Summa I, Q.5: Are Good and Being the Same? (Arts. 1–2, first part): Simply vs. in Some Way, and Why Dionysius Names God Good Before Being

Orientation #

He says they are starting the fifth question today: Thomas stops to treat good in general, which properly belongs to wisdom (first philosophy), for the student’s benefit, before treating God’s goodness in the next question; this is attached to the attribute of God’s perfection. The class ends at a break after the reply to the second objection of a.2 (“a little break after the injection”). The previous class finished q. 4 a. 3 and the transcendentals; the next continues q. 5 (a. 1 objections 2-3 and a. 3).

The class, in order #

1. Overview of the six articles of q. 5 (“start the fifth question today”) #

The point: the six articles form “quite a little treatise on the good,” and he walks through what each asks.

• a.1: whether good and being are the same secundum rem. Aside on the word “really”: from res; the Greek equivalent is ontōs, from being — “is that really so” instead of “is that being so”; Thomas also says in rerum natura. The alternative to identity in thing: same thing but differing in notion, like three feet and thirty-six inches — same length, not described the same way. How they differ in meaning should come out in a.1.
• a.2: supposing they differ in ratione only, which is before by reason.
• a.3: whether every being is good, and (reverse) whether everything good is a being — i.e. whether they are convertible in the logical sense: A and B convertible if every A is B and every B is A. Two and half of four are convertible (two, a property in the strict sense). A definition must be convertible with the defined: square = equilateral right-angled quadrilateral, and the reverse. Socrates turns a proposed definition around: “a dog is a four-footed animal” — but is every four-footed animal a dog? Not yet a definition. Convertibility is necessary, not sufficient (it must also bring out the nature).
• a.4: to which cause is the ratio of good reduced — the end (student guesses correctly). In ethics we first define good as what all want, then ask the Socratic question: good because wanted, or wanted because good? Examples: the last drink at the party — you wanted it, then realize it was not good for you, so wanting does not make good; the kid driving 100 mph who admits after the crash it was not good for him. So good is a cause of wanting, and of the four causes (matter, form, mover, end) it is the end; Aristotle often says the fourth cause is the same as the good (means good only secondarily). Connection: God as end of everything and God as good.
• a.5: whether the ratio of good consists in mode, species and order — from Augustine’s De Natura Boni (he thinks); tied to the Scripture text that God made everything in number, measure, order (words vary). Thomas’s explanation “very subtle.”
• a.6: whether good is divided into honestum (honorable, noble), useful, pleasant.
• Difference between a.5 and a.6: a.5 is like the integral or composing parts of the good (every creature’s goodness involves those three); a.6 divides a universal whole into less universal ones. Sonnet: “every sonnet consists of fourteen lines” (composing parts) vs. “sonnet divided into English and Italian” (universal whole). Plot in the Poetics: beginning-middle-end, tying and untying the knot, vs. comic and tragic plot. Which first? The composing parts, since you look into the nature and it grounds the other division: knowing the fourteen lines first, you then see how each kind divides them (three quatrains and a couplet; octet and sestet — Shakespeare sometimes “crafty,” hinting at eight-six).
• Parallel: the Marietti edition gives parallels; De Veritate q. 21 corresponds, almost the same articles, each sometimes bringing out something the other does not. He would call the work De Veritate et Bonitate: q. 1 truth, knowledge questions down to q. 20, q. 21 good, remaining seven on desire of the good, grace, etc.
• Aside: his joke on naming, reversing Love’s Labour’s Lost (“the posteriors of the day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon”): “the eight books of Natural Hearing, which the rude multitude call the Physics,” “the fourteen books of Wisdom” — not too seriously, or Thomas ends up in the rude multitude.

2. Article 1: objections, sed contra, corpus (“Whether good differs secundum rem from being”) #

The point: good and being are the same thing, differing only in meaning; good adds “desirable.”

• Obj. 1: Boethius, De Hebdomadibus: in things, other is it that they are good, other that they are. Boethius “the great Boethius”: between Augustine and Thomas, the greatest mind in the Church.
• Obj. 2: nothing is informed by itself, but good is said by informing being (commentary on the Liber de Causis; look at the etymology of “informed”). Aside: early Thomas followed the common opinion that the Liber de Causis was Aristotle’s own “post-physics”; later saw it was not, but has a commentary on it.
• Obj. 3: good receives more and less, being does not. Class play: you may be better than me, but are you more than I am? Am I less today? (diet joke).
• Sed contra: Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana: insofar as we are, we are good.
• Corpus, as he sets out the middle terms: (1) the ratio of good is that something is desirable (“appetite” from the Latin for desire) — Aristotle, Ethics I: the good is what all want, with the induction that every art, science, action, choice aims at some good; (2) each thing is desirable insofar as perfect, for all want their own perfection; (3) something is perfect insofar as in act; (4) to be is the actuality of every thing (from above). Conclusion: good and being are the same thing; good adds the notion of desirable, not said by “being” — good = a desirable being. “Do you see the argument then?” — he restates: desirable, perfection, not ability but actuality, being in the full sense.
• Also the reason good is attached to “perfect.” Thomas sometimes says simply that everything wants to be, to be as such is good; here he shows it this way.
• Ninth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX] (seen earlier): being divided into ability and act; ability is for the sake of act, act is end and perfection of the ability; so being in the full sense is actuality, which is the good of the thing; ability is good in a secondary, lesser sense, being able to be actualized.

3. Digression: the four or five kinds of distinction (“four or five kinds of distinction”) #

The point: the reply to obj. 1 uses one of the four or five distinctions used “over and over again in philosophy,” four of which correspond to four of Aristotle’s kinds of mistake.

1. Distinction of the senses of a word (hard when the word is equivocal by reason, with connected meanings). 2. Distinction of the senses of a speech. These answer the first two mistakes from words; mixing up senses of a word is, per Aristotle, the most common mistake in thinking. Class story today: which is better, breathing or philosophizing? All chose breathing, reason: you can’t do anything without breathing. He replied: that shows breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before (I can breathe without philosophizing, not the reverse), but you conclude it is before in the fourth sense (in goodness) — like arguing Chaucer is better than Shakespeare because before him in time. He had predicted they would mix up the four senses of before (time, being, knowledge, goodness).
2. Distinction between what is so through itself / as such and what is so through happening / by happening (first mistake outside words). Definition of nature (looked at with guests last night): beginning and cause of motion and rest in that in which it is first, as such and not by happening — Aristotle distinguishing nature from the doctor who cures himself: not as diseased that he has the art, by happening he has the art that cures it. So the distinction is in the very definition.
3. Distinction between what is so simply and what is so not simply but in a qualified way (second mistake outside words). Arithmetic vs. natural philosophy: arithmetic is about numbers, period; natural philosophy talks of numbers (of legs, fingers, teeth, chambers of the heart) but is about the numbers of natural things — you must qualify. The first and third readings from Thomas on Physics II involve, respectively, the as-such/by-happening and the simply/not-simply distinctions.
4. (the “fifth”) Through itself vs. through another — similar to 3 but different. Axiom: the through itself is before the through another. Not every statement can be known through others, some must be known through themselves; not every mover can be a moved mover (a mover through another); nothing could be sweet if nothing were sweet of itself.

4. Reply to obj. 1: being simply and good simply are reversed (“just the reverse”) #

The point: the simply/not-simply distinction applied to both being and good gives contrary results, which is how Boethius is understood. “This is a very subtle thing… it shows you how fundamental that distinction is.”

• Being properly says being in act, and act has order to potency/ability; so something is a being simply according to what first distinguishes it from what is in potency only — its substantial being. Acts added over that (e.g. to be white) give being secundum quid (in some way, in a qualified sense), since they do not take away potency simply but come to a thing already in act.
• Examples: “I came to be in this room today” — I did not come to be (that was when my parents conceived me, God infused my soul), I came to be in this room, a diminished sense. “If you leave this room you will cease to be” sounds like a threat; in court, “all I meant was cease to be in the room” — “no one would understand that for what you said.”
• Good says perfect, hence desirable, hence the notion of what is ultimate or last; so what is perfect at last is good simply; what lacks its due last perfection is good only secundum quid. Hitler: good in a certain way insofar as he existed, but not good simply — that needs virtue.
• So: by first (substantial) being a thing is being simply and good secundum quid; by ultimate act it is being secundum quid and good simply. Boethius’s “other… other” refers to being good simply and being simply. Yet by the first act it is good in some way, and by the last act being in some way: I came to be when generated (and was good in some way); I came to be a geometer when I learned geometry; when I acquired virtue I came to be good. So taken simply they are not the same; but being simply is in some way good, good simply is in some way being — really the same thing.
• Asides: you need Thomas to explain what Boethius, Augustine, Dionysius mean; his rule of thumb, “Aristotle means what Thomas says he means.” Thomas (De Veritate, chapter on goodness, he thinks) says Augustine followed Plato as far as he conformed to the faith; Augustine likely knew neither Aristotle’s works nor Plato in the original, but those unfolding Plato’s teaching — hence his treatment of the ideas.

5. Replies to obj. 2 and 3; order of objections (“the solution of the first objection helps”) #

• Reply 2: good “informs” being in the sense of good simply — now that you are, think about being good — something added; but what is added is also being in some way.
• Reply 3: more and less belong to the later kind of being (science, virtue): you can be more or less courageous, wise, healthy than me, but not more or less than I am. Where good simply is found, being more or less; where good only in some respect (being simply), no more or less.
• Objections are ordered by the teacher so that the solution of one presupposes the other; in real life they come in any order. Thomas in the third part of the Summa: even dialectic remains after science, and is more perfect because more ordered. Plato’s dialogues (written for students entering the Academy) are frustrating, less ordered than Aristotle’s dialectic in the Natural Hearing and Ethics; once one sees the truth one sees better which probable things lead to it — as in his own teaching.

6. Article 2: objections and corpus (“being, by definition… is before good”) #

The point: being is before good in ratio, because being falls first in the understanding’s conception.

• Obj. 1: order of names follows order of things signified; Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 3, puts good before being among God’s names.
• Obj. 2: what extends to more is before by reason; Dionysius ch. 5: good extends to existing and non-existing things, being to existing only.
• Obj. 3: the more universal is before; good is desirable, and for some not-to-be is desirable — Matthew 26:24, Christ on Judas: good for him had he not been born (“terrible”).
• Obj. 4: not only being but life, wisdom, etc. are desirable, so being is a particular desirable, good the universal. (Obj. 3 and 4 both try to show good more universal than being — “a good, good attempt.”)
• Sed contra: Liber de Causis: the first of created things is being.
• Corpus: the ratio signified by a name is what the understanding conceives about the thing and signifies through the vocal sound; so that is before by reason which falls first in the conception of the understanding; being falls first, because (Wisdom IX) each thing is knowable insofar as it is in act — recall the triangle where the line had to be drawn, made actual, before it became understandable; so being is the proper object of the understanding, the first understandable, as sound is the first hearable. A thing is not knowable because desirable but because actual. “Kind of subtle reason.”
• Aside: the “everybody objects to himself” joke; his brother Richard, a psychiatrist, who sees everyone as right at the borderline.

7. Reply to obj. 1: Dionysius names God as cause (“causa causarum”) #

• Dionysius treats the divine names as they import a relation of God as cause, named from creatures as a cause from its effect. Good, meaning the desirable, implies the relation of final cause, the causa causarum, whose causality is first: the agent acts only on account of the end (the carpenter makes the chair for sitting), and through the agent matter is moved to form. So in causing good is before being, as end is before form — form being so important in metaphysics, the science of being as being. Hence among names signifying divine causality good is laid down first, then being. Aside: someone (name heard as “Charles Hall” — uncertain) wrote a doctoral thesis on the end as causa causarum, the cause moderns most neglect.
• Digression on care in ordering, from Metaphysics V (the book of names): Book IV shows the subject is being as being, then also one (one and being convertible, closer even than good and being); Books VI-IX treat being, X the one — being before one. But in V, among names of the subject, one is taken before being, and parts of one before parts of being — not a textual accident. His reasons: (a) Aristotle takes names of causes first, starting from “beginning,” and it is a property of one to be at the beginning, so one fits first among subject names; the parts of one give before and after, corresponding to beginning again; (b) subject names are substance, being, one; meanings of being (including the figures of predication under which substance falls) must be distinguished before substance, so being and substance must go together, and one and being are similar — doing one between would be “jerky”; perhaps also one is less complicated. Likewise Thomas sees a special reason for Dionysius’s order, not that good is understood before being.
• Aside: Thomas reportedly thanked God for having understood everything he read; Berquist cannot, but Thomas understood Dionysius, Augustine, Boethius, whom many still misunderstand.

8. Reply to obj. 2: Platonists, matter and privation (“not distinguishing matter from privation”) #

• Dionysius speaks more in the Platonic tradition, like Augustine using Plato as far as he conforms to the faith; reasonable belief in Plato comes from Augustine’s authority, in Aristotle from Thomas’s.
• The Platonists, not distinguishing matter from privation (seen in Physics I), say matter is non-being. How the confusion arises: thinking matter apart from form, one thinks matter as formless; but matter is not as such non-being, the lack of form as such is; matter desires form and is perfected by it — lack of form desiring form makes no sense. Danger: lack of form is opposed to form, which is good, so lack of form seems bad, and matter is then thought evil — Plotinus speaks so, and that is really the Manichean position. Augustine on first matter: “a something that is a nothing, or a nothing that is a something” — not clearly distinguishing matter and lack of form.
• Hence they extend partaking of good to more than partaking of being: first matter partakes of good since it desires it (nothing desires what is not in some way like itself) but not of being, which they deny it. So Dionysius says good extends to non-existing things. The Aristotelian: matter is being, being in ability; Thomas goes along with the Platonic way of speaking but does not think it the best. Matter is good in some way, but not as good as act and form — form is something God-like, God being pure act; ability partakes of form’s goodness insofar as it is for the sake of form.
• Replies to obj. 3 and 4 of a.2 are not reached before the break.

His words #

• secundum rem — “as a thing,” “really” (from res; Greek ontōs, from being).
• in rerum natura — “in reality.”
• in ratione / secundum rationem — in meaning, definition, notion, thought.
• convertible — every A is B and every B is A (logical sense).
• honestum — the honorable, noble good.
• integral / composing parts vs. universal whole — the two kinds of division (a.5 vs. a.6).
• De Veritate et Bonitate — his name for the Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics]; “books of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics].
• ability [ed.: potency]; act, actuality.
• secundum quid — “in some way,” not simply, qualified; vs. simply.
• through itself / as such vs. through happening / by happening [ed.: per se / per accidens]; through another.
• causa causarum — the end, cause of the other causes’ causing.
• lack of form [ed.: privation].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 5, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies 1-3).
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 5, a. 2 (objections 1-4, sed contra, corpus, replies 1-2). Mentioned
• Thomas, De Veritate q. 21 (parallel), and the Augustine-follows-Plato remark (De Veritate, chapter “De Bonitate,” he thinks).
• Boethius, De Hebdomadibus; Liber de Causis and Thomas’s commentary; Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, De Natura Boni; Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 3 and 5; Matthew 26:24.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (good is what all want); Metaphysics IX (act and ability; knowable insofar as act), IV, V, VI-X (order of being and one); Physics I (matter and privation), II (definition of nature; mathematics vs. natural philosophy; Thomas’s first and third readings); Poetics (plot).
• Thomas, Summa III (dialectic remaining after science) — locus not given.
• Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost; Plotinus; Plato’s dialogues.

His questions #

• What does convertible mean in the logical sense? Every A is a B and every B is an A (two and half of four; definition and defined).
• Which cause is the ratio of good reduced to? The end.
• Is it good because you want it, or do you want it because it is good? You want it because it is good (last drink; the crashed driver).
• What’s the difference between a.5 and a.6, and which is naturally first? Composing parts vs. universal whole; the composing parts first, because you look into the nature.
• What’s his middle term in a.1? Desirable → perfection → actuality → being in the full sense.
• Which is better, breathing or philosophizing? Students said breathing, confusing the second sense of before with the fourth.
• Would you say I came to be when I walked in the room? No: came to be in the room — being secundum quid, not simply.
• Can you be more or less than I am? No; only more or less wise, courageous, healthy — more and less belong to the later being.
• Why does Aristotle take up one before being among the names in Book V? Because he began with “beginning,” a property of one, and substance must follow being; perhaps one is simpler.
• Is Hitler good? In a certain way, insofar as he existed; not simply.