Aquinas, Summa I-II Q.18 a.2–4: Goodness and Badness from the Object, the Circumstances and the End

Orientation #

He opens with “Article 2 here”, continuing the reading of q.18 begun last time, and refers twice to “as has been said” for the rule that good and bad of action are read from the fullness of being (prev. lecture). The previous class finished q.17 and opened q.18 aa.1 on goodness of acts according to being and object; the next continues with aa.5-6 on species of acts.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, the objections: is the act good or bad from its object? (“the object of action is a what? Thing”) #

The point: three objections are read that the object cannot be what makes an act good or bad.

1. Obj. 1: the object of action is a thing; but bad is not in things but in sinners’ use of them (Augustine, “third book”); so not from the object. Illustrated by the drinking scene in Othello (inferred; he says “a fellow gets drunk” and “Iago says”): the drunk soldier curses wine, Iago answers it is a good thing used in moderation. Aside: “some of you want to have prohibition, these things are evil.”
2. Obj. 2: object is to action as matter; goodness is from form, which is act; so not from the object.
3. Obj. 3: object of an active power is to action as effect to cause; goodness of a cause does not depend on the effect but the reverse. Aside: “Can you imagine being a debater? Somebody could rattle these objections off.”

2. Sed contra and body: species from the object as motion from its term (“They were made abominable just as the things”) #

The point: the act takes its species, and so its first goodness or badness, from its object, as a natural thing from its form.

• Sed contra, Osee 9, “one of my favorite quotes”: they were made abominable as the things they loved. His classroom gloss: “if you love disgusting things, you are disgusting yourself.” Man becomes abominable to God from the malice of his operation, and that malice is according to the evil objects loved; same reasoning for goodness.
• Body: (1) good and bad of action, as of other things, are read from fullness or defect of being (as said before). He remarks Thomas is “more abstract” here than Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. (2) What first pertains to fullness of being is what gives the species. (3) A natural thing has species from form; an action from its object, as motion from its term. Example: “my movement was to the monastery today” and later “a movement to my house”: not the same movement, because the term differs. (4) So the first goodness of a moral act is from a suitable object, whence some call it good ex genere, e.g. “to use his own thing”; the first evil is from the object, e.g. “to take what is another’s”, called bad from its genus.
• Natural parallel for the first evil: the generated thing fails to reach its specific form, “not a man but something in place of a man” — “sounds like these modern experiments.”
• Genus taken for species: as people say “human genus” for the human species. He wonders whether the English “kind” is the same, and whether it is the naming pattern where a name of two is kept for one and the other gets a new name (species adds to genus); “I’m not sure.”

3. Reply 1: the pen that is not mine (“I’m going to take your pen home”) #

The point: exterior things are good in themselves but may lack a suitable proportion to this or that action, and as objects of such actions lack goodness.

• Example worked with a student: “I’m going to take your pen home.” The pen is good (writes well; the goodness of pen as pen is that it writes well); what is bad is my act of taking it home, because as your possession it is not proportioned to that act. Anecdote: brother Richard and his wife rushing off to look at apartments, always borrowing a pen; signing a refund form in a department store and pocketing the pen: “I don’t know how many pens we lost.”
• Student question: can the object of a moral act be a physical thing? Answer from the text: Thomas says accipere aliena, “take something that belongs to another”; the exterior thing is good in itself, but its belonging to another means it lacks proportion to the action of taking it home, and that disproportion is repugnant to reason. Same with adultery: the woman is good in herself, but not proportioned to my use.

4. Replies 2 and 3: matter about which, and the object as effect (“not matter from which, but matter about which”) #

The point: the object is matter about which, which has in some way the notion of form since it gives species; and objects of active powers are effects only once changed.

• Reply 2 illustrated by the sciences: geometry is about lines, angles, figures; arithmetic about numbers; theology about God; ethics about human acts — the matter about which specifies the science.
• Reply 3: the object of human action is not always the object of an active power, for the desiring power is in some way passive, moved by the desirable, yet is a principle of human acts. Objects of active powers are effects only when already changed: food changed is the effect of the nourishing power; unchanged, it is matter about which it operates. Since the object is in some way the effect, it is the end of the action, and so gives form and species (motion has species from its end). The action is called good as able to induce a good effect; proportion of action to effect is the reason of its goodness. His summary: “if I love murder, the object of my love is what makes my love bad. I love the ugly.” Loving God is good; loving the devil or mayhem is bad.

5. Article 3, objection 1 and the digression on good in things (“good and bad are in the things themselves”) #

The point: circumstances “stand around” the act as outside it, but good and bad are in things (Metaphysics VI); so circumstances would not make the act good or bad.

• He calls the Metaphysics VI text famous: true and false are primarily in the mind, in its statements; good and bad primarily in things. This matches knowing (getting the thing into the knower) versus love (going out to the thing).
• Digression on the order of the Prima Pars: the goodness of God is treated with the divine substance, before the will of God; but that God is truth itself is treated only after the understanding. Because good is primarily in things, goodness attaches to the perfection of the substance; truth comes after knowledge. “Very Aristotelian… really profound the order.”
• Same order noticed in book II of the Sentences: angels, then material world, then the soul; the psalms praise from higher things down to the earth and finally men. Scripture’s order “prepares the way” for seeing that by becoming man Christ brings the whole creation back, man being a minor mundus (seen by Greek philosophers before Aristotle, “I think Democritus”). A student adds it follows the order of creation: matter first, then man.
• Student digression on the order of the vows: poverty, chastity, obedience (or reversed), but Vita Consecrata, Vatican II and Francis de Sales’s Treatise on the Love of God put chastity first, then poverty, then obedience; said to be “the order of the gospel”, Matthew 19 (marriage, then leave everything, then follow). Suggestion: chastity’s matter is more known to adults. Secular priests take chastity, a kind of obedience, but not the vow of poverty. Asides: diocesan priests at St. Thomas joking that monks with the abbot’s purse were better off; Brazilian seminarians: “you take the vow of poverty, but we live it”, same for obedience.

6. Article 3 continued: circumstances as per se accidents (“the virtuous man acts according as he ought”) #

The point: circumstances add to the act’s goodness beyond its species, as accidents to a natural substance, and they are per se accidents considered by moral doctrine.

• Obj. 2: goodness and badness of acts belong most to moral doctrine (“that broad sense of morum”), but circumstances are accidentia of acts and no art considers the per accidens (Metaphysics VI).
• Obj. 3: what belongs to a thing by substance is not attributed by accident; good and bad belong to the act by its genus (as said); so not from circumstances.
• Sed contra, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (“I suppose”): the virtuous man acts as he ought, when he ought, and per the other circumstances; the vicious man contrariwise. Asides: De Koninck said “Aristotle is somebody”; Thomas says Plato and Aristotle are the chief philosophers; since Albert the Great no one is a philosopher without knowing them. The Aristotle text is “very brief”, Thomas unfolds it “like a master.”
• Body: in natural things the whole fullness of perfection is not from the substantial form; much is added by accidents (in man: shape, figure, colour), and if something lacks to a decent condition, something bad follows. So the fullness of an action’s goodness is not wholly in its species; suitable circumstances add, and when a required one is lacking the act is bad.
• Reply 1: circumstances are outside the essence of the act but in it as accidents, as accidents are outside the essence of natural substances yet in them; “so they are in rebus”, as “my geometry and my logic are in this thing here.”
• Reply 2: not all accidents are per accidens to their subject; some are per se accidentia, properties, considered in each art, e.g. geometry shows the interior angles of a triangle equal two right angles. Naming note: accidentia divided into per se and the rest, the per se ones renamed “properties”, the rest keeping “accidents” — “be aware of that kind of equivocal by reason.”
• Reply 3: good is convertible with being; as being is said by substance and by accident, so good by essential and accidental being, in natural things and moral acts. Same for the division into act and ability [ed.: potency]: act is good simply, ability good as ordered to acting. His summary: object gives the essential goodness, circumstances an accidental “but nevertheless per se” goodness. Aside: “you studied the various senses of per se.”

7. Article 4, the objections: is the act good or bad from the end? (“nothing looking towards the evil acts”) #

The point: three objections that the end does not make the act good or bad.

1. Obj. 1 (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4): no one acts looking to the evil; all act for something good; so if goodness came from the end nothing would be bad. Examples: “when I murdered you I wanted to get rid of the annoyance in my life”, so aiming at a good; the bank robber asked why he robs banks: because money is good.
2. Obj. 2: goodness of an act exists in the thing; the end is an extrinsic cause. He notes the ordering of the articles: circumstances (a.3) are accidents in the thing, so more plausibly affect goodness; the end seems even more extrinsic.
3. Obj. 3: a good operation can be ordered to a bad end, as alms for inane glory (sounding a trumpet; today, fundraisers with the big check and the photograph); and a bad one to a good end, as Robin Hood stealing to give to the poor (“didn’t steal from everybody, but these fat guys coming through, just like Obama”; “President Robin Hood”, “Chicago Hood”).

• Sed contra, Boethius, Topics: that whose end is good is good, whose end is bad is bad.

8. Body: goodness as being, and the fourfold goodness (“a fourfold goodness is able to be considered”) #

The point: things whose goodness depends on another take a reason of goodness from the end, in addition to their absolute goodness, giving four goodnesses in human acts.

1. The disposition of things in goodness is as in being. Some things’ being does not depend on another; consider their being absolutely. Others depend on another and must be considered through the cause.
2. As being depends on agent and form, goodness depends also on the end.
3. Hence in the divine persons, whose goodness depends on nothing, no reason of goodness is taken from the end. Aside on the Trinity: some ask why three persons, one sufficing, applying the principle of simplicity from natural philosophy; but that principle concerns not using more than is needed for a goal, and the three persons are not for reaching a goal — the Father generates the Son by natural necessity, not by choice, and they do not choose that the Holy Spirit proceed.
4. Human acts, whose goodness depends on another, have a reason of goodness from the end besides their absolute goodness.
5. Fourfold goodness: by genus, as an action (as much being, so much goodness, as said); by species, from a suitable object; by circumstances, as accidents; by end, as relation to the cause of goodness.

• Student: is the generic goodness about whether it is good or bad, a quality? Answer: no, simply as an action, some kind of being, outside the realm of morals, yet some goodness; the fourfold division takes in 2, 3 and 4 and something beyond.

9. The replies: apparent good, proportion to the end, and good from an integral cause (“Not, however, is an action good simply”) #

• Reply 1: the good one looks to is sometimes a true, sometimes an apparent good (Aristotle says so too), so a bad action can follow from an end. Example: bombings “over there in Afghanistan and Iraq”, fifty people, Christians at Christmas; Christ says they will persecute you thinking they do honour to God; the persecutor “thought you were serving God.”
• Reply 2: though the end is extrinsic, a suitable proportion to the end inheres in the action.
• Reply 3 (after a student recalls the objection: good act, bad end and the reverse): nothing prevents an act having one of the four goodnesses and lacking another; an act good in species or circumstances can be ordered to a bad end and conversely. Aside: the moral question raised “the other day” of the assassination of the nuclear scientist in Iran by a magnet bomb on his car, was it justified — “very difficult.”
• Closing rule: an act is not good simply unless all the goodnesses run together, because any single defect causes the bad, but good is caused from an integral cause (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4). “That’s why it’s very hard to be good, many ways to go wrong.”

His words #

• fullness of being / defect of it: the measure of good and bad in action as in other things
• species from the object, as motion from its term
• good ex genere / bad from its genus: genus here taken for species, “as we say human genus”
• suitable proportion (ratio) of the thing to this or that action: what an object lacks when the act is bad
• accipere aliena: to take what belongs to another
• matter about which, not matter from which: the object, which has in some way the notion of form
• the desiring power is in some way passive, moved by the desirable
• circumstances “stand around” the act, outside its essence but in it as accidents; in rebus
• accidentia, per se accidentia: the latter renamed “properties”, an equivocal by reason
• act and ability [ed.: act and potency]: act good simply, ability good as ordered to act
• inane glory [ed.: vainglory]: the alms-giver’s bad end
• minor mundus: man as little world
• integral cause: what good requires; any single defect causes the bad

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, a. 2 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, a. 3 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, a. 4 (whole article)
• Osee 9 (sed contra of a. 2)

Mentioned

• Augustine, “third book” (a. 2 obj. 1)
• Shakespeare, Othello, Iago on wine (inferred)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (a. 3 sed contra; and as less abstract than Thomas)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI (true/false in the mind, good/bad in things; no art considers the per accidens)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, order of goodness and truth of God
• Thomas, Sentences II, order angels, material world, soul
• Psalms (order of praise)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4
• Boethius, Topics
• John Paul II, Vita Consecrata; Vatican II; Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God; Matthew 19 (student, order of vows)
• De Koninck (“Aristotle is somebody”); Albert the Great

His questions #

• The object of action is a what? A thing; but as object of such an action it can lack proportion to it.
• My movement to the monastery and a movement to my house: is it the same movement? No, because the term is not the same.
• Is it what you took home that is bad, or my act? The act of taking it home; the pen is good, but as yours it is not proportioned to that act.
• Can the object of a moral act be a physical thing? Thomas says accipere aliena: the thing belonging to another is the object, considered under that disproportion.
• Why does the Prima Pars treat God’s goodness before his will but his truth only after his understanding? Because good is primarily in things, truth primarily in the mind.
• Who is “the philosopher”? “You better know by now.” Aristotle.
• Is the goodness by genus about whether the act is good or bad, a quality? No, it is the act simply as an action, some kind of being.
• Was the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist justified? Left open; “very difficult.”
• When is an action good simply? Only when all goodnesses run together, since any single defect causes the bad.