Nature, Habit and the Fixed Will After Death; the Beatific Vision; Article 2: Free Will Is a Power

Orientation #

He begins mid-article: “Now the fifth objection,” i.e., the last reply of q. 83 a. 1, and recalls “as we saw before” that the lower, sense desire obeys reason to some extent (prev. lecture). He closes by deferring a. 3 (is the power desiring or knowing?) to “next time.” Verified sources match q. 83 a. 2 (about 20 min), a. 1 (about 10 min), a. 3 (about 5 min), and Summa Theologiae I, q. 12 (about 10 min); the transcript itself, however, attributes the beatific-vision passage he discusses to the third book of the Summa Contra Gentiles. The previous class treated a. 1’s objections and body; the next treats a. 3 and the transition to q. 84.

The class, in order #

1. Two kinds of quality in a man (“the quality of man is twofold”) #

The point: the Philosopher’s maxim (Ethics III) “such as each one is, so does the end seem to him” does not threaten free judgment, once “such as a man is” is distinguished.

• Quality is natural (inborn) vs. supervening (coming upon the man, through his own acts).
• Natural quality is either on the side of the intellective part or on the side of the body and the powers joined to the body.
• Intellective side: man naturally desires the last end, beatitude, to live well and do well; this desire is natural and not subject to free judgment. “I don’t really choose to live well and do well rather than to live badly and do badly.”
• Bodily side: a man’s “makeup,” complexion, disposition, from an impression of bodily causes, inclines some to anger, others to concupiscence, others to fear. Examples: children who are shy, or quick to anger, or with “a weakness for candy” — shows the body disposing to certain emotions.
• Argument that this leaves free judgment intact:
  1. The body does not press upon the intellectual part (though it has some influence), because the intellectual part is not the act of any body.
  2. So from bodily disposition a man is inclined to choose or repudiate something; that is how “such as he is, so the end seems to him.”
  3. But these inclinations are subject to the judgment of reason, which the sense desire obeys to some extent (prev. lecture).
  4. Therefore nothing is prejudicial to free judgment.
• Examples of resisting a bodily inclination: a man resisting fear and not running when he should stay and fight; St. Benedict jumping into the bush of prickly things (concupiscence); St. Francis de Sales resisting his inclination to anger; a shy student who took a speech class with spontaneous speeches and ended up running for and winning office; Alcoholics Anonymous fighting the tendency to drink.
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (play within the play), as he quotes it: “What to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending, doth the purpose lose” — when angry the goal seems to be to hit you; under fear, to escape; under concupiscence, to eat the candy or pursue the woman. Passion makes an end appear, but it can be resisted.

2. Supervening qualities: habits we are responsible for (“the habits and passions by which someone is more inclined”) #

The point: acquired habits and passions also make an end seem good, but they too are subject to reason and are in our power to acquire or exclude.

• “Moral” comes from mores, custom: moral virtues and moral vices are dispositions and habits acquired by repeated acts. If I have repeatedly given in to candy I am now a glutton; if to anger, an irascible man — and I am responsible for the habit by which it seems suitable to act as I do.
• Coriolanus (Shakespeare): inclined to anger by nature, never fought it, so he acts for an end that fits his anger — the destruction of Rome that treated him shabbily. Don Giovanni: gave in to another passion all his life; when the Commendatore takes him by the stony hand he cannot repent and goes down to hell (the Cesare Siepi film, with real flames; “it’s in D minor”).
• After the break he reads the last sentence: such qualities are subject to us insofar as it is in us to acquire them “either causally or dispositively” or to exclude them; nothing repugnant to free will.
• Student: does this answer “the whole homosexual question”? He: there is controversy over how far the tendency is inborn, and it is not altogether clear; but either way it is something a man can resist, as people have — you don’t have to follow bodily inclinations, though it may be hard. If not inborn, it falls under the supervening type; “you only have those two options.” Environment and “crazy family life” often reported. Francis de Sales again: by resistance became a very mild, prudent man.

3. Aside: habits fixed at death (“where the tree falls, there it shall lie”) #

The point: the habits formed by repeated acts remain when we die, and outside time take on permanence.

• The Old Testament saying, understood by the Church Fathers of the will: in this life the will stands upright and can fall toward God or toward the devil; whichever way it falls at death, it lies there forever and cannot be changed.
• Already seen here: how hard it is to change people who have habitually consented to some sin. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics: how a person is brought up makes “no little difference… or rather all the difference.”
• Virtues brought to heaven determine degree of glory in large part — primarily, though, charity.

4. Aside: why we will love God more in the beatific vision (“God has to be both what is seen and that by which He is seen”) #

The point: both causes of love reach their maximum in the vision of God as He is.

1. Two causes of love (from his Love and Friendship course): the good as known, and likeness or union.
2. Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles III, on seeing God face to face: it cannot be through any created form; God must be both what is seen and the form by which our intellect sees Him (not the power itself) — hence the Psalm “In Your light we shall see light.”
3. Thomas cites 1 John 3:2: “when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” God sees Himself through Himself; we shall see God through God, joined to our mind — “the most like God there ever be.”
4. Therefore both causes are strongest: God’s goodness known as it is in itself (not only from creatures), and a likeness greater than any before. Hence we love Him more than we can now.

• Corollaries: this union is more intimate than bodily marriage, though Scripture speaks of it under the likeness of marriage (cf. Shakespeare, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments”); Christ’s saying that the least in heaven is greater than John the Baptist — greatness being by charity, the least in heaven loves God more than John before the vision; Christ’s “same table, same food” as the metaphor for seeing the Trinity as God sees it.
• Student: does Thomas there also comment on Paul’s “we shall know as we are known”? He: not in that text, only John; probably in the commentary on Paul; but it comes to the same — God knows everything by knowing Himself, so to know as we are known is to know God through God.

5. Article 2, objection 1: judgment names an act (“a power be signified by the name of its act”) #

The point: liberum arbitrium is free judicium, and judgment names an act not a power — so it seems not a power.

• Reply (read: it is consuetum, customary, that a power be signified by the name of its act): the act, free judgment, names the power which is its source; otherwise, if it named an act, it would not always remain in man.
• Examples of a power named from its act: “understanding” for the act or the ability (Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding means the ability); “he doesn’t see” of a blind man means he lacks the ability, not that he isn’t now seeing, as I don’t when I close my eyes; “sight” and “taste” can name the act, the object (“the taste of salmon”), or the sense itself (“one of the five senses”). Recall: we know powers by their acts and acts by their objects (prev. lecture).

6. Objection 2: facultas of will and reason, Bernard’s “habit” (“facultas names the facility of a power”) #

The point: free will is defined as a facultas of will and reason; facility comes through a habit; Bernard calls it “a habit of the soul, free of itself” — so it seems a habit.

• Reply: facultas sometimes names a power that is “expeditious,” habilitated to doing something; so it stands in the definition. Bernard takes habitus not as divided against power but as a relation by which something is disposed toward an act — as Aristotle calls the act of understanding a habitus, in the sense in which every act is a habitus as opposed to its lack. “These are problems more at the words than with the thing.”
• Free judgment involves both: through the power a man is able to do something; through the habit he does it well or badly (Ethics II). Ability to feel anger is neither virtue nor vice (the power); being habituated to anger beyond reason is the vice; habituated to follow reason, as in our Lord, the virtue.

7. Objection 3: sin takes away free will (“loses both himself and his free will”) #

The point: no natural power is lost by sin, yet Augustine says the man badly using free will loses himself and it.

• Reply: man by sinning loses free will not as regards natural liberty (freedom from force) but as regards freedom from guilt and from misery. Natural freedom is not lost but somewhat diminished: man cannot avoid all sins, at least venial ones; by great concentration one may avoid this sin here and now, but one cannot be always so diligent.
• Analogy: he knows how to spell, yet typing quickly reverses letters; people who don’t reread their emails always misspell something. So “if we say we have no sin, we are liars” (St. John).

8. Sed contra and body: power, habit, or power with habit (“either a power or a habit, or perhaps a power with some habit”) #

The point: the principle of the act of free judgment must be a power.

• Sed contra: only a power is the subject of a habit; free will is the subject of grace, by whose help it chooses the good; so it is a power.
• Body: properly liberum arbitrium names an act, but by common use (common in Latin, “not common English”) it names the principle by which man freely judges. The principle of an act in us is both a power and a habit: we know by science and by the understanding power — do I syllogize by my reason or by logic? Both. Do I demonstrate a geometrical theorem by reason or by geometry? Both. (Habit taken up in the Prima Secundae, going back to Aristotle’s Categories.) Hence three candidates; two are eliminated.
• First argument (not a habit):
  1. If a habit, it would have to be a natural habit, since free will is natural to man.
  2. Natural habits incline us by way of nature — as to assenting to first principles (“the whole is more than a part”: he calls that habit natural understanding).
  3. What we are naturally inclined to is not subject to free will (as with the desire to be blessed, said above).
  4. So a natural habit is against the definition of free will; and a non-natural habit is against its naturalness — “it’d be kind of strange to acquire free will.”
• Student: what would be a non-natural habit? Acquired virtues. He adds Aristotle’s virtues of reason: nous (Latin intellectus, his “natural understanding”), episteme (scientia, “reasoned-out understanding,” acquired by demonstration), sophia (sapientia). Parallel: no commandment to love yourself is needed; it is natural.
• Student puzzled by “natural habit,” since habit seemed by definition acquired by repeated acts. He: that is moral virtue; natural habits are spoken of more in the mind than the will, since the mind needs forms by which it understands; whole and part come to be in the mind naturally — it seems innate, but one needs some experience of wholes and parts first, and then sees the whole is always more than a part.
• Second argument (from Ethics II): a habit is that by which we are disposed well or badly toward passions or acts — temperance vs. intemperance toward sense desires, science vs. its contrary toward knowing the truth. But free will is indifferent to choosing well or badly. So it is not a habit; and (not explicitly stated by Thomas, but following) not a power with a habit, since the habit would be virtue or vice and remove the indifference. “It remains therefore that it be a power.”

9. Preview and a student’s question on heaven (“is it a desiring power or is it a knowing power”) #

• Since judgment is an act of reason, one might think the name belongs to reason — that is a. 3, whether the power is desiring or knowing; “kind of unusual what it’s named.” Next time.
• Student: if the will is free to choose good or bad, how is it not constrained when fixed in the good in the beatific vision? He: that is natural necessity — the will now naturally wills happiness in a confused way (“I want to live well”); once it sees clearly and without doubt what living well is, it necessarily wills it.
• Shipping-dock story: asked what he’d do if he won the lottery — find a quiet place and read; the other man: “get a harem” [ed.: “hairament” in transcript]. Both want to live well; in this life we can be deceived about what that is. “Living it up” by getting drunk and losing the use of reason “is living it down.” His brother Mark, filling in on the dock, tore down the men’s pictures.
• The recording ends as a student begins a question [unclear in recording].

His words #

• “such as each one is, so does the end seem to him” — Aristotle’s maxim (Ethics III), the fifth objection.
• “natural” vs. “coming upon” qualities — his rendering of supervenientes.
• “makeup,” “complexion,” “disposition” — the bodily natural quality.
• “free judgment” — his rendering of liberum arbitrium [ed.: free will/free choice]; he keeps “free will” alongside.
• “moral” from mores, custom.
• consuetum — “customary” that a power is named by its act.
• facultas — left in Latin; a power made “expeditious,” habilitated to act.
• habitus — Bernard’s and Aristotle’s sense: a disposition/relation to an act, not divided against power.
• “natural understanding” — his name for the natural habit of first principles (nous, intellectus); “reasoned-out understanding” — episteme, scientia, acquired by demonstration; sophia, sapientia.
• “power with some habit” — potentia cum aliquo habitu, the third candidate.
• “living it up” vs. “living it down.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 83, a. 1, ad 5 (translated and commented).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 83, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Shakespeare, Hamlet, play within the play (couplet quoted from memory).
• 1 John 3:2, as quoted by Thomas.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics III (the maxim) and II (habits; upbringing).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles III (beatific vision; verified sources match ST I, q. 12 here).
• Thomas Aquinas, Prima Secundae (on habit); Aristotle, Categories.
• Psalm “In Your light we shall see light”; Old Testament “where the tree falls, there it shall lie”; 1 John “if we say we have no sin, we are liars”; Paul, “we shall know as we are known”; Christ on John the Baptist and the least in heaven.
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus; sonnet “Let me not to the marriage of true minds”; Mozart, Don Giovanni.
• John Locke, Essay on Human Understanding.
• Bernard; Augustine (as cited in the objections).
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 83, a. 3 (previewed).

His questions #

• Is my desire to live well and do well something I choose? No; the desire for beatitude is natural and not subject to free judgment.
• Do I have to give in to my anger, concupiscence, or fear? No; these inclinations are subject to the judgment of reason.
• Is the ability to feel anger a virtue or a vice? Neither, undetermined — it is the power; the habit makes it virtue or vice.
• Do I syllogize by my reason or by logic? Demonstrate by reason or by geometry? Both — the principle of an act is both power and habit.
• What would be an example of a non-natural habit? Acquired virtues (as against natural understanding of first principles).
• Where is the command to love yourself? It doesn’t need to be commanded; it is natural.
• How does Thomas explain that we shall be like God because we see Him as He is? We see God through God as the form joined to our mind, so both causes of love — the good as known and likeness — are at their strongest.
• How is the will not constrained when fixed in the good in heaven? It is natural necessity: what it now wills confusedly (to live well), it then wills necessarily because seen clearly.
• Is liberum arbitrium a desiring or a knowing power? Left open — the third article, for next time.