Summa I-II q.3 a.3–4: Beatitude, the Senses, and Why Happiness Is Not Essentially an Act of the Will

Orientation #

He does not say anything about last time or next time beyond “as has been shown” back-references within the treatise. Verified sources: this episode treats ST I-II q. 3, a. 3 and a. 4 (both matched against the text); the closing stretch is probably still within a. 4, and the transcript ends before a. 4’s replies to objections. The previous class worked through q. 3 aa. 1–2 (beatitude as created operation, immanent not transitive), and the next continues with a. 4’s replies and a. 5 on speculative vs. practical intellect.

The class, in order #

1. Opening prayer and an aside on glorified bodies (“proportional to your increase of grace and glory”) #

He opens with the usual prayer (God, guardian angels, Thomas Aquinas), then an aside from his reading of Thomas: the clarity of a saint’s body shows how much grace and glory he has, so an appearance of Christ or Mary “has got to be blinding” — proportional to one’s grace and glory. Joke: “at least I won’t blind anybody.”

2. Article 3, objections: does beatitude consist in the operation of the senses? (“we cannot understand without the phantasm”) #

He reads the three objections and the sed contra.

1. Obj. 1: no operation of man is nobler than sense operation except the intellectual; but the intellectual depends in us on the sensitive, since we cannot understand without the phantasm/image (On the Soul III); so beatitude consists also in sense operation.
2. Obj. 2: Boethius (Consolation III): beatitude is a state made perfect by the bringing-together of all goods — aside on the Latin (grex, “flock”, he thinks, for the aggregation word); so sense operation is required. Aside: “especially with all that singing that’s going to be done there.”
3. Obj. 3: beatitude is the perfect good (Ethics I), which it would not be unless man were perfected “through it” (he corrects “through himself” to “through it, meaning through beatitude”) according to all his parts; some parts of the soul are perfected by sense operations.
4. Sed contra: in sense operation we come together with brute animals, but not in beatitude; so beatitude does not consist in sense operation. Joke: “so you have a glass eye or something there.”

3. The response: three ways something pertains to beatitude (“essentially, antecedently, and consequently”) #

Point: sense operation pertains to beatitude only before and after, never essentially.

• Essentially, no, for two reasons he reads: (a) beatitude consists essentially in union of man to the uncreated good, the last end, and man cannot be joined to it by sense operation; (b) beatitude does not consist in bodily goods, which are all the senses can attain.
• Aside on “the man in the pew” who thinks of seeing God with physical eyes: “see” in “beatific vision” is a word equivocal by reason — carried over from the eye.
• Antecedently: in the imperfect beatitude possible in this life, the operation of the understanding presupposes the senses. Asides: the bumper sticker “Music is my life” as a kind of beatitude; Aristotle in the Politics mentions a philosopher’s opinion that listening to music is the end of man — but here the reason is only that sense is presupposed to understanding. Example: solid geometry is harder than plane geometry because it needs a better imagination; his cardboard models of the solid figures of Euclid’s last books hung from the porch lights (twelve-sided figures etc.) — without imagining them “you’re kind of lost.”
• Consequently: in the perfect beatitude expected in heaven after the resurrection, from the beatitude of the soul there is a flow-back/overflow into the body and bodily senses so that they are perfected in their operations (Augustine, Epistle to Dioscorus; “clearer below when one treats of the resurrection”). Thomas elsewhere: sense pleasures compatible with beatitude are added — seeing or hearing something beautiful; but no pleasure of eating steak, French fries or sipping wine. “Eat at my table” is metaphorical; student: the Lord ate fish after the resurrection — “well, he was Middle Eastern.”
• The operation by which the mind is joined to God does not depend on the senses: God is both what you see and that by which you see Him; you could not see Him as He is unless He Himself became the form of your mind.

4. Replies to the objections, with asides (“union to the universal fountain of all good”) #

• Ad 1: the objection proves sense operation is required antecedently to the imperfect beatitude of this life.
• Ad 2: perfect beatitude, as the angels have it, has the congregation of all goods through union to the universal fountain of all good, not needing particular goods; imperfect beatitude requires a congregation of sufficient goods for the perfect operation of this life.
  • Aside: better to say God is “something” or “everything”? Everything, “in a simple way.” “Something” is opposed to nothing, so God is not nothing; but “something” tends to imply a particular thing (as “sometimes” implies not all the time) — He is more a thing by being everything, in a superior way. Aside: reading the treatise on angels, he imagines his guardian angel calling the others over to enjoy “our buffoonery” in trying to understand angels.
• Ad 3: in perfect beatitude the whole man is perfected — “even your toenails” — but the lower part by overflow from the higher; in the imperfect beatitude of this life it is the reverse: from perfection of the lower part one proceeds to perfection of the higher.
  • Application: grade-school children should be memorizing, not discussing; Flannery O’Connor on eighth-graders consulted about what literature they like: irrelevant, they are there to be informed, they have no taste yet. Mozart and Palestrina “might have something to show us.” Aside: Mozart died in his 36th year; what he may be preparing “up there”; a concert for Pope Benedict, a Mozart lover, who is not likely to canonize him.

5. Article 4, objections: does beatitude consist in an act of the will? (“this is a kind of a controversial thing”) #

He notes five objections and reads them.

1. Augustine, City of God XIX (“beautiful discourse on peace”): man’s beatitude consists in peace; Psalm 147, qui posuit fines tuos pacem; peace pertains to the will. Aside: prayers for the dead — “eternal rest” refers to the will (peace, “rest in peace”), “perpetual light” to the reason.
2. Beatitude is the highest good (summum bonum); the good is the object of the will. “Nice argument.”
3. To the first mover corresponds the last end, as victory is the end of the whole army and of its leader (“no substitute for victory,” which he attributes to “Gregory” as heard; he adds “no substitute for seeing God”); the first mover to operating is the will, which moves the other powers.
   • Aside from the treatise on angels: an angel cannot naturally know our cogitationes because the use of our knowledge depends on our will; nor the mysteries of grace, which depend on God’s will, except as God reveals it. Thomas says the angels knew of the incarnation from the moment of their beatitude, but not all its mysteries; so he doubts Thomas agreed with those who say the fallen angels were tempted to pride by the incarnation (foreknowledge rejected) — “some people say that.”
4. Beatitude must be man’s noblest operation; loving God (will) is nobler than knowing (understanding), per the Apostle: the greatest of these is charity (1 Corinthians, “three” as heard [ed.: likely 13]).
5. Augustine, De Trinitate XIII: blessed is he who has everything he wants and wants nothing bad; he adds that the blessed one wishes well whatever he wishes, and of the goods that make him blessed he already has one, the good will.
6. Sed contra: John 17 (“that number seventeen showing up again”): this is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God; eternal life is the last end; so beatitude consists in knowledge of God, an act of the — “will. Understanding. Just testing.” Also Psalm 62 on seeing God’s power and glory.

6. Thomas’s argument: the achievement of the end is not an act of the will (“the will is carried towards the end”) #

Point: two things are required, the essence of beatitude and a per se accident, a property following upon it (he renders per se as “do itself”: “do being blessed, you are pleased” — you don’t have beatitude if you’re not pleased, but is being pleased the beatitude or what follows on it?). As to the essence, it is impossible that it be an act of the will:

1. Beatitude is the achievement (consecutio) of the last end.
2. The achievement of the end is not the act of the will, because the will is carried to the end both when it is absent (desiring it) and when it is present (delighting, resting in it).
3. Desire for the end is manifestly not the achievement but a motion toward it.
4. Delight comes to the will from the end’s being present, not the reverse (the end is not present because the will delights).
5. So something other than the act of the will is needed through which the end is made present to the will. “What do you think of that argument?” — student: “I’ll take his word for it.”

7. His own supporting arguments: love, desire, pleasure (“three basic acts of the appetite”) #

• If you said love is the end: you can love the end when you have it and when you don’t; so how can love itself be the end?
• A second line Thomas sometimes uses: the first act of the will cannot have the act of the will as its object, just as the first thing understood is not our understanding. Example: his mother’s letters — the first letter ever written cannot be about something in a letter; only a second letter can report what a letter said. So if the first thing willed is the last end, and the first thing willed cannot be the act of the will, beatitude cannot be in the act of the will — “a very empty act.”
• Three basic acts of appetite: love/liking (most basic), desire, pleasure/delight. Desire arises from love in the absence of the beloved, pleasure in its presence or possession. Hence in God’s will there is love and delight/joy but no desire, since He lacks no good and nothing is added to His goodness by us.
• Ranking the candidates: desire is most obviously not the end (you lack what you desire); love — you can be cut off from what you love and still love it; pleasure is the best candidate, which is why Aristotle’s final consideration of happiness in Ethics X takes up pleasure — but he concludes pleasure follows upon the good rather than being the good. His comparison: pleasure perfects the act as beauty perfects youth — not its essence but something following upon being young (“you lose your good looks as you get older, at least Owen does”).

8. Rereading the argument: why desire is most known; steak, money, and the intelligible end (“he grabs it with his hand”) #

• Rereading: consecutio, “the achievement of the end, I should say,” not merely getting to it. Desire is a motus, and that is why desire is the act of the will (and of the emotions) most known to us: what is like a motion is most known (Shakespeare: things in motion catch the eye). Hence the powers are called appetitive, named from appetitus, desire, though desire is neither the basic act (love) nor the culminating one (delight). Parallel: Shakespeare defines reason as the ability for discourse, from the Latin for running around; reasoning, the motion-like act (from the known or more known or probable to a conclusion), gives reason its name.
• Delight comes to the will when the end is present — “after,” not necessarily in time but as effect after cause (“looking before and after”). Example: if I like steak, I am delighted because the steak is present, not the reverse; he chose steak over salmon. Aside: at the Restoration Society meeting in California his last day was a Friday — salmon, “offer it up.”
• Thomas’s sensible example: if getting money were by the act of the will, the one desiring money would have it at once; but it is absent until he grabs it with his hand, and then delights in the money had. “What a crude man this Thomas was” — against the flowery examples and “existential musings” of modern philosophers that don’t help you see.
• So too with the intelligible end: from the beginning we wish to attain it, but we arrive at it by its being present through an act of the understanding, and then the will delights and rests in the end attained. You first attain God as He is in Himself by the act of reason, arrive at the good that is every good, and then have complete rest of will.
• Conclusion: the essence of beatitude consists in the act of the understanding; to the will pertains the delight following upon it, as Augustine (Confessions X) says beatitude is gaudium de veritate — defining it by what follows upon it. Another Augustine line he has seen: “the vision is the whole reward.” The gaudium is the consummation of beatitude, as pleasure is the consummation of understanding the Pythagorean theorem — delight when you see the beautiful theorem. Recording ends here.

His words #

• essentially / antecedently / consequently: the three ways something pertains to beatitude; “before and after,” “looking before and after” (Shakespeare).
• phantasm: the image without which we cannot understand.
• grex: his guess at the Latin behind “bringing together of all goods” (flock).
• “see” (of God): a word equivocal by reason, carried over from the eye.
• flow back / overflow / flowing down: the redounding of the soul’s beatitude into body and senses after the resurrection.
• sufficient goods: what imperfect beatitude of this life requires, vs. all goods through the universal fountain.
• something vs. everything (of God): God is everything “in a simple way.”
• summum bonum: the highest good, beatitude.
• cogitationes: our thoughts, which an angel cannot naturally know.
• per se accident, property: “do itself” — what follows upon beatitude as such (delight).
• consecutio: the achievement of the end (corrected from “getting to”).
• motus: desire as a movement toward the end.
• love/liking, desire/wanting, pleasure/delight: the three basic acts of appetite; love most basic.
• appetitus / appetitive (desiring) powers: named from desire, the act most known.
• discourse: Shakespeare’s definition of reason, from “running around.”
• gaudium de veritate: Augustine’s “joy of truth,” beatitude defined by what follows on it.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 3, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, response, replies).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 3, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, response; replies not reached).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, On the Soul III (no understanding without phantasm).
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy III (beatitude as state perfected by all goods).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (beatitude the perfect good); X (pleasure; beauty and youth comparison).
• Aristotle, Politics (a philosopher’s opinion that listening to music is man’s end).
• Augustine, Epistle to Dioscorus; City of God XIX (peace); De Trinitate XIII; Confessions X (gaudium de veritate); “the vision is the whole reward” (unlocated).
• Psalm 147 (qui posuit fines tuos pacem); Psalm 62; John 17; 1 Corinthians (charity the greatest).
• Thomas, treatise on angels, Prima Pars (angels’ knowledge of thoughts and of the mysteries of grace; clarity of glorified bodies) — no locus given.
• Euclid, the last books (solid figures).

His questions #

• What does “see” mean in “beatific vision”? Not the eye’s seeing; the word is equivocal by reason.
• Is God “something” or “everything”? Everything, in a simple way; “something” suggests a particular thing, though He is not nothing.
• Will there be pleasures of the senses in heaven? Yes, compatible ones (seeing, hearing beautiful things) by overflow after the resurrection; not eating and drinking, which the Lord speaks of metaphorically.
• Does “eternal rest” or “perpetual light” refer to the will? Eternal rest/peace to the will; perpetual light to the reason.
• Is being pleased your beatitude, or something that follows upon it as such? It follows upon it as a property; you lack beatitude if not pleased, but it is not the essence.
• What do you think of that argument (that achievement of the end is not an act of will)? Student: “I’ll take his word for it”; he then gives his own supporting arguments.
• If love is the end, how can you love the end when you don’t have it? You can; so love itself cannot be the end.
• Which act of the will is the best candidate for beatitude? Pleasure — which is why Aristotle ends with it in Ethics X — but it follows upon the good rather than being it.
• Why are the powers named “appetitive,” from desire? Because desire, being like a motion, is the act most known to us, as reasoning names reason.
• Is the steak present because I delight in it, or do I delight because it is present? I delight because it is present; delight follows the end’s presence as effect follows cause.