Summa I, Q.79 a.13: Conscience as an Act; Studiousness, Figures of Speech (Antonomasia, Synecdoche, Metonymy), and Emotions Ruled by Reason

Orientation #

He ties this article to the last one: “these two articles are together,” article 12 having treated synderesis, the first natural habit in practical reason (prev. lecture). For next time: question 80, articles 1 and 2, the desiring powers; then the sense appetites, the will and free will; from question 84 the acts of reason in detail, the acts of will and the emotions being left to the second part. The previous class worked through article 12 on synderesis as a natural habit rather than a power; the next treats q. 80 a. 1 on appetite as a distinct power.

The class, in order #

1. The objections and the sed contra (“It seems that conscience is a certain power”) #

The point: we all use the word “conscience,” so Thomas must ask what it really names; he will say it is most properly an act.

• Obj. 1 (Origen): conscience is a corrector spirit and pedagogue, a companion of the soul separating it from bad things and adhering to good; but “spirit” in the soul names a power — the mind itself (the part with powers not in the body: understanding and will; “be renovated in the spirit of your mind”), or sometimes the imagination (an imaginary vision is called spiritual, Augustine, Genesis to the letter XII). A student suggests Origen’s “spirit” might be the guardian angel; he defers to Thomas.
• Obj. 2: only a power of the soul is the subject of sin; Titus 1:15 says of some that their mind and conscience are stained (inquinatae, “defiled”).
• Obj. 3: conscience must be act, habit or power; not an act, since then it would not always remain in man (you lose it when not thinking); not a habit, since we are directed in things to be done by many habits and conscience would then be many, not one.
• Sed contra: people sometimes set aside their conscience — Shakespeare’s characters urging someone to a financially rewarding but unjust action; but one does not set aside a power.

2. The body: an act, from the name and from what we say of it (“conscience, properly speaking, is not a power but an act”) #

Two proofs, as he gives them:

1. From the ratio of the name: con = with, scientia = knowledge; conscientia is cum alio scientia, knowledge with something else, implying the order of knowledge to something; but applying knowledge to something comes about through an act; so the very structure of the word names an act rather than a habit or power. He stresses it is not an ability, nor habitual knowledge as such, but “doing something with knowledge.”
2. From what is attributed to conscience — to testify, bind, instigate, accuse, remordere (literally “to bite again”), reprehend (“my conscience bothers me”) — all of which follow on applying knowledge (the Ten Commandments, or something more particular) to what we do.

The application happens in three ways:

• (i) recognising we have done or not done something (Ecclesiastes 7:23: your conscience knows you have spoken badly of others) — conscience testifies: “I’ve killed a man,” “I haven’t paid my taxes,” “I haven’t studied for the exam”;
• (ii) judging something ought or ought not be done — conscience instigates or binds: “Thou shalt not steal / commit adultery / bear false witness” vs. “honor your father and mother”; English “bound” covers both: bound to honor parents, bound by the commandment not to steal;
• (iii) judging a deed done well or badly — conscience excuses, accuses, or remordere (“bites again,” torments). Illustrated by Washington Irving’s story of the Italian who, tricked into believing his fiancée lost to a rival, stabs him and cannot live with himself, finally turning himself in; and a Dickens murderer waiting for the body to be found, guarding his calm for when the news comes.

Aside: Latin factum here means a deed, not a thing made; English “in fact / indeed” keeps that practical origin even when applied to “two is half of four.”

3. The name given to the habit: synderesis (“sometimes the name of conscience is attributed”) #

The point: since a habit is the principle of an act, the name is sometimes given to the first natural habit of practical reason, synderesis, treated in the previous article.

• Jerome’s gloss on Ezekiel calls synderesis “conscience”; Basil calls it the naturale iudicatorium (Greek in his footnote: kritērion physikon, physis = nature); Damascene calls it “the law of our understanding” (reference to De Fide Orthodoxa; a student asks whether Damascene wrote in Greek — the “MG” reference, Migne’s Greek series, settles it, as with Basil).
• Reason given: cause and effect are customarily named from each other.
• Student exchange: what do we usually mean by “conscience” in English? — usually the rule. But “he has no conscience” does not mean he lacks synderesis (everyone has that by nature); it means he is not applying it. The man who chooses theft or adultery does not choose it as unjust but as pleasant or profitable, so he fails to apply the knowledge he has; like making a bully ask “what if someone did this to you?” — forcing him to apply knowledge he already has.

4. The replies (“spirit is placed for the mind”) #

• Ad 1: conscience is called spirit as “spirit” stands for the mind, because conscience is a dictamen of the mind — the cause named for its effect, looking back to the last paragraph of the body. Aside: Richard III (Thomas More’s life of Richard being a source) — the night before Bosworth the murdered come in a dream; “conscience makes cowards of us all”; “Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I” — but does he love himself, having done such evil?
• Ad 2: stain is in conscience not as in a subject but as the known is in knowledge — one knows oneself to be defiled. So “a bad conscience” is actually a good conscience: I am conscious of something bad in me. Parallel: Shakespeare’s “large discourse” — either the discourse is long, or its object is large.
• Ad 3: an act does not always remain in itself but remains in its cause, the power and the habit; and though the habits from which conscience is informed are many, all have their efficacy from one first habit, the habit of first principles, synderesis — which is why that habit is sometimes called conscience. He notes most of the Ten Commandments would seem to belong to synderesis.

5. Aristotle and the Commandments (“he doesn’t need an argument; he needs punishment”) #

The point: Aristotle treats certain commandments as things everyone already knows.

• Topics, on what is excluded from being a dialectical problem: one who doubts whether snow is white needs sensation, not argument; one who doubts whether to honor father and mother needs punishment, not argument — the doubt is not ignorance but badness. A student is struck: “Who says this?” — Aristotle.
• Ethics: moral virtue is a habit in the middle between too much and too little, determined by right reason; but “there is no mean of the extreme.” Drinking wine can be too much or too little, but “getting drunk the right amount” is absurd since drunkenness already names excess; likewise murdering neither too much nor too little; Aristotle’s own example is adultery — any of it is wrong. So Aristotle seems to know the Commandments about one’s neighbor.
• Student: was there much adultery in his time? He deflects to our own time (a president guilty of it) — “now you can use these words more correctly.”

6. Heraclitus on moderation, wisdom, truth, nature (“wisdom is to speak the truth”) #

The point: the fragment says wisdom is to speak the truth and act according to nature, giving ear to it — something natural by which we judge both what is true and what to do.

• Paradox: the fragment opens “moderation is the greatest virtue,” though Greeks ranked courage and justice higher. His resolution (from a lecture he once gave): read the whole sentence — wisdom, nature and truth are all called modest: Kent in Lear (“modest truth, nor more nor clipped”), Hamlet (“the modesty of nature”), Macduff in Macbeth (“modest wisdom plucks me from credulous haste”). Hence the virtues disposing to the life of the mind are kinds of modesty: humility, studiousness, mildness.

7. Preview, and studiousness (“studiositas is the name of the virtue”) #

Preview of question 80 and beyond (see Orientation). Student asks what studiousness entails: it moderates the natural desire to know, so one does not spend time on unimportant things — not the opposite of laziness people expect. Albert the Great: to study lower things for any reason other than to study God is a perverse attitude to knowing, unless forced by necessity (the doctor studying the body for health). Some things are necessary before knowing God and take long to understand; scatter your study and you never get there. Illustrations: the Worcester State historian narrowing to a decade of the 1880s (“more and more about less and less, until we know everything about nothing”); one could spend a life reading whodunits and never come to know God; a little literature to relax is fine, Shakespeare more than relaxing.

8. Antonomasia, synecdoche, metonymy (“they’re all examples of speaking antonomasia”) #

The point: three figures of speech (named by rhetoricians, not philosophers, hence badly; no treatise exists, but Thomas notes them in the scriptural commentaries) which one must grasp to read Scripture and poetry.

• Antonomasia (forms: antonomastic, antonomastically; Thomas uses antonomastice of truth at the start of Summa Contra Gentiles): the universal whole’s name given to a part, or the reverse. General to particular: “Christ” = anointed, said of him who is king of kings, the priest (Hebrews), the teacher; “poet” from poiein, the maker, given to the epic-maker (Plato’s Symposium, Ben Jonson on poetry); “lover” for the romantic lover, not the lover of wisdom; “the Bible,” “the Gospel.” Particular to general: a Romeo, a Casanova, a Don Juan, a Hamlet (hesitant), a Babe Ruth. Scripture uses the first kind more.
• Synecdoche: the composed whole and its part — “he’s a brain,” the placekicker called “the toe,” “a bicep.” Scriptural example: “the Word was made flesh” for “became man,” emphasising that he went down even to the bodily part; heretics misread the figure (the Word turned into flesh; or, with Arius, the Word replaced the human soul). “All flesh must come” stresses man’s mortal, fragile part.
• Metonymy (metonym is the name itself): cause named for effect or reverse, and container for contained. “Let the earth bless the Lord” (those on earth); “a wicked place,” “a bad time” (the events in it); “the White House announced” (the man in the house — while “White House” for the president’s house is antonomasia, since he too lives in a white house); cause/effect: “loving hate, hating love” in Romeo (love of a girl or country causing hate of a rival or enemy), “scornful pride” (from last time).
• Shakespeare’s first sonnet, “beauty’s rose”: “beauty” is a metonym for human beauty, general for particular; “rose” the reverse, particular for general — a double figure done spontaneously. Aside: his daughter’s baby picture beside her own daughter’s; Aristotle in the Ethics: pleasure perfects operation as beauty perfects youth.

9. Student question: memory, habit and power (“the four inward senses”) #

A student’s confusion is sorted: sense memory is a power, one of the four inward senses — common sense (senses the difference between sweet and white, which no outward sense can), imagination (retains what common sense apprehended), estimative power (cogitative in us; perceives what is not sensed: food, enemy — the cat reacting to a belt, the bird taking a twig for its nest), memory (retains that). Intellectual memory (article 7, just done) is a habit, a perfection of the power; hence the possible confusion, since a habit disposes a power well or badly. Why sense memory is a separate power: in material things what receives easily does not retain well, and vice versa. A student asks whether the estimative power grows (the dog remembering a kick): yes; particular reason partakes of reason, as the emotions, though bodily, partake of reason and must be habituated to obey it — Mozart represents emotions partaking of reason, the Romantics resist their rule. Aristotle’s “very subtle distinction”: reason rules the emotions as a father his son, not as a master his slave — the son has something to say, and the father rules for the son’s good, the master for his own; so the rule of reason is for the emotions’ good, and the unruled are emotionally distraught. Student: so sometimes reason gives in to a hot fudge sundae? — yes. Asides: the stone chip on his new car in Maine (“I’m a philosopher, I’m not going to get excited”); the three-car pile-up on the way to Assumption after which he taught his classes; teaching classes while his first child was born; his mother letting him stay home when his cat was run over.

10. “It loved to happen” (“nature doesn’t want to be disordered”) #

Student asks about the line “it loved to happen” (Salinger, Franny and Zooey), wondering if it is Heraclitus. He takes it to the way of speaking by which we attribute wanting to what has none: “nature doesn’t want to be disordered,” “nature abhors a vacuum,” the wrong nut “doesn’t want to go,” a square peg in a round hole, “you’re forcing it,” and Aristotle’s “matter desires form” — meaning the matter is adapted to this form. Averroes objected that this is speaking like a poet, but practical men speak this way. Closes with the screw on his own chair that finally “got in there.” Left open as to the Salinger source itself.

His words #

• conscience: properly an act, the application of knowledge to what we do; cum alio scientia
• remordere: “to bite again,” to torment; his gloss for the accusing conscience
• factum: a deed, not a thing made
• synderesis: the first natural habit in practical reason, habit of first principles
• naturale iudicatorium / kritērion physikon: Basil’s name for it, “natural judgment”
• dictamen: a saying of the mind (ad 1)
• “no mean of the extreme”: Aristotle, drunkenness, murder, adultery
• studiositas: the virtue moderating the desire to know
• antonomasia / antonomastic / antonomastically / antonomastice: universal whole’s name for a part or reverse
• synecdoche: composed whole and part
• metonymy / metonym: cause and effect, container and contained
• estimative power: called cogitative or particular reason in us
• “MG”: the Greek series (Migne) [ed.: Patrologia Graeca]

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 79, a. 13 (whole article, objections through replies)
• handout “The Royal Fragment,” p. 1 — Heraclitus on moderation, wisdom, truth, nature (10 min, verified)
• handout “The First Statement and King of Statements,” p. 2 (2 min, verified)

Mentioned:

• Titus 1:15; Ecclesiastes 7:23; Ezekiel (Jerome’s gloss); Augustine, Genesis to the Letter XII; Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa; Origen; Basil
• Aristotle, Topics (dialectical problems); Nicomachean Ethics (mean; no mean of extreme; pleasure and youth)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, opening (antonomastice); scriptural commentaries on metonymy
• Plato, Symposium; Ben Jonson on poetry; Albert the Great
• Shakespeare: Richard III, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Sonnet 1; Thomas More, life of Richard III
• Washington Irving (Italian revenge story); Dickens (a murderer); Salinger, Franny and Zooey
• Hebrews (Christ the priest); John 1 (“the Word was made flesh”)
• Averroes on “matter desires form”
• ST I q. 79 a. 7 and a. 12 (back-references); q. 80, q. 84 (forward)

His questions #

• What does “conscience” really mean — some hidden power in us, or what? Properly an act: the application of knowledge to what we do.
• Con means what? and scientia? With; knowledge — knowledge with something else.
• Conscience is said to testify, bind, instigate, accuse, remordere — what does remordere mean? To bite again, to torment.
• What do we usually mean by “conscience” in English? Usually the rule; but “he has no conscience” means he is not applying what he naturally knows.
• Why is a “bad conscience” actually good? Because one is conscious of something bad in oneself (ad 2: stain as known in knowledge).
• Whether to honor father and mother — what does the doubter need, on Aristotle? Punishment, not argument.
• Can there be a mean of drunkenness, murder, adultery? No — the extreme is already in the word; “no mean of the extreme.”
• How can Heraclitus call moderation the greatest virtue when courage and justice rank higher? Read the whole sentence: wisdom, nature and truth are all “modest.”
• Does studiousness mean not being lazy? No: it moderates the natural desire to know so one does not waste it on unimportant things.
• Is “it loved to happen” from Heraclitus? Left open; he treats it as the ordinary way of attributing wanting to nature.