Summa I-II, Q.1, Article 8 and Q.2, Articles 1–2: God as the end of all things, and why happiness is not in riches or honor

Orientation #

He refers to “the day before” when he was quoting the psalm on unity (Ps 132/133) (prev. lecture). He ends a.2 with “we’ve got to stop now” — nothing said about next time. The previous class worked through q.1 a.6 on all things being willed for the last end; the next continues q.2 on honor and glory.

The class, in order #

1. Q.1 a.8: do all other things share man’s last end? (“all other things come together”) #

He reads the three objections and the sed contra of a.8.

• Obj. 1: the end corresponds to the beginning; God is the beginning of men and of all other things; so God is the end of all — “not just of man.”
• Obj. 2: Dionysius, Divine Names: God converts all things to himself as to the last end; but he is man’s last end too, since he alone is to be enjoyed (Augustine).
• Obj. 3: man’s last end is the object of the will, and that object is universal good, the end of all things.
• Sed contra: man’s last end is beatitude, which all men desire (Augustine); but irrational animals cannot be blessed (Augustine, 83 Questions).

2. The body: end as thing vs. end as use (“end is said in two ways”) #

The point: Thomas resolves the question with Aristotle’s distinction (Physics II and V) between the end as the thing itself in which the notion of good is found, and the end as the use or obtaining of that thing.

• Examples of the pair: for a heavy body in the old physics, the lower place (thing) vs. being in the lower place (use); for the avaricious man, money vs. possessing money; “Romeo’s end is Juliet, or the possession of Juliet.”
• Conclusion: as the thing, all creatures share man’s last end, God; as the attaining, irrational creatures do not — but the angels do (“who are my friends, the angels here”).
• Man and the angels achieve the end “by knowing and loving God.” He notes Thomas speaks here with less precision than later (does it consist more in knowing or in loving?) — “it’s more safe to say knowing and loving than to be more precise.”
• Other creatures obtain the end by partaking a likeness of God: by being, by being alive (“the trees out here”), or even by knowing (the dog and the cat).
• Reply to all objections: beatitude names not the thing that is the end but the obtaining of it.

3. Alpha and Omega; all things becoming like God (“form is something divine”) #

The point: God is the end of the whole universe, as Aristotle himself said, and irrational things pursue him by becoming like him.

• The tabernacle in his parish has the Alpha and Omega; the Apocalypse says “the first and the last,” “the beginning and the end” — said by antonomasia: beginning of beginnings, end of all ends, “Lord of Lords.” So God is the end of both the tree and him; he attains it by knowing and loving, the tree by becoming like God.
• Plato (he guesses the Symposium), and Aristotle in De Anima II speaking of the plant soul: plants in reproducing try to be like God, the immortal, so far as possible — not immortal as individuals, but their kind goes on.
• Physics I: form is something divine — common ground between Aristotle and Plato. Thomas’s comment on why: form is act, matter is passive ability, God is pure act; so every form as act is like God, and when nature forms something it is “in a way pursuing God.” “That’s profound.”
• Aristotle’s argument there against Plato from that shared premise: matter desires form (it is perfected by it), but privation, the lack of form, is opposed to form and seems something bad; so Plato should distinguish matter from privation, which he does not.
• Aside: scripture’s “we shall know even as we are known” — God knows us by knowing himself; we will know God as he is in himself.

4. Student question: “beatitude” and “blessed” (“blessing God, and then God blessing you”) #

A student notes that Thomas brings in the term beatitude only at the end, and that it applies only to rational creatures. He agrees and connects it to the psalms he quoted the day before: Ps 133 on unity, Ps 132 on blessing God (praising him) and God blessing you (making you blessed). “Blessed” is the English for beatitude (beatus): the heavenly saints are “the blessed”; a priest gives a blessing; to beatify someone is to proclaim him among the blessed — a declaration or judgment, not what makes him blessed. Thomas’s word for attaining, adeptionem: attainment, achievement, as one is “adept” at something.

5. Q.2 prologue: the eight false candidates, Boethius, and the levels of pleasure (“too high for the beast and too low for the angels”) #

The point: q.2 begins to get more precise about the last end — in what things it is (q.2), what it is (qq.3-4), how we obtain it (q.5), which sets the stage for the whole second part.

• Thomas goes slowly, paulatim, “bit by bit,” from the general and confused, more known and certain, filling in gradually.
• The eight articles: riches (divitiis; the gospel’s rich man is called “Dives” from this word, since we are not told his name); honors; fame or glory (“clear knowledge with praise” — gloria); power; some good of the body (health or strength; aside on visiting a former neighbour in a rest home); pleasure; some good of the soul; any created good.
• The first six almost correspond to the false happiness Boethius treats in Consolation I, considering false happiness before true because it is more known to us and to clear away mistakes — “a beautiful order.” He often says Boethius is the greatest mind between Augustine and Thomas, “I don’t know if that’s true,” but one of the greatest.
• The fifth (body) is “kind of stuck in there” as an extra; pleasure might suggest bodily pleasure, but there are higher pleasures. Mill, summing up the line that the end is pleasure, answers the objection that this reduces man to a beast: “you’re the beast,” for thinking the only pleasures are those shared with beasts.
• An essay he liked, “Towards an Evaluation of Music” by Austerlitz [name unclear in recording]: the pleasures of the fine arts are too high for the beast and too low for the angels (angels have no senses, so no interest in paintings, statues, Mozart). His cat: he played Mozart for her and pretended she enjoyed it, but the crinkle of sandwich meat brought her at once.
• His ladder: pleasures of eating, drinking, reproducing (shared with beasts, though we have them in a higher, more refined way); pleasures of the fine arts (the properly human ones); pleasures of understanding — “Euclid,” philosophy (shared with angels, who have them more fully, since we understand little and not well). One must go through the middle to be disposed for the higher; those who stop at the fine arts are above the beast but “haven’t gone all the way.”

6. Q.2 a.1: beatitude does not consist in riches (“all things obey money”) #

Objections: (1) beatitude is what most dominates in men’s affections; Ecclesiasticus, “all things obey money” (“so the devil can quote scripture”); (2) Boethius III, beatitude is a state perfected by the gathering of all goods, and money seems to possess all things, since coins were invented (Ethics V) so that whatever men want to buy they can; (3) desire of the highest good never fails and seems infinite, and this is found most in wealth — the avaricious man is never filled (Ecclesiasticus 5:9). Sam Walton, asked what he wanted after his billions: “I want more.” A rich trustee he knew who had an opponent in tears over “one more killing.” Sed contra: man’s good consists more in keeping beatitude than in giving it out, but Boethius II says we are better by spending wealth than conserving it: avarice makes men odious, largitas makes them illustrious. If wealth were beatitude, giving it up would not be most praiseworthy. The body:

1. Riches are twofold (Politics I): natural — what aids against natural defects: food, drink, clothing, vehicles, dwellings (“be careful”: clothing and vehicles serve a natural need, though not themselves natural, “in some sense natural, especially in the winter”) — and artificial — what does not aid by nature, like the denarius, the dollar bill (German inflation: banknotes used as wallpaper), invented by human art to ease exchange, as a measure of common things.
2. Natural riches are sought for something else, sustaining man’s nature, so are ordered to man as to an end and below him (Ps 8, “all things subject under your feet”); so not the last end.
3. Artificial riches are sought only for the natural ones (“I want money so I can buy food, clothing, a house, my car”), so much less have the notion of last end. Replies: (1) all bodily things obey money, in the judgment of the multitude of the stupid who know only bodily goods; judgment is to be taken from the wise, as of flavours from those with a well-disposed tongue. His mother: eat your orange before your candy, or the orange tastes bitter; hot sausages interfere with taste. “The number of fools is infinite,” so “all things obey money” is true of them. Asides: money in canonizations; Dominicans said not to bother you for money, “the OFM stands out for money”; bishops more concerned about raising money — but Bishop Edmund Klein of Wichita set up the diocese so no school charges tuition, still true. (2) money buys all saleable things, not spiritual ones; Proverbs 17:16, what use is wealth to the fool who cannot buy wisdom — “a beautiful quote.” His distinction: the ability to make money vs. knowing what to spend it for (pleasure seekers, not finders; some cannot even preserve it). (3) desire of natural riches is not infinite — a measure of nature suffices, you don’t want to eat forever; desire of artificial riches is infinite, serving disordered concupiscence (Politics I on the art of money-making: “just print more”). But that infinite desire differs from desire of the highest good: the more it is possessed, the more it is known and loved and other things despised (St. Paul’s strong language) — Ecclesiasticus 24, “who eat me will still hunger”; wealth is the reverse: when had it is condemned and others desired, John 4, “who drinks this water will thirst again” (temporal things), because their insufficiency is more known once had. “Romeo might not have been perfectly happy, even marrying Juliet.” Thackeray’s Vanity Fair ends: who in this world ever gets what he wants, or having got it is satisfied? (Aside: Thackeray’s daughter, “why don’t you write more like Mr. Dickens?”)

7. Q.2 a.2: beatitude does not consist in honor (“honor is not in the one who is honored”) #

Objections: (1) beatitude, also felicitas (from “fruit”: fruit is the end of a natural process, so happiness is the natural result of virtuous behaviour), is the reward of virtue (Ethics I); honor most of all seems the reward of virtue (Ethics IV — “your honor” for the judge). His gloss: at the end of Ethics I Aristotle takes virtue as a praiseworthy quality; the coward is not praised nor the foolhardy, but the mean; the puritan who won’t touch wine is criticized, the drunkard more. (“Virtue is its own reward” — some say its only reward, but the reward is happiness.) (2) what belongs to God and the most excellent is beatitude; such is honor (Ethics IV). Two virtues concern honor, magnanimity among them; Mozart’s last (Jupiter) symphony represents magnanimity, the 38th and 40th courage. Courage, Aristotle’s first virtue, is most known as honorable: the Medal of Honor is not given for paying your bills or eating moderately all your life, but for one afternoon on the battlefield; footage of Marines in Afghanistan going back without an arm or a leg. (3) nothing is more desired than honor; men will suffer anything but loss of honor — “death before dishonor” in his yearbook; forefathers pledged their sacred honor. Sed contra: beatitude is in the blessed one, but honor is in the one honoring, who shows reverence (Ethics I). Compare: friendship consists more in loving than being loved; being loved is not something in you, at most a sign of something good, while loving is your perfection. Honor is extrinsic — how can it be the end? Body: honor is shown for some excellence of the person, so is a sign, test and testimony of it; man’s excellence is most in beatitude, the perfect good, and in its parts; so honor can follow on beatitude but beatitude cannot chiefly consist in it. His gloss: your chief good can’t be that you are loved, but what you are loved for. Replies: (1) honor is not the reward of virtue for which the virtuous act; men give it in place of reward, “not having something better to give” — “kind of marvelous.” The Medal of Honor given to parents of a dead son: not equal to what they lost, “but what can we do?” The true reward is beatitude; to act for honor would be ambition, a vice. Shakespeare’s Henry IV: Hotspur more pained by losing honor to Prince Hal than by death; Hal in France admits love of honor is his sin. Heraclitus: most men are like beasts pursuing pleasure, the best seek honor. West Point’s motto includes honor. (2) honor is owed to God and the most excellent as a sign of pre-existing excellence, not what makes one excellent. Politicians and “Hail to the Chief,” twenty-one guns — the man of honor makes sure of his full quota; yet honor makes men pursue higher things to some extent, “not entirely bad.” (3) from the natural desire of beatitude, on which honor follows, men most desire honor, and most to be honored by the wise, in whose judgment they are confirmed excellent or happy (Aristotle: honor from the ignorant multitude confirms nothing). A priest doing mission work in the Sudan told him: “we’re like rock stars, but you guys are the real deal.” Class stops here.

His words #

• “end is said in two ways”: the thing itself vs. its use or obtaining (attaining)
• ability: passive ability, said of matter [ed.: potency]; God is pure act
• antonomasia: God as “the beginning and the end” by pre-eminence
• adeptionem: attaining, attainment, achievement (“adept”)
• paulatim: bit by bit, gradually
• Dives: “rich man,” from divitiis
• gloria: clear knowledge with praise
• natural vs. artificial riches: what aids natural need vs. the denarius, invented to ease exchange
• largitas: makes men illustrious (vs. avarice, odious)
• felicitas: from “fruit,” the natural result of virtuous behaviour
• honor: a sign, test and testimony of pre-existing excellence, in the one honoring

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q.1 a.8 (objections, sed contra, body, reply)
• Thomas, ST I-II q.2 prologue and a.1 (whole article)
• Thomas, ST I-II q.2 a.2 (whole article)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics I (form divine), II and V (end in two ways); De Anima II (plants reproducing); Politics I (natural/artificial riches, art of money); Nicomachean Ethics I, IV, V
• Thomas’s commentary on Physics I (form is act)
• Plato, Symposium (his guess)
• Dionysius, Divine Names; Augustine, 83 Questions
• Boethius, Consolation I (false happiness), II (spending wealth), III (definition of beatitude)
• Apocalypse (Alpha and Omega); Ps 8; Ps 132/133; Ecclesiasticus (all things obey money), 5:9, 24; Proverbs 17:16; John 4; “we shall know even as we are known”; “the number of fools is infinite”
• Summa contra Gentiles (against wealth, passing mention)
• Mill on higher pleasures; essay “Towards an Evaluation of Music” [author unclear in recording]; Thackeray, Vanity Fair; Shakespeare, Henry IV; Heraclitus
• Handout “The First Definition of Reason,” p. 32 and DHB Vol. III p. 797: matched by the text-matching system; not identifiable in the transcript

His questions #

• Does the last end of man consist more in knowing God or in loving God? Left open; “more safe to say it consists in knowing and loving God than to be more precise.”
• How does the tree obtain the same end as I do? By becoming like God, since every form as act is like God, pure act.
• Why does Thomas bring in “beatitude” only at the end of q.1? (student) Because beatitude names the obtaining of the end, which belongs only to rational creatures.
• If wealth were beatitude, would giving it up be praiseworthy? No; so the good of money is in being used and given up, hence not the last end.
• Are clothing, vehicles and dwellings natural riches? Yes in the sense that they serve a natural need, not that they are themselves natural.
• Is the desire for natural riches infinite? No, a measure of nature suffices; only desire for artificial riches is infinite.
• Does the infinite desire of wealth resemble the desire of the highest good? No: the highest good loved more the more it is had; wealth condemned once had.
• Does friendship consist more in loving or in being loved? In loving, which is your perfection; likewise honor is in the one honoring.
• Why do men most want to be honored by the wise? Because their judgment confirms an excellence; honor from the ignorant multitude confirms nothing.