Circumstances of Human Acts and Whether the Will Wants Only the Good (Q.7 aa.3–4; Q.8 a.1)

Orientation #

He begins by “just reading Thomas there again” on the proemium to the Metaphysics (not tied to a prior class), and refers back to “as has been said above” that human acts are voluntary. He ends: “take a little break here now before we go to article two” (q. 8, a. 2). The previous class covered ignorance and the involuntary and the opening articles on circumstances; the next treats q. 8 on whether the will is of the end only or also of the means.

The class, in order #

1. Why the practical sciences are least certain (“wisdom is more certain than the other sciences”) #

The point: circumstances are the source of the relative incertitude of practical science.

1. Aristotle’s principle (Posterior Analytics): the science requiring fewer things to consider is more certain; example, arithmetic more certain than geometry.
2. Thomas’s gloss: geometry’s fundamental thing is the point, arithmetic’s the one; the point adds position (“here or there”) to the one; hence Euclid must distinguish cases by arrangement, while “the one is nowhere.”
3. Natural science adds more (from the geometrical body to “your body or my body or the dog’s body”).
4. Least certain are the practical sciences, “because you have to consider all these circumstances.”

2. q. 7, a. 3: are the circumstances suitably enumerated? (“quis quid ubi quibus auxiliis”) #

The point: he reads the three objections, sed contra, and Cicero’s list.

• Obj. 1: circumstances are what stands outside the act; the outside things are time and place; so only two, where and when.
• Obj. 2: from circumstances comes doing well or badly; that is the mode of the act; so all circumstances reduce to one, the modus agendi.
• Obj. 3: circumstances are outside the substance of the act, but causes belong to its substance; so quis (efficient), propter quid (final), circa quid (material) are not circumstances.
• Sed contra: the authority of the Philosopher, Ethics III.
• Corpus, first part: Tullius/Cicero in his Rhetoric assigns seven, in the verse quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando (who, what, where, by what aids, why, in what way, when). Aside on “cur”: Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, “nice, concise.” Thomas summarizes in the same order: “whodunit”; by what instruments; what; where; why; in what way; when.
• Aristotle in Ethics III adds one, circa quid (“about whom or about what”), which Cicero comprehends under quid.
• Asides: Cicero has many names (first, second, family name); Cicero calls Aristotle “a golden river,” speaking of his Rhetoric — “maybe he got some of this from Aristotle. Who knows?”

3. The rule of two or three: Thomas’s derivation of the list (“touches upon the cause of the act”) #

The point: Cicero and Aristotle did not follow “the rule of two or three”; Thomas does, so the number can be understood.

1. A circumstance is what is outside the substance of the act but in some way touches it.
2. It can touch (a) the act itself, (b) its cause (before it), (c) its effect (after it).
3. (a) The act itself, either by way of a measure — time and place (as in natural philosophy time measures motion, place the thing in place; both under Quantity in the Categories, whose species are distinguished by measurement) — or by way of quality of the act, the modus agendi. “He divides that first into two, and one of the two into two.”
4. (c) The effect: quid, what someone did (this covers Aristotle’s addition).
5. (b) The cause: final cause, propter quid; material cause or object, circa quid; agent cause divided into principal (quis, “whodunit”) and instrument (quibus auxiliis). Example: “I robbed you with a gun” — that I did it, and what I used; a gun is more serious than a stick “or just growling at you.” Comparison: Porphyry’s Isagoge enumerates five (“the book of the five names”), Aristotle’s Categories ten (“the book of the ten names”); to understand why five or ten one must divide by two or three — Porphyry’s five: essential (genus, difference, species) vs. non-essential (property, accident), each subdivided; Thomas divides the ten into three (said of an individual substance as what it is, as something in it, as something outside it) and subdivides the second and third. Aristotle’s text does not give the rule of two or three; Thomas does — “this is known as breaking the bread,” since otherwise the mind gets “indigestion, a constipated mind.” Distinction: enumeration vs. division — enumeration is just counting (seventeen grandchildren, the Ten Commandments one through ten); division is logical (two tablets, three and seven, the seven subdivided; likewise the seven sacraments). Asides: confirmation students who could not collectively name the seven sacraments (adding “graduation”); a bishop on EWTN whose catechism priest said “you all know the catechism, now we’re going to do some St. Thomas… the five ways”; Warren Murray’s grade-school nun doing the Summa; one confirmation student in twenty could name the Pope; a girl answering “seven for boys and six for girls.”

4. Replies of a. 3 (“something that falls upon all the circumstances”) #

• Ad 1: time and place stand around the act by way of measure; the others attain it in some other way while still outside its substance. “Substance” here means what a thing is: Aristotle’s and Plato’s logos tes ousias, Latin ratio substantiae, since logos has so many meanings.
• Ad 2: the mode “well or badly” is not laid down as a circumstance but something falling upon all of them — eating candy in church, a ribeye steak on Friday (“especially not a Good Friday”): badly done because of any circumstance. The special circumstance modus agendi is the quality of the act: walking swiftly or slowly, striking fortiter or lightly (“only touched him” / “he knocked me to the floor”). Anecdotes: Sister “Cannonball” Corona and the pointer stick (“how hard did you come down?”); sisters with “eyes in the back of her head”; Sister Carolyn, “Look at the person to whom you are speaking.” Dr. Johnson’s rule to Boswell on beating schoolboys: no case unless permanent damage — “where did you hit him, how hard, did you blind him.” Any circumstance can make an action good, bad, worse, or not so bad.
• Ad 3: the condition of a cause on which the substance of the act depends is not a circumstance, but a condition joined to it. Object: that the thing is another’s is the substance of theft, not a circumstance; that it is large or small is a circumstance (stealing pennies “maybe shouldn’t be bothered to be punished”). Aside: “hate crimes” are like taking a circumstance (stole from a black man because I hate blacks); joke about the vegetarian who hates plants. End: the end that gives species is not a circumstance but an adjunct end is — the courageous man acting on account of the good of courage vs. acting for the liberation of the city. Circa quid: pouring water over someone is not a circumstance of washing, but that it is cold or hot is. “You can see how touchy the circumstance business can be” and how it contributes to incertitude — the man walking to the drugstore: to get penicillin for his mother-in-law’s infection… “because he knows she’s allergic to it.” Aside: the neighbour boy who smashes the potted plants — “what do you do in those circumstances?”

5. q. 7, a. 4: which circumstances are chief? (“those in which there is the operation”) #

The point: Aristotle (Ethics III) says the chief are “on account of which” and “those in which there is the operation.”

• Obj. 1: “in which there is operation” seems to mean place and time (the first meaning of “in” is in place, with in-time attached; Thomas’s commentary on Physics IV treats place and time), which are most extrinsic. His illustration: does it matter where or when I kill you? Yet “kill a guy in church, it’s different” — the Renaissance Florentine murders timed for the consecration: not the substance of the act (they want to kill the man), but it adds sacrilege, so worse in church than on the street; still a circumstance outside the act.
• Obj. 2: the end is extrinsic to the thing, so not chief.
• Obj. 3: chief in each thing is its cause and its form; the cause of an act is the person acting, its form is its mode; so these two are chief.
• Sed contra: “Gregory of Nyssa” — the footnote says Nemesius (“is he a doctor of the church?” — left open): the chief circumstances are cuius gratia and what is done; Aristotle says the same.
• Corpus: (1) acts are properly human insofar as voluntary; (2) the mover and object of the will is chiefly the end; (3) so the chiefest (principalissima, the superlative) circumstance is what touches the act on the side of the end, cuius gratia; (4) second, what touches the substance of the act, what he did; (5) the others are more or less chief as they approach these.

6. Replies of a. 4 and a digression on obscure philosophers (“two steps forward, three steps back”) #

• Ad 1: “the first objection based upon misunderstanding” — the Philosopher does not mean time and place but what is joined to the act itself; Gregory/Nemesius, expounding him, says “what” in place of in quibus est operatio.
• Digression: with modern philosophers you spend most of your time figuring out what they say and little judging whether it is true — a St. Mary’s College professor still trying to figure out what Heidegger meant by being three years later; Hegel’s deathbed remark that no one understood him; “much more prefer a guy who says water is the beginning of everything,” whom you can argue with. “It’s a method I call ’two steps forward, three steps back.’” The senior paper: “desiccation is a greater problem with land animals” vs. plain “drying out” — the familiar word lets you judge true or false at once. Aristotle “uses words the way men use them in daily speech.” Ratzinger’s Communio talk urging scholars out of closed vocabularies, answering “who are you talking about?” with “chiefly myself, I suppose.” His brother at Notre Dame using words professors dare not ask about. Belloc at Oxford: “You fools, I made the whole thing up.”
• Ad 2: the end, though not the substance of the act, is its chief cause — causa causarum — as it moves one to act; hence most of all a moral act has its species from its end.
• Ad 3: the person acting is a cause of the act according as he is moved by the end; his other conditions are not chiefly ordered to the act. The mode is not the substantial form (that is noted from object and term or end) but an accidental quality; the objection took form as substantial form.

7. q. 8 proemium: the plan of the acts of the will (“the acts of the will towards the end seem to be three”) #

The point: he lays out the structure. Acts elicited by the will first, then acts commanded by the will (q. 17). Of elicited acts: those toward the end first, then those toward the things for the end (q. 13). Toward the end there are three acts: velle (to will/wish), frui (to enjoy, q. 11), intendere (to intend, q. 12) — “Thank goodness, three… seems pretty complete.” Of velle: of what things the will is (q. 8), by what it is moved (q. 9), in what way (q. 10). “He’s very thorough.” q. 8 asks: whether the will is only of the good; whether only of the end or also of the means; if of the means, whether by one motion. Aside: reading Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons on the Song of Songs — at sermon forty-two still in the first chapter, a sermon per line; Montaigne likewise spends a classic on one or two lines; “it takes a while to absorb these things.”

8. q. 8, a. 1: the objections, and how the mind ties knots (“the same power is of opposites”) #

The point: three reasons the will seems not to be only of the good.

• Obj. 1: the same power is of opposites — sight of white and black, taste of sweet and bitter (bitter, not sour or salty, is the contrary of sweet; salty is “not as far away,” bittersweet chocolate “brings opposites together”); good and bad are opposites; so the will is of the bad too. Student: reason thinks both true and false, so the will must will both; brother wills to go to the dentist, a bad thing.
• Obj. 2: rational powers are for opposites (Metaphysics IX: a natural power is determined to one, fire heats not cools; the doctor can heal or kill, the rhetorician persuade for or against, guilty or not guilty, “whichever they’re paying me”); the will is in reason (De Anima III); so the will is of the bad — “these terrorists… willing bad things for ambassadors.”
• Obj. 3: good and being are convertible, but we will non-beings — to not walk, to not speak, future things.
• Aside on the Poetics: plot is the soul of tragedy, divided into beginning, middle, end (defined by before and after); in the Metaphysics the philomythos is in a way a philosopher, loving to know the before and after; the other division, tying and untying the knot — “just what Thomas does”; the young poet is better at tying than untying, and so is the mind; left to Voltaire’s objections “we’d just be tied in a knot and give up” — the Minnesota student whose contradicting professors drove him to the farm, refusing to pick up a book. The Summa is an abbreviation of the Quaestiones disputatae; proper teaching would give the objections and let the student struggle “for a day or two.”

9. Sed contra and corpus: the will is of the good (“the good is what all want”) #

• Sed contra: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 — the bad is outside the will’s part, and all want the good; Aristotle says the same at the beginning of the Ethics, by a kind of induction.
• Corpus: (1) the will is rational desire; (2) all desire is only of the good, because desire is nothing but the inclination of the desirer toward something; (3) nothing is inclined except toward what is like it and suitable to it; (4) everything, insofar as it is a being and a substance, is good; (5) so its inclination is to the good — hence Ethics I, “the good is what all want.”
• His Socratic illustration: ask a boy “what is good?” — candy, popcorn, hot dogs, baseball; what they have in common is that he wants them, the first notion of good; his own little boy, “a good meal” if he likes it; next step: “is it good because you want it, or do you want it because it’s good?” “But here Thomas is arguing a little differently” — from inclination to the like, and you are by nature good.
• Further: every inclination follows a form; natural desire follows a form existing in nature (the plant grows toward the sun and down to water), sense desire and the will follow a form grasped. So the will’s object need not be good in reality but grasped under the notion of good; the Physics: the end is a good or an apparent good. “This is very fundamental stuff.”
• Illustration: he was drawn to the bishop by shared likes (Shakespeare, Bernard, Protestant father and Catholic mother); one is drawn to what is like oneself — not to a man who likes Mick Jagger.

10. Replies: velle and nolle, opposites under the good, beings of reason (“Thomas made up that word”) #

• Ad 1: the same power is of opposites, but not in the same way: of the good by desiring, of the bad by fleeing (fugiendo, cf. fuga). Actual desire of the good is voluntas as naming an act; flight from the bad is nolle — volentes of the good, nolentes of the bad; “Thomas made up that word.” Comparison with the mind: it knows the false only as false, which is true; can you know that two is half of five? You can think it, being in error — “the only thing worse than ignorance is error”; “men don’t get into trouble by the things they don’t know but the things they know that ain’t so.” Aside: getting up in the morning to read a little Thomas.
• Ad 2: a rational power does not pursue any opposites whatever but those under its suitable object (convenience, “coming together,” harmony); the will’s object is the good, so it pursues opposites comprehended under good — to move and to rest, to speak and to be silent (“a time to talk and a time not to talk”; “speak now or forever hold your peace”). Father Hardon: one of the will’s most important uses is to direct the mind what to think about. Cases: whether to tell a wife of her husband’s infidelity; a recommendation that must reveal a man’s lack of qualification.
• Ad 3: what is not a being in reality is taken as a being in reason; negations and lacks are beings of reason (ignorance is a lack, “being of reason”), and future things as apprehended are beings — dinner tonight exists in your mind, not yet in reality; so the will tends to them; Ethics V, the lack of evil has the notion of good. Bonaventure: the saints think about hell, doubling their joy; they remain humble, still fear God — the Psalm, “fear of the Lord is holy, enduring forever,” not fear of punishment; useful for a student’s master’s thesis on fear.

His words #

• rule of two or three: Thomas’s way of dividing so an enumeration can be understood; “breaking the bread”
• enumeration vs. division: counting vs. logical division
• modus agendi: the mode, a circumstance of quality (swiftly, forcefully); “well or badly” falls upon all circumstances
• substance of the act: what it is; logos tes ousias, ratio substantiae
• circa quid: Aristotle’s added circumstance, “about whom or about what”
• cuius gratia: “for the sake of which,” the chiefest circumstance; principalissima, “the superlative”
• causa causarum: the end as chief cause
• “the book of the five names” / “the book of the ten names”: Isagoge / Categories
• “two steps forward, three steps back”: his name for obscure modern method
• philomythos: lover of plots, in a way a philosopher
• tying / untying the knot: division of plot; what objections and Thomas do to the mind
• velle / nolle; volentes / nolentes: desiring the good / fleeing the bad
• convenience: etymologically “coming together,” fitting
• being of reason: negations, lacks, apprehended future things

Texts #

Read in class:

• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 7, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 7, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 8, proemium and a. 1
• Cicero’s verse of the seven circumstances (in the corpus of a. 3) Mentioned:
• Thomas, proemium to the Metaphysics commentary (inferred); Aristotle, Posterior Analytics; Aristotle, Ethics III (circumstances), I (“the good is what all want”), V (lack of evil has notion of good); Categories (quantity); Porphyry, Isagoge; Thomas’s commentary on Physics IV (place and time); Aristotle, Physics (end is a good or apparent good); Metaphysics IX (rational powers for opposites); Metaphysics (philomythos); De Anima III; Poetics (plot, knot); Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4; Gregory of Nyssa / Nemesius; Anselm, Cur Deus Homo; Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs; Boswell’s Life of Johnson; Bonaventure on the saints and hell; Psalm on fear of the Lord.

His questions #

• Have Tullius and Aristotle followed the rule of two or three? No; Thomas does, dividing what touches the act itself, its cause, and its effect.
• What’s the difference between an enumeration and a division? Enumeration just counts; division is logical (two tablets, three and seven).
• Is “well or badly” a circumstance? Not a circumstance but something falling upon all of them; the special circumstance is the mode.
• Does it make a difference where or when I kill you? In a way, yes: killing in church adds sacrilege, but it is still outside the act’s substance.
• Which circumstance is chiefest, and why? The end (cuius gratia), because human acts are voluntary and the end moves the will; then what he did.
• Is it good because you want it, or do you want it because it’s good? Left open as posed to his son; Thomas argues from inclination toward the like and suitable.
• Can the mind know the false — that two is half of five? No; it can think it in error, and error is worse than ignorance.
• So is the will of both the good and the bad? Yes, but not in the same way: the good by desiring, the bad by fleeing (nolle).
• Is being ignorant a being in reality? No, a lack, a being of reason.
• Is Nemesius a doctor of the church? Left open.