Summa I-II, Q.1, Articles 6–7: Whether we will everything for the sake of the last end, and whether all people share one last end (jest, speculation, taste and the sweetness of the Lord)

Orientation #

He says “we’re up to Article Six here in Question One” and then continues to “whether there’s one last end of all men” (a. 7 by count, inferred). Forward references: Thomas will talk about renewing one’s intention “later on”; what the last end is found in “is going to be in these next questions”. Text-matching flags a handout, “The First Definition of Reason” (p. 86), for the Shakespeare-on-reason digression, and Summa contra Gentiles IV, ch. 15 for about ten minutes, though he never names that locus. The previous class did a. 5 (one man cannot have many last ends); the next does a. 8 and q. 2 aa. 1–2.

The class, in order #

1. Feast of Thomas; angels arrive at beatitude all at once (“man’s way of arriving at beatitude”) #

Opening aside from his reading of the Quaestiones disputatae de spiritualibus creaturis: man’s way of reaching beatitude is divided against the angels’ way, since they arrive or are lost all at once, whereas we arrive in time and so can repent. He notes how clear things are for an angel, so it can make a definitive choice we cannot make, at least as children; our will only gradually becomes strongly committed. He wonders why Thomas’s feast is today rather than March 7 (“the old days”); he doesn’t know.

2. Article 6, the objections (“whether a man wills all things”) #

The point: the objections express what “the man in the street” thinks, and what our own experience seems to say.

• Two anecdotes of not knowing one’s motive: a St. Mary’s College professor of Arabic history (“I don’t know what motivated me”); a specialist in Restoration England who fell into it through one interesting course, “haphazard”.
• Obj. 1: things ordered to the last end are spoudaia, serious, “as it were utilia, useful”; but laughable things are distinguished from serious, as tragedy from comedy, and Aristotle quotes Gorgias’s advice in the Rhetoric to kill the opponent’s seriousness with jesting and his jesting with seriousness; so what is done jocosely is not ordered to the last end. Aside: for someone to whom everything is a joke, it is “even more serious to think”.
• Obj. 2: the “looking sciences” (speculative in Latin, theoretical in Greek, from the word for looking) are sought for their own sake (Metaphysics, beginning); his example, doing arithmetic in Euclid VII–VIII for its own sake; if for its own sake, how is it for the end of human life?
• Obj. 3: whoever orders something to an end thinks about that end; but a man does not always think of the last end. He stresses: if one were proud and did not listen to the master, one would be deceived; “pride does cause deception”.

3. Sed contra and the two arguments of the body (“this appears by a twofold reason”) #

Sed contra: Augustine, City of God XIX: the end of our good is that on account of which we love other things, but it on account of itself; cf. Aristotle’s three phrases (desired for its own sake, not for something else, everything else for its sake). Argument 1:

1. Whatever a man desires he desires under the notion of the good.
2. If not desired as the perfect or complete good (which the last end is), it is desired as tending toward the perfect good, because the beginning of a thing is always ordered to its completion, in nature and in art alike (the buildings going up outside, where he overheard two workmen arguing about the right size of nail or screw).
3. So every beginning of perfection is ordered to consummate perfection, which is through the last end. “An interesting argument.” Argument 2:
4. The last end stands to desire as the first mover stands to other motions.
5. Second movers move only as moved by the first mover.
6. So second desirables move appetite only in order to the first desirable, the last end. Illustrations: you don’t stop and think why you got up or picked up a book; likewise every statement you accept rests on the axioms, ultimately on “something cannot both be and not be” (his joke: “to be or not to be, that is a question, because you cannot both be and not be”), which underlies all thinking without being explicitly thought. Generalisation: in each of the four kinds of cause the first is what all the rest depend on. The comparison to the mover is close because we even call the end a mover: “Pyramus’s beauty moves him to climb the tower” [reading uncertain in recording].

4. The three replies (“the power of the first intention”) #

• Ad 1: ludicrous actions are not ordered to an extrinsic end but to the good of the one jesting, as pleasing him or giving him rest; the consummate good of man is the last end, so in some way it is ordered to the complete good, either a part of it or a rest necessary to pursue it. Student exchange: did Christ tell jokes? Answers offered: wordplay; perhaps the evangelists thought them not worth recounting (“he could have been humble and told bad jokes”); “they would be like one of us” as a possible divine irony, echoing the devil’s “I’m going to be like gods”. Is recreation a means or part of the end? More a means, “certainly in terms of what he calls rest” (requiem praestantes); delectantes is closer to the end but not complete joy, “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee”. He recalls Thomas’s example in the Secunda Secundae of John telling someone too serious that he will break the thing (the bow, inferred).
• Ad 2: speculative science is a good of the one speculating, included under the complete good, as play is for the good of the player; the lower science is on the way to the higher. Aside: in the Metaphysics proemium Aristotle argues the science is speculative, then almost as if it were the only speculative science, since lower sciences are for their own sake but also for the higher, in which one knows God. Thomas’s passage: I study the body to understand the soul, the soul to understand the angels, the angels to understand God, “but that’s it”.
• Ad 3: one need not always think of the last end; the power of the first intention remains in any desire, as a traveller need not think at every step of where he is going. His example: walking to church and admiring the flowers or snowbanks. He adds: Thomas later says intention must be renewed; the morning offering; the intention can weaken. “So you convinced by Thomas? This time.”

5. One last end of all men: the objections (“Jefferson said the pursuit of happiness”) #

The point: Jefferson didn’t say what happiness is or whether it is the same for all; bumper sticker “Music is my life”, “Baseball is my life”, “I live to eat”.

• Obj. 1: the unchangeable good (God, he supposes) seems most of all the last end; but some are turned from it by sinning.
• Obj. 2: the whole life is ruled by the last end; if one for all, there would not be diverse pursuits of living, which is false. Aside: his sister-in-law, told he must do a few theorems of Euclid daily, said “something wrong with you”; “that’s your way of life”.
• Obj. 3: the end is the limit of action; actions are of singulars; men agree in species but differ as individuals. Digression on obj. 3, from a former student who held that the last end is to perfect one’s individual gifts. His questions: which is better in me, what is private or what is common? Student: the good of many is better; the common good is your good too. His development: what is private is judged by how it disposes us for what is common; an irascible or alcoholic person is worse disposed toward living according to reason, a poor memory ill disposes for the life of the mind; what is private comes more from the body, and body is not as good as form. Boundary cases: should Mozart have been a logician, Shakespeare written metaphysics, Babe Ruth been a philosopher? “Some probability to that.” Aside from his reading: each angel is its own kind, since individuality comes from matter; his old teacher: you don’t count angels; and each angel has the whole perfection of its kind, whereas no man does (if he had Mozart, Shakespeare, Euclid, Aristotle, Thomas, Augustine wrapped up in him, “I’d be one hell of a guy”).

6. Sed contra and a digression on the definition of reason (“Thomas is always seeing a distinction”) #

Sed contra: Augustine, De Trinitate XIII: all men agree in desiring the last end, beatitude. “No, Thomas is going to see a distinction” — which leads to: where does distinction come up in Shakespeare’s definition of reason? Before and after presupposes distinction; his “axiom of before and after”: nothing is before or after itself. One may distinguish two students without knowing which is better, but cannot know which is better without distinguishing them. So “looking before and after” includes looking for distinctions, just as “large discourse” does not exclude small discourse but names the full power (if you can lift 200 pounds you can lift 100). Further: Thomas, in another article, argues our reason derives from God because reason discourses, discourse is a kind of motion, motion depends on an unmoved mover, so our reason depends on a mind that understands without discourse. From the Spiritualibus creaturis: our reason understands per modum motus, from effect to cause, cause to effect, like to like, opposite to opposite — a complete division of discourse, coming to know the unknown through the known. Student question: if the matter of the Second Part is what we pray for in the Our Father (end, means, avoidance of what deviates), why divide it in two, not three? Answer: what leads to and what deviates from the end are opposites, and each vice is known by the virtue opposed to it, so they must be treated together. Aside on whether authors “saw all that”: a talk at Thomas Aquinas College unfolding a Heraclitus fragment; Planck telling his son he had found something as great as Newton, without foreseeing Einstein’s photoelectric effect (1905) and Bohr’s atom thirteen years later. Thomas on angelic hierarchy: one angel purifies another not from sin or error but from ignorance, pointing out an effect of a cause already known; we are purged mostly of error. Anecdote of a talk at which Merton [name unclear] and Konik disagreed afterward.

7. The body: notion of the last end vs. that in which it is found (“all seek to fulfill their own perfection”) #

Distinction: the last end according to its notion vs. according to that in which the notion is found (to come in the next questions). All agree in the notion, since all seek to fill up (adimplere) their own perfection, a confused notion not yet unfolded. They disagree in the thing: some want wealth as the complete good (high-school homeroom: Mr. Burns, “money isn’t everything”; a shrewd boy, “but what it isn’t, it’ll buy”; bishop anecdotes: the ladies rushing to receive communion from the bishop; “is his blessing any better than yours?”; hot Minnesota Julys sent “for your sins”), some pleasure, some the developed body (a boxer friend on men whose end is their physique), some power. Thomas’s likeness: sweet delights every taste, but some most delight in wine, some in honey; that is simply sweeter which delights the man with the best taste. His unfolding: Aristotle in the Ethics says the last end is something pleasing and men are not wrong in that, but they have never tasted the higher pleasures; Thomas: no man can live without pleasure, so one who cannot taste the higher will go to excess in the lower, since they don’t satisfy. Psalm, “taste and see how sweet is the Lord”: Thomas’s commentary unfolds the metaphor: the sweet is pleasant, refreshing, and restful; beautiful scenery is “restful”, beautiful is what pleases when seen, a beautiful girl “a sight for sore eyes”, candy taken to refresh; all true especially of God. “Thomas’s example is well chosen”, natural given Scripture, Metaphysics and Ethics. Taste extended to judgment: “no taste in music”; Warren Murray leaving a restaurant over the music; Father Boulay sending money to the band to stop. Development of taste: soda pop as a boy vs. wine, which doesn’t taste as good the first time; you don’t let Coke warm to taste it, “there isn’t much to taste”; cousin Donald preferring Baroque until he listened to Mozart; his own first hearing of the Magic Flute, hearing nothing, then more and more; marches vs. a Mozart symphony. So what seems to the well-disposed man is the judgment to follow: Pius XII making sure his Shakespeare came to the papal quarters; Paul VI’s favourite poets Dante and Shakespeare. “Taste and see” is experiential knowledge, which the saints have. His candidate-interview question, coffee or tea, beer or wine: one with no judgment on lower things can hardly judge higher; all beer-lovers he knows who know wine think wine tastier; those who prefer beer lack taste in wine. Conclusion of the body: that good should be judged most complete which is desired as last end by one whose affections are well disposed.

8. Replies and the closing exchange on common vs. private (“we shouldn’t celebrate diversity too much”) #

• Ad 1: sinners are turned from the unchangeable good in which the notion of the last end is truly found, but not from the intention of the last end, which they seek falsely elsewhere; cf. Thomas’s commentary on Psalm 1 (he thinks): all agree in wanting to be happy, differ in the roads and in the outcome (“not everybody’s happy”). So this article knows happiness indistinctly, as Aristotle first draws a line around it (a perfect good, etc.) before going further, and further still in Ethics X.
• Ad 2: diverse studia, plans of life, come from the diverse things in which the notion of the highest good is sought.
• Ad 3: actions are of singulars, but their first principle is nature, which tends to something one. “Something to think about.” Closing: is what is common (reason, animal with reason) better than what is private? Since by what is private we are well or badly disposed to what is common, and the end is better than what is for the end, the common is better. Student: private things are geared to the common because none has the whole perfection of the kind; another: the different saints reflect different perfections of God. His reply: the saints subordinate what is individual to the common end; the root is that the private comes from matter, the common from form, and form is better; so the end must be found in something common. “So we shouldn’t celebrate diversity too much.” The recording ends in noise (“you’ve got bubbles to grow up”).

His words #

• spoudaia: serious; things ordered to the last end, “as it were utilia, useful”.
• looking sciences: his rendering of speculative (Latin) / theoretical (Greek), from the word for looking.
• axiom of being and non-being: something cannot both be and not be; underlies all thinking implicitly.
• axiom of before and after: nothing is before or after itself; so before/after presupposes distinction.
• requiem praestantes / delectantes: giving rest / pleasing; the two goods of the jester.
• power of the first intention: remains in every desire though the end is not thought of.
• adimplere: to fill up; all seek to fill up their own perfection.
• per modum motus: our reason understands by way of motion, i.e. discourse.
• discourse: coming to know the unknown through the known; effect to cause, cause to effect, like to like, opposite to opposite.
• studia: pursuits or “plans of life”.
• taste: in its extended sense, judgment; the well-disposed man’s taste is the standard.
• notion of the last end vs. that in which it is found: the distinction of the body of a. 7.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 1, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 1, a. 7 (inferred numbering; “whether there’s one last end of all men”)
• Augustine, City of God XIX (sed contra a. 6)
• Augustine, De Trinitate XIII (sed contra a. 7) Mentioned
• Thomas, Quaestiones disputatae de spiritualibus creaturis (angels vs man; reason per modum motus)
• Aristotle, Rhetoric (Gorgias’s advice)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, beginning / proemium
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (last end pleasing; book X)
• Euclid, Elements VII–VIII
• Thomas, commentary on the Psalms (“taste and see”; Psalm 1, he thinks)
• Thomas, Secunda Secundae (John and the too-serious man)
• Shakespeare’s definition of reason (“looking before and after”, “large discourse”); handout “The First Definition of Reason” p. 86 (verified source)
• Summa contra Gentiles IV, ch. 15 (flagged by text-matching only; not named in the transcript)
• Heisenberg on Planck; Boethius not mentioned this time

His questions #

• Which is better in me, what is private to me or what is common to me and others? The common; the private only disposes us well or badly toward it, and comes from matter.
• Did our Lord tell jokes? Left open: wordplay perhaps; maybe the evangelists left them out.
• Is joking or recreation a means to the end or part of the end? More a means, as rest; pleasure is closer to the end but not complete joy.
• Why does Thomas divide the Second Part into two and not three, if it matches the Our Father? Because what leads to and what deviates from the end are opposites and are known together.
• What do you think of Thomas’s example of the sweet? Well chosen: sweet is pleasant, refreshing, restful, true especially of God.
• If a man has no judgment on beer or wine, how could he judge higher things? He can’t; the well-disposed taste is the judge.
• Is the end better than what is for the sake of the end? Yes, so the end must be found in what is common.
• “So you convinced by Thomas?” “This time.”