Aquinas on Command: Command and Its Act as One, and Commanding the Will, Reason and the Passions (ST I-II Q.17 a.4–7)

Orientation #

He opens with “we have to article four here” and closes with “we better stop now”; he does not refer to last time or next time. Verified sources place the whole class in I-II q. 17, aa. 4–7 (a. 4 for c. 9 min, a. 5 for c. 10, a. 6 for c. 10, a. 7 for c. 12, with a stretch of digression inside a. 7).

The class, in order #

1. Article 4, objections: are command and commanded act one act? (“of diverse powers there are diverse acts”) #

The point: three objections say the command and the act commanded must be two acts.

1. Diverse powers, diverse acts; the commanding power is other than the power commanded — “unless the reason is commanding the reason.”
2. What can be separated are diverse, “for nothing is separated from itself” (the soul can be separated from the body, not from itself); sometimes a command goes before and no commanded act follows.
3. What stand as before and after are diverse (“the axiom of before and after: nothing is before or after itself”); command naturally precedes the commanded act. He flags: “obviously Thomas is going to see some distinction that the objector has not seen.” Sed contra (the Philosopher): where one is on account of another, there is one only; the commanded act is only on account of the command.

2. Article 4, body: many simply and one secundum quid, and the reverse (“simply speaking many, and secundum quid one”) #

The point: nothing prevents things being in one way many and in another one; the distinction to keep is which side is simply.

• Dionysius, last chapter of the Divine Names: all that are many are in some sense one. He compares: some things are simply good but in some imperfect way bad, and vice versa.
• One is said just as being: being simply is substance, being secundum quid is accident or a being of reason. Example: “did I come to be today here in this room?” — I came to be here; you must add something. “If you get up you will cease to be — sitting; you won’t cease to be.”
• One in substance vs. one secundum accidens: I am a geometer and white — “some way I’m many, but simply I’m one.” A whole in the genus of substance made of its parts (essential: body and soul; integral: heart and lungs) is one simply. Many men are one people, many stones one pile — a unity of composition or order — diverse simply, one secundum quid. Many individuals one in genus or species are simply many, one secundum rationem. Boundary put to the class: “so what are we here? … we’re not one simply, are we? Simply, we’re many.”
• Application: as man is one natural being from matter and form though with many parts, so in human acts the act of the lower power stands as matter to the act of the higher, insofar as the lower acts in virtue of the higher moving it; the act of the first mover stands as form to the act of the instrument. Hence command and commanded act are one human act as a whole is one, many according to parts. His gloss: doing something for somebody loved, doing something bad to somebody hated — “formally speaking.”

3. Article 4, replies (“the same is the act of the mover and the moved”) #

• To 1: if the powers were diverse and not ordered to each other, their acts would be simply diverse; but when one power moves another their acts are in some way one, since the act of mover and moved is the same (Physics III). Examples: hammering a nail — is the act of my hand and my hammer one? “quo modo” [ed.: in a way]; “if I’m kicking you, you’re being kicked — am I kicking you the same?”
• To 2: separability shows they are many in parts; the parts of man can be separated (“when you die, your soul and body say goodbye for a while, anyway”) yet are one in the whole.
• To 3: in things many in parts and one in a whole, one part can be before another: the soul in some way before the body, the heart before the other members. Student exchange on the heart being first generated: he recalls Aristotle’s saying that the heart is the first to start and the eyes the last to be perfected, and that in death it is the reverse — eyes go first, heart last. “Thomas is very strong about that.”

4. Article 5: is the act of the will commanded? (“the soul commands that it wills”) #

Objections: (1) Augustine, Confessions VIII: the soul commands that it will, and it does not; (2) to be commanded belongs to what understands the command, and the will does not understand — he calls this “could be a good argument… people will be scratching their head at this one”; (3) if any act of the will is commanded, all are, and since an act of will precedes the commanding act of reason, this goes ad infinitum. Sed contra: what is in our power lies under our command, and acts of will are most of all in our power, since our acts are in our power insofar as voluntary. Body: command is an act of reason ordering something to be done; reason can judge it good to will something, so it can order by command that a man will. His instance put to the class: “to command the will to love God — could it do that?”

• To 1: when the soul perfectly commands itself to will, it already wills; when it commands and does not will, the command is imperfect, because reason is moved from diverse parts to command or not, and “fluctuates between two.” Aside: someone asked Thomas what is necessary to be a saint — “to want to be one,” but many want it “in a distracted way… I want this but I want that too.” Class exchange on the cause of that fluctuation: passions or a poorly formed mind, ignorance, pride; he settles on the four wounds of the fall — concupiscence (excessive love of creatures), weakness, ignorance, malice: turning from God through love of creatures leaves one weak and malicious. Romeo taking poison, Juliet stabbing herself: “loving her even too much.”
• To 2: as each bodily member acts for the whole body (St Paul: the eye sees for the whole body), so each power of the soul: the understanding understands for all the powers and the will wills for all — “beautifully said”; man commands his own act of will insofar as he is both understanding and willing.
• To 3: only what is subject to reason is commanded; the first act of the will comes not from reason’s ordering but from the instinct of nature or of a higher cause, so no infinite regress. His test: “do I command myself to desire happiness? I’m just naturally moved”; likewise the desire to know — Augustine: ask a man whether he likes to be deceived. Aside: “there’s a lot of self-deception going on.”

5. Article 6: is the act of reason commanded? (“reason reflects upon itself”) #

Objections: (1) it is unfitting that something command itself, and reason is what commands; (2) what is by essence differs from what is by partaking — the powers commanded by reason are reason by partaking (Aristotle, Ethics: will and emotions partake of reason; hence reasonable love, reasonable anger — “Our Lord gets angry once in a while” — reasonable fear — “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”), and reason essentially is not commanded; (3) to know and judge the true is not always in our power. Aside on the previous article’s footnote: Romans 12:5, one member of the other — the foot is a member of the eye insofar as it carries it, the eye of the foot insofar as it directs it; he recalls Monsignor Dionne using this text and says it is “the text to use.” Sed contra: what we do by free judgment we can command; Damascene says by liberum arbitrium man searches, scrutinizes, judges, disposes. Body: because reason reflects on itself it can order its own act as it orders the others. His gloss: Thomas calls logic the art of arts, since reason orders its own acts and from it comes the ordering of all other arts — learning to drive orders hands and feet. Then the distinction:

• As to exercise: always commandable — “pay attention and use reason” (“Shakespeare’s exhortation”).
• As to object, two acts: (a) grasping the truth about something — not in our power, since it comes by a light, natural or supernatural. Class joke: “I command you to understand this… did you think about it? Yeah, nothing happened — that’s like the modern world.” (b) Assent: to first principles the intellect assents naturally, so ascent to them or descent from them is of nature, not command — “quantities equal to the same are equal to each other: I can’t command myself to assent to that.” Things that do not so convince the understanding, where it can assent, dissent or suspend, fall under command — “Rome has spoken.” Replies: (1) reason commands itself as the will moves itself, each reflecting on its own act and tending from one act to another; (2) given the diversity of objects, reason can partake of itself, as knowledge of the conclusion partakes of knowledge of the premises (cause and effect); (3) clear from the above — “in some cases it’s not in the power, because you can’t help but know the thing.”

6. Article 7, objections: can the sense appetite be commanded? (“can you command yourself not to be afraid”) #

Framing: a paratrooper afraid to speak in public; people who cannot control anger — “can they command themselves to be milder?”; his own temper on the potholed Kennedy route in Maine, “I’m a philosopher, what’s turning this thing?” Objections: (1) the Apostle (Romans 7): “not the good that I wish, this do I do”; the gloss: man wishes not to lust (concupiscere) and does; concupiscere is an act of the sense appetite; (2) bodily matter obeys God alone as to formal transmutation (Prima Pars), and the sense appetite’s act involves a bodily change — heat in anger, cold in fear — “can’t command myself to be hot or cold”; (3) its proper mover is something grasped by sense or imagination, not always in our power (“go enjoy yourself tonight” — the joke about being told to say you had a nice time). Sed contra: Gregory [footnote: Nemesius, not Nyssa] divides what obeys reason into concupiscible and irascible (epithumia and thumos), which belong to the sense appetite. His parallel: can the dog be commanded? “not always — sometimes the dog bites.”

7. Article 7, body: apprehension vs. bodily disposition (“the sense appetite is the power of a bodily organ”) #

1. An act is under command insofar as in our power, so ask how the sense appetite’s act is in our power.
2. Unlike the will, the sense appetite is a power of a bodily organ (Aristotle, De anima); the act of such a power depends on the power of the soul and on the organ’s disposition — sight depends on the seeing power and on the quality of the eye that aids or impedes it.
3. On the soul’s side the act follows apprehension, and the imagination’s particular apprehension is ruled by reason’s universal one; on this side it is subject to command.
4. Bodily quality is not subject to reason, so on that side the passion is sometimes not wholly under command. Student aside: is that why Benedict/Francis jumped in the bush? — the body not subject; no example of jumping in fire that he knows.
5. The motion is sometimes roused suddenly at an apprehension of sense or imagination, outside reason’s command, though reason could impede it if foreseen. Hence Politics I: reason rules the irascible not by despotic rule (lord over servant) but political or royal, over the free, not totally subject — as Aristotle on the father ruling the son as a free man. Digression on music: this is why the fine arts matter; Aristotle on music at the end of the Politics; the navy riot with folding chairs when rock and roll came in; Ostley’s essay on evaluating music: Baroque and Mozart represent the emotions in harmony with reason, so one’s own emotions move in harmony with them. Student objection: Thomas does not say why some emotions are not subject; without the fall would not even the first motion be subject? He grants it (“that’s true”), says Thomas treats the fall in the Prima Pars and need not here; Francis de Sales uses this by way of counsel: it is not in your power to control the motion, but to stop what occurs. Aside examples of temperament: the patient clerk who blows up; “keep calm” as an insult; he is slow to anger but then “about to destroy you”; his father forgetting what he had to say; football and hockey fights; the Patriots’ slow starts.

8. Article 7, replies (“I see another law in my members”) #

• To 1 (“what about St Paul? Can I defend the poor man?”): wishing not to desire yet desiring comes from bodily disposition impeding the appetite from wholly following command — “another law in my members repugnant to the law of my mind; who will free me from this body?” — and from the sudden motion of concupiscence; or of anger, or fear: Hector suddenly running from Achilles.
• To 2: bodily quality relates to the passion in two ways — preceding (one’s disposition to this or that passion; from nature or from a preceding motion that cannot at once come to rest — not under command) and following (as one heats up from anger, incalescit — under command, since it follows the local motion of the heart, which moves diversely with the acts of the appetite). His gloss: white fear vs. red fear (shame): in shame the blood rushes to the face to drive off the disgrace in others’ eyes, in fear of death it contracts to the vital organs, one turns cold — the gibbering men in Homer.
• To 3: sense apprehension needs an exterior sensible present, whose presence is not always in our power, though a man can use his sense when it is present, barring an impediment of the organ; the imagination’s apprehension is subject to reason according to the strength or weakness of the imaginative power. Failure to imagine what reason considers is either because the thing is not imaginable (what your soul will be like when it leaves the body) or from weakness of the organ (passing from plane to solid geometry, “imagination isn’t up to the task”).

His words #

• “secundum quid” vs. “simply”: in some (imperfect) way vs. without qualification.
• “putting together or of order”: the unity of a people or a pile [ed.: unum per accidens / of composition].
• “secundum rationem”: one in genus or species is one by an account.
• “quo modo”: his answer to whether hand and hammer have one act.
• “command”: “an act of reason ordering something to be done.”
• “reason by partaking”: the will and emotions insofar as they obey reason; reasonable love, anger, fear.
• “ascent” (ASR for “assent”): the act following on grasping; assent to first principles is natural.
• “sense desire” / “sensitive desiring power” [ed.: sense appetite]; “concupiscible” and “irascible”, epithumia and thumos.
• “concupiscere”: to lust, the sense desire St Paul’s gloss speaks of.
• “formal transmutation”: the bodily change in a passion (heat, cold).
• “despotic” vs. “political or royal” rule: lord over servant vs. rule over the free.
• “incalescit”: heats up, the bodily quality following anger.
• “white fear and red fear”: fear of death vs. shame.
• “four wounds of the fall” (his count): concupiscence, weakness, ignorance, malice.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 17, a. 4 (whole article)
• I-II, q. 17, a. 5 (whole article)
• I-II, q. 17, a. 6 (whole article)
• I-II, q. 17, a. 7 (whole article)
• Romans 12:5 (from the footnote to a. 5), the foot a member of the eye

Mentioned

• Dionysius, Divine Names, last chapter (all many are in some way one)
• Aristotle, Physics III (the act of mover and moved is one)
• Augustine, Confessions VIII (the soul commands that it will)
• Damascene (by free judgment man searches, judges, disposes)
• Aristotle, Ethics (will and emotions partake of reason)
• St Paul, Romans 7 (not the good that I wish)
• Gregory [Nemesius] on concupiscible and irascible
• Aristotle, De anima (sense appetite a power of a bodily organ); Politics I (political, not despotic rule) and end of the Politics (music)
• Thomas, Prima Pars (matter obeys God alone; the fall)
• Aristotle on generation: heart first, eyes last (no locus given)
• Ostley, essay towards the evaluation of music; Francis de Sales (counsel on emotions); Homer, Hector and Achilles; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

His questions #

• Did I come to be today here in this room? I came to be here — being secundum quid; you must add something.
• What are we here — one or many? One in some way, but simply many.
• When I’m hammering the nail, is the act of my hand and of my hammer one? Quo modo — in a way, as mover and moved.
• Could reason command the will to love God? Yes, reason can judge it good to will something and command that man will.
• Do I command myself to desire happiness? No, I’m just naturally moved; the first act of will is from nature.
• Can I command myself to assent to “quantities equal to the same are equal to each other”? No, I naturally assent; only what does not convince falls under command.
• Can you command yourself not to be afraid, or to be milder? Partly: on the side of apprehension yes, on the side of bodily disposition and sudden motion no.
• Can the dog be commanded by us? Not always — sometimes the dog bites.
• Without the fall, would not even the first motion be subject to reason? (student) He grants it, but says Thomas need not go into the fall here.
• What about St Paul — can I defend the poor man? His concupiscing against his wish comes from bodily disposition and sudden motion.