What Is Virtue? A Thing's Own Act, Moral vs. Intellectual Virtues, and the Two Ends of Reason

Orientation #

He opens mid-sentence on “these two powers” and says today’s discussion is “connected with this text we have here on the distinction between looking reason, speculative reason, as Thomas calls it, or theoretical reason” and doing reason (prev. lecture). He recalls “something we met before in our study of causes” (the four causes, the end) and says “we’re not going to go into all the virtues today”; Thomas’s five main virtues of reason are named as what the division leads to. The previous class treated whether speculative and practical intellect are distinct powers; the next treats the fivefold division of the intellectual virtues.

The class, in order #

1. Virtue is broader than human virtue (“Much virtue in herbs, little in men”) #

Point: you must understand the general meaning of virtue before the particular; people who use “virtue” narrowly get into difficulty.

• Friend’s kitchen plaque, “Much virtue in herbs, little in men”: shows the broad sense.
• Aristotle: wealth is the virtue of money, not of the man.
• Sharpness is the virtue of a knife; dullness its vice. So not only man has virtue or vice.
• His left eye sees the wall more distinctly than his right: “my more virtuous eye” (joke: not because he looks at the girls with it).
• Our Lord’s comparison, “You are the salt of the earth”: salt that loses its savor is cast out and trampled.
• Student offers: the Greek sense of excellence. He accepts but says the broad meaning we start with in the Ethics presupposes Plato’s definition of a thing’s own act (Republic, Book I).

2. Plato’s definition of a thing’s own act (“the act which that thing alone can do”) #

A thing’s own act: the act which either that thing alone can do, or at least which it does better than other things (written on the board).

• Only through the eyes do I see, only through the ears hear: seeing is the eye’s own act, hearing the ear’s.
• Walking on one’s hands: possible, but not as well as on the feet, so walking is the feet’s own act (the second branch of the definition).
• Screwdrivers: many fit a given screw, but the right one turns it without ruining the head (his refrigerator repair); the act done best. Everything that has its own act can have a virtue or vice in the broad sense.

3. Definition of virtue and vice in the broad sense (“makes it and its own act good”) #

Virtue of a thing having its own act: the quality (more precisely, the disposition) of that thing which makes it and its own act good. Vice: the disposition that makes it and its own act bad.

• Method: to know a thing’s virtue you must first know its own act. Knife: own act is to cut; sharpness makes it cut well; dullness is the vice.
• In other things the virtue is not so easy to tell: the optometrist knows exactly the vice of his right eye or the virtue of his left; twenty-twenty vision would be a most virtuous eye.
• Mozart’s virtuous ear (he could tell notes so finely that a trumpet almost knocked him off his feet); a music-appreciation professor who names a chord struck on the piano.
• Parker the wine judge: a more virtuous tongue or sense of smell; he distrusts his own judgment in wine, which “came down to some greediness”.
• Herbs: own act is to season food; herbs kept too long lose their savor; a connoisseur chef threw out his stale herbs, knowing the vice of herbs as the eye doctor knows the vice of an eye. The plaque fits the kitchen: herbs are more apt to have their virtue than the overeating, drunken men eating there.
• Our Lord’s salt comparison again: you are supposed to be good and to save the world, like the good people in the city.
• Plato and Aristotle speak of the virtue of a horse or dog: behaving as a horse should in the service of man.
• Why wealth is the virtue of money: money’s own act is to buy; the wealthy buy well (best cut of meat, fancy car), the poor buy poorly (second-hand clothing, used car, two-dollar wine). Poverty is the vice of money.

4. Aristotle’s division of human virtue: moral and intellectual (“an act with reason and an act of reason”) #

Point: the Nicomachean Ethics asks what qualities make a man and what a man does good; at the end of Book I Aristotle divides human virtue into moral virtues and virtues of reason (intellectual virtues).

• Where they are: virtues of reason in reason; moral virtues in the emotions and the will. Courage concerns fear and boldness about bodily dangers; temperance, hunger, thirst and sexual desire; mildness, anger; justice is in the will. Argument for the basis of the division:

1. To know a thing’s virtue you must know its own act.
2. Aristotle asks in Book I whether man has his own act or is naturally without one; man has reason. Defined strictly (as Shakespeare’s definition of reason does), man alone has reason; loosely, the higher animals partake of it but not to man’s extent. So man’s own act involves reason.
3. The will especially, and also the emotions, can partake of reason: they can be habituated to listen to reason.
4. Therefore man’s own act is “the act with reason”, not “the act of reason”: it includes acts of reason and acts of what partakes of reason. Hence two kinds of virtue.

• Do “act with reason” and “act of reason” mean the same? No. Shakespeare: “Love and reason keep little company nowadays; a pity no one makes them better acquainted”: love can be reasonable or unreasonable, so it is not an act of reason but can be measured by it.
• Reasonable anger: our Lord chasing the money changers from the temple; a man using his kids for target practice should meet enough anger to stop him, “may not have to kill you”.
• Eating and drinking can be reasonable or unreasonable. Things that are not acts of reason but can be ordered or measured by reason are said to partake of reason.
• Plato’s comparison: reason is to the emotions as a man to his horse; the horse first tries to throw him, but if he keeps getting back on he habituates it to obey. Moral virtue is the habituation of the will or emotions to obey reason.
• Aristotle’s comparison: reason should rule the emotions as a father rules his son, not as a master his slave, i.e. for the good of the emotions and will, not only for reason’s own good. (A student asks who said this; Aristotle, who raises it as a philosophical question and argues for the father.)
• Thomas in the Secunda Secundae calls sins of the flesh childish vices: an unchastised child becomes ungovernable; “chastity” comes from chastising. Unchastised emotions likewise.
• Quebec story: a passing driver’s tires kicked a rock into his new car; “I’m a philosopher, I’m not getting excited about this”; the Homeric hero calming himself, “worst things have I endured” (he names Sarpedon quoting Homer).
• Parents rule the child with reason before his own reason develops: the birthday box of candy and “you’ve had enough today”; the tenth piece not as enjoyable as the first; the children’s story of the rabbit who ate all the candy on his birthday and had to go to bed sick; children set before a table of sweets and healthy food who move on their own to a balanced diet; his brother’s pickups stopped by their mother’s spanking until he learned to stop and look around (“already a little bit of control”); his California students who drank wine at the family table had a maturity his high-school buddies who drank to get drunk never had; freshmen get sick from beer more often than seniors.
• Irascible men who became mild through control of anger: St Francis de Sales, and St Jerome “for all I know”. Conclusion: all human virtues involve reason; the intellectual virtues are virtues of reason itself, the moral virtues are virtues of something other than reason that can be habituated to follow its lead.
• Aside: the theological virtues; faith is in reason though it depends on the will, hope and charity in the will; Aristotle does not treat them, being supernatural.

5. The good, the end, and the better (“The good is what all want”) #

Point: virtues of reason are the habits or dispositions that make reason and its own act good; so he stops on “good”.

• The first definition of good is reached by induction. If Socrates had asked the slave boy what is good, the boy would enumerate: candy, bicycles, baseball (as children asked “what is a nose?” or “what is a chair?” point to instances). Socrates asks what they all have in common: not sweet like candy, not ridable like a bicycle; the only common thing is that they are all what he wants. His son Paul worked this out at table: a liked meal is “good”, a disliked one “not good”.
• First definition: the good is what all want, what all desire. Socrates touches on it in the Meno; Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics with this induction.
• From the four causes: the end is that for the sake of which, whether of a thing or an operation. Chair for sitting, medicine for health, studying for knowing.
• Connection of end and good (definitions not identical): if something is good or seems so, people aim at it; and seeing people aim at something is a sign it is good or seems good. The means is called good or useful because it leads to the end.
• The end matters for “better”: Aristotle says the whole is better than the part, and the end better than what is for the sake of the end (the parts are for the whole). Hence one way to show God is the best thing: as end of the whole universe he must be better than everything else.

6. Why the two ends of reason yield two groups of virtues (“See how everything fits together”) #

Argument (he asks the class to see what he is leading up to):

1. Looking reason and doing reason differ by their end.
2. End is tied up with good, and good with virtue.
3. A thing’s own act is really its end or purpose; a virtue perfects a thing with regard to achieving its end (knife: end is to cut, sharpness disposes it to cut well).
4. Therefore two ends of reason give two kinds of virtue: virtues of looking reason, perfecting reason with regard to just understanding, and virtues of practical reason, perfecting it with regard to doing or making. “The truth: all things harmonize.”

• Thomas, in the Prima Secundae, divides the five main virtues of reason into virtues of speculative (looking) reason and virtues of practical reason, subdividing each; the five themselves are not treated today.
• Eyes: for making and doing, but also for seeing rainbows, sunsets and paintings; reason likewise is for understanding (like just seeing) and for directing what we do and make.
• Tongue: is it for eating or for talking? Both, and differently disposed for each. French speakers say “da” for “the” because their tongue is not accustomed to that sound, and vice versa; a tongue trained in a foreign language is accustomed or disposed to those sounds. Drinking wine uses the tongue differently from drinking water (draw air over it, let it roll to the sides, not too much at once); his father, imitating him, coughed and gagged, his tongue lacking the virtue. The habit for sounds and the habit for wine are not the same thing, so one needs both: two dispositions for two uses.
• Names: Thomas’s speculative intellect is Aristotle’s theoretikos nous; practical intellect, praktikos. Since virtue perfects you with regard to your own act, which is your end, and theoretical and practical differ by end, this is the natural way to divide the virtues.

His words #

• virtue (broad sense): the disposition (quality) of a thing having its own act which makes it and its own act good.
• vice (broad sense): the disposition that makes a thing and its own act bad.
• a thing’s own act: the act which that thing alone can do, or does better than other things (Plato).
• virtues of reason: his name for the intellectual virtues, “virtues of the intellect or understanding”.
• moral virtues: virtues in the emotions and the will.
• act with reason vs. act of reason: man’s own act is the former; it includes acts measured or ordered by reason.
• partake of reason: what can be ordered or measured by reason without being an act of reason.
• habituation: how emotions and will come to obey reason (man and horse).
• childish vices: Thomas’s name for sins of the flesh; chastity from chastising.
• the good: “what all want”, the first definition, reached by induction.
• the end: “that for the sake of which”.
• looking reason / doing reason: his renderings for speculative (theoretical) and practical reason [ed.: intellectus speculativus / practicus]; Greek theoretikos nous, praktikos.

Texts #

Read in class

• Plato, Republic, Book I: definition of a thing’s own act (stated from memory and put on the board). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I: whether man has his own act; opening induction on the good; division of virtue into moral and intellectual at the end of the book.
• Aristotle: wealth is the virtue of money; reason should rule emotions as father his son.
• Plato: reason to emotions as man to horse; virtue of the horse.
• Plato, Meno: the slave boy; the good touched on.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Secundae: division of the five virtues of reason into speculative and practical.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae: sins of the flesh as childish vices.
• Gospel, “You are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13, inferred); our Lord and the money changers.
• Shakespeare: definition of reason; “Love and reason keep little company nowadays”.
• Homer: “worst things have I endured”.
• Children’s story of the rabbit who ate all the candy on his birthday.

His questions #

• What is this broad and very general meaning of virtue? The disposition of a thing having its own act that makes it and its own act good.
• What is a thing’s own act? The act which it alone can do, or does better than other things.
• What is the main virtue of a knife? Sharpness, once you know its own act is to cut; dullness the vice.
• What must you always know before you can know the virtue or vice of a thing? Its own act.
• Why does Aristotle say wealth is the virtue of money? Money’s own act is to buy; wealth lets you buy well, poverty poorly.
• What is the basis for the division of human virtue into moral and intellectual? Man’s own act is the act with reason, which includes acts of reason and acts of what partakes of reason.
• Do “an act with reason” and “an act of reason” mean the same thing? No; love, anger, eating can be reasonable or unreasonable without being acts of reason.
• Should reason rule the emotions like a master his slave or like a father his son? Like a father his son, for the good of the emotions.
• What would the slave boy answer if asked what is good? He would enumerate good things; what they share is that he wants them: the good is what all want.
• What is the relevance of the distinction between looking and doing reason for distinguishing the virtues of reason? They differ by end; virtue perfects a thing with regard to its end; so two ends give two groups of virtues.