Reason, Will and Nature: Why Natural Understanding and Natural Willing Are the Roots of Thought and Choice

Orientation #

He recalls “a talk one time” he gave on the distinction between reason and nature and will and nature; mid-class he says “let me just finish the article and then we’ll come back to it,” and he promises synderesis “we’ll come to that eventually.” Verified sources place the class at ST I, q. 79, a. 8, with long stretches between a. 8 and a. 9. The previous class worked through a. 8 (reason as motion, understanding as rest); the next takes up aa. 9-10 on higher and lower reason.

The class, in order #

1. How the moderns misread the distinction (“distinction between reason and nature”) #

The point: the modern philosophers take reason vs. nature (and will vs. nature) as a distinction like black and white or virtue and vice, whereas it is like one and two, or man and animal.

• What belongs to nature is to be determined ad unum; the moderns deny this of reason and will entirely: reason knows nothing naturally (everything comes from some discourse), the will wills nothing naturally, not even happiness.
• Sartre: everything is up for grabs, ends as much as means; “if you’re honest,” everything you will you are free to will or not.
• Mill, On Liberty, chapter on liberty of thought: everything is always probable, you never know in the strict sense, so the conversation goes on forever.
• Aside: his brother Mark, deciding between Cabernet Sauvignon and pinot noir, said “Jeremy’s not in favor of perpetual seminars”; he himself hosts a “perpetual seminar dinner” on his birthday.
• He flags the stakes: denying natural necessity in will “is going to destroy all knowledge, really,” with “tremendous consequences for all our thinking and for our moral life.”

2. The first difference: nature is determined to one (“nature not being able to be more than one thing”) #

The point: dividing cause into nature and reason-or-will rests on nature being determined to one, reason and will not.

• Shakespeare, Coriolanus: “nature not being able to be more than one thing.”
• Paper in the fire: the fire does one thing, burns it. The doctor with a patient: can save his life or kill him, abort or deliver the baby, “and they do sometimes both.”
• Reason can reason to contrary conclusions, with probability; to think something is so, it is able to think it is not so. The will can do or not do, choose this or that.
• This is “the first difference we see,” but not the whole story.

3. Yet reason and will are determined to some things (“Is one really free to want to be miserable?”) #

The point: reason naturally knows some things and the will naturally wills some things, so each is “a particular nature” without being just a nature.

• Will: does anyone really want to be miserable? One naturally wants to live well.
• Reason: the whole is more than a part; nothing is before itself, nothing is the beginning of itself. A sophist can argue against these and confuse people so they “don’t know that they know them”; but pay the denier part of his salary, serve part of his dinner, deliver part of his car, and he will “scream and rave and rant.”
• Aside: “we’ll start the Islamic law here” and chop a hand off, since part equals whole; “it’s absurd.”
• Student: reason corresponds to the first principles naturally known, the will to synderesis. He corrects: synderesis is the name for the first principles in the practical order (“do good and avoid evil”), which we naturally know or come to know; “we’ll come to that eventually.” One could call it natural understanding too.
• Distinction: reason as a nature vs. reason as reason. Reason is called a nature because it has something of the character of nature, but is not just a nature.
• The model: two vs. three. Three has two in it, but is not just two; it is two plus one. Contrast virtue vs. vice: vice is not virtue plus something. Likewise animal vs. man: a man is an animal but not just an animal. Aside: his mother objected to his calling man an animal until he said “I don’t mean he’s just an animal”; his daughter “has two daughters, but not just two daughters,” she has three.
• A student says he does not follow the two-and-three point; he defers it: “let me just finish the article and then we’ll come back to it.”

4. Finishing the article: natural understanding and the replies (“sense, imagine, think, and understand”) #

The point: the reason there is a natural understanding, and how Thomas answers the objections.

• Argument for natural understanding: (1) if you understood nothing at all before reasoning, you would have nothing to reason from; (2) so there must be an understanding before reasoning; conclusion: call that natural understanding, things naturally understood or naturally come to be understood.
• Reply to obj. 1 (the text “of not too much authority”): the enumeration is according to the order of acts, not a distinction of powers. Triangle on the board: I sense it, imagine it, think about it, understand it; the last two are acts of the same power, one imperfect compared to the other.
• Reply to obj. 2 (Boethius): eternity is to time as the immobile to the mobile, so understanding is compared to eternity, reason to time. Warning: “don’t get too much carried away” with that proportion, since we understand, or come to understand, in time too. But the proportion reasoning : understanding :: motion : rest is “really very important” — it lets one raise the question whether understanding is both before and after; since there can be rest before motion and after, there are two kinds of understanding.
• Reply to obj. 3 (angels): other animals are so below man they cannot attain the truth reason inquires; man attains the understandable truth angels know, but imperfectly; so the angelic knowing power is not a different genus from reason’s but is compared to it as perfect to imperfect.
• He notes: man is more properly said to have reason than understanding; understanding is the name for “this overshadowed understanding we have.”

5. Back to the distinction: the same knowledge is of opposites (“nature is determined or limited… to one of two opposites”) #

The point: Aristotle in the ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX], the book about act and ability, distinguishes active from passive ability and then nature from reason (art), the two main active powers around us.

• Look around the room: mainly artificial things, but your face and hands are natural; in the woods, mainly natural things. Some things are made by nature, some by reason.
• Nature is determined to one of two opposites: fire warms the air, cannot also cool it. Reason (and will) have the same knowledge of opposites.
• Socrates at the end of the Symposium, all drunk but Socrates, Aristophanes and Agathon: if you knew what you were doing, Aristophanes could write tragedies and Agathon comedies. “A famous proposition in the chief philosophers,” Plato and Aristotle.
• Examples, each showing the one art enables both opposites: barbecuing (cook it pink and juicy, or burn it; knowing pork should be 170 tells me what is too much or too little); the medical art (heal or make sick); Aristotle, Politics V, how to preserve governments and how to corrupt them; logic (reason correctly or incorrectly, deceive by the same art). He qualifies: “I’m not saying the art is for both, but it gives me the ability to do both.”
• Aside: a bright student at Saint Mary’s College argued they should not teach the required ethics course, since the same knowledge of opposites means students learn how to be bad as well as good, and being inclined to be bad, are made worse; “perhaps the most reasonable attack upon the teaching of ethics that I’ve seen.”
• Grammar: “I is your professor, and you are my students” — I can speak incorrectly and know it by grammar.
• Plato, Lesser Hippias (ends in aporia): the man who knowingly does the bad is better off artistically, worse off morally. Overdose given knowingly: my grasp of the medical art is better than if I gave it unknowingly, though morally the reverse. Aristotle sees here the distinction between art and prudence: knowingly overcooking the meat to punish the guests does not make my art defective; unknowingly overcooking it does.
• Mozart’s Musical Joke, illustrating a composer’s mistakes, some obvious, some subtle, written by the same art as his wonderful pieces.
• The same for the will: choose to eat steak or not, smoke or not, eat this or that.
• Aristotle introduces this when he talks about the soul, since the difference really appears with reason and will; but even the plant soul anticipates it: the tree grows up and down, beginning to transcend what is characteristic of nature.

6. What the will wills naturally, and what it chooses (“the will is determined to some things, isn’t it?”) #

The point: the will is a nature because it wills some things naturally, and not just a nature because beyond that it chooses.

• Do you choose to want to be happy rather than miserable, healthy rather than sick, to prefer pleasure to pain? Students: naturally. So the will is determined to some things.
• It chooses among things not clearly leading to happiness, or among things equally leading there: routes home to Shrewsbury (down Walnut instead of South), all arriving about the same time; sometimes a reason decides (police watching, a bus stopping), sometimes it “makes no difference.”
• “This is the way God is free too”: many ways he can be as to himself. [unclear in recording]
• “That’s fundamental”: the things the will wills naturally are the reason why it wills other things; because I naturally want to live well and be healthy, I choose certain things. The will as nature is more fundamental than the will as choosing.
• Restated: like one and two, or two and three; three has two in it but is two plus one. Reason likewise naturally knows the whole is more than a part, “the beginnings of all its understanding”; later things are not always clear, it sees reason on both sides, and “even reasonable men can disagree.”

7. The modern position restated, and its rootlessness (“modern philosophy is rootless”) #

The point: putting the question to the class — is the distinction like two and three / animal and man, or like virtue and vice? — the moderns take the latter: two absolutely different things, reason determined to nothing.

• Then reason is “just talking,” never reaching a conclusion; if you think you reached one you are “a dupe of your own thinking,” “stuck in your categories”; open-mindedness is praised.
• Asides: bumper sticker “if you haven’t changed your mind, maybe you don’t have one”; “a mind is like a parachute, doesn’t function unless open”; he counters, “don’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out”; Oliver Wendell Holmes, asked to write down all the things he was sure about, would leave the page blank — “a common thing among intellectuals.” A student asks who said the mind must have talons; left unanswered.
• Conclusion: the things we naturally want and naturally understand are “the roots of philosophy, the roots of all kinds of things”; modern philosophy, lacking them, is uprooted, “no principles.”

8. Student question: why nature, reason, will under “cause” (“Choices cause us something”) #

The point: nature is the cause of some things, reason or will of others; artificial things are things made by reason. Then, unfinished, which is more “me,” choice or emotion.

• Ethics: the definition of moral virtue he gives, “a habit with choice existing in the middle towards us as determined by right reason”; ethics is about things existing in some way by choice. Marriage defined as a stable union of a man and woman by mutual choice for the sake of children; vows are a choice of life; the priest asks not whether you have warm feelings but whether you are choosing this person.
• Which is more you, your choice or your emotions? The sober alcoholic who chooses AA, then feels the urge to drink: when is he true to himself?
• Two Gentlemen of Verona: Proteus, pledged to Julia with “soul-confirming oaths,” sees Sylvia and says he cannot be true to himself without betraying his friend and Julia. Contrast Polonius, “to thine own self be true… thou canst not then be false to any man.” Who is right? It goes back to which is more me: the will that chose Julia, or the emotions.
• Students who think they are more their emotions still judge, as jurors, a premeditated murder more severely than a murder of passion: with time to think, “you’ve done it more.”
• “I don’t want to see you anymore” said in words is more easily retracted than written in a letter: the letter is a decision.
• He begins the bar example (Joe about to get in a fight, told to control himself) — recording ends mid-sentence.

His words #

• ad unum / determined to one: what pertains to nature; the moderns deny it of reason and will.
• “perpetual seminar”: a discussion that never comes to a conclusion (his brother Mark’s phrase).
• reason as a nature vs. reason as reason: reason insofar as it naturally knows some things vs. insofar as it reasons both sides.
• synderesis: his gloss, the name for the first principles in the practical order (“do good and avoid evil”).
• natural understanding: the understanding that must be before reasoning; the things naturally understood or naturally come to be understood.
• “the ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX]; “ability” [ed.: potency], active and passive.
• “the same knowledge of opposites”: art or reason is not limited to one of two opposites.
• “this overshadowed understanding we have”: why man is more properly said to have reason than understanding.
• rootless / uprooted: modern philosophy without what is naturally known or naturally willed.
• moral virtue: “a habit with choice existing in the middle towards us as determined by right reason.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 79, a. 8: replies to objections 1 (order of acts, not powers), 2 (Boethius: eternity/time, immobile/mobile), 3 (angels’ knowing power as perfect to imperfect), and the note that man is more properly said to have reason than understanding.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (“ninth book of wisdom”; inferred), act and ability, nature vs. reason/art.
• Plato, Symposium, end (Socrates, Aristophanes, Agathon).
• Plato, Lesser Hippias, ending.
• Aristotle, Politics V (preserving and corrupting governments).
• Aristotle on the soul (where the nature/reason difference is introduced; no locus given).
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus (“nature not being able to be more than one thing”).
• Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona (Proteus, Julia, Sylvia); Polonius’s speech (Hamlet, inferred).
• Sartre (no work named); J. S. Mill, On Liberty, chapter on liberty of thought.
• Mozart, A Musical Joke.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes (saying, no source).

His questions #

• Do the modern philosophers misunderstand the distinction between reason and nature? Yes: they take it like virtue and vice, two entirely different things, so nothing is known or willed naturally.
• Is one really free to want to be miserable? No; one naturally wants to live well.
• Does reason naturally know that the whole is more than a part? Yes; the denier still screams when given part of his salary.
• If you understood nothing before reasoning, what would you reason from? Nothing; so there is a natural understanding before reasoning.
• Is the understanding both before and after reasoning? Yes, as rest before and after motion: two kinds of understanding.
• Do you choose to prefer pleasure to pain, health to sickness, happiness to misery? Students: naturally; so the will is determined to some things.
• Is the distinction between reason and nature like two and three, like animal and man, or like virtue and vice? Like two and three / animal and man; the moderns take it like virtue and vice.
• Why put nature, reason and will under cause? Nature causes some things, reason or will others; artificial means made by reason.
• Which is more you, your choice or your emotions? Choice, as the jury verdict on premeditated murder shows; left unfinished when the recording ends.