Summa I, Q. 82, Art. 4: Does the Will Move the Understanding? End and Agent as Two Kinds of Mover

Orientation #

He begins: “we’re up to Article Four here in Question eighty-two,” and refers back to “the previous article” for the point that the understanding is simply nobler than the will (prev. lecture). He does not say what comes next; the transcript as supplied ends in mid-sentence after the reply to the third objection (“Interesting things in Eudemian Ethics there. So”). Verified sources also list a handout page (“On the Natural Fragments”, p. 40) as read for ten minutes in this episode’s audio and a probable transition toward a. 5, but neither appears in the transcript supplied. The previous class treated whether the will is a higher power than the understanding; the next continues with q. 82, a. 5.

The class, in order #

1. The three objections (“It seems that the will does not move the understanding”) #

Point: Thomas, as usual, first objects against what he will show.

1. Obj. 1 — The mover is more noble than and before the moved, since the mover acts upon and the moved undergoes (“more divine to give than to receive”; Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter XII, and Aristotle, De Anima III). He notes this is the principle Aristotle used when distinguishing the undergoing (possible) understanding from the acting-upon (agent) understanding: if the undergoing one is immaterial, even more so the active one. But the understanding is before and nobler than the will (previous article). So the will does not move the understanding. “That’s a nice argument.”
2. Obj. 2 — The mover is not moved by what it moves, except accidentally. The understanding moves the will, because the desirable thing once grasped is an unmoved mover, while desire is a moved mover. So the understanding is not moved by the will. His gloss: if I’m your father you can’t be my father; but “there may be hidden here an equivocation in the word mover.”
3. Obj. 3 — Nothing can be willed unless understood. If the understanding understands because the will moves it, that willing needs a prior understanding, that a prior willing, and so on forever — impossible. He flags that the reply will allude to Aristotle’s argument in the Eudemian Ethics, “a second argument for the unmoved mover,” not from natural motion as in Physics VII–VIII but from God being behind our willing.
4. Sed contra — Damascene (On the Orthodox Faith): it is in us to think about something or not to think about it when we want to (he re-renders the clumsy “perceive in the art and to not perceive”).

• Aside: his students not wanting to think (“you can lead a horse to water”); a student thinking Columbus believed the earth flat; a bumper sticker on “the right to be stupid,” an archbishop’s “right to be wrong,” and stickers going from “challenge authority” to “challenge reality.”

2. Two senses of “to move”: end vs. agent (“something is said to move in two ways”) #

Point: Thomas’s whole answer turns on distinguishing two meanings of “move.”

• Move by way of the end (as the end moves the efficient cause) vs. move by way of an agent (as the one altering moves the altered, the one pushing moves the pushed).
• Juliet’s beauty moving Romeo over the garden wall: it moves as the end, for the sake of seeing her — not as if he had been lassoed and pulled over (agent).
• “Attract”: lassoing an animal and drawing it toward you vs. a performer at the Centrum who is “a big attraction” drawing people for the sake of seeing him.
• Words proper to the third cause (mover/maker) get transferred to the other causes: we call the end a “motive” (from “to move”); we say the spherical shape “makes” the rubber a ball, my geometry “makes” me a geometer, my health “makes” me healthy — none of these is making in the sense of the third cause. So “mover,” “maker,” “move,” “make” are used equivocally for different kinds of causes. He recalls the four causes: matter, form, mover/maker, end (finis).
• Application: the good understood is the object of the will, and the good in the primary sense is the end; so when the understanding proposes an end as good, the will is moved to desire or love it — the understanding moves the will as end. The will moves the understanding, and all powers of the soul except the vegetative, as agent (Anselm, On Likenesses). Fire softening wax or butter, the grill altering the meat: alteration as agent-moving.

3. Things can be causes of each other, in different ways (“things can be causes of each other”) #

Point: Aristotle’s corollary after the four causes — many causes of one thing, and things causes of each other, but not in the same way.

• Exercise is cause of health as maker; health is cause of exercise as end.
• “Do you know because you studied, or did you study in order to know?” Both, by different causes: knowing is the end (that for the sake of which, the definition of end); studying produces knowledge.
• Area of the table: multiplying length by width causes knowing the area (as maker); knowing the area causes the multiplying (as end).
• The syllogism: do you know the conclusion because you put the premises together, or put them together to know the conclusion? Both, “but not in the same sense of responsible.”
• So the will causes understanding as mover; the good understood, being the end, moves the will as end.

4. The power regarding the universal end moves the powers regarding particular ends (“in active powers that are ordered”) #

Point: Thomas’s reason for the claim, shown in natural and political things.

• Natural (ancient science): the heavens, acting for the universal conservation of generable and corruptible things, move the lower bodies, each acting for the conservation of its own kind or individual; even today the sun is a universal cause extending to all plants and to us.
• Political: the king, intending the common good of the whole kingdom, moves by command those set over particular cities. Compare the Nicomachean Ethics on one art under another: medicine commands the pharmacist’s art because it is ordered to health; the president commands department heads and is commander-in-chief because the army’s victory is ordered to the good of the country.
• Application: the object of the will is the good and the end in general. He notes Thomas, like Aristotle, couples good and end: end = that for the sake of which; good = what all desire; these go together, since what is wanted is aimed at and what is aimed at is thought good. Means are good because they lead to the end (studying because knowing is good; medicine because health is good).
• Each power has its own particular good: sight to perceiving color, understanding to knowing the true. So the will as agent moves all powers to their acts, except the natural vegetative powers, not subject to our judgment (I digest at night without saying “now digest”). Eye concerned with seeing, stomach with digesting, but the will’s object is good in general — extending to my family’s good, the city’s common good, even God, “the common good of the whole universe,” “the good of every good” (Augustine). So the will commands reason to understand, or commands me to look closely at a painting or listen carefully to Mozart.

5. Reply to obj. 1: two ways of considering each power (“the understanding can be considered in two ways”) #

Point: each power may be considered by the commonness of its object or as one particular power with a determined act.

1. The understanding as grasping being and the true universally: as the Greeks’ “you can’t get something out of nothing” shows, the only thing outside something is nothing; being and true extend to everything, so the understanding is in some way infinite. Vs. the understanding as one particular power among many (sight, digestion, growth, walking, getting angry).
2. Likewise the will: by the commonness of its object (good in general) vs. as a determined power with a determined act.

• Why philosophers get excited about this one power: my eye extends only to color, digestion only to food, but I can think about food, color, sound, anything — “my mind is open to everything,” though it may not get far. Hence Aristotle, De Anima III: the soul is in some way all things; and so it is in the image of God. He quotes God to Abraham/Moses, “follow me and I will show you every good,” and Thomas: that is myself, since every good is in God; our soul with understanding and will is open to knowing and loving all things.

3. Comparisons: (a) both by commonness of object: the understanding is simply higher, its object being more simple (previous article). (b) Understanding by its object, will as a determined power: understanding again higher, since under being and true are contained the will, its act and its object, “just as a stone or a piece of wood” — one of the many things reason knows the truth about (the eye, horse, dog, cat, stars). (c) Will by the common notion of good, understanding as a particular power: the understanding, its act, and its object (the true) are contained under good as particular goods among others — my family’s, my country’s, the universe’s (“Bless the Lord, all your works,” the psalm); in this way the will is higher and can move the understanding.

• Comparison from Summa Contra Gentiles (understanding is not a body): my mind can contain your mind and yours mine, which two bodies cannot do — my body in the room, the room not in my body. Similarly, understanding and will contain each other in their objects, “kind of unusual”: sound is not a kind of color nor color a kind of sound, but the will is among things understandable and the understanding is a particular good.
• Student: is this because true and good are convertible? Answer: yes, but also because these are immaterial powers with “a certain infinity.”
• Digression on Feuerbach (The Essence of Christianity, between Hegel and Marx/Engels): man’s mind is infinite, the infinite is God, so man is God; the incarnation a myth that man is God. His reply: “infinite” is very equivocal — as Aristotle in Physics I refutes Melissus for mixing two senses of infinite, Feuerbach confuses two others. God’s infinity is universal perfection without limit; man’s mind is a blank tablet, always able to learn more, hence always imperfect. “The most common mistake in thinking” is mixing senses of one word; but the element of truth is that there is something infinite about human understanding and will.
• Thomas’s conclusion: the powers by their acts include each other — the understanding understands the will to will, the will wills the understanding to understand; the good is contained under the true as a true thing understood, the true under the good as a good desired. “So in one way one is superior; in another way, the other.” Thomas does not deny the mover is superior and more universal, “but you have to see those distinctions.”

6. Reply to obj. 2: the equivocation in “move” and “before” (“nothing is before or after itself”) #

Point: the understanding moves the will in one way, the will the understanding in another, so the axiom is not violated.

• The bank robber (“that’s where the money is”): the money moves him to rob banks rather than you or me, but as an end, that for the sake of which.
• The axiom “nothing is before or after itself”; all words in the axioms are equivocal by reason. Chaucer is before Shakespeare in time, Shakespeare before Chaucer in excellence — no problem; but both before each other in time would be nonsense.
• If A and B cause each other in the same sense, then since cause is before effect, A is before B, B before A, so A before A — denying the axiom “all thinking is based on” (today before tomorrow, after yesterday, but not before or after today). But end and mover are two senses of cause; since there are four meanings of “cause” there are four meanings of “before.” Father-and-son mutual causation would be the same sense, hence absurd.

7. Reply to obj. 3: one stops in a first understanding, which is God (“it’s not necessary to proceed infinitely”) #

Point: some knowing precedes every motion of the will, but not every knowing is preceded by a willing; the beginning of taking counsel and understanding is a principle of understanding higher than ours, God, as Aristotle says in Eudemian Ethics VII. “Amazing Aristotle saw that.”

• “A second argument for the unmoved mover,” an argument for God.
• Aside: his cousin, a “blue baby” who lived into her fifties as a secretary, took a miniature great-books course and was amazed that Aristotle knew things “you think only a believer would know.”
• The transcript ends here in mid-sentence.

His words #

• “understanding” — for intellect; “undergoing understanding” [ed.: possible intellect], “active / acting upon understanding” [ed.: agent intellect]
• “move in two ways” — by way of the end vs. by way of an agent
• “mover or maker” — the third cause [ed.: efficient cause]; “efficient” from the Latin for maker
• “end” — that for the sake of which; finis
• “good” — what all desire; coupled with end
• “motive” — end-word borrowed from “to move”
• “attract” — draw toward one; used for both agent and end
• “the natural hearing” [ed.: Physics]
• “book about likenesses” — Anselm’s De similitudinibus
• “commonness of its object” — universality of being/true, of good
• “the good of every good” — Augustine on God
• “infinite” — equivocal: God’s unlimited perfection vs. the mind’s openness (blank tablet)
• “taking counsel” — Thomas’s consilium in the reply to obj. 3

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 82, a. 4, whole article: objections, sed contra, body, three replies (verified).

Mentioned

• Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter XII; Aristotle, De Anima III (obj. 1; “the soul is in some way all things”).
• John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith (sed contra).
• Anselm, On Likenesses.
• Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics VII (God as principle of counsel); Physics VII–VIII (unmoved mover); Physics I (Melissus on “infinite”); the corollary on causes of each other after the four causes (Physics II, inferred); Nicomachean Ethics (subordination of arts).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, argument that the understanding is not a body (no locus given).
• Psalm “Bless the Lord, all your works”; Scripture, God to Abraham/Moses, “I will show you every good,” with Thomas’s gloss.
• Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity.
• Handout “On the Natural Fragments”, p. 40 / DHB Vol. I, p. 153: listed by the verification system as read in the audio, but not present in the transcript supplied.

His questions #

• “Was he moving in the sense of an efficient cause, or an end?” (Romeo and the wall) As end — for the sake of seeing her; lassoed would be efficient.
• “Is that making in this sense of this third cause?” (shape makes a ball, health makes me healthy) No; “make” is used equivocally.
• “Do you know because you studied, or did you study in order to know?” Both, by different kinds of cause: end and maker.
• “Is multiplying length by width the cause of knowing the area, or the reverse?” Both in different ways — maker and end.
• “Is that because ultimately truth and good are convertible?” (student) Yes, and because these immaterial powers have a certain infinity.
• “If my body is inside this room, can this room be inside my body?” No — unlike minds, which can be in each other.
• “Can today be before today, or after today?” No: nothing is before or after itself, in the same sense.
• “Would it make sense to say I’m your father and you’re my father?” No, because that would be causes of each other in the same way.