Summa I-II, Question 9, Articles 4–6: Is the Will Moved by Something Outside It, by the Heavenly Bodies, or by God Alone?

Orientation #

He opens: “we’re up to the fourth article here, I guess, in question nine,” and refers back to the distinction “that he had in the previous article” between specification and exercise, and to the earlier point that the will is in some way moved by the sense appetite (“we saw that before”) (prev. lecture). He ends at a. 6 ad 3, where Thomas defers grace: “we’ll talk about that later,” then calls a break. The previous class treated I-II q. 9 on the sense appetite and the will moving itself; the next treats q. 10 on what the will wills naturally and whether its object moves it of necessity.

The class, in order #

1. Article 4, objections and sed contra (“the will is not moved by something outside”) #

The point: three reasons why the will seems not to be moved by anything exterior, and the sed contra he calls “correct” but not the whole story.

1. Obj. 1: the motion of the will is voluntary, and it is of the notion (ratio, “the definition”) of the voluntary that it be from an intrinsic beginning, just as of the natural. He: “That’s convincing enough, right? But we have to learn to consider more carefully.”
2. Obj. 2: the will cannot undergo violence (shown above), and the violent is what has its source outside.
3. Obj. 3: what is sufficiently moved by one mover needs no other; the will sufficiently moves itself.
4. Sed contra: the will is moved by its object, and the object can be an exterior thing proposed to the senses. He: Thomas grants this, “but we want to talk about something in addition to that.”

2. Article 4, the body: the first motion is from an exterior mover (“this mover cannot go on forever”) #

The point: as moved by its object the will is obviously movable from outside (the “third kind of cause”); but even as to the exercise of its act it must be moved by an exterior source.

1. Everything that is sometimes acting and sometimes only in ability needs a mover; the will manifestly begins to will what before it did not will; so it is moved by something to willing.
2. The will moves itself: willing the end, it leads itself to willing what is for the end (from ability to act as regards the means). But it can only do this “by the middle of counsel,” the act of reason. Example: one wills to be healed, thinks how this can be achieved, finds it can be through medicine, and then wills that. But since it does not always actually will health, it must begin to will to be healed by something moving it; if it moves itself, it does so by counsel and from some willing already presupposed.
3. “The old argument”: this cannot go on forever, so in the first motion of the will the will is brought forth from the instinct of some exterior mover, “as Aristotle himself concludes” in a chapter of the Eudemian Ethics, a passage Thomas often refers to and which is not explicitly in the Nicomachean Ethics. He stresses: “I sometimes say this is the second argument for the unmoved mover”: not only natural motion (Physics) but the movement of the will goes back to an unmoved mover; “that dependence that we have upon God.”

• Student: can the exterior mover be the intellect, something in us? No, because that is the counsel; “the world has to move you before that.” Example: getting up in the morning, not yet willing to get out of bed; “I must depend upon God to eventually issue this command.”
• Student: is the will’s natural inclination sufficient? No; even in natural motion (first argument for the unmoved mover) one does not stop at nature, because it is going from ability to act, which requires something already in act; no infinite regress, “because there’d be nothing first.”
• Aside: a presentation on Newman’s argument from conscience, as reported to him: a man who always follows his conscience, even in error, is “prejudiced” (Newman’s word) to act as God reveals and will be led out of error. He says this is “kind of” like Thomas’s argument but probably not very developed in Newman.
• Aside on Latin word order in Thomas (“when this before it did not will”); the difficulty with Albert the Great; “Warren tells me that that’s German word order.”

3. Article 4, the replies (“proximate beginning that’s within”) #

The point: each objection is answered by distinguishing the proximate from the first beginning.

• Ad 1: the voluntary does have its beginning within, but this intrinsic beginning need not be the first beginning not moved by another; proximate beginning within, very first beginning outside, “just as the first beginning of natural motion is from the outside, which moves nature.” He again notes the likeness of the two arguments: God the unmoved mover behind both natural and voluntary motion; “Aristotle saw this.”
• Ad 2: “the principle be outside” is “not a complete definition” of the violent; one must add that the one undergoing in no way gives strength to it. That does not happen here: it is the will itself which wills, though moved by another. It would be violent only if contrary to the will’s motion, which the thing proposed cannot be, since one cannot will and not will the same thing.
• Ad 3: the will is sufficient in some respect and in its own order, as proximate agent, but not as regards all things; it needs a first mover. Student: needed every time we want something? “To start it, yeah.” So even the sinner is moved by God, but God moves the will in accordance with its nature: it is moved to will, willingly.
• Aside: reading the Summa Contra Gentiles that morning on God’s knowledge of future contingents: God’s causality does not destroy necessity or contingency; things happen, and in the way He wants, some by chance, some by necessity, some by will. Meeting people or picking up a book by chance changes a life; Thomas wanting to be a Dominican, locked in the tower, reading and memorizing.

4. Article 5, objections and sed contra (“moved by a celestial body”) #

The point: the case for the heavens moving the will.

1. Obj. 1: various and multiform motions are reduced to a uniform motion, that of the heaven (Physics VIII); human motions are various and begin after not being. He: “I think some of the Mohammedans thought this.”
2. Obj. 2: Augustine, De Trinitate III, lower bodies are moved by higher; the motions of the human body caused by the will cannot be reduced to the heavens unless the will is. He: “a nice use or misuse of Augustine.”
3. Obj. 3: astrologers foretell some true things about human acts. Example: “spring comes, young men’s thoughts turn to love, as the poet says”; allusions throughout Shakespeare, the Renaissance, the sonnets.
4. Sed contra: Damascene, second book (of the Orthodox Faith, “the book” of Damascene): the celestial bodies are not the causes of our acts.

5. Article 5, the body: no body acts on the will directly (“the will is a power entirely immaterial”) #

The point: the heavens can move the will on the side of the object and through the organs, but the opinion of “some” (quidam) that they directly press upon the will is impossible.

1. As moved by its object, yes: exterior bodies proposed to the senses move the will (the sun shining, we go get some sun), and the organs of the senses are subject to celestial motion.
2. As to exercise, no: the will “is in reason” (De Anima III), meaning not the power called reason but the highest, immaterial part of the soul; reason is not bound to a bodily organ (shown in De Anima III); so the will, like reason, is omnino immaterial and bodiless. He: “you have to read the Physics before you do metaphysics,” otherwise “we think we’re all material things,” like those today who think the brain is the organ of thought.
3. No body can act upon a non-bodily thing, but rather the reverse, because the immaterial is more formal, everything acts insofar as it is in act, and (a student adds) more universal.
4. Aristotle attributes the view (Empedocles; Homer’s “lay there thinking other thoughts” after a blow to the head; “such is the will in man as the father of gods and men makes in the day,” Jupiter standing for the whole heavens) to those who held that understanding does not differ from sense. Example: his brother Mark, knocked unconscious climbing with Brother Edmund, wished he had pretended his whole philosophy had changed.
5. Sense powers, being acts of bodily organs, are moved per accidens by the heavens when their bodies are; and since the will is in some way moved by the sense appetite (something seems suitable according to how the body is disposed), the heavens’ motion redounds indirectly into the will through the passions. Example: the drunkard still admits “nothing too much,” he just does not see that in this case he has had too much; “the way your body is disposed, it can seem good to you to have some more.”

• Aside: a book on New England taverns; in Puritan days an appointed man sat and cut the drinker off at half a pint of wine; a convicted drunkard wore a D on his back for a year, like the scarlet letter A.
• Aside: a funeral where the priest spoke vaguely of “this part of us that’s not material” now “looking down”; people now assume everyone made it first try; his brother’s funeral asked for prayers; the twelve-year-old girl of rural Portugal in purgatory “till the end of the world.”

6. Article 5, the replies: three indirect ways and the astrologers (“the wise man dominates the stars”) #

The point: the multiform motions do reduce to a uniform cause, but an immaterial one; the heavens influence the will only on the side of the object, never by interior instinct.

• Ad 1: the uniform cause is superior to understanding and will, which cannot be said of any body but only of an immaterial substance, “like God or your guardian angel.” Aside: the Rheims New Testament note on “lunatic,” that demons want us to think material things (the moon) bad, so that God is a source of evil or there are two gods.
• Ad 2: bodily human motions are reduced to the heavens insofar as (i) the disposition of the organs is from the celestial impression (“is there some truth to that? I’ll take your word for it”; Warren’s report of a correlation between birth date and character, “the scientists trying to say”; it comes up in King Lear); (ii) the sense appetite is moved by that impression; (iii) exterior bodies are moved by the heavens, from which the will begins to will or not. Example: the cold comes and one wants to make a fire; he put his hat on today (Aunt Margaret: “we’re weak in the head”); “it was me and the heavenly bodies,” student: “by means of your counselor” (his wife). He sums up: three ways the heavens influence the will, but never by acting directly on it; the motion is from the object presented outside, not from an interior instinct, which is the way God uniquely moves us; angels move us by persuasion, on the side of the object.
• Ad 3: the sense appetite is the act of a bodily organ, so the celestial impression can dispose some to be irascible or desiring, as does natural complexion. Examples: drink brings out the natural habitus, one man amorous, another ready for a fight; weekly newspaper stories of drunken quarrels (a soccer game); Alfalfa of Our Gang shot over fifty dollars and a borrowed dog. Most men follow their passions, which “the wise alone resist,” so predictions are verified ut in pluribus; but, Ptolemy in the Centiloquium, “the wise man dominates the stars,” resisting the passions through free will. Student: then why a horoscope in every paper? “Not many men are wise.” Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram II: what astrologers say truly is said by a most hidden instinct which minds undergo unknowingly, the operation of seducing spirits, “the devils helping.”

7. Article 6, objections and sed contra (“moved by God alone, as by an outside beginning”) #

The point: whether anything other than God, chiefly the angel, moves the will from outside.

1. Obj. 1: the lower is apt to be moved by its superior, as lower bodies by the celestial; the angel is above man’s will after God. “So, is your guardian angel able to move your will?”
2. Obj. 2: the will follows the understanding, which is reduced to act not only by God but by the angel through enlightenment (Dionysius). He ties this to the opening prayer to the guardian angels: can they not do the same for the will?
3. Obj. 3: God causes only good things (Genesis 1:31, valde bona); if God alone moved the will, it would never be moved to bad, yet by the will one sins and lives rightly. Student: good angel, bad angel, one on each shoulder; he: “but acting by way of persuasion.”
4. Sed contra: “the apostle” (Paul, by antonomasia, as Peter is the apostle) Philippians 2:13: it is God who works in us to will and to perfect; “not my angel, but God.” He notes this belongs back in a. 4: the exterior principle is God.

8. Article 6, the body: only the cause of the will moves it from within (“nothing other than God Himself”) #

The point: voluntary motion, like natural motion, is from within, and can be caused only by what causes the nature.

1. A natural thing can be moved by what is not the cause of its nature, but its natural motion cannot. Example: a stone thrown upwards by man, violent; its natural downward motion is caused only by what causes its nature; Physics VIII, “the one generating moves the heavy and the light according to place,” as the one who generates the plant is in a sense responsible for its growing.
2. So a man having a will can be moved by what is not his cause, but voluntary motion from an exterior principle that is not the cause of the will is impossible.
3. The human soul comes into existence only by direct creation; even Aristotle in the Generation of Animals has the rational soul coming from outside, not from the parents. Student: because the animal soul is bound to the body? Yes, and caused by transformation of matter; our soul can exist without the body, so gets existence from God and the body shares in it.
4. Thomas’s two reasons: (a) the will is a power of the rational soul, caused by God alone through creation; (b) the will has an order to the universal good, and only God, the universal good, can cause it; every other good is by partaking, a particular good, and a particular cause does not give a universal inclination, just as first matter, in potency to all forms, cannot be caused by a particular agent (it comes by creation). He: “put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

• He stresses: you must do dogmatic theology before moral theology, study the deity and the soul before ethics; “do you think your soul came from your mother and father?” Only the body and its disposition come from the parents (the story of the son who knocks his father down, “it runs in the family”).

9. Article 6, the replies (“God moves the will of man as a universal mover”) #

• Ad 1: the angel is not above man in the way of being the cause of his will, as the heavenly bodies are causes of the natural forms upon which natural motions follow; “my guardian angel didn’t create my soul.”
• Ad 2: the angel moves man’s understanding on the side of the object placed before him, by the power of the angelic light; in this way a creature can be moved from outside.
• Ad 3: God moves the will as universal mover to its universal object, the good, without which man can will nothing (he wills only as good); but man through reason determines himself to this or that, truly good or apparently good; sometimes God moves some determinately to willing something good, as through grace, “we’ll talk about that later.” “That’s great stuff to think about.”

His words #

• “ratio”: the definition or notion (of the natural, of the voluntary).
• “ability” vs “act”: [ed.: potency and act]; “sometimes acting, sometimes only an ability.”
• “specification” vs “exercise” of the act: moved by the object vs. moved to will or not will.
• “the middle of counsel”: the will moves itself only through counsel, the act of reason.
• “instinct of some exterior mover”: Thomas’s phrase for the first motion of the will.
• “second argument for the unmoved mover”: his name for the Eudemian Ethics argument, alongside the Physics argument.
• “the violent”: source outside and the one undergoing gives no strength to it.
• “the will is in reason”: in the intellectual, immaterial part of the soul, not the power called reason.
• “omnino”: altogether (immaterial and bodiless).
• “quidam”: some who held the heavens press directly on the will.
• “per accidens”: how the heavens move the sense powers, by moving their organs.
• “natural complexion”, “habile” [ed.: habitus]: the natural disposition drink brings out.
• “ut in pluribus”: for the most part; astrologers’ predictions hold of most men.
• “apostle by antonomasia”: Paul.
• “valde bona”: very good, Genesis 1:31; he glosses it as the common good.
• “universal good”: God as sole cause of the will; other goods “by partaking.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 9, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 9, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 9, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, “a certain chapter” (as cited by Thomas); contrasted with the Nicomachean Ethics
• Aristotle, Physics VIII (uniform motion of the heaven; the generator moves heavy and light)
• Aristotle, De Anima III (will is in reason; reason not bound to an organ; Empedocles and Homer quoted)
• Aristotle, Generation of Animals (rational soul from outside)
• Augustine, De Trinitate III; De Genesi ad litteram II
• John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa II
• Ptolemy, Centiloquium
• Dionysius (angelic enlightenment)
• Philippians 2:13; Genesis 1:31
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (God’s knowledge of future contingents)
• Newman’s argument from conscience (as reported by a student presentation)
• Shakespeare’s sonnets and King Lear; the Rheims New Testament (note on “lunatic”); Hawthorne’s scarlet letter (inferred author)

His questions #

• Can that exterior mover be the intellect, something in us? No; that is the counsel, and the world has to move you before that.
• Isn’t the will’s natural inclination a sufficient source? No; going from ability to act needs something already in act, and there is no infinite regress.
• Is that first mover needed every time we want something? To start it, yes; even the sinner is moved by God, but in accordance with his nature.
• What is Thomas’s reason that the heavens cannot directly press upon the will? The will is in reason, altogether immaterial and bodiless, and no body acts on the non-bodily.
• Is there some truth to the heavens disposing the organs at birth? “I’ll take your word for it”; he reports the alleged correlation and leaves it open.
• If the wise man dominates the stars, why is there a horoscope in the papers every day? Because not many men are wise; most follow their passions.
• Is your guardian angel able to move your will? Not as an interior principle; he did not create the soul; he moves the intellect on the side of the object, by persuasion.
• Do you think your soul came from your mother and father? No; only the body and its disposition; the soul is created directly by God.