Whether Sense Desire Moves the Will, and Whether the Will Moves Itself (Question 9, Articles 2–3)

Orientation #

He begins directly at the second article and closes at the end of the third, remarking “we divided these six articles into three and three” and that the rest waits for next time; the body of a. 2 opens “as has been said above”, referring back to a. 1 on the object moving the will (prev. lecture). The previous class covered the “rule of two or three” and aa. 1–3 of q. 9; the next takes aa. 4–6.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“It seems that the will is not able to be moved by sense desire”) #

The point: three objections against sense desire moving the will, which he calls “beautiful”, and James against them.

1. Objection 1: the agent is more outstanding (praestantius) than the patient (Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter XII; Aristotle argues the same way about the acting understanding being at least as immaterial as the undergoing understanding); sense desire is below the will as sense is below understanding; so it cannot move the will. Example: “the corporal moving the general — just never done.”
2. Objection 2: no particular power makes a universal effect; sense desire is particular, following the particular knowing of sense (sense knows good and bad only as agreeable or disagreeable, “a very limited way of knowing the good”); the will’s motion is universal, following universal understanding (Aristotle in the Rhetoric: “we hate the whole genus of thieves”). So sense desire cannot move it.
3. Objection 3: Physics VIII, the mover is not moved by what it moves, else motion would be reciprocal; the will moves sense appetite insofar as it obeys reason; so sense appetite does not move the will.

• Sed contra: James, “each one is tempted by his own concupiscence and drawn away” — concupiscentia means sense desire primarily, not the will; one would not be drawn away unless his will were moved by sense desire, in which concupiscence is (the concupiscible appetite).

2. Body: suitability depends on both extremes (“From the condition of what is proposed”) #

The point: what is grasped as good and suitable moves the will by way of object; that something seems suitable comes from two things, the thing proposed and the one to whom it is proposed.

• Suitability is said secundum relationem, so depends on both extremes; hence a taste (gustus) diversely disposed takes the same thing as suitable or not. Example: the experienced wine-taster knows the first glass will taste different. He notes the same holds of the mind: something “seems so to your mind” partly from what is said, partly from what is inside you — custom and the like.
• Ethics III: “such as a man is, so does the end seem to him” (qualis… talis). He connects this with the permanence of damnation: the qualis cannot change once you are dead — “where the tree falls, there it lies” (scripture); “your will could be fixed in the bad — a terrible thought.”
• On the Soul III: people who act badly pursue what seems good here and now without looking before and after; man is the animal with the sense of time; only in time can you change how you are, by changing the habit or disposition, and then things seem different.
• Aside: no children in heaven, all “back at the age of thirty-three”; mothers missing the age when the child sat in their lap; the “spice of life” of telling the husband what the child did today — different times of life, “we’re not the same exactly.”

3. Passion changes disposition (“Man is changed to some disposition”) #

The point: according to passion (the undergoing of the sense appetite) a man is changed to a disposition — “disposition” being the weaker, more general word of the Categories against “habit” — so that in a passion something seems suitable which would not outside it.

• Example: in anger it may seem suitable to hit or kill someone; later, when the anger has gone down, you regret it.
• Shakespeare’s two lovers “in the very wrath of love — clubs cannot part them”: a magnificent metaphor because it joins two strong emotions, one irascible, one concupiscible, that have a likeness; you need clubs to separate two fighting dogs and sometimes a man and a woman. That is why the powers are named the irascible and the concupiscible: they “go at each other in different ways.” A student adds Pope John Paul’s poem on mining, coupling anger and love — anger directed at the difficult good you love.
• Shakespeare again: “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs” — the emotions most like motion give their names to the faculties: desire is more like motion than love or liking; joy is a resting in what you wanted, wanting a seeking.
• Digression: three words Aristotle uses for the science in the Metaphysics — methodos, episteme, zetesis; the proemium ends “in this zetesis and methodos”. Zetesis is a search, a seeking; episteme (he renders “reasoned-out knowledge/understanding”) means coming to a halt, something perfect at the end. Philosophy in the beginning is a zetesis, like the pro and con at the head of each article; Euclid needs little zetesis, the harder sciences more; modern philosophy is “a zetesis without any episteme, and they even admit it.” A student cites David Tracy at the anniversary of Lonergan’s Insight: theology is all about the journey, we don’t know where we come from or where we’re going — “why bother?” Thomas in the commentary on St Paul: if a man at this stage does not know the articles of faith and the commandments, time is going against him.

4. “It’s not for me”: the side of the subject (“It’s my thing, right?”) #

The point: on the side of the object, what seems suitable, the sense appetite moves the will; the distinction is that suitability is partly on the side of the thing, partly on the side of you.

• Examples: trying to interest someone in something good and they say “it’s not for me”; the opposite, “this is my thing” — his own judgement that Bach is the best music ever written probably “fits me in some way,” and he could be (happily) deceived; likewise Shakespeare.
• Food: the nutritional value of insects, insect sections in supermarkets, chocolate-coated ants that tasted fine “until I knew what it was,” frog legs “taste like chicken,” snakes in the Southwest, Hamburger Helper — the same thing suitable to one gustus and not another.

5. Reply to objection 1: simply vs. in some way (“Insofar as he is subject to the passion”) #

The point: nothing prevents what is simply and secundum se more outstanding from being weaker in some respect — “again that famous distinction”: simply vs. in some way.

• The will is simply more outstanding than sense desire; but as regards the one in whom passion dominates, insofar as he is subject to it, sense desire is preeminent. So emotion can be more powerful than the will “in some way, but not simply”; the man is held responsible for following his passion.
• Homer, Iliad I (Lattimore translation): Achilles and Agamemnon, noble men dominated by their anger; Achilles does not come in until his friend is killed, the friend whose father he had promised “I’ll bring him back alive.” Hera in her perfume distracting Zeus from governing the universe until he wakes and finds something has gone wrong — Homer’s gods very human. Aside: the “natural theology fragments” where Heraclitus and others mock the gods and statue-worship — “as if a man should talk to his house.”

6. Reply to objection 2: actions are about singulars (“actions and choices of men are about singulars”) #

The point: since human actions and choices are about singulars, the very particularity of sense desire gives it great power, disposing a man so that things seem thus or otherwise about singular things.

• Example: a man knows universally that adultery is wrong, but “you don’t commit adultery in general”; this woman under these circumstances seems desirable, and the act is in the singular. Aristotle in the Ethics: the universal does not move you unless you apply it; the universal is “kind of remote.” He calls this the turn that answers the objection based on universal vs. singular.
• Corollary: why fiction is so powerful — “the universal singularized or the singular universalized,” involving the whole man.
• Why the Secunda Secundae is needed: to descend more to singulars; why Pius XII made [name unclear in recording] rather than Thomas the patron of moral theologians and confessors — he descends more to particulars, necessary for the practice of moral theology.
• Aristotle, proemium to Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics I]: sensing, memory, experience, art and science; as far as acting is concerned experience is not inferior to art and often more successful. Examples: nausea — some are helped by ginger ale, popcorn or vodka, others made worse by wine; he might know his own peculiar nature better than the doctor; his own night popcorn in Nova Scotia against nausea from headache medicine. The psychologist knows the kinds of mental illness, but a parent or friend who knows this person may cure their depression better — a bottle of wine, Mozart, a good cry and a nap, peaches; St Philip Neri curing a depressed brother by challenging him to a race, knowing he needed exercise. “Action is in the singular.”
• But the man of art is wiser because he knows why. Tea: from experience he knows loose tea left more than about four minutes goes bad (tea bags, made from the cheapest small leaves, get strong at once); the chemist knows that after six or seven minutes different chemicals with different release times come out. Overcooked meat loses flavour; construction workers rolling their eyes at the architect, who leaves things “to be determined by the field conditions”; the men at his father’s factory who had made farm wagons for thirty or forty years rejecting a board he chose from the woodlot.
• “In the light of what he says in many places” the solution: being about the singular seems inferior as to knowing, but as to doing it is more important. “I’ll make an exception of this woman”: The Blue Angel — the pedantic professor seduced by Marlene Dietrich, his whole life as a teacher destroyed; Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure — Angelo, “the angelic one,” who smiled at other men’s weaknesses until he met this one; the title is from scripture.
• Aside: people are influenced in moral judgement by literature, even bad television; Father Owen Bennett (directed study in literature and aesthetics) said most people will not read the saints or scripture, but they will read good literature, so a priest who knows it can influence them more than by preaching.

7. Reply to objection 3: royal, not despotic, rule (“not by a despotic principle”) #

The point: reason, in which part of the soul the will is, moves the irascible and concupiscible by its command not as a master moves a slave but by a royal or political rule, as free men are ruled by a governor and can move against him; so they can move to the contrary of what the will moves, and nothing prevents the will sometimes being moved by them.

• Aristotle, Politics I, asked whether the emotions are ruled as a father rules a son or a master a slave; his answer is father and son — “everybody thinks Aristotle says master and slave, but that might be the Stoic something.” Two differences (elicited from students): (1) the master rules the slave for the master’s own good, the father rules the son for the son’s good; (2) the slave has nothing to say about whether he goes to the field today, the son has something to say, so the father consults the son’s inclinations.
• Examples: his father’s business friend who sent his son to Amherst, the son flunked out and, asked what he wanted in life, said a filling station, so the father bought him one; his father never forced his sons into the company despite visitors saying “learning it from the bottom up”; doctors and lawyers who force sons into their profession; a faculty advisor consulting students (“you take Greek — no choice,” but with discretion). As the free man can resist (people resisting Obama’s orders), so sense desire can move against reason though reason is superior; “David had some trouble with his son.”

8. Article 3, objections and sed contra (“It seems that the will does not move itself”) #

The point: will he contradict omne movens inquantum huiusmodi est in actu?

1. Objection 1: every mover as such is in act, whatever is moved is in ability, motion being the act of what exists in ability as such; the same thing is not in potency and act with regard to the same; so nothing moves itself, and neither does the will.
2. Objection 2: the mobile is moved at the presence of the mover; the will is always present to itself; so if it moves itself it would always be being moved — “clearly false.”
3. Objection 3: the will is moved by the understanding; if it also moved itself the same thing would be moved by two movers immediately, which seems unfitting.

• Sed contra: the will is lord of its own act, in it is to will and not to will, which could not be unless it had in its power to move itself to willing — otherwise “it wouldn’t have any free will.”

9. Body and replies: the will moves itself from end to means (“reduces itself from potency and act”) #

The point: as the intellect, actually knowing the beginnings, reduces itself from potency to act as regards the conclusions, so the will, willing the end, moves itself to willing the things toward the end.

• Premise: the will moves the other powers by reason of the end, its object; “the famous proportion of the philosopher”: the end is in desirables as the beginning is in understandables. He notes it is “connected with the fourth tool of dialectic.”
• Example: “I wanted to be happy; then I realized I had to be wise to be happy; then I was moved to pursue wisdom — and even logic.” Aside: the greatest compliment Monsignor Dionne paid him, “you can move yourself.”
• Reply 1: the will is not mover and moved by the same; not in act and in ability by the same; insofar as in act it wills the end, it reduces itself from ability to act regarding the means. Student: what reduces the will from ability to act with regard to the end? Answer: that goes back into nature and the intellect; you do not choose to want to be happy, you naturally will it, as reason naturally knows the axioms without moving itself to them — more a matter of the undergoing understanding; seeing “what the whole and the part is,” you naturally see the whole is greater.
• Reply 2: the power of the will is always present to itself, but the act by which it wills some end is not always present, and it is through that act that it moves itself; hence it does not always move itself — “thank God, I don’t always move myself to study logic.” Aside: his brother Richard taught him logic, so the college gave him the final exam and credit for the course.
• Reply 3: the will is not moved in the same way by the understanding and by itself: by the understanding as regards the object, by itself as regards the exercise of the act according to the ratio of end. He stops here: “the will arrest” for next time, the six articles being divided three and three.

His words #

• praestantius: more outstanding, “stands out” (of the agent over the patient, the will over sense desire).
• sense desire: his rendering of appetitus sensitivus [ed.: sense appetite].
• concupiscentia: sense desire primarily, not the will.
• suitable / convenient (conveniens): said secundum relationem, by relation, depending on both extremes.
• gustus: taste, diversely disposed.
• qualis: how you are; “such as a man is, so does the end seem to him.”
• passion: the undergoing of the sense appetite, “not a word for emotion” in the loose sense.
• disposition vs. habit: the more general, weaker word of the Categories.
• irascible / concupiscible appetite: named from the two intense emotions that “go at each other in different ways.”
• methodos, episteme, zetesis: Aristotle’s three names; zetesis a search or seeking; episteme coming to a halt, “reasoned-out knowledge.”
• simply vs. in some way (simpliciter / secundum quid): “that famous distinction.”
• despotic vs. royal or political rule: master over slave vs. governor over free men.
• ability: his rendering of potentia [ed.: potency].
• undergoing understanding / acting understanding [ed.: possible and agent intellect].
• “the famous proportion of the philosopher”: the end is in desirables as the beginning in understandables.
• proemium to Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics I, 1].

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 9, a. 2 (whole article, in Latin and English)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 9, a. 3 (whole article)
• Aristotle, Politics I (rule of father over son vs. master over slave; two differences)

Mentioned:

• Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter XII (agent more outstanding than patient)
• Aristotle, Rhetoric (“we hate the whole genus of thieves”)
• Aristotle, Physics VIII (mover not moved by what it moves)
• Aristotle, Ethics III (“such as a man is, so the end seems to him”; the universal moves only when applied)
• Aristotle, On the Soul III (man the animal with a sense of time; acting on what seems good here and now)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, proemium (art vs. experience; zetesis and methodos)
• Aristotle, Categories (disposition vs. habit)
• Epistle of James (tempted by his own concupiscence)
• Scripture, “where the tree falls”; “measure for measure”
• Thomas, commentary on St Paul (time running against the man ignorant of the articles and commandments)
• Shakespeare: “in the very wrath of love, clubs cannot part them”; “things in motion sooner catch the eye”; Measure for Measure (Angelo)
• Homer, Iliad I (Lattimore translation); Heraclitus fragments; Pope John Paul’s poem on mining; Lonergan, Insight; David Tracy; film The Blue Angel

His questions #

• “Funny you should even ask that question” — can sense desire, which is below the will, move it? Yes, on the side of the object: passion disposes a man so that something seems suitable to him.
• That something seems good and suitable happens from what two things? From the condition of what is proposed and of the one to whom it is proposed.
• Where does Aristotle say “such as a man is, so does the end seem to him”? Ethics III; he links it to the permanence of the will’s state after death.
• Is emotion more powerful than the will? In some way, in the one dominated by passion; not simply — the man remains responsible.
• How can a particular power move the universal will? Because actions and choices are about singulars, and sense desire is about the singular.
• Which is better for acting, experience or art? Experience is not inferior and often succeeds better; art knows why (tea and the chemist).
• Are the emotions ruled as a father rules a son or a master a slave? Father and son — royal or political rule; the son can resist and is consulted.
• Does Thomas contradict “every mover as such is in act”? No: the will is not mover and moved by the same; in act as to the end, in ability as to the means.
• What reduces the will from ability to act with regard to the end itself? Nature and the intellect; you naturally will happiness, as reason naturally knows the axioms.
• If the will is always present to itself, is it always moving itself? No: the power is always present, the act of willing an end is not.