Summa I, Q.5: Is Good Prior to Being, and Is Every Being Good? (Arts. 2–3): Per Se vs. Per Accidens, Evil as Privation, First Matter and Mathematics

Orientation #

He picks up at the second objection of a. 2 (“let’s go on to the second objection”), recalls the definition of the good “we developed before” as what everybody wants, and stops “halfway through” at about 4:30 with a. 4 still to come. Verified sources: a. 3 matched against the text (10 min); the earlier part probably a. 2 to a. 3, the later part probably a. 3 to a. 4 (inferred). Last time opened q. 5 and worked through a. 1 and the start of a. 2; next time takes a. 4 on good as final cause.

The class, in order #

1. a. 2 ad 2: good reaches the non-existing by causality (“not by predication, but by what causality”) #

The point: good is not “more universal” than being, but it extends to things in ability, whereas being is tied to act.

1. “Non-existing things” here means not what wholly is not, but what is in ability and not in act. Student: strictly should they be called non-existing? Not strictly, since they are being in potency; only “in a certain way”, as not existing in act.
2. Good has the notion of end, and an end is not only what things rest in that have reached their perfection but also what things still seeking their perfection are moved toward.
3. Being implies causality only of the formal cause, inhering or exemplar (what you model something after), whose causality reaches only what is in act. He calls this “a kind of subtle way of explaining it”, and adds his own qualification: one could still say matter is more being-in-ability than non-being.

2. a. 2 ad 3: the as-such and the by-happening (“does somebody want to commit suicide”) #

The point: not-to-be is desirable only per accidens, as the removal of a bad that deprives one of some being; what is desired per se is to be. Objection: it is desirable for Judas not to have been born; tragedies end with someone taking his life; Romeo wants to die thinking Juliet dead. The distinction he says Thomas uses (after students guess “simply/in a certain respect” and “forms of the will”): as such vs. by happening (per se vs. per accidens). Set up from the earlier definition of good as what all want (Socrates in the Meno: everyone wants what is good for them), against “people sometimes want what is bad”:

• delicious poison: drunk not as poisonous but as delicious, which is good in some way; the bad is desired only by happening;
• the last drink that makes you sick: wanted as a way to continue or increase the good time, though it in fact ends it;
• Crime and Punishment: the young man kills a woman he has no dislike of, to show he is above the law; a false imagination of an excellence (“you are under the law, I am above it”); beating someone up likewise gives a false appearance of superiority. So one desires the bad because of a real good in it, or a resemblance of good, or a false imagination. Reply as read: not-to-be is not desirable secundum se but by happening, insofar as the removal of a bad is desirable; and that removal is desirable only insofar as through the bad one is deprived of some being; so what is per se desirable is to be. Romeo wants to be happy with Juliet, which needs her alive; not being able to stand the deprivation, he wants to escape the evil. Dying to escape torture: the same. He notes this distinction is the “first kind of mistake outside words” from his earlier analysis (on the handout), and recurs in matter and privation: for Aristotle matter as such is not non-being, lack of form as such is, matter only by happening. “The sooner you begin to understand that kind of distinction,” the more particular examples you understand and the more common mistakes, in speech or outside it, you avoid.

3. a. 2 ad 4: life and science are desired that they be in act (“I’m a lover of wisdom”) #

The point: life, knowledge and such are desired that they may be in act, so in all of them a certain being is desired; when I love wisdom I want to be wise, i.e. to be in some way. So nothing is desirable except being and nothing good except being; both sides of the convertibility are now in view, leading into a. 3.

4. a. 3, the objections and sed contra (“It seems that not every being is good”) #

The point: reading the four objections and the sed contra, with asides. Preface: “every being is good” always strikes the non-philosopher as strange (“what kind of an optimist are you”); an Empedocles fragment mentions men’s short life and its bad things before its good things.

• Obj. 1: good adds to being; what adds to being contracts it, as substance, quantity, quality (the figures of predication) do; so good would be less universal. He flags that Thomas does not make the three-way distinction explicit here but does in the De Veritate; aside on how an earlier work is sometimes more explicit than a later one, sometimes the reverse (“unfold yourself”, a Shakespearean phrase).
• Obj. 2: nothing bad is good; Isaiah 5:20, woe to those who call bad good and good bad. Aside: the witches in Macbeth, “fair is foul, and foul is fair; hover through the fog and filthy air”; he once lectured at St. Anselm’s on these lines as naming the two moral mistakes (thinking good bad and bad good) and their two causes, the fog of the mind and the filthy air of one’s morals.
• Obj. 3: good means desirable; first matter has the notion of desiring only (matter desires form), not of desirable; so it is not good.
• Obj. 4: the Philosopher, Metaphysics III: in mathematics there is not the good, yet mathematicals are beings, otherwise there would be no knowledge of them. Aside: this is why a mathematical science of nature, which dominates modern science, has trouble seeing the good and the end in nature; the moderns see the world without sense qualities, substance or purpose, and all three are missing in mathematics; custom is the major force in our thinking, so these come to seem unscientific.
• Sed contra: every being that is not God is a creature of God, and every creature of God is good (1 Timothy 4:4); God himself is most of all good.

5. Body of a. 3: every being, as being, is good (“every being, insofar as it is a being, is an act”) #

1. Every being, in quantum est ens (as such), is an act.
2. Every act is a certain perfection.
3. The perfect has the notion of desirable and good (from before). Conclusion: every being as such is good. His addition beyond the text: being is said to some extent of ability too; ability desires act and is ordered to act for the sake of act; so in a more remote way it partakes of the good, just as it is being in a lesser sense. To know actually is good; so to be able to know is good, but not as good as knowing.

6. Ad 1: three ways something adds to something (“something can add to something else in three ways”) #

The point: substance, quantity, quality contract being by applying it to some what-it-is or nature; good adds only the thought of desirability and perfection, which belongs to to-be in whatever nature, so it does not contract being. The De Veritate distinction, as he gives it:

• (i) Adding something wholly outside the nature of the other: green to triangle; geometry to a man. Nothing can add to being this way, since there is nothing wholly outside the nature of being, which is completely universal (“then being wouldn’t be anything”).
• (ii) Adding what determines or contracts: man to animal, square to quadrilateral (square is a quadrilateral, said more distinctly; green is not a triangle); equilateral triangle to triangle. This is how the highest genera add to being.
• (iii) Adding something not real but of reason: negation, privation, and some relations of reason (“a very involved subject”). So one adds to being a negation, undivided being (God is one: undivided, indivisible being; “indistinct from others” is also a negation). Tests: “a man whose body and soul are not separated” adds nothing real to “a man”, whereas “a healthy man” does; blindness adds nothing real. Same with “something”: “something substantial” or “some relation” contracts it; “something undivided” adds only a denial, of reason; and nothing can be added to “something” from wholly outside it, “then you’d be adding to something something that isn’t something”. Also “undivided line” vs. “straight line”. Thomas’s rule: any positio absoluta (positio opposed to negatio, absoluta to relative) posits something in the thing; only a negation, or a relation, can be a mere ens rationis.

7. Ad 2: the bad as a lack (“no being is said to be bad in so far as it is being”) #

The point: a being is bad not as being but as lacking a certain being; again the as-such distinction.

• From Natural Hearing I: form is godlike (God is pure act, form a kind of act), good and desirable; lack of form, opposed to form, seems bad; matter, capable of form and ordered to it, partakes of goodness secondarily. So the bad is rooted in the non-being of something one is able to have and especially should have: “the fundamental meaning of bad”.
• A man is bad as lacking virtue; an eye is bad as lacking clearness (his own “bad eye” for distance vs. reading). From Metaphysics IX: neither act nor ability as such is bad; the bad is when you can and should have something and don’t. “That’s kind of the key to understanding the bad.”
• Three meanings of bad: the lack itself (blindness); what has the lack (to be blind; a bad human act is an act, not a non-being, but lacks the order or measure of reason); what produces the lack (poking your eye out).
• Lack vs. mere negation: the mug is not blind; it is not bad that the mug doesn’t see. Augustine’s “sin is nothing, the man who sins becomes nothing” is not quite precise, since nothing is nearly non-being, while lack is non-being in a subject able to have and should have; not seeing is not bad, being blind is.
• Aristotle’s kinds of opposition: contradiction (seeing / not seeing: no alternative, no common subject needed, the mug doesn’t see); having and lack (sight / blindness: a common subject able to have and should have; the mug is neither); contrariety (virtue / vice: same subject and same genus, both habits, whereas blindness is the non-being of a quality); and relatives (Categories, Metaphysics V). Aside: this matters for the Trinity; Father and Son are really distinct (secundum rem) but not by being/non-being (“I am who I am”), lack, or contrariety, so by relatives, as Augustine showed and John’s “the Word was towards God” says.

8. Ad 3: first matter good only in ability (“I call it the first matter”) #

The point: as first matter is being only in ability, so it is good only in ability. He prefers “the first matter” to “prime matter” (“I can speak English”). Reply as read: the Platonists can call first matter non-being on account of the privation adjoined, but that is by happening; it partakes of the good by its order or aptitude for the good, so it is not desirable but desires. Student worry: if it is not desirable, how is it good? His answer: it is good only in ability, but then it is being only in ability too, so being does not extend further than good; where you find being in a lesser sense you find good in a lesser sense; cf. Metaphysics IX, act better than ability. Asides: Thomas says human reason is in the order of understandings what prime matter is in the sensible world (Aristotle’s tablet with nothing written), the lowest mind, while angels are created in act; a priest said of potential vocations “we don’t want prime matter”.

9. Ad 4: mathematicals abstract from the end (“mathematical things do not subsist separated”) #

The point: if mathematicals subsisted in themselves there would be good in them, their very being; but they are separated according to reason only, abstracting from motion and matter, hence from the end, which moves things. Frame: the disagreement of Plato and Aristotle on “the central question of philosophy”, does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Plato yes (so a mathematical world between the forms and sensibles); Aristotle no, one can truly know in separation, in some cases, what does not exist in separation, the knowledge incomplete but not false (“I’m a grandfather” without “I’m a philosopher”). From Natural Hearing II: geometry’s definitions have no matter in the ordinary sense and no reference to motion; a geometrical sphere has no melting or freezing point, is neither heavy nor light nor fragile (rubber ball bounces, glass shatters, steel sticks; lead balloon goes down, helium up; the geometrical sphere does none). So it is not inconvenient that in some being according to reason there is not the ratio of good, since the ratio of being is before the ratio of good. He adds, tentatively, that elsewhere Thomas might allow something good there for reason. Close: “we’re halfway through, and three is enough.”

His words #

• non-existing things; here, things in ability and not in act, not what wholly is not
• ability; his word throughout [ed.: potency]
• as such / by happening; his rendering of secundum se, per se / per accidens
• the delicious poison; his standard example that the bad is desired only by happening
• lover of being / lover of wisdom; the a. 2 obj. 4 objector’s posture
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• ninth book of wisdom, fifth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX, V]
• figures of predication; the categories substance, quantity, quality etc.
• unfold yourself; being more or less explicit (a Shakespearean phrase)
• fair is foul, and foul is fair; the two moral mistakes; hover through the fog and filthy air, their two causes
• being of reason (ens rationis); negation, privation, some relations
• positio absoluta; anything absolute posited is something in the thing
• the first matter; his preferred English for “prime matter”
• privation adjoined (privatio adiuncta); why Platonists call matter non-being
• lack; non-being in a subject able to have and should have (vs. nothing / mere negation)
• the central question of philosophy; whether truth requires the way we know to be the way things are

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 5, a. 2, ad 2, ad 3, ad 4 (translated line by line)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 5, a. 3, objections 1-4, sed contra, body, ad 1-4 (verified match)
• Isaiah 5:20 (in obj. 2); 1 Timothy 4:4 (in sed contra)
• handout: “The First Statement and King of Statements”, p. 3 (verified source; the “first kind of mistake outside words”)

Mentioned

• Thomas, De Veritate: the three ways something adds to something (locus not stated)
• Aristotle, Physics I (matter, form, lack) and II (geometry abstracts from matter and motion)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics III (mathematics lacks the good), IX (act better than ability), V and Categories (opposites)
• Plato, Meno (everyone wants what is good for them)
• Empedocles fragment (DHB Vol. I, p. 103, verified source)
• Shakespeare, Macbeth (witches’ opening lines); Romeo and Juliet; Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
• Augustine: sin is nothing; Father and Son distinguished by relatives; John 1:1

His questions #

• Strictly speaking, should things in potency be called non-existing? Not strictly; they are being in potency, non-existing only in the sense of not in act.
• What kind of distinction does Thomas use to answer the suicide objection? The as-such and the by-happening (per se / per accidens).
• Did you desire the last drink insofar as it was bad? No; as a way of continuing the good time.
• Does square add to quadrilateral the way green adds to triangle? No; square determines what quadrilateral says indistinctly, green is outside triangle’s nature.
• Does “a man whose body and soul are not separated” add anything real to “a man”? No, only a negation; “healthy” would add something real.
• Can you add to “something” something wholly outside it? No, you would be adding something that isn’t something.
• Does the mug either have sight or is it blind? Neither; it merely doesn’t see; lack needs a subject able to have and should have.
• If first matter is not desirable, how is it good? Good only in ability, as it is being only in ability; good extends as far as being.
• Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Plato yes, Aristotle no; one can truly know in separation what does not exist in separation.
• Throw a geometrical sphere at the wall, does it shatter or bounce? Neither; it has no reference to motion or sensible matter.