Serving the Lord and Learning from the Teacher; Counsel as Inquiry and Counsel About the End (Summa I-II, Q.14, Articles 1–2)

Orientation #

He begins with an opening devotion on Psalm 100 and John 13 before turning to “question fourteen in the prima Secundae” on counsel; he refers back to the treatment of choice (“choice, as has been said, follows the judgment of reason”) (prev. lecture), and ends at “Article Three here now. Take a break.” The previous class covered choice (q.13); the next continues q.14 aa.3-6.

The class, in order #

1. Psalm 100: serve, come before, then know (“Serve the Lord with gladness”) #

Point: the order of the psalm mirrors the order of the Summa Contra Gentiles and of the Ethics: one serves and rejoices before one knows.

• “Serve the Lord with gladness … come before Him with joyful song … know that the Lord is God”: he reads the three clauses of the “know” verse (He made us, we are His, the flock He tends) as the division of SCG books 1-3: God in Himself, God as maker, God’s providence.
• Thanksgiving vs praise: Thomas sometimes calls thanksgiving a part of praise, but he sees a distinction: thanksgiving is for what God has given us, praise is for what God is in Himself. Petition (Our Father) → thanksgiving (less self-regarding) → praise (self forgotten): thanksgiving is “a stepping stone to praise.” “Give thanks to Him” = thanksgiving; “bless His name” = praise. Augustine: “because God is good, we are.” Faithfulness “is a bit like justice, but … justice to oneself.”
• Psalm numbering: Catholic 99, Protestant 100; modern scholars adopted the Protestant numbering, which “fouls up” Augustine’s and Thomas’s division into three fifties: Psalm 50 asks forgiveness (Teresa of Avila’s favourite), 100 is of good deeds, 150 rest in God, matching the three levels of charity (fighting sins, progressing in virtue, resting in contemplation).
• Ethics order: Aristotle takes moral virtues before the virtues of reason for two reasons Thomas gives in the commentary: they are more known to us, and by them we are disposed for the virtues of reason. So we serve the Lord with gladness before we are ready to learn about Him.

2. John 13: Lord and Teacher (“Ye call me Master and Lord”) #

Point: the apostles call Christ didaskalos (teacher) and kurios (Lord), and Christ restates it in the order Lord, then Teacher, the same order as the psalm.

• Translation caution: “master” is ambiguous (opposed to slave, or magister as Lombard is “the Master” by antonomasia, or the boy who has mastered his passions); the Greek didaskalos means teacher.
• “kai kalos legete, you speak well,” i.e. truly, as Socrates in the Apology: a good speaker, if it means one who speaks truly, “then I am a good speaker.”
• Applied: serving the Lord is toward Him as kurios; coming before Him to know is toward Him as didaskalos.
• What is a teacher? Students offer: has authority, communicates knowledge, forms you. His answer: the best thing you can say about a teacher is that he enlightens you. John 1 “the true light”; Thomas’s Eucharistic prayer “Lux vera”; “perpetual light” for the dead; “in Thy light we shall see light.” So in the beatific vision God is above all the teacher. We should not come to be enlightened until we obey Him: then we are well disposed, “in this order of the Summa Contra Gentiles.”
• Aside: Pius X’s letter on the Angelic Doctor quotes John XXII (who canonized Thomas): he enlightens the Church more than all the rest, and one learns more from a year of him than a lifetime of the others.

3. Question 14 prologue; a statistics aside (“six things are sought”) #

Point: the six articles on counsel: (1) whether counsel is an inquiry; (2) whether about the end or only things toward the end; (3) whether only about what is done by us; (4) whether about all we do; (5) whether it proceeds in the order of resolution; (6) whether in infinitum (“kind of like Zeno”). “Most people have not even seen the question, let alone the answer.”

• Aside on inquiry going wrong: Krugman’s claim that Wisconsin schools beat Texas on average, whereas white, black and Hispanic students each score higher in Texas; the average flips because Texas has more Hispanic students. Shows “how tricky” statistics are; Twain: “lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
• Counsel matters for ethics and moral theology, but also because it is so much a part of life and interesting to compare with other parts of the life of the mind.

4. Article 1: is counsel an inquiry? (“counsel is not a inquiry”) #

Objections as he reads them:

1. Damascene: counsel is an appetitus (desire); desire does not inquire. His gloss: it may be a desire before counsel: “I desire to be wealthy, therefore I take counsel how to make money.”
2. To inquire is discursive (Shakespeare’s “large discourse, looking before and after”), which does not belong to God (SCG I, ST I: no discourse in God); yet Ephesians attributes counsel to God.
3. Inquiry is about doubtful things, counsel about certain goods: Paul (“the Apostle” by antonomasia, as Peter; John Paul II’s “princes of the apostles”) on virgins: “I have no command of the Lord, but I give counsel.”

• Sed contra: Gregory of Nyssa (really Nemesius, as the Liber de causis was thought Aristotle’s until its author was found): every counsel is a quest, not every quest a counsel. Boundary case: dialectic (his Wednesday logic class) is a quest but not counsel, being about universals.
• Corpus, as an argument: (1) choice follows reason’s judgment about things to be done; (2) in things to be done there is much incertitude, because actions are about contingent singulars, uncertain by their variability; (3) in doubtful matters reason does not judge without a preceding inquiry, “unless you’re a fool”; so an inquiry of reason is necessary before judgment, and this inquiry is called counsel. Confirmed by the Philosopher, Ethics III: choice is desire of the pre-counselled.
• Comparison to philosophy: Aristotle puts a dialectic before determining, except perhaps in geometry and arithmetic. Reason “guesses before it knows,” hence error; in geometry the guess is usually right (an equilateral triangle’s angles equal, but not yet known with certitude), elsewhere guesses conflict (water, earth, air as the beginning of things). Dialectical reasoning: from probable opinions even to contradictory conclusions. Every Summa article is a miniature dialectic; the quaestiones disputatae have ten or fifteen arguments a side; here Thomas gives beginners “the milk, not the whiskey.”
• Military counsel: MacArthur reviewing the Inchon landing once more en route, “it’s the right decision,” then reading his Bible; he had witnessed the Japanese landing at Inchon in 1905. The Peloponnesian War, “all these things that could have gone this way or that.” Military prudence is counsel.

5. Replies: why Damascene, why God, why certain goods (“counsel is appetitus inquisitivus”) #

Reply 1 (why Damascene erred: “he’s not a dummy”): when the acts of two powers are ordered to each other, each can be named from the other. Reason’s act directs toward the end; the will’s act tends under reason’s rule. So choice, an act of will, shows something of reason (order, “before and after”); counsel, an act of reason, shows something of will as its matter (what a man wills to do) and its motive (willing the end moves one to take counsel about means: wanting wealth). Hence Ethics VI: choice is intellectus appetitivus; Damascene: counsel is appetitus inquisitivus. Counsel is more an act of reason, as choice is more an act of will, though each is sometimes spoken of as the other’s. Reply 2: what is said of God is taken without every defect found in us. Science in us is of conclusions through discourse (cause to effect, effect to cause, opposite to opposite, like to like); in God it signifies certitude about all effects in the light of the first cause, without discourse. Rule: carrying a word to God, drop the genus, keep the difference: our science is a syllogism making us know the cause and that it cannot be otherwise; in God there is no syllogism but there is knowing the cause and that it cannot be otherwise. The genus is taken from matter (imperfect), the difference from form (godlike), “as Aristotle says.” So counsel is attributed to God for the certitude of its judgment, which in us comes from inquiry; the inquiry itself has no place in God (“just a minute, I’ll get back to you”), and so Damascene says God does not take counsel, for it belongs to the ignorant to take counsel.

• Bush’s Decision Points shows a man taking counsel, not jumping; his father consulted bishops before the Gulf War.
• This is one way a word becomes equivocal: carried over with part of its meaning dropped. Likewise names of emotions carried to the will drop the bodily change but keep the formal meaning (desire, love, liking); carried further to God’s will, some go only metaphorically, some not at all: no fear or boldness in God; “I hate divorce” is a metaphor. Reply 3: some things are most certain goods by the judgment of the wise and spiritual men, though not by the judgment of the many or carnal men; about such, counsels are given. Stories: John Paul II taking a priest who wished to leave back into the church to pray, repeatedly, until “I think I should stay”; the confessor at the Gethsemani abbey warning the entrant he would someday be tempted to leave.

6. Digression: the discipline of the article form (“stop and think a little bit”) #

Point: Thomas’s fixed form is not an impediment to the mind’s freedom but makes one stop and think of reasons; others would be less rash.

• Like constitutional forms that hamstring both the mob and the experts (an Obama official’s “we need less democracy”); C. S. Lewis on great artists adapting to form; Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, all fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, same rhyme scheme, “tell that to him”; Mozart more conservative in form than Haydn yet expressive. Sherlock Holmes: a good artist knows when to stop.
• Moderns state the opposite of what Aristotle said without mentioning him, his reasons, or refuting them; Aristotle in the “third book of wisdom” [ed.: he seems to mean Metaphysics I] recalls his predecessors on the causes, their reasons, and reasons against. Doing this is to proceed as “a man who’s taking counsel, but on universal matters.”

7. Article 2: is counsel about the end? (“The end has the notion of a beginning”) #

Objections: (1) whatever admits doubt can be investigated; in human doings there is doubt about the end too (“you don’t know the aim of life; pick up the Nicomachean Ethics”); (2) counsel’s matter is human operations, and some operations are ends (Ethics I): “Should I be a philosopher?” (joke: asked what philosophers do for the common good, “we are the common good”). Sed contra: Gregory: doubt, and counsel, not about the end but about things toward the end. Corpus: (1) in things to be done the end has the notion of a beginning, since arguments about means are taken from the end; (2) a beginning does not fall under the question but is supposed in every investigation; (3) counsel is a quest (he prefers “quest” to “question” to render quaestio here); so counsel is not about the end but only about things toward the end. Yet what is an end for some things may be ordered to another end, as a premise of one demonstration is the conclusion of another.

• Continuous demonstrations: continuous properly is quantity whose parts meet at a common boundary (semicircles at the diameter, parts of a line at a point); number is discrete (in seven, three and four meet nowhere); yet a proportion 4:6::6:9 is called continuous because the end of one ratio is the beginning of the next, by likeness. So Aristotle calls syllogisms continuous when the conclusion of one becomes a premise of another, as Euclid does. Same with ends: money is the end of money-making, but for the sake of food. Same with definitions: Euclid defines rectilineal plane figure, uses it to define quadrilateral, uses that to define square; quadrilateral is both definer and defined, but not defined by what it defines.
• Application: picking up the Ethics I supposed I want to be happy and sought the road; “if I want to be wise, I must learn logic.” Some end must be supposed, indubitable. Reply 1: what is taken as an end is already determined; when it is in doubt it is not had as an end, and counsel about it is not about it as an end but as a means.

8. “As such”: the genus defined, the son as father (“not in so far as it’s a genus”) #

Point: the reply rests on the as such distinction, which he draws out with Thomas on Metaphysics V.

• Aristotle divides “one” into one in number, species, genus, analogy, and says one in species has the same definition. Thomas asks why not genus, since a genus can be defined: because a definition is from the genus and differences of a species, so a genus is defined not as genus but as the species of a higher genus. So counsel about an end is not as end but as means to a further end, for which there is no counsel: “an important thing to see.”
• As such vs accidental: can a son as son be a father? Is a teacher as teacher learning? No, though the teacher is always learning when he teaches. Only the ignorant learn, only the sick are healed: true always, yet accidental. “I am a white man, but not white because a man”: easy to see, since many men are not white; but where the accident is always there one is easily deceived. Aristotle: the fallacy of accident deceives even the wise; he thinks especially the wise, when it happens always, as with modern philosophers.
• Ends at “up to Article Three here now.”

His words #

• thanksgiving vs praise: for what God gives us vs for what He is in Himself; petition → thanksgiving → praise
• didaskalos / kurios: teacher / Lord; “master” ambiguous
• teacher: one who enlightens
• counsel: an inquiry (inquisition, investigation, quest) of reason before judgment about contingent singulars to be done
• res dubiae: doubtful things; multa incertitudo
• the Apostle, the Philosopher: antonomasia for Paul, Aristotle
• dialectical reasoning: from probable opinions even to contradictory conclusions; “reason guesses before it knows”
• milk vs whiskey: Summa vs quaestiones disputatae
• intellectus appetitivus (choice), appetitus inquisitivus (counsel)
• drop the genus, keep the difference: how names pass from creatures to God
• quest vs question: his rendering of quaestio in a.2
• continuous: parts meeting at a common boundary; continuous proportion, continuous demonstration by likeness
• as such / accidental: the genus defined as species; the end counselled as means

Texts #

Read in class

• Psalm 100 (Catholic 99)
• John 13 (Greek, on Lord and Teacher)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 14 prologue, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies), a. 2 (objections, sed contra, corpus, reply 1) Mentioned
• Summa Contra Gentiles I (no discourse in God); Summa Theologiae I on the same; SCG IV ch. 15 (verified source, on names carried to God; not named by him)
• Thomas, commentary on Ethics (moral before intellectual virtues); Ethics I, III, VI; Metaphysics V (inferred, on “one”), “third book of wisdom” (predecessors on causes); Physics and Metaphysics on four causes
• Ephesians (counsel of His will); 1 Corinthians on virgins (inferred locus); Damascene; Gregory of Nyssa / Nemesius; Liber de causis; Augustine on the Psalms; John 1
• Pius X on the Angelic Doctor; John XXII; Plato, Apology; Shakespeare on reason and the sonnets; Euclid; Bush, Decision Points; C. S. Lewis

His questions #

• What is the best way of describing what a teacher does? He enlightens you (students: authority, communicates, forms).
• When you serve the Lord, do you serve Him as teacher or as Lord? As kurios; you come before Him to know as didaskalos.
• Why should Damascene make this mistake, calling counsel a desire? Because acts of ordered powers are named from each other; counsel has will as matter and motive.
• What really is science for us, and what is kept when said of God? The syllogism (genus) is dropped; knowing the cause and that it cannot be otherwise (difference) is kept.
• Is there any fear in God? hate? No; “I hate divorce” is a metaphor.
• Is quadrilateral a definer or defined? Both, but not defined by what it defines.
• Why does Aristotle say “same definition” for one in species but not one in genus? A genus is defined only as species of a higher genus, not as genus.
• Is a son as son a father? a teacher as teacher learning? No; accidental, even when always so.
• Which schooling is better, Wisconsin or Texas? Texas by each group, Wisconsin by the average: statistics are tricky.