Beatitude Is Not in the Soul or Any Created Good (Summa I-II q.2 aa.7–8)

Orientation #

He opens on “Article Seven here” and refers to “last day” playing with numbers in Euclid VIII, and to “the love and friendship course” where the two loves were treated. He says he will “take a little break now” at the end of Article 8, reply 3. The previous class refuted beatitude in power, bodily goods and pleasure; the next takes up q. 3 (uncreated vs created, operation).

The class, in order #

1. Article 7, the three arguments for a good of the soul (“the good of man is divided into three”) #

Point: he reads the objections and notes that one expects Thomas to side with them.

1. Good of man divided (from the Greeks) into outside goods, goods of body, goods of soul; the first two eliminated; therefore the soul. He flags the form: an either-or syllogism, valid only if the division exhausts the possibilities.
2. What we wish a good to, we love more than the good (the friend more than the money we wish him); each wishes good to himself; so he loves himself above all other goods; but beatitude is most loved; so beatitude is a good of the man himself, and not of the body.
3. Perfection is something of the thing perfected; beatitude is a perfection of man; not of the body; therefore of the soul. “So this is kind of surprising, right? You think Thomas is going to take the side that’s good of the soul.”

2. Sed contra and body: the end “said in two ways” (“the soul itself be the last end of itself”) #

Sed contra (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine): that in which the blessed life is constituted is loved for itself; but man is to be loved for God’s sake; so in no good of the soul. Body, as he reads it:

• End is said in two ways: the thing itself we desire, and the use/attaining/possession of it.
• As the thing desired, the last end cannot be the soul or anything of it. (a) The soul in itself is in potency (“ability”): from able-to-know to knowing in act, from able-to-be-virtuous to virtuous; potency is for the sake of act as its completion, so what is in itself in potency cannot have the notion of last end. (b) Nor its power, habit, or act: the last end is a perfect good satisfying desire; the will (as opposed to the emotions) is of the universal good; every good in the soul is a partaking good and so a particular good.
• As attaining/possession, the last end is something of the soul: man reaches beatitude through his soul. So “beatitude is something of the soul, but that in which beatitude consists is something outside the soul” (God), attained by knowing and loving it.

3. Reply to the first: the division and the object (“that division of virtue therefore complete”) #

Point: an either-or argument needs an exhaustive division; Thomas grants it one only by reading “good of soul” widely.

• Parallel: the objection that faith, hope, charity are neither moral nor intellectual virtues, so not virtues; Thomas: virtue in another sense (supernatural), so the division is not complete.
• Here: if the division is to comprehend all goods desirable for man, “good of the soul” must mean not only power, habit or act but also the object, which is extrinsic. So that in which beatitude consists may be called a good of the soul as its object, but is not something of the soul. “This is a very subtle argument.” Easier to argue against riches; you cannot find in yourself something that would exhaust your ability to love.

4. Digression: Euclid VIII has twenty-seven theorems (“between any two cube numbers”) #

Point: playful memory device, offered as a “taste of beatitude” in knowing.

• 8 (2 cubed) and 27 (3 cubed) are the first two cube numbers; the famous theorems in the middle of Book VIII, attributed by the Greeks to Plato: between two squares one mean proportional, between two cubes two. Hence 27 theorems.
• 8 : 12 : 18 : 27, each two-thirds of the next. Student objection about 27 and 64 (a cube in between) is corrected: the theorem is about two mean proportionals, not cubes in between. His method for 27 and 125: take 3 and 5, multiply (15), then 3×15 = 45 and 5×15 = 75; 27 : 45 : 75 : 125, a triple ratio of three-fifths.
• Student: “This is the fourth taste of beatitude?” He: it satisfies the desire to know, though the enthusiasm wears off. He will throw it at Warren Murray to annoy him. Asides: his wife “couldn’t care less about Euclid”; the summer he taught neighbourhood kids Euclid, the boys stayed, the girls went to the kitchen.

5. Replies to the second and third; can one be satisfied with oneself? (“not the same ratio of love”) #

Reply 2: beatitude is most loved as the good desired; the friend (and oneself) is loved as the one for whom good is desired. Two loves (from the love-and-friendship course): amor concupiscentiae vs amor amicitiae, not the same ratio of love. I love candy and love myself, not the same kind: Thomas’s example, one does not want the wine to spoil, but not out of wishing well to the wine. Whether by love of friendship man loves something above himself is left to the treatise on charity (“you might guess the answer”); applied to God: is God the good I want for myself, or also the one to whom I wish well, more than myself? Francis de Sales: love of complacence and love of benevolence. Reply 3: beatitude, a perfection of the soul, inheres in it; that in which it consists, the object that makes blessed, is outside. Some think they are satisfied with themselves; but the will’s desire is for the universal good. Even his understanding of Thomas does not equal Thomas’s: rereading the first lectio on the Physics and the three questions on the soul, “gee, who is that?”; on the phone with Warren Ray about the proportions in the dianoia. Aside: Shakespeare’s exhortation has 49 words (7×7, wisdom), begins on the seventh syllable, ends on the sixth (the first perfect number, completeness); “but this way madness lies”; his challenge to write an equal exhortation in fifty, or even a hundred, words.

6. Article 8: the objections for a created good (“man, who, in the eighth book of the Physics”) #

1. Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 7: divine wisdom joins the ends of the first to the beginnings of the second; so the highest of the lower nature attains the lowest of the higher; angel above man; so beatitude is attaining the angel. “Interesting argument.”
2. The last end of a thing is in its greater state; the part is for the whole as end. He recalls the two basic statements about the better: the end is better than what is for it; the whole is better than the part; the first is more basic, since the whole is the end of the part. The universe is the greater world, man the little world (Physics VIII; Greek microcosm, said by Democritus). So beatitude is in the whole universe of creatures.
   • Warren Murray’s reversal of the question “why are great scientists atheists?” (Einstein, Bohr): rather, why are atheists scientists? Denying God, they need a substitute and find it in intense study of nature. Galileo (a believer) studies the universe as the whole greater than the part; to pan, the all; Einstein giving his later life to cosmology.
   • Student: but the end is better than what is for it, and the universe is for man. He: taken as a whole, man is a part; be careful, we may be an elevated part (the soul is the end of matter), yet the universe as a whole, including man and the angels (which the scientists might not know), is better than man.
3. Man is blessed when his natural desire rests; natural desire does not extend beyond what he can grasp; man is not capable of a good beyond the whole of creation; so some created good can beatify. “I am satisfied to understand the universe” (Einstein). Sed contra: Augustine, City of God XIX: as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God; Psalm 143, blessed the people whose Lord is God.

7. Body: only the universal good fills the will (“nothing is able to bring to rest”) #

“Impossible” has two senses (Aristotle): what in no way can be, and what is hard; Thomas means the absolute sense.

1. Beatitude is a perfect good wholly resting the appetite; otherwise not last end, something remaining to be desired.
2. The object of the will (the human desiring power, following on reason as the emotions follow the senses) is the universal good, as the object of the understanding is universal truth.
   • Aside on “in some sense you know everything”: everything is something, known in the most confused way (the student’s father: no more tuition); mind goes from confused to distinct; some go from confused to more confused; Nietzsche’s mock title “The Boredom of Being”; yet it shows the mind open to everything.
3. So nothing rests the will except a universal good, found in no creature (every creature’s good partakes the universal good, has it partially) but only in God; impleri, to fill: God alone fills the will (Psalm 102, who fills your desire with good things); otherwise the will stays more or less empty. Compared with Boethius, Consolation III, second part: happiness is the summum bonum, the summum bonum is God, so happiness is God, seen quickly. Student: why is God the only universal good? He: God is goodness itself; goodness is that by which the good is good, so anything good partakes what God is.

8. Why God is universally perfect: senses of “perfect” (“nothing is perfect except through being”) #

Point: the connection of good with perfect, from Aristotle, Metaphysics V.

• Three meanings: what has all its parts; what has the whole ability of its kind (Homer the perfect poet, Mozart the perfect musician); what has reached its end. Then a further distinction: perfect in its kind (lacking nothing that kind should have) vs lacking nothing at all; Averroes says the latter is God, and Thomas agrees. “Really profound Aristotle.”
• Thomas, after showing that God’s being is God (“I am who I am”): nothing is perfect except through being something; I would not be perfect by wisdom unless wise by it, by justice unless just, by health unless my body is healthy. God is being itself, so universally perfect, containing eminently every perfection a creature has by being in some way (a logician, a geometer). Mozart lacks nothing a musician should have but lacks other things; God lacks nothing. So only a good good as God is good could bring the will to complete rest, not in what we are or have.
• Student: universal good in the sense of perfect good? He: not perfect in its kind but universally perfect. Student: is his existence his ultimate perfection? Yes, that is one way Thomas argues to universal perfection.
• In both Summas Thomas takes simplicity before perfection: more can be argued from simplicity (being itself) to universal perfection than the reverse; and it is more known to us that the beginning is simple than that it is perfect. The early Greeks took something simple (water, earth: Shakespeare’s “common mother”) but not perfect as beginning; Metaphysics XIII-XIV (not commented by Thomas), Aristotle faults them for not seeing the first as most perfect; Metaphysics IX: ability before act only in what goes from ability to act, and by something already in act; what is simply first is perfect and actual.
• The second fallacy outside speech (Sophistical Refutations): confusing what is so simply and so in a qualified sense; the mistake of moderns and materialists (ability for act in a limited sense taken as the whole truth). Meno’s “you can’t know the unknown”: Socrates knows what he doesn’t know; the man on the street whose name is George, whom I know in some way by knowing I don’t know his name, imperfectly; researchers looking for the cause of Parkinson’s; looking up on the internet. Jokes: “Google this. Why? I don’t know”; theunknown.org, bumper sticker.
• Summa Contra Gentiles on God’s goodness: whether good, goodness itself, anything bad in him, the good of every good (Augustine), the summum bonum; the “good of every good” article is missing in the Summa Theologiae, “a little superiority” of the Contra Gentiles. Thomas treats perfection before goodness.

9. Reply to the first: the universal fountain of the good (“as far as the universal fountain”) #

The highest in man attains the lowest of the angelic nature by likeness, but does not rest there; it proceeds usque to the universal fountain of the good, the object of beatitude of all the blessed, an infinite and perfect good. “A beautiful way of speaking.” In the ST infinity follows perfection: infinity modifies perfection, infinitely perfect, no limit; “that’s why we never get bored in heaven.” Student: John says God is love; is love the ultimate, or existence more perfect? He: in speaking of love or desire one first speaks of the good; God’s love and knowledge are the same as his goodness; good is the object of the will; good and end almost the same (Nicomachean Ethics); means good secondarily; Metaphysics II: to deny end is to deny good, so the moderns have no idea of the good. Augustine’s Confessions: “too late have I come to know thee, thou ancient beauty”; Plato’s Symposium, Socrates’ ascent to the beautiful itself, not beautiful one way and not another. Beauty as restful (Thomas on the metaphor of sweet): rock and roll not beautiful because not restful; the busy bishop who slept only after half an hour of classical music; if God is beauty itself he alone brings the heart to rest.

10. Reply to the second: the two orders (“the good of the universe, which is its order”) #

If a whole is ordered to a further end, the last end of the part is not the whole but that end; the universe is ordered to God; so its good, its order, is not man’s last end, but God. Aristotle, Metaphysics XII, always quoted by Thomas (and in the proemium to the Ethics): order of parts to each other vs order of the whole to a separated end. Examples: the chair, whose back comes in at a slightly obtuse angle (acute worst, right not good, very obtuse puts you to sleep), ordered as a whole to sitting, which is better than the chair; the army, ordered within and to victory (MacArthur, “no substitute for victory”), so “no substitute for God.” Paul VI, “where is the love of the church now?”: the church is a greater good than me, so I should love it more than myself, but it is ordered to Christ (the Psalm’s “best wheat,” the Eucharist). Our Father: “hallowed be thy name” before “thy kingdom come” because the kingdom is ordered to his glory; Thomas defines the kingdom as the ordered society of those who see God (the order within), for the sake of the order of the whole to God.

11. Reply to the third: capable of the infinite as object (“of which he is capable as an object”) #

The created good is not less than what man is capable of as an inherent thing, but is less than what he is capable of as object, which is infinite; the good partaken by the angel and by the whole universe is finite and contracted (God could have made a different universe). Thomas often shows the mind ordered to the infinite from numbers going on forever (his cube theorem: what about fourth powers?). Weizsäcker (Heisenberg’s student): the move from the finite to the infinite universe (“from the closed universe to the infinite universe,” the famous book) coincided with decline in theology; twentieth-century physics found limits everywhere (size, even time, after general relativity); the older physicist angry at his lecture had no scientific objection, only disliked limits; the mind wants the infinite and, if not in the universe, must find it elsewhere; the early Greeks’ infinite body. Break.

His words #

• outside goods, goods of body, goods of soul: the threefold division of man’s good.
• either-or syllogism: must exhaust the possibilities [ed.: disjunctive syllogism].
• ability: what the soul is in itself [ed.: potency].
• partaking good: every good in the soul, hence particular [ed.: participated good].
• attaining/possession vs the thing desired: the two senses of end.
• amor concupiscentiae / amor amicitiae: love of the good wanted, love of the one for whom it is wanted.
• complacence / benevolence: Francis de Sales’ names for the two loves.
• greater world / little world: universe vs man (microcosm).
• to pan: the all.
• impossible: strictly, what in no way can be; loosely, what is hard.
• impleri: to fill; God alone fills the will.
• perfect: all its parts; whole ability of its kind; reached its end; then perfect in kind vs lacking nothing.
• the fifth book of wisdom, the ninth, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth books of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics].
• usque: as far as the universal fountain of the good.
• two orders: parts to each other; whole to the separated good.
• finite and contracted good: the good of angel and universe.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 2, a. 7 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 2, a. 8 (objections, sed contra, body, replies). Mentioned
• Augustine, On Christian Doctrine (sed contra a. 7); City of God XIX; Confessions (ancient beauty).
• Psalms 143, 102; the Psalm on the best wheat; Our Father.
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 7.
• Aristotle, Physics VIII (little world); Metaphysics II, V, IX, XII, XIII-XIV; Sophistical Refutations; Nicomachean Ethics and Thomas’s proemium.
• Plato, Meno; Symposium.
• Boethius, Consolation III.
• Euclid, Elements VIII.
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles on God’s goodness; ST on simplicity, perfection, infinity; treatise on charity (forward reference); questions on the soul; commentary on Physics, first lectio.
• Averroes on “perfect”; Francis de Sales; Nietzsche; Weizsäcker; MacArthur; Paul VI; Shakespeare.

His questions #

• Is the first argument an either-or syllogism, and must it exhaust the possibilities? Yes; the division holds only if “good of soul” includes the object.
• Why can’t the soul be its own last end? It is in potency, and potency is for the sake of act.
• Is God the good you want for yourself, or also the one to whom you wish well more than yourself? Left to the treatise on charity; “you might guess.”
• How many theorems in Euclid VIII, and why? Twenty-seven: 8 and 27 are the first cubes, and the book’s theorem gives two means between cubes.
• Why are atheists scientists (Warren Murray)? Denying God they need a substitute and find it in the universe.
• Why is God the only universal good? He is goodness itself and being itself, so universally perfect; creatures partake.
• Why does Thomas take simplicity before perfection? More can be argued from being itself to universal perfection, and simplicity is more known to us.
• Why “hallowed be thy name” before “thy kingdom come”? The kingdom is ordered to God’s glory.
• Where is the mind’s order to the infinite seen most easily? In numbers going on forever.