Summa I-II Q.12, Arts. 1-2: Intention as an Act of the Will, and Intending the Last End and Intermediate Ends

Orientation #

“Last time we were talking about fruition, right? Now we’re going to talk about intention” (prev. lecture). He ends before a. 3: “Take another article, or before we take a break.” The previous class treated q. 11 on fruition; the next continues q. 12 through the later articles.

The class, in order #

1. Opening: angels, images, and Bernard’s little foxes (“strengthen the lights of our minds”) #

The opening prayer is glossed: bad angels act on our images and suggest things, good angels “strengthen the light of our mind, so we can judge better”, judging being to separate true from false. Aside: two sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux on the little foxes (Song of Songs); the second addresses the heretics of his time (Albigensians: marriage and certain foods forbidden); Bernard asks why they have no founder’s name like the Nestorians, and answers that the sect probably came from the devil.

2. Where we are: the prooemium to q. 8 (“acts of the will in special”) #

He rereads the prooemium of q. 8 to locate q. 12.

• First division: acts immediately of the will itself (elicited) vs. acts commanded by the will.
• Second: the will is moved to the end and to what is toward the end; the acts toward the end are three: to will (voluntas), to enjoy (fruition), to intend.
• q. 12 is the third; its five articles listed: intention an act of understanding or will; only of the last end; two things intended at once; intention of end same act as willing the means; intention in brute animals.

3. Article 1, the objections (“intention is an act of the understanding”) #

1. Matthew 6, “if your eye is simple … your whole body will be lucid”: Augustine (Sermon on the Mount) says eye signifies intention; the eye is a tool of sight, so of a grasping power. Aside on “grasping”: Thomas calls the first act of reason simple grasping; taken from the hand, where what is grasped is contained; so knowing is the thing known being in the knower, whereas love is the reverse, the heart in the thing loved.
2. Augustine calls intention a light (“if the light which is in you are darknesses”); light pertains to knowledge.
3. Intention designates an ordering toward the end, and to order is reason’s. Aside: Shakespeare’s “looking before and after” as the mark of reason; Homer’s near-identical phrase “look before and behind yourself” at the key points of the Iliad (Achilles on Agamemnon; Polydamas alone looks before and behind and urges retreat into the city, “but fools, Zeus had taken away their mind”); Theobald, editing Shakespeare, called the phrase “almost Homeric”; Shakespeare’s is better because “before and after” extends to all the ways reason looks before and after. Student aside: “wit” traces to Latin videre, a root shared with Sanskrit Veda, “to see”; he ties it to the first sentence of the Metaphysics, better rendered “to understand” than “to know”.
4. The will’s act is only of the end (voluntas or fruition) or of the means (choice), and intention differs from these. He notes with a laugh that Thomas “has forgotten” the three acts he set out in the prooemium.

Sed contra: Augustine, De Trinitate XI: the intention of the will joins the body seen to vision, and the species in memory to the sharpness of the soul thinking (cogitare, “to agitate together”). “Obviously Augustine is in contradiction with himself” — no; Thomas straightens it out.

4. The body: to tend in something (“signifies to tend in something”) #

1. Intention, as the name sounds, signifies to tend in something (student: “into or unto”; he allows “toward”).
2. Both the action of the mover and the action of the moved tend toward something, but the moved tends by the action of the mover: the glass of water tends toward my mouth because I, the mover, bring it.
3. So intention first and chiefly belongs to what moves something to an end: the architect and everyone commanding moves others to what he himself intends.
4. The will moves all the other powers of the soul to the end (said above); therefore intention is properly an act of the will. His gloss: the object of the will is the good, and the good is basically the same as the end (Aristotle, Metaphysics II), so the will moves things to their end.

5. Replies 1-3 (“presupposing the ordering of reason”) #

• Ad 1: “eye” is metaphorical, not because intention is an act of knowledge but because it presupposes knowledge, which proposes to the will the end it moves to, as by the eye we foresee where to tend bodily. He generalises: “a lot of these objections can be solved by pointing out that the act of reason is presupposed to the act of the will.” Aside: Hamlet’s “in my mind’s eye”. Aside: Aristotle, young poets are better at tying the knot than untying it; so too young (and most old) philosophers.
• Ad 2: intention is called light because it is manifest to the one intending; deeds are called darkness because a man knows what he intends but not what will follow from the deed (Augustine’s own exposition).
• Ad 3: the will does not order, but tends by the order of reason; intention names the will’s act presupposing reason’s ordering. Parallel on “presupposed” vs. “meaning”: when Thomas explains order he first says it involves distinction (nothing is before or after itself), then corrects himself: order means before and after; distinction is presupposed, not the meaning. “You find that a lot.”

6. Digression: likeness, the cause of deception (“likeness is a slippery thing”) #

Prompted by an email asking why false imagination is the cause of deception.

• First, what is presupposed: reason depends on images as the eye on colour outside it (no seeing the apple’s red without the apple); reason’s proper object is the what-it-is of something sensible or imaginable. Without that dependence there would be no false imagination; but this does not yet show why imagination deceives.
• Then what is peculiar to imagination (Thomas): it knows the likeness of things absent. Two causes of deception lie there, and likeness is the great one: Plato, Sophist, “likeness is a slippery thing”; Aristotle on likeness at the start of the Sophistical Refutations. Deception is seeing the likeness without seeing the difference.
• His own example from “my favorite book,” SCG I: God knowing his substance knows other things as effects like it; God loving his substance (goodness itself) loves other things as ordered to it. The likeness tempts one to say: since he necessarily knows all else in knowing himself, he necessarily wills all else in willing himself. But the difference: the divine goodness in no way depends on other things and they add nothing to it; adding creatures to God is like adding a point to a line. It would be an imperfection in God not to know all that is and could be; no imperfection not to love anything else, since “God contains all the goodness” of things.
• Aristotle, the “book of places” (Topics, from topos): of the dialectician’s four tools, the third is finding differences, the fourth consideration of likeness; the order matters, differences first, because seeing likeness before difference deceives. The Greek for the fourth is skepsis: not “skeptic,” but stop and consider exactly in what way two things are alike.
• Ratios: 4:6 as 2:3. Not because 2 and 3 are prime (4 and 6 are not), nor because one is even and one odd; but because 4 is the same parts of 6 that 2 is of 3 (student’s answer, accepted).
• Clocks: turn the clock back to an earlier time and the man in the street says he will get up earlier; in fact later; springing forward, earlier. “Deceived by imagination.” Asides: it must be about money; showing up an hour early at St. Paul’s Cathedral; a family that “cheats” by shifting the day before.

7. Reply 4: the will regards the end in three ways (“the will regards the end in three ways”) #

• Absolutely: voluntas, as we will health “or something else of the sort.”
• As that in which one rests: fruition.
• As the term of something ordered to it: intention. We intend health not merely because we will it but because we will to arrive at it through something else (“What were you trying to accomplish?”). He stresses the order: voluntas first, the other two add to willing; these are specifically different acts with formally different objects, “a little distinction … kind of hard to see.” Application: the philosopher’s end is wisdom, and he is named from the love of wisdom; that love is the absolute act (voluntas), not intention. His own case: enjoying Thomas that morning (fruition of wisdom), the students doing logic (intention of wisdom through logic): “Thomas is clarifying my thought.” Aside on three: “three is the first number about which we say all” — Mary and Joseph both went to Bethlehem; fleeing to Egypt they all went.

8. Digression: God’s beatitude and its four conditions (“the most perfect operation”) #

From the text he was reading (SCG on God’s beatitude; principles transferable to man’s): beatitude is the most perfect thing, hence an operation; four things make an operation most perfect (“doesn’t always say three”).

1. Genus of the act: Aristotle, ninth book of “wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX] distinguishes acts remaining in the doer (sensing, understanding, loving) from acts proceeding outside (making, ruling). Beatitude is of the first, since making a table perfects the table, not the maker (“contrary to Marx”); directing the army perfects the army. So listening to Mozart or seeing Jupiter (brilliant beside the moon after last night’s class) is at least in the right genus.
2. Act of the highest power, in us the understanding (understanding the Pythagorean theorem?).
3. Of the best object: understanding God, true for God himself too.
4. Lasting / perfect in its form: easy, firm, delightful. All true of God: he perfectly understands himself, easily, without change, most delightfully. Then bring in the beatific vision. “Three is enough”: Physics I, everyone sees opposites in every change, but there must be a third thing, the subject (coldness itself cannot become heat), and Aristotle stops there; Sophocles introduced the third actor and got the most perfect plays (the Greek saying: Sophocles is Homer writing tragedy, Homer Sophocles writing epic). Asides: Sartre’s three-character play in hell; the doctor’s-office closet sign “not an exit”.

9. Article 2: only of the last end? (“intention is only of the last end”) #

Objections, with his preface that Aristotle admits intermediary ends and Thomas will respond accordingly:

1. Prosper’s Book of Sentences: clamor ad Deum, crying out to God, is the intention of the heart; God is the last end of the heart.
2. Intention regards the end as terminus (Aristotle takes up terminus in Metaphysics V); terminus has the notion of what is last.
3. As intention regards the end, so does fruition; fruition is only of the last end. “Must he be deceived by likeness here? Yeah.” Sed contra: the last end of human wills is one, beatitude; if intention were only of it there would be no diverse intentions, clearly false (the man whose three intentions were to marry, get rich, be governor). Body:
4. Intention regards the end as end of the will’s motion.
5. In motion an end is taken in two ways: the last end, in which one rests (Augustine, “Thou hast made us for thyself … our hearts are restless until they rest in you”; Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: who in this life gets what he wants, or having got it is satisfied? the first million, the Walmart man who wants only “to make more”); or something in the middle, beginning of one part of the motion and end of another: from A to C through B, C is last, B a limit but not the last.
6. Of both there can be intention, since both are ends; so intention is always of an end but not necessarily the last.

10. Replies to article 2 (“terminus has the notion of something last”) #

• Ad 1: the intention of the heart is called a crying out to God not because God is always its object but because when we pray we direct our intention to God, and that intention has the strength of a cry. Aside from the Catena Aurea on John: “I come not to do my will but the will of him who sent me” (more dramatic in Gethsemane) shows Christ’s humility; so “Thy will be done” is in a way praying for humility; “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come” as end, “thy will be done” as means; the Mass prayer “all the saints who have done your will.”
• Ad 2: terminus does mean something last, but not always last with respect to the whole; sometimes with respect to a part.
• Ad 3: fruition implies rest in the end, which belongs only to the last end; intention implies motion to the end, not rest. “The reason is not similar; you’re deceived by the likeness there” — false imagination again.

His words #

• “premium” — prooemium of q. 8, read to locate q. 12.
• elicited vs. commanded acts — acts immediately of the will itself vs. acts of other powers commanded by it.
• voluntas — “willing”, the will regarding the end absolutely.
• fruition — the end as that in which one rests.
• intention — “to tend in something”; the end as term of what is ordered to it; belongs chiefly to the mover.
• “simple grasping” — Thomas’s name for the first act of reason, from the hand [ed.: simplex apprehensio].
• cogitare — “to agitate, to think together.”
• “looking before and after” — Shakespeare’s mark of reason; Homer’s “before and behind yourself.”
• “book of places” — Aristotle’s Topics, from topos.
• skepsis — the fourth dialectical tool: stop and consider in what way things are alike.
• “ninth book of wisdom” — [ed.: Metaphysics IX], acts remaining in the doer vs. proceeding outside.
• clamor ad Deum — crying out to God, Prosper’s phrase for the intention of the heart.
• terminus — Aristotle’s word (Metaphysics V); “what is last,” with respect to a whole or a part.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 8, prooemium (division of the acts of the will).
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 12, prooemium and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 12, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Matthew 6, “if your eye is simple … your whole body will be lucid”; “if the light which is in you are darknesses.”
• Augustine, De Trinitate XI (sed contra of a. 1).
• Thomas, SCG on God’s beatitude and the four conditions of the most perfect operation, and on divine knowing and willing of other things — he says “the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles”; the verified list gives SCG IV, ch. 15 (matched against the text).

Mentioned

• Augustine, De Sermone Domini in Monte (eye = intention; light; deeds as darkness).
• Bernard of Clairvaux, two sermons on the little foxes.
• Aristotle, Physics I (third principle beyond the opposites); verified list: Aquinas’s commentary, lectio 11, matched against his handout “Note for Book One, Reading Eleven”.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics II (good and end), V (terminus), IX (two kinds of act); first sentence of the Metaphysics.
• Aristotle, Topics (four tools); Sophistical Refutations (likeness); Poetics (young poets tying knots; Sophocles’s third actor).
• Plato, Sophist (“likeness is a slippery thing”).
• Homer, Iliad (Achilles and Agamemnon; Polydamas); Shakespeare, Hamlet (“in my mind’s eye”; “looking before and after”); Theobald’s note.
• Prosper, Book of Sentences (obj. 1 of a. 2).
• Augustine, “Thou hast made us for thyself” (Confessions, inferred).
• Thackeray, Vanity Fair; Catena Aurea on John; Sartre’s play in hell; Marx.
• Printed volume DHB Vol III, “The School of Aristotle,” p. 344 (verified list only; not named in the transcript).

His questions #

• To will, to enjoy, and to what? Intend.
• Where are 4:6 and 2:3 alike? Not as prime or as even/odd, but 4 is the same parts of 6 that 2 is of 3.
• Did Mary and Joseph “all” go to Bethlehem? No, both went; to Egypt they all went — three is the first number of which we say all.
• If wisdom is the philosopher’s end, what act of the will is his love of wisdom? The absolute act, voluntas; going through logic is intention.
• Which genus of act is beatitude in? The one that stays inside the doer.
• If you move your clock back, will you get up earlier? No, later — deceived by imagination.
• Must Thomas be deceived by likeness here (fruition/intention)? Yes: fruition implies rest, intention motion; the reason is not similar.
• Can coldness itself become heat? No, there must be a third thing, the subject.