Summa I, Q. 82, Art. 3: Is the Will Higher Than the Understanding? Simply vs. In Some Respect, Sight vs. Hearing, and Loving God

Orientation #

He opens after “a little break” and calls this “the second article” of the session; the article read is the one asking whether the will is a higher power than the understanding (verified sources: ST I, q. 82, a. 3, with a stretch matching ST I, q. 12, probably the beatific-vision discussion). He refers back to “the previous article” on the will always being for the good and the definition of good as what all desire (prev. lecture). He closes: “we have two more articles to do on this question,” and he will be absent next week. The neighbouring classes treat q. 82 a. 2 (whether the will necessarily wills whatever it wills) and a. 4 (whether the will moves the understanding).

The class, in order #

1. The three objections and the sed contra (“Whether the will is a higher power”) #

He reads the objections for the will’s superiority and Aristotle’s authority against them.

1. The good and the end is the object of the will; the end is the first and highest of causes, “the causa causarum, the cause of causes”; so the will is the highest power.
2. Natural things go from imperfect to perfect; in the soul, from sense to understanding, which is nobler; and from the act of understanding to the act of will; so the will is more perfect.
3. “Probably the strongest one, because it always occurs to Christians”: habits are proportioned to powers as perfections to the perfectible; charity, which perfects the will, is nobler than the habits perfecting the understanding (1 Cor 13: if I know all mysteries and have all faith but not charity, I am nothing; “the greatest of these is charity”).

• Aside on the theological virtues: asked in graduate school which is second, faith or hope, he answers hope, and gives Thomas’s explanation (though Thomas seems to treat it as disputed): by faith we in a sense know the end, by hope we tend toward it, by charity we are joined to it; tending is better than merely being aware. Hope, like charity, is in the will.
• Sed contra: the Philosopher in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics says the highest power of the soul is the understanding. “Pagan philosopher he is quoting here.”
• Aside: a Dominican teacher’s maxim: “Never affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish”; a visiting priest’s version: “Don’t say yes, don’t say no, say distinguo.”

2. Thomas’s distinction; digression on the fallacy of the accident (“the eminence of something towards another”) #

Thomas begins: eminence of one thing over another is noted in two ways, simply (simpliciter) and secundum quid; at a student’s request he reviews the distinction via Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations.

• Aristotle divides thirteen kinds of fallacy into those from speech (e.g. equivocation) and those outside speech; the first two outside speech correspond to two very common and important distinctions.
• First, the fallacy of the accident: mixing up the as-such with what is “by happening.”
  • Delicious poison: I desire something bad to drink, but not as bad or as poisonous; I desire it as tasting good, and it happens that what tastes good is poisonous. Otherwise “you’d have a hell of a time eating and drinking anything.”
  • This protects the first definition of the good, “what all want” (Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, Albert, Dionysius, Augustine): a definition must be convertible with what it defines, so if the bad as such were desired the definition would fail. People want bad things only as good in some way.
  • Convertibility explained on the board: A and B are convertible if every A is B and every B is A; true of a strict property (two and half of four) and of a definition (square and equilateral right-angled quadrilateral). Socrates’ method: “every dog is a four-footed animal, but is every four-footed animal a dog?”; “square is a four-sided figure” fails the reverse. Etymology of “definition” from “limit”: the city limits of Worcester must contain all of Worcester and no other town. “Green equilateral quadrilateral” leaves squares out; “right-angled quadrilateral” lets oblongs in; “it’s got to be a tight fit.”
  • Who builds a house? “Sometimes a pianist, sometimes a beer drinker”: accidental; it is the house builder as such.
  • Green squares and circles do not put green into the definition of square. Heidegger’s “philosophy speaks Greek”: the chief philosophers were Greek, but the lover of wisdom as such loves wisdom, not Greek; “an important accident.”

3. The fallacy of simply and in some respect (“simply and not simply”) #

The second fallacy outside speech confuses what is so simpliciter with what is so only in some respect.

• Aristotle’s example: a white man is black in his eye; a black man white in his eyes; we call a man white or black simply by the color of his skin, not red because of his tongue.
• “Do you know my brother Mark?” A girl says no; but she knows what a man and a brother are, so in a very qualified way she knows him and every brother in the world. Not a self-contradiction.
• A knock at the door: you don’t know who is knocking, it is your mother; you don’t know your mother as the person knocking, but you know her simply.
• Why do people rob banks? It must be good in some way. Is it good or bad to murder someone who annoys you? It removes an annoyance. “You are making this mistake all day long”: doing bad because in some limited way it’s good, or omitting good because in some way it’s bad. Nothing is so good that doing it does not prevent something else good; so everything is in some way bad.
• Plato’s Meno, “can you know what you don’t know?”: a student asking a question knows what he asks for in a certain way; cancer researchers know what they are looking for in some way, else why pay them, but not simply, else no research needed.

4. Knowing a lesser thing well vs. a greater thing less (“a glimpse of those we love”) #

A closer example of the same distinction: Aristotle at the beginning of the De Anima says one knowledge is better than another because about a better thing or because more certain; if A is about a better thing but B knows its object better, which is better? He does not settle it in the De Anima but does at the beginning of the Parts of Animals: imperfect knowledge of a better thing beats perfect knowledge of a lesser, “just as a glimpse of those we love is more than a leisurely view of those we don’t care about.”

• The office worker who sees his ogre boss all day but treasures a glimpse of his girlfriend through the window; a short telephone call with a friend outweighs a long talk with someone we have no attachment to.

5. Simply, the understanding is higher: its object is more simple and abstract (“the object of the understanding is more simple”) #

Reading the first part of the respondeo.

1. Something is such simpliciter as it is such by itself (secundum se); secundum quid as it is such with respect to another.
2. Powers are known through their objects; the proper definition of a power is its order to its object.
3. The object of the understanding is more simple and absolute than the object of the will: the understanding’s object is the very definition (ratio) of the desirable good, while the good so defined is the will’s object.
4. What is more simple and abstract is in itself more noble and higher.
5. Therefore the understanding is by itself and simply the higher and nobler power.

• On premise 4, “a little bit hard”: God is the most noble and the simplest; the higher contains what the lower has, in a simpler way. Compare understanding with sense: I can see and imagine a line, but the understanding knows what it is to be a line; you can ask which of two lines is longer, but “how long is what a line is?”; yet in knowing what a line is you know more of the thing.
• Fine arts: in the Poetics, tragedy vs. epic; both represent men greater than us and arouse and purge pity and fear, but tragedy does it in a simpler, more condensed way. A tragedy of Sophocles (the greatest Greek tragedian) reads in an hour; the Iliad takes much longer. “It accomplishes the same thing with fewer means”; like the square containing more area for the same perimeter (referred back to an earlier discussion), or the wise man saying more with fewer words.
• Marietti edition footnote on abstraction: this is formal abstraction; what is abstracted is more like the form, and the what-it-is and form are almost the same (Aristotle defines the formal cause as “the what it was to be”). Both objects are transcendentals, but the understanding’s is more simple and abstract in the formal sense.

6. Secundum quid the will is higher: hearing and sight, music and painting (“hearing is in some way more noble than sight”) #

Reading on: in comparison to another, the will is sometimes higher, when the object of the will is found in a higher thing than the object of the understanding; Thomas’s illustration: hearing is secundum quid nobler than sight insofar as the thing sounding is nobler than the thing colored, though color is nobler and simpler than sound.

• His own development: most men would rather be deaf than blind, so they rank eye above ear; a lady student who played the organ (Bach) objected she would rather be blind. He always maintains music is a higher art than painting; she used that against him. His answer: the eye is a much more spiritual, finer sense than the ear (light and color vs. gross sounds), more like the understanding; hence we borrow “see” and “light” for understanding: St James’s “Father of Lights” (not “Father of sounds”); St John, “we will be like him because we will see him as he is”; St Paul, seeing God “face to face”; “the beatific vision, not the beatific hearing.” So sight is higher simpliciter (Greek haplos), yet hearing Mozart is better than seeing Da Vinci, because of the excellence of music’s object; music affects the soul more.
• Beauty aside: Aristotle on the beautiful (he thinks Metaphysics XIII; used in his article on comedy): order, symmetry, moderation, which the mathematical sciences especially show; music is more mathematical than fiction. In heaven there will be vocal praise and music (we have our bodies), but no plays: the two main forms of fiction, tragedy and comedy, fit fallen man (comedy mocks our ridiculousness, tragedy turns on death, the outward punishment) and so witness the fall.
• Sophocles’ Ajax: his downfall is Athena turned against him; Calchas reveals why: leaving for Troy his father told him to succeed with God’s help; Ajax replied even a worthless man could succeed with the gods’ help, he would succeed without it; in battle he refused Athena’s aid. “That’s hubris, capital H”; the pagan poet understands the evil of pride. Compare the scientist who says “I don’t need that hypothesis” to explain the universe: “that sounds like Ajax.”
• Augustine on things he would have liked to see: Rome in its glory, but especially Christ in the flesh; saints who saw the Blessed Virgin said she is more beautiful than the paintings.
• Student question: why are the prophets represented as blind if we know most by sight? Answer: we are speaking of natural knowledge. Robinson Crusoe explores his island better by eyes than ears; all astronomy depends on sight alone; when something is clear to another sense we still say “I see”; a shape felt with eyes closed becomes clearer when you open them. But secundum quid the ear may be higher: the eye is the sense of discovery, the ear the sense of learning from another; Thomas quotes St Paul, “fides ex auditu,” faith is from hearing; with eyes closed I can still instruct you. A student asks whether music is then a vehicle for learning from another: no, that is a separate way the ear is higher.
• His conclusion: he did not contradict himself with the organist; music is higher than painting, yet simply the eye is higher than the ear.

7. Why: the understanding draws the thing into the soul, the will goes out to the thing (“good and bad are in things”) #

Reading on: the action of the understanding consists in the thing understood being in the one understanding; the act of the will is perfected in the will’s inclining to the thing as it is in itself. Hence the Philosopher in Metaphysics VI: good and bad, the will’s objects, are in things (which is why you cannot love the good and the bad at once: in things they exclude each other), while true and false are primarily in the mind and in statements.

• Therefore when the thing having goodness is nobler than the soul (in which the understood ratio is), the will is higher in comparison to it; when below the soul, the understanding is higher. “The love of God is better than the knowledge of God; the knowledge of bodily things is better than the love of them”: better to know what sense pleasure or food is than to love it. Simply, nevertheless, the understanding is nobler.
• The mistake of sliding from “better in some way” to “simply better”: the rocks in his yard and California trees will outlast him, so are better in some way, but not simply better than a man. Socrates in the Meno claims the slave boy already knew how to double the square because it came out of his answers. Simple version: knowing the length and width of the table, do I know the area? Only in potency; the practical man would say “you know it,” but to be able to know is not to know; students are able to know what he teaches, so know it only in a qualified sense, not simply.

8. Reply to the first objection; the first thing willed cannot be the will’s own act (“the first act of the understanding or the will cannot be its own act”) #

Reading the reply: the ratio of cause is taken in comparison of one thing to another, and in such a comparison the ratio of good is chiefly found; “the good is chiefly what is perfective of another in the manner of an end,” and end is the name of a cause. The true is said more absolutely (absolute = as opposed to relative) and signifies the ratio of the good itself; so the good is a certain truth, and the true is a certain good insofar as the understanding is a thing and the true is its end, the most excellent of ends as the understanding is among powers. Hence will and reason mutually influence each other: the good is understandable, and to understand is good.

• Development from the Summa Contra Gentiles: the first act of the understanding or the will cannot be its own act.
  1. I understand something before I understand my understanding; I see you before I know that I see you, and know that I see before knowing that I know. The first letter ever written was about something never in a letter; the first thing written is not a copy.
  2. Likewise I must will some good before I will my willing: I love wisdom because it is a great good; then I see it is good to love wisdom and can love my love of wisdom, but not first. Unless I love God I would not love my loving of God; you can love charity by charity, but not first.
  3. The first thing the will wills is the last end (confusedly: the desire to be happy, not knowing what it consists in, “a filled refrigerator with soda or whatever”), since it wills everything else for that end.
  4. So the last end, the best thing, cannot be an act of the will; it must be an act of reason. Hence Scripture: eternal life is to know, vision.
• Student: what then is the Franciscan (voluntarist) error in the spirituality debate? He: they put the will above reason as a faculty. But one may say God in Himself is much greater than my vision of God, and in loving God in Himself my will goes out into God, beyond the intellect; in that sense the love is greater, secundum quid, as Thomas says. Not “just a matter of perspective”: my last end is to see God face to face, but I cannot rest in my vision as the be-all, since God’s goodness is far greater than mine; so I will praise, glorify and thank God.
• Images: Thérèse of Lisieux’s first sight of the ocean as a metaphor for the divine; Augustine’s boy putting the ocean into a hole: my mind can never comprehend God as He is knowable (that is putting the ocean in the hole), but I can jump into the ocean, as the will goes into the thing. The Apocalypse: the saints throw down their crowns, referring beatitude back to God. Thomas’s “Adoro te devote, latens deitas… tibi se cor meum totum subiicit, quia te contemplans totum deficit” (quoted twice by the Pope in the Eucharistic document): heart here includes reason and will, and both wholly fail before Him. Psalms: praise God as much as you can, you can never praise Him enough; you can never know or love God too much; “the measure of love is to love God without measure.”
• Psalm 62 (his numbering) and the new catechism’s definition of the beatific vision as both eternal life and the kingdom: “my soul thirsts… like earth parched, lifeless” (fullness of life) and “to see your power and glory” (kingdom); Thomas defines the kingdom of God as the ordered society of those who see God; we pray “thy kingdom come” because it is the common good of the whole Church, not the private good of Duane Berquist; “with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be filled, and with exalted lips my mouth shall praise you”: a banquet is not for one, and you don’t stop at the banquet but refer your beatitude to God’s glory; “the will follows the understanding.” You had no claim in justice on creation, providence or salvation; it was gratuitous, though most fitting.

9. Replies to the second and third objections (“act is before potency”) #

Reading the reply to 2: what is prior in generation and time is imperfect, as potency is imperfect (in one and the same thing potency precedes act in time); but what is prior simply and in the order of nature is more perfect, and so act is before potency. In this way the understanding is before the will as mover to moved and active to passive, for “the good understood moves the will.” The mover is always higher than the moved.

• On sense to reason: recalling their earlier study, the senses and images do not move reason until enlightened by the agent intellect; the lower is not the principal agent. Aristotle in De Anima III argued that if the undergoing understanding is immaterial and incorruptible, still more the agent understanding, since the mover is higher than the moved.
• The understanding moves the will as an end moves; the will moves reason as an efficient cause; the end is the highest cause.
• Reply to 3: solved in the second part of the body: charity is that by which we love God, who is above us, so in that respect the will is higher.
• Closing: two more articles remain; next week he goes to the baptism of Lucy Marie, fourth child of his son Paul and Elizabeth, near Fort Knox, Kentucky, bourbon country, a dry county where they make bourbon (as, he thinks, where Jack Daniels is made).

His words #

• understanding; his rendering throughout [ed.: intellect]
• causa causarum; “the cause of causes,” the end
• never affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish; Dominican maxim; “say distinguo”
• simpliciter / simply; secundum quid / in some way, in some respect; Greek haplos = simpliciter
• as such vs. by happening; the fallacy of the accident
• convertible; every A is B and every B is A; required of a definition or strict property
• definition from “limit”; the city-limits image
• the good is what all want; first definition of good; later: what is perfective of another in the manner of an end
• what it is; the object of the understanding ([ed.: quiddity, ratio]); “the definition of what was to be” for formal cause
• formal abstraction; from the Marietti footnote; what is abstracted is more like the form
• transcendentals; good and true as objects of will and understanding
• absolute; in Thomas, as opposed to relative
• ability; his rendering for potency ([ed.: potentia])
• undergoing understanding / act of understanding, “the agent intellect” [ed.: possible and agent intellect]
• fides ex auditu; faith is from hearing
• kingdom of God; Thomas’s definition: the ordered society of those who see God
• the measure of love is to love God without measure

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 82, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–3), Marietti edition with footnote
• Psalm 62 (his numbering), verses on thirsting, seeing power and glory, banquet and praise
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote (first lines, Latin)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X (sed contra); Sophistical Refutations (thirteen fallacies; accident; simply/secundum quid; white man black in eye); De Anima beginning (ranking of knowledges) and book III (agent intellect); Parts of Animals beginning (glimpse of those we love); Poetics (tragedy vs. epic); Metaphysics VI (good and bad in things); Metaphysics XIII “I think” (kinds of the beautiful)
• Plato, Meno (knowing what you don’t know; slave boy doubling the square)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (first act of understanding or will not its own act); Summa Theologiae I, q. 12 (probably, per verified sources, on the vision of God)
• 1 Corinthians 13 (charity); St James, “Father of Lights”; 1 John, “we will see him as he is”; St Paul, “face to face,” “fides ex auditu”; Apocalypse (crowns thrown down)
• Heidegger, “philosophy speaks Greek”; Sophocles, Ajax; Homer, Iliad; Augustine (wanting to see Christ in the flesh; boy and the ocean); Thérèse of Lisieux (autobiography, the ocean); the new Catechism (beatific vision as eternal life and kingdom); the Pope’s Eucharistic document quoting Adoro te devote; his own article on comedy

His questions #

• Which is greater, faith or hope? Hope: by faith we know the end, by hope we tend toward it, by charity we are joined to it.
• If the bad is sometimes desired, how can the good be defined as what all want? Definitions state what belongs as such; the bad is desired only as good in some way, accidentally.
• Is it good or bad to murder somebody who annoys you? Bad simply, but good in some limited way (removes an annoyance); hence the mistake we make all day long.
• Is it better to know well a lesser thing, or to know less a better thing? The latter, as a glimpse of those we love beats a leisurely view of those we don’t care about.
• How long is what a line is? It has no length; what a line is is more simple and abstract than a line, yet knowing it is knowing more.
• Would it be worse to be blind or deaf? Most say blind; the eye is higher simply, though the organist and the higher rank of music show the ear higher secundum quid.
• If I know the length and width of this table, do I know the area? Only in ability; to be able to know is not to know simply.
• Can the first thing the will wills be its own act? No; so the last end is an act of reason, not of will.
• Then what is the Franciscan/voluntarist error, and in what sense is love higher? They put will above reason as a faculty; but God in Himself exceeds my vision, and the will goes into God Himself, so love is higher secundum quid.
• Can you love God too much, or know God too much? No; the measure of love is to love God without measure.