Felicitas as Fruit, Boethius on False Happiness, and Why Happiness Is Not Honor or Glory (ST I-II q.2 aa.1-3)

Orientation #

He returns to “that word” felicitas from before, to the comparison of honor with friendship “last time”, and to a. 2 “we started” earlier; the plan is to go on to a. 3 (fame or glory). The previous class covered q. 1 a. 8 and q. 2 aa. 1–2, and the next continues with power, bodily goods and pleasure.

The class, in order #

1. Felicitas and the meaning of “fruit” (“the name fructus is carried over”) #

Point: felicitas (Latin for eudaimonia, “happiness”) comes from felix, fruitful, and Thomas’s explanation of fructus shows why the word fits man’s end.

• Occasion: last Monday’s Mass was of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas — “perpetua felicitas”.
• ST I-II q. 70 a. 1 (fruits of the Holy Spirit), read for the basic extension of the word: fructus is “carried over” (translatum) from bodily to spiritual things, as our names commonly are. In bodily things, fruit is what a plant produces when it has arrived at perfection and has in itself sweetness (suavitas). Hence felicitas suits the end of man: it comes when he has arrived at perfection, and it is pleasant.
• Fruit compared to two things: (a) the tree producing it — “fruit of man” as what he produces; this fits the Ethics, where happiness results from virtuous behavior; (b) the man who obtains it — “fruit of man” as what he obtains, but not everything obtained is a fruit: only what is last (ultimum) and has pleasure, hence “sweet” metaphorically.
• Aside: the same is explained where Thomas treats fruition, the act of the will.

2. Shakespeare: sweet philosophy and sweet happiness (“to suck the sweets of sweet philosophy”) #

Point: The Taming of the Shrew carries Shakespeare’s most explicit statement about philosophy, and its ending joins “sweet” and “happy” as the explanation of felicitas does.

• Lucentio to Tranio (opening after the induction): “that part of philosophy… that treats of happiness by virtue especially to be achieved” — “a good description of what the Ethics is about”.
• Tranio: “to suck the sweets of sweet philosophy” — “a lot of sweetness in that line”. Latin sapientia from taste (sapere); Thomas’s etymology sapida scientia, “savory knowledge”, something you have to savor, as Shakespeare must be savored. Wisdom is in a way our end, and the end is called sweet.
• “Let’s be no Stoics nor no stocks”: pun; the Stoic watching wife and children killed feels like a stone.
• “The mathematics and the metaphysics” alliterate: beginning and end of philosophy. Lucentio leaves out natural philosophy, which in King Lear is called “the wisdom of nature”.
• Two senses of “wisdom of nature”: the wisdom about nature, and the wisdom nature shows in its works (partaking of God’s). Same doubling in “word of God” and in “knowledge of reason” (what it is about / who has it).
• Petruchio at the end, having tamed the shrew: peace, love, quiet life, “awful rule” (awful in the good sense), “what not that’s sweet and happy” — “put the two together… think about that in terms of the explanation of felicitas”.

3. The order of q. 2 and Boethius’s false happiness (“following the order of Boethius”) #

Point: the first six articles of q. 2 correspond to the parts of false happiness in Consolation book III.

• Prooemium of q. 2 read: riches, honors, fame or glory, power, some bodily good, pleasure, then some good of the soul or some greater good.
• Consolation III: Lady Wisdom (feminine — a commentator: women are more consoling than a man) first goes through false happiness, then turns to true; III.9 is the turning point (“what I have so far shown of the shape of false happiness suffice… the right order now is to show you what true happiness is”).
• Opening of book III read: she will first delineate “a subject better known to you” (false happiness) so that, turning to its opposite, he may recognize true blessedness. Then the passage: all men strive by different roads to one end, the good that leaves no room for further desire, containing all goods; the desire for the true good is inborn but men are led astray — riches (to want nothing), honor, power, fame, pleasure.
• Thomas follows something like this order in Summa Contra Gentiles III too, and returns to false happiness even when treating God’s happiness: whatever is sought in false happiness is found better in true happiness, since there is some element of truth in false happiness or men would not pursue it.
• Aside: Washington Irving (never went to college) in the Sketch Book on James I of Scotland reading Boethius in prison, “translated by his great prototype Chaucer”; Irving calls it “an admirable textbook for meditation under adversity” with “maxims of sweet morality” — note “sweet” again.

4. Q. 2 a. 2, objections and sed contra (“honor is not something in the one who is honored”) #

Point: whether beatitude consists in honors; three objections and the sed contra.

• Why “beatitude” here rather than felicitas: in theology everything is defined in reference to God, and our true happiness is a blessing from God (Psalm: “how good and pleasant for brethren to dwell at one”, then God’s blessing). Commentaries on the Ethics use felicitas; obj. 1 says “beatitudo sive felicitas”; English has the one word “happiness”.
• Obj. 1: happiness is the reward of virtue (Ethics I), honor most of all seems the reward of virtue (Ethics IV). He recalls Aristotle at the end of Ethics I taking virtue as a praiseworthy, honorable quality and vice as dishonorable — so one might think honor is the whole point.
• Obj. 2: what belongs to God and to the most excellent seems to be beatitude; such is honor (Ethics IV: magnanimity concerns great honors, philotimia small ones); 1 Timothy 1, “honor and glory to God alone”.
• Obj. 3: what men most desire is beatitude; nothing more desirable than honor, since men suffer injury in all other things lest they suffer detriment of honor. Heraclitus: most men are like beasts pursuing pleasures, the noblest seek honor — Achilles.
• Sed contra: beatitude is something in the blessed, but honor is in the one honoring (Ethics I). Recalled from last time: friendship consists more in loving than in being loved, since being loved is nothing in the man loved, only said of him because another loves him.

5. A. 2 body: honor a sign of excellence (“a sign and testimony of a certain excellence”) #

Point: Thomas’s argument that beatitude cannot consist in honor.

1. Honor is shown to someone on account of some excellence in him; so it is a sign and testimony of that excellence. Haydn to Mozart’s father: “before God, as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me” — describing Mozart’s excellence, above all his taste (that word again).
2. A man’s excellence is most of all noted according to his beatitude, the perfect good of man, and according to its parts (goods by which something of beatitude is shared). Aside on Aristotle’s three meanings of “perfect”: has all its parts; has all the ability of its kind (the perfect carpenter); has reached its end — the culminating meaning, so end and bonum perfectum go together.
3. Therefore honor can follow upon beatitude as its sign and witness, but cannot be that in which it chiefly consists — as to be loved (which Aristotle says is close to being honored, not the same) cannot be one’s chief good. The song “you’re nobody till somebody loves you”: true that love is a witness to some good in you.

• Student: what if the one loving is God? Answer: God’s love is the cause of the good in us, whereas our love is aroused by the good we find; the article speaks of honor from men. In heaven there is true honor, for what you really are.

6. A. 2 replies (“honor from men in place of a reward”) #

• Ad 1: honor is not the reward for which the virtuous act; they take honor from men in place of a reward, from those with nothing better to give (the magnanimous man accepts it but does not care; Mother Teresa’s room of trophies and plaques). The true reward of virtue is beatitude. “Virtue is its own reward” is less precise: beatitude is the result of virtue, not virtue itself. To act for honor is not virtue but ambition — the man who wants to be president.
• Ad 2: honor is owed to God and the most excellent as a sign of an excellence already existing, not making them excellent. Achilles wading through blood toward immortal glory.
• Ad 3: honor follows on the natural desire of beatitude, hence men most of all desire honor. Student exchange on canonization vs. beatification: the honor paid is a sign of the saint’s beatitude; “beatification” means being made blessed, but it is a recognizing, not a making, by us — left partly unsettled. Hotspur in Henry IV Part 1: dying, what pains him is that his honors pass to Prince Hal; likewise philosophers try to refute the most famous predecessor to become the most honored. “Did Lincoln have that desire for honor?” — deferred to another time.
• End of ad 3: men seek most to be honored by the wise, by whose judgment they believe themselves excellent — Phidias (name uncertain in recording); he himself wanted approval from Monsignor Dionne, not the crowd praising a bestseller.

7. A. 3 objections and sed contra (“clear knowledge with praise”) #

Point: whether beatitude consists in glory — close to honor, but different in meaning.

• Obj. 1: beatitude is what is rendered to the saints for their tribulations, and that is glory (Romans 8, sufferings not worthy to be compared to the future glory). Aside: Thomas’s communion prayer also ends with glory.
• Obj. 2: the good is diffusive of itself (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4); through glory man’s good is most diffused to others’ knowledge, glory being (Ambrose, a definition Thomas often quotes) “clear knowledge with praise” — Nobel Prize, Medal of Honor.
• Obj. 3: beatitude is the most stable good, and fame seems so, since through it men achieve a kind of eternity. Thucydides’ (he gropes for the name) ktema es aei, “a possession forever”; Al Gore’s Nobel; Samuel Johnson’s circle: it takes a hundred years to tell a poet; Homer and Shakespeare still read; Irving drawn to Poets’ Corner over kings and soldiers; Irving to his nephew: idle to seek honor for writing, Shakespeare and one or two others have said it all. Boethius: “you seem to make yourselves immortal when you think of fame in future time”. Machiavelli — the Kennedy White House reading him after the Cuban invasion.
• Sed contra: beatitude is the true good, but fame can be false (Boethius III): many get a great name by the multitude’s false opinions, and are shamed by praises for things falsely spread. Anecdote: a man at the bus stop called “gentleman” — “I’m no gentleman”.
• Asides: “Deacon” said he was only teaching how to read Thomas; Kasurik: “you don’t read very carefully — carefully, frequently, and reverently”.

8. A. 3 body and replies (“divine knowledge is the cause of the things known”) #

Point: “impossible” (every one of these articles says impossible) for beatitude to consist in fame or human glory.

1. Glory is clear knowledge with praise (Ambrose).
2. Human knowledge is caused by the things known; divine knowledge is the cause of the things known — parallel to §5: the good in things causes our love, God’s love causes the good.
3. So the perfection of man’s good, beatitude, cannot be caused by human knowledge; rather human knowledge of someone’s beatitude proceeds from that beatitude, begun or perfected. Hence beatitude is not in fame.
4. But man’s good depends as on a cause on God’s knowledge; so on the glory with God man’s beatitude depends as on its cause — Psalm 90, “I will save him and glorify him… fill him with length of days”.
5. Human knowledge is often deceived, especially in singular contingents such as human actions, so human glory is often fallacious (Boethius’s argument); God cannot be deceived, so his glory is always true — “he is proven whom God commends”; Paul: my conscience does not accuse me, but I am not thereby justified.

• Ad 1: the Apostle means the glory from God before his angels (Mark 8), not from men.
• Ad 2: if the knowledge of many is true it derives from a good in the man, presupposing perfect or beginning beatitude; if false it does not agree with the thing and the good is not there; so fame in no way makes a man blessed.
• Ad 3: fame has no stability, easily lost by false rumor; if it perseveres, that is by accident; beatitude has stability of itself and always.

His words #

• felicitas — from felix, fruitful; Latin for eudaimonia / “happiness”
• fructus — carried over (translatum) from bodily to spiritual; what is last and has pleasure
• suavitas — sweetness
• sapientia as sapida scientia — “savory knowledge”, to be savored
• “wisdom of nature” — Shakespeare’s name for natural philosophy, in two senses
• “the mathematics and the metaphysics” — beginning and end of philosophy
• beatitude — used in theology because defined in reference to God, a blessing from God
• perfect — three meanings: all parts; all ability of its kind; reached its end
• ambition — acting for the sake of honor
• philotimia — virtue about small honors, beside magnanimity
• glory — “clear knowledge with praise” (Ambrose)
• ktema es aei — “a possession forever”
• fruition — act of the will (mentioned)

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 70 a. 1, body (on fructus)
• Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew: Lucentio–Tranio exchange after the induction; Petruchio’s closing speech
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 2, prooemium
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, book III (opening prose passages; III.9 turning point)
• Washington Irving, The Sketch Book (James I of Scotland reading Boethius)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 2, a. 2 (whole article)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 2, a. 3 (whole article)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Ethics I and IV (honor, magnanimity, philotimia); Aristotle on friendship (loving vs. being loved); Aristotle on the meanings of “perfect” (locus not stated)
• Shakespeare, King Lear (“wisdom of nature”); Henry IV Part 1 (Hotspur)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles III
• 1 Timothy 1; Romans 8; Psalm 90; Mark 8; Corinthians (conscience passage); a Psalm on brethren dwelling as one
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4; Ambrose; Heraclitus; Homer, Iliad; Machiavelli

His questions #

• The Latin word for wisdom comes from what? Taste — sapientia as sapida scientia.
• Does friendship consist more in loving or in being loved? More in loving, since being loved is nothing in the one loved.
• What if the one loving is God? Then love is the cause of the good in us; the article speaks of honor from men.
• Is honor the reward of virtue? No — taken in place of a reward; the true reward is beatitude; acting for honor is ambition.
• Is canonization or beatification a “making blessed”? A recognizing of beatitude, not a making — left partly unsettled.
• Did Lincoln have that desire for honor? left open (“we’ll talk about that sometime”).
• Does fame give men eternity and so stability? No — fame is lost by false rumor; if it lasts, that is by accident.
• Why is God’s glory always true while human glory is often false? Because human knowledge, especially of singular contingents, is deceived; God cannot be deceived.