freely commits himself and which impresses a definite direction upon his life as a person.’’20 That is, Maritain wants an event that is well-enough developed in the line of freedom really to count in the domain of morals. Yet, as we shall see, because he has chosen to talk about the child, he will constantly be involving himself in obscure states of mind, absence of reflection, preconscious and unconscious acts, and the like. All this does not make for simplicity.21 In any case, he says: ‘‘I am considering the first or primal act of freedom exercised by a child when, for the first time, he ponders or ‘deliberates about himself.’ ’’22 Trying to explain this event of deliberation, Maritain tells us that it is not ‘‘discursive,’’ yet there is reflection:

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At the root of such an act there is a reflection upon oneself which takes place in the intellect and answers the question: ‘‘What do I live for?’’ Yet this reflection is not explicitly signified to the mind, and the question which it answers is not formulated in clear concepts. This question, on the contrary, is altogether engaged and involved in a choice whose immediate object may be a bit of straw, a trifle, but which is pregnant with a spiritual vitality, a decisive earnestness, a commitment, a gift of oneself the plenitude of which will not be experienced by adult age except in rare and miraculous occasions.23 There follows the presentation of the example of a ‘‘trivial lie,’’ which the child refuses to tell. To use as an example something that is in itself a venial sin seems to me very misleading. If it is to make sense, the child himself must be seen as making a mountain out of a molehill. That is, the child must be seen as in error, having an erroneous conscience. Or else the example is really even more incidental to what is going on than that! As I have said, Maritain himself tells us in a footnote at the very end of his paper that the essay is ‘‘connected’’ with ST 1–2.89.6, on whether one can possibly have a venial sin on one’s soul together with original sin without ever having committed a mortal sin. Thomas is explaining that this cannot happen, because the first event in the moral life either rids one of original sin or involves one in mortal sin. Thus, venial sin can exist only later than mortal sin. That is why Thomas is led to confront us with the case of the child entering into the moral life. Thomas himself did not get into the case of the child merely because of ‘‘any first act of freedom,’’ whether in an adult or a child. He did not select the case of the child for the sake of ‘‘simplicity.’’ He had to discuss it because of the problem of original sin and the difficulties of the particular theological question he was confronted with. In any case, he means to consider a child who really is confronted with a problem of mortal sin. The object of the discussion is how the child is going to orient his life. Will the child order all else merely to himself, or will he order himself to a higher being? No matter what else the child may be thinking about, this is the focal issue. In Maritain’s scenario, the child ‘‘refrains from telling a lie, because lying is wrong. It would not be right to tell a lie. That would not be

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good.’’ What we have here is a focus on goodness, and thus we are told: ‘‘When he thinks: ‘It would not be good to do this,’ what is confusedly revealed to him, in a flash of understanding, is the moral good, with the whole mystery of its demands.’’24 Maritain moves us from the grasp of the good to a ‘‘whole mystery’’ which is revealed with it. Again, although Maritain suggests that some rare people may have a memory of such a moment, it is for the most part not remembered: He has answered the question ‘‘What do you live for?’’ He will not remember this event any more than the day when, in the midst of images, the life of reason and of universal ideas awakened in him. For what took place was not a philosophical discovery of his ego, but a spontaneous reflection involved in a practical process whose object was not, by any means, extraordinary or exceptional; and it is toward the object, not the event which goes on within himself, that the attention of the child is always turned.25 I must say that I do not here recognize the mental life of the child I have myself been. What goes on in one’s moral self is an object that children coming of age in morals might be thought to take an interest in. Nor is it easy to recognize in what Maritain describes the situation proposed by Thomas in ST 1–2.89.6. One difficulty we might mention is that Thomas finds it appropriate to view the child as faced with the voice of God issuing a command.26 Maritain (and not merely because of the difference between philosophy and theology) wishes to have the child say to itself (however nonconceptually), ‘‘It would not be good to do this.’’ The difference probably relates to Maritain’s conception of the natural law as pure product of divine reason rather than as expression of the divine will, and as known through inclination, not through concepts.27 It does also relate, we might concede, to Cajetan’s speaking, as we shall see, of acting for the bonum honestum. In any case, we have now before us something of what Maritain wishes to consider. In section 2 of his paper, which is entitled ‘‘The Implications of the First Act of Freedom,’’ we get what Maritain calls the act’s ‘‘immanent dialectic.’’ That is, having placed the emphasis on the implicit rather than the explicit, Maritain now wishes to explore that hidden domain. How else can he do this, save by looking at the intelligible necessities

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involved in any act of moral importance, as found in adults, and reading them into the hidden area? We note that ‘‘immanent dialectic’’ is taken as equivalent to ‘‘secret dynamism.’’ It is presented as having three ‘‘implications.’’ The first is that the intellect knows the distinction between good and evil, and knows that the good ought to be done because it is good. Maritain here stresses the transcendence of this grasp over the whole order of empirical convenience and desire.28 This in turn implies that there is: ‘‘An ideal and indefectible order of proper consonance between our activity and our essence, a law of human acts transcending all facts.’’29 This is the second implication, and I say it is ‘‘in turn’’ implied by the first because Maritain himself derives it from the first, by pointing out that the first surpasses the empirical and concerns what ought to be.30 The third implication is presented in a much longer paragraph than the other two and seems to move through a few stages itself. Maritain sees the law he has mentioned as depending on a superior reality. He says: ‘‘Such a law carries in the world of actual existence the requirements of an order that depends on a reality superior to everything and which is Goodness itself—good by virtue of its very being, not by virtue of conformity with anything distinct from itself. Such a law manifests the existence of a Separate Good transcending all empirical existence and subsisting per se, and subsists primarily in this Separate Good.’’31 We must pay close attention to this claim, that the second implication is law, and that the third is its requiring a Separate Good in which it primarily exists.32 Certainly we would agree that the order of goodness requires the existence of subsisting Goodness. The questions I have are what sort of knowledge we should attribute to the moral debutant, and whether we are willing the goodness of this Good as a subsisting good, that is, as a good thing for which we will good things. Do we have a friendly love33 for the subsisting Good? Such a love is necessary for the true moral goodness. The Good must be a personal being and must be treated as that for the sake of which we ourselves exist. We must be putting ourselves at the service of the Good. Maritain thus far has been speaking of the good, and thus not of a person in the way we usually think of a person. This is in part because he

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thinks that we see this higher being in our very contemplation of the goodness of good actions. That is, Maritain is following somewhat the line of thinking we find in Thomas’s fourth way (of proving the existence of a God), where one concludes to the existence of a maximal good, starting from the vision of the order of goods in hierarchy.34 On the other hand, a ‘‘law’’ is something that might put us more on the path of the fifth way, where government reveals a Mind that stands at the origin of universal government. But we begin to come to such a conclusion as Maritain continues to talk. He says that we can make such a total commitment only if the Separate Good is both the Good and my Good. This leads him to speak of the natural root of such a choice. We read: The initial act which determines the direction of life and which— when it is good—chooses the good for the sake of the good, proceeds from a natural e´lan which is also, undividedly, an e´lan by which this very same act tends all at once, beyond its immediate object, toward God as the Separate Good in which the human person in the process of acting, whether he is aware of it or not, places his happiness and his end. Here we have an ordainment which is actual and formal, not virtual—but in merely lived act (in actu exercito), not in signified act—to God as ultimate end of human life.35 Thus, Maritain begins here by speaking of the naturalness and the ‘‘mineness,’’ we might say, of the Good, but then eases into the identification of the Good with God. This is not unexpected, but does it really do justice to the situation? Does the distinction between lived act and ‘‘signified act’’ (by which he means a conceived act) really do the trick? Certainly such notions as ‘‘confusion’’ seem serviceable, but I wonder how much of this really should be called ‘‘preconceptual.’’ In any case, Maritain concludes the section in which he presents the three implications constituting the ‘‘immanent dialectic’’ or ‘‘secret dynamism’’ by saying that although these implications ‘‘are not disclosed to the intellect’’ of the child, the child nevertheless has them in his first deliberation, in which he has an ‘‘explicit idea, no matter how confused’’ of the bonum honestum.36

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Section 3 is entitled ‘‘A Non-Conscious Knowledge of God.’’ In it we have at least two accounts. First, we have what is pretty much a restatement of what we have seen, but one that makes more definite the sort of knowledge of God that is of the essence of the situation, and indeed distinguishes it from another sort of knowledge of God that is not relevant. None of this is to be identified altogether with the knowledge of the moral good and bad. Thus we read: In his first act of freedom . . . the child does not think explicitly of God, or of his ultimate end. He thinks of what is good and of what is evil. But by the same token he knows God, without being aware of it. He knows God because, by virtue of the internal dynamism of his choice of the good for the sake of the good, he wills and loves the Separate Good as ultimate end of his existence. Thus, his intellect has of God a vital and non-conceptual knowledge which is involved both in the practical notion (confusedly and intuitively grasped, but with its full intentional energy) of the moral good as formal motive of his first act of freedom, and in the movement of his will toward this good and, all at once, toward the Good. The intellect may already have the idea of God and it may not yet have it. The non-conceptual knowledge which I am describing takes place independently of any use possibly made or not made of the idea of God, and independently of the actualization of any explicit and conscious knowledge of man’s true last End.37 We see that the child has a notion, such as it is, of the good and the bad. He has no notion, as regards this act of freedom, of God, but knows God by virtue of both the notion aforementioned and the movement of the will. The extent to which we are asked to set aside conceptual knowledge of God here is remarkable. If it is not ‘‘in the way,’’ an impediment, it is certainly not appropriate as a help or as furthering the process of which Maritain wishes to speak. We come now to a slightly lengthier paragraph in which we are given many more hints that the will is doing much work here for the intellect. I note that this paragraph begins with ‘‘In other words.’’ We read: In other words, the will, hiddenly, secretly, obscurely moving (when no extrinsic factor stops or deviates the process) down to the term

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of the immanent dialectic of the first act of freedom, goes beyond the immediate object of consciousness and explicit knowledge (the moral good as such); and it carries with itself, down to that beyond, the intellect, which at this point no longer enjoys the use of its regular instruments, and, as a result, is only actualized below the threshold of reflective consciousness, in a night without concept and without utterable knowledge.38 We see here that it is more than a hint we are being given of the role of the will. Far more, it would seem, than the notion of moral goodness itself, it is the will that takes us beyond notions to encounter God. For indeed, it is God who is the ‘‘beyond’’ that has been mentioned; thus Maritain continues: The conformity of the intellect with this transcendent object: the Separate Good (attainable only by means of analogy) is then effected by the will, the rectitude of which is, in the practical order, the measure of the truth of the intellect. God is thus naturally known, without any conscious judgment, in and by the impulse of the will striving toward the Separate Good, whose existence is implicitly involved in the practical value acknowledged to the moral good. No speculative knowledge of God is achieved. This is a purely practical knowledge of God, produced in and by the movement of the appetite towards the moral good precisely considered as good. The metaphysical content with which it is pregnant is not grasped as a metaphysical content, it is not released. It is a purely practical, nonconceptual and non-conscious knowledge of God, which can coexist with a theoretical ignorance of God.39 Maritain says that this is the typical case that moral philosophy must consider, since it sees things ‘‘in the perspective of the most natural and most spontaneous development of moral life within us.’’40 What we must note, in the above account, is the role of the argument about the rectitude of the will as ‘‘the measure of the truth of the intellect’’ in the practical order. What does this mean, and in its true meaning, can it really be used to make the argument Maritain wishes to make about the power of the will to lead the mind to God? The rectitude of appetite as measure of truth has to do with judgment about things that we order

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toward ends, not as regards the ends themselves. The ends are proposed by reason, taken as prior to will. The appetite does not prescribe or propose the end. Rather, it tends toward the end prescribed by natural reason.41 Natural reason is prior to appetite. Thus, I maintain that Maritain is making the will do something that it cannot and should not be asked to do. the cajetan account Maritain himself advises us to read Cajetan’s commentary on ST 1–2.89.6, the text on venial and original sin.42 In Cajetan’s paragraph 6, the objector poses a question about the meaning of Thomas’s statement that ‘‘the first thing that at that time it occurs to a man to think about is deliberating about oneself.’’ Is it about a fact or about a duty (de facto, an de debito)? Is it that this thought, just as a matter of fact, does occur to the person beginning to have the use of free choice? Or is it simply something he should think about? He raises many difficulties for either reading, but it will be sufficient for us to see what they elicit from Cajetan. Cajetan, in paragraph 7, replies that the words of the text are to be understood not merely as regards a duty but as regards a fact; and they are to be taken as referring to oneself in a way as an end, and in a way as for an end. To make this clear, note that in the first occurring end there are two features to be found: (1) that which is appetitively sought (quod appetitur) and (2) the one for whom it is appetitively sought (cui appetitur). The first is loved with a concupiscible love, and the second with a friendly love. Cajetan here makes reference to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Thomas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics:43 each one loves the good proper to himself. And further, the friendly relations with one’s neighbor arise from one’s friendly relations with oneself.44 This being so, says Cajetan, the first one for whom good things are sought (primum cui appetitur) is oneself who does the seeking (est ipsemet appetens). And because the item concupiscibly sought is ordered to the one loved by friendly love, and not the converse, the first end, unqualifiedly so called, occurring to the one seeking, is himself, who is the end of all objects of concupiscible love, toward which all concupiscible objects are naturally ordered. Therefore, since the end is first in intention, and the youth himself is the first one loved by friendly love, for whom he loves concupiscibly

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de facto, it is necessary that the first thing de facto occurring to the boy’s will is himself, to whom he orders the other concupiscibles. This natural occurrence having been completed—by which the boy naturally wills for himself the good and happiness—it follows that he immediately, concerning the especially loved thing (de praecipue amato),45 which he now faces, that is, concerning himself, is solicitous of what ought to be sought for him: on that depends what is to be done, what is to be cared about (sollicitandum), what is to be suffered, and whatever else lies within his power. And because he is more loved, as regards his very self (secundum seipsum), than himself as regards his parts, or his partial intelligible aspects, the consequence is that the first thing calling for the youth’s attention (primum solicitans puerum) is to deliberate what for himself taken as a whole, not in this or that respect, is to be sought (appetendum). But this is to deliberate about himself and to order himself to an end, because that which for himself especially loved (praecipue amato), taken as a whole, is to be sought is the end toward which he himself is ordered (finis ad quem ipse ordinatur). Hence, if he judges as what is to be sought for himself the unqualified good, considered confusedly (bonum honestum in confuso), as at that age is normal (ut aetas illa consuevit), he has deliberated well concerning himself, locating his end in true happiness, though imperfectly and inchoatively; no more is required from a youth (a puero). But if not, he will be guilty of omission, as is said in ad 3. The idea, as I see it here, is that true love of oneself will reveal that one’s own good is to love God more than oneself. It does not matter that one naturally loves oneself first in time if eventually one loves God more than oneself. Of course, if at first one loved oneself as supremely lovable, that would already include a view of what there is, and the decision to put oneself first. The primary difficulty I see is that Cajetan seems to take natural love for oneself as necessarily first in time. He uses as basis for this the doctrine that the lovables that are with respect to another are derived from the lovables that are with respect to oneself, that is, the doctrine of Aristotle that Thomas uses in ST 1.60.3 sed contra, in asserting that we love ourselves by natural love. However, in ST 1.60.5 ad 1, it appears to me to be clear that this does not apply to the relation of oneself to God. Is there any reason, in coming to consider oneself rationally, one should not appear to

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oneself as ‘‘for an end’’? Thus, one’s first act of love would be one of friendship for God. Furthermore, Cajetan does not bring God in at all. He limits the case to seeking the bonum honestum. It is not clear that this satisfies Thomas’s doctrine. It would be a concupiscible good unless it is held to take one beyond oneself, as in ‘‘doing justice.’’ Is that viewed as presupposing a higher mind? Cajetan now, at paragraph 8, goes back to the objections that were made against the argument. It was said that if the meaning is that in fact one just does think of oneself and deliberates about oneself, then it is false: ‘‘good’’ is what occurs to us first; and the supposed reason for saying we deliberate about ourselves—namely that the end is first in intention, and we are the end to which other things are ordered—is an inadequate reason, because it is false that we are the end, since we are ordered to an end. And also it is false because given that we are the end, we need not deliberate about the end. To all this, Cajetan replies. Indeed, the argument necessarily concludes that in fact one encounters oneself as an end loved by friendship when first one has concupiscible love for the good. Because every concupiscibly loved item is so sought for someone, and since it is evidently not for another, it therefore is for oneself. Similarly, it is proved that one as a matter of fact encounters oneself as a thing about which to deliberate (ut deliberabilis), as regards the real order of things (quantum est ex rerum ordine), because one is the especially loved thing (praecipue amatus). And because the order of things at that time has not been misdirected by sin, accordingly as regards what is encountered, the factual series follows the order of nature. But it is true that the will does not necessarily accept that encounter, but rather can fail to think (non cogitare) and can omit, as is said in the text. Hence, also, no difficulty arises from the fact that the good or happiness (bonum aut beatitudo) occurs to him first, because they both occur as concupiscible items. Nor is there difficulty in the fact that he encounters himself first as an end. Indeed, from this we derive the reason that it is not a merely arbitrarily asserted point: because the end is the especially loved item (praecipue amatus), and concerning it first of all solicitousness follows. And thus, from its being the end loved by friendly love (esse finem amatum amicitia), there follows its being the primary deliberable item (esse primum deliberabile); for it is in such a way an end, that it can be for

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another end (est enim sic finis, quod potest esse ad alium finem). And because of that, it is not false that it is an end, and it is not at odds with the conclusion. Thinking back to what Maritain proposed, I am struck by the extent to which Cajetan was focusing on the encounter with oneself as an object of deliberation. Maritain does not have even this much explicit reflection. Rather, he presents an entirely other-directed mind with all sorts of significant events taking place in the background psyche of the child. Cajetan does not expect anybody to remember the event either, but it is a very different sort of event from what Maritain is describing. Also, Cajetan does us the service of using the distinction between concupiscible and friendly love. One can agree with Cajetan’s view that in the first act of freedom one must be seeking the good and happiness as concupiscible goods. The crucial issue is how one views oneself. If, as he says, one sees oneself as for an end, then one can proceed to an act that actually favors the end over one’s own individual self. Cajetan limits the end envisaged to the bonum honestum in confuso. It seems to me that since the natural love we have is an intellective love for God, as common good of all reality, even the beginner must have a natural knowledge of God, though a confused knowledge. This requires a natural reasoning process,46 but that is not a telling objection. The Natural Law and the First Act of Freedom As I said earlier, the first act in question involves more than natural law. Natural law pertains to the universal knowledge needed for morals, whereas the first act takes the form of a practical syllogism, including both universal and particular knowledge. We might try to indicate what some of the premises in such syllogizing might be. Thomas’s law ‘‘turn to me,’’ said by God to the human being, means that universally, ‘‘the human being ought to turn to God as to an ultimate end’’ is a primary law facing the moral agent. This is equivalent to saying that the first and common principle of natural law is ‘‘the human being ought to love God above oneself.’’ Obviously this contains much other knowledge, such as the superiority of God over the human being and the appropriateness for the inferior to be subject to the superior. ‘‘Act is prior to and better than potency,’’ as the metaphysician would say.

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What might be a particular premise? Here, it is necessary that the agent think of himself, and see the universal as applying to himself. ‘‘I am a human being, and the law applies to me.’’ The conclusion will be the act of self-dedication to God. If we try to see what might happen in the person who sins, failing to turn to God, we should first consider that here too, we have present the universal premise just seen, namely, ‘‘the human being ought to love God above oneself.’’ The natural law is known to all, particularly in its first and most common principles.47 However, if we look for the sources of sin, we should think first not of the universal premise but of the particular. How does the person view himself ?48 The root difficulty begins in the sensitive appetite, in the passions of the sensitive appetite. These can affect the imagination and the estimation one has of oneself, and this in turn affects the conception one has of oneself as a free agent.49 One must see perfection, happiness, in the fulfillment of oneself as a sentient being.50 Thus, we have a particular premise such as ‘‘I should get all the pleasure I can.’’51 Still pursuing the sinful syllogism, we turn to the universal. There are such extremely universal considerations as ‘‘one should order to the end all the things that will bring about the end.’’ But there are also such things as ‘‘a human being should do those things that foster his own being and perfection.’’ This, taken in combination with our particular ‘‘I, the human being, find being and perfection in pleasure,’’ leads to the conclusion that this pleasure here is to be sought, all things being equal. Because of the power of the particular premise, one neglects or omits the universal premise concerning God.52 The entire issue is, where has the ultimate end been located? The sin we are seeing is one of omission. In the very moment of entering into the moral universe, one must be declaring an ultimate end.53 One has the possibility of locating that ultimate end in God.54 To act at that moment merely for pleasure is to locate the ultimate end in pleasure. This is an event that involves a view of oneself as perfected essentially by such pleasure. Now that I have at least tried to formulate these syllogisms, I would like to turn more directly toward the natural law as involved in this. Maritain certainly saw the need for knowledge of God in the case of the first act of freedom, a knowledge he presented as stemming from the

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will. Cajetan seems to be content with a seeking of the bonum honestum. Nevertheless, Thomas Aquinas speaks of natural law as requiring us to turn to God. I wish to explore further what this means in the context of Thomas’s own writings. In the De malo text quoted earlier, it is notable that Thomas makes a parallel between the first principles of apprehension and the natural appetite. The ultimate end naturally occurs in appetite. Should we then be featuring appetite, inclination, in our discussion of natural law? Is natural law more a matter of inclination than of cognition? Can we put inclination and cognition together in the formula ‘‘knowledge through inclination’’? Can the inclination itself be the informant as to what natural law is? We certainly see Thomas use natural inclinations to teach us something about natural law. That is, Thomas will present natural inclinations in subhuman things in order to argue the naturalness of certain inclinations in man.55 Nevertheless, Thomas’s primary doctrine concerning inclination is that it presupposes cognition. The cognition need not be in the being that has the inclination, but in the case of what is proper to the human being, the inclination is preceded by cognition: natural inclination is based on natural cognition. One may well say that the inclination has a cognitive dimension, but that dimension has priority within the whole.56 Thus, I maintain that Thomas’s natural inclinations, as presented in ST 1–2.94.2, presuppose natural knowledge. The knowledge is completed in inclination, since it is practical knowledge, and the intellect cannot be practical save as natural principle of appetite. This means, then, that the inclinations of which Thomas speaks, and which are useful as signs as we reflect on the natural knowledge (the knowledge itself is so self-evident that it is hardly noticed),57 help us focus upon definite natural lights: inclinations presuppose lights. There is no doubt that there is a kind of echo effect that reinforces our knowledge. The lights are in a very friendly setting, inasmuch as they have inclinations attendant upon them. The moral universals are a more connatural knowledge than the theoretical universals.58 Let us come to the text of ST 1–2.94.2, in which we are presented with the first precept of natural law, and with the order of the subsequent precepts, based on the order of natural inclinations. The extent to which the doctrine of order in this article has been obscured is remarkable. Thus, interpreters such as Germain Grisez, William May, and John Finnis have

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denied the moral significance of the presented order.59 Even Benedict Ashley, though insisting on an order, has, I believe, missed the true interpretation. He speaks of four basic goods, and this in the teeth of the three levels of inclination that are presented. He sees the first level as exclusively concerned with the preservation of the individual.60 I have long maintained that the first level of inclination spoken of by Thomas should rather be considered in terms of the great universality it has. It pertains to all substances as such. Thus, it has not to do merely with the individual as an individual. It rather has to do with the being and wellbeing of being as such. It is the inclination of the creature as a creature. This is the inclination that is present in each thing, but present in that thing according to the proper mode of being of the thing. Thus we read: ‘‘For there is present firstly in man an inclination toward the good according to the nature that he has in common with all substances, inasmuch as all substances have appetite for the conservation of their own being according to their own nature. And according to this inclination those things through which the life of man is preserved and the contrary impeded pertain to natural law.’’61 This should not be read, for example, as though it did not include the tendency to reproduction, by which the species is preserved. The second level of inclination to which St. Thomas refers, the more special one, concerns what man has in common with the other animals, such as male-female relations and the upbringing of offspring. This is not just reproduction, but a special setting for reproduction. Each thing has inclination for its own preservation, not only as to the individual, but as to the species.62 Thus, I maintain that the best commentary on the first level of inclination in ST 1–2.94.2 is ST 1.60.1–1.60.5, in which we have detailed discussion of the natural love found in angels and human beings. We see that the inclination common to all substances is a natural love for itself as an individual, and even more for its species, and still more again for the author of being, God himself. In this respect, one should notice that in ST 1–2.94.2, the third level of inclination, concerning what is proper to the human species, does not speak of love of God, but of knowledge concerning God. It mentions our desire to know the truth concerning God. It is the desire to know that is being considered, an inclination not found in all substances. The precept he formulates in its connection is ‘‘avoid ignorance.’’ Love of God, on the other hand, is presented everywhere in Thomas’s writings as present in every substance as such, and

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indeed such that every being loves God naturally more than it loves itself. It is this domain of what might be called ‘‘transcendental inclination’’ that is being referred to in the first place in ST 1–2.94.2. The other two sorts of inclination are clearly relative to the genus and the species.63 I see two main questions to be posed about this reading of the natural law principles. First, how does this law of love for God work (the true nature of human life is love of God by mind and will) in a doctrine such as Thomas’s, where knowledge of the existence of God is the result of a reasoning process? Can God’s existence be known even before we have the idea of the good? Or soon after? And second, if we have a natural love for God, is it not then necessary that we love God? Can we really do otherwise? Surely the question about knowledge of God requires, first, that we distinguish between the demonstrations of the philosophers and the spontaneous reasoning of the common man, who naturally follows a certain line of thinking. Our best references to this in Thomas Aquinas’s writings are in three places. Two were mentioned earlier in this book.64 The third occurs in his Commentary on the Psalms,65 in the commentary on the following verses of Psalm 8: Out of the mouth of infants and of nurslings you have perfected praise because of your foes; that you might destroy the enemy and the avenger. Because I will see the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have established.66 There had previously been mention of the majesty of God. Thus, Thomas says: Then, when he says: Out of the mouth [ex ore], he shows that it [the majesty of God] is maximally manifest. And firstly he shows the manifestness; secondly the reason for it, there [where he says]: Because I will see [Quoniam videbo]. That it is manifest he proves: because that is manifest which is placed within [inditum] all, no matter how simple [they are], as by a sort of natural knowledge [quasi quadam naturali cognitione]. For there are two sorts of men who follow natural and right instinct [naturalem et rectum instinctum], namely, the simple and the wise. That the wise know God is no great matter; but that the simple do is [a great matter]. But there are some who pervert the right instinct,

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and these people reject knowledge of God. See Psalms 81: They have not known, that is, they willed not to know, nor have they understood etc. See Job 22: They have said to God: Go away from us; we do not want your ways. But God has brought it about that through them, that is, through the simple people who follow the natural instinct, are confounded those who pervert the natural instinct. By ‘‘infants’’ the simple are signified, see 1 Peter 2: Like newborn infants, reasonable, without guile. Therefore he says: Your name is admirable; but in such a way that out of the mouth of infants and nurselings you have brought praise to perfection, [you] who interiorly instigate to this; and this because of your enemies, who oppose your science and knowledge. See Philemon 3: Enemies of the cross of Christ. . . . This takes place when the simple recognize God, and others pervert the study of natural knowledge, lest they know God himself. Next, he subjoins the reason for this manifestness, saying Because [Quoniam]. Tully says in the book De natura deorum, and it was said also by Aristotle, though in those books of his that we have among us it is not found, that if some man were to enter a palace, which he would see [to be] well disposed, none is so lacking in intellect [amens] that, even though he would not see how it had been made, he would not perceive that it had been made by someone. And this the order of the celestial bodies especially shows. For there were some who, erring, attributed the causes of things to the necessity of matter: hence, they said all had been made because of the warm, the cold, the dry, and the wet, as by the elements that have these properties. But this, if it can have an appearance [of truth] regarding other things, can in no way [have such appearance] in [the case of] the celestial bodies; for they cannot be attributed to the necessity of matter, where one is so distant from the other, and they take so great a time to complete their course. That cannot be traced back to anything but an intelligent cause. And so Scripture, when it wants to manifest the power of God, directs us to a consideration of the heavens. My interest here is in the fact that though Thomas speaks of a ‘‘natural knowledge’’ had by the simple, and of them following ‘‘natural instinct,’’ he still sees this phenomenon as having its reason, its source, in a grasp of

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the cosmic situation.67 He sees the common man as spontaneously sizing things up, somewhat as in the Summa contra gentiles (SCG) and the secunda secundae of the Summa theologiae. Thus, I see no sign in Thomas of any appeal to the will as a special vehicle of the natural instinct to know God. Notice also the idea, here, that it is moral perversion that leads to lines of thinking in natural science that hide God. We would not have to say that all people who are locked into such a worldview are morally culpable, but we would certainly have to consider some sort of mass inculpable ignorance. Also, they might be theists in spite of their convictions about what the natural world shows.68 The other question I posed above was how we could fail to love God above all things if we do so naturally. Thomas himself faces and answers this question.69 As the universal common good, God must be loved by all more than their very selves. In this world, where we do not have the vision of the divine essence, but know him through various particular effects, we can be displeased with some of those effects, such as punishment of the unjust, and can hate God, considered as the cause of such effects. But even in this world, each one naturally loves God as universal common good more than one’s own self. Notice that this ‘‘common good’’ is loved not merely as a concupiscible good but as an object of friendly love, that is, as a personal being. However, such necessity pertains to the object, the specification, of our acts of will. It remains true that, as to exercise, that is, on the side of the acting subject, no act is necessary. We can always omit to think of the universal common good.70 The practical syllogism of the sinning person, sketched earlier, involves precisely such a failure to consider the universal proposition expressing the natural law to love God, another universal having been used as principle of the reasoning.71 By way of conclusion to these reflections, I will simply say that Thomas regularly envisages the young human mind as capable of knowing God in a conscious way, and of considering God as a source of law. Cajetan seems less confident that God will be known, preferring to limit the youth to a knowledge of the unqualified good. Maritain thought that it was right to bring God in, but in an implicit way that would be explained in and through the act of the will attaining to love of the unqualified good. I see no reason to disagree with Thomas.

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Chapter 15

JEAN PORT ER ON NATURAL LAW: THOMISTIC N OTES

Introduction Jean Porter’s book Natural and Divine Law1 aims at making theologians aware of medieval Scholastic theological discussions of natural law. The sources she consults include both theologians and canonists, extending over a period including the twelfth and much of the thirteenth century. She sees such discussions as a possible fruitful source for contemporary Christian ethics. As a former student of Etienne Gilson’s, I rejoice to see this interest in medieval thought and in its theological dimension. As a disciple of St. Thomas, I am sure that acquaintance with the background against which he formulated his views of natural law can help one appreciate the magnitude of his accomplishment. A reader, one would hope, might benefit from such a book by coming to see how what were often confused and confusing presentations eventually become coherent in the works of Thomas. Thus, many years ago Father Thomas Deman used the history of moral discussions by theologians to present Thomas as the founder of moral theology, establishing its order and its place within the unity of sacra doctrina.2 However, Porter’s own intentions do not run in that direction. She is interested, rather, in what a knowledge of the nitty-gritty of medieval theological discussion can do to dispel the sort of ‘‘neat package’’ image of natural law that is somewhat the result of its presentation both by modern philosophers and in some Church documents. Jacques Maritain used to insist on how much ‘‘rationalist recasting’’ and ‘‘the advent of a 24 2

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geometrising reason’’ had by the eighteenth century ruined the conception of natural law.3 I would say that an attempt to reestablish an awareness of the difficulty and variety of natural-law discussion is well worthwhile. However, my ultimate conviction from such an exploration of medieval natural-law theory, including the texts of Thomas with their very thoughtful distinctions between levels of natural-law precepts (and the possibilities or impossibilities of dispensation, whether by God alone or by human judges), is simply that natural law is not enough. I immediately recall the first article of the first question of the Summa theologiae (ST) of St. Thomas. We have need of a divine revelation, not only as regards knowledge of truths that transcend human reason but even of those truths necessary for salvation that are within the range of our reason. The truths about God at which reason can arrive are known only by a few, after a long time, and with a mixture of error.4 And this need, Thomas eventually makes clear, also concerns truths about how humans should live their lives. Natural law needs the support of divine authority, at least in the present weakened condition of the human being in this world.5 Thus, I was pleased to see ‘‘divine law’’ in the title of the book. In fact, a main interest of Porter’s is to make us aware of the theological context in which the medievals theorized about natural law. Again, this kind of interest puts one in mind of Etienne Gilson’s autobiographical Le philosophe et la the´ologie, in which he recounted how, in order to establish the existence of authentic philosophizing during the medieval period, when he was faced with the ‘‘axiom’’ that there was no philosophizing between the Greeks and Descartes, he had to rediscover what theology was in the Middle Ages. How could it constitute such a friendly biosphere for sound philosophy?6 With natural law also, I would say, there is no reason to think that theology, particularly medieval theology, was not an exceptionally good context for development of knowledge of it. However, it does seem to me, in reading Porter, that her insistence on the medieval theological setting for natural-law discussion tends to move in a rather particularizing direction, to what constitutes a historicizing of the concept of natural law. She tells us: ‘‘My aim throughout has been to present these medieval authors as conversation partners from whom we can learn, even as we transform their ideas in the process of appropriating them for our own moral reflections.’’7 I wonder if one can ‘‘transform’’ an idea. One

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can place an idea in a larger framework, but the idea is generally the expression of a form, such that to change it by adding or subtracting a note is to eliminate it. Here in this article, I propose to move through Porter’s book, expressing a few impressions. My point of view is that of a student of St. Thomas and of someone having, I hope, concerns appropriate for present-day Christian moral philosophers. Natural Precepts One of the things that Porter aims to do is stress the distance between principles and conclusions in natural law. This distance can result in an indeterminateness as regards specific moral precepts.8 In that line of thinking, she criticizes9 Germain Grisez’s reading of ST 1–2.94.2, which sees Thomas as presenting a multiplicity of precepts that are self-evident to all. She does not understand Thomas to be speaking in that article of many self-evident precepts at any very specific level. In arguing that he does not mean that, she holds that the precepts he has in mind do not have the predicate included in the notion of the subject (as the article itself explained the nature of the self-evident proposition). We read: ‘‘He does not say that these human goods are self-evident, but rather that they are naturally known, because they are not propositions which could be per se nota, that is to say known through the very meaning of the terms.’’10 This seems to me to reject the construction of the text. Thomas, having presented the first principle, that the good is to be done (faciendum) and pursued, and the bad to be avoided (vitandum), immediately envisages the development of the multiplicity of precepts, very much in the terms of the first principle: ‘‘And upon this are founded all the other precepts of the natural law,11 in such fashion that all those things to be done or avoided [facienda vel vitanda] pertain to the precepts of natural law that practical reason naturally apprehends as being human goods.’’ Now, the question is whether in saying this Thomas is envisaging reasoning processes, or simply more particular apprehensions of goods. For example, is ‘‘ignorance is to be avoided’’ a conclusion of a syllogism such as ‘‘the humanly bad is to be avoided, and ignorance is an instance of the humanly bad’’? Or is ‘‘ignorance is to be avoided’’ rather the fruit of an experience in which ignorance is encountered as what is meant by ‘‘the humanly bad’’ and so is immediately seen as ‘‘that which is to be avoided’’

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(with no middle term)? It appears to me that it is that latter sort of derivation that is meant by Thomas. Just as we do not expect a reasoning process to be involved in the sequence of intelligibles ‘‘being,’’ ‘‘true,’’ ‘‘good,’’12 so neither is there a reasoning process required in the application of ‘‘goodness’’ to the particular objects that are naturally apprehended as human goods. Thus, I believe that those are correct who see ST 1–2.94.2 as presenting many precepts that are per se nota to all. However, the precepts must be indeterminate enough that they do not have the determinateness of the Ten Commandments. The sort of precepts Thomas has in mind are known through the very meaning of the terms. I think Porter is wrong to distinguish the doctrine of goods naturally apprehended from the doctrine of per se nota precepts. Ignorance, naturally apprehended as a humanly bad object, is apprehended as a vitandum. I think Thomas deliberately uses the term ‘‘apprehendit’’ here to indicate the directness of the knowledge, just as he speaks of ‘‘apprehendit’’ in such texts as ST 1.85.5 and ST 1.58.4, when he wishes to indicate the primary experience prior to any compositions or divisions. The precept merely expresses the concrete application of the first principle. It is true that Thomas in ST 1–2.94.2 is not very explicit as to an exact list of precepts, preferring to assign fields in accordance with the three levels of natural inclination he notes.13 And already, by the time we get to the particular applications that are the Ten Commandments, we are said (in the present prima secundae context, at any rate) to be in the domain of conclusions, not per se nota principles. It is, however, true that St. Thomas changed his view of the presence of the per se notum as regards the precepts of natural law. Thus, whereas in the prima secundae the Ten Commandments are presented as immediate conclusions from the first principles, by the time he writes the secunda secundae Thomas has decided that they are most manifest principles of natural law; thus, they are surely being considered as per se nota.14 Natural Law and Nature natural social hierarchy In her discussion of the idea of nature among those she is speaking of, and the sources of that idea, Porter speaks of Platonic natural justice and

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its implications for an idea of social hierarchy. Her citation15 of William of Conches shows us the importance of the divine origin of nature for the entire approach: nature is an expression of divine wisdom. However, she tells us that the doctrine of social hierarchy, although important for some groups from the twelfth century to the nineteenth-century papal encyclical Rerum novarum, was not central or primary for ‘‘the scholastic concept of natural law that we are examining.’’ Thus, we are given a reference to Thomas Aquinas. Porter says: Yet the more distinctive Platonic idea of a natural social hierarchy, and of society as a body, play at most a secondary role in their reflections on the natural law. It is worth noting that Aquinas, who does make use of a Platonic idea of natural justice in his commentary on The Divine Names of pseudo-Dionysius (De Divinis Nominibus X, 1, 857), nonetheless repudiates the view that social inequalities reflect a natural hierarchy among human beings, comparable to the angelic hierarchy (Summa theologiae I 109.2 ad 3).16 She is concerned about human natural social hierarchy. The reference to Thomas’s ST is somewhat deceptive. It is a short statement in a discussion of the condition of the fallen angels, the demons. As with all angels, Thomas presents them as each specifically different from the other, and as ordered according to superiority and inferiority of natures. Following on that, he presents them as having an order of ‘‘praelatio,’’ that is, the action of the inferior is subject to the action of the superior. The third objection interestingly proposes two possible bases for such social hierarchy (praelatio). The first is nature, which is rejected on the grounds that subjection or servitude does not have its origin in nature, but is the result of sin. Thomas’s answer is that the demons are not equal as to nature; hence, in them there is natural social hierarchy (naturalis praelatio). He immediately adds that one does not find this in human beings, because they are by nature equal (qui natura sunt pares).17 What we get from this is that human social hierarchy is not natural in the way that angelic hierarchy is. However, this is not the best text upon which to base one’s judgment of Thomas’s doctrine of the human situation. The best texts are ST 1.96.3 and ST 1.96.4. The first of these details the different sorts of inequality that were suitably to be present in the state of innocence (supposing, that

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is, no original sin). The second expressly presents the governing of one human being by another in that state of innocence, and quotes with approval St. Augustine calling this ‘‘the natural order.’’18 In short, equality as to specific nature is not the only grounds for natural social hierarchy.19 Indeed, it is hard to see any difference between the sort of thing Thomas is teaching in the text of In De divinis nominibus to which she refers and what one finds in ST 1.21.1, on divine justice (the order of the universe appears in both natural and voluntary things).20 It is true that there is not the same sort of natural hierarchy in angels and in human beings, but that does not eliminate natural social hierarchy from human beings. In this connection we might mention here something Porter says in the next chapter, where her interest is in the theological character of the Scholastic concept of natural law. She speaks of the Scholastics’ selective appropriation of the traditions they had at their disposal.21 In particular she mentions the repudiation of Aristotle’s doctrine of human inequality. For this repudiation by Thomas Aquinas she refers us to ST 2–2.47.12.22 This is a difficult issue. In fact, in the article, Thomas is distinguishing levels of prudence and explaining the difference between that of ruler and that of subject. He explicitly allows that an underling precisely as an underling has no share in government. On the other hand, any human being, as rational, participates in something of rule, as having rational judgment, and to that extent it pertains to such a person to have prudence. He refers us to Aristotle himself on this, where Aristotle speaks of the governed having prudence like a manual laborer’s possession of art. In the replies to the objections in the article, one sees Thomas’s way of handling the doctrine of natural servitude presented in the Politics. The servant is said not to have the deliberative faculty, taking the servant precisely as servant.23 This is exactly the same thing Thomas presents as Aristotle’s meaning in his commentary on Aristotle’s Politics.24 He certainly does not present himself as making a ‘‘selection.’’ And again, if one looks at Summa contra gentiles (SCG), we find Thomas referring with approval to Aristotle on natural servitude. He even finds that Aristotle and Proverbs agree on that.25 human morality and the natural world Speaking of ‘‘Medieval Naturalism and Its Implications for Today,’’ Porter contrasts a kind of ‘‘sacralization’’ of morals in the modern world with

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a more naturalistic view of morals. In speaking of ‘‘sacralization,’’ she has in mind something associated with Immanuel Kant: ‘‘Western societies have been deeply shaped by Kant’s powerful argument that the experience of moral obligation represents a discontinuity with the phenomenal world of nature and ordinary human experience, with its implication that morality is our only point of access to transcendence.’’ She also has in mind ‘‘what Mary Douglas describes as ‘that still-continuing process of whittling away the revealed elements of Christian doctrine, and the elevating in its place of ethical principles as the central core of true religion.’ ’’26 She argues that the medieval Scholastic continuity of nature and reason is more compatible with those who appreciate the evolutionary origin of humanity, including its morality. We read: We do not seem to be able to avoid a sense of humiliation at finding ourselves so much like the other animals, precisely with respect to that aspect of our humanity, our moral sense, which once seemed so god-like. From the Christian standpoint, this is surely salutary. Anything that challenges our pride and reminds us of our limitations as creatures deserves at least a hearing among Christian theologians. Yet, with only a few exceptions, theologians have not yet attempted to come to terms with the work of evolutionary psychologists and those philosophers influenced by them.27 Doubtless she is right in criticizing the described modern tendency. An outlook more like that of the medievals would also encourage more theological interest in ecology and the future of nature. However, I am somewhat concerned with the way Porter presents the ‘‘continuity’’ between the human moral animal and the lower orders of nature. Our moral sense not only ‘‘seems’’ godlike. It is godlike. Long before any modern view of morality as transcendent or sacred, there is the sort of medieval Scholastic thinking that one finds in the works of Thomas Aquinas. Consider the prologue to the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae—the presentation of the whole of morals, precisely in the light of the human being as the image of God, and this in function of man’s ability to determine his own actions.28 And although there is obvious and profound continuity between the animal world and the human world, there is, for Thomas, an infinite29 difference. Consider

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the chapters of SCG 3.111–3.113, which precisely introduce the treatises on law and grace. The argument is that providence, although it is concerned with all creatures, has a special character as regards the rational creatures. Furthermore, basing himself on the condition of the intellectual nature, Thomas in chapter 112 teaches that the rational creatures are cared for for their own sake, whereas the nonrational creatures are cared for for the sake of the rational. Humility is a virtue, but it compares our status as humans to the status of the divine nature.30 In a moral context, Thomas certainly does not see us as all that similar to the nonrational animal. The position of the human being is such that the human soul is the goal of all matter,31 but the human soul requires special creation by God for each individual, beyond ordinary natural generation.32 It is right to stress the spirituality of the lower realms of nature. Aristotle (so very different from Descartes in this respect) stressed that no part of an animal is purely material or purely immaterial.33 And that is the more medieval outlook, judging by the genuinely medieval case of Thomas Aquinas. Porter says: The scholastics show us that it is possible to interpret a naturalistic account of morality in a theologically satisfactory way. To put it another way, the scholastic concept of the natural law implies a theological loss, at least from one standpoint, but it also brings a compensating theological gain. The loss is that, for the scholastics, morality is desacralized; it is seen as a natural phenomenon, as an expression of the human person’s continuity with the rest of the natural world, and not as in itself a medium for transcendence. In compensation, however, the scholastics offer a theological interpretation of this morality, precisely because they interpret the natural world itself theologically. Just as the visible, natural world is an expression of God’s wisdom and goodness for them, so human morality, considered as a part of that natural world, is also an expression of divine wisdom and goodness.34 Is human morality ‘‘part of the natural world’’? We enter here into problems about the meaning of the word ‘‘nature.’’ It can be used in a more limited way, or in a transcending way. Thus, Thomas, speaking of

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God’s justice, says: ‘‘The order of the universe, which is apparent both in natural and in voluntary things, demonstrates the justice of God.’’35 He distinguishes between the natural order and the order found in the domain of the voluntary, which could well be called the ‘‘moral’’ order. It is true that the very doctrine of natural law means that the moral order has its roots in ‘‘nature’’; but what is meant by ‘‘nature’’ here? Consider ST 1.60.1, which asks, is there natural love in angels? The answer is yes, and this is based on ‘‘nature’’ meaning ‘‘the essence of a thing.’’ There is a natural love in the angel because the nature, being the angel’s essence, is prior to the angel’s intellectual power (and so is prior also to its will). And it is common to all nature, so understood, that it have an inclination.36 In nature at each level, that inclination is found in a mode in keeping with that level. In the angel the natural inclination is found in keeping with the mode of will. Now, it should be appreciated that this is not ‘‘nature’’ in the sense that Aristotle defines ‘‘nature’’ in the Physics.37 The natural world of Aristotle’s Physics is part of the ‘‘natural’’ world of the metaphysician, but other parts of that world transcend nature in the Physics sense. The beings of the world of Aristotle’s Physics do what they do in imitation of, and so love of, the divine.38 However, one enters the moral order inasmuch as one has a higher sort of nature, one that has an infinity as compared to the lower sort, one, that is, that transcends the lower sort of nature. And this is true even before one gets into discussions of grace and the supernatural. I would stress, then, that as seen in ST 1.60, angels are part of ‘‘nature,’’ too, in the sense that pertains to the discussion of natural love, natural inclination, and the natural law. The continuity of nature includes the nonliving, the subhuman living, the human, and the angelic: it is a union with an analogical unity. Now, evolution, as relevant to this discussion, is a development of the higher from the lower. At best, one finds in the other animals something akin to morality, a ‘‘participation’’ in prudence.39 Morality, properly so called, comes on the scene with the advent of the crucial difference, rationality. Thus, inasmuch as we look, in the evolutionary perspective, toward ‘‘the natural world’’ as what is less than the human, morality is not ‘‘part of the natural world.’’ Morality transcends the natural world.

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It is true, nevertheless, that human morality, as distinguished from angelic or divine, involves the problems proper to the intelligent being that finds its home in the material world. A moral agent that has to mature, that needs to form habits for good living, is certainly in a ‘‘continuity’’ with the animal world. There is no question of making the human being a mind that merely uses a body. One of the most controverted of moral issues, the doctrine of those sexual sins (luxuria) called ‘‘sins against nature,’’ focuses precisely on the substantial unity of the rational animal. That is why opponents of the doctrine so often distinguish sharply between the merely ‘‘biological’’ level of the human being, on the one hand, and our rationality, on the other. What is good in Porter’s statement, as I see it, is the point about the natural world as the expression of divine wisdom. I would not, however, accept ‘‘desacralized,’’ nor would I admit that morality ‘‘is not in itself a medium of transcendence’’ for the medieval Scholastics or in truth. If ‘‘morality’’ is taken to mean a purely natural sort of life, there is not the sort of transcendence possible that we mean by supernatural beatitude; but that is not the only acceptable meaning of ‘‘transcendence.’’ The entire ethics of Thomas Aquinas rests on the doctrine that nature is a cause that acts for an end, and that applies to ‘‘nature’’ in the metaphysical sense. This is a feature of the vision of being that carries the mind to the existence of a governing, authoritative cause, a source of law. Indeed, considering that ‘‘morality’’ here means the natural law, one immediately thinks of the doctrine of Augustine in De libero arbitrio as to the implications of our having access to immutable moral truths: this is a way to the existence of God. The very possession of moral wisdom on our part is a way to God: the truth such as ‘‘all men wish to be happy’’ is a pathway to God.40 The Scholastics surely did not get rid of that line of thinking.41 She continues: This does not imply for them that the moral life in itself offers a way to salvation; on the contrary, they insist that it does not. Nor would they deny that the actual beliefs and practices of men and women are often inadequate or corrupt. Nonetheless, because they affirm the inherent, immanent goodness of the natural world, they can affirm the value of human morality, with all its limitations and

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imperfections, because they see it as an expression of the goodness of the created order.42 What is said here must pertain to the natural dimension of human morality. When one sees that ‘‘the moral life in itself ’’ does not offer a way to salvation, one may be forgiven for wondering what is meant by ‘‘the moral life.’’ Thus, for Thomas Aquinas, ‘‘the moral consideration’’ is an expression that describes everything in the second part of the ST.43 Indeed, the natural moral virtues are not virtues in the unqualified sense of the word ‘‘virtue.’’ Only the infused moral virtues are perfect and are to be called, without qualification, ‘‘virtues.’’44 It is true that the acquired virtues and the acts that flow therefrom have a natural goodness that is an authentic moral goodness. But already, at this level, there is a transcendence of the merely subrational. Even on the natural level, the good that is sought by authentic natural virtue transcends infinitely the sort of imitation of the divine that is found in the being and life of subrational creatures.45 In this connection, one should keep in mind Thomas’s doctrine in the Quaestiones disputatae de malo concerning the punishment for original sin that is the lot of the unbaptized infant. In a state of pure nature, this would be the natural end of man, a contemplation of the divine on the part of the separated soul. Thus, even for purely natural morality, according to Thomas at any rate, there is always the view of the moral agent as in a social relation with God, a relation that transcends the mode of participation in the divine that pertains to subrational nature.46 Natural Law and Scripture In urging upon theologians a reexamination of medieval natural law theory, Porter has in mind the theological and canon law context in which that theory was developed. She sees awareness of this context as a remedy for excessive certitude at the level of specific precepts in morals. Much depends on how one conceives of the symbiosis of natural knowledge and supernatural faith in revelation. For Christian theologians, the view of the Scholastic concept of natural law as ‘‘theological’’ should pose no problem. As Gilson said, ‘‘everything in the ST of Thomas Aquinas is theology.’’47 This is true, even though much of it is fully philosophical.48 Philosophy can have its own existence within the Christian thinking sacra doctrina.49

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Still, I have no trouble believing that a presentation of the purely philosophical dimension of this theological doctrine is both possible and useful, even if, from a theological point of view, it would be ‘‘truncated,’’ as Porter contends.50 I say it could be ‘‘useful’’ though I am sure that it would only be accepted by a few. Porter says that ‘‘most [Scholastics] affirm that the natural law is in some sense the common possession of the human race, but again, this does not imply for them that it should be understood in non-theological terms.’’51 However, it seems to me that if one maintains that the law is universally knowable (and one can hardly ‘‘possess’’ a law without knowing it), there is some interest in finding the tenets held by those who have no apparent access to revelation. And that would be an interest in an understanding of the law in nontheological terms. Thus, when Thomas Aquinas poses the question, ‘‘does it pertain to natural law that one offer sacrifice to a God?’’ he argues as follows: Natural reason declares to the human being that he is subject to something higher, because of the shortcomings that he experiences in himself, as regards which he needs to be helped and directed by something higher. And whatever that is, it is what all call ‘‘a god.’’ But just as in [the realm of] natural things, the lower are naturally subject to the higher, so also natural reason instructs man in function of natural inclination that he show, in a way that befits his own [human] nature, subjection and honor to that which is above man.52 And throughout the article (especially the sed contra), Thomas Aquinas is asserting what all human beings actually do.53 Now, although obviously it is the professor of sacra doctrina speaking, such an interest is precisely what one might call ‘‘understanding natural law in nontheological terms.’’ Porter, in a section entitled ‘‘Natural Law and Scripture in Scholastic Thought,’’ opens very effectively with a presentation of Gratian. She rightly underlines the theological appropriateness of first presenting the natural law as something found in the law and the gospel. That makes sense inasmuch as the Christian finds instruction in how to live primarily from these sources. Nevertheless, I do not like the formula (Porter is interpreting Gratian and Hugh of St. Victor) that the natural law ‘‘can adequately be understood only through Scripture,’’ even when this is qualified by ‘‘at least as seen from the perspective of canon law.’’54 I would

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agree that its moral authority can be fully reckoned only when seen in that perspective. And I agree that we need ‘‘a properly theological understanding of law,’’ including natural law. The opening remark of Gratian’s55 is hardly rightly called a ‘‘definition’’ of natural law (Porter calls the passage ‘‘the scriptural definition with which he begins’’ and contrasts it with ‘‘Isidore’s definition’’).56 It tells us where to find that law, and gives us a fundamental example there found. Her quote from Isidore is much more truly definitional. Indeed, Porter herself goes on to quote Gratian as saying that ‘‘not everything in the Law and the Gospel belongs to the natural law.’’ Thus, the opening remark hardly aimed at ‘‘definition’’ in his mind. That does not take away from the rightness of beginning with the fact that the natural law is found in Scripture, particularly for someone writing from a Christian perspective. To speak of ‘‘definition,’’ however, promotes the idea that natural law is altogether indissociable from the theological context. Porter gives us hope for natural law’s having some substance of its own when, having stressed the use of Scripture to determine what pertains to the natural law, she asks whether this means that the Scholastic concept of natural law is ‘‘empty.’’57 She denies this by speaking of the need to interpret Scripture, and to say what in it pertains to natural law, so that one does not have to obey the whole law of Moses. This clearly suggests that there is a concept that can be distinguished from the scriptural concept, if not separated from it in the Scholastic context. Nevertheless, in stressing the theological character of the Scholastic concept of natural law, she says: ‘‘Any attempt to abstract a ‘‘purely rational’’ account from that concept will result in a fragmentary and unpersuasive account of the natural law.’’58 This seems to me an unsuitable stance, since the Scholastic concept of natural law itself suggests that the primary precepts of natural law that it finds in Scripture are ‘‘known to all.’’59 It pertains to the idea of natural law (the scriptural idea, that is), that natural law can be known ‘‘by those who do not have the law,’’ that is, as the gloss says, by those who do not have the written law, that is, Scripture.60 Accordingly one is not faithful to the scriptural concept if one holds that a purely rational account is impossible. It may very well have problems as to its ‘‘persuasiveness,’’ since the Scholastic account also holds that sin has weakened our practical knowledge and our natural inclinations.61

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Human Nature and ‘‘Alternative Ethics’’ the possibility of an alternative ethics Another aspect of Porter’s conception of the support that Scripture has provided for natural law, from the Scholastic concept of natural-law perspective, is that human nature itself is not an adequate source of morality. Thus, she argues that ‘‘morality is under-determined by human nature’’ so that ‘‘there is no one moral system that can plausibly be presented as the morality that best accords with human nature.’’62 This seems to me problematic. ‘‘Presented’’ to whom? Any moral point runs into trouble from somebody. The notion of a ‘‘moral system’’ as a unified item distinguishable from other ‘‘moral systems’’ may vary inasmuch as one aims to be more or less specific with one’s laws. If we take the golden rule and its negative counterpart, these might seem too minimal to constitute a ‘‘system’’; but if we take the Ten Commandments, although we may encounter opposition to them as a ‘‘moral system,’’ we might decide that such opposition is unreasonable.63 Still, we do not want the fundamental code to be too specific, precisely because that overlooks the variability of concrete situations. And ‘‘under-determined by human nature’’: is there some natural lack? Obviously, the field of reason must remain under-determined. That pertains to the very nature of reason as a source of action. That is why we have virtues and the need to develop them.64 Yet I would say that nature offers the true and ineluctable basis, and that the moral system proposed by Thomas in the ST might be said to accord best with human nature.65 Porter carries her conception of human nature as inadequate to furnish ‘‘the morality’’ to the point of sketching an alternative to the Christian conception of natural morality presented in the Scholastic concept of natural law. She tells us that humans are ‘‘naturally inclined’’ to seek gratification ‘‘even at others’ expense.’’66 Taken literally (i.e., I am having my way paid by others and against their will), that would mean that we have a natural inclination to injustice. She says that these tendencies may be expressed in ways that are ‘‘destructive and repugnant,’’ but she continues: ‘‘But they can also take forms that are striking, attractive, even praiseworthy, and it is possible to envision a moral system that gives them priority over inclinations towards care and reciprocity. Such a morality would be

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an authentic natural morality, and yet it would look very different from the scholastic concept of the natural law.’’67 Here, I would say we have something close to the core of our differences. She has told us: ‘‘There is nothing obvious about the claim that our basic tendencies to care, reciprocity, and non-maleficence should be given moral priority over other standing tendencies, or that our capacities for rationality and responsible freedom are morally the most significant aspects of our nature.’’68 Her point here is that the Scholastics selected among natural tendencies, and that the principles of selection were ‘‘largely scriptural.’’ That the Scholastics were attentive to Scripture before all else is true. That the priorities they found there should be taken as providing the authentic natural priorities seems to me the authentic Christian stance. It is certainly the Thomistic stance. The idea of there being more than one ‘‘authentic natural morality’’ hardly finds a place in a return to the ‘‘Scholastic concept of natural law.’’ In fact, Porter’s alternative natural ‘‘morality’’ or ethic, seeking gratification at others’ expense, takes up the stance of Thrasymachus in Republic 1:69 the primacy of the private self. It is not morality, but simple immorality.70 It is not ‘‘human nature’’ that leaves morality ‘‘under-determined’’; it is the nature as wounded that makes errors about what constitutes authentic morality likely. Pursuing this line of thinking, that is, the possibility of an authentic natural morality other than the natural morality that the Scholastics found in Scripture, Porter introduces a consideration of the views of Friedrich Nietzsche. She begins with the remark: ‘‘Recently, a number of philosophers have called attention to the Christian antecedents, and therefore the historical contingency, of even our most pervasive moral assumptions.’’71 The expression ‘‘have called attention to’’ suggests to me that these philosophers have really seen how things are, and are merely pointing them out. They do not merely ‘‘claim.’’ They ‘‘call attention to.’’ And I take it that the ‘‘therefore’’ is taken as part of the truth they have seen. That is, I read Porter as herself agreeing that our most pervasive moral assumptions are historically contingent. It does not follow that if our most pervasive moral assumptions [?] have Christian antecedents, then these assumptions are historically contingent. Suppose that human beings were having trouble with ‘‘1 Ⳮ 1 ⳱ 2’’ and God sent a prophet to declare this truth. It would remain a necessary truth, though the confirmation were historically contingent. So also, that

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a human being should love God, the author of being, above all, even above his own self, is not a historically contingent truth, even though it has been affirmed in the realm of historical contingency.72 I placed a question mark after the word ‘‘assumption,’’ since it suggests that a position is merely assumed rather than seen or proved. The Scholastic position (at least in Thomas Aquinas’s texts) is that our ‘‘most pervasive moral’’ principles are per se nota, most manifest, that is, seen in their truth.73 They are not merely assumptions or postulates. Even the word ‘‘pervasive’’ is questionable, at least when characterizing what are called ‘‘assumptions.’’ It can suggest an invasion, perhaps an alien influence, of the moral zone by the assumption. A moral principle, such as ‘‘be reasonable,’’ certainly affects, indeed quickens, every nook and cranny of the moral order, because reason is the proper source of order for everything in human life. nietzschean versus christian ethics Porter quotes John Casey on the subject of a ‘‘pagan’’ option to the Christian ethic: ‘‘We all inherit from Christianity, and from Kant, the assumption [!] that there must be some set of principles of conduct which apply to all men simply as men.’’74 Obviously, we could also be said to inherit that from Plato or Aristotle, or any number of other prominent ‘‘pagans.’’ Casey is presented as setting forth Nietzsche’s ‘‘noble ethic,’’ expressed as concentrating on action rather than motive. This ‘‘ethic’’ claims to ‘‘make values intelligible,’’ but appears to me to be the enemy of intelligibility. Basically, Porter is here saying that although this ‘‘ethic’’ seems to us morally repugnant, it corresponds to ‘‘natural inclinations.’’ We read: The difference between Nietzsche’s moral vision and Christian morality is not that the one is natural and the other is not. Both visions are grounded in natural human inclinations, but each one gives priority to a different set of inclinations and subordinates and directs the others in accordance with those it privileges. For this reason, Nietzsche presents us with an alternative construal of what is normative in human nature, in the light of which the distinctiveness of the scholastic account can more readily be appreciated.75 Now, this seems to me again to be at the heart of my difference with Porter. Obviously, the inclinations that she is calling ‘‘natural’’ have been

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in evidence from pre-Christian times, and have been assessed by preChristian philosophers as unnatural. Indeed, we remember Plato’s attempt to understand how the degeneration of society is possible, in terms of the nuptial number and the myth of the metals.76 Christianity teaches that our natural inclinations have been weakened, and we even have from St. Paul the doctrine of a ‘‘law of sin which dwells in my members.’’77 Porter seems to argue that we must take the Nietzsche ethic seriously in a way the Scholastics would not have done. I see her praise of the Nietzschean ideal as thoroughly wrong. Obviously, the passions, including anger and hate, are beautiful and naturally good, and are virtuous inasmuch as they are in accordance with the rule of reason. But the romantic exaltation of ‘‘spiritedness, aggression, fierceness,’’ heedless of the requirements of reason, is quite unacceptable. She asks to what degree the Scholastics themselves are aware of the distinctiveness of their concept of the natural law. Beginning her answer, she says: ‘‘Certainly they are aware that their scripturally governed approach to natural law reflection is not the only possible approach, and in that sense they see themselves as working within a particular framework of thought that is not shared by all rational persons.’’78 Now here, we might simply be speaking of the difference between those who possess a revelation and those who must depend on reason without revelation. The Scholastics saw themselves as in a very different position from that of some other ‘‘rational persons’’ such as Plato and Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas speaks of the anguish of such brilliant geniuses as Aristotle, Alexander, and Averroes concerning the doctrine of the possibility of human happiness.79 However, the contrast with Nietzsche was supposed to pertain to the most fundamental moral principles, not merely to ‘‘specific rules.’’ Thus Porter continues: I do not believe [the Scholastics] ever considered the possibility of a challenge to their fundamental moral convictions as radical as that which Nietzsche poses. For this reason, the scholastic concept of natural law, understood as implying specific moral commitments as well as an interpretation of morality, will be problematic for us in ways that it was not problematic for the scholastics themselves. The

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problem of moral relativism has been raised in sharper forms for us, not only by philosophers such as Nietzsche and his heirs, but also by experiences of moral disagreement in an increasingly pluralist and international world. At this point, it is impossible to deny the reality of genuine, serious disagreement among different traditions even with respect to fundamental moral commitments.80 As for whether the Scholastics had to face a challenge such as that of Nietzsche, I suppose that this depends for an answer on how one understands and judges the phenomenon that is Nietzsche. If one thinks of positions we encounter in ancient philosophy, there are those mentioned earlier. In Scripture itself, they do have such portraits of the mind of the advocate of power as we find in Wisdom 2:1–22. Thus, we read: ‘‘Let our might be our law of right, for what is weak proves itself to be useless.’’81 As for the Scholastics’ analysis of this state of mind, we have, for example, Thomas’s treatment of the sin of pride. It is in the ‘‘irascible appetite,’’ taken in the large sense, which includes the intellective appetite or will. It is a principle of spiritual blindness.82 It is certainly true that the Scholastics did not have to contend with the social phenomenon that is atheist humanism and its aftermath. And there are many other aspects of modern or postmodern society that make for difficulty for the moralist. Nevertheless, disagreement has always been part of the moral scene, and one of the reasons for the existence of divine law, beyond the natural law, is the uncertainty of human judgment, especially in contingent particulars, whence come contrary laws.83 If the sense of Porter’s argument were ‘‘there is more radical disagreement now than in medieval times, and more disagreement on specific moral problems as well; therefore, we stand in need of divine law to maintain the true natural law,’’ I would agree entirely. However, Porter’s presentation of the Nietzschean man as ‘‘thrilling,’’ and the doctrine as ‘‘a natural morality’’84 I again find unacceptable. That there are ‘‘whole genres of popular fiction’’ making fortunes on its appeal is of course true. She says: ‘‘We do admire the man . . . who goes his own way, lives by his own rules, and demands respect, even fear, for his independence and power.’’ What is meant by ‘‘living by one’s own rules’’? Taken in the strict sense, it is the essential ‘‘non serviam’’ position. Only a very superficial or abstract view of human life, or a very wicked view,

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can find a thrill in such a picture. The part of us that gets such a thrill is not what makes us suitable judges in moral matters.85 She contends that the natural law ‘‘stands in need of defense,’’ because of the need to distinguish the tendencies we find within ourselves.86 This is true. Thus, Thomas argues that it is natural to love oneself;87 he argues that it is natural to love God by a friendly love even more than oneself;88 he argues that it is natural to offer sacrifice;89 he argues that it is natural to seek redress for wrongs done to oneself.90 In the SCG he argues that it is natural to reason to a knowledge of a god, if only in a somewhat confused way, and that not to so reason argues a moral failing in the person.91 I might add, as regards the modern problems, that we may very well have developed a proud society, in the way that Caesar’s ‘‘Germans’’ were supposedly piratical.92 A proud society would tend to be atheistic or antitheistic.93 Concerning Nietzsche and atheist humanism, one might reread Henri de Lubac.94 Speaking of the death-of-God doctrine, he says: Whatever be the case as to [its] antecedents, the meaning which Nietzsche attaches to the expression ‘‘the death of God’’ is new. It is not in his mouth a simple statement of fact. Nor is it a lamentation or a sarcasm. It voices an option. ‘‘Now,’’ says Nietzsche, ‘‘it is our taste which decides against Christianity. It is not arguments.’’95 It is an act, an act as clear-cut, as brutal as is that of a murderer. ‘‘The death of God is not only for him a terrible fact. It is willed by him.’’96 If God is dead, he in fact adds: ‘‘it is we who have killed him.’’ ‘‘We are the assassins of God.’’97 Further along, de Lubac presents Nietzsche as seeing himself as the first to look down on Christian morals.98 Everyone acknowledges a ‘‘greatness’’ of Nietzsche, but what does it mean? I would suggest that it is the greatness of the poet, where poetry is a persuasive rather than a demonstrative mode of discourse. It is a seductive influence in the realm of thought.99 In that sense, Nietzsche does indeed represent a new dimension of human crisis. Thinking of Nietzsche as artist, I am put in mind of Gilbert K. Chesterton’s criticism of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Chesterton was concerned about his society’s ability to conjure evil and the lack of a

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corresponding enthusiasm, or even ability, for conjuring the good. He says: If there is anyone who does not comprehend the defect in our world which I am criticizing,100 I should recommend him, for instance, to read a story by Mr. Henry James, called ‘‘The Turn of the Screw.’’ It is one of the most powerful things ever written, and it is one of the things about which I doubt most whether it ought ever to have been written at all. It describes two innocent children gradually growing at once omniscient and half-witted under the influence of the foul ghosts of a groom and a governess. As I say, I doubt whether Mr. Henry James ought to have published it (no, it is not indecent, do not buy it; it is a spiritual matter), but I think the question so doubtful that I will give that truly great man a chance. I will approve the thing as well as admire it if he will write another tale just as powerful about two children and Santa Claus. If he will not, or cannot, then the conclusion is clear; we can deal strongly with gloomy mystery, but not with happy mystery; we are not rationalists, but diabolists.101 Sexual Ethics Coming to one of her chapters concerning more particular moral issues, Porter says: ‘‘Even those who are most sympathetic to medieval moral thought consider the scholastic sexual ethic an aberration to be explained away.’’102 And again: [The Scholastics’] sexual ethic is strikingly different from that of the majority in the industrialized West.’’103 She says that eventually she will argue that ‘‘it is possible to develop a critical reappropriation of the natural law that preserves the central scholastic insights into the human and theological significance of sexuality while still allowing for subsequent developments in our understanding of what counts as natural and appropriate in sexual relations.’’104 the good of marriage In a first section, on sexuality in the Scholastic concept of natural law, she mentions Peter Lombard’s reaffirmation of Augustine’s view that sexual intercourse is evil except within marriage, together with his assertion that

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marriage is justified by a threefold good: the faithfulness of the spouses, children, and the sacramental bond between the spouses.105 She speaks of Thomas as teaching that sexual pleasure serves a purpose, as offering an inducement to procreation. I have not seen her refer to the text where he says that sexual pleasure would be more intense in the state of original justice.106 Porter tells us: ‘‘For the scholastics, there is only one unambiguously good purpose for sexual intercourse within marriage: procreation. In addition, most of the scholastics consider it morally justifiable for either spouse to initiate sexual relations in order to satiate the sex drive, if his or her purpose in doing so is to forestall temptation to sexual sin.’’107 The expression ‘‘morally justifiable’’ seems minimalist if one takes the case of St. Thomas, who says that to so act is meritorious (and so, obviously, unambiguously good): ‘‘The conjugal act is sometimes meritorious, and without either mortal or venial sin; that is, when it is ordered toward the good of procreating and educating a child for the worship of God: for thus it is an act of religion; or when it is done for the sake of rendering what is owing [to each other]: for so taken, it is an act of justice. For every act of a virtue is meritorious if it is [done] with charity.’’108 Really to do justice to the situation, one would have to bring in the doctrine that the concupiscence that we experience has a dimension of punishment, stemming from original sin, inasmuch as it is recalcitrant to reason. Then, marriage understood as a remedy for this condition is seen as entirely and unambiguously a good. Thus, as Thomas says: ‘‘That unseemliness of concupiscence that always accompanies the matrimonial act is not the [sort of] unseemliness that pertains to moral fault, but rather to penalty coming from the first sin, such that the lower powers and bodily members do not obey reason.’’109 In line with that, Thomas teaches that as regards the instituting of marriage, there were several steps: It is to be said that nature inclines to matrimony, intending some good, which [good] indeed is varied in accordance with the diverse states of men. And so it is necessary that that good be diversely instituted in the diverse states of men. And therefore matrimony, according as it is ordered toward the procreation of the child, which was necessary even when sin did not exist, was instituted before sin.

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But according as it provides a remedy against the wound of sin, it was instituted after sin, in the time of the law of nature. But according to the determination of persons, it had its institution in the law of Moses.110 But according as it represents the mystery of the union of Christ and the Church, it had its institution in the new law, and in function of that it is a sacrament of the new law.111 Clearly, the good of matrimony can hardly be envisaged without an appreciation of the concrete situation of the moral agent, which includes the results of original sin.112 Before original sin, reproduction was the only good of matrimony (at least, the only good to which Thomas alludes in the above passage), but after original sin, its goodness as a remedy is unambiguous.113 sexual sins I notice Porter’s rejection, for ‘‘us,’’ of Thomas’s view that after homicide, sexual sins are worst. We read: ‘‘The scholastic attitude is well expressed by Aquinas’ remark . . . that sexual sins comprise the worst form of wrong-doing, next to murder (Summa contra gentiles III 122). For most contemporary men and women, such a view is incomprehensible. We tend to presuppose that there are important differences between those kinds of actions that harm other people, and sexual transgressions.’’114 Now, what I notice here is the failure to communicate the sense of Thomas’s judgment. The very text she mentions, SCG 3.122, begins by making the claim, on the part of adversaries, that simple fornication harms no one, and so is not a sin at all (we might say they are ‘‘astonishingly modern’’!). We read: ‘‘They say take [the case of] some woman who is free from any husband, who is under the power of no one, whether a father or anyone else. If someone has sexual relations with her, with her willing [cooperation], he does no injury to her because he pleases her, and she has power over her own body. He does no injury to anyone else because she is held to be under the power of no one else. Therefore, there seems to be no sin.’’115 Thomas argues, on the basis of teleology, that every emission of seed that takes place in such a way that generation cannot result or suitably result is against the good of the human being. Thus, if this is purposely done, it is a sin. He notes first the case of sins against nature (such as contraception). He goes on to take the case of an emission of seed that

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takes place in such fashion that generation can indeed follow, but suitable education is impeded. Speaking of the fact that any inordinate emission of seed is not a light offense, but rather a most serious one, he says: ‘‘The inordinate emission of seed opposes [repugnat] the good of the nature, which is the preservation of the species. Hence, after the sin of homicide, by which an already actual existent human nature is destroyed, this kind of sin is seen to hold the second place, by which the generation of human nature is interfered with [impeditur].’’116 Thus, obviously, the whole judgment is based on the justice involved in the common good of humanity and the particular good of individuals who may be born in unsuitable circumstances for wholesome human life. Since the current view to which Porter refers is largely based on a contraceptive approach to sexuality, one should be clear that Thomas, in the text referred to, first of all argues on the basis of the teleology of our bodily parts and of their proper operations. He argues in exactly the same way as when he considers all lying as a sin.117 He mentions here in SCG 3.122 the case of walking on one’s hands or doing something with one’s feet that would naturally be done by the hands, both of which he would assuredly consider venial sins. It is certainly the gravity of the problem of generation in human life that leads to the judgment that misuse in this domain is criminal. Most important, here, is ST 2–2.154.11–2–2.154.12, on sin against nature as the most serious sort of sin of lust. Immediately, in article 12, we see the sort of argument Porter mentions as ‘‘the way we think now,’’ that is, that contraceptive intercourse harms no one, as the very first objection here, in the thirteenth century: ‘‘A sin is more serious just to the extent that it is against charity. But adultery, defilement, and rape, which tend to harm the neighbor, seem more against charity toward one’s neighbor, than sins against nature, through which no one harms another. Therefore, the sin against nature is not the most [sinful] among the sins of lust.’’118 The main reply here by Thomas is of the greatest importance.119 Thomas says: It is to be said that in any domain the corruption of the principle on which all else depends is what is worst. Now, the principles of reason are those things that are in function of nature; for reason, those things being presupposed that are determined by nature, disposes the others in the way that agrees [with

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nature]. And this is apparent both in speculative and in practical [matters]. And thus, just as in speculative matters error concerning those things knowledge of which is naturally implanted in man is most serious and most unseemly, so also in matters of action to act against what is determined in function of nature is most serious and unseemly. Therefore, since in sins that are against nature a man transgresses that which is determined in function of nature regarding sexual activity, hence it is that in such matter this sin is most serious.120 The harm that is being done by such sins is to the very possibility of right judgment concerning our lives. We saw how great was the insistence in the first objection that the sin against nature harms no one and thus seems least of all against charity. The reply, again, is of the greatest importance, and most sobering: It is to be said that just as the order of right reason is from man, so also the order of nature is from God himself. And therefore in sins against nature, in which the very order of nature is violated, injustice [iniuria] is done to God himself, the one who orders nature. Hence, Augustine says, in Confessions 3 [chap. 8; in PL 32:689]: ‘‘Those disgraceful acts that are against nature are to be everywhere and at all times detested and punished, such as were those of the men of Sodom: which should all peoples commit, they should all stand guilty of the same crime, by the divine law, which did not so make men that they should use one another in that way. In fact, the social relation itself [ipsa societas] that we ought to have with God is violated when that same nature of which he is author is polluted by perversity of sexual passion.’’121 Thomas thinks of human well-being as indissociable from the relation to God; thus, the first commandment of the Decalogue, laying the foundation for human goodness, must bear on the ultimate end of the human will, which is God.122

‘‘humanae vitae’’ Introducing the topic of contraception, Porter says that the papal encyclical Humanae vitae (1968) rejects the use of contraception ‘‘based on an

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appeal to the structure of the sexual act and its inherent orientation towards procreation, as this is revealed by rational analysis prior to theological interpretation.’’123 She contrasts this with the Scholastics, who do not typically argue this way. Rather, they focus on the proper purposes of sexuality and marriage as these are revealed through theological reflection, and then they judge particular kinds of acts to be unnatural because they are not in accordance with those overall purposes. They do sometimes speak in terms that suggest that unnatural sexual practices violate the purposes of the sexual organs, but it is important to realize that this way of speaking itself presupposes a particular understanding of the purpose of sexuality.124 She says that Aquinas makes this clear in SCG 3.122, and quotes that part of it that distinguishes between sexual sins against nature and walking on one’s hands. He says, as we saw, that such activity does little harm, whereas misuse of sex is bad for the common good of the human race. Now, is this ‘‘a particular understanding of the purpose of sexuality’’? Thomas is quite clear that there is a purpose for the hands and another for the feet, and that they are not being used for those purposes in the instances mentioned. So also there is a purpose for sex. He has to make his point because the purpose is clear in all three cases. The contrast is not as to discerning of purpose, but in terms of the seriousness of the matter for the universal good of the human being. The issue is what dangerous consequences pertain to the misuse of sex. Similarly, the sort of lie that is a venial sin is a misuse of speech as such. But the matter is not serious, as it is in the case of sex. All sexual disorder is grave, and the disorder that contravenes the very nature of the being is gravest in the genus, because it overrules the very basis of using reason in ethics.125 Rereading Humanae vitae, I am impressed with the extent to which it is a theological and pastoral document, putting us in the context of the magisterial teaching of the Church, as the interpreter of natural and divine law. Porter tells us that ‘‘even the most sympathetic critics of Humanae Vitae have found its focus on particular acts of sexual intercourse to be unpersuasive and even offensive.’’126 Again, we might question the listing of who is ‘‘most sympathetic’’ to the doctrine. Does Humanae vitae

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‘‘break marriage down into a series of disconnected sexual acts’’?127 I would say it definitely does not do so. Nevertheless, it takes seriously any sexual act, and offers good reasons for so doing. Indeed, if we go back to St. Thomas, we see that such an approach to an act pertains to the rational foundation of morals. Porter allows that there is some wisdom in the line of thinking developed by the Scholastics, and that Humanae vitae reflects ‘‘similar theological convictions.’’ However, she sees these convictions, as expressed in Humanae vitae, ‘‘obscured by the encyclical’s concern to present its arguments in terms of a universally accessible moral rationality.’’128 Now, one might judge that the encyclical, which of course was meant to appeal to ‘‘the faithful and to all men of goodwill,’’ as it says in the beginning, shows considerable optimism as to the actual success it can achieve; though it does say: It is to be anticipated that perhaps not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching. There is too much clamorous outcry against the voice of the Church, and this is intensified by modern means of communication. But it comes as no surprise to the Church that she, no less than her divine Founder, is destined to be a ‘‘sign of contradiction.’’ She does not, because of this, evade the duty imposed on her of proclaiming humbly but firmly the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical.129 Humanae vitae does not present what it says as ‘‘universally accessible’’ in the sense that what is per se known to all is such. It is clearly meant as a Church document interpreting the natural law for those who have serious need of help in such interpretation. homosexual activity Later in this chapter Porter raises the issue of homosexual activity. After noting that the Scholastics were against it, she looks at the twentiethcentury situation and ‘‘far-reaching changes in general attitudes toward sexuality itself.’’ She eventually comes to this: The difficulty with some forms of contemporary gay culture, seen from a theological standpoint, is not that they represent an evil or unnatural way of life. Rather, they are problematic because they

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represent an alternative construal of human nature that has its own value and integrity but that is nonetheless in tension with fundamental Christian commitments. The tension does not stem from the fact that homosexual activity is non-procreative. Rather, it reflects a more basic tension between the values of erotic experience and procreation, when these are considered as key values for a socially embodied sexual ethic.130 We are back, as she mentions, to the sort of observations she made in the previous chapter about the Nietzschean approach to life: ‘‘authentic’’ but hardly Christian. All this seems very far from the medieval conception of natural law. It is not merely that they said something else. It is that nature has been so limited as a source of morality than one seems no longer to have to do with the same idea. Conclusion By way of conclusion, I would say that we need an interest in natural law, and in the kind of defense that metaphysical reflection can provide. Even truths that are known by virtue of themselves to all require defense, as Aristotle indicated in undertaking the defense of the first principle of demonstration. Without a vision of ontological hierarchy there is very little to hope for from ethics. Questions about the distinction between intellect and will, and between reason and sense knowledge, as well as the respective nobilities of these items, must be constantly revisited. Porter’s remarks about the selection of this tendency over that, in contrasting the Nietzschean and the Christian positions, strike me as lacking just such a vision.

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Chapter 16

ST. THOMAS, THE C OMMON G OOD, AND T HE LOVE OF PERSONS

A Universe of Persons My theme is the relation of the person to the common good. When one hears these words, the expectation is that the discussion will be of things political, even if at a philosophical level. And certainly my original interest in preparing the present essay was quite political, namely, the duty one has to put one’s own life at risk for the good of the political society in which one lives. My aim has been to place this duty properly within the context of the sapiential vision proposed to us by St. Thomas Aquinas. In so doing, I must confess to having been taken somewhat by surprise by the heights of spirituality that St. Thomas has obliged me to scale in my quest. In order to grasp adequately the situation of the good citizen in the life before death, it has been necessary to consider the human being as meant for life beyond the grave. In the end, you may be surprised too by the extent to which a most profoundly social doctrine finds it roots in the immediacy of each human person to God, that is, to the Divine Personal Being. A further word of forewarning. Those familiar with St. Thomas rightly insist on his doctrine of the unity of the human being. If one takes the doctrine of Plato in the Phaedo as a foremost example of the dualism that not merely distinguishes soul and body within the human being but views the body as a prison, an ‘‘unfriendly’’ environment as regards the life most appropriate to the soul,1 then Thomas Aquinas is no dualist. The soul is in the body as in a most friendly milieu for its, the soul’s, proper development (though, in so saying, I leave to one side the entire issue of the 271

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effects of original sin).2 Nay, more: the soul and the body together constitute one being.3 This is so true that, although the human soul is held to be immortal, and thus after the death of a human being the soul remains in existence, because it is incomplete as regards the fullness of human nature, it is not properly a person4 (by which Thomas, in agreement with Boethius, means an individual substance of a rational nature). As is well known, though for St. Thomas the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is not within the range of strict philosophical proof (‘‘demonstration’’), still, his philosophy of man is such as to find in resurrection the entirely appropriate outcome of our spiritual journey.5 I say all this by way of preface to my forewarning to you that even though our topic is the person and the common good, I will be speaking of the human being in a way that sets off sharply soul from body, and which gives priority, and almost exclusivity, to the soul. In so doing, I am not inventing. I am presenting Thomas Aquinas’s own doctrine. Indeed, I am taking care lest I distort or introduce an imbalance. The texts I use are not hidden in corners, nor are they mere remnants of someone else’s thought. They are surely Thomas’ own approach. St. Thomas begins his thinking by consideration of sensible, changeable things, corporeal things. He finds in them not merely mathematical intelligibilities or even physical intelligibilities, that is, laws of movement, rest, predictable change. He finds in them laws pertaining to reality in its entirety. He reads in physical events intelligible necessities that hold true for whatever is.6 However, one quickly finds that his own interest is to exploit the grasp of these ‘‘laws of being’’ with a view to exploring and understanding incorporeal, spiritual reality. This interest is not to be explained only by his role as a ‘‘theologian,’’ that is, a theoretician in the domain of Christian revelation. It also relates to his being occupied with philosophical wisdom, with a sapiential or metaphysical grasp of reality.7 Although Thomas (unlike thinkers in the Platonic tradition) attributes to corporeal reality the status of authentic being, he regards such being as extremely secondary, ‘‘minimal.’’8 Its existence is not fully intelligible except as a theater and environment for mind (or spirit), especially the lowest grade of mind, the human mind.9 St. Thomas has a great deal to say about angels. This, again, is not surprising, since his primary task is the exploration of biblical revelation. However, Thomas found in the existence of these superhuman creatures

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a truth particularly satisfying to the trend of his metaphysical investigations. The existence of God, an incorporeal being, is strictly provable.10 The existence of the human soul is evident to us,11 while the truths that that soul is incorporeal and immortal are strictly provable.12 I would say that the existence of angels—created spirits of a higher nature than the human spirit—is not regarded by St. Thomas as susceptible of strict philosophical proof. It is merely reasonable, highly probable. Thomas thinks there are good reasons to propose their existence, and their existence in number and variety such as to surpass incomparably any number of corporeal beings.13 The created universe, as St. Thomas conceives it, is overwhelmingly spiritual as to its ontological status, an assembly of spiritual substances or persons. ‘‘The universe’’ is primarily a group of persons.14 Although it is important to have this picture of St. Thomas’s view of things, in which human spirits, human persons, are so low in the ‘‘mainstream’’ of even created reality as to be regarded as ‘‘the bottom of the barrel,’’15 it remains true that our only philosophical gateway to spirit is through our experience of the human mind and will.16 Also, in the last analysis, the important doctrine is not that created spirit is numerically the overwhelming part of reality. Rather, it should be realized that as to quality of being, as to ontological importance, any human spirit is incomparably superior to the entirety of corporeal reality.17 Thus, with or without angels it would be right to say that ‘‘the universe is a group of persons.’’ What do we mean by ‘‘a person?’’ Thomas uses the definition provided by Boethius: ‘‘an individual substance of a rational nature.’’ Thomas’s presentation of this definition takes the form of explaining why individuals possessing the rational nature are the occasion for providing a special word, a distinctive vocabulary, namely, ‘‘person.’’ What Thomas insists upon (and what is not in Boethius) is that the individual is that to which action is attributed, and that by virtue of its rationality, a being is preeminently an agent, an origin of action, whereas subrational individuals are more ‘‘done to’’ than ‘‘doing.’’ That is, Thomas is seeing individuality as an ontological wealth, an intrinsically perfect feature of reality, one that is found not uniformly or homogeneously in all things but (in all things) according to priority and posteriority. Corporeal things are individual, but their individuality is surpassed by the individuality of the spirit, which

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is ‘‘rated’’ by being seen as source of its own actions. This higher individuality is personality. Personality and liberty are indissociable.18 This means that every person has a story (‘‘narratio’’).19 Moral effort or history is the proper fulfillment of each human spirit, each person.20 Thomas envisages these efforts as orchestrated by Divine Justice so as to result in a perfect outcome, the ‘‘order of the universe’’ as regards ‘‘voluntary matters.’’21 Love in the Universe of Persons: Its Nature and Priorities All reality flows from the Divine Will, and so all reality itself exhibits its own inclination, its own tendency, its own love. The various levels of created being exhibit various levels of love: those that have no knowledge have inclination of the lowest sort, those that have sense knowledge have inclination of a higher sort, and those creatures that have mind or intellect—and so possess the knowledge of the nature of goodness—are most perfectly inclined, that is, pursue the good because they themselves see its goodness. This is the level of love proper to ‘‘will,’’ proper to persons.22 St. Thomas distinguishes within the life of the human will two levels called ‘‘natural love’’ and ‘‘elective love.’’23 Morally virtuous operation pertains to election, choice, but it preexists, we might say, in natural love. Our moral task, indeed, consists in making choices that accord with the natural inclination or natural love that is present in the will. Thus, the presentation of moral priorities, that is, the order proper to love, consists largely in the discernment of the order of natural inclination. This order is presented by Thomas in various places, but in most detail in the treatise of the Summa theologiae (ST) on charity.24 We will look at that in a moment. First, however, I wish to make two points. The first concerns the nature of love, and is of the greatest importance for the view I wish to present. Thomas teaches that the word ‘‘love’’ has two distinct (though related) senses. Love relates to the good: we love what is good (or seems to us to be good). Now, ‘‘the good’’ and ‘‘that which is’’ are really two ways of conceiving what is altogether the same reality. And since, moreover, there is a distinction of two grades of being (or of ‘‘that which is’’)—namely, the concrete thing or subsisting thing, on the one hand, and the inherent thing, on the other hand—and since, also, it is the concrete

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or subsisting thing that ‘‘is,’’ in the unqualified sense of ‘‘is,’’ as having being as its own, whereas what merely inheres is said to ‘‘be’’ in a qualified sense only, so also, we must distinguish between ‘‘the good,’’ unqualifiedly, and ‘‘the good’’ in a qualified sense. It is the subsisting thing that is good, unqualifiedly, whereas the inherent is good in a qualified sense. Accordingly, we must distinguish two senses of ‘‘love.’’ One ‘‘loves,’’ unqualifiedly, what is ‘‘something good’’ unqualifiedly, whereas one ‘‘loves,’’ in a qualified sense, what is a ‘‘good’’ qualifiedly. Now, what is it to love something as a subsisting good thing? It is to wish good things for that thing; thus, for example, when I love a friend, I wish good things—comfort, safety, fair treatment—for that friend. The friend, the one for whom the ‘‘good things’’ are attachments or perfections, is the subsisting good thing. On the other hand, those ‘‘attached items,’’ that is, the ‘‘good things’’ I wish for the friend, are only ‘‘good’’ in the qualified sense. And when we say (as we do say) that we ‘‘love’’ such goods, this is ‘‘love’’ in a qualified sense. When, for example, I say I ‘‘love the taste of salmon,’’ this is a secondary sense of ‘‘love.’’ What I primarily and unqualifiedly ‘‘love’’ in that case is myself eating salmon: I am the subsisting or concrete good thing. Let us call unqualified love ‘‘friendly love’’ and qualified love ‘‘desirous love.’’25 Now for my second point, which is Thomas’s teaching that by natural inclination we love God, with friendly love, even more than we love ourselves. Thomas notes that some people hold that we love God by desirous love more than ourselves, in that we wish for ourselves the divine good even more than some good of our own. Again, these people are willing to admit that, in a way, we have more of the friendly sort of love for God than for ourselves, in that we wish for God a greater good than we wish for ourselves: we wish God to be God, whereas we wish for ourselves our own proper nature. However, these people say that, speaking unqualifiedly, we love ourselves more than we love God, since we love ourselves more intensely and more principally. Arguing that this is false, St. Thomas takes his cue from what we can observe in beings that do not have the power of reason. What we find is this: Each thing, among natural things, which naturally as to its very being belongs to another, is more principally and more [intensely] inclined toward that to which it belongs than to itself. And this

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natural inclination is shown from those things that are naturally done, because each thing, as it naturally acts, just so is it naturally suited to [or inclined to] act. . . . Now, we see that the part naturally exposes itself for the preservation of the whole body: as the hand is exposed to the spearpoint, without deliberation, for the conservation of the whole body.26 Basing his doctrine on this phenomenon, as revealing a law of being, Thomas goes on to argue that every creature whatsoever, as to its very being, belongs to God, and thus by natural love man loves God more than he loves his very own self. The idea is clearly that the human will is more intensely inclined to wish good things for God than for one’s own self. God is more loved, as a subsisting good thing, that is, as a personal being. The ontological proportion between creatures and God is what is being exploited. The part-to-whole proportion within created being is used to appreciate the nature of the relation of the entirety of created being to God. Created being and good finds its entire raison d’eˆtre in the Divine Being, to an extent quite surpassing the way a part finds its raison d’eˆtre in the whole. In this same context, Thomas calls God ‘‘a common good’’ and ‘‘the universal good,’’ and sees everything as inclined toward him. Clearly, God is a common good precisely as the supreme personal being. Let us now come to the question, Can one naturally love one’s neighbor more than, or even as much as, oneself ? St. Thomas will answer no. One must naturally love oneself (as to one’s spiritual nature) more than one loves one’s neighbor (as to his spiritual nature). To see, however briefly, something of this, we can note the way Thomas answers a rather convincing adversary. The adversary argues that God is the principle object of charity (i.e., the being who is primarily loved, by virtue of charitable love); but sometimes a person has a neighbor more closely related to God than the person himself is; thus, that person should love that neighbor more than himself. In reply, Thomas says that charitable love derives its quantity not only from the side of the object, which is God, but also from the side of the one doing the loving, who is the person himself who has the charity: just as the quantity of any action depends in some way on the subject itself in which the action occurs. Thus, even though our better neighbor is closer to God than we ourselves are, since the neighbor is not as close to the person who has the charity as that

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person is to himself, it does not follow that we ought to love that better neighbor more than ourselves.27 We see here how the very idea of inclination is indissociable from that of self-assertion. The implication is that a subsisting good thing can love more than itself, by friendly love, only another that surpasses it in the very line of being and causality, and this other, since we are dealing with persons, can only be God (i.e., the cause of beings as beings).28 In the same context, we see Thomas reply to an opponent who argues that a person loves more the one that person strives to keep from harm, but by charity, a man sustains harm to himself to protect his neighbor; thus, he must love the neighbor more. Thomas answers that it is bodily harm that a person ought to sustain for his friend, and he continues: ‘‘And precisely in so doing, he loves himself more, according to the spiritual mind, because that [way of acting] pertains to the perfection of virtue, which is the good of the mind. But in spiritual matters, a person ought not to suffer harm, that is, by sinning, with a view to freeing the neighbor from sin.’’29 Thomas constantly sees us as naturally loving ourselves more than our neighbors, in the line of unqualified love. There is one more point to be made as regards our love for our neighbor (and it is most important for our theme). St. Thomas teaches that when all the historical striving has reached its term, the multitude of persons will find themselves existing in an ultimate order of greater and lesser proximity to, intimacy with, God. One person will find himself behind somebody else and in front of another. Will one love to see that someone else, ahead of oneself, receiving a greater good than oneself ? Yes, says St. Thomas. Even though one loves oneself more intensely than one loves one’s (better) neighbor, one loves God and his plan and his will more than one loves oneself. That is, one’s love for the order of the universe (including its ultimate order) derives from the friendly love by which one loves the Divine Personal Being, the Universal Good, more than one loves one’s own person.30 Conclusion In his inquiry into the grounds of happiness, Thomas makes it clear that human corporeal existence cannot constitute the ultimate goal of human rational striving. This surely applies not only to the existence of individuals but to the entire human race. If the race or the community or the

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individual is worth preserving in corporeal existence, that worth must be found in each as the instrument and theater for acts of mind and will, goods that incomparably surpass the merely bodily good.31 Thus, to someone arguing that it is impossible to overdo fearlessness, because one should not fear even death, Thomas replies: ‘‘Death, and whatever else can be visited upon us by mortal man, ought not to be feared in such a way that one falls away from justice. Nevertheless, it is to be feared, inasmuch as by it a man can be prevented from performing virtuous works either as regards himself or as regards the improvement he can make in others.’’32 Again, when Thomas is in the course of making the point that courage, as a virtue, has to do with facing death primarily in a war, an opponent argues that one ought not to risk death for the temporal peace of the republic, since such peace is the occasion for much lascivious behavior. Thomas replies: ‘‘The peace of the republic is something intrinsically good, nor is it rendered bad by the fact that some people make poor use of it; for there are many other people who make good use of it, and much worse evils are prevented by it, namely, homicides, sacrileges, than those evils that are occasioned by it, which latter pertain especially to sins of the flesh.’’33 Clearly, Thomas is teaching us to view both oneself, and the multitude of persons having the good of peace, as corporeal existents whose raison d’eˆtre is the practice of virtue, that is, the life of reason. The risking of one’s corporeal existence for the community is seen as reasonable, inasmuch as the community is seen as the adequate theater for the fullness of the practice of virtue.34 Just as our love for the order of the universe (not only of natural things but of voluntary things) was seen to derive from our friendly love for God, a fortiori our love for such particular and terrestrial common goods as the peace of the republic derive from that friendly love for God more than ourselves, and from our love for ourselves as reasonable beings. In sum, the entire moral life is seen by St. Thomas as grounded in the relation of the particular created person to the uncreated Personal Being who is God. This is, in and of itself, a relation of a particular good to the universal or common good. What we might call Thomas’s ‘‘radical personalism’’ is essentially a doctrine of love for the Common Good more than for one’s own self.35

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Chapter 17

ST. T HOMAS, JOHN FINNIS, AND T HE POLITICAL G OOD

Introduction In our observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the role of the philosopher is to provide, as Jacques Maritain said, the true philosophy of those rights.1 The present study is focused on the nature of political society, with the view that this is the best thing there is, at least in the line of practical life, in human affairs.2 Not to be allowed to live the full life of political society is to be gravely deprived, and philosophical teachings that tend to diminish our awareness of the nobility of political or civic life should prompt us to work hard toward their refutation. Thus, I see myself here as defending the universal right to live in a true city (using this word to translate the classical ‘‘civitas’’ or ‘‘polis’’). Although many articles in the Universal Declaration relate to this, I would cite especially article 28: ‘‘Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.’’3 In the early 1940s there was a rather acrimonious dispute among Thomists in North America, involving principally Charles De Koninck and Ignatius Eschmann, O.P. De Koninck had published a book on the primacy of the common good ‘‘against the personalists.’’4 Eschmann regarded it as an attack on Jacques Maritain, and also as a conception of the common good at odds with the Christian tradition. His vitriolic attack on De Koninck5 provoked a response much longer than the latter’s original essay.6 27 9

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It has always seemed to me that De Koninck had by far the better of the argument and that the important point brought forth by the debate was the idea of an intrinsically common good, a type of object of experience that even if one were the only creature of God, one would have to encounter as a participable or communicable object. Much of the debate turned on the nature of the object of the beatific vision, that is, the creature’s vision of God’s essence. Eschmann stressed the ‘‘personal’’ and ‘‘private’’ nature of a contemplative experience. De Koninck insisted that even if there were only one creature capable of having such an experience, that creature would be encountering God as a common good. For De Koninck, the nobility of the human person lay not in its private goods but in the fact that it is a being meant to participate in the more universal good. It was very much in the line of De Koninck’s thinking that if a member of a political community has certain rights that lie in a zone untouchable by the leaders of the body politic, the reason is especially that that member is not only a member of the civil or properly political community but also and even primarily a member of a more universal and noble community. Thus, there was great insistence on the nobility of the common good as such.7 As we move toward the end of the twentieth century, it seems that we are better and better advised to seek good reasons to oppose the allencompassing power of political leaders. Newly invented machines threaten the ‘‘privacy’’ of the whole of human life. ‘‘Big brother’’ has taken on many faces, some in government and some at the head of ‘‘multinational’’ commercial enterprises. It is not surprising, then, that we reflect on the grounds for resisting the omnipresent imposer of policies. The present study questions John Finnis’s interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, concerning the specifically political common good.8 It is evident that Thomas limits the zone of human life subject to direction by the human legislator. Not only is God to be obeyed rather than man (where the two conflict), but man’s jurisdiction over man is not all embracing and leaves room for personal responsibility in such key areas as marriage. Finnis finds Thomas’s justification of the limits not altogether clear,9 and proposes (basing his argument on certain texts) a conception of specifically political society as that of Thomas, a conception that is held to help clarify the situation. The said conception seeks to present political society

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as something less that a ‘‘basic human good’’ (a key role in Finnis’s conception of the moral life).10 The basic good of ‘‘society’’ is found directly instantiated in such situations as family life and religious community. Political society is ‘‘instrumental’’ in maintaining such a basic good. The ‘‘natural’’ status of political society is questioned, as is also the idea that the goal of the human lawmaker is the development of virtue in the citizens. In short, the focus is heavily upon the role of politics as maintaining external order, leaving free a space for the inner life and private life of the human being. I will contend that the ‘‘society’’ mentioned in Summa theologiae (ST) 1–2.94.2 is primarily political society (and so, in the language of Finnis, that political society is a ‘‘basic human good’’), that we have a natural inclination to life in political society, and that the goal of the legislator is the development of virtue in the citizen. Thomas gives good reasons for limiting the role of the legislator, and indeed limits the common good of political society (to merely human virtue). I would see those limits as definitely implying the wider common good of the whole of reality. I find the Finnis appeal to private or personal zones inadequate if the goal is to interpret Thomas. The Text on Obedience First, let us note the sort of text of Thomas that provides the basis for discussion. ST 2–2.104 is on the virtue of obedience. Article 5 asks whether subjects are morally obliged to obey their superiors in all matters. The answer is ‘‘no.’’ Two lines of escape from obedience to a superior are indicated. If there is a hierarchy of command, one should not obey the inferior commander if his command is at odds with that of the superior commander (thus, one should obey God rather than the emperor commanding something at odds with God’s commandments). And if the commander gives a command that does not fall within the domain of his superiority, one need not obey; thus, concludes Thomas, one is not obliged to obey human beings, only God, as regards the inner movement of the will. One human being should obey another in things that are done exteriorly (as compared with the will) by bodily action. And yet here again there are limits. This is because all men are equal as regards the very

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nature of their bodies, that is, in the domain of bodily nutrition and the production of offspring. Thus, a slave is not required to obey his master, a son is not required to obey his father, as regards such matters as the contracting of marriage, remaining a virgin, and so on. This reference to equality as a reason for escaping the supervision of another person relates directly to the very first presentation Thomas makes of obedience. He asks, is one man obliged to obey another? It is to be noted that in giving an affirmative answer, Thomas uses a comparison between the natural world and the world of human action. In the natural world, superiors move inferiors to their actions, by means of superior powers bestowed by God. And he continues: ‘‘So also it is necessary in human things that superiors move inferiors by their [the superiors’] will, from the power of the divinely ordered authority.’’11 Thus, where there is no such superiority, there is obviously no requirement of obedience.12 Otherwise Thomas insists that obedience is due a human superior in matters of human acts and human affairs, but only in the very line of the superiority: the soldier should obey the military superior in those matters that pertain to the conduct of warfare. More vaguely, Thomas speaks of the slave or servant obeying the master in ‘‘servile works,’’ the son obeying the father in those matters pertaining to ‘‘the discipline of life and the domestic interest.’’ He ends by saying, ‘‘and so on.’’ That is, we should be able to work out what is the line of suitable limited authority in particular cases. Thomas notes that in all matters, external and internal, one is unqualifiedly subject to God. In only some matters, one is subject to a human being; thus, in those spheres, the superior is an intermediary between oneself and God. In the other cases, one is immediately subject to God, and is instructed by him by the natural or the written (divine) law.13 The Finnis Position Finnis begins his discussion by disagreeing with the claim, made by Germain Grisez,14 that Thomas held that the general promotion of virtue and suppression of vice should be the main component of the common good of political society. Finnis wishes to make clear the limits of the nature and goal of political society as Thomas conceived it. The line of argument proposed supposes a certain conception of ethics and of Thomas’s ethics. This conception depends heavily on a reading of

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ST 1–2.94.2, as to the multiplicity of precepts of natural law. In that text, Thomas presents the first principle of practical reason, namely, ‘‘that the good is to be done and pursued, and the bad is to be avoided,’’ and goes on to present an order of derivative precepts, in accordance with the order of natural inclinations found in the human being. These inclinations are in a threefold order, the first level being inclination as common to all substances: every substance whatsoever is inclined to maintain its own being in accordance with its own nature. Thus, those things by which the life of man is preserved and its contrary repelled pertain to natural law. The second level is toward more special items, in keeping with the nature shared with other animals: sexual intercourse and the raising of children. The third level is an inclination proper to the rational nature: man has an inclination to know the truth about God and to live in society. Thus, there are natural laws such as ‘‘avoid ignorance’’ and ‘‘do not offend those with whom you ought to live.’’ In Finnis’s use of this text of Thomas, the doctrine of natural inclinations becomes a doctrine of ‘‘basic human goods’’ that control all ethical decision. He says: In human affairs which are matters of deliberation and choice, what is natural is settled by asking what is intelligent and reasonable. That in turn is settled by looking to the first principles of practical reason, to the basic human goods. So the civitas could be called ‘‘natural’’ if participation in it (a) instantiates in itself a basic human good, or (b) is a rationally required component in, or indispensable means to instantiating, one or more basic human goods. Aquinas’s opinion, rather clearly, is that it is the latter. At the relevant point in his lists of basic human goods he mentions nothing more specific than living in fellowship (in societate vivere)—something that is done also with parents and children, spouse, friends, and other people in various more or less temporary and specialized groups (of pilgrims, of students, of sailors, of merchants, and so forth).15 Apparently, the criterion for whether something is directly a basic human good is whether it is the object of a natural inclination. Thus, in beginning his concluding judgment of Thomas’s doctrine of political society, just prior to the above remarks, Finnis says: ‘‘Contrary to what is often supposed, Aquinas’s many statements that we are ‘naturally political

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animals’ have nothing particularly to do with political community. So they cannot be pressed into service as implying that the state or its common good is the object of a natural inclination, is an intrinsic and basic good. Strikingly, they do no more than assert our social not solitary nature.’’16 And he goes on to construct a sort of aporia by pointing out the following: ‘‘On the other hand, Aquinas accepts Aristotle’s opinion that we are ‘‘naturally civil animals’’ because we are naturally parts of a civitas, which stands to other natural communities as an end.’’17 His task then becomes one of explaining this ‘‘naturalness,’’ and we see in the passage I quoted first above the proposal of two possible senses of ‘‘natural’’ in this case, and the option for the second. Political society is not a basic human good, is not the object of a natural inclination. It is an ‘‘indispensable means,’’ we shall see, for instantiating one or more basic human goods. He says: The thought that we cannot live reasonably and well apart from a civitas is consistent with the proposition that the common good specific to the civitas as such—the public good—is not basic but, rather, instrumental to securing human goods which are basic (including other forms of community or association, especially domestic and religious associations) and none of which is in itself specifically political, i.e., concerned with the state. If that proposition requires qualification, the qualification concerns the restoration of justice by the irreparable modes of punishment reserved to state government.18 This is really the heart of Finnis’s position. The ‘‘qualification’’ seems to be a bit of fudging. Is political society a basic good or not? This seems to be the issue. The qualification amounts to proposing, after having answered in the negative, a bit of an affirmative. Let us see how this is spelled out. Finnis points to two areas in which the nonpolitical human groups are insufficient for the good life: ‘‘(1) to secure themselves well against violence (including invasion), theft, and fraud, and (2) to maintain a fair and stable system of distributing, exploiting, and exchanging the natural resources which, Aquinas thinks, are in reason and fairness—naturally’’ (not merely ‘‘initially’’)—things common to all.’’ Finnis calls this ‘‘the

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public good of justice and peace.’’19 What Finnis calls the ‘‘basic goods’’ are not as well maintained by the family and other such groups as they are by law and political institutions. This is what is meant by saying that the civitas is merely ‘‘instrumental’’ and not itself a ‘‘basic good.’’ What is to be understood here is the rather ‘‘thin’’ character the ‘‘public good’’ has in this picture. Its limitation to externals is stressed. However, there is the ‘‘qualification.’’ Finnis notes that although Thomas holds that there would be need for government and direction of free people, even if there were no badly disposed people, Thomas does not say that in that state of ‘‘original innocence’’ before original sin there was a need for law and specifically political government. Thus, Finnis views law as inextricably bound up with the need to punish wrongdoers, and indeed to punish them in ways that do irreparable harm to the punished. He notes that for Thomas, the family has not the right to impose such punishments. It is precisely the right and duty of the political society or its governors to coerce in that way. Thus, in his approach to his ‘‘qualification’’ of the idea that political society is merely instrumental relative to basic goods that pertain to the individual, the family, or other nonpolitical associations, Finnis asks why there can be no ‘‘law, in the focal sense’’ within such nonpolitical groups. Why is Thomas so ‘‘insistent on distinguishing public from private’’?20 Finnis sees the answer in the need for judgment according to publicly established law in order to impose the irreparable measures that may be needed to restore justice and peace. He sees the need for ‘‘the detachment which becomes possible in principle when the persona publica is differentiated from the persona privata.’’21 It is in this nature of law that Finnis seemingly sees a need to ‘‘qualify’’ his contention that properly political society is not a basic human good. Having said, ‘‘for Aquinas the whole construction of a strictly ‘‘public’’ realm is by law and for law,’’ and having stressed that this does not require the subjects of the law to be truly virtuous, but merely that they ‘‘uphold justice and peace’’ in their externals,22 Finnis maintains a sort of hesitation to the end, as to the political society being a ‘‘basic good.’’ Thus we read: The human common good—now understanding that phrase without restriction to the state’s or political community’s good—is promoted, and love of neighbor is intelligently put into practice, when

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the common good that specifies the jurisdiction of state government and law is acknowledged to be, neither all-inclusive nor (with one qualification) basic, but limited and (save perhaps in respect of restorative justice) instrumental.23 It is I who underline the ‘‘perhaps.’’ Finnis is not quite ready, it would seem, to say that there is ‘‘basic good’’ here. That is perhaps why he calls the introduction of the idea that a basic good is involved only a ‘‘qualification.’’ Some Features of Finnis’s Argument Thus far I have been using Finnis’s conclusion. In the discussion leading up to the conclusion I note three prominent points. The first has to do with whether the lawmaker has the virtue of citizens as his goal or end, the good in view. Finnis stresses as much as possible the limitation to ‘‘externals’’ of behavior as the proper domain of politics. Indeed, his position consists in the main in isolating as a sort of ‘‘thing in itself ’’ this very behavioral ordering of people. The second point raises a question about calling the political society the complete society. The third point is the presentation of goods that are not the proper business of political society as ‘‘private’’ goods of the person or family. I am concerned that it will not be seen that these goods are really common goods of even more noble social life. That is, since Finnis is denying that the political is a basic human good, there is a tendency to undermine the social as such. virtue as the end of government First, then, the goal of the governor. We could very well entitle this part ‘‘Thomas’s Philosopher-King.’’ It is the constant teaching of Thomas that the end or goal or good of political society is virtue, that is, human goodness, and that for this to obtain it is necessary that the governors themselves be truly virtuous.24 Looking at part 4 of Finnis’s chapter, entitled ‘‘The Virtue Required for Peace and Just Order,’’ I notice that there is a toning down of Thomas’s idea that the end of the law made by civil society is the life of virtue.

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When I look at ST 1–2.95.1, to which Finnis refers us25 (as an item he has to explain), I am struck by how much the entire existence of human law is viewed in the light of the desirability to become virtuous. This is certainly not presented merely as something that will accomplish some other goal of civil society. It rather is something that all agencies have to further, but that they prove inadequate to bring about in certain cases. Here is Finnis’s explanation: ‘‘The answer seems to be this. Human law must inculcate virtues because it will only work well as a guarantor of justice and peace if its subjects internalize its norms and requirements and— more important—adopt its purpose of promoting and preserving justice.’’26 This is quite a different approach than the line of argument in ST 1–2.95.1 would lead one to expect. On the Finnis reading, the prompting toward virtue seems to have become something that happens because of something else more limited (‘‘justice and peace’’ conceived in terms of mere external behavior). Reading ST 1–2.96.3 ad 2, to which Finnis refers us so that we may see virtue as merely ‘‘a legitimate hope and important aim (finis) of government and law,’’27 one sees Thomas dealing with an objection that held that the acts of the virtues could not be commanded by law, because the acts of the virtues presuppose the existence of the virtues, that is, are ex virtute, whereas virtue is the goal, end, finis, of law. Thomas replies that we must distinguish between the two ways of performing the act, as coming from the virtue, and as merely the material act that the virtue requires. All the law can oblige is the latter, but the former is the end of the law. This hardly gives a picture of law having virtuous acts as merely ‘‘an . . . important aim.’’ When we look at the next reference, that is, ST 1–2.100.9 ad 2, we are even more surprised. Let us recall that the Finnis view would focus the attention on the limited capability of law: what can law really be requiring, and thus what is its primary nature? The inculcation of virtue, he wants us to believe, is only ‘‘an . . . important aim’’ of the law. Does the text of Thomas run in this direction? I would say it does not. The article to which we are referred asks whether the ‘‘mode of virtue’’ falls under the precept of the law. Now, by the ‘‘mode of virtue’’ Thomas means that the act would be performed as by someone really having and using the virtue (i.e., knowingly, willingly, and in a firm or decided way).28 The article teaches that what is required by a law is that concerning which the

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lawmaker can adequately judge (and so inflict punishment for transgression). Thus, human law requires that an act be done knowingly, and so it takes ignorance into consideration when meting out punishment. However, it does not require the inner act of the will to be in conformity with virtue. Human law does not punish the one who merely wishes to kill but refrains from doing so. God’s judgment, however, does bear upon this and require good will. Neither divine nor human law requires that the act be done as by one having the virtue, as regards the firmness or steadiness that is the proper fruit of the established habit. Now, the objector argued as follows: ‘‘That most of all falls under the precept that belongs to the intention of the legislator. But the intention of the legislator primarily bears upon this, namely, that it make men virtuous, as is said in Ethics 2 [1103b3]. But it pertains to the virtuous person to act virtuously. Therefore, the mode of virtue falls under the precept.’’29 And Thomas replies: The intention of the legislator bears upon two items. One of them is that unto which he intends to lead through the precepts of the law, and this is the virtue. The other is that upon which he intends the precept to bear, and this is that which leads or disposes toward the virtue, namely, the act of the virtue. For the end of the precept is not identical with that about which the precept is given, just as neither in other matters is there identity between the end and that which is for the sake of the end [ad finem].30 Thomas is very clear. Virtue is not merely ‘‘an important aim’’ of the law. It is the end of the law. The limited matter upon which the law is obliged to bear is rather an ad finem situation relative to virtue. The measures in their limited character that can be exacted by just law should not be viewed merely as things in themselves. They are rather to be seen as imbued with the goal of the legislator, that is, as properly ad finem behavior. Political life is life on the way to virtue. ST 1–2.96.2, on the limited prohibitions coming from human law, is important for our purposes. The question asked is whether it pertains to human law to restrain (cohibere) all vices. Thomas is going to answer in the negative. The second objection uses the premise that the intention of the legislator is to make citizens virtuous, and argues that this will happen only if all vices are eliminated. The sed contra cites Augustine, who sees

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human law as permitting some things for which divine providence will eventually inflict punishment. Thomas, in his main reply, says: The law is established as a rule and measure of human acts. But a measure ought to be homogeneous with the thing measured, as is said in Metaphysics 10 [1053a24]; for diverse things have diverse measures. Hence, it is necessary, also, that laws be imposed on men in accordance with their own condition, because, as Isidore says, the law ought to be ‘‘possible and in accordance with nature, and in accordance with the custom of the country [patriae].’’ Now, the power or capacity for operating proceeds from interior habit or disposition: for the same thing is not possible for someone who does not have the habit of virtue and for the virtuous [person]; just as also the same thing is not possible for the boy and for the mature man. And for that reason the same law is not laid down for children as for adults: many things are permitted for children that in adults are punished by law, or severely criticized. And similarly, many things are permitted to men not perfected by virtue that would not be tolerable in virtuous men. Now, human law is laid down for the multitude of men, in which the greater part consists of men not perfected by virtue. And so, not all vices are prohibited by human law, but only the more grave, from which it is possible for the greater part of the multitude to abstain; and especially those [vices] which are harmful to others, without prohibition of which human society could not be preserved: as, for example, homicides and thefts and such things are prohibited by human law. We have here a limiting of the action of the lawmaker, who makes laws tailored to the condition of the ones to be guided. Such a limitation pertains not to the limited character of the lawmaker, whose goal is indeed virtue, but to the limited character of the subjects. In the replies to objections, the second stresses the need for moderation on the part of lawmakers. Thomas does not deny the premise that making citizens virtuous is the intention. But he says: ‘‘Human law intends to lead men to virtue [lex humana intendit homines inducere ad virtutem], not suddenly, but rather gradually. And so it does not immediately impose

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upon the multitude of the imperfect those things that already are [found] in the virtuous, that is, that they abstain from all evils. Otherwise, the imperfect, not being able to bear such precepts, would break out into even greater evils.’’31 Thus, Thomas very firmly makes the goal of the legislator the virtuous citizen. The reason for going slowly is precisely the good order toward such a goal, working on the sort of subjects available. It seems to me that if Finnis were right in stressing a sort of limited ‘‘social engineering’’ picture of lawmaking, this would be the place for Thomas to say so. Instead, he affirms that the goal is the development of the virtuous citizen. In order to bring out this ‘‘development of virtue’’ dimension of political society as conceived by St. Thomas, and thus present its unquestionable character as a fundamental human good, one must take fully into account what he says about two virtues, the prudence proper to the governor and the virtue of legal justice, primarily to be found in the governor. Indeed, this relates to the view that although the good citizen and the good man are not necessarily identical, the good ruler and the good man are necessarily identical: to be a governor requires the possession of virtue. Legal Justice In Finnis’s view, the political society and its common good are seen as ‘‘natural,’’ in the sense that they are instrumental relative to certain basic human goods. Political society, conceived as the establishment of legal order, the order brought about by law, is necessary because of sin, which requires coercion. Thus, political society is essentially a remedy for evil, rather than something having its own proper goodness. (I leave aside for the moment Finnis’s ‘‘one qualification.’’) Against this, I would argue that a virtue corresponds to a natural inclination and that legal justice is a virtue, and a very primary or basic virtue. Thus, at ST 2–2.108.2, asking whether vindicatio (‘‘the disposition one has to punish the wrongdoer’’) is a distinctive or ‘‘special’’ virtue, Thomas replies in the affirmative as follows: As the Philosopher says in Nicomachean Ethics 2 [1103a23], the aptitude toward virtue is present in us by nature, though the completeness of the virtue is through habituation or through some other cause. Hence it is clear that virtues perfect us for following through,

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in due measure, on our natural inclinations, which pertain to what is naturally just [ad prosequendum debito modo inclinationes naturales, quae pertinent ad ius naturale]. And therefore some special virtue is ordered toward each determinate natural inclination.32 Now, there is a virtue of legal justice. I have noticed (in discussions with him) that this was not something Finnis seemed to wish to admit, or at any rate not in the way that I wished to present it.33 We should underline the way Thomas presents it. In ST 2–2.58.3, he teaches that justice is virtue. Justice rectifies human action, and so renders human acts good. He quotes with approval Cicero’s saying that men are called good especially because of justice. Next (article 4), he locates this virtuousness in the will, as distinguished not only from the intellect but also from the sense appetites. Article 5 asks whether justice is ‘‘all-inclusive virtue [virtus generalis].’’ The line of thinking Thomas pursues here is as follows. Justice has to do with our treatment of ‘‘another’’: Now this can be in [either of] two ways. In one way, toward the other considered in his singularity. In the other way, toward the other communally [ad alium in communi], inasmuch as someone who serves some community serves all the humans who are contained within that community. Thus, justice, according to its very own notion, can relate to both [ways of taking ‘‘the other’’]. Now, it is evident that all those who are contained within a community stand related [comparantur] to the community as parts to a whole. And the part, as to its very substance [id quod est], belongs to the whole [totius est]; hence, also, any good of the part is orderable to the good of the whole. Therefore, in accordance with this, the good of any virtue, whether ordering some human being toward himself or ordering him to other individual persons, is referable to the common good, to which justice is ordered [ad bonum commune, ad quod ordinatur iustitia]. And in accordance with this, the acts of all the virtues can pertain to justice, according as it orders a man to the common good. And to this extent, justice is called ‘‘all-inclusive virtue.’’ And because it pertains to the law to order to the common good, as was said earlier, thus it is that such justice, all-inclusive in the explained way, is called ‘‘legal justice,’’ because, through it a

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man is in accord with the law ordering the acts of all the virtues to the common good.34 If I understand him, Finnis wants to insist on ‘‘some community,’’ and so see nothing necessarily ‘‘political’’ here. I want to insist on ‘‘legal’’ and underline that it is through the item (the virtue) that Thomas has presented that one is in accord with the law ordering toward the common good. Of course, if law is per accidens to the whole picture of goodness, then Finnis is right. Finnis, if I understand him concerning ‘‘legal justice,’’ thinks that it is a doctrine contrasting any ‘‘community’’ with the individual as an individual. One could have that sort of ‘‘general justice’’ inasmuch as one is a member of a commercial enterprise, such as IBM. This seems to me quite wrong. Doubtless, there are dispositions that one must have if one is to work well in a common enterprise. However, here we are speaking of human virtue, and just as we contrast art and prudence inasmuch as prudence has to do with the whole of human life, so also with all the virtues.35 But let us go beyond this presentation of article 5. Indeed, it is article 6 that interests me most, asking ‘‘whether all-inclusive justice is identical as to its very essence with every virtue.’’ The idea here is that legal justice is going to be presented as one virtue among many, essentially or substantially distinct from the others. As we read Thomas in ST 2–2.58.6, we see that the generality we are here considering is not the ‘‘generality’’ of predication. If it were, all the virtues would be justice essentially. It is rather the generality as pertaining to a universal cause relative to its effects. Thus, even though all the virtues fall under general justice, they need not be identified with it, because such effects are not identifiable with the universal cause. General or all-encompassing justice, legal justice, orders the acts of all the virtues to its own proper end (the common good): this is to ‘‘move’’ by commanding (per imperium). Thomas accordingly compares the role of legal justice to that of Christian charity. He says: For just as charity can be called an ‘‘all-encompassing’’ virtue inasmuch as it orders the acts of all the virtues toward the divine good, so also legal justice [can be called an ‘‘all-encompassing’’ virtue] inasmuch as it orders the acts of all the virtues to the common good.36 Therefore, just as charity, which relates to the divine good

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as to its proper object, is a certain particular virtue, as to its own essence, so also legal justice is a particular [specialis] virtue, as to its own essence, inasmuch as it relates to the common good as to its proper object. And thus it is in the governmental leader [in principe]37 principally and, as it were, architectonically, but in the subjects [in subditis] secondarily and, so to say, administratively.38 It strikes me that the very comparison with charity argues for the view that the ‘‘common good’’ being envisaged as regards legal justice is the common good of a complete community. It is certainly, I am contending, a natural inclination to life in a complete community that we are seeing perfected by the virtue of legal justice. Governmental Prudence Let us now look at another virtue that seems to be proper to the ruler of the political community, namely the primary sort of prudence. It too would be the development of a definite natural inclination, or so one would think. If we look at ST 2–2.47.10, which asks whether prudence extends to the ruling of a multitude (ad regimen multitudinis), we are told, of course, that it does. But of what ‘‘multitude’’ is Thomas speaking, and about what ‘‘common good’’? Consider the first objection and reply. The objector says: ‘‘The Philosopher says in Ethics 5 [1129b17] that the virtue related to the common good is justice. But prudence differs from justice. Therefore, prudence is not related to the common good.’’ Thomas replies: ‘‘It is to be said that the Philosopher is speaking there of moral virtue. But just as every moral virtue related to the common good is called ‘‘legal justice,’’ so also prudence related to the common good is called ‘‘political prudence’’; for the political [prudence] stands related to legal justice the way prudence unqualifiedly so called stands to moral virtue.’’ What I notice is that Thomas is using the word ‘‘political’’ here, just as he used the word ‘‘legal’’ when speaking of justice. Now, Finnis has told us that we are not to take ‘‘legal’’ seriously in the expression ‘‘legal justice’’: general justice has to do with the good of just any group (e.g., IBM). Are we here going to be told to ignore Thomas’s word ‘‘political,’’ that is, that Thomas does not mean a virtue having to do specifically with the ruling

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of the properly ‘‘political’’ multitude? We seem to be removing words from Thomas’s mouth. Article 11 asks whether the prudence with respect to one’s own good is identical with the prudence with respect to the common good. Interestingly, the sed contra argument distinguishes carefully between the ‘‘common good’’ of the household or family and that of the state or city. It argues for diverse virtues of prudence for the individual, the householder, and the citizen. Then, in the body of the article, we have a most important line of argument as regards our present interest, since the properly political common good seems to have the status of a quite distinct and important end or good. We read: The species of habits [habituum] are diversified in accordance with the diversity of object, which is caught sight of as regards its [the object’s] formal character. Now, the formal character of all those [items] that are ‘‘toward an end’’ [ad finem] is caught sight of on the side of the end [ex parte finis]. . . . And so it is necessary that from the relation to diverse ends the species of habit are diversified. But the good proper to one and the good of the family and the good of the city and kingdom [bonum civitatis et regni] are diverse ends. Hence it is necessary that prudences differ as to species in accordance with the differences of these ends; in such fashion that one [prudence] is prudence simply so called, which is ordered to one’s own good; another is domestic [oeconomica], which is ordered to the common good of the household or the family; and the third is political, which is ordered to the common good of the city or kingdom.39 What could be clearer? Finnis is right in thinking that sometimes the expression ‘‘common good’’ refers to something less than the common good of the city. However, Thomas is definite in seeing a species of virtue, a species of the virtue of prudence, that has to do properly with the common good of the city, and that he calls ‘‘political.’’ And it is this that he related, seemingly, to ‘‘legal’’ justice in making his earlier comparisons. If specific virtues relate to their proper natural inclinations, I would say that the human being must have, in Thomas’s eyes, a natural inclination to political society.

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Moreover, although here we could get material for our line of argument from each reply to objection, I will just mention the reply to the third, which not only considers the hierarchy of goals or ends but gives us a rule of primacy. Indeed, whereas I, in arguing with Finnis, am trying to make room for the distinctively political virtue, lest we be forced to say that the really primary sort of virtue is that which rules in family life, for example, the problem for Thomas and his objector is more one of making room for the lower, more particular, which is tending to get eaten up by the more all-inclusive. Thus, Thomas says: Even diverse ends, one of which is ordered to another, diversify the species of habit; for example, horsemanship and the art of war and politics differ specifically, even though the end of one is ordered to the end of the other. And similarly, though the good of one [person] is ordered toward the good of the multitude, nevertheless this does not prevent such diversity from bringing it about that a habit differ specifically. But from this [situation] it does follow that the habit that is ordered to the ultimate end is more primary [principalior], and commands the other habits.40 This whole line of thinking clearly means that the political prudence, properly having to do with the common good of the city or kingdom, has primacy over the other types of prudence, such as that which pertains to family life. Lastly, in this reading of ST 2–2.47, let us look at article 12, asking whether prudence is only in governors or also in the governed. The answer here (that it is in both) ties the discussion very much to reason and our ability rationally and freely to follow the commands of the governor or ruler. I also note ST 2–2.50.1 and 2–2.50.2. In fact, this is a better source for my line of thinking than even ST 2–2.47. In providing a question on the ‘‘subjective parts’’ of prudence, that is, the species that fall under the genus, Thomas begins by asking whether there is a prudence properly called ‘‘regnativa.’’ This should translated as something like ‘‘kingly,’’ since he explicitly relates it to the king.41 It might be called ‘‘monarchical,’’ but the ‘‘monarch’’ (elected on considerations of virtue) would be much more like our prime minister or president than like what we mean in English by a ‘‘king.’’

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However, the surprising thing is that the second article asks whether there is a prudence called ‘‘political,’’ and by this is meant something distinct from the kingly prudence. Let us look at these two articles. I am inclined to say that the first article makes an ironclad case against Finnis. This is especially so if one accepts the view that Thomas presents in the article on vindicatio, namely, that virtues perfect natural inclinations. I take Finnis to be saying that such virtues as ‘‘legal justice’’ or ‘‘general justice’’ pertain to just any multitude; and it seems to me he should be saying the same thing about the prudence that relates to a multitude. The interesting thing about the corpus of ST 2–2.50.1 is that it is so explicit as to what ‘‘multitude’’ it is considering. We read: It is to be said that, as is clear from things already said [2–2.47.8], to prudence it pertains to rule and command [regere et praecipere]. And therefore, where one finds a special type [ratio] of rule and command in human acts, there also one finds a special type of prudence. But it is evident that in him who has not only himself to rule but also the perfect community that is the city or the kingdom [communitatem perfectam civitatis vel regni], one finds a special and [indeed] the perfect type of rule [perfecta ratio regiminis]; for, just to that extent a rule is more perfect, namely, to the extent that it is more universal, extending itself to a greater number and attaining a more ultimate end. And so, to the king [regi], to whom it pertains to rule a city or kingdom, prudence is due [or befitting: competit] as having a special and [indeed] its most perfect type [perfectissimam sui rationem]. And for that reason ‘‘the kingly’’ is proposed as a species of prudence. Obviously, here we are at that ‘‘highest in the genus, which is the cause of all the others in the genus.’’42 If there is a natural inclination to be reasonable in matters social, it is here that it finds its proper perfection. It seems to me that these texts present well enough the sort of primacy we have always associated with the political common good and political society. The move of Finnis, to make it more ‘‘instrumental’’ as regards such things as family common good, is to be rejected if the goal is to interpret Thomas Aquinas.

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complete society Now we look into Finnis’s part 6, entitled ‘‘The State’s Elements, Private and Public.’’ What he has already done he sees as showing the possibility of understanding Thomas’s doctrine as a coherent one. He presents what follows as dealing with ‘‘the challenge of principle.’’ We read: ‘‘Are there good grounds for judging that the state’s specific common good is this limited public good of justice and peace?’’ Finnis does not want the reason for limitation to be merely what I would call ‘‘prudence,’’ that is, making laws in this matter would cause more trouble than it would eliminate. He wants the fact that law does not seek to bear upon complete virtue to flow from a principle, a goal presumably. He says: ‘‘But why judge the effort wrong in principle, an abuse of public power, ultra vires because directed to an end which state government and law do not truly have?’’43 I will here consider only what Finnis calls ‘‘a second argument.’’ He says: [It] asks the questioner to go behind the proposition that states are complete communities, and to consider the grounds for it, on the tacit assumption that the institutions which give this community its completeness—law and government—need justification in the face of the natural equality and freedom of persons, and need to show just why and when their authority overrides the responsibility of parents and the self-possession of free persons above the age of puberty.44 He begins by stressing the independence and necessity and even adequacy of individuals and families. He quotes a text (Thomas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics) to the effect that the human being is more naturally conjugal than political.45 It is remarkable that he quotes this, since it presents the human being at its most ‘‘animal.’’ It is hardly related to the human being as a person exercising liberty, at least as the primary angle. Even in paragraph 1721, where Thomas goes on to argue that man is naturally conjugal in a special human way, the presentation is that the husband is suited for outside work, whereas the wife is suited for inside work. What keeps them together is the common good that is children. What constitutes justice in their treatment of each other is a subject that pertains more to domestic morality or even to political morality, and so is set aside for later (paragraph 1725).

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It is really rather surprising that Finnis refers to the whole discussion in paragraphs 1721–1724 to make his argument. He does not include paragraph 1725, which would take him back to the political. The ‘‘naturalness’’ meant is so much on the material or animal side, especially as regards the text he quotes. Finnis speaks of the totum bene vivere of the household. I would say he exaggerates the completeness of it. He thus claims that Thomas comes to the conception of the ‘‘completeness’’ of the city community only by attending to the deficiencies of such a community’s elements or ‘‘parts.’’46 Of course, it is true that we appreciate the whole body only when we see what the eye can and cannot do, what the ear can and cannot do, and so on. Finnis wants to present the priority of the parts in a way one might not have thought of. He says: These parts [fundamentally, individuals and families] are prior to the complete community not historically but in a more important way: in their immediate and irreplaceable instantiation of basic human goods. The need which individuals have for the political community is not that it instantiates an otherwise unavailable basic good. By contrast, the lives of individuals and families directly instantiate basic goods, and can even provide means and context for instantiating all the other basic goods: education, friends, marriage, virtue.47 This is really the heart of the Finnis contention. I think that the main objection to it is in terms of the interpretation of the ST 1–2.94.2 inclination to life in ‘‘society.’’ I conceive of it as a rational communion beyond what we get in the family: a perfect society is a city. Even if ‘‘instantiating basic human goods,’’ individuals and families can still have a material role, the role of parts, relative to the complete society. What one needs is a consideration of hierarchy in basic goods. Which ends are more ultimate than others? Which goods are more common than others, in the same order? For St. Thomas, the political governor is in the spot he is in to give direction to the lives of the subjects, direction pertaining to the promotion of virtue. His work gives that unity of order toward goodness of human life that families as such cannot provide. This is quite clear in Thomas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics.48

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Earlier Finnis says of Thomas: ‘‘He has stipulated that a state is a complete community, and given complete community a purely formal description: a community so organized that its government and law give all the direction that properly can be given by human government and coercive law to promote and protect the common good, that is, the good of the community and thus of all its members and other proper elements.’’49 Is Thomas’s description of the completeness of the community as purely formal as Finnis contends? The stipulation that the state is a complete community we do find in the texts to which Finnis refers. However, just how ‘‘purely formal’’ is the description? That the state gives all the direction that can be given is formal enough. That this direction is given for the common good, and that that means the good of the community, is also formal enough. But there is material relevant to the description, as I see it, that Finnis does not mention. In the presentation of the city in Thomas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics 1, lesson 1/b, commenting on Aristotle at 1252b27–31, he sees it as telling us qualis concerning the city: what sort of thing is it? The condition of the city is presented as regards three features. It is ‘‘out of several’’ neighborhoods or quarters (ex pluribus uicis). It is a perfect community, having whatever is necessary for life. It is ordered to virtue. We read: ‘‘Thirdly, he [Aristotle] shows to what the city is ordered. For it is originally made [primitus facta] for the sake of living, that is, so that men find sufficient of those things by virtue of which they can live; but from its actually being [ex eius esse] it comes about that men not only live, but that they live well, inasmuch as through the laws of the city the life of men is ordered to virtue.’’50 Now, this is really proper to the nature of the city, as Thomas sees it. Thus, in the same lesson, a little later, we are told about the establishing of the city. The whole thing is conceived by linking city and virtue: Then, when he [Aristotle] says: ‘‘Therefore, nature indeed . . .’’ [1253a29], he deals with the establishing [institutione] of the city, concluding from the preceding that within all human beings there is present a natural impetus toward the community of the city, just as also toward virtues; and nevertheless, just as virtues are acquired through human exercise, as is said in Ethics 2, so cities are established by human endeavor. But he who first established a city was the cause for humans of the greatest of goods [maximorum bonorum].

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For man is the best of the animals if the virtue to which he has a natural inclination is perfected in him; but if he is without law and justice, man is the worst of all the animals. Which he proves thus: that injustice to that extent is crueler the more arms it has, that is, aids for wrongdoing; now, to man according to his own nature belong prudence and virtue, which in themselves are ordered to the good; but when a man is bad, he uses them as arms for wrongdoing, as when through astuteness he thinks up fraudulent schemes, and through abstinence he is rendered able to tolerate hunger and thirst in order to persevere in wickedness, and similarly with other such things. And thus it is that man without virtue as regards the corruption of the irascible is maximally abominable and wild, as being cruel and without affection; and as regards the corruption of the concupiscible he is worst concerning sexual matters and concerning voraciousness as regards food. But man is led back to justice by the political order, which is shown from this, that among the Greeks the order of the political community is called by the same name as the judgment of justice, that is, ‘‘diki.’’ Hence, it is evident that he who establishes a city takes away from them that they be worst, and leads them to this, that they be best as regards justice and virtues.51 Thus, Thomas conceives the completeness of the community as such a completeness as leads to virtue. This takes us beyond the formalism that Finnis spoke of. The common good of the city, so considered, seems to me very close to the ultimate end of human life. Thus, the imperfect ‘‘felicity’’ or ‘‘beatitude’’ possible in this life is seen by Thomas as primarily in contemplation of the divine, but secondarily in the operation of the practical intellect ordering human actions and passions.52 A state (Finnis’s term for Thomas’s civitas or gens) may only be able to give a limited ‘‘type of direction’’ if it is prudently to aim at the goal that is the ultimate end of human life. Thus, we considered earlier ST 1– 2.100.9 ad 2: virtue is the goal, and the act of the virtue is the means.53

private good? The other point I wished to mention is the tendency of the Finnis line of thinking to promote the good that falls outside the properly political as a

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‘‘private’’ good. There is no doubt that for Thomas the terrestrial political society is a limited good. We see this in the discussion of obedience, where it is taught that one must obey God in all matters whatsoever, both as to external actions and internal operations (that is, of the will), but that the subjection to human superiors is as regards determinate issues.54 Finnis does indicate that Thomas regards the Church as ‘‘also’’ (i.e., besides the civitas) a perfect community, and thus there is another ‘‘common good’’ besides that of the civitas.55 However, he goes on to claim that ‘‘the common good of the political community does not, as such, include certain important human goods that essentially pertain to individuals in themselves, such as the good of religious faith and worship; the fact that such individual goods are goods for many people, or for everyone, does not convert them into the good of the community.’’56 Here, in order to show that he is echoing Thomas Aquinas, he quotes a passage from Summa contra gentiles (SCG) 3.80. This has to do with the hierarchies of angels and their assigned tasks. Here is what Finnis quotes (Finnis’s English translation): In human affairs there is a certain [type of] common good, the good of the civitas or people (gentis). . . . There is also a [type of] human good which—[though it] benefits not merely one person alone but many people—does not consist in community but pertains to one [as an individual] in oneself (humanum bonum quod non in communitate consistit sed ad unum aliquem pertinet secundum seipsum), e.g., the things which everyone ought to believe and practice, such as matters of faith and divine worship, and other things of that sort.57 What is the SCG 3.80 text really saying? Does it fall in with Finnis’s conception? As I said, it bears upon the angelic hierarchy and their assigned tasks. It is dealing with the lowest part of the hierarchy, which part, according to the Dionysian schema, is to be divided into three levels, the principalities [principatus], the archangels, and the angels. This lowest hierarchy is responsible for the execution of divine providence in the merely human order (as contrasted with the whole cosmic order). Thomas tells us that by ‘‘human things’’ here he means ‘‘all inferior natures and particular causes that are ordered to man and fall into human use.’’ He then explains the three levels of angels in terms of three levels of human

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good, moving from the more universal to the less universal. Thus we are told: Among these [human things] there is an order. For in human things there is a common good, which is the good of the city or people, which seems to pertain to the order of principalities. . . . And thus, the disposition of the kingdoms, and the change of domination from people to people, necessarily pertains to the ministry of this order. Also, the instruction of those who have the role among men of governors, concerning those things that pertain to the administration of their regime, seems to look to this order. Next, we move to a middle position, between the common good and the individual good. Thomas continues: There is also another human good, which does not find its place [consistit] in the community but pertains to some one [person] in himself, but [a good] not merely of service [utilia] to one alone but to many: for example, those things that are to be believed and observed by all, such as the things of faith and of divine worship and the like. And this pertains to archangels, concerning whom Gregory says that they announce the highest things; for example, we call Gabriel an ‘‘archangel,’’ who announced to the Virgin the incarnation of the Word, to be believed by all. Thus, one sees what is meant by the limitation to the one individual, that is, it is the Virgin Mary to whom the message is announced. Yet the message is one for all the people. The idea is not that faith in general pertains to the people on a sort of individual basis outside the community of the Church. The ‘‘pertaining to one person’’ is the dimension of the angelic task, a message to one person. The nature of the message keeps us in a middle position, pertaining somewhat to the more universal or common good. We then move to the lowest level, that of the individual believer. Thomas says: ‘‘There is a human good pertaining to each one singly. And such [good] pertains to the order of angels, concerning whom Gregory says that they announce the lowest things.’’ Thomas goes on to say that the middle group have something in common with the highest and with the lowest. Concerning the relation to the highest, he says: ‘‘Having

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something in common . . . with the principalities, inasmuch as they confer authority to the lower angels, and not unworthily, because the things that are individual [propria] in human affairs should be dealt out in keeping with what are common [communia].’’ One sees then that what Finnis singled out is rather misleading. The faith and worship is the general thing, and the individual concerned is the Virgin Mary, not just any individual believer. Moreover, there is the usual insistence that the particular must be ordered toward the common. In fact, Thomas considers religious practice as pertaining to the natural law. Thus, to offer sacrifice is presented by him explicitly as a duty decreed by natural law. And he then sees it as altogether appropriate that the human political community enact positive laws in this regard. These laws are distinct, of course, from the divine positive laws.58 That such enactment of laws is possible only ‘‘somewhat’’ in any given group of people is, of course, the point of the need to limit the enforcement of virtue. The Basic Goods Approach Finnis’s main contention is that the common good proper to political society, for Thomas Aquinas, is not a ‘‘basic human good,’’ but rather is ‘‘instrumental’’ as regards those goods. There is added the ‘‘qualification’’ that it may perhaps be a basic good as concerns retributive justice. I see this as an important issue, quite simply because any diminution in nobility that the political as such suffers relative to the eye of our mind cannot fail to affect the way politics is lived, and especially what we expect from our leaders. The Finnis focus on the limitation of political jurisdiction moves us from a definitely moral conception of political life to something much less obviously so. The view I wish to insist on is that St. Thomas stresses that the goal of the political society and its leaders is authentic human virtue, that accordingly the leaders must be virtuous, and that the limitations in lawmaking relate properly to the licit means of moving the multitude of the people toward that goal. As I have said, Finnis sees ST 1–2.94.2, on the unity and multiplicity of the precepts of natural law, as locating certain ‘‘basic human goods’’ on the basis of some natural inclinations present in the human being. Thus, he can challenge the status of political society as a ‘‘basic human good’’ by questioning the existence of a natural inclination toward it.

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Now, first of all, I would like to shake up the vocabulary of ‘‘basic human goods.’’ Thomas, in the text in question, speaks of our naturally apprehending the notion of the good. Beyond that, he also speaks of our naturally apprehending certain bona humana, human goods. These naturally apprehended human goods are then pointed out to be ends (bonum habet rationem finis). And so the naturally apprehended goods are seen as the ends toward which we have natural inclinations. Obviously, Thomas does no more in the article than provide a sketch of the multiplicity and order of these natural inclinations. The extent to which the doctrine of order in this article has been obscured is remarkable. Thus, interpreters such as Germain Grisez, William May, and John Finnis have denied the moral significance of the presented order.59 Even Benedict Ashley, though insisting on an order, has, I believe, missed the true interpretation. He sees the first level as exclusively concerned with the preservation of the individual.60 I have long maintained that the first level of inclination spoken of by Thomas should rather be considered in terms of the great universality it has. It pertains to all substances as such. Thus, it has not to do merely with the individual as an individual. It rather has to do with the being and well-being of being as such. It is the inclination of the creature as a creature. This is the inclination that is present in each thing, but present in that thing according to the proper mode of being of the thing. Thus we read: ‘‘For there is present firstly in man an inclination toward the good according to the nature that he has in common with all substances, inasmuch as all substances have appetite for the conservation of their own being according to their own nature. And according to this inclination those things through which the life of man is preserved and the contrary impeded pertain to natural law.’’61 This should not be read, for example, as though it did not include the tendency to reproduction, by which the species is preserved. The second level of inclination to which St. Thomas refers, the more special one, concerns what man has in common with the other animals, such as male-female relations and the upbringing of offspring. This is not just reproduction, but a special setting for reproduction. Each thing has inclination for its own preservation, not only as to the individual, but as to the species. Here the best interpretation comes from Thomas himself in ST 1.60.5 ad 3. The objector argues against a natural

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love for God more than for oneself, precisely because nature tends to selfpreservation, and tending to favor another over oneself would be against nature. Thomas replies: ‘‘Nature turns back toward itself not only as regards that in it which is singular but much more as regards the common: for each thing is inclined to preserve not only its own individual self but also its own species. And much more has it a natural inclination toward that which is the unqualifiedly universal good.’’ I am talking about the inclinations that pertain to what Thomas calls, in ST 1.45.5 ad 1 (lines 288b36–38), ‘‘if I may so put it, the nature of being [ut ita dixerim, naturam essendi],’’ which is participated in by all creatures. This is part of the view of all reality as the divine effect, and so as naturally ‘‘turned toward God.’’ (ST 2–2.106.3, on the philosophy of gratitude, contains the following quotation from the Pseudo-Dionysius: ‘‘God turns all things back toward himself, as the cause of all.’’)62 Thus, I maintain that the best commentary on the first level of inclination in ST 1–2.94.2 is ST 1.60.1–1.60.5, in which we have detailed discussion of the natural love found in angels and human beings. We see that the inclination common to all substances is a natural love for itself as an individual, and even more for its species, and even more for the author of being, God himself. In this respect, one should notice that in ST 1–2.94.2, the third level of inclination, concerning what is proper to the human species, has to do not with love of God but with knowledge concerning God. It mentions our desire to know the truth concerning God. It is the desire to know that is being considered, an inclination not found in all substances. The precept Thomas formulates in its connection is ‘‘avoid ignorance.’’ Love of God, on the other hand, is presented everywhere in Thomas’s writings as present in every substance as such, and indeed such that every being loves God naturally more than it loves itself.63 It is this domain of what might be called ‘‘transcendental inclination’’ that is being referred to in the first place in ST 1–2.94.2. The other two particularizing sorts of inclination are clearly relative to the genus and the species.64 Now, as regards the third level of inclination, Finnis’s reading suggests that the ‘‘society’’ referred to in the passage ‘‘There is in man inclination to the good in function of the nature of reason [secundum naturam rationis], which is proper to him; for example [sicut], man has natural inclination to this, that he know the truth about God, and to

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this, that he live in society [in societate vivat]’’65 is merely the ‘‘basic good’’ of friendship.66 However, I would argue that just as Thomas focused the inclination to know on knowing about God, so one would do well to consider that the society he has in mind is the most perfect form of society, the complete society. And that, as Thomas teaches, is the civitas, not just the friendship found within the limits of domesticity. It is remarkable that although Finnis seems to doubt that there is a natural inclination toward life in the political society, he does note in a footnote that in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, Thomas, paraphrasing Aristotle, speaks of a natural impetus to political community.67 The word ‘‘impetus’’ Thomas finds in his translation of Aristotle’s Politics at 1253a30. In explaining this and the following few lines, Thomas himself, as we have already seen, says: ‘‘Man is the best of animals if virtue, to which he has natural inclination, is perfected; but if he is without law and justice, man is the worst of all the animals.’’68 It seems to me that the natural inclination to legal justice, which is found in all (otherwise it could not be in the governed even secondarily),69 is identical with the natural inclination to live in a political society or civitas. If we look at some of the other places where Thomas expresses what is essentially the same doctrine as that in ST 1–2.94.2 on the natural inclinations, we see even more clearly that the object of legal justice, the end or good sought by legal justice, has a certain primacy among naturally apprehended human goods. Thus, in the discussion of prudence in the secunda secundae, it is asked whether prudence presents the end to the moral virtues. The general answer is that it does not.70 Rather, prudence has to do with those things that are ordered toward the attainment of the end. The virtues themselves prescribe the end to prudence, but the virtues themselves presuppose the natural ability of reason to apprehend the primary ends. We read: The end of moral virtues is the human good. But the good of the human soul is to be in accordance with reason. . . . Hence, it is necessary that the ends of the moral virtues preexist in reason. . . . In practical reason there preexist some items as naturally known principles, and of this sort are the ends of the moral virtues, because

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the end has the same standing in [the domain of] things to be done as has the principle in [the domain of] things observed.71 And in the same line, at the end of the treatment of prudence, speaking of the Ten Commandments, Thomas makes the point that the Decalogue itself is not about the objects of prudence, precisely as such, but about the ends of human life. We read: ‘‘The precepts of the Decalogue, just as they are given to all the people, so also they fall under the grasp of all, as pertaining to natural reason. But paramount among things commanded by natural reason are the ends of human life [fines humanae vitae].’’72 Of course, all the precepts of the Decalogue in a way pertain to prudence: ‘‘Nevertheless all the precepts of the Decalogue pertain to [prudence] inasmuch as it is directive of all virtuous acts.’’73 We see what should be thought about the ends of human life when we look at what Thomas says about the suitability of the first three commandments of the Decalogue. We read: It pertains to law to make men good. And therefore it is necessary that the precepts of the law be ordered in accordance with the order of coming-to-be, that is, by which a man becomes good. But in the order of coming-to-be two things are to be noted. The first of which is that the first part is constituted first, for example in the generation of the animal firstly the heart is generated, and in the [case of] the house firstly the foundation is laid. And in the goodness of the soul the first part is the goodness of the will, [starting] from which the particular man makes good use of every other goodness whatsoever. But the goodness of the will is seen [by looking] toward its object, which is the end. And therefore in him who was to be set on the road to virtue through law, firstly it was necessary to, as it were, lay down a foundation of religion [iacere quoddam fundamentum religionis], through which man is duly ordered to God, who is the ultimate end of the human will.74 Thomas goes on to discuss a second need for the order of coming-tobe, explaining the order among themselves of the first three commandments. But we need only note the above. If the ‘‘basic’’ in ‘‘basic human good’’ is that foundation, compared to the foundation of the house, of which Thomas speaks, then we see that the basic human good is the

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ultimate end of man, and that goods will be more basic to the extent that they pertain more closely to that end. If we consider the moral virtues and the goodness that pertains to them, we see the preeminent goodness of justice. In fact, the text is so decisive that one wonders that it is not cited more frequently. The question asked is whether justice is preeminent among the moral virtues. We read: ‘‘If we are speaking about legal justice, it is evident that it is more splendid among all moral virtues, inasmuch as the common good has preeminence over the singular good of one person. And in that regard the Philosopher says in Nicomachean Ethics 5 [1129b27] that ‘justice seems to be the most splendid of the virtues, and neither is Hesperus nor Lucifer so admirable.’75 Thomas goes on to show how even the particular justice of one person to another singular person is a reality more noble than other moral virtues, but that need not concern us. It is precisely the common good that the law has to do with that makes legal justice so unquestionably noble. It is, of course, true that Thomas presents prudence as even more noble than legal justice. This is inasmuch as prudence is not merely a moral virtue but is an intellectual virtue. We read: The good of reason is the good of man. . . . But prudence, which is the perfection of reason, has this good essentially. Justice, however, is productive of this good, inasmuch as it pertains to [justice] to put the order of reason into all human affairs. But the other virtues have a conservational role regarding this good, inasmuch as the passions are given measure lest they remove a man from the good of reason. . . . Hence, among the cardinal virtues, prudence is better; secondly, justice; thirdly, fortitude; fourthly, temperance.76 However, we have seen that Thomas sees the supreme instance of prudence in the person of the ruler. ‘‘Instrumental’’ Finnis presents the good of political society as ‘‘instrumental’’ regarding the basic human goods found in the friendship of marriage, and the like. One supposes that this makes of such a good not an end in itself but an

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ad finem item having in itself nothing to recommend it. Thomas sometimes uses the example of a bad-tasting medicine to portray such a ‘‘good.’’77 Of course, nothing prevents something from being both a primary goal of human life and an instrument in the service of still more final goods. In fact, this is how Thomas does present political society. The political order is not the best thing in man. The political is ‘‘instrumental’’ relative to the contemplative order, and the intellectual virtues are more noble than the moral, wisdom more noble than political prudence.78 In ST 1–2.66.5 ad 1, the conclusion is For it does not belong to prudence to inject itself into [consideration of] the highest things, which wisdom considers; but it gives orders concerning those things that are ordered toward wisdom, namely, how men ought to arrive [pervenire] at wisdom. Hence, in this, prudence, or politics, [prudentia, seu politica] is the servant [ministra] of wisdom; it introduces to it, preparing the way for it, like the door-keeper for the king [sicut ostiarius ad regem].79 Thomas is quite explicit. Politics is the servant, and so the instrument, of wisdom.80 Thus, what I object to in Finnis’s conception is not that the political order is considered as ‘‘instrumental’’ toward human good. It is rather that with his system of ‘‘basic human goods,’’ he sees such things as family life as absolute, and so as an unqualified human good in contrast to the instrumentality of political life. He sees the ‘‘basic good’’ of ‘‘living in society’’ as fulfilled primarily in such things as family life and other relatively private associations. As an interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine on the status of political society, this seems to me quite off the mark. One should consider the family as a family. What is proper to this mode of human socializing as such? Thomas does not see it as more noble than the city. He sees it as a part of the city, an element, we might say. Like other ways of human association, it can and should be ordered toward the higher life, the contemplation of truth and the life of religion. However, precisely as family life, it is ordered toward the life of the city. Thus, in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics 1.11, where Thomas is commenting on Aristotle’s Politics 1260b8 and following, we see that the discussion of the virtue involved in

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the relationships of husband and wife, father and children, is postponed. It cannot be determined until one gets into ‘‘politics,’’ that is, into the discussion of ‘‘cities.’’ Two reasons are given. The first reason is that one must discuss the disposition of the part by making a comparison to the whole, as one determines concerning the foundation by considering what pertains to the house as a whole. Now, the household is a part of the city, and these two relationships or conjunctions—father and son, man and wife—pertain primarily to the household; hence, one must consider the formation (qualiter sint erudiendi) of the child and the wife in the light of what is said of the city.81 The second reason is as follows: Those things whose disposition makes a difference as to the goodness of the city are to be considered in politics [in politiis]; but of this sort are the instructions [instructiones] of children and women as to how the two are good, since women are half the free human beings who are in the city, and from the children grow the men who must be those who dispense in the city: therefore, it is in politics that one must determine concerning the instruction of children and women.82 This suggests a different relation of the household or family to the political society from the one found in Grisez or Finnis, it seems to me. It need not at all violate any ‘‘principle of subsidiarity,’’83 which means simply authentic causal hierarchy: there really is a role proper to the lower thing, and it belongs to the higher thing to foster, not destroy, the lower thing.84 Conclusion In the present study I have had a limited purpose. I have not attempted to go into detail as to what are the good reasons for the limitations on law and government. I have rather focused on what I see as an unhappy effect of Finnis’s interpretation, namely, to diminish the goodness proper to law and government, as understood by Thomas. My aim has been mainly to argue for a primary ‘‘basic (or foundational) human good’’ in the civitas as such. Although Thomas certainly uses the need to provide coercion to approach the need for the political order, seen as the source of law,85 the actual portrait of that order, especially as found in the suitable governor, is of the richest of goods that practical reason provides.

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Addendum Since making this study I have come upon a text of St. Thomas that I consider very important for the critique of Finnis on law. I mentioned early on,86 that Finnis notes that although Thomas speaks of human government in the state of original innocence, he does not speak expressly of law or political government. The contention that law and politics are not meant is based on the fact that there would be no wrongdoing in such a state of human affairs, and that the need for law is regularly argued by Thomas on the grounds of the unruliness of youth (beyond what parents can deal with).87 Is it only the fallen human being who has need of law and political government? Such a view would place in doubt the existence of a natural inclination toward political government, one might conclude. The text to which I wish to call attention is from Thomas’s Commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard. We read: At the beginning, when God fashioned man, he could have [poterat] formed another man from the mud of the earth whom he might have left in the condition of his own nature, as mortal and susceptible to injury and experiencing the battle of concupiscence against reason; in that person nothing of human nature would have been missing, because this [condition] follows from the principles of the nature. Nevertheless, this weakness would not have had in him the character of sin or punishment, since this weakness would not have been caused by the will.88 Thus, it seems to me that the argument for the necessity of human law, as based on the presence among us of unruly youth, should not be taken as dependent on the theological premise of fallen man; it is an argument that considers what pertains to human nature as such.

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Chapter 18

THOMAS AQUINAS, GERARD BRADLEY, A N D T H E D E AT H PE N A L T Y

In 1970 Germain Grisez published a paper criticizing St. Thomas’s view of the legitimacy of capital punishment.1 That Grisez found Thomas’s doctrine in this matter unacceptable is not surprising, since, as he made clear there, Grisez rejected Thomas’s fundamental conception of political society and indeed, the absolute primacy of the common good.2 Grisez taught that no one, not even the political authority, could ever licitly intend the death of a human being. Gerard Bradley, in a paper for a Grisez Festschrift,3 argues that Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical letter Evangelium vitae (EV), tends to agree with Grisez. In so doing Bradley recalls some of the contentions of Grisez in his criticism of Thomas. My aim here is to review passages of Thomas on capital punishment to show the shortcomings of the Bradley criticism. Bradley begins with a very flawed contention. He first cites a statement from the papal encyclical Veritatis splendor (VS) to the effect that if something is intrinsically bad, no one has the right to do it, no matter whether one is a leader of the world or poorest of the poor. The quoted passage runs: ‘‘When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the ‘poorest of the poor’ on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal.’’4 He then makes this into the view that ‘‘this universal applicability of the exceptionless norms establishes the moral equality of all persons.’’ Finally, in the same act of interpretation, he speaks of a denial by VS and EV of ‘‘the divisibility of morality into ‘public’ and ‘private’ realms.’’ 312

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Now, the statement he quotes has no tendency to deny a distinction between public and private realms. One could say that capital punishment is a morally virtuous act, an act of justice, but one that is licitly performable only by a person in the appropriate public office. For a private person to decide that a criminal should be executed and accordingly to carry out the execution is not identifiable, as to moral species, with the aforementioned act of justice. It is rather a sin of unjust homicide. It remains quite true that no person, whether occupying public office or not, has the right to perform an act of unjust homicide. And this is what the VS statement quoted says. It does not deny that there are acts that only a person in public office can justly perform. It is ironic that Bradley begins with VS, which bases its case for the existence of intrinsically evil acts on the doctrine, ‘‘borne out by the insightful analysis, still valid today, made by St. Thomas,’’ that the moral act is to be judged in terms of its object.5 Thomas’s own example of a fundamental distinction between two species of moral act, the one good because of its object, the other bad because of its object, is the distinction between ‘‘killing a human being in order to preserve justice’’ (good) and ‘‘killing a human being in order to satisfy anger’’ (bad).6 Bradley says, in the same connection: ‘‘By declaring the basic human goods (the backbone of the exceptionless norms) absolutely immune from direct attack, Catholic social teaching insures that no one may rightly be made an instrument of the purposes of another—not of the Cabinet, the ‘community’ or the ‘great man.’ ’’7 We see that ‘‘Catholic social teaching’’ is being swept into the system of analysis of the Grisez school. But it is not true, on the basis of the cited passages, that no one may be made an instrument of the community. If that were so, it would be impossible to require someone to defend his country. Furthermore, there is every reason to ‘‘use’’ the criminal for the benefit of the community, precisely by punishing him or her. It is clear that Bradley, in reading the papal documents, is adhering to the Grisez line of thinking that sets aside the primacy of the common good. Grisez’s own doctrine of sinless killing of human beings is based on Thomas’s doctrine of legitimate self-defense by a private person. Thomas held that although the private person is not permitted to make the judgment that the attacker ought to die (as the public authority has the power to do), the private person has the right to act for the preservation of the

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life or lives for which he is responsible, even though the measures needed for that purpose require the death of the attacker. Thomas argued for that on the basis of an act possibly having more than one effect, this being true of the acts by which we defend ourselves. The agent here can perform the act, but not as an act of killing—only as an act of preservation of life. He cannot ‘‘intend’’ the killing. In this, the private defender of life is different from the public defender. The public agent, in defending the society, can select death from among other measures, as in this or that set of circumstances the correct measure to be taken. In that sense, the public agent can ‘‘intend’’ the death in a way not open to the private agent.8 Since the Grisez-Bradley principles eliminate the nature of the public domain, their doctrine is described by Bradley as ‘‘no intentional killing whatsoever.’’9 Punishment and Human Dignity Within the confines of the present essay, I cannot enter into the doctrine of Thomas in all its richness. I will here select two lines of discussion that I find in Bradley and show that there is a misrepresentation of the implications of Thomas’s doctrine.10 I will start with the point that for Thomas capital punishment is in keeping with the fundamental human dignity of the criminal. First we must see how Bradley gets into this issue. Bradley’s general project is of interest. He is not saying that one cannot practice capital punishment. He is inquiring into its correct moral analysis. Does all legitimate killing of human beings have to be unintended? He comes to the Church and capital punishment at page 158. Is not capital punishment intentional and yet permitted by the Church? He writes: One means of reconciliation might be to say that the criminal forfeits his right to life by his bad actions, that he descends to the moral status of a beast. I doubt whether anyone ever considered this an argument, as opposed to a loose way of stating a conclusion in favor of capital punishment. However, this possibility of reconciliation is now foreclosed by Church teaching: ‘‘Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this.’’ (EV 96, emphasis in original).11 The papal document is talking about the case of Cain. God put a mark on him to keep him from getting killed. There is no doubt that the Pope

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is recommending that we be imitators of God in the treatment of criminals, imitators of him in his treatment of Cain. What of the statement ‘‘Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity’’? It certainly looks designed to counter the line of thinking recalled by Bradley. Has the criminal taken on the ‘‘moral status of a beast’’? Bradley says he doubts this was ever really meant as an argument for capital punishment, only as a conclusion that there should be capital punishment. I suppose he means that one is ‘‘calling somebody names’’ in the act of condemning him: ‘‘Die like a dog!’’ Of course, he must know that the point is introduced in Thomas’s Summa theologiae (ST) 2–2.64.2, in the body of the article and in ad 3. However, he does not see an argument there, we can assume. What is said in those passages? It is remarkable that Thomas begins his question on homicide with the article on the killing of brute animals. He elsewhere mentions heretics of his time holding it a sin to kill any animal.12 Still, he is neatly setting up a context for the discussion in the whole of question 64. If we look at the objections to the killing of animals, we notice the second. Is not homicide forbidden because it is a taking of life? Should we not then ban the killing of animals, which is also a taking of life? Thomas specifies that what is forbidden is the taking of rational life, which is a source of events. Animals are more moved things than sources of events, a sign that they are for the use of others.13 Let us now look at article 2, on the licit killing of criminals. In doing so, I have open before me both the Bible and John Paul II’s encyclical EV. One thing I notice right away about EV is the context for the discussion of life in this world: Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, in fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the entire unified process of human existence . . . At the same time, it is precisely this same calling which highlights the relative character of each individual’s earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an ‘‘ultimate’’ but a ‘‘penultimate’’ reality; even so, it remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a

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sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brother and sisters.14 Notice how different this line is from what we hear from many commentators. We have not merely the vision of ‘‘life’’ as an absolute, but of earthly life as something rightly seen in relation to eternal life.15 The Pope speaks of the ‘‘sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end,’’ of the ‘‘incomparable value of every human person,’’ of ‘‘the Gospel of the dignity of the person.’’16 He is alarmed at ‘‘new forms of attacks on the dignity of the human being.’’ What alarms him as well is ‘‘the fact that conscience itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns the basic value of human life.’’17 I note this reference to human life as a ‘‘basic value,’’ that is, a basic good.18 In his introductory part 1, the Pope makes use of the crime of Cain and the punishment God exacted. Abel is linked by Scripture itself (Hebrews 12:22 and 12:24) with Christ. The first victim and Christ the victim are linked. Christ’s blood is more eloquent than that of Abel.19 Let us see how this episode is used. I am very happy to see the presentation begin with the statements from Wisdom 1:13–14 and 2:23–24 that man is made for ‘‘incorruption’’ and ‘‘in the image of His [God’s] own eternity.’’20 This is the key ethical starting point, the intention of the Creator in establishing the human being as an immortal animal. No wonder the commandment says ‘‘Thou shalt not kill!’’21 What the Pope does not bring out, doubtless for reasons of present persuasion, is that death was imposed by God as a punishment.22 Next, the Holy Father quotes in its entirety the episode of Cain and Abel. He notes its ‘‘archaic structure and extreme simplicity,’’ but says it has much to teach us. In speaking of the murder, he brings out the fratricidal aspect of all homicide: ‘‘Brother kills brother. Like the first fratricide, every murder is a violation of the ‘spiritual’ kinship uniting mankind in one great family, in which all share the same fundamental good: equal personal dignity.’’23 Notice this use of the words ‘‘personal dignity,’’ since we wish to interpret correctly what the Pope has said about murderers. It is something, this personal dignity, in which we all have an equal share. My point will be that it refers to the nobility of the rational nature,

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whereby we have been, in the most basic way, made in the image of God.24 I will show that Thomas Aquinas, who talks about the bestial (and worse than bestial) character of those criminals worthy of capital punishment, also maintains that we must have charitable love for the murderer because of his being in the image of God, that is, because there is no diminution in his ‘‘personal dignity,’’ so conceived. In speaking about God’s punishment of Cain, Pope John Paul II makes the statement referred to by Bradley, about the dignity of the murderer and God’s pledge to guarantee that he does not lose it. There is no doubt that this interests the Pope because of the line he is taking on the practice of capital punishment. Nevertheless, we must distinguish carefully between the meaning of the statement about the murderer and the practical treatment of murderers. My contention is that the statement about the dignity of the murderer is nothing new, whereas the practical approach suggested is moving into the domain where moral judgments are much less open to certitude, and where prudence must prescribe now one approach, now another.25 For example, anyone who knows about conditions in prisons, the sort of internal ‘‘society’’ they involve, not to mention the mentality of many prison guards, knows this: if one recommends prison sentences instead of capital punishment, one must be willing to campaign for suitable prisons and suitable guards. Let us look now at the texts of St. Thomas on the criminal and his dignity. One might start with ST 1.93.4, on whether the image of God is to be found in every human being whatsoever. This text presents three levels of the image, the greatest being man in the beatific vision; the second greatest, man in the life of grace and virtue; but the minimum is one’s having the natural aptitude to know and love God. This is in everyone. St. Thomas presents the whole second part of the ST as concerned with the image of God, that is, the whole moral order pertains to man as possessed of free choice and so as the source of his own acts.26 From this point of view, it is only man as the image of God who can be worthy of punishment, as being responsible for his actions.27 Next, we should look at the article in the treatise on charity: are sinners to be loved with charitable love?28 We see at once that we are in the right context, since one of the objections quotes the very passages of Scripture that Thomas uses at ST 2–2.64.2 sed contra as justification for capital

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punishment. One is Psalms 100:8: ‘‘In the morning I will kill all the sinners of the earth.’’ The other is Exodus 22:18: ‘‘You shall not suffer evildoers to live.’’ The objector argues that it is hardly charitable treatment that is being prescribed. Thomas, in the sed contra here, arguing that one must treat sinners charitably, quotes Augustine concerning the commandment to love one’s neighbor; Augustine says this clearly means every human being. And Thomas argues: ‘‘But sinners do not cease to be human beings, because sin does not do away with nature. Therefore sinners are to be loved with charity.’’29 This is to say that the murderer does not lose his dignity, that is, the dignity that he has in common with all human beings. Thomas’s answer in the body of the article is that we must hate sinners as regards the sin, but love them as regards the nature that is capable of sharing with us in beatitude. In this context, then, he discusses capital punishment. He urges that as long as possible we should retain our friendly relations with sinners and urge their reform; still, when they fall into maximal maliciousness and become incurable, then friendliness should not be exhibited. And so for such sinners, concerning whom harm to others is more to be anticipated than their own reform, divine and human law prescribes their being killed. And nevertheless the judge does this, not out of hate for them, but out of charitable love, by which the public good is preferred to the life of this individual person. And nevertheless the death that is inflicted on the sinner by the judge is to the advantage [of the sinner], whether he is converted, [thus advantageous] for the expiation of his sin, or not converted, [thus advantageous] for the termination of sin, because by that the power to sin more is taken away from him.30 Notice this. The judge does not act out of hate for the criminal. I wonder whether some who refuse the idea of ‘‘intentional killing’’ of the criminal do not think that all intentional killing stems from hate for the criminal. Of course, we are all always supposed to hate the sinner as regards his sin, but we are supposed to love the sinner right to the end. Thomas makes this very clear. We see, also, that for Thomas charity itself is conceived as placing first the common good, the public good. This relates to his conception of

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political or civil society as a theater of, and a school for, virtue.31 But it especially pertains to charity as friendship based on the possibility of sharing with others in beatitude, the heavenly city: ‘‘In sinners two things can be considered, namely, the nature and the fault. As regards the nature, which they have from God, they have capability for beatitude, upon the communication of which [beatitude] charity has its foundation.’’32 Acting out of charity requires that one think not only of this particular human being but of all those who are potentially our companions in beatitude: they have a right to a theater of action that fosters charity itself.33 This makes especially relevant the question Thomas dedicates to the order of charity: in the practice of charity, who should come first and who second?34 Let us come back now to the article on capital punishment, namely, ST 2–2.64.2. We see in the third objection that killing a human being is marked as intrinsically evil, what no one is permitted to do; the reason for this—its being so rated—is that we are to love all human beings with charitable love and we wish friends to live and be. Thus, the intrinsic evil of killing a human being is directly diagnosed from the nature of the object, the human being as worthy of charity. And charity, being a form of friendship, should do what friendship does, that is, seek the preservation of the life and being of the friend. Then, in the sed contra, as already mentioned, we get the quotations of Scripture prescribing the death penalty. Thomas, in his main reply, does look back to what he has just determined about the treatment of animals. However, the application is far from direct. Thomas recalls that the imperfect is for the sake of the perfect. He then applies this to the present case by pointing to the relation of the private person to the entire community. It is a part-to-whole relationship, and thus an imperfect-to-perfect relationship. The part is for the sake of the whole, and so the comparison is made to the cutting off of a noxious member of the body. Thus, the justification is clearly through the contrast within human society. There is here no direct application of the ‘‘status of a beast’’ to the human being. But what about the reply to the objection requiring us to have friendly, charitable love for the sinner? It is there that the beast is once again mentioned. Thomas says:

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Man by sinning recedes from the order of reason; and so he recedes from human dignity [recedit a dignitate humana], inasmuch as man is naturally free and a being whose existence is its own justification [propter seipsum existens], and he falls in a way [quodammodo] into the servitude proper to beasts [incidit quodammodo in servitutem bestiarum], in this respect, that it is ordained concerning him as it is useful for others, in accordance with the Psalm 48:21: ‘‘Man, though he was honored, did not understand; he has been compared to the stupid beasts, and has been rendered similar to them.’’35 And Proverbs 11:29 has: ‘‘Who is stupid will serve the wise.’’36 And therefore, while it is intrinsically evil to kill a man who abides in his dignity [hominem in sua dignitate manentem], nevertheless it can be good to kill a human being who is a sinner, like killing a beast; for a bad man is worse than a beast, and does more harm, as the Philosopher says in Politics 1.1 [1253a32] and in Ethics 7.6 [1150a7]. Obviously, properly speaking, there is no ‘‘moral’’ status of a beast. Only human beings have the dignity to have moral status, that is, to be moral agents. The bad human being is infinitely worse than any lower animal, since moral evil is incomparably worse than physical evil.37 It is only because the criminal is credited with human dignity that he can be held responsible for his actions. We see that Thomas’s comparison of the criminal with a beast has a scriptural basis. Nevertheless, we should take seriously the ‘‘in a way’’ that Thomas uses in making the comparison. What he is saying is that the criminal is treatable, not as what one is primarily acting for, but as he is useful for, good for, others. In this, he is analogous to the beast. Thus, Professor Bradley is right in saying that it is not a mere consideration of the criminal as a beast that is the argument. The argument is precisely appropriate to the human being as such. The beast is characterized in the psalm as ‘‘stupid’’; thus Thomas also uses the proverb that merely mentions stupidity, not beasts; this reduction to stupidity is in accordance with the idea of someone falling away from reason. But there is always the idea that the wrongdoer ought to know better.38 The same point that is dealt with in the objection and reply just seen is once again touched on in the article asking whether it is ever right to kill an innocent person. Thomas’s main reply is as follows:

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The human individual [aliquis homo] can be considered in two ways: in one way, just in himself; in the other way, by comparison with something else. Considering a man just in himself, it is not licit to kill anyone, because in anyone, even a sinner, we ought to love the nature that God has made, and that by killing is destroyed. But, as was said above, the killing of the sinner is rendered licit by comparison with the common good, which is destroyed by sin. But the life of just [people] is conservative of and promotes the common good, because they are the more principal part [principalior pars] of the multitude. And so it is in no way licit to kill the innocent.39 Here we see that far from viewing the fundamental dignity of the human being as taken away from the sinner, Thomas explicitly points to it. Even the sinner, considered just in himself, is not a licit object of killing, precisely because of the human nature, something that God has intended not to be subject to death. The entire process of this article shows that when Thomas speaks in the earlier reply to the objection, about the sinner ‘‘receding from human dignity,’’ he does not mean that there is destruction of the fundamental dignity, the image of God. To understand what he is saying, one must look at such texts as ST 1–2.85, on the effects of sin. Does sin diminish the good of the nature? There we see that there are three levels of goodness distinguished: the nature itself, the inclinations of the nature, and the gift of original justice. The third is lost by original sin, the first is in no way lost by sin, and the natural inclinations are weakened by sin.40 One objector argues that in those already in hell, the ability to act virtuously is totally absent. Thomas replies: ‘‘Even in the damned the natural inclination to virtue remains; otherwise there would not be in them remorse of conscience. But that it is not put into action comes about because grace is lacking, in accordance with divine justice.’’41 I think it is clear that the diminution in human dignity of which St. Thomas speaks is entirely compatible with the retaining of human dignity about which he elsewhere speaks, and of which the Pope speaks. In short, the Pope is stressing the humanity of the murderer, and this is of importance for the practical procedure he is promoting, but it is not a new doctrine about murderers.

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The Spirit of Punishment The texts on God as punishing and on the virtue of redress (vindicatio) help us see what constitutes the virtuous mind of the punisher for Thomas. They also help us realize how important is his conception of the common good for his entire ethics. We find an analysis of the situation in the context of the discussion of God causing the punishment of the sinner. ST 1.19.9 is basic. Since the notion of the good is the appetible, and the bad is the opposite of the good, it is impossible that one have appetite for the bad as such. However, the bad can be an object of appetite incidentally (or, by association) (per accidens), inasmuch as it follows upon (consequitur ad) some good. Thus the lion, killing the deer, intends the food, to which the killing of the animal is conjoined; and the adulterer intends the pleasure, to which the disorder of the sin is conjoined. The next point is that the bad that is conjoined to the good is the privation of some other good, and so one has appetite for the bad, even incidentally, only if the good that one will obtain is more loved than the good that one will forgo. This is now applied to God. He loves no good more than his own goodness, but he loves some particular good more than some other particular good. Accordingly, he in no way wills the evil of sin, since it eliminates order to the divine good itself. However, and here is my point, ‘‘the evil of natural defect, or the evil of punishment, [God] does will, in willing some good, to which such evil is conjoined; such as willing justice, he wills punishment; and willing the preservation of the order of nature, he wills that some things be naturally corrupted.’’42 This is very important, since it must involve what we mean by ‘‘intending the killing.’’ One can will the death of the criminal as punishment, inasmuch as one wills the order of justice. In this connection we should note the fundamental text ST 1–2.19.10 ad 2 (of the first group). In order that our will be good, must we will the very same thing that God wills? The second and third objections, contending that we cannot be expected to will the very thing that God wills, point to the possibility of his willing the damnation or the death of oneself or one’s parent. Thomas replies to both in one answer: ‘‘God does not will the damnation of someone under the aspect of damnation, nor the death of

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someone under the aspect of death, because he ‘wills that all human beings be saved’ [1 Timothy 2:4], but he wills these under the aspect of justice. Hence, it is sufficient regarding such matters that the human being will the preservation of the justice of God and of the natural order.’’ This implies that in the case of private self-defense, what is forbidden is the intention ‘‘justice through execution.’’ No one (whether a public official or a private person) is ever allowed to ‘‘intend the death of this person’’ in the way that that involves pleasure in that person’s suffering or hate of that person as possessed of human nature. But the private person has not the right even to restore the order of justice through any sort of punishment.43 And of course we need the testimony of ST 1–2.87, on worthiness to be punished. We note that it is not punishment itself that is the effect of sin, but being worthy of punishment. Punishment itself is God’s effect, when it is just.44 God does not delight in punishments because of themselves, but because of the order of justice that requires them.45 We see ourselves as acting, as far as is appropriate for a creature, on the divine model when we undertake just punishments. This is presented in the question in the seconda secundae of the ST on redress (vindicatio). Here is a text that is primary for the understanding of all punishment, and so of capital punishment. The main reply has entirely to do with making sure that the spirit in which the redress is accomplished is the right one. We read: Redress is brought about through some penal evil inflicted on the wrongdoer. Therefore, in redress what is to be considered is the spirit [animus, the ‘‘mentality’’] of the one doing the redressing. For if his intention bears principally on the [penal] evil [happening] to the one on whom redress is taken, and rests there [ibi quiescat], then it is altogether illicit; because to take pleasure in the evil [befalling] another pertains to hatred, which is repugnant to charity, by virtue of which we ought to love all human beings. Nor is someone [doing the redressing] excused if he intends the evil regarding someone who has unjustly inflicted evil on himself [the redresser]; just as one is not excused for hating someone who hates oneself. For a man ought not to sin against another, on the grounds that the other first sinned against him; for this is ‘‘to be overcome by evil,’’ which the Apostle prohibits, Romans 12:21, saying, ‘‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’’46

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But if the intention of the redresser bears principally on something good, to which one comes through the punishment of the wrongdoer, for example to the improvement of the wrongdoer, or at least to the restraining of him and peace [quietem] for others, and to the preservation of justice and the honor of God, then redress can be licit, other due circumstances being observed.47 This is the whole main reply, and it really constitutes the picture we need of the mind of the punisher. It answers the question, what do we mean by ‘‘intending the death of the criminal’’? Obviously, it cannot be an intention that takes any direct pleasure in death or in someone’s death: it is not ‘‘antilife.’’ Ad 1 makes the point that the person who exercises redress in accordance with the divine order of society, and the place that person rightly has in it, is using the power bestowed by God. The text of Romans 13:4 is quite clear on this. What we should note, in connection with this discussion of redress, is that within one’s own area of licit action, one can intend the redress, but always the point is the production of justice, not the doing of harm to the culprit. That one cannot so intend in the case of personal self-defense as regards the death of the attacker is simply because of the need for an adequate judgment by public authority for such great harm to a human being.48 My whole interest is in providing a conception of the ‘‘intention’’ that is legitimate in punishing, whether it be on the small scale of private redress or on the large scale of the virtue of commutative justice, properly so called. As for the arguments against capital punishment, Thomas says that one is supposed to tolerate the tares when to do otherwise would cause more harm than good, but that there are situations when killing the criminal can be a great good for the community. The second reply is of the greatest importance: ‘‘All those sinning mortally are worthy of eternal death, as regards the future retribution, which is according to the truth of the divine judgment. But the punishments of the present life are rather medicinal. And so the death penalty is imposed for those sins only that tend to the grave harm of others.’’49 Certainly, if Thomas thought that society would be just as well off without capital

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punishment, he would want to get rid of it. And that is the sort of thought that the Pope has now put before us as pertaining to the present state of society. Conclusion The Bradley presentation would give one the impression that charity has only come on the scene fully with the present urgings of the Holy Father. I wish to stress that although a particular society in a particular age might conceivably do better by refusing to execute criminals, no matter how much of a threat they are to society, the discussion one finds Thomas providing in the thirteenth century is fully conscious of the nature of charity that must control the entire discussion. One can wonder whether the sort of simplification of the conception of human life proposed by Bradley and Grisez, eliminating the good proper of society as such, really should receive our approval. I certainly think not. Addendum (June 17, 2001) I notice ST 2–2.99.4, on the punishment suiting the sin of sacrilege. This text expands on the medicinal character of punishment as inspiring fear, deterring by fear. Excommunication is suitable punishment as for the equality that makes a punishment just; however, those who have no regard for divine things are not deterred by such a punishment, and so, medicinally, they are punished by monetary penalty, which they care about. Punishment is supposed to deter the sinner from repeating the crime. I note that in Thomas’s time, human law punished the perpetrator of sacrilege with the death penalty. The Church ‘‘does not inflict corporeal death,’’ and that is why its temporal punishment for sacrilege takes the monetary form. Obviously, Thomas thinks there is some deterrent value in the death penalty.

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Chapter 19

DEAT H IN T HE SETTING O F D IVINE WISDOM: T HE DOCTRINE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

Introduction The contemporary phenomenon that has stimulated the following reflections is suicide as a tactic of war waged in the interest of a religious cause. Certain Muslims have recently been using such tactics, driving trucks of explosives into emplacements, the truck driver having no possibility of escape (and making a videotape prior to the event to proclaim his religious and suicidal intention)—all this in the name of a ‘‘holy war.’’1 In a world where suicide for private reasons seems to be gaining in acceptance, and where suicide as an escape for captured spies is often presented as a sort of duty, the question of suicide as an instrument of war, and particularly of religiously motivated war, must be taken seriously.2 The discussion of this matter requires recourse to the highest sources of wisdom if we are really to come to grips with the issue. We are in a sphere of reflection, I would say, where philosophy can merely ‘‘be of some assistance’’: it does not have the last word, because a higher light is needed. Though present-day Islamic practices have occasioned the discussion, I am going to take as my guide here a Christian sage, Thomas Aquinas— because of his place of honor in the Church and in philosophy, and because of my own field of specialization. I hope, all the same, to raise questions for those who have other guides. St. Augustine, in The City of God, discusses suicide undertaken by Christians, and even gives his opinion regarding the practice we are interested in, namely, the case of Samson who killed himself in order to kill 326

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the Philistines, the enemies of God (Samson, says Augustine, was the beneficiary of a special divine inspiration). So also, St. Thomas Aquinas took up the question of suicide, repeating and improving upon, I would say, the positions of Augustine.3 Suicide undertaken for religious reasons leaves far behind arguments against it based on the natural inclination to preserve one’s life. This inclination is presented by St. Thomas as subordinate to, dependent on, the inclination to favor God more than oneself.4 It is especially clear that the argument against suicide drawn from natural inclination needs considerable shoring up in a context that affirms the immortality of the soul, and in which bodily existence is, of course, something good, but is a lesser good than the goodness of the soul (virtue, good conduct).5 If we are to discern in the teachings of St. Thomas on death and homicide anything more than arbitrary vetoes, it is necessary to look at the overall sapiential vision he presents. The Justice of God and His Wisdom Eventually, I wish to clarify St. Thomas’s doctrine that the Decalogue, including the commandment ‘‘thou shalt not kill,’’ has such primacy in the order of law that God himself cannot dispense anyone from obeying any of them—God himself cannot make it just that anyone act contrary to any of the Ten Commandments. This seems evident enough for those commandments having to do with man’s order to God, but it is more difficult to admit when the commandment treats of the relations among human beings. To see why Thomas teaches that God cannot make exceptions even concerning the order of man to man, one must grasp the unity of justice, or the unity of eternal law (which is identical with God),6 the indissociability of the order of man to God and the order of man to man. To bring out this indissociability, which pertains to the eternal establishment of fundamental human relations, I begin with Thomas’s presentation of God as just. I do so because, as we will see, the reason God cannot permit exceptions regarding ‘‘thou shalt not kill’’ is that the commandment belongs essentially to justice itself, and, God being justice, for him to deny this commandment would be for him to deny himself.7 Summa theologiae (ST) 1.21.1, which asks, ‘‘is there justice in God?’’— that is, is the statement ‘‘God is just’’ appropriate?—sets aside the sort of justice based on commerce or mutual exchange, and focuses on justice as

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suitable distribution, the way we call ‘‘just’’ the governing person who gives to each in accordance with the status (dignitatem) of each. Thomas says: Just as the suitable order of a family or of any governed multitude manifests the presence of this sort of justice in the one who governs—just so, the order of the universe, which is apparent both in natural things and in voluntary affairs, manifests the justice of God. Hence Dionysius says, the true justice of God is to be seen in this, that he gives what is appropriate to all, in accordance with the nobility [dignitatem] of each existing thing; and he preserves the nature of each one in its proper order and power.8 Among the replies to objections in this article (ST 1.21.1), one requires our close attention. The objector says that to be just is to give what is due, or in Latin, ‘‘debitum.’’ Since God is not a debtor relative to anything whatsoever, he can hardly ‘‘do justice’’ or be called ‘‘just’’ in his treatment of things. This evokes from Thomas a discussion of ‘‘debitum,’’ what is ‘‘owing,’’ what ‘‘ought’’ to be or to be done. It is to be said that to each is due [owing, ‘‘debitum’’] that which is its own [suum]. Now, we call ‘‘its own’’ relative to something that which is ordered to that thing: thus, it is the servant who is ‘‘the master’s’’ and not vice versa, because that is ‘‘free’’ which is ‘‘cause of its own.’’9 Accordingly, under the name of ‘‘debitum’’ [that which is owing, that which is due] is introduced the idea of a certain order of requirement or of necessity of some thing toward that toward which it is ordered.10 Now, two orders in things are to be considered. One is the order by which something created is ordered to some other created things: as parts are ordered toward a whole and accidents to substances and each thing to its end. The other order is that by which all created things are ordered to God. Consequently, that which is due [debitum] is found in two ways in the divine operation: either as something is due, owing, to God or else as something is owed to a created thing. And in these two ways God gives what is due. For it is due to God that there come

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about in things what his wisdom and will have predetermined, and what shows his goodness; and from this point of view the justice of God has to do with what befits his own seemliness [decentiam], according as he renders to himself what is due to himself. And, secondly, it is due to a created thing that it have what is ordered to it: for example, to man, that he have hands, and that the other animals be at his service: and in this way God also does justice when he gives to each thing that which is due to it according to the idea [rationem] of its nature and its condition. But this ‘‘due’’ depends on the first, because that is due to each being which is ordered to it according to the order of divine wisdom.11 Thus, we see that justice among creatures, and so the treatment owed to a (human) being by another being (including, and particularly, by another human being) is determined by, flows from, the nature and the condition of the being that God in his wisdom has decided to create. What, then, is due to man in the eternal plan of God? Man and Death Is death the effect of sin? Or is death natural to man? St. Thomas points out that by virtue of its form, each thing tends toward incorruption. However, only the human form (the human soul) attains to this incorruptibility in an effective way. Thus, the soul (or form) of man is, by its incorruptibility, something proportionate to the end of man, the purpose of man, which is the sharing of perpetual happiness. The matter of man is partly proportionate to the soul (as a matter that makes possible the sensible experience of which our intellect has need), partly not proportionate (as principle of corruption). Nature would have preferred another matter, if such were possible, an incorruptible matter. And St. Thomas continues: ‘‘But God, to whom all nature is subject, made up for the shortcoming of nature when man was instituted, and accorded to his body a certain incorruptibility—this, the gift of original justice. . . . That is why it is said that God did not make death, and that it is a punishment for sin.’’12 St. Thomas’s presentation is philosophically highly developed. He makes use of the metaphysics of form as principle of being and permanence, and of the related doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Conceptions of matter and of ‘‘particular natures’’ and ‘‘universal nature’’ are

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brought into play to direct us toward the idea of man such as he was originally conceived in the divine creative wisdom: man as the animal to which immortality is due, is owing, is proportionate, or fits. This is man from the viewpoint of ‘‘original justice’’ (in our experience, this expression has tended to become a mere technical aspect of the doctrine of original sin; on the contrary, it should be taken as two well-chosen words). Let us note, too, to how great an extent judgments of St. Thomas are understandable only from the viewpoint of the natural unity of man, soul and body. Soul and body constitute one single coherent being. We are at the antipodes vis-a`-vis Plato’s doctrine in the Phaedo.13 The same vision of the divine idea of man is found already, to take another example, in the Summa contra gentiles (SCG), where St. Thomas teaches that the very fact of human death proves in sufficiently probable fashion the existence of original sin, given the immortality of the soul, the naturalness of the unity of body and soul, and the omnipotence of the divine providence. That is, God has willed an immortal animal, and death is explicable only as punishment.14 Clearly, to grasp this teaching in all its dimensions, it would be necessary to consider the notion of punishment as belonging to the order of the universe, an order extending even to voluntary affairs. For the sake of brevity, I will leave that for another occasion.15 The Decalogue There is an interesting change of doctrine concerning the Decalogue in the texts of Thomas Aquinas. In Quaestiones disputatae de malo, he teaches, following in this St. Bernard, that God can dispense us from obeying the commandments of the ‘‘second tablet’’ (i.e., those concerning relations among human beings) but not from those of the ‘‘first tablet’’ (the order of man to God)—and regarding the latter impossibility he cites St. Paul: ‘‘because he cannot deny himself.’’ This is taken to mean that God cannot direct others elsewhere than to himself.16 However, ST 1–2.100.8 gives one the impression of having been written expressly to correct this De malo opinion. The same text of Scripture is cited, but understood this time in the sense that God who is justice can never direct us against justice wherever it may be found: God cannot dispense one from the Ten Commandments ‘‘even in relations among men.’’17

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Let us examine this idea of the indispensability of the Decalogue, as St. Thomas presents it. Here is the principle he employs: A dispensation should be given whenever, in a particular case, the observance of the letter of the law would go contrary to the intention of the lawgiver. Now, the intention of any lawgiver is ordered primarily and principally to a common good; and, secondarily, to an order of justice and virtue, in accordance with which the common good is preserved, and through which one attains to it. In the case, therefore, of precepts whose actual content is the preservation of the common good, or the very order of justice and virtue, they contain the lawgiver’s intention, and are therefore not open to dispensation.18 And here is its application to the Decalogue: Now, the precepts of the Decalogue contain the very intention of the lawgiver, God. For the precepts of the first tablet, which order to God, contain the very order to the common and final good, which is God; whereas the precepts of the second tablet contain the very order of justice to be maintained among men, that is, that nothing undue be done to anyone and what is due be rendered to everyone: for it is in this light that the precepts of the Decalogue are to be understood. Therefore, they admit of no dispensation whatsoever.19 We see that the order of justice among men is conceived as finding its purpose in its relation to God. By justice we are in communion with the mind of God as regards what concerns the nature and destiny of mankind. The second tablet finds its raison d’eˆtre in the first. Notice to what extent the entire argument is designed to include not merely the commandments of the first tablet but also those of the second. The article brings this about by using as a principle of interpretation of the second tablet ‘‘do nothing undue to anyone, and to each render his due.’’ This whole approach implies that ‘‘to kill a human being’’ is quite simply undue, and that it is only by the qualification, the decidedly per accidens qualification, that a human being has sinned, that to kill him becomes something due. I mean that the content of the commandments does not rate the label ‘‘that which is due’’ for no reason at all (by chance,

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so to speak). By the creative decree coming from divine wisdom (wisdom that is called by St. Thomas ‘‘the law of justice’’),20 life is due to a human being—unless a man in some way puts himself in the position of an enemy as regards God and his eternal plan for man. The way in this context St. Thomas treats the case of Abraham ready to obey the divine command to kill Isaac is highly significant. He does not merely say that God has commanded Abraham to do so but calls God the master of life and death, saying: ‘‘It is [God] who inflicts the punishment of death on all humans, just and unjust, for the sin of the first parent, which sentence, if a man carries it out by divine authority, he will not be a murderer, just as neither is God [a murderer].’’21 Thomas takes care to present Isaac as a man to whom death is due, as punishment for sin.22 The point seems to be that the original divine justice institutes man as nonkillable, and it is only sin that can introduce death as something due. In the case of actual sin (as distinct from original sin), the execution of the sentence has been given into human hands (public authority as representative of God), but in the case of a just man such as Isaac, it is only by personal mandate coming from God that Abraham rightly aims to kill him.23 The meaning of the commandment, I wish to underline, is not merely ‘‘Do nothing undue, and to kill a man, most of the time, is undue.’’ Rather, the meaning is ‘‘To kill a human being is undue, and nevertheless there is a secondary situation in which it is due, and the commandment does not exclude that.’’ I insist on the essential role of the particular content of the Decalogue, because one could reduce St. Thomas’s answer to the doctrine that the commandment means ‘‘do nothing unjust’’ or ‘‘do not kill anyone unjustly’’ (as though ‘‘to kill a human being’’ were, in itself, morally neutral). Such an interpretation would empty the commandments of their value as moral teaching. ‘‘Do not kill when one ought not to kill’’ is the very model of an empty moral teaching.24 The meaning of St. Thomas’s doctrine is that ‘‘thou shalt not kill,’’ in its particular content, is the expression of justice itself toward the human being. God has willed an immortal animal. Our Approach to Death, and Philosophy In presenting this viewpoint of St. Thomas, I wish to encourage a sapiential way of looking at man and his life. This vision will not solve all the

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problems of suicide, war, capital punishment, and so on. Nevertheless it constitutes a more reverential approach to the human being and to the questions that bear on his life and death. We are dealing with individuals, with persons, whom God has made for eternity. Our treatment of such persons (including our treatment of ourselves) is, first and foremost, God’s business. In the Christian tradition, man has certain authorizations vis-a`-vis human lives (capital punishment for crimes, just war) but does not have certain others (no suicide permitted on the basis of any human authority whatsoever).25 This outlook ought to give pause to the religious man, even when engaged in a ‘‘holy war.’’ What sort of contribution does philosophy make to this vision of man and his death? Isn’t what we have just been considering one of those revealed truths that leaves philosophy and its means of investigation far behind? This is true, but could be deceptive. I wish to stress the extent to which St. Thomas was able to marshal and orchestrate (without, I would say, doing violence to the philosophical spirit) a whole group of philosophical doctrines in the service of this Christian truth. First, there is the immortality of the human soul, a doctrine that depends on a certain conception of intellectuality, but also and most of all on the relation between form and actual being. What St. Thomas is providing is a metaphysical reflection on the text ‘‘For he created all things that they might exist.’’26 The principal created beings (the rational creatures) are absolutely necessary beings, not contingent beings (even though they are entirely dependent on the Creator).27 Second, and in the same line, these principal beings (rational creatures) are principal parts of a perfectly ordered universe, a universe inclusive of both natural and voluntary things, so that the universe cannot be grasped in its fullness without the development of the theory of the eternal law, with its two sides of communion of the just with God and punishment of the unjust.28 Third, let us recall St. Thomas’s doctrine of the unity of the human being, body and soul. This is the vision of a suitable, natural, substantial union, and it steers us toward a conception of the immortality of man (i.e., of the entire human person, soul and body), and not merely the immortality of the human soul.29

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A truth can be philosophical without being demonstrable. The philosophical mind loves to catch sight, even from a distance, of the plan of the mind that is at the origin of the universe of natural and voluntary things. The philosophical mind, so understood, sees the probability of the immortality of man in the divine idea of man.30 Addendum What if somebody asks me about divine mercy? Your paper presents a view of God as exacting justice. Is this the Christian God? My fundamental answer is that mercy, in the most proper sense that can be attributed to God (obviously pity, in the sense of a passion or emotion is not attributable to God, but its effects are31), has to do with the misery of the human being. This misery is something bad, a malum poenae. It has, thus, the aspect of punishment.32 Thus, the most proper notion of mercy presupposes, as to its very intelligibility, the order of divine justice. This also leads us to the reason mercy does not destroy justice, or oppose justice, but rather fulfills or completes the order of justice. Justice itself supposes an order, and so an origin, a principle, of that order. It is this source, this root of justice, that injustice operates against, and so punishment, the restoration of the original order, the reassertion of the primacy of what is primary in that order, is demanded by right, as something owing, to the source of order. Thus, I have no right to pardon someone for an offense that is not merely an offense against me but an offense against the whole community. The community, through its leaders, may do so. Mercy must come from the source of goodness for whose sake the order of justice is established. So understood, mercy reveals the eminence, the transcendence, of the good source over the mere members of the ordered group who participate in the order of justice.33 Order may be restored, after the disorder of injustice, by means of the justice of punishment, or by means of the mercy that restores the offender to the order of the virtuous. To the conception of mercy, as exercised by God in such a case, there must be united the conception of the conversion of the offender, and his or her repentance.34 I would say that a discussion of human justice and mercy would have to add such considerations as (1) our own peccability (i.e., I might be the

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criminal standing in the dock), (2) the uncertainty of human justice, (3) the hope that by exercising mercy, one may, with time, elicit a change of heart, and (4) the danger in all of this that we will fail to maintain the order of justice and to protect the rights of those who have suffered from the unjust behavior of others.

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Chapter 20

SUICIDE A S A BELLIGERENT TA CTIC: THOMISTIC REFLECTIONS

For a colloquium in 1985 celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Faculty of Philosophy of Laval University, I wrote a paper entitled ‘‘Death in the Setting of Divine Wisdom.’’1 I had been asked to prepare something in the domain of ‘‘ultimate questions,’’ and I was then much interested in such events as the suicide bombings in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. At the request of the Lebanese government, the United States had established a peacekeeping force between Muslims and Christians in Beirut. The Muslim forces, however, viewed the soldiers as their enemies and frequently attacked them with artillery and mortar. On October 23, 1983, a large Islamic jihad truck loaded with 2,500 pounds of explosives crashed through the main gate of the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen and wounding 81. Two minutes later another Islamic jihad truck packed with explosives crashed into a French base two miles away, killing 58 soldiers. The attacks were reportedly carried out by Hezbollah with the help of Syrian intelligence and financed by Iran.2 I was asking myself what one could say to the religious believer who believes that devotion to God requires suicide if needed to defeat God’s enemies? I saw as perhaps effective in speaking to such a person nothing less than a reflection on the role of death in the plan of the Almighty. I went to St. Thomas for a conception of God as the origin of justice. I found the teaching that what is due, owing, to the human being, in keeping with the original divine justice, is the immortality of the human being (not just the soul). I showed the effect of this conception on St. Thomas’s treatment of the Ten Commandments. I developed the (to me) surprising view that only the death penalty (as inflicted by God) makes sense of the 336

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death of the human being. I pointed out that the imposition of that penalty has been assigned in various ways to public authorities (in emergencies, so to speak), but that in general it is a sentence to be executed by God alone. I sketched the philosophical work that St. Thomas used to help the mind toward such a faith. Still, when all was said and done, all I could do was ask the suicide bomber who had the conviction that he was on a divinely authorized mission, ‘‘Are you sure that God is telling you to do this?’’ The conclusion was not new. St. Augustine, speaking against suicide, was confronted with the biblical case of Samson, who pulled down the house upon himself in order to kill the Philistines.3 Augustine held that Samson had a genuine divine inspiration to act in such a way. Thus, all Augustine could say in the end was, ‘‘Be very sure that it is God who is so prompting you.’’4 Suicide bombing has dramatically increased since 1983. And our colloquium is about just-war theory. In view of the recent spread of the use of suicide as a tactic in wars of various sorts, I thought it essential that something be said about it. Anyone who has performed a search on the Internet using the word ‘‘suicide’’ knows how hot a topic it is. Much of the discussion is about assisted suicide of the terminally ill and kindred interests.5 Other sites concern the practice of suicide by the young. Recently, I have seen discussion of online ‘‘chat rooms’’ for Japanese youth seeking companions for acts of suicide (which have actually taken place). Religion enters into the discussions very often. Thus, a Web page presenting the Jain religion of India tells us about the practice whereby some elderly persons starve themselves. Another very prominent article on the Web carefully rejects the view that Buddhism approves the suicide of monks who have achieved spiritual perfection.6 And one could go on and on. Information on the use of suicide as a tactic in war is not lacking.7 Because my previous writing on this practice had been prompted by the acts of suicide bombers in Lebanon in 1983, I first went looking for something on those events. Indeed, there is a very detailed presentation, including the names of the victims.8 And one can find not only information but reflection9 concerning more recent suicide bombings by Palestinians against Israelis. However, there is much else. There are the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka,10 and there were the kamikaze pilots from Japan in World War II.11 Little mention is made of the Iranian Basaji, thousands of young

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men running into the face of Iraqi gunfire, as a human wave preceding the Iranian army in the Iran-Iraq War.12 Although there is an obvious religious connection with much of this, it is not necessarily religious people, or people who believe in an afterlife, who so act. Centuries ago the question was raised as to why people who did not believe in an afterlife dared to face death in battle (let alone to use suicide as a tactic). For example, Thomas Aquinas, in the course of teaching that everything is willed for the sake of happiness, faces an objection, as follows: ‘‘Death in no way can be ordered toward happiness, save on the basis of hope in a future life after death, because happiness is something only the living can have. However, some people voluntarily submit to death, either from themselves or from others, without any hope of a future life. Therefore, not everything that someone does is willed for the sake of happiness.’’ And Thomas replies: Some people, without hope of a future life, expose themselves to death in two ways: in one way, for the sake of virtuous action, as those who have chosen in advance to undergo death that they might save their homeland or that they might avoid some dishonorable thing: and this they ordered toward happiness according to their judgment, not as something resulting after death, but as to be attained at the very moment of the deed; because to perform a perfect act of virtue, which was in the facing of death, was for them the maximally desired object in which they located happiness. In the other way, because of being weary of the misery that they have been enduring, which they judged that they escape through death; now, to flee from misery and to seek happiness come to the same thing. And so it is clear that the desire of those who voluntarily undergo death is ordered toward happiness.13 This is psychologically very interesting, particularly the first group, who see happiness in that ultimate act. It might be further noted that ethics is a domain in which very fine distinctions have often to be made. Aristotle tells us that Socrates was the first to fix thought on definitions, and that this occurred in the realm of morals.14 We might ask ourselves why it was in the realm of morals that interest in definition first arose. It is perhaps that there is not a huge

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difference, physically, between, for example, risking one’s life for the community and taking one’s life for the community. A person who is ready to go into battle for a deeply felt cause, seen as eminently just, may be easily convinced by leaders that suicide is an appropriate procedure. The leaders may think so themselves. Let us come, then, to the discussion of the use of suicide bombing and its relation to just-war theory. I have included in my title ‘‘Thomistic Reflections,’’ and so I turn to the question on war in the Summa theologiae (ST) 2–2.40. The first article sets out the conditions for a war to be just, namely, that it be undertaken by those who have the legitimate responsibility for the common good, that it be for a just cause, and that its waging be done with the right intention, the promotion of the good. Nothing specific is said about tactics. However, at article 3, the use of stealth in war is questioned and seen as quite appropriate and just. Nevertheless, lying to the enemy and breaking promises is rejected. Thomas, in this regard, speaks of certain laws of war and agreements to be observed even between adversaries: ‘‘Iura bellorum et foedera etiam inter ipsos hostes servanda.’’15 One should not lie or break promises, but one must use concealment. My discussion falls into this area of just-war theory, the problem of means. I notice that in current discussions and judgments about suicide bombing, the focus is commonly on the killing of civilians by such methods, or else on the youth (and sometimes gender) of the bombers. Thus, in a recent protest published by the organization Human Rights Watch, their spokesperson is quoted by the BBC as follows: ‘‘Palestinian armed groups must clearly and publicly condemn all use of children under the age of 18.’’ And again: ‘‘Any attack on civilians is prohibited by international law, but using children for suicide attacks is particularly egregious,’’ said Jo Becker, advocacy director for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch.16 Similarly, the Web site of a group called the Crimes of War Project tells us: The Crimes of War Project posted an expert analysis on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which included both Israeli and Palestinian lawyers, as well as other experts. . . . All but one of our experts agreed that the Palestinians had violated the laws of war in sending suicide bombers against Israeli civilians. All

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but one also agreed that the Israeli Defense Forces had seemingly committed war crimes by unleashing overwhelming force against the civilian population, and targeting journalists, aid workers and ambulances. With one exception, our experts also agreed that the current fighting is an armed conflict and that the laws of war apply to both sides. ‘‘Humanitarian law, it must apply in exactly the same way whether the Palestinians are right or they are wrong. This is difficult for the Palestinians to accept, but it is basic in humanitarian law,’’ said Marco Sassoli, Professor of International Law at the University of Quebec, Montre´al.17 My point is that nothing is said about the use of suicide as such as a tactic. Indeed, as I have said, one finds a great deal of pro-suicide propaganda today, so that even Socrates and Jesus are presented as suicides. My contention is, with St. Thomas, that suicide is always wrong, and so is wrong as a tactic in a just war. People, and in particular those involved in war, need protection against the pro-suicide propaganda. The position of the soldier who is a good combatant is that he is ready to risk his life; he is therefore somewhat susceptible to the argument that suicide itself is not so different. The strategic advantage, that is, the technical advantage, to the general in having suicides at his disposal is evident. Thus it is imperative that the absolute ban, witnessed from classical times, be strongly asserted. Suicide is wrong. It is degrading for the human being. It is a huge step toward the ‘‘commodification’’ of human life that we are witnessing on all fronts. Let us first note the testimony of the ancient Greek philosophers. Socrates is often presented on the Internet as a suicide. The example of such an acknowledged sage is meant to give the practice the appearance of dignity. Indeed, ‘‘death with dignity’’ has been a slogan of such people, and for many years an association for the promotion of the practice of suicide was named The Hemlock Society, an obvious allusion to the death of the Athenian sage.18 That Socrates, as presented by Plato, considered death desirable, at least for the true philosopher—the truly virtuous person—is quite true, though the metaphysics behind this view might not be shared by those who are promoting the practice of suicide today. In fact, this very conviction serves to underline just how strong was the veto

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he speaks of against suicide. Plato’s Phaedo is amazingly explicit on the point that suicide is absolutely forbidden. Attention is called to the fact that in this respect it seems unique among moral vetoes.19 The ultimate reason for this, as explained by Socrates, is that we are the property of the gods, and that our lives are thus not our own to end.20 He clearly sees himself as being punished by the political society, the Athenian city-state. He is executed by the state. The fact that he himself must drink the hemlock from the bowl is immaterial. It was probably thought to be the most humane method. The description of his death indicates how peacefully he succumbed.21 In the Crito Plato makes plain that in refusing the offer of an arrangement for his escape Socrates is obeying the law that has condemned him. Socrates considers it wrong to disobey that law. The argument is that it would create a scandal as regards obedience to the law in general. Only people who have no conception of Platonic philosophy would think there is any inclination to suicide in the Socratic defense of himself in the Apology.22 Socrates is someone who dies because of unjust condemnation. Aristotle, testifying to the practice of the same Athenian milieu, provides a very interesting witness to the view of the society of his time. Suicide, he argues, is never right, the indication of which is the fact that it is a thing never commanded by the law for any of its citizens.23 We are today faced with political societies or associations commanding or encouraging such a thing of their most loyal citizens. Jesus is, of course, executed. The suggestion of the advocates of suicide is that he did not do enough to avoid this, and that he expressly says that no one takes his life from him; he himself lays it down. Indeed, he even commands his followers to follow his lead, and lay down their lives for each other. Either Jesus is, as he claimed, truly God and truly man, in which case it makes sense for him to say that he has power to lay down his life and power to take it up again, or else he is not one to be followed. Moreover, the being ready to ‘‘lay down one’s life’’ is the description of the way the good shepherd, the one who is not a mere hireling, looks after his sheep. This is not a command to suicide, but it certainly is a command to be ready to risk one’s life for the faith. It pertains to the sort of readiness for death that is always expected of the good soldier.

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Let us turn to St. Thomas’s treatment of suicide. It occurs in the detailed discussion of the virtue of justice and the sins opposed to it. It is a fact that the discussion is focused on life within the political community, rather than relative to an outside political community as happens in war between states. Nevertheless, the application to war is not inappropriate, as occasional examples within it make clear.24 It is first established that it is licit to kill malefactors (responding to the question, who is an appropriate target of such action?).25 Now the issue becomes, who is the appropriate agent for such killing? Can any private person do so?26 Can clerics do so?27 Can the malefactor himself do it to himself ?28 Following these queries, it is asked whether an innocent or just person can ever be the legitimate target of a killing.29 Thus, it is in article 5 that the discussion of suicide occurs. The way I have described the sequence, one might think that it would only have to do with self-killing by some criminal. In actual fact, it is a general discussion of suicide. The second objection does look at the case of someone with public authority, thus having the right to execute malefactors; it argues that if he were himself a malefactor, he could legitimately put an end to himself. Thomas counters this with the view that no one has the right to act as (public) judge over himself, though he can always admit his crimes and submit to public authority. But this is only a particular point in the discussion. Thomas presents three reasons for judging suicide as ‘‘entirely forbidden [omnino illicitum].’’ The first runs: ‘‘Each thing whatsoever naturally loves itself, and to this it pertains that every thing whatsoever naturally preserves itself in existence and resists agents of corruption as much as it can. And therefore that someone kills himself is against the natural inclination, and against the charity by which each one ought to love himself. And so to kill oneself is always a mortal sin, as being contrary to the natural law and contrary to charity.’’30 He has already discussed the existence and nature of natural law earlier in the ST. He has also discussed the nature of charity toward oneself. From this point of view, a suicide is not sinning against justice. It is directly an opposition to one’s own self, one’s own nature seen as embodying a share in divine wisdom: one’s own reality is a wise teacher opposing suicide. The term ‘‘charity’’ adds a supernatural dimension to the love one has for oneself. Charity relates to the sharing of God’s own blessedness in a way transcending the powers of

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human nature: one is opposing oneself considered as a lovable candidate for such divine friendship.31 Thomas’s first reason is perhaps the most accessible, in the sense that it is a very deep natural instinct, common to all substances. I wonder about its seeming simplicity, which strikes me as deceptive. All substances love their specific selves more than their individual selves and love God more than themselves.32 Thus, the inclination to risk one’s own life for the family or for political society is also natural, save that one is not naturally a member of the particular political society in which one finds oneself, and so the virtue of courage must be developed so that one be ready to be loyal to that society.33 The second argument against suicide introduces the human social dimension. Thomas says: ‘‘Every part, as to its very substance [id quod est], belongs to the whole. Now, any human being whatsoever is a part of a community, and so his very substance belongs to the community. Thus, by the very fact that he kills himself, he does injury to the community, as is clear from the Philosopher [Aristotle] in Ethics 5.’’34 The passage from Aristotle, already mentioned above, bears on the question, can one be unjust to oneself ? The case of suicide is considered, and Aristotle presents it as unjust, though not to oneself; it is unjust to the community. One might very well wonder whether the community itself, through its leaders, might not ask someone to kill themselves for the sake of the common good. This is exactly what the Japanese government did, as well as the leaders of some other communities. Aristotle, in the very passage Thomas refers to, presents suicide as something no government ever requires of a citizen. We might note the argument Thomas uses to answer the question, is it ever right to kill the innocent? That it is never right he tells us: The human individual can be considered in two ways: in one way, just in himself; in the other way, by comparison with something else. Considering a man just in himself, it is not licit to kill anyone, because in anyone, even a sinner, we ought to love the nature that God has made and that by killing is destroyed. But, as was said above, the killing of the sinner is rendered licit by comparison with the common good, which is destroyed by sin. But the life of just [people] is conservative of and promotes the common good, because

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they are the more principal part [principalior pars] of the multitude. And so it is in no way licit to kill the innocent.35 It seems especially unfitting that the governor, who is supposed to move the people toward virtue, would issue an order that means the death of a citizen so loyal to the community as to be ready to risk his life. Still, one can envisage objectors urging that the common good might require suicide of some worthy citizens in its defense. Let us look at Thomas’s third argument against suicide: Life is a gift divinely conferred on the human being, and subject to the power of the one who kills and makes to live. And therefore, the one who deprives himself of life sins against God, just as a person who kills someone else’s servant sins against the master whose servant that is; and like that person sins who usurps for himself judgment concerning a thing not committed to his charge. For to God alone pertains the judgment concerning life and death, in keeping with Deuteronomy 32: ‘‘I kill and I make to live.’’36 Here we have returned to much the same line of thought that was presented by Socrates in the Phaedo. No person, no government, can take the life of the innocent. It is out of human hands altogether. There is a divine assignment of us to this present life that we have. It is not a ‘‘gift’’ in the sense of what one can rightly refuse. It is notable that Thomas supplies three arguments. It suggests that he sees the need to look at the matter from various angles in order to see how thoroughgoing the prohibition is. It is all too evident that people will often think it is the thing to do. Although only the first argument mentions natural law, it is a fact that Thomas teaches that we love God even more than we love our own selves, and this on both the natural and the supernatural levels.37 We naturally love God, considered as the author of nature, more than ourselves, and the love of charity is a further perfection in this same line, considering God as the author of supernatural blessedness. The third argument could thus also be said to have a ‘‘natural law’’ aspect. Moreover, although our belonging to the particular political society that we do is not something natural, the general human condition of belonging to a political society is natural. In that way, our loyalty to a just society has a natural basis.

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Thomas, of course, teaches that the genuine human natural inclinations, natural loves, are weakened by original sin and that only by divine gift can we hope to live up to our nature. No wonder, then, that he seeks to highlight all the dimensions of reality that express the veto against suicide. In one way, our own inclination to love ourselves is most telling. In another way, the natural inclination to recognize a higher power is needed: this is perhaps most needed when it is a question of undergoing terrible suffering. Many suicide bombers have taken that route to provide for their otherwise poor or even destitute families. Indeed, the royal treatment accorded the families of the so-called martyrs is a feature of Tamil Tiger policy as well as that of the various Palestinian groups. I would say that only a loving respect for divine authority will adequately counter such thinking. There is some hope to oppose suicide itself with people who have a strong belief in God, but again, the tradition in which we live that belief makes a huge difference; the Catholic tradition against suicide, underlined especially by St. Augustine, is very strong. However, we now live in a society for which suicide is no longer legally a crime. Under such circumstances, it is almost impossible to object to suicide bombing save on grounds of age of practitioners or the killing of civilians. Thus, it is important to protest the youth of some bombers, the targeting of civilians (though this is regularly rejected by the people who do this kind of thing), and in particular, to question the fairness to the candidates (it is a very private decision, I think most would agree) and the fairness in war in general (I think of the rules against combatants being in civilian clothes, against putting artillery next to hospitals and schools, etc.). I would encourage a campaign to think along these lines. However, the truth of the matter is that it is per se malum, intrinsically evil.

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Chapter 21

JACQUES M ARITAIN, ST. THOMAS, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Introduction My aim here is to carry further than Jacques Maritain ever had occasion to do certain fundamental proposals of his. I treat philosophy of religion as the highest part of moral philosophy. Maritain championed the development of as autonomous a moral philosophy as is possible in the universe, the true dynamics of whose sphere of action is revealed to us in the Gospel. He argued both that moral philosophy does not yet exist and that the principles for fully developed moral philosophy are to be found in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Accordingly, I make some suggestions concerning possible use of the treasure to be found in St. Thomas’s theological writings, with a view to developing as far as possible an autonomous moral philosophy (and I see in Ignatius Mennessier’s work the beginnings of such an endeavor for philosophy of religion). Furthermore, religion being the highest form of justice, and having its cause in our love for God, I put forward as a primary problem for the philosopher of religion (or for the metaphysician on his behalf ) the explanation of the distinction between justice and friendship or love, and the presentation of the causal relation between the two (love as the cause of justice): the idea being to trace this distinction to its roots in the very nature of being. Part 1 A primary concern of Jacques Maritain was the autonomy of philosophy. In Le paysan de la Garonne, he accuses the disciples of St. Thomas of 349

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never having presented the philosophy of St. Thomas in its properly philosophical condition, and he gives a few indications of what that condition would be like.1 We find the same point made earlier, in Court traite´ de l’existence et de l’existant2 and in Science et sagesse.3 This last-mentioned text is most important, for it shows us that this appeal for a philosophy ‘‘not attenuated or enlisted, but free’’ is part of the more general appeal for ‘‘integral humanism,’’ ‘‘theocentric humanism’’; that is, Maritain saw the development of philosophy in its own proper dimensions as part of the fulfillment of the human that must be a goal of Christian endeavor.4 Let us note his brief characterization of ‘‘Thomistic philosophy disengaged [from theology] for its own self and in its own nature,’’ as given in Le paysan. Having noted the philosopher’s need for teachers and tradition (though in another way than the theological requires these), he says: As regards the method he is to follow, it is clear that presentation of problems, inquiry, and discovery come before systematization. And even before direct inquiry (and the battle with things and discussion and controversy and finally the doctrinal synthesis toward which he tends, and which all together constitute his proper work) the avenue of approach most normal for him is historical investigation—and not merely historical, since he has already, of course, his idea in the back of his head and perhaps his frame of reference (and history by itself does not suffice for judging)—it is the historical and critical investigation of what has been thought before him. (There too, we can take lessons from Aristotle.) The avenue of approach in question is only an introductory avenue, but, both in inquiry and in teaching, it is altogether necessary.5 The approach of which Maritain speaks is best illustrated, in his own writings, in La philosophie morale.6 In the preface to this work he tells us that although the domain of moral philosophy has been largely elucidated by Thomas Aquinas and his commentators, he thinks that a moral philosophy conceived in the light of Thomas’s principles, and capable of clarifying our modern problems, remains to be produced. Moral philosophy, in its proper form, has not yet been brought into existence.7 If we begin now to speak of ‘‘Christian philosophy’’ and of ‘‘moral philosophy adequately taken,’’ topics much discussed by Maritain, we

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have not changed the subject of discussion at all. In Approches sans entraves, Maritain assures us that ‘‘Christian philosophy’’ is only ‘‘philosophy fully itself.’’8 Indeed, Science et sagesse made it quite clear that these concepts of Christian philosophy and moral philosophy adequately taken were both forged with a view to developing, in their true relation to the rest of the world of the human spirit, truly philosophical philosophy, both theoretical and practical. In theology, philosophy has an instrumental status. Maritain was proposing that Christians should also develop to the full a mode of Christian intellectuality in which philosophy, though recognizing its secondary place, would retain the status of principal agent (not instrument). This proposal was relatively simple for theoretical philosophy (the general doctrine of ‘‘Christian philosophy’’). It became far more complex for the case of moral philosophy. The point especially to be noted here is that it is precisely because Maritain wanted moral philosophy to be a distinctive philosophical endeavor, not a case of mere theory about human action, that the special difficulties arose. Had he been content with a conception of ethics that made it a part of metaphysics or epistemology, the general conception of ‘‘Christian philosophy’’ would have sufficed. However, Maritain conceived of moral philosophy as genuinely ordered toward action. Moral judgments could rise to the level of science only if they shared in a rightness with respect to concrete reality, a rightness that could not be had without reference to revelation.9 Thus, Maritain’s position was that moral philosophy, precisely in order to fulfill its own nature, had to be supplemented in the domain of the object, doctrine, information, by revelation. Thus, moral philosophy could only be ‘‘imperfectly autonomous.’’10 The development of philosophy with as much autonomy as possible, even in the domains of morals and religion, is a thoroughly Maritainian project. Although Maritain was constantly writing of religion, it seems to me that he himself did little for the direct development of philosophy of religion. (This remark will be clearer when I have explained what I mean by ‘‘philosophy of religion.’’) Considering that for him the whole realm of moral philosophy remained to be brought into existence, and considering also that the objects of religion lie in the area where the autonomy of moral philosophy is most subject to question, this is perhaps not surprising.

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Part 2 Maritain, on the one hand, wanted philosophy to take on the order and style and circumstances proper to its nature—and he wanted this for philosophy throughout all the domains of its endeavor. In this regard he puts us particularly on guard against a Thomism (if one should use this word at all)11 that would merely transfer a theological treatise into philosophy.12 On the other hand, he never ceased to assure us that the ‘‘principles’’ are to be found in the writings of St. Thomas. The present study is put forward in the belief that we must indeed go to St. Thomas for principles, and not only to the commentaries on Aristotle but especially to the ST. Furthermore, the principles (and that is a word that covers a somewhat smaller or greater field, depending on the circumstances) are not necessarily lying on the surface like gold nuggets, but require a mining operation. In short, there is work for the philosopher of religion, which consists in a certain sifting of the texts of the second part of the ST.13 Thus far I have simply taken it for granted that ‘‘philosophy of religion’’ names a part of moral philosophy. In a climate of epistemological realism, I think this would be readily apparent. The word ‘‘religion’’ clearly pertains to human activity, behavior, just as ‘‘politics’’ and ‘‘war’’ do. However, when the distinction between being and knowledge becomes blurred, when the focus is shifted to ‘‘experience,’’ then discussions that one might have located in theoretical philosophy, in metaphysics (e.g., the existence and nature and operations of God), may tend to get cataloged as ‘‘religion,’’ and conversely, the ‘‘philosophy of religion’’ may tend to turn into a discussion of metaphysics: questions about God and universal providence. Of course, moral philosophy itself requires a considerable theoretical basis, but nevertheless, if the proper modalities of the human spirit are to be respected, we must work to develop a truly practical philosophy, that is, a body of doctrine genuinely ordered to the problems of action (itself presupposing that there exists a theoretical philosophy, having its own style and proper development, on which it can depend). We must still further ‘‘fine-tune’’ what we mean by ‘‘philosophy of religion.’’ St. Thomas locates ‘‘religion’’ as a virtue (and here we have the whole issue of the orchestration of the moral life in function of the virtues) under the umbrella of justice, as something akin to justice (the closest we can come to justice when it is God, not man, to whom we are

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giving what is due).14 This surely appears to some as an undesirable narrowing of perspective: ‘‘religion’’ suggests something extremely foundational for human life.15 I propose, nevertheless, to take seriously the locating of religion in the domain of justice. If one is not happy with this, let me present it as a working hypothesis: I suggest that respecting this schema of St. Thomas will result in ample philosophical dividends. Thus, I am taking the expression ‘‘philosophy of religion’’ as akin to ‘‘philosophy of justice’’ or ‘‘philosophy of friendship.’’ The Summa theologiae (ST) of St. Thomas Aquinas is a work of sacra doctrina,16 a work that from the start is beyond the philosophical domain. Nevertheless, ‘‘great philosophers are scarce,’’17 and we will be wise to go begging our philosophy from someone who only provides it as his secondary work. Moreover, there are features of the situation that make such a work of recovery of philosophical doctrine from theology entirely feasible. First of all, there is the nature of theology as itself making use of philosophy. Thus, St. Thomas tells us that ‘‘grace and virtue imitate the order of nature, which has been set up by the divine wisdom.’’18 Theology itself is possible only on the basis of a careful consideration of the natural order. We shall see more of this later. Indeed, in this respect, we can wonder just what are the principles of order in the ST. Although, in general, there is a point to saying that theology ‘‘starts with God’’ whereas philosophy begins with creatures and only ultimately arrives at God,19 still, not only is it true that there is philosophical order within the bodies of individual articles of the ST,20 but there are indications of philosophical order in entire treatises.21 To what extent is the ‘‘top-down’’ ordering of the ST more a result of its having the style of wisdom generally than the result of its being ‘‘theology, not philosophy’’? In any case, reordering is possible and indeed has been done, and in the very domain we wish to speak of, with great effect. I am referring to the ‘‘Notes doctrinales thomistes’’ by Ignatius Mennessier, O.P., published as an appendix to his translation of the ST questions on religion.22 As he says in beginning to present St. Thomas’s teachings on religion: Filial piety, respect [observantia], gratitude, indeed derive from religion as from a virtue that implies eminently with respect to God all the duties whose accomplishment they assure. St. Thomas delays

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treating in greater detail, until studying them, an entire psychology with which we must enrich our conception of the virtue of religion. The descending order, strongly logical, followed by our author, gives us a very high idea of our duties toward human authorities, having us consider them in the wake of our duties toward God. But it is good for us to follow the reverse order as well, so as to regulate analogically our duties toward that transcendent someone else who is God. The notes that follow aim to serve such a plan, and to aid toward a better penetration of St. Thomas’s brief formula: ‘‘The object of religion is to render honor to the sole God, under the sole aspect that he is the first principle of the creation and government of things.’’23 In passing, we might note the point of obvious philosophical moment, that St. Thomas’s definition of religion includes the notion of creation. However, by way of indicating something of the merit of Father Mennessier’s study, let me call attention to the way his reversing of St. Thomas’s order of consideration focuses the mind on the most common sort of gratitude and gift giving among human beings. He thereby proposes as a primary principle for St. Thomas’s philosophy of religion the doctrine that ‘‘every effect is naturally turned toward its cause’’ (St. Thomas made this the root of gratitude).24 Indeed, the overall project of Father Mennessier displays clearly the importance of the notion of principle (principle of being and direction) for St. Thomas’s philosophy of religion.25 Part 3 Father Mennessier’s work constitutes a pressing invitation to exploit the ST in the development of a philosophy of religion having what Maritain called the methods and modes proper to philosophy.26 In this last section I wish to indicate what I take to be a primary issue for elaboration. Being by habit and inclination a metaphysician, I will focus on the area of ‘‘metaphysical foundations of ethics.’’ Father Mennessier, aiming to speak of ‘‘the general idea of our duties [devoirs] toward our superiors,’’ what is owing with respect to them, begins with some considerations of justice and love. He says it might seem strange that St. Thomas makes filial piety a form of justice, the union

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between parents and children being so much one of love. Father Mennessier goes on to say that although it is true that a father has so much of himself in his son that he (the father) can hardly be described as ‘‘just’’ toward the son, only as ‘‘loving,’’ the son is so situated (ontologically) with respect to the father as to have relations both of love and of a very profound sort of justice to the father. The point is well taken, though I do not think Father Mennessier provided the best references to texts in St. Thomas for the clearest understanding of it.27 Be that as it may, the focus on the distinction between justice and love could not be more appropriate. St. Thomas constantly teaches that charity is the cause of religion.28 The two are to be distinguished, and seen in causal relationship. Now, with the introduction of the term ‘‘charity,’’ it may be thought that I am clearly moving into the supernatural, ‘‘beyond philosophy.’’ Of course, ‘‘charity’’ is a term used by St. Thomas exclusively for the supernatural love of God.29 However, the philosopher, in his mining of the ST, ought not merely to turn away when he encounters such terms. Rather, he must look at the theory of charity itself and more generally at St. Thomas’s conception of ‘‘theological virtues.’’ They are conceived as analogues, within the supernatural order, of realities already to be found in the natural order. They correspond to what St. Thomas calls ‘‘the natural principles of man,’’ by which he is ‘‘ordered toward his connatural goal.’’30 Reason and will are naturally ordered to God, inasmuch as he is the principle and goal of nature, ordered nevertheless in a way proportioned to human, or created, nature.31 St. Thomas also says that the theological virtues order man to supernatural beatitude, the way man through natural inclination is ordered to the end connatural to him. Presenting in more detail this natural inclination, he speaks of the role of reason or intellect as containing the first universal principles known to us through the natural light of the intellect, and also of the rightness of the will naturally tending toward the good of reason.32 My point is that the relation of charity (to which, for our present purposes, the theological virtues can be reduced) to the moral virtues generally, and religion in particular, is itself conceived on the basis of St. Thomas’s view of the natural order. This in turn means that it is man’s natural love of God above all things (the most sublime dimension of the rightness of our will, according to St. Thomas)33 that will be at the root of religion.

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The question I wish to pose is precisely, why distinguish between the love of God and religion? How can we catch sight of religion as a peculiar and necessary item in the world of human perfections? Of course, ‘‘religion’’ names a virtue that, properly speaking, exists only when it is produced by human endeavor.34 Still, such a virtue itself presupposes a peculiar natural inclination.35 My question, then, is really about a variety or diversity, and a subordination, found among our natural inclinations: namely, love (and especially love of God) and justice (and especially religion). The doctrine I wish to sketch is that in speaking of the created universe we must distinguish between the communicable and the incommunicable. Such terms as ‘‘being’’ and ‘‘goodness’’ express reality according to its communicability. As St. Thomas says, when we say God is good, we mean that what we call ‘‘good’’ in creatures preexists in God in a higher mode.36 Such intelligibilities are found by priority in God, and only secondarily and derivatively in creatures (though our way of speaking of them is more appropriate to them as found in creatures).37 Now, love has as its object the good as such.38 This means that it is a kind of connaturality with God, a ‘‘movement’’ of the ‘‘generator’’ in the thing engendered.39 Justice (and here, it would really be better to call it ‘‘justness’’ or ‘‘fairmindedness,’’ for we mean the inner quality, the goodwill, of the man; ‘‘justice’’ seems to mean the objective situation) is not strictly speaking a form of love. It is an inclination, an affection, but it is an affection not precisely for the good as such but for equality. This means that the movement proper to being just finds its terminus in things considered as diverse one from another.40 We have to do no longer with the communicable as such, according to which all things are somehow one, but with the incommunicable as such, according to which each is given its due. I am not merely taking these considerations from other contexts in St. Thomas’s texts and applying them in arbitrary fashion to the case of religion. St. Thomas himself makes the application. For example, when asked why there are distinct virtues of honor toward God (religion) and honor toward parents (filial piety), whereas the one virtue of charity applies to love of God and neighbors (and the objector invokes Aristotle: ‘‘to be honored is the next thing to being loved’’), St. Thomas replies precisely that the object of love is the good, whereas the object of honor or reverence41 is something excellent. The goodness of God is communicated to his

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creatures, but not the excellence of his goodness. Hence, although the charity by which God is loved is not distinct from the charity by which the neighbor is loved, religion, by which God is honored, is distinct from the virtues by which humans are honored.42 The essential thing in the object of religion, then, is the order that the creature ought to have to the Creator, inasmuch as one keeps one’s eye on the mode of being proper to each. St. Thomas generally distinguishes between reverence and religion, though reverence is much closer to religion than the love of God is (to religion). Both reverence and religion are conceived on the basis of the contrast between creature and Creator.43 To what extent one could distinguish between reverence and the natural inclination peculiar to religion is another question. I believe the distinction is in large part between the inclination and the developed virtue.44 Taking religion and reverence together, it might be noted that they are not destined to disappear in the realm of immortality (notice that philosophy of religion must include, even aside from its information from revelation, a doctrine of immortality and of the ‘‘connatural end of man’’).45 They are heightened by proximity to God. They are not merely compatible with love of God but have that love as their proper cause.46 Nevertheless, this also means that they are not the most perfect things in creation. The contemplation and love of God are more divine.47 The duality of love and reverence or religion is ultimately rooted in the distinction between being (esse) and essence in creatures; however, we will leave the development of this point for another occasion.

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Chapter 22

PHILOSOPHY AND S PIRITUALITY: CULTIVAT ING A VIRT UE

What do I mean by ‘‘spirituality’’?1 I am going to take this word as synonymous with ‘‘holiness,’’ ‘‘sanctity,’’ as these words, in turn, are a way of speaking, from a particular angle, of what Thomas Aquinas called ‘‘the virtue of religion,’’ or just plain ‘‘religion.’’2 It refers to the quality of life of a religious person. The activities of the religious person are such deliberate things as acts of devotion, prayer (the interior acts), and adoration, the offering of sacrifices, the taking of vows, public praise (external acts). Insofar as these practices imbue and transform the whole of life, one speaks of ‘‘saintliness of life.’’3 These things are discussed in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae (ST) 2–2.81–2–2.100.4 There, although the setting is distinctly Christian, and clearly a part of sacred theology, the subject is approached in a definitely philosophical way. The natural basis for all such activity is explored. Though we should never lose sight of the properly Christian level of the discussion, it is important to grasp the merely human and natural dimension of our spiritual life. Grace not only completes but also imitates nature.5 Thus, it will be seen that such topics do not pertain exclusively to the Christian and that the attitudes and behavior and character formation involved are appropriate for all human beings, just because they are human beings. I would stress the term ‘‘character formation.’’ We are here having to do with the development of our personalities, as people who are called upon throughout life to choose and to act, and to do so in a way that befits the human being, living with God, living with other 358

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human beings, living in the midst of God’s creation. Holiness— spirituality—is a universally required trait of human character.6 Religion or religiousness, spirituality, the formation that ensures that amid the vicissitudes of life one can be depended upon to render to God what is due to God, is presented as one among, and one of the most important of, all the virtues. ‘‘Virtue’’ here is the general term for the states of character that prepare us for acting rightly as human beings. Thus, ‘‘justice’’ (or ‘‘fairness’’), ‘‘bravery’’ (or ‘‘courage’’), ‘‘moderation,’’ and ‘‘sagacity’’ (or ‘‘prudence’’) are all viewed as virtues, that is, as character traits that are subject to development by each human being (with the help of teachers who must be models). And human beings are seen as required to work at such self-development. The background of the word ‘‘virtue’’ is significant. It is related to the Latin word ‘‘vir,’’ meaning a man, a male human being. Moreover, this way of speaking about ‘‘men’’ has its roots in warfare. ‘‘Virtue’’ harkens back to ‘‘manliness’’ as courage, that is, the quality of character displayed by the good soldier in the midst of war. I say all this obviously not in order to provoke women to protest but to indicate the human problem that virtues are meant to face, namely, that whatever our good intentions, however much we may wish to do the right thing, nevertheless when the going gets tough, not all of us can be counted on to stand our ground and do or say or even think the right thing. We may say we are going to defend our family against the enemy, but what will we actually do when the moment of truth comes? Will we have the strength of character to actually carry out, in freedom, what we said we would? Or will we be the slaves of our emotions, overcome by them, and act in a somewhat unsuitable way, whether with cowardice or foolhardiness? Have we prepared ourselves responsibly to meet the test? Thus, the study and cultivation of virtuousness is precisely the production of responsible liberty. Although I have just used the evident difficulty of war to bring out the need for virtue, I would hasten to recall that virtue has more to do with the good than with the difficult, and that the goodness of putting one’s life on the line derives from the goodness of the peaceful social life for which it is done.7 The approach to holiness of life, that is, holiness as a virtue, is not new. It can be seen in such key books as Plato’s Republic (and the Euthyphro) and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Such works are not exclusively about

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holiness, of course, but about the virtuous life in all its dimensions, the cultivation of human goodness—freedom and responsibility. Nor do they pretend that such goodness can be produced by self-help books or teachers who merely guide us through such books or courses of reflection. In fact, they explicitly pose the problem as to the place of book learning or lecture listening or discussion in the formation of good human character.8 The Republic attempts to provide a program of training, right from the cradle. It asks what sort of music and stories children ought to be exposed to. It considers the place of physical cultivation, the gymnastic side of life. It envisages military training. It comes finally to intellectual cultivation, and what sort of course of studies will encourage the direction of the mind toward virtuous living and true wisdom. Study is seen as something that has to find a place, even if a crowning place, in a total setting of cultivation of the human being. So also, the Nicomachean Ethics is a self-help book. It is meant to assist in a program of self-improvement. It is written as a practical move. Aristotle is aiming to say things that will change the way his listeners live their lives. And so he immediately takes up the question, to whom are these lectures addressed? What qualifications must the listener already possess if we are to get the desired effect? It is of interest that his answer is that we are certainly not speaking to the young, either in years or in disposition. The actions of such people are ruled by their passions. We are speaking to people in whom reason has some sway over what they choose to do.9 Aristotle thus presupposes a certain preparation, in the midst of the family and of the Greek society at large, that assures a certain minimum agreement, right from the start, on the part of his listeners that certain actions are reasonable or unreasonable, good or bad.10 His analyses of fairness, bravery, moderation, sagacity, friendship, and the like find their place in such a setting. He notes that there is, presupposed by what he is saying, a set of conclusions about the nature of man and his psychology. He says that the book does not require precise theoretical unanimity in these matters, but a certain minimum agreement on such issues is required.11 (One would have a difficult time in an ethics course with those who thought that blacks or Asians were not first-class human beings; and the same goes for disagreement on whether there is a god). The above remarks are meant to introduce the idea of using Thomas Aquinas’s treatise on religion as a self-help book (with the aid of teachers)

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in spirituality or holiness of life. I do not wish this to be taken as a proposal for a panacea. I wish, for instance, to underline the need for certain social and family conditions if any course of study is to be practically helpful in this area. It is among people who are already trying to live virtuous lives that the study of the virtues will have some point. But given that setting, in some degree, the kind of reflection and analysis provided by St. Thomas will aid immeasurably in the ‘‘fine-tuning’’ of our judgment and decisions as to courses of conduct. It will help us orchestrate the various requirements of genuinely human action, and it will form us for liberty. To illustrate this proposal, I will consider two points: one, the nature and role of devotion, and the other, the nature and role of prayer. Devotion comes first, as an act of the will, one that presides over all our action in this domain of religion.12 It is an interior act that imbues everything we do with the character of ‘‘giving the whole of oneself to God.’’ It is seen as having its appropriate preparation in the meditation of the person, who looks upon God as origin and director of reality in its entirety, with respect to whom only complete submission is suitable. It likewise focuses, in meditation, upon one’s own person, as God’s creature, that is, as nothing at all without God.13 To be noticed here is how much the doctrine of creation has to do with the very nature of the truly religious submission to God. This is an attitude that is supposed to be incomparably more dedicated than one would be to any human parent, to any society of human beings, to any other creature.14 Also to be noted is that such devotion is the foundation for all religious activity, and especially that of prayer. The schema Thomas Aquinas presents us with begins in contemplation of the immensity of the Creator in his goodness and power (and our own createdness and fallibility). This meditation or contemplation is the preparation for love of God. That love issues in devotion, and then moves to prayer. Prayer befits us as doers, agents, origins of being.15 We are made in the image of the Creator. Like God, we are free and responsible.16 We have a responsibility to bring certain things about. We have a responsibility for what reality is going to be like. Thus, prayer is presented by Thomas as an act of what he calls ‘‘practical reason.’’17 It is something that pertains to us as causes. Yet what do we do in prayer? We ask God to make things happen. This is the primary practical thing to do, considering that he is

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the creator and universal provider and governor. We can be said to have a share in bringing about what our well-placed friend brings about at our asking.18 One can see from these considerations how one’s outlook and one’s practice will be influenced by reflection on the nature of such things as devotion and prayer. But one can also see that such reflection itself calls for investigation of questions about the nature of creative causality, about the compatibility of universal divine providence and governance, on the one hand, and human freedom on the other. Should we pray if we believe God looks after everything (to take only one question)? We should, but the reason requires some spelling out.19 Thus, true spirituality deserves genuine philosophical education. And this becomes more and more necessary for those in responsible leadership roles in a world wherein all the forces of commerce are exploitative of all the forces of sophistry and seduction. Society itself is a great theater of sophistry.20 In the battle against it, the word of God and faith are primary, but they deserve the accompaniment of all the resources the human mind and will can muster. Obviously not all can be theologians and philosophers, but all deserve the benefits of the centuries-long experience the Church has in these areas. I wish to stress the lifelong use of St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae secunda secundae. Moral education, self-help in spirituality, requires that we make such a book, such a treatise on human living, a constant stimulus of our reflection. We should read these discussions of all the angles of human virtuous operation to become more and more aware of the subtleties of human situations and of the many beautiful sides to good living. We should also read and reflect on how many ways we can go wrong, and how much questioning of ourselves and our attitudes really thoughtful living supposes. Just in the area of religion itself, it is an immensely beneficial thing to reflect from time to time on the many ways in which we can go to extremes: the forms of superstition, the ways in which one can sin by ‘‘putting God to the test,’’ and so on.21 We need to form students to be people who live with a few fundamental guides all their lives. Spirituality will not be communicated after the manner of a succession of formulas, much as the overweight person is always being taken in by new diet schemes. Formation, we ought to know well by now, is only to be initiated in early life. It must be carried forward and reinforced by one’s constant practice all during life. Thomas’s analyses are nourishment for

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this. I remember once hearing Robert M. Hutchins say in a lecture, ‘‘Education, in a modern, industrial, scientific democracy must be education for all of the people all of their lives.’’ The truth of this is more evident now than it was in the 1950s, when I heard him. Nor does it refer merely to occasional ‘‘recycling’’ sessions. It is a way of life that is meant. I would add that not everyone will find the prescription equally suitable. True practicality must ultimately deal with individual needs. However, I believe that what I am suggesting is the most reasonable general approach. Also, it should be said that I am speaking within a certain framework of understanding the relations among divine faith, theology, and philosophy. I have written on this elsewhere,22 but I am here extending what I have said there about the importance of metaphysics for sacred theology to the domain of philosophical ethics, understood as rational analysis of the principles of behavior with a view to human character formation. Thus far I have been speaking of spirituality formation as having an essentially philosophical dimension. Here I would like to add a remark that may at first surprise. I would argue that this is truer for Christians than it was for the Greeks who listened to Aristotle. Christians have a responsibility for ethical exploration and pursuit of perfection that surpasses what is required in a non-Christian context. It is interesting to note that St. Thomas Aquinas, explaining a difference between his own ethical discourse and that of Aristotle, sees Aristotle as judging to be evil what is harmful to other human beings, whereas he himself calls ‘‘evil’’ what is repugnant to rightly ordered reason.23 Later, speaking about the moral part of the divine law, Thomas relates what is basically the same difference to the fact that the divine (i.e., revealed) law orders us toward community with God, whereas mere human law orders human beings among themselves; thus, since it is by reason or mind that man is united to God, the divine law goes beyond mere human law, instructing us in all those things whereby the reason of man is well ordered.24 I take this to imply that we should put more emphasis on the desirability of probing the theoretical or contemplative wellsprings of ethical structures; that is, the Christian religion calls for a deepening meditation on the Creator’s sublimity, so as to heighten our love and devotion or dedication. Lastly, it should be clear by now that when I speak of ‘‘philosophy’’ and spirituality, I am not speaking in a general way about the advantages

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of exposing students to a few courses in the history of philosophy or to some training in logic or even to a few credits in ‘‘values’’ studies. I have spoken of philosophy as determinate human knowledge available to us through competent teachers, some few of whom have, over the centuries, received a constant ecclesiastical recommendation.25 A return to intense philosophical studies as a form of priestly education is necessary. Without it, what do we have? What we have is literary studies of sacred Scripture, under every sort of human theoretical light save the sapiential. This is a formula for confusion and spiritual disaster.

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Chapter 23

ST. tHOMAS AND T HE ONTOLOGY OF PRAYER

Introduction Twice in his twenty-year academic career, toward the beginning and toward the end, St. Thomas Aquinas undertook to present systematically the act of prayer. The first of these studies is found in the fourth book of his Commentary on the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard, written about 1256.1 There2 the general topic is the sacraments, and in the midst of the discussion of the sacrament of penance, St. Thomas reviews the means by which one makes satisfaction for an offense against God. These means are fasting, almsgiving, and prayer.3 In this way, an occasion is presented for a discussion of prayer, and St. Thomas responds with a set of twenty-three basic queries and replies arranged under seven headings.4 Since, at the corresponding moments in their commentaries on the work of Peter Lombard, neither St. Bonaventure nor St. Albert the Great gives us such a treatise on prayer, it can be suggested that the study presented by St. Thomas manifests a particular interest on his part in the theology of prayer.5 That this is the case is also shown by the fact that the treatise follows very much its own intrinsic lines of interest, quite independent of the issue of penance and satisfaction.6 The second of St. Thomas’s studies on the act of prayer is found in the second part of the Summa theologiae (ST), written about 1271.7 In the prologue for the whole ST, St. Thomas tells us that he is writing the work with a view to eliminating useless questions, articles, and arguments, and with a view to presenting the material according to an order suitable for 365

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learning, rather than merely in an order dictated by the task of commenting on another author’s work.8 It is thus of some interest that the question on prayer still contains some seventeen articles (seventeen basic queries), a record for an ST question.9 These correspond in a general way to those found in the Commentary on the Book of Sentences, and certainly the seven large headings of the Sentences treatment remain; nevertheless, they have been thoroughly reordered.10 Furthermore, the question on prayer is no longer found in the midst of a discussion of penance, but now takes its place in the treatment of the virtue of religion.11 One of the most evident and important consequences of this is that the whole question on prayer is now preceded by a question on the act of devotion, viewed as the immediate and proper cause of the act of prayer.12 This question on devotion has no parallel in the writings of St. Thomas.13 From these few indications of change, it is evident that St. Thomas’s second treatise on the act of prayer constitutes a considerable revision as compared with the first. The complete investigation of the nature and extent of this revision would involve us in a task of some magnitude. Here, I will limit myself to presenting one evident and important revision bearing on the essential nature of prayer.14 What Is Prayer? The first of the seven articles or general headings in the Sentences is entitled ‘‘What is prayer?’’15 This general topic is presented by means of three more particular queries: 1. Is prayer an act of will, of desire, of the affective side of man, or is it an act of reason, that is, of the manifestative, demonstrative, representative side? 2. Is prayer the act of a gift of the Holy Spirit, or is it the act of a virtue?16 3. Is prayer an act that we can be and are commanded to perform, that is, does it constitute the matter for a commandment? To see how these queries pertain to the question of the essence of prayer, I will touch lightly on the content of St. Thomas’s responses to them. As regards the first, the connection is not very difficult to see, since it concludes that ‘‘prayer is an act of reason referring the desire of the will

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to him who is not in our power but is above us, namely God. Hence, the definition of [St. John] Damascene, ‘prayer is the asking of fitting things from God,’ most truly sets out the essence of prayer.’’17 Most of St. Thomas’s effort in the response is to explain asking as an act of reason. In the second of the responses, St. Thomas must discuss the specific intelligibility of prayer to see whether it is the act of a virtue. The genus of the act, he tells us, is asking. In the definition of Damascene, the ‘‘of fitting things’’ does not belong to the essence of prayer, but is rather a condition of its being well done. What specifies the asking called ‘‘prayer’’ is that it is an asking for something from God. This implies a manifestation of reverence, and accordingly it is an act of worship (latria). And since worship or religion is a virtue, prayer is the act of a virtue. The effect of the response is to suggest, on the basis of an examination of the definition, something of the entitative status of the act of prayer: that it is a rightacting, and in a human mode.18 The first query having presented us with the genus, asking, as an act of reason and the second having shown how the specific difference, from God, comports the exhibition of reverence for God (thus presenting prayer with the entitative status of virtuous action), the third query now serves to exhibit the being of prayer as possessed of a necessity proper to it. Prayer is not a merely optional item in the economy of salvation: it has that sturdiness of being that we call ‘‘necessity.’’ This is brought out through the question, is prayer something we are commanded to do? The answer is to some extent a mere reference to the existence of statutory law in the matter: certain people in the Church are expressly bound to the recitation of the liturgical prayers, and at certain times everybody is so bound. However, in a more reasoned way, the point is made that some prayer is necessary for everyone. Each is bound to procure for himself spiritual goods, and only God can give them. And again, the precept of charity that we must love our neighbors as ourselves makes it necessary that we pray for them. Thus, the general point is that we are responsible for asking for our spiritual goods. Let us come now to the ST. Though, as I have said, the order of queries has been changed, St. Thomas appears to be still satisfied to begin with the entitative inquiry, what is prayer? He does not present us with general headings, but the first three articles correspond in a general way to the first three queries in the Sentences, that is, to the three we have just reviewed.

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Nevertheless, important internal revisions have been effected, and it is to these that I wish to draw attention. The first query remains the same: is prayer the act of the appetitive power, or of the cognitive power? But the query put second in the Sentences, namely, is prayer an act of the virtue of religion? now comes in third place. Furthermore, the third query of the Sentences, whether prayer is something commanded, has now been reduced to an objection and reply within the query about prayer as an act of religion.19 Most notable of all, between the first two Sentences queries, concerning prayer as cognitive and prayer as virtuous, a new query has been inserted. The second article of the ST asks, is prayer an appropriate thing for man to do? Is prayer of any use? Thus, already at the level of the questionnaire, we see that something has happened to the discussion of the essence of prayer. Let us examine the articles more closely. As I said, the query in ST article 1 is the same as that which we find put first in the Sentences. However, the response of St. Thomas has been considerably revised. In the earlier treatment, St. Thomas first pointed out the variety of uses of the word ‘‘oratio’’ (statement, discourse, prayer, etc.), and focused his inquiry on the meaning ‘‘petitio’’ (asking). He then set out to present asking as an act of reason. To do this, he contrasted man with the other animals as regards the obtaining of things desired. This ultimately led him to a picture of the use of reason in relation to the will. First, reason inquires as to what should be chosen by the will; then, once the choice has been made by the will, reason follows up with a command, determining as regards each instrument what it ought to do. This latter act of reason is expressed by the imperative mood in verbs. It is an act that pertains not only to the inner life of man but to his relation to other persons; and when these other persons are our superiors, it becomes the act of requesting or asking. Thus, in the response, St. Thomas does very little to show that it is reason as distinct from appetite that is at work. The presentation is rather descriptive, and concerns the phases that may be discerned in our way of obtaining things. When we come to the ST article, we find something rather different. Citing the saying of Cassiodorus ‘‘Oratio dicitur quasi oris ratio,’’ which

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can be rendered in somewhat Joycean English as ‘‘Orisons are oral reasons,’’ St. Thomas uses this as a cue for discussing ratio, reason, and more precisely, the causal character of practical reason. Thus, he says: Speculative and practical reason differ in this, that speculative reason is merely apprehensive of things, whereas practical reason is not merely apprehensive but also causative. Now, something is cause of another in two ways: in one way, perfectly, imposing necessity, and this happens when the effect is totally subjected to the power of the cause; in another way, imperfectly, merely disposing, when the effect is not subjected to the power of the cause totally. So also, therefore, reason is a cause of some things in two ways: in one way, as imposing necessity, and in this way it pertains to reason to command not only the lower powers [of the soul] and parts of the body but also subjected men, which it does by giving a command; in another way, as inducing and somehow disposing, and in this way reason asks that something be done by those who are not subjected to it, whether they be equals or superiors.20 Having thus presented practical reason’s causative role, St. Thomas next carefully makes the point that the described activity is truly the job of reason: ‘‘Now, both of these [modes of causing], namely, to command and to ask or beseech, include in their intelligibility a certain ordering, inasmuch, that is, as a man disposes that something is to be done by another [thing]. Hence, they pertain to reason, to which [it belongs] to put in order: which is why the Philosopher [Aristotle] says . . . that ‘reason pleads for what is best.’ ’’21 We see, thus, that in the ST there is a more formal approach to showing that it is truly reason that is at work. Nevertheless, the argument used to show this is present in the Sentences, not very explicitly in the main response, but in the preliminary arguments22 and in the reply to an objection.23 Thus, in this matter, St. Thomas is merely regrouping his arguments for better argumentative form. The stress on the causal character of prayer or asking, however, is entirely new. To pray is to act as a cause of the things prayed for. Let us see how this notion is put to use by St. Thomas.

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We can do this by passing on to an examination of the second ST article, an article the body of which has no parallel in the earlier Sentences treatise on prayer. The inquiry bears on the point, is prayer an appropriate, useful, suitable activity? We see at once that we are asking a question not altogether unlike that which was put third in the Sentences, namely, is prayer something commanded, and so, necessary? Indeed, many of the materials used in the Sentences for that inquiry are made use of here by St. Thomas; for example, the argument sed contra in the ST uses the text of Luke 18:1, as did a similarly situated argument in the Sentences.24 However, the response in the ST article belongs to a rather different domain from that of anything we find in the Sentences treatment. We find in the ST response the detailed presentation of a problem and its careful solution. The problem is presented in terms of three ancient errors concerning prayer. The first is that human affairs are not regulated by divine providence and thus that there is no point in praying. The second is that everything, human affairs included, happens of necessity, whether the necessity be traced to God’s immobility or to the necessity of the celestial bodies or to the chain of causes in the universe; once again, in such a perspective, prayer is useless. The third position is that divine providence is subject to change and thus that prayer is something useful, precisely as something meant to change God’s mind. The theoretical grounds for all these errors concerning prayer have already been eliminated in the first part of the ST. What remains for St. Thomas here, then, is to present the utility of prayer as neither to impose a necessity on human acts, which indeed are subject to providence, nor to present that providence as changeable. In the second part of the response, St. Thomas explains the utility of prayer. First, he presents a general picture of causality in the universe: By divine providence is arranged not merely which effects will be brought about but also by virtue of which causes and in which order they will take place. Now, among other causes, the causes of some [things] are human acts. Accordingly, it is necessary that men do some things, not so as by their acts they might change the divine arrangement, but that by their acts they may bring to pass certain effects according to the order arranged by God. And it is the same with natural causes [as distinct from human or voluntary causes].25

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Having presented this doctrine of secondary causes and their true causality within the causal order of divine providence, St. Thomas applies this doctrine to the special case of prayer: ‘‘And it is similar also as regards prayer. For it is not for this reason that we pray, namely, that we may change the divine arrangement, but rather that we may obtain that which God arranged was to be accomplished through the prayers of the saints.’’26 What we find here, then, is a doctrine in close continuity with the causal presentation of prayer already seen in article 1. Taken together, the two articles contrast sharply enough with the Sentences treatment. What are we to make of this new approach to prayer on St. Thomas’s part? First of all, it should not be thought that St. Thomas has, sometime between 1256 and 1272, had a new insight into the role of prayer in the universe of salvation (or, at any rate, one ought not to conceive of such an insight in an overly simplistic way). Though the issue discussed in the ST article 2 is not found in the treatise on prayer in the Sentences, the picture of prayer used in that ST article is already found in the first book of the Sentences.27 There, in the context of the discussion of predestination, man is presented as a cooperator in the working out of the divine plan, and prayer is seen as a cause of the effect of predestination. If one follows along chronologically the various texts on this topic in the course of St. Thomas’s career, one finds oneself very quickly in the midst of responses quite like our ST article.28 Also, in a somewhat different context, namely, the presentation of the doctrine of divine providence against the background of the philosophicoscientific doctrines of the universe, St. Thomas is led to pose the very query that we find in our ST article 2; this occurs in Summa contra gentiles (SCG) 3.95–3.96, which discusses the usefulness of prayer, even given the immobility of divine providence.29 Accordingly, the phenomenon I am calling attention to is not the presence of this doctrine in the writings of St. Thomas but rather its incorporation into the treatise on the nature of prayer. Let us consider more closely the way this incorporation takes place. We should note first that St. Thomas has not merely inserted the article on the usefulness of prayer into the questionnaire; he has rewritten the first response, on prayer as an act of reason, so as to make of these two articles a pair. The primary interest of article 1 is to present the act of asking as an act of causing. This having been done, the second article

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presents prayer as an activity that makes sense, has its place, in a universe presided over by an all-knowing, unchangeable God. Furthermore, the article on the usefulness of prayer has not been inserted just anywhere. It has been placed between the query concerning prayer as an act of the power called ‘‘reason’’ and that concerning prayer as an act of the virtue called ‘‘religion.’’ What is the meaning of this location, of this sequence of argument? St. Thomas’s doctrine of the logical order of questions may be of help here. He teaches that the question of the existence of this or that type of thing must be answered if one is to be able to pose the question of a thing’s essential nature; and if the thing is of such a kind that its existence really poses a problem, the knowledge that one must have, in order to ask and answer the question of existence, bears upon the meaning of a word. Thus, first of all, one must know, for example, what ‘‘a god’’ means; then, one can attack the question, does anything exist corresponding to that meaning? and this being answered, one can appropriately raise questions bearing on the nature of the thing, for example, whether in God there is any composition or magnitude or change.30 This, it seems to me, is the sequence in the ST treatise on prayer. The first article bears upon the meaning of the word ‘‘prayer.’’31 The second article demonstrates the existence of prayer, that is, reveals prayer, understood as one of our ways of being causal with respect to our salvation, as a real possibility, and indeed an essential item, in the universe of salvation presided over by an unchangeable, all-good, all-knowing, almighty God. The third article then presents prayer in its specific being within the movement of the rational creature toward God, that is, as an act of the virtue of religion.32 Reflections by Way of Conclusion Examining the different ways St. Thomas begins his earlier and later treatises on the act of prayer, one might be tempted to see nothing more than a change designed to meet the challenge of certain particular problems proper to St. Thomas’s own age. One might consider the development of the query concerning the use of prayer, as shown by the presentation in the Summa contra gentiles, and one might couple this with the fact that among the propositions condemned in 1277 by E´tienne Tempier, bishop of Paris, we find ‘‘that one ought not to pray.’’33

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Nevertheless, however much stimulus for the formulation of an appropriate discussion of prayer such current problems doubtless provided, it should be clear that what St. Thomas has aimed to give us in the ST treatise is an ontology of prayer, raising and answering the questions to which this spiritual reality typically gives rise in the human mind. Once asking is seen as causal,34 prayer, recognized as asking, has a problematic existence. We should ask, in a well-ordered human investigation, how can there be such a thing as prayer? And the answer to this question shows the way to a vision of the universe of salvation in which human intelligence, freedom, and responsibility have their culmination in that cooperation with God that is prayer. In this light, the citation with which St. Thomas concludes the entire article on the appropriateness of prayer, that is, the ST article 2, is really more suitable as an overall comment of his than as a mere part of the reply to the third objection. The citation runs: ‘‘Consider how great is the boon [felicitas] conceded to you, how great the glory given you: by prayer to converse with God, to engage in conversation with Christ, to select what you want, to ask for the things you desire.’’35

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Chapter 24

ST. THOMAS, LYING, A ND VENIAL SIN

Introduction Is it good to tell a harmless lie to save a life? Immanuel Kant held that it is very bad, for even though the lie does no immediate harm to the individuals involved, the liar is doing all he can to undermine the basis of law and contracts.1 Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine’s lead, had a much less severe judgment in the matter. Although he held that all lying is bad, what he called a ‘‘sin [peccatum],’’2 he nevertheless believed that a harmless lie to save a life is only a venial sin, not a mortal sin. Still, some interpreters of Thomas would like to eliminate even this stricture, and to do so, they sometimes attempt to redefine the event of which Thomas is speaking.3 I am afraid that in so doing, they tend to undermine our identification of species of sin. They cast doubt on the validity of moral taxonomy. I wonder if this is not due, in part, to a failure to understand the nature of venial sin. Accordingly, I propose here to recall some features of Thomas’s doctrine of venial sin and see how it applies to the discussion of lying. Venial Sin The distinction between venial sin and mortal sin is not directly about species of sin. What is in kind a venial sin can be done in such a way as to make it mortal, and what is in kind a mortal sin can be done in such a way as to make it venial. However, there are kinds of sins that by virtue of their very kind are mortal, and kinds that are venial.4 A mortal sin is 374

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one that goes contrary to the inclination to the true ultimate end, eternal beatitude. A venial sin is one that is not thus contrary. The result of this is that by a mortal sin, the spiritual principle of life within the person, namely grace and charity, is eliminated. Accordingly, the person does not have the inner resources to live spiritually. Such a sin has, as its appropriate punishment, perpetual banishment from beatitude. On the other hand, a venial sin does not eliminate or even decrease charity, and so one can repair oneself spiritually. The appropriate punishment is of limited duration.5 The entire moral life is viewed as the movement of the rational creature toward union with God in the beatific eternal life.6 The acts that move us in that direction are those that are in accordance with reason, whereby we are in God’s image.7 Thus, the entire moral enterprise is seen as enlivened by charity, that is, the love of God as source of beatitude, the love of oneself as capable of union with God in beatitude, the love of one’s neighbor as capable of association with us in beatitude.8 God is the ultimate end.9 Creatures are ‘‘for the ultimate end.’’10 Thus, if one acts in such a way as to give a creature the status of the ultimate end, this is a mortal sin.11 If one treats a creature according to its true status in the scheme of things, there is no sin.12 Where, then, does venial sin come in? One can tend toward a creature in a way that is somewhat disorderly, and yet not make it the ultimate end. One retains one’s love for the true ultimate end (see appendix 1 below),13 even though one tends toward a creature in a somewhat disorderly way—disorderly, that is, from the viewpoint of reason. Reason is the key to moral life, because it constitutes the proper nature of man. A thing is good inasmuch as it acts in accordance with its nature, and so man is good inasmuch as he is reasonable.14 And reason itself determines right action by considering the natures of things and their proper roles, one with respect to another. We are supposed to treat things, including ourselves, in accordance with their natures. Indeed, reason is that whereby we are united to God,15 and our treatment of natures as they deserve constitutes already a social relation to the author of nature.16 Thus, Thomas teaches that all acts of injustice, acts that truly harm our neighbor, such as murder or theft, are mortally sinful. They are against charity. They do not treat the neighbor according to his proper nobility in the divine scheme.17

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Suppose we contrast a mortal and a venial sin. One act of simple fornication, that is, noncontraceptive reproductive activity by people who are not married at all, is a mortal sin because it is against the welfare of the child that can result: such a child, having no father, will be handicapped as regards its entire life. On the other hand, one act of overeating is a venial sin. It is the expression of an excessive appetite for food, that is, an appetite not in accordance with reason. However, one such act does no great harm, and certainly not for the whole of anyone’s life (see appendix 2).18 Accordingly, when Thomas distinguishes between mortal and venial sin, the contrast is great. Indeed, he tells us that there is an infinite difference between them. As he says: Sins do not differ infinitely on the side of the turning toward the changeable good (in which the substance of the act consists); but they differ infinitely on the side of the turning away [involved]. For some sins are committed by turning away from the ultimate end; whereas some [are committed] by disorder having to do with those things that are for the end. Now, the ultimate end differs infinitely from those things that are for the end.19 Furthermore, confronted with an adversary who cites Augustine’s definition of sin as thought, word, or deed against the eternal law, an adversary who argues that since what is against the eternal law is mortal sin, all sin is mortal sin, Thomas replies that the word ‘‘sin’’ is said analogically of mortal and venial sin. Venial sin does not correspond perfectly to the idea of sin. Just as ‘‘a being’’ is said of both substance and accident, but of substance by priority, of accident merely in a secondary way, so also ‘‘sin’’ is said of the mortal and the venial. Venial sin is not ‘‘against the eternal law’’ (contra legem). Thus, Augustine’s definition applies properly only to mortal sin. Venial sin is ‘‘out of step’’ with law (praeter legem), since law always prescribes that things be done according to reason. Venial sin lacks the reasonableness that law promotes. Still—and this should be stressed—no law prohibits venial sin, even though it is not something licit. As Thomas says: ‘‘Someone sinning venially does not do what the law prohibits, or fail to do that to which the law by precept obliges.’’20 In this same line of thinking, we should hesitate even to say that venial sin is ‘‘bad.’’ At least, we must recognize that ‘‘bad’’ is said in different

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ways. Thus, Thomas tells us: ‘‘Venial sins do not exclude the spiritual good, which is the grace of God or charity. Hence, they are not called ‘bad,’ unqualifiedly [malum simpliciter], but in a qualified sense [secundum quid].’’21 A further gauge of the proper weight to be assigned to venial sins is the teaching that for them to be forgiven, there is not even need that one think of them individually. Any actual charitable movement of the mind toward God includes the repudiation of all such ‘‘being out of step’’ with the divine plan. Still, one ought to have the ambition to cut down on such sin. Otherwise one stands in danger of failing. Repeatedly sinning venially is seen as a ‘‘disposition’’ toward mortal sin.22 Lying Now, what about lying? How does it stand with respect to sin, mortal and venial? Thomas distinguishes, in connection with lying, between two intentions on the part of the speaker: (1) the intention to say what is false and (2) the intention, by so doing, to deceive someone. It is the first that is formal, that is, essential, for the lie. The second is the lie’s proper perfection, so to speak (something distinct from, but normally accompanying, the essence).23 Thomas teaches that every lie is a sin, using the word ‘‘sin’’ in a way that covers both venial and mortal. The reason is that words are naturally ordered to the manifestation of truth. Accordingly, to use words to express the false is an abuse of nature. In no circumstances, then, is a lie licit. Thomas makes the argument very carefully to arrive at a universal ban on lying: That which is in itself bad in kind can in no way be good and licit, because in order that something be good, it is required that all [factors] rightly concur: ‘‘for the good is from the complete cause, whereas the bad is from any particular defect,’’ as Dionysius says in On the Divine Names 4 [in PG 3:729 (no. 30)]. But a lie is bad in kind. For it is an act falling upon undue matter, for since spoken words are naturally signs of thoughts, it is unnatural and undue that someone signify by speech that which he does not have in mind. Hence, the Philosopher [Aristotle] says in Nicomachean

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Ethics 4 [7.1127a28] that ‘‘the lie is in itself bad [pravum] and to be avoided; the true is good and praiseworthy.’’ Hence, ‘‘every lie is a sin,’’ as Augustine also says, in the book Against the Lie [1 in PL 40:519, 21 in PL 40:547].24 This article is the occasion for Thomas to treat of the perennial ‘‘Gestapo question’’: what to say to the murderous agent of an unjust regime, asking about the presence of a victim you are hiding in your house. His answer is quite simply that one ought not to lie, no matter what the consequences. He indicates that evasiveness should be exploited, but lying is not a thing to do. The argument of the objector interestingly tries the move of comparing lying to amputation for health. We read: ‘‘The lesser evil is to be chosen so that one avoids the greater evil, as for example the medical practitioner amputates the member lest the entire body be corrupted. But it is a lesser harm that someone give rise to a false opinion in the mind of someone than that someone kill or be killed. Therefore, a man can licitly lie so as to preserve one [person] from homicide and preserve another [person] from death.’’ We notice, in this argument, the social character of veracity and lying; it measures the harm one does to one’s neighbor by lying. Thomas replies: It is to be said that the lie does not have the character of sin solely from the harm it inflicts on one’s neighbor, but [already] from its own disorder, as has been said. But it is not licit [non licet] to make use of some illicit disorder [aliqua illicita inordinatione] in order to impede the harms and deficiencies of others; just as it is not permitted to steal in order that a man engage in almsgiving, save perhaps in the case of necessity in which all things are in common [ownership]. And so it is not permissible to tell a lie in order that one free another from any peril whatsoever. Nevertheless it is permissible to hide the truth prudently under some dissimulation, as Augustine says in the book Against the Lie [10, in PL 40:553)].25 We see that the conception of the lie as a sin is very much tied to the right use of things, that is, use in conformity with their own natures. Just as one should not allow one’s appetites, for example, one’s anger26 or one’s desire for wealth,27 to be out of line with the reasonable, so one

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ought not to allow one’s speech to be out of line with its reasonable condition.28 But is every lie a mortal sin? Definitely not. Reminding us that a mortal sin is an act contrary to the charity by which we love God and our neighbor, Thomas presents a discussion in which we can see the many possibilities involved in lying. We can see mortal sins of lying, (1) considering the lie just in itself, (2) considering the further intention one has in lying, or (3) considering some incidental feature of the situation. Most important for our topic is the presentation of the lie ‘‘just in itself.’’ Thomas will present a hierarchy of types of lies. It seems that the word ‘‘lie,’’ from the viewpoint of moral taxonomy, requires the same sort of care as does the word ‘‘soul’’ in Aristotle’s De anima. That is, ‘‘soul’’ does not name one kind of thing only, but a hierarchy of forms, some more perfect than others.29 So, here, there is a hierarchy of lies. To consider the lie ‘‘in itself,’’ one looks directly at what it talks about: ‘‘ex ipsa falsa significatione,’’ from the false meaning itself. Suppose one lies about God. That is a mortal sin. Suppose one lies about the nature of things or about moral formation. That is a mortal sin, though less grave. Suppose one lies about a contingent truth, such that the person to whom one speaks is not harmed by it. That is a venial sin.30 We see, then, that it would be wrong to say that ‘‘lying is only a venial sin.’’ There are types of lies that are mortal sins, and there is a type of lie that is a venial sin. This hierarchy should be related to Thomas’s conception of the proper perfection of the human mind. Thomas himself does not make this comparison in the text of the question on lying, but I believe it is the relevant, and indeed crucial, background. It is not simply knowledge of any contingent fact that constitutes what properly perfects the mind.31 Rather, it is the truth (1) about God, the author of reality, (2) about the permanent features of reality: the species of things, the objects of science, and (3) about morals—these are the things that we naturally desire to know. Thomas presents Adam, prior to the Fall, as perfect in the order of knowledge of science and morals (though not yet at the ultimate goal). Yet Adam was not thought to know ‘‘how many pebbles are at the bottom of this or that stream.’’32 So also, in teaching about the communication among angels, Thomas distinguishes carefully between the speech that is properly called

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‘‘illumination’’ and the speech that is ‘‘merely speech.’’ The former communicates truth concerning God and the nature of things. The latter speaks merely of what depends on the will of this or that creature.33 Thus, lies about things that pertain to the proper perfection of the human mind are against justice and charity. They are mortal sins. A lie, on the other hand, that is false concerning contingent truth not pertaining to the person addressed is a venial sin. It is a disorder merely touching on a created good, a thing ‘‘for the end’’ (ad finem) and not the ultimate end. It is the conception of the mind and its proper perfection that allows us to assess the gravity of this sin and find it ‘‘venial.’’ It is only after he has presented the types of lies that are, in themselves, mortal and venial that Thomas raises the question of the further intention, that is, an end in view beyond the lie itself. It is here that we have the famous triad of lies: malicious, jocose, and officious (or out of kindness). Obviously, lies that aim to injure are mortal sins, but lies that are in themselves venial, and are performed to amuse, are venial. And even less grave than the comic lie is the kind lie, where one’s motive is actually to help someone. This should be underlined. The so-called officious lie, that is, the lie out of kindness, the lie to save lives, is of even less moral importance than the comic lie, which, by the way it is told, is meant to deceive no one. Lastly, to leave nothing out, Thomas reminds us that there is always the possibility of a situation that will turn any lie into a mortal sin, for example, if it could cause scandal under the circumstances.34 Most illuminating is his treatment of the Egyptian midwives, who lied to the pharaoh to save the male infants of Israel from death. He treats this first in the discussion of whether every lie is a sin. The book of Exodus tells us that God rewarded the midwives by building them houses.35 Surely they were not rewarded for sin! Thomas replies that they were rewarded for their reverence for God and benevolence toward the Israelites. They were not rewarded for the lie itself, which followed upon this goodwill. In this Thomas is echoing St. Augustine.36 However, much more is said in the context of the question, is every lie a mortal sin? An adversary, contending that every lie is a mortal sin, interprets some remarks of St. Gregory. The idea is that the goodwill of the midwives would ordinarily merit for them an eternal reward. However, they receive a terrestrial reward. Thus, the lie must be the occasion for losing the eternal

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reward, and so must be a mortal sin (and if even such a lie is a mortal sin, what lie is not?). Thomas, in his reply, denies that the midwives lost their eternal reward. Rather, for their goodwill, they did merit eternal life. Thus, St. Jerome has interpreted the ‘‘houses’’ as an eternal dwelling place. Thomas even opines that they might have received terrestrial houses as a reward for the lie itself (that is how Gregory ought to be interpreted). Thomas had already said, in an earlier discussion of rewards, that merely terrestrial goods are not ‘‘rewards’’ properly so called. But he definitely sees the midwives as meriting eternal life, and the lie does not deprive them of that.37 This is in keeping with his doctrine that venial sins do not eliminate or even diminish charity and grace.38 If we apply this solution to our modern question about lying to the Gestapo to save the Jewish family we are hiding, the answer of Thomas is that we should not tell a lie, even a harmless lie. To do so would be a venial sin, and one should never commit a venial sin, no matter what good might come of it. However, given the human condition, most good people, most saints (we might even say), will tell the lie, that is, will commit the venial sin.39 For their charity, which consists in their goodwill toward their neighbors, God will reward them with eternal life. It is even possible that for the venial sin God might reward them with some terrestrial goods, though that is hardly of interest to such people. Really Bad? Now, thus far my aim has been to show how minor a moral fault a venial sin is, and this venial sin (lying) in particular. I did say that venial sins could be called ‘‘bad’’ only in a qualified sense of the word. However, to the extent that I have succeeded, the question arises, is a venial sin really bad in any sense? Might we not say that the person should lie to the Gestapo? Might it not be a terrible moral fault not to tell the lie? And it is the answer to this challenge that seems to me to show the importance of the entire question of venial sin. For the answer seems to me to turn on one’s fundamental conception of the moral life. One must have firmly in view the project of friendship with God, a friendship to be perfected by action according to reason. One is dealing with an almighty and universally provident God. He is the author of nature. We humans come upon an already given scene, and our role is to cooperate with the author

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of nature. The rejection of mortal sin is obvious. The rejection of venial sin is the extension of the same primary project to every nook and cranny of our existence. We should refuse to perform any act that misuses the nature that is given into our charge (and that ultimately includes the whole material universe).40 The temptation to think that we would be morally at fault for not telling the lie to save a life arises from quite a different moral scenario. Of course, it plays on our quite reasonable and wholesome love of human life.41 However, it arises from a conception of the moral agent as much more ‘‘an engineer of reality’’ than a cooperator with the author of reality. It acknowledges certain given ‘‘ends or goals of life,’’ but sees less than it should of the givenness of nature and natures. To fill out the appropriate picture of our moral life, and the zone to which venial sin pertains, it is necessary to recall certain doctrines concerning the condition of Adam before the Fall, that is, the state of ‘‘original justice’’ or ‘‘innocence.’’ Thomas conceives of this state of grace as one in which, as long as the mind of man remained properly subordinate to God, the lower powers of man would be rightly subordinate to the higher powers. Accordingly, in that state, venial sin was impossible. This is because sins venial in kind have their origin in a certain insubordination of the sense appetites.42 For example, in the Gestapo case, we may lie because we ‘‘just cannot stand the thought of those good people dying’’; such an event would be just too sad. Thus, venial sins are conceived of in the light of that perfect condition of the human being, in which there can be no flaw in the functioning of the lower appetites in their order to our higher nature. That is, it is necessary to view the human being as capable of very great moral perfection if one is to take seriously the sort of fault that is venial sin. This is to say that venial sin is part of the doctrine of human nature as a fallen nature. Somewhat in the same line of thought, it is seen that a pure spirit, an angel, simply cannot commit a venial sin. Only one sin of the angel was possible, and that had to be a mortal sin.43 The venial sin is thus a problem typical of the human being in the fallen state. It corresponds to the nobility of the human calling and the wounded character of our nature. From what I have said, the question should arise, To what extent is this a doctrine that pertains to moral philosophy, as distinct from Christian theology?44 Without the doctrines of the state of original justice and of

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the Fall, one might simply judge that such disorder in human behavior is an inevitable failing of the nature. One might think, then, that it is something to avoid if possible, but not something to take very seriously in the moral life. This is certainly, I would say, a much better, more reasonable, view than that proposed by Kant. Kant’s approach seems far too abstract. Thomas’s distinction between what does and what does not constitute the perfection of the human intellect makes good sense. Once the reality of a ‘‘lie about contingent truth’’ is isolated for consideration, one can then raise the question of one’s intention in telling the lie. There is a world of difference between lying in such matters harmlessly to save a life and lying for commercial advantage or other unjust reason. Thomas, contrasting his own approach in morals with that of Aristotle, notes that Aristotle calls ‘‘bad,’’ properly, whatever is harmful to other people, and so he said that the prodigal person is not ‘‘bad.’’ And it is similarly the case with other actions that do no harm. Thomas says that he himself calls ‘‘bad,’’ more generally, everything that is repugnant to right reason.45 Interestingly also, when cataloging the acts of law, namely, to command, to forbid, to permit, and to punish, Thomas comes to ‘‘permission’’ and says: ‘‘But there are some [acts] that, as to their kind, are [morally] indifferent; and with respect to these, the law has [the role] of permitting.’’ But he immediately adds: ‘‘And all those acts, also, can be called ‘‘indifferent’’ which are either slightly good or slightly bad [vel parum boni vel parum mali].’’46 We should remember Thomas’s doctrine that the law does not prohibit the venial sin. Still, the venial sin—the harmless lie—is not properly a morally ‘‘indifferent’’ act. It is flawed from the viewpoint of reason. Conclusion By way of conclusion, I will simply say that reflection on the conception of venial sin cannot be neglected if one wishes truly to assess the morality of the harmless and indeed helpful lie. Kant’s contention that such a lie is ‘‘a wrong done to mankind generally’’ should be rejected. With St. Thomas and St. Augustine, although we do not approve of such a lie, we do say, to others and to ourselves, that if refraining from such lies ‘‘is at present beyond us, we must at least admit of lies only in this sort of necessity. We may then deserve to get rid even of these lies, if they alone

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remain, and receive strength from the Holy Ghost to make light of any suffering for truth’s sake.’’47 (See appendix 3.) Appendix 1 In connection with the Holy Eucharist and its reception, there are good texts on the distinction between habitual charity and actual charity, so that although one does not have the spiritual refreshment of the sacrament, one can still have the grace from the sacrament; this is important for the question, can one sin venially and love God charitably? The text I have in mind is ST 3.79.8. Thomas asks whether venial sin impedes the effect of the Eucharistic sacrament. Speaking of actually exercised venial sins (‘‘prout sunt actu exercita’’), he says: ‘‘Venial sins do not totally impede the effect of this sacrament, but [do so] partially. For it has [already] been said that the effect of this sacrament is not only the obtaining of habitual grace or charity but also a certain actual refreshment of spiritual sweetness. This latter is impeded if someone comes to this sacrament with a mind distracted through venial sins. But it does not take away the growth in habitual grace or charity.’’ And in the reply to the first objection we read: ‘‘He who approaches this sacrament with an act of venial sin eats spiritually in habitual fashion, but not actually. And so he receives the habitual effect of this sacrament, but not the actual.’’ We thus see that habitual action, ‘‘going through the motions’’ to a certain extent (where that involves no disrespect), results in a growth in grace and charity, at the habitual level; that is, one obtains an increase in one’s readiness to act charitably. Thus, what one does habitually, one really does, and one really derives benefit from it. This helps us get the picture of ourselves as caught in venial sin, and yet as habitually ordered toward God as source of beatitude, even though what one is actually doing does not have the character to advance us actually toward beatitude. There is nothing in what we do that points us toward an ultimate end other than God as the object of beatitude. We are loving God as ultimate end, not actually, but habitually. Appendix 2 Although sins can be venial or mortal depending on factors on the side of the sinner, what I wish to get at is the venial sin, as so determined by the very nature of the act. The following text from Quaestiones disputatae de malo seems to me especially helpful. Thomas says:

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In another way, it comes about that some sin is contrary or is not contrary to charity from the very type of the act, which is from the side of the object or matter that is contrary or not contrary to charity. For just as some food is contrary to life, for example, a poisonous food, whereas some food is not contrary to life, though it imposes an impediment as regards the right condition of life, for example, fat food and not easily digestible food, or else, if it is suitably digestible, because it is not taken in due measure; so also, in human actions, something is found that of itself is contrary to charity toward God and neighbor, namely, those things by which subjection and reverence of man to God are taken away, as blasphemy, diabolic activities, and things of that sort; and also those things that do away with the association [convictum] of human society, for example, theft, murder, and such: for human beings cannot live together socially where such things are perpetrated randomly and indifferently. And these are mortal sins in their very type, no matter with what intention or disposition of the will they be done. But there are some [actions] that, though they contain an inordinateness, nevertheless do not directly exclude either of the aforementioned, as, for example, that a man tell a lie not concerning the faith, nor tending to harm one’s neighbor, but to delight him or even to aid him, or if someone goes to excess in food and drink and other such. Hence, these are venial sins in their kind or type.48 Notice this inclusion of drink. We might note that Thomas changed his mind about the seriousness of excessive drinking when the beverage can cause drunkenness. Thus, in De malo 2.8 ad 3 and 7.4 ad 1, drunkenness is venial in kind, whereas in ST 1–2.88.5 ad 1 and 2–2.150.2 (which is directly on the topic), it is very explicitly mortal in kind. However, he still mentions venial sins of overindulgence in beverages generally. Appendix 3 Disputed Questions: When I put the question to a philosophical (and decidedly Christian) friend, he said he would be inclined to think one might be culpable for not telling the lie. The only answer to that is the natural status of speech.

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He asked whether there is not reason to abuse a nature in extreme circumstances. This might well be what the philosopher without revelation should say, at least as regards lying about contingent truth, a rather minor abuse of a nature. The lie becomes inconsiderable in the setting of the saving of a life. I am saying that there is a criticism to be made of the lie, but that most people will tell the lie, and that it is not gravely wrong. They are in the position of the midwives. Someone asked me why I could not use the lie as a form of self-defense, just as I would use a gun. The only answer is that some things qualify as legitimate weapons, the sorts of things one can use to defend oneself so long as one uses them moderately. However, words used as lies are not suitable weapons. Words might be used as weapons, as when I shout to frighten someone. But the lie is using the word in a bad way to scare someone off. It would be somewhat similar, that is, analogous, to committing fornication as a means of avoiding death. (However, that would be a mortal sin, and lying about contingent truth in a harmless way is a venial sin.) Why is an amputation good and a little life-saving lie bad? I believe the answer must move along the lines of self-defense. However, amputation is presented in terms of part and whole. Still, prominent in its explanation is the responsibility one has for one’s own health.49 And this is prominent in the presentation of self-defense.50 The answer, then, seems to rest in the reply to the question, concerning self-defense, why one cannot commit adultery or fornication, or any other mortal sin, to save one’s life. Thomas replies: ‘‘The act of fornication or of adultery is not ordered to the conservation of one’s own life by necessity [ex necessitate], the way the act [is] from which sometimes homicide follows.’’51 All the more, there is a certain natural necessity in the relation of parts to whole that justifies amputation. But there is not the same relation of lying to saving the life of oneself or one’s neighbor. In this case, the lie may not be a mortal sin, but it is something not to be done.

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Chapter 25

COMMUNION WITH THE T RADITION: FOR T HE BELIEVER WHO IS A PHILOSOPHER

Introduction Recently I heard of a bishop who, seeking advice on the abortion issue, consulted some academics in a Catholic institute of higher education in his diocese. He consulted the members of the Department of Theology. He did not, as far as I know, consult those in the Department of Philosophy. As it happens, the people best informed in the Theology Department regarding the details of opinion and debate surrounding abortion had, as it seems to me, little to recommend them as metaphysicians. Abortion, on the other hand, is an issue that stirs such emotions as tend to bring into question the very principles of ethical science. And it is the metaphysician who is supposed to judge and defend the principles of the sciences. Had the bishop knocked at the door of the Philosophy Department, he would have found it (in this particular case) peopled by believing Christians who have sought to meditate on their faith as itself calling for or encouraging ‘‘a philosophical approach.’’ He would have found believers who have put metaphysics at the service of faith. And he would have found people with a keen interest in, and something to say about, the issue of abortion. All of the above concerns only one incident in one diocese, but I take it as an occasion to raise a question about the validity of our ‘‘departmental’’ divisions. Doubtless, there is a distinction to be made between philosophy and theology, but how much has it to do with present-day departmentalization? Do ‘‘departments’’ have a mesmerizing effect on us? Should we 38 7

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speak of the ‘‘myth’’ of the department? Is there a need for ‘‘demythologizing’’ here? Let us refer, still by way of introduction, to another (though not, I say, unrelated) question. In its ‘‘Chronicle of Philosophy,’’ the Revue thomiste recently noted several books debating the desirability of employing ontology in Christian theology. Some people tell us it is necessary ‘‘to loosen the connection between God and being or, at least, between the thinking of the believer and traditional ontology.’’1 Others insist on the need for ontology in theology: ‘‘It is at the heart of Christian wisdom that the ontological question must once more take its place, first at the level of specifically metaphysical reflection, and, as a result, at the center of the understanding of the Faith.’’2 In the present essay, I wish to encourage what I would call a ‘‘fidelity’’ to ontology, or to metaphysics as a doctrine of being, in the continuing effort to approach the Catholic faith through understanding. First, I will recall St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine concerning the nature of ‘‘the sacred teaching’’ (sacra doctrina); second, I will ask what is meant by the ‘‘philosophical sciences’’ that the sacred teaching may put to use; third, I will recall a teaching of Plato concerning the human mind and its knowledge of being; and last, I will lay emphasis on a neglected doctrine of St. Thomas, namely, the differences of personal aptitude and personal historical destiny, as that doctrine applies to the history of Christian education. The Sacred Teaching The first question of the Summa theologiae (ST) of St. Thomas, on ‘‘the sacred teaching,’’ begins by presenting that teaching as something other than ‘‘the philosophical disciplines.’’ It is an instruction about divine things by means of divine revelation. It is possessed by faith. It includes all the knowledge of God that pertains to the eternal destiny of the human being, that is, both those truths about God that entirely surpass the human mind’s natural investigative power and those truths about God that man can discover using his natural power, though only with great difficulty.3 The sacred teaching thus embraces in a unique and sublime unity of scientific vision all the things about which the philosophical sciences treat, to the extent that what those sciences treat has any relevance to the supernatural beatitude that God has planned for the human being.4

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The philosophical sciences have their own character, and their own range and extent of investigation, such that what might interest the philosopher regarding a given topic might take him into areas that the sacred teaching finds no reason to consider.5 Still, the very things the philosopher considers, to the extent they are relevant to salvation or supernatural beatitude, fall under the light of faith and revelation, that is, belong to the sacred teaching. To be clear on the scenario envisaged here for the human mind, let us recall certain passages from the discussions of faith, found in the ST secunda secundae. We are told that it is necessary for man to accept or receive, in an attitude of faith (accipere per modum fidei), not only those things that are beyond reason but even those things that can be known by reason.6 One might easily slip into the view that such an ‘‘attitude’’ of faith concerning the truths of revelation that reason can know would be encouraged only as long as no philosophical demonstration is had. This view seems to follow from what Thomas teaches in one reply to an objection, namely, that ‘‘concerning one and the same thing there cannot be science and faith present in the same person.’’7 However, what St. Thomas has in mind as a program for the believer seems to require that one retain a believing attitude toward all of revelation, yet all the while strive to provide rational argument for its truths wherever such argument seems feasible. We see this most clearly in the discussion of how the introduction of rational argument affects the meritorious character of faith. Although it is granted that there can be a hankering after ‘‘reasons’’ that diminishes faith’s merit, St. Thomas nevertheless presents us with what he regards as the truly admirable process of mind, as follows: ‘‘When a man has an eager willingness to believe, then he loves the believed truth, and he thinks about it, and he is delighted if he can find any arguments going in its direction. And to this extent human argument [ratio humana] does not exclude the merit of faith, but is a sign of greater merit.’’8 And lest it be thought that this line of mental conduct relates only to those truths of revelation that ultimately are beyond reason, Thomas adds: ‘‘When a man has the will to believe on the sole basis of divine authority those things that pertain to faith [ea quae sunt fidei], then even if he has a demonstrative argument for some one of them, for example, for the existence of God, the merit of faith is neither taken away nor [even] diminished.’’9

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Obviously, the willingness to believe on divine authority alone all that is contained in revelation dominates what must remain secondary, the mere possession of demonstrative argument. The attitude of faith must pervade the whole of our mental life vis-a`-vis what God has revealed. This doctrine, it seems to me, brings out the unity and self-sufficiency of faith and revelation, as St. Thomas presents it. This situation gives rise to a double existence of the philosophical sciences. On the one hand, they have their own proper existence, and are pursued for their own sakes. On the other hand, the sacred teaching itself may, for its own purposes, take up the philosophical sciences and put them to work (doing so in such a way as to take from them all that can clearly be of service). In speaking of this use made of philosophical sciences by the sacred teaching, Thomas Aquinas stresses the self-sufficiency of the sacred teaching. It can teach about the things it speaks of (including those the philosophers talk about) without depending on the philosophical sciences. Still, this science [the sacred teaching] can receive something from the philosophical disciplines, not that it requires them necessarily, but for greater clarity as to the things treated in this science. For it receives its principles not from the other [i.e., the philosophical] sciences but immediately from God by revelation. And so it does not receive from the other sciences as from higher sciences, but uses them as inferiors and servants, the way the architects use the lesser crafts, and the way the civil authority uses the military. And its so using them is not because of any lack or insufficiency in it [the sacred teaching], but because of the deficiency of our mind; [our mind] is more easily guided from those things that are known through natural reason (from which the other sciences proceed) to those things that are above reason, which are treated in this science.10 ‘‘The Philosophical Sciences’’ When St. Thomas speaks of the sciences other than the sacred teaching, he has in mind, of course, much more than metaphysics. He tells us the sacred teaching includes ‘‘diverse philosophical sciences.’’ He says: ‘‘The sacred teaching . . . although remaining a unity, extends to those things

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that pertain to diverse philosophical sciences, because of the formal aspect that it looks to in the diverse things, namely, according as they are knowable by the divine light.’’11 I wish to point to one such science that should stimulate our reflection on the intellectual life of the believer. I mean knowledge of the Bible. It may seem strange to place such knowledge in the general category of ‘‘philosophical science.’’ Hence, I call to your attention a text in which St. Thomas speaks of God’s causing miraculously in a human being a knowledge that can be caused by one’s own natural power (as distinct from a supernatural capacity like divine faith). He takes as example God’s conferring on the Apostles the knowledge of the Scriptures and of all languages. He says: ‘‘Sometimes, in order to show his power, God infuses into man even those capacities [habitus] that can be caused by a natural power. Thus, he gave to the apostles the knowledge of the Scriptures and of all languages, which men can acquire through study or use, though not in such a perfect way.’’12 I take ‘‘scientia scripturarum’’ in this text to refer not merely to knowledge of writing, that is, how to read, but to knowledge of the Bible, as in the episode of the disciples on the road to Emmaus when the risen Lord ‘‘opened to us the Scriptures.’’13 Here in St. Thomas’s text we see a conception of the study of Scriptures that makes of it a human literary endeavor. It is all the more interesting in that Thomas, in speaking of it, employs an expression that, in ST 1.1.5 obj. 2, appears in a quotation of St. Jerome, where it stands in contrast to philosophical learning. Clearly, like the term ‘‘theologia,’’14 the expression ‘‘science of scriptures’’ (‘‘scientia scripturarum’’) can refer to a natural knowledge within the natural capacity of the human mind, and to a knowledge consisting in faith in divine revelation (as to its principles: in its complete being, the sacred teaching certainly involves the human effort of study).15 I am stressing the characterization of ‘‘knowledge of the Scriptures’’ as natural (as distinct from supernatural) knowledge, acquired by study, and so as one (or even many) of the ‘‘philosophical sciences’’ (to use the medieval expression), because I think it will help us clarify our conception of the integral Christian intellectual project. We allow ourselves to be regimented far too much by departmental distinctions that are more material than formal; that is, we classify scholarship more by the topics discussed than by the light under which they are discussed. People who talk

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about proofs of the existence of God or of the immortality of the soul or about free choice versus determinism are ‘‘philosophers.’’ People who talk about holy Scripture, its meaning, its history, and so on, although they may be called ‘‘Scripture scholars’’ or ‘‘exegetes,’’ are generally to be found in ‘‘theology’’ departments. If the school is a Catholic one, there might be a case for saying that they are all engaged in ‘‘the sacred teaching,’’ or rather in materials contributing to the sacred teaching. The sacred teaching, itself, would involve the unity and subordination of the diverse ‘‘philosophical’’ disciplines, by which I mean not only metaphysics or moral philosophy, but also the literary study of the Scriptures, history of the biblical peoples, archaeology, sociology, Church history, and so on. In such a unification, metaphysics would play a crucial role. The Permanent War about Being What sort of opposition do we find to the use of metaphysics, or philosophy of being, in the service of the faith? Has some new difficulty arisen, or are we confronted with the sorts of opposition that are constantly present in the history of philosophy, that is, traditional problems of skepticism, nominalism, positivism, and so on? I am sure that many different objections are raised by a variety of authors, but I will focus on one general source of a sense of unsuitability, namely, the contrast between the concrete historical character of the biblical narrative and the abstract scientific character of the approach to God, to creation, and even to ethics in the traditional theology.16 Now, I suggest that this is itself an ‘‘ontological’’ issue. Of course, the person who complains about experiencing a remoteness from the concreteness of the Incarnation and the Cross when reading ‘‘proofs of the existence of God’’ need not be disposed to frame the difficulty as an ‘‘ontological’’ issue. Indeed, that very aspect of the situation is standard. In the Sophist,17 Plato speaks of a permanent war among human beings between the ‘‘earth-born giants’’ and the ‘‘celestial gods’’ as to what being is. However, the former are almost unapproachable and if asked for their views, are likely to hurl stones at you to provide you with the experience of reality or being. Nevertheless, the Platonic philosopher—in this dialogue the Eleatic Stranger—undertakes to formulate the ontology expressed by this behavior. He presents it not as a mere corporealism or

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materialism but as what might be called ‘‘dynamism’’: ‘‘to be,’’ the ‘‘earthborn giants’’ are saying, is either the capacity to act upon something or else to be acted upon by something; in a word, being is dunamis, or let us say, ‘‘that which is engaged in events.’’18 In contrast to this is the view of the ‘‘celestial gods,’’ for whom ‘‘to be’’ is not to change: being is what stands back, in splendid isolation, from the turmoil of events. It is what always is.19 Now, the person who stresses history, narrative, and event seems to me to be taking the ‘‘giant’s’’ stand as to the ‘‘really real’’; and there may exist ‘‘celestially minded’’ ontologists to take the other stand, though that position in its purity would be hard to find in authentic Christianity: perhaps the closest we could come would be something like the proof for God’s existence in St. Anselm’s Proslogion. In any case, what needs underlining is that the Eleatic Stranger in Plato’s Sophist does not stop with the mere juxtaposition of the two views. Each criticizes the other. The ‘‘dynamists’’ argue that surely there must be life and event in the Supreme Being (is not cognition an event, and will the act of knowing be absent from the Supreme Being?). But conversely, the celestials are not wrong in seeking the highest in the eternal, the unchanging. Without the aspect of being they (the celestials) have caught sight of, pure event, ‘‘movement,’’ would leave us in unintelligibility, in chaos. The Eleatic Stranger says we must have what both have seen. The giants and the celestials each have a point about the really real. Plato’s meditation on being, in these passages, strikes me as pointing out the incompleteness of the doctrine of being usually referred to as the doctrine of ‘‘Ideas.’’ Plato seems to present, before Aristotle, the need to complete the doctrine of Platonic forms with the unique contribution of the cause Aristotle calls ‘‘that whence motion begins.’’20 Although it is true that in the subsequent history of metaphysics, Plato’s view that there is a kind of permanent war among human thinkers, with now one side now the other gaining ascendancy, has been largely confirmed, I nevertheless would say that the sacred teaching has called for both, like the Eleatic Stranger. And one of the reasons St. Thomas Aquinas has received such recommendation from those in authority in the Church is that his doctrine strongly guides us toward the two aspects of being, being as permanent and being as event. St. Thomas’s metaphysics, which he puts in the service of the sacred teaching, provides an intellectual

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vision of the universe, not only of natural things but also of voluntary things, with God as the source of order in both.21 St. Thomas, Personal Difference, and Personal Destiny The argument about the use of metaphysics in the teaching of the faith is an argument among believers, believers who are (willy-nilly) philosophers. The faith itself takes its ‘‘philosophical’’ stands, proclaiming the existence of only one God, creator of all things visible and invisible, omnipotent, provident, and governing even as regards the acts of the human individual. The faith proclaims the freedom and responsibility of the human person, whose acts are ‘‘sins’’ or are ‘‘perfect’’ and representative of the perfect goodness of God. The faith takes these stands without, in the main, determining what ‘‘philosophers’’ might say about them. That aspect of the situation is left to the judgment of the teachers with their variety of teaching techniques. Take the question of creation. We know by faith and revelation, that is, as a principle of the sacred teaching, that God has made all things other than himself from nothing, and with finite duration (looking toward the past).22 God alone has existed from eternity. But what have the philosophers seen of this? Indeed, how much could they possibly have seen? Different teachers give different answers. Thomas Aquinas thought they could see and had seen the complete dependence, through and through, of all beings on the one God. He did not think they could have anything to say about the question of duration: as to whether created reality is eternal or not (looking toward the past).23 Albert the Great, on the other hand, seems to have thought they could not have seen matter’s createdness, though if that createdness were premised, he thought they could not help but conclude to finite past duration.24 Indeed, it is just such philosophical disagreement on such matters that St. Thomas uses to explain the inclusion in the sacred teaching of doctrines that might be judged to be philosophical.25 If any truth of the faith has been solemnly declared by the Church to be ‘‘philosophical,’’ it is the existence of God. Yet even in that case, one could hardly claim that the Church has declared itself in favor of or against, for example, the approach of St. Anselm in the Proslogion; and for Thomas Aquinas, to take that Anselmian line of thinking makes of the existence of God not a

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demonstrable conclusion but an indemonstrable, self-evident principle. That is, the existence of God, the faith teaches us, is naturally knowable, but no particular approach is certified.26 The use of philosophy, inasmuch as it is a personal undertaking of the professor of the sacred teaching, leaves one wondering which way to turn. At this point, we would do well to remind ourselves of the fundamental nature of the sacred teaching, particularly as regards the role of authority in it. This will throw light on the spirit in which ecclesiastical recommendations of particular teachers ought to be received. The acceptance of a doctrine on the basis of authority consists in taking the doctrine as certain, not because we see the truth of the particular things said, but because we recognize the nobility (the ‘‘being well placed to know’) of the person who says them. ‘‘Taking it on authority’’ is the typical position of the pupil, the one who is being led to a vision but is not yet in a position to see. This is the idea of our life of faith, as St. Thomas presents it; that is, we live in this world as pupils of God the Teacher, and we are still merely ‘‘on the way’’ to seeing the things we already profess.27 In the sacred teaching, then, the argument from authority, that is, divine authority, is the strongest argument.28 To be in an attitude of faith is to be taking what is said as uttered by the source of all truth.29 In accordance with this, what matters most in the further communication of the sacred teaching is the designation of the person of the authentic spokesman. We believe that the apostles and prophets are bearers of the divine teaching. The Scriptures, as read by the Church,30 are the source of necessity in what the sacred teaching says. The other ‘‘doctors of the Church,’’ however well recommended, have an authority that amounts to probability; but their word belongs, as it were, to the household of the sacred teaching. In contrast, in the perspective proper to the sacred teaching, merely philosophical authorities are probable, and not truly from within the household of faith.31 If we take this matter of authority, and so of ecclesiastical authorization seriously, as seems consonant with the very idea of faith and revelation, then the recommendation by the Church of someone like St. Thomas Aquinas, and his practice of metaphysical approach to the faith, has a more than philosophical appeal to it. Taking this for granted, I wish to

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recall some of his views on the role of the person, that is, this or that person, in history.32 Although human beings are equal as to their specific nature, they are unequal as individuals, as persons, because divine providence has intended some for greater tasks, some for lesser tasks.33 This is true as regards the very substance or essence or nature of individuals. Some people have bodies and souls more apt for understanding things, and so have better minds.34 Some have, if not better minds, at least memory and imagination and cleverness better disposed for understanding.35 Beyond these things, there is the human possession of free choice and so of personal effort. Thus, even in a state of original justice, there would be marked personal differences in a community all of whose members were virtuous: ‘‘But also there would have been diversity as to the things of the soul, both as to justice and as to science. For man would have acted not from necessity but by free choice; and from it reason has it that man could apply the mind either more or less to the doing or willing or knowing of something. Hence, some would have become more perfect than others as regards both justice and science.’’36 St. Thomas, in well-known passages, teaches that the things the mind can discover about God are known with certainty only to a few, and only after much time spent in study, and with a mixture of error even then. By the ‘‘long time’’ to which he refers, he seems to mean that an individual would come to such knowledge, if at all, relatively late in life. He does not seem to be thinking about the centuries of investigation.37 However, he was not unmindful of the need for investigation over long historical periods.38 Many of the above considerations of individual variation would apply considering only human nature and its operative limitations. However, for the reflection adequate to the true human condition as revealed to us by the sacred teaching, we must have in the picture the wounded character of human nature, and the effects that this brings with it.39 And we have to add the redeemed character and the life of grace.40 This leads us to ask what gifts God has given to individual teachers of the sacred teaching. Such a question takes us beyond this or that particular thinker, beyond St. Thomas, beyond St. Augustine, to a centuries-long philosophical effort, on the part of ecclesiastically recommended teachers, aimed at serving the mind of the believer. In this way, we come in sight of a properly

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Christian philosophical tradition, engaged in those philosophical discussions most apt to provide a service in the communication of the sacred teaching. That the philosophy of being has had a primacy in this tradition can hardly be denied. This, in itself, recommends a patient cultivation of the philosophy of being on the part of Christian believers.41 Of course, there is no substitute, where philosophy is introduced, for a philosophical assessment. The introduction of philosophy by a teacher is obviously a call to the student to exercise philosophical judgment. Yet the context of sacred teaching is a reminder of the need for patience. And, I would add, it is a reminder that moves also in the direction of a sound philosophical attitude. I might conclude by calling to mind a remark of Etienne Gilson: ‘‘We read in Claude Bernard’s Notebook: ‘Science is revolutionary.’ I am deeply convinced that philosophy is not.’’42 Appendix The twentieth ecumenical council, Vatican Council I, voted the following definition and corresponding canon on April 24, 1870: Sancta mater Ecclesia tenet et docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali humanae rationis lumine a rebus creatis certo cognosci posse; ‘‘invisibilia enim ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta, conspiciuntur.’’ [Romans 1:20] [Holy mother Church holds and teaches that God, the origin and goal of all things, can be known with certainty through created things by the natural light of human reason; for ‘‘ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature . . . has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.’’]43 The canon has: ‘‘Si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verum, creatorem et Dominum nostrum, per ea quae facta sunt, naturali rationis humanae lumine certo cognosci non posse: anathema sit [If someone has said that the one true God, our creator and Lord, cannot be known by the natural light of human reason with certainty through those things that have been made, let him be anathema.]’’44 In presenting, on March 14, 1869, the schema to the Fathers of the Council for their vote, Monsignor Gasser (bishop of Brixen, Italy), representing the Deputation of the Faith (the commission responsible for the

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formulation of the doctrine), read the document ‘‘Observations Attached to the Schema Prepared by the Deputation of the Faith and Distributed to the Fathers.’’ In it, concerning our text, we read (my italics): Definitio haec, Deum per res creatas rationis lumine certo cognosci posse, et canon ei respondens necessaria visa sunt, non solum propter traditionalismum sed etiam propter errorem late serpentem, Dei existentiam nullis fermis argumentis probari nec proinde ratione certo cognosci. [This definition, ‘‘God through created things can be known with certainty by the light of reason,’’ and the canon corresponding to it, were seen as necessary, not merely because of traditionalism, but also because of the error widely spreading, that the existence of God is proved by no firm arguments, nor hence is it known with certainty by reason.] After explaining how this touches traditionalism,45 a statement is added about the word ‘‘creator’’ used concerning God in the text of the canon; we are told: Etsi in canone legatur vocabulum creator; non ideo definitur, creationem proprie dictam ratione demonstrari posse; sed retinetur vocabulum, quo Scriptura hanc veritatem revelans utitur, nihil ad eius sensum determinandum adiecto. [Though in the canon one reads the word ‘‘creator,’’ there is not on that account a definition that creation, properly so called, can be demonstrated by reason; rather, we are retaining the word that Scripture uses in revealing this truth, while adding nothing meant to determine its meaning.] Here the note refers us to Wisdom 13:5: ‘‘A magnitudine enim speciei et creaturae cognoscibiliter poterit creator horum videri.’’ I notice that although the Ecumenical edition of the RSV translates the passage as ‘‘For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator,’’ Ronald Knox has ‘‘Such great beauty even creatures have, reason is well able to contemplate the Source from which these perfections came.’’46 The council was asked to vote on a proposed amendment reading in part: ‘‘naturali rationis lumine certo cognosci et demonstrari posse [can be certainly known and demonstrated by the natural light of reason.]’’ Commenting on this, the Deputation of the Faith made it clear that they

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meant to speak in favor of the viability of philosophical proofs. Nevertheless, they deliberately chose the words ‘‘certain knowledge’’ rather than ‘‘demonstration.’’ We read (my translation and my italics): Emendatio, quae habetur in secunda parte: naturali rationis lumine certo cognosci et demonstrari posse, ex una parte deficit, et ex altera abundat. Deficit ex una parte, quia media naturalia, quibus homo posset naturaliter cognoscere Deum, non indicantur: excedit ex altera parte, quia non solummodo edicit, Deum naturali lumine certo cognosci posse; sed etiam hanc Dei existentiam certo probari posse, seu demonstrari posse. Quamvis aliquatenus certo cognoscere et demonstrare sit unum idemque, tamen phrasim mitiorem Deputatio de fide sibi eligendam censuit, et non istam duriorem.47 [The [proposed] . . . emendation, which has in its second part ‘‘. . . can be certainly known and demonstrated by the natural light of reason,’’ on the one hand is deficient and on the other is excessive. In one respect it is deficient, because the natural means by which man can naturally know God are not indicated; but in another respect it goes too far, because it does not merely say ‘‘God can be certainly known by the natural light,’’ but also that this existence of God ‘‘can be certainly proved or certainly demonstrated.’’ Now, although ‘‘know certainly’’ and ‘‘demonstrate’’ are to some extent one and the same, nevertheless the Deputation of the Faith opted to select the milder expression rather than the stronger one.] The council voted to reject the proposed emendation and thus ultimately affirmed the milder language proposed by the deputation (though, of course, also including the mention of the knowledge being had ‘‘through the things that have been made,’’ that is, the natural means.)

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Chapter 26

‘‘OBIECTUM’’: NOTES O N T HE INVENTION OF A WORD

Introduction The importance for theology, at least from the mid-thirteenth century onward, of the Latin word ‘‘obiectum, -i’’—a substantive meaning the object of a power—is easily shown. The case of St. Thomas Aquinas is entirely symptomatic. The word figures prominently in his explanation of the beatitude promised to man as the goal of life. And it is accordingly used to explain the nature of Christian charity: charity is the love of God, that is, the love one has for God, considering God not merely as the author of natural reality but as the obiectum of supernatural beatitude.1 The word is found in general use in the writings of theologians contemporary with St. Thomas.2 And it is scarcely necessary to say that subsequently it came into heavy and exceedingly complex use.3 However, it occurs rarely in works dated before 1240. In the first two books of Glossa in quatuor libros sententiarum of Alexander of Hales, written circa 1223– 1227, I have not found a single instance of the word. In the third book I found one instance.4 The aim of the present study is to initiate investigation of the invention of this word. By way of preliminary, I will look at the entries in some dictionaries. Next, I will examine the two earliest texts in which I have found the word used in a fairly elaborate way. And last, I will consider some of the background indicated by these earliest uses. The Dictionaries Let me indicate more precisely the word I mean. If we consult Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, we do not find an entry 403

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for ‘‘obiectum, -i.’’ The closest principal entries are ‘‘obiectus, -a, -um,’’ a participle and participial adjective from the verb ‘‘obicio,’’ and ‘‘obiectus, us,’’ a masculine noun also deriving from ‘‘obicio.’’5 ‘‘Obiectus, -us’’ has a rather verbal meaning, namely, a casting before, a putting before, a lying before, a being interposed. Also, there is a second, transferred meaning: ‘‘that which presents itself to the sight, an object, appearance, sight, spectacle.’’ However, the only reference given by Lewis and Short for this meaning is to a doubtful reading.6 Under ‘‘obicio,’’ we find at the end of the entry a section devoted to ‘‘obiectus, -a, -um,’’ meaning (1) ‘‘lying before or opposite,’’ (2) ‘‘exposed,’’ and (3), the word now being a neuter plural substantive ‘‘obiecta, -orum,’’ ‘‘charges, accusations.’’ These entries are as close as we can come to our word in Lewis and Short. Albert Blaise, in his Dictionnaire latin-franc¸ais des auteurs chre´tiens, dedicated to the period from Tertullian to the end of the Merovingians, has an entry for ‘‘obiectum, -i,’’ but it is the plural, meaning objections, that he has in mind.7 The same author’s Lexicon Latinitatis Medii Aeui tells us that ‘‘obiectum, -i’’ is both classical and to be found in his Dictionnaire just mentioned. He tells us that it means ‘‘l’objet,’’ and sends us for an instance of its use to St. Thomas Aquinas. However, the classical and early Christian word he has in mind is clearly ‘‘obiecta, -orum,’’ meaning accusations.8 The Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish Sources, prepared by R. E. Latham, lists ‘‘obiectum’’ meaning objection or charge as occurring in texts circa 1125 and circa 1343. It also lists it with the meaning ‘‘object (phil.),’’ with the dates 1286 and 1444.9 The use of ‘‘obiectum, -i’’ to mean an objection is quite common by the early thirteenth century. The use with the meaning ‘‘the object of a power’’ is only just being invented. It is the latter phenomenon with which we are concerned.10 Two Early Texts The word occurs several times in the De anima attributed to Robert Grosseteste. This treatise was published in print by L. Baur in 1912.11 S. Harrison Thomson dated it, on paleographical grounds, at 1208–1210.12 Leo Keeler has argued its dependence on Philip the Chancellor, and his hypothesis is that it is a reportatio by Robert Grosseteste, as a student in

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Paris in 1209 or thereabouts, of the teachings of Philip the Chancellor13. Even if we were to add ten years to Thomson’s estimate and say ‘‘circa 1220,’’ it would still be a very early instance of the use of ‘‘obiectum.’’ The next earliest extensive use I have found is in the De potentiis animae et obiectis (anonymous) published by D. A. Callus in 1952 and dated by him as between 1220 and 1230.14 Even if we say merely ‘‘circa 1230,’’ it still constitutes the earliest direct discussion of the notions signified by the word ‘‘obiectum.’’ Let us, then, examine the employment of the word in these two works. the de anima of grosseteste: The word occurs in this work in three distinct discussions. The first is about the way the soul is present in the body. An objector refers to statements of St. Augustine in his De quantitate animae to the effect that the bodily eye is affected (patitur) where it is not, seeing being a case of being affected by the things seen, and the eye seeing things in places in which it, the eye, is not located. The objector argues that one could say the same thing with even more force concerning the soul. And so he concludes that the mere fact that the soul is affected in the individual members of the body does not show that the soul is present in those members essentially. Here is the reply: ‘‘Augustinus ponebat, quod videmus extra