Thomas's Premium to the Ethics: Wisdom, Order and the Parts of Moral Philosophy; Aristotle's Opening — the Good Is What All Want

Orientation #

He does not refer to a previous class. He says the passage beginning on page 3 of the handout (where Aristotle “draws a line around the purpose of man”) is also Book One, and the final treatment of man’s purpose comes only in Book Ten; he announces that the proemium has three parts (aim, way of proceeding, suitable hearer) and starts only the first. The next class continues the opening of the Ethics with the good as “what all desire” and the hierarchy of arts and ends.

The class, in order #

1. What a “premium” is; Aristotle’s vs. Thomas’s (“Paving the way is probably the best way”) #

Point: a proemium (his “premium”) “paves the way”; Aristotle’s is directed to the book at hand, Thomas’s stands back to the larger picture.

• Almost every work of Aristotle has a proemium; the most important thing in it is what the book aims at, sometimes also its importance and way of proceeding.
• The two most important: the proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics (in effect a proemium to practical philosophy) and the proemium to Wisdom at the start of the Metaphysics (to theoretical, “looking” philosophy).
• His observation: perhaps only these two end with an epilogue in which Aristotle recalls what he did, going from the last thing back to the first; Thomas divides the proemium exactly into those parts. Illustrated from the end of the Ethics proemium (p. 3 of the handout): the hearer, then how to proceed, then “what we propose” — reverse order.
• Aristotle’s books are divided like Romeo and Juliet: prologue and play; the prologue is short but prepares you for the kind of play. Thomas’s other works use prologus rather than proemium; epilogue is the opposite.
• Aside: tomorrow (the 28th) is Thomas’s feast on the new calendar; “we do it on March third”; Warren Murray’s dinner; don’t forget St Ephraim.

2. Thomas’s first paragraph: wisdom orders, reason knows order (“it belongs to the wise to order things”) #

Point: the quote sapientis est ordinare (the sixth and crowning attribute of the wise man in the Metaphysics proemium) is grounded by Thomas in the nature of reason.

1. Wisdom is the name of the greatest perfection of reason.
2. It is proper to reason to know order: the senses know some things “absolutely,” but to know the order of one thing to another belongs only to understanding or reason. (Thomas often opposes “absolute” to order or relation.)
3. Therefore the knowledge that most perfects reason is most of all a knowledge of order.

• Fits Shakespeare’s definition of reason, “large discourse, looking before and after”: before and after is what order means.

3. The twofold order: parts to each other, whole to its end (“the parts of a house are ordered to each other”) #

Point: a distinction from Metaphysics XII — the order of the parts of a whole to each other is for the sake of the order of the whole to its end.

• Order of parts of a whole/multitude to each other vs. order of things to their end; Aristotle says the order of the parts of the universe to each other is for the sake of the order of the whole universe to God — but the point is general.
• Chair: the back meets the seat at a slightly obtuse angle (not acute, not right); the reason is the chair’s order to sitting, which is not a part of the chair. House: parts ordered to each other on account of the house’s order to dwelling, protecting us from snow. Army (Aristotle’s example, “the philosopher” being antonomasia for Aristotle): parts ordered to each other because of the whole army’s order to its leader, i.e. to the leader’s end, victory. Aristotle takes the army rather than the city because it is a clearer case of order; more chaos in a city.
• Aside: he tells soldiers Aristotle compares the universe to an army — a compliment.

4. Order compared to reason in four ways (“an order which reason does not make, but only considers”) #

Point: Thomas’s “four ways” is really a division into two, the second subdivided into three (“you can’t divide things into four”).

• A. Order not made by reason but only considered: the order of natural things (made by nature, ultimately by God).
• B. Order which reason “by considering makes”:
  1. in its own acts — ordering its thoughts to each other and assigning the vocal sounds that signify them (in a syllogism, two statements ordered to a conclusion);
  2. in the acts of the will — the will is not reason but close to it (I want money, therefore I want to play the stock market, buy a sweepstakes ticket, bet on a horse: “hot tip from the horse’s mouth”);
  3. in exterior matter — wood, metal, plastic: a box, a house, a chair.

5. Four knowledges by the four orders; the subject of moral philosophy (“diverse forms of knowledge according to the diverse orders”) #

Point: because reason’s consideration is perfected by the firm disposition of knowledge, knowledges are distinguished by the order each considers.

• Order not made by reason: natural philosophy (spring before summer before fall; we might have put spring after fall, but nature puts winter — “in this part of the country anyway”); likewise metaphysics/wisdom, considering the order made by God. Thomas does not here distinguish natural philosophy from metaphysics — that belongs to metaphysics.
• Order in reason’s own acts: rational philosophy, “as the Greeks call it, logic” (logos/ratio equivalent): order of parts of a speech — a definition (genus and differences), and “beginnings” (Thomas’s word for premises) to conclusions.
• Order of voluntary acts: moral philosophy — which for Thomas covers ethics, domestic and political philosophy; the order the Ethics and Politics are about.
• Order in exterior matter: the mechanical arts (Middle Ages: mechanical or servile arts vs. liberal arts).
• Moral philosophy considers human acts as ordered to each other and to the end (the twofold order again: first the end of man, then everything else ordered to it).
• Definition of human acts: those proceeding from the will according to the order of reason. Acts not subject to will and reason are natural, not human: the acts of the plant soul — generation, growth, nourishing. Digesting while asleep, growing when young: not chosen, not for moral philosophy; putting too much food in the mouth or drinking too much wine: subject to will.
• Parallel: as the subject of natural philosophy is motion or the movable thing, so the subject of moral philosophy is human acts ordered to an end (Thomas’s addition).

6. Why practical philosophy divides into three: family and city (“man is naturally a social animal”) #

Point: man needs a multitude for two things, to live and to live well; hence the household and the city.

• Man is by nature social/political since he needs many things he cannot prepare alone; he is naturally part of some multitude.
• For the necessities of life: the domestic household — from parents come generation, nourishment, discipline; members supply each other’s needs (wife makes the pie, husband grills the steak and shovels the snow, “otherwise there’d be no pie”).
• For a complete sufficiency of life, living well: the city — bodily goods, artificial things, and even moral things, since insolent youth whom paternal admonition cannot correct are forced by public power and threat of punishment. He couldn’t live well without Shakespeare, Mozart, Thomas Aquinas, wine — none of which come from his own family.
• Aside: his mother — “get out of hand, it’ll be out of my hand.”
• Note: the divisions of practical philosophy, of looking philosophy and of the mechanical arts are each on a different basis.

7. Acts of a part vs. acts of the whole; unity of order (“has only a unity of order”) #

Point: not every act of a man is an act of his family, nor every act of the family an act of the city, because family and city have only a unity of order, not unity simply.

• Obama reading Shakespeare this evening: the United States has not sat down to read Shakespeare, nor the Obama family. A father buying a house in a safer neighbourhood acts as father; reading fairy tales to his children he chooses as father what he would not choose for “the good of Duane Berquist” (he’d read Shakespeare). Voting or holding office: acts as citizen.
• Three ends: the good of the individual (his mind not good without Euclid, emotions without Mozart, disagreeable without wine); the common good of the family, “really the children”; the good of the city. But the father has some time to himself, and even a president is not always acting for the country.
• Unity of order vs. unity simply (composed, bound together, continuous):
  • Unity of order: a part can have an act not of the whole (a soldier’s act not the army’s). If a Holy Cross student beats up an Assumption student, it is not just for an Assumption student to beat up some Holy Cross student; an Italian kills an Irishman, an Irishman may not kill some Italian — neither act is the community’s. Nor may the big guy in my family beat the little guy in yours.
  • Unity simply: no act of a part which is not of the whole — if I hit you with my fist you may hit me in the jaw, “my jaw didn’t hit you” is no answer.
  • Yet the ordered whole has acts of the whole: the army striking together, a multitude drawing a ship.
• Conclusion: a whole that is one simply and its parts belong to the same knowledge; a whole with mere unity of order and its parts do not. Hence “moral philosophy” (here meaning practical philosophy, the whole; today a synonym for ethics, the first part) has three parts: acts of one man ordered to an end, “monastic” (misleading — not a monastery; we say ethics: the end of the individual and what he must do); acts of the domestic multitude, domestics (end of family and marriage); acts of the civil multitude, politics.
• Books from Aristotle’s school: several ethics (Eudemian, Nicomachean the most famous), a book on domestics thought not to be Aristotle’s but a school member’s, and the Politics; Aristotle wrote the greatest things himself and left domestics, as plants, to a student.
• Recap with the board: Thomas gives a proemium to the whole of practical philosophy and situates it in the life of reason via the four orders.

8. Aristotle’s proemium: its three parts (“who is or is not a suitable hearer”) #

Point: Aristotle’s proemium says (1) what it aims at — the end of man; (2) how to proceed; (3) who is a suitable hearer.

• Unsuitable: the inexperienced in life (no experience of what ethics is about, so he can’t understand) and the one leading a disordered life (knowing won’t do him any good), since the end here is not to know but to act according to the knowledge.

9. The first sentence: an induction from all human activity (“seems to aim at some good”) #

Point: “Every art and every science, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good” is, as Thomas explains, an induction.

• Arts: carpentry (chairs, beds, tables, houses — should we sit on the floor?); cooking aims at tasty, not healthy, food (“important to think”); medicine at health; pens, computers, cars. Thomas’s example that you can travel without a horse but to travel well you need one — he finds it strange, joking the friars were required to go on foot.
• Sciences: geometry seeks the truth about triangles and squares; natural philosophy the truth about natural things.
• Then foresight [ed.: prudence], which Thomas says directs choice and action, and the will which chooses: every doing is for some purpose, even amusement; every choice regards some good (steak rather than chicken, chicken rather than fish — “anything better than salmon”).
• Aristotle’s text is condensed like lecture notes; a professor could expand each item.
• Asides: the professor with “the whole course on one index card”; students reducing a course to a card and the professor conceding “No, I guess not.”

10. “The good is what all want”: the first definition of good (“the good is what all want”) #

Point: “it has been well said that the good is what all desire” — his rendering “what all want” (alliteration; or with the Latin, desire) is the first definition of good, and where thinking about the good begins.

• Plato’s dialogues show how men proceed: asked what a thing is, they give examples — Meno on virtue, Euthyphro on piety, Theaetetus on science — and Socrates must ask what they have in common. This is the natural way of knowing, from sense to reason: senses know examples, reason compares and separates out the common. A little boy asked “what is water” points: that’s water, the stream is water.
• The boy asked what is good: candy, pizza, baseball, football, vacation. Are they all sweet? pizza isn’t. All edible? not the baseball. What they have in common: they are what he wants; what he doesn’t want is not good. Also: the good is “something that’s wanted.”

11. Euthyphro, Heisenberg, and the slave boy (“to ask the right question”) #

Point: the right question does most of the work.

• Euthyphro, prosecuting his father for impiety, gives examples, then: the pious is what the gods approve of; problem, the gods disagree; grant they agree — or for us, what God approves of, as sin is what displeases God. “Then Socrates asks another question” — he does not state it (left for later).
• Heisenberg: to ask the right question is to go more than halfway to the truth. His diagram: a line from ignorance to knowledge; people place the question at the start, Heisenberg past the midpoint.
• Meno: Socrates claims learning is recalling; proof with the untaught slave boy. Asked how to double a square he says double the side — wrong; questioned, he sees three more equal squares filling the corner make four times, diagonals halve each, so the square on the diagonal is half of four, twice the original: the diagonal is the side of the double square. Socrates: I didn’t teach him, it came from him — but the questions were Socrates’, and each right question is almost there. “Marvelous, marvelous.” Difficulties with Socrates’ position not gone into.

His words #

• “premium” [ed.: proemium]: paving the way; Greek verb form “pave the way.”
• “looking philosophy”: theoretical philosophy.
• Sapientis est ordinare: it belongs to the wise to order.
• reason (Shakespeare): “large discourse, looking before and after.”
• “absolute”: Thomas’s opposite of order or relation.
• “the philosopher”: antonomasia for Aristotle.
• “beginnings”: Thomas’s word for premises.
• rational philosophy: what the Greeks call logic (logos = ratio).
• mechanical / servile arts vs. liberal arts.
• human acts: proceeding from the will according to the order of reason; otherwise “natural.”
• unity of order vs. one simply (composed, bound together, continuous).
• monastic: Thomas’s name for what we call ethics (not “monastery”).
• “moral philosophy”: for Thomas the whole of practical philosophy; for us, ethics.
• foresight [ed.: prudence]: directs choice and action.
• “the good is what all want” / “what all desire” / “something that’s wanted.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, proemium to the Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (handout pp. 1–2), read through.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, opening sentences of the proemium (handout; Aquinas lectio 1 inferred); the epilogue on p. 3 of the handout quoted.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I proemium (the wise man; sapientis est ordinare); Metaphysics XII (order of the universe to God; the army).
• Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics; Politics; the school’s book on domestics; the book on plants.
• Plato, Meno (virtue; the slave boy), Euthyphro, Theaetetus.
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (prologue); Hamlet’s definition of reason (inferred).
• Heisenberg on the right question.

His questions #

• What does “premium” mean? Paving the way.
• What is Shakespeare’s definition of reason? Large discourse, looking before and after — i.e. order.
• At what angle does the back of the chair meet the seat, and why? Slightly obtuse, because of the chair’s order to sitting.
• Can you divide things into four? No; Thomas divides into two, then the second into three.
• If Obama sits down to read Shakespeare, has the United States, or his family, done so? No — the whole has only a unity of order.
• If a Holy Cross student beats up an Assumption student, may another Assumption student beat up a Holy Cross student? No, that is unjust; it was not an act of the community.
• If I hit you with my fist, must you hit back my fist? No; a man is one simply, so the act of the part is the whole’s.
• Does the art of cooking aim at some good? Tasty food, not healthy — that is medicine’s aim.
• What do candy, pizza, baseball, vacation have in common that makes the boy call them good? Not sweetness or edibility — they are what he wants.
• Where along the line from ignorance to knowledge does the right question come? More than halfway (Heisenberg).