Summa I-II Q.13 Art. 1-2: Is Choice an Act of Will or Reason, and Do Animals Choose?

Orientation #

He opens by asking whether “we’re getting a new little division here” and reads Thomas’s consequenter: after the acts bearing on the end, the acts of the will bearing on “those things which are for the end” (qq. 13-16). He does not refer back to last time. He ends by reading the title of a. 3 (“whether choice is only of those things which are for the end, or also sometimes of the end itself”) without treating it. The previous class treated intention (q. 12) and the next continues q. 13 on choice.

The class, in order #

1. The new division: choice, counsel, consent, use (“How does he get these three all the time”) #

Point: qq. 13-16 treat the acts of the will “in comparison to those things which are what towards the end” (he prefers the English “for the end”), and Thomas divides them into three acts plus a presupposition.

• The three acts: eligere (to choose), consentire (to consent), uti (to use). But counsel goes before choice, so four questions: 13 choice, 14 counsel (“presupposed to it”), 15 consent, 16 use.
• He reads the six things asked about choice: (1) of what power it is an act, will or reason; (2) whether it belongs to brute animals (“what Shakespeare calls a beast”); (3) whether only of things for an end or also of the end; (4) whether only of things done by us; (5) whether only of possible things; (6) whether man chooses of necessity or freely. His count matches Thomas’s six.
• Aside on (6): the “offer I couldn’t refuse” of the businessman.

2. a. 1, objections and sed contra (“choice implies a certain what? Comparison”) #

Point: the objections show that choice involves reason; whether it is an act of reason “is a little more to be considered.”

1. Choice implies a collatio, a bringing together (con = together, ferre = to bring) by which one thing is preferred to another; bringing together belongs to reason (reason is collativus et discursivus: it brings two premises together and “runs” to a conclusion; in defining it brings together genus and difference). So choice is of reason.
2. It belongs to the same thing to syllogize and to conclude; syllogizing in doable things belongs to reason; choice is “as a conclusion in things to be done” (Ethics VII). So it is an act of reason.
3. Ignorance pertains to the knowing power, not the will; there is an “ignorance of choice” (Ethics III). So choice is of reason.

• Sed contra: Aristotle, Ethics III: choice is the desire of those things which are in our power; desire is an act of the will. He notes Aristotle “sometimes spoke as if it’s both, or one or the other”; Thomas will say it involves both but is an act of one rather than the other.

3. a. 1, corpus, first step: choice involves both (“it’s either intellect desiring or intellectual desiring”) #

Point: seen “in a somewhat confused way,” choice is a composite of reason and will.

• Ethics VI: electio is either a desiring understanding or an understandable desire; “he’s kind of at that point,” indicating both. Thomas’s rule: when two things concur to constitute one thing, one is as formal with respect to the other.
• Thomas cites “Gregory of Nyssa”; the footnote says this is Nemesius. Whichever Gregory: choice is neither desire by itself nor counsel alone but something put together from both, as the animal is put together from soul and body and is neither alone.
• Digression on confusable names, prompted by Kagan’s book on the Peloponnesian War: a general named Sophocles (the playwright did serve as general with Pericles, on the board over the generals, and as a kind of treasury head); Laches and Nicias of Plato’s dialogue are real generals of that war; two Winston Churchills (the novelist, and the statesman who also wrote a novel, with a letter between them on distinguishing their names); Euclid of Megara vs. Euclid of the Elements; Gertrude the Great confused with her abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn (old editions show her in abbess costume). “So here’s Thomas with two Gregories, maybe.”

4. a. 1, corpus, second step: form from the higher power (“materially speaking an act of what fortitude”) #

Point: acts essentially of one power or habit can receive their form and species from a higher power or habit that orders the lower; reason orders the will, so choice is substantially of the will, formally of reason.

1. Charity is called the form of the virtues (St Paul: it believes all things, hopes all things). An act of fortitude done for love of God is materially fortitude, formally charity. Thomas on monks: abstaining from food under a vow is materially temperance, formally obedience.
2. Reason in some way comes before the will, because the will’s object, the good, is known by reason, and reason orders the will’s act. Aristotle: it belongs to the wise man to order, ordering being the highest perfection of reason, which “looks before and after” (Shakespeare). So a before-and-after order in the will’s act must come from reason.
3. The vis apprehensiva (grasping power; simplex apprehensio is named from the hand) represents its object to the vis appetitiva (wanting power).

• A contrast he draws here: knowing gets the thing known into the knower (as what I grasp is in my hand), while love is more in the thing loved; the will goes out to and rests in its object (“I left my heart in San Francisco”; Christ: where your treasure is, there your heart). His old example: you can jump into the ocean but cannot put it in you, “and that’s the way it is with God”; hence the will is more proportioned to God than the mind, especially in this life, and charity remains after death while faith gives way to vision.

4. Conclusion: the act by which the will tends to something proposed as good, because reason has ordered it to an end, is materially an act of the will, formally of reason; “the substance of the act materially has itself to the order placed upon it by a superior power.” Choice is substantially (from “standing under”: the will’s act stands under the order reason imposes) not an act of reason but of the will; and it is perfected in a motion of the soul toward the good chosen, hence manifestly an act of the desiring power.

• Example: desiring to take the medicine for the sake of health. The desire to take it is an act of will, but only because reason (mine or the doctor’s) has seen the order of medicine to health; “if the medicine tasted good, that might be a different thing.” Childhood anecdote: cinnamon-coated medicine sucked through to an awful taste; candy-flavoured medicine is dangerous with children; “it’s only by reason that I want to take that medicine.”

5. a. 1, replies (“Not that it is essentially the bringing together”) #

• To 1: choice does imply a preceding collatio, but is not essentially (here a synonym for “substantially”) that bringing together. He asks how the English renders collatio: “comparison” (bring alongside, latus); he notes Albert the Great and Thomas calling reason collativus et discursivus, which he always thinks of as the syllogism (discourse from running to the conclusion).
• To 2: the conclusion of a syllogism in things to be done pertains to reason and is called a sententia or judicium, which choice follows; so the conclusion seems to pertain to choice as to something following upon it.
• To 3: ignorantia electionis: not that choice is knowledge, but one is ignorant of what should be chosen. “That’s a perfect phrase.”

6. a. 2, objections and sed contra (“as if using a divisive syllogism”) #

Point: three reasons to think brute animals choose, and the sed contra from “Gregory.”

1. Choice is a desire of some things on account of an end (Ethics III); brutes desire something for an end and from desire. His question: “Do they compare, or is it by nature that this is in them?”
2. The name of choice signifies taking one thing before others; the sheep eats one herb and refuses another. Asides: giving a cat a pill inside a meatball; the Texas cat brought to the farm for the mice in the feed; poisons for animals that tear at the chicken screens (“potent things”; watch the kids); animals “got some class” in preferring pork or steak.
3. Prudence chooses well what is for the end (Ethics VI); brutes have prudence: Metaphysics I says they are prudent without learning, those that cannot hear, as the bees; sense shows marvellous sagacities in bees, spiders and dogs. The dog following the stag at a trivium explores by smell the first and second ways and goes securely into the third without exploring, “as if using a syllogismo divisivo” (his classroom name: “an either-or syllogism”): it went this road or this; not these; therefore that. Aside: police tracking dogs and hot pepper to throw them off.

• Sed contra: “Gregory,” i.e. Nemesius, De natura hominis: boys and irrational animals do something voluntarily but not choosing. The baby does not choose to cry, but at some point realizes it is a tool for attention and then chooses to cry; an older grandchild correcting the younger for crying to get what she wanted “shows it increases the reason.”

7. a. 2, corpus (“choice has no place”) #

Point: choice requires many things that can be chosen, and only the will is thus undetermined.

1. Choice is the taking of one with respect to another; so it must be with respect to many choosable things; where things are entirely determined to one, choice has no place.
2. Sense desire vs. will (clear from what was said before): sense desire is determined by the order of nature to one particular thing; the will is by nature determined to one common thing, the good, but indeterminate with respect to particular goods. Example: at a restaurant you are determined by nature to eat something, but must choose from the menu.
3. Therefore choosing is proper to the will, not to sense desire, which is the only desire in brutes; so choice does not belong to brute animals.

8. a. 2, replies 1 and 2, and individual differences (“without choice, fire is moved upwards”) #

• To 1: not every desire of something for an end is choice, but only where there is a discretio of one from another, which has no place unless desire can be carried to many. He asks where “discrete” comes up in the Categories: continuous and discrete quantity.
• To 2: the brute takes one before another because its desire is naturally determined to it; when sense or imagination represents what its appetite naturally inclines to, it is moved to it without choice, as fire is moved up and not down. He restates: “when something is proposed to him that is in accord with his natural inclination, he goes for it.”
• Digression, individual differences in animals: the house cats Tabitha (went out every morning to hunt in the empty lot) and Moppet (sat on the window sill and watched the world go by) — “one is contemplative and the other is active,” but “I don’t think it was a choice”; his childhood cat at the window getting excited at a dog fight. Human analogues: he likes licorice, his wife doesn’t, his daughter does; salmon; people confessing they enjoyed their Friday meal; allergies to peanuts and hazelnuts are natural, not chosen; a student adds the plastic plate whose compound some people can taste and others cannot (tested with slips in an anthropology course). National food preferences are probably custom rather than nature, though custom is “a second nature,” perhaps inbred after generations (Minnesota lake food, walleye pike, vs. ocean fish). Left as “do they choose? … I don’t know,” with the point that individual difference is not choice.

9. a. 2, reply 3: the order of the mover in the moved (“the arrow tends directly towards the target”) #

Point: animals are called prudent because the order of the divine art appears in their natural inclinations, not because they have reason or choice.

1. Physics III: motion is the act of the mobile from the mover, so the mover’s power appears in the motion of the mobile (the quarterback’s power seen in the thrown football).
2. Hence in all things moved by reason the order of the mover’s reason appears, though they have no reason: the arrow tends to the target by the archer’s motion, “as if they themselves had a reason directing them”; likewise in the motions of clocks (horologium, genitive plural horologiorum; “horological” in English).
3. As artificial things are compared to human art, natural things are compared to the divine art; so order appears in what is moved by nature as in what is moved by reason (Physics II, “Natural Hearing”). His gloss on Physics II: so much does action for an end appear in bees and ants that people wonder whether they have reason; Aristotle does not assert they do — either they have reason, or they are moved by something that has reason.
4. So in the works of brute animals wise things appear insofar as they have a natural inclination to most ordered (ordinatissimos) processes, as ordered by the highest art; hence some are called prudent or sagacious, not from reason or choice in them.
5. The sign: all of one nature operate in the same way (bees all make hives alike), unlike men (houses differ from place to place).

• Aside: De Koninck on the “second definition of nature” as something of the divine art in things: if the shipbuilding art could be put into the wood, it would build itself into a ship; computers put something of our art into the thing, which is why they seem more like nature. The Charlie Rose interview with a computer man predicting exponentially when computers would surpass the human mind (“I think the deadline is passed”; “we’ll be obeying them”): there is something of human art in the machines, “maybe not quite as much as this guy thought.”

10. Close (“or also sometimes of the end itself”) #

He reads the title of a. 3 and stops.

His words #

• “for the end”: his English for ad finem, preferring it to “towards the end”.
• eligere, consentire, uti: to choose, consent, use; the three acts of the will about what is for the end.
• collatio: a bringing together, bringing alongside; translated “comparison”; reason as collativus et discursivus (discourse from running).
• “desiring understanding” / “understandable desire”: his rendering of Aristotle’s electio in Ethics VI [ed.: intellectus appetitivus / appetitus intellectivus].
• “grasping power”: vis apprehensiva, named from the hand; “simple grasping” for simplex apprehensio.
• “wanting power”: vis appetitiva.
• “substantially”: from “standing under”; the will’s act stands under the order reason imposes; “essentially” used as its synonym in the reply.
• sententia / judicium: the conclusion of a practical syllogism, which choice follows.
• ignorantia electionis: ignorance of what should be chosen.
• discretio: “discretion,” discrimination of one from another; connected to discrete quantity in the Categories.
• “either-or syllogism”: his class name for the syllogismus divisivus.
• trivium: the three ways at which the dog stands.
• horologium: clock; “horological”.
• “Natural Hearing”: Aristotle’s Physics [ed.: Physica, “physical hearing/lectures”].
• ordinatissimos: “most ordered” processes.
• “second definition of nature” (De Koninck): something of the divine art in things.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 13, prologue (the consequenter division) and the list of six articles.
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 13, a. 1, objections, sed contra, corpus, replies.
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 13, a. 2, objections, sed contra, corpus, replies.
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 13, a. 3, title only.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics III (choice as desire of things in our power; ignorance of choice), VI (electio as desiring understanding; prudence), VII (choice as conclusion in doables).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, beginning (animals prudent without learning; bees).
• Aristotle, Physics III (motion the act of the mobile from the mover), II (order in nature as in art; bees and ants).
• Aristotle, Categories (continuous and discrete quantity).
• Nemesius, De natura hominis (cited by Thomas as Gregory of Nyssa).
• St Paul on charity (believes all things, hopes all things) (inferred: 1 Cor 13).
• Christ: where your treasure is, there your heart.
• Shakespeare: reason “looks before and after”; “beast.”
• Thomas on monks (obedience vs. temperance), no locus given.
• Albert the Great (reason collativus et discursivus), no locus.
• Plato, Laches (Laches and Nicias); Kagan on the Peloponnesian War; De Koninck.

His questions #

• How does Thomas get these three (choose, consent, use), and why four questions? Counsel is presupposed to choice, so choice, counsel, consent, use: qq. 13-16.
• Does the first objection show choice is an act of reason? It shows choice involves reason; whether it is an act of reason “is a little more to be considered.”
• Where does the “before and after” in the will’s act come from? From reason, whose highest perfection is to order.
• How do they translate collatio there? “Comparison” — bringing alongside.
• Do the animals compare, or is it by nature that preference is in them? By nature: their desire is naturally determined to one thing, as fire goes up.
• Where in the Categories does the word “discrete” come up? Continuous and discrete quantity.
• The little baby doesn’t choose to cry, does he? Not at first; later, realizing it is a tool, the child chooses to cry.
• Do you choose to like licorice, or salmon? Are individual differences in animals choice? Left open (“I don’t know”), but treated as nature or custom, not choice.
• Do the bees and ants have reason? Aristotle does not assert it; if not, they are moved by something that has reason — the divine art.