Summa I-II Q.18 a.5–6: Good and Bad as Differences of Species; the End as Object of the Will

Orientation #

“We’re up to Article Five here, in Question Eighteen.” He refers back to points “said above” (species from the object; good and bad from circumstances; acts have species from the end) without naming the earlier class. He closes: “I go to Article Seven here.” The previous class covered aa. 2–4 (object, circumstances, end) and the next covers aa. 7–9.

The class, in order #

1. Article 5, the four objections and the sed contra (“The score is four to one”) #

The point: the objections urge that good and bad do not diversify the species of moral acts; the sed contra says they do.

1. Obj. 1: good and bad in acts conform to good and bad in things; but a good man and a bad man are the same species; so neither in acts.
2. Obj. 2: bad is a privation (English: “lack”), hence non-being; non-being cannot be a difference (Aristotle, Metaphysics III), and a difference is “something positive”; a difference constitutes the species (Porphyry: the difference is what the species has in addition to the genus, or what separates species under the same genus); so a bad act is not constituted in a species by its badness.
3. Obj. 3: acts differing in species have different effects; but the same effect in species follows a good and a bad act — a man is generated by adultery and by the conjugal act.
4. Obj. 4: good and bad are sometimes from circumstances; a circumstance is an accident, and accident is distinguished from difference; so no species from goodness and badness.
5. Sed contra: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II — like acts produce like habits; good and bad habits differ in species (liberality vs. extravagance); therefore their causes, the acts, differ in species. Aside on obj. 3: Edmund, the illegitimate son in King Lear, protesting he is as good as his brother; the euphemism “love child” (the Supremes’ Motown hit) — “more heat in the love child, so you probably get a better product.”

2. Corpus, general principle: per se vs. per accidens relative to the active principle (“nothing that is per accidens constitutes a species”) #

The point: every act has its species from its object, but a difference in the object makes a difference of species only relative to the active principle to which it is per se.

• Example: color and sound differ per se in comparison to the senses (sight, hearing), but not in comparison to the understanding, which knows both.
• His principle, “that I give a lot of times”: it always belongs to the higher power and the higher science to distinguish between itself and the lower ones. Reason can distinguish reason from the senses, and sight from hearing; sight or hearing cannot. In Physics II (natural philosophy, “second philosophy”) Aristotle distinguishes second from third philosophy (mathematics) but not wisdom from those two; only in Metaphysics VI does he distinguish first philosophy (wisdom) from second and third.
• Applied “to some people’s chagrin” to philosophy and theology: it belongs to theology, the higher knowledge with more the character of wisdom, to distinguish the two; modern philosophers, not accepting theology, cannot correctly distinguish philosophy from theology, let alone see their order. Hence his old objection to “philosophy of religion” as a catch-all: officially a philosophy course, yet treating Christianity, Mohammedanism and the rest as if the philosopher as philosopher could distinguish among them.

3. Corpus applied: good and bad in acts are said by comparison to reason (“That’s the key thing to see”) #

The point: since moral good and bad are said in relation to reason, a difference in the object that is suitable or unsuitable to reason is per se, and so diversifies species.

1. In human acts good and bad are said by comparison to reason — “that’s the key thing to see”; Thomas often cites Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4: the good of man is to be according to reason, bad is to be outside reason. His classroom formula: a good human act is a reasonable act, a bad one an unreasonable act.
2. Good for each thing is what belongs to it according to its form; bad, what is outside the order of its form.
3. Acts are called human or moral (“moralis” here not opposed to immoral but to natural) according as they are by reason — reason is their form.
4. So the difference of good and bad in the object is per se to reason; per se differences diversify species.

4. Reply to obj. 1: even natural things (“a dead body and a living body”) #

The point: even in natural things, what is according to nature and what against nature diversify species. A dead body and a living body are not in the same species; Aristotle’s constant remark that the eye of a dead man is an eye only equivocally. Likewise good (by reason) and bad (outside reason) diversify moral species.

5. Reply to obj. 2: bad is not a bare non-being (“You can hear the googling going down”) #

The point: a bad act is not the lack itself but something positive that lacks the order and measure of reason.

• Example: drinking too much. The swallowing of a lot of beer or wine is something positive, not a lack (“slurp”); what is lacking is the order and measure of reason. So bad implies a lack not absolutely but following upon some power; an act is bad in species not because it has no object but because its object is not suitable to reason (taking what belongs to another). Insofar as the object is positive, it can constitute the species of a bad act.
• Text from Summa Contra Gentiles (read from his edition, locus not stated): in moral contrarieties either both are bad (prodigality and illiberality) or one good, one bad (liberality and illiberality); moral evil is both genus and difference not as the lack of the good of reason but from the nature of the action or habit ordered to an end repugnant to the end of reason. Two comparisons: a blind man is an individual man not as blind but as this man; “irrational” is a difference of animal not on account of the lack of reason but by reason of a nature upon which follows the removal (remotio) of reason — the dog is not a lack of reason, but has a nature such that lacking reason follows. If badness were only a lack it would not be a real species.
• Text from the Sentences (locus not stated): a bad action is specified from its order to an unsuitable end (finem indebitum), with which is mixed the lack of the due end (debitus finis); not the privation alone specifies, but the laying down of an order to an end together with the privation of the due end.
• Three meanings of “bad” (equivocation): (1) the lack itself — a non-being one is able to have and should have; (2) what has the lack (not a non-being) — a bad act is bad in this sense; (3) what produces the lack. Keep them distinct.
• Example: a pilot or doctor found drinking before the flight or the operation may lose his job; the drink is not forbidden but out of order — before and after is the definition of order; a drink before the flight is a drink out of the order reason sets.
• Augustine’s “sin is nothing” and “the man who sins becomes nothing”: a somewhat exaggerated way of speaking, less careful than Thomas — the bad is not simply non-being but a subject able to have something and lacking what it should have. Aristotle distinguishes the opposition of being and non-being from that of lack and having: a stone, strictly, is not blind though it does not see — mere negation, not lack.
• English “want”: means desire (for what one does not have), and lack — “sadly wanting” of a student, food that “wants something”; “very beautiful English language.”

6. Reply to obj. 3: adultery and the conjugal act (“He’s cooperating with what nature”) #

The point: compared to reason the conjugal act and adultery differ in species (one reasonable, one not) and have effects differing in species — praise and reward vs. blame and punishment; compared to the generating power they do not differ, so their effect (a man) is one in species. Hence the recurring question whether God cooperates with adultery in infusing a rational soul into the illegitimate body: Thomas says he cooperates with nature, not with the moral act; nature is disposed for a rational soul. Student: this is why the Church sets limits in these matters — it is a cooperation with the creation of a person, not merely man’s doing; hence the word “procreation”: animals reproduce the species, we help create a new person. Aside: he saw King Lear on stage right up front, “don’t distract the poor actor.”

7. Reply to obj. 4: circumstances (“We got to be careful with circumstances”) #

The point: a circumstance is sometimes taken as an essential difference of the object as compared to reason, and then gives species to the moral act; this is necessary whenever the circumstance changes the act from good to bad, for it would not make the act bad unless it were repugnant to reason (then it is per se). Boundary cases: taking one’s principal meal at noon (Warren Murray) vs. in the evening (himself) — no repugnance to reason, so no good/bad. Brother Marcus’s rule of no alcohol before noon, “a good rule”; yet in English novels they drink small beer at breakfast, presumably because the water was bad — opposed to reason for us, not for him: “one man’s poison is another man’s salvation.”

8. Article 6, objections and sed contra (“the end is something kind of extrinsic”) #

The point: does good and bad from the end diversify species?

1. Obj. 1: species is from the object; the end is apart from the notion of the object.
2. Obj. 2: what is per accidens does not constitute species; it happens to an act to be ordered to an end (almsgiving for vainglory). His case: is teaching for vainglory a different act from teaching to enlighten students?
3. Obj. 3: acts of diverse species, even diverse virtues and vices, can be ordered to one end (vainglory). Summary of the difficulty: the end seems extrinsic — how can something outside determine the species? Sed contra: shown above that human acts have species from the end.

9. Article 6, corpus and replies: interior and exterior act (“more an adulterer than a thief”) #

The point: the end is the proper object of the interior act of the will, which is formal to the exterior act, so human acts take species formally from the end, materially from the object of the exterior act.

1. Acts are human as voluntary; in the voluntary act there is a twofold act, interior act of the will and exterior act, each with its object.
2. The end is the proper object of the interior act of the will; that about which the exterior action is, is its object. So the exterior act is specified by its object, the interior act by the end as its object — “a probably important distinction… to get into this reality.”
3. What is on the side of the will is formal to the exterior act, because the will uses the members of the body as instruments, and exterior acts have the notion of morality only as voluntary — someone knocks his arm and it hits you: not voluntary.
4. Hence species formally from the end, materially from the object of the exterior act (form is more like the species). Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics V: he who steals in order to commit adultery is, per se loquendo, more an adulterer than a thief. Replies: (1) the end too has the notion of object, especially of the interior act. (2) being ordered to such an end happens (per accidens) to the exterior act, not to the interior act, which is formal to it as to material — giving you food to be admired: is that kindness? only materially. (3) many acts differing in species ordered to one end: diversity of species on the side of the exterior acts, unity on the side of the interior act — all done out of charity, one there. Aside: the saints’ “purity of intention” is tied to the interior act of the will and hard to have; a saint’s saying that a man with two eyes cannot look up and down at once, so he should have one goal.

His words #

• privation — “English word for privation is lack”
• difference — “something positive”; Porphyry: what the species has in addition to the genus, or what separates species under the same genus
• understanding — the power that knows both color and sound [ed.: intellect]
• second philosophy / third philosophy / first philosophy or wisdom — natural philosophy, mathematics, metaphysics
• moralis — moral as distinguished from natural, not from immoral
• malum morale — moral evil
• remotio — removal (of reason, following upon a beast’s nature)
• finem indebitum / debitus finis — unsuitable end / the end that should be
• order — “before and after is the definition of order”
• want — English word carrying both desire and lack
• per se loquendo — speaking per se
• formal / material — the interior act of the will as formal to the exterior act

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies 1–4)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies 1–3)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, passage on moral contrarieties (read from the note in his edition; locus not stated)
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences, passage on bad action specified by order to finem indebitum (locus not stated) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics III (non-being not a difference); Metaphysics VI (distinguishing first, second, third philosophy); Physics II
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II (like acts, like habits); Nicomachean Ethics V (thief to commit adultery)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4
• Porphyry on difference (Isagoge, inferred)
• Augustine, “sin is nothing”
• Shakespeare, King Lear (Edmund and Edgar)

His questions #

• Does a bad man differ in species from a good man? No, same species — the first objection; answered by the dead body vs. living body.
• Can the senses distinguish between reason and the senses? Only reason can; the higher distinguishes itself from the lower.
• Does it belong to philosophy to distinguish philosophy from theology? No; to theology, the higher knowledge with the character of wisdom.
• What is a good human act, and a bad one? A reasonable act; an unreasonable act, contrary to reason.
• Is drinking too much a lack? No, something positive — swallowing much — lacking the measure of reason.
• Isn’t God cooperating with adultery when He infuses a rational soul? He cooperates with nature, not with the moral act.
• Does taking the main meal at noon or in the evening make one good and one bad? No — no repugnance to reason there.
• Is teaching for vainglory a different act from teaching to enlighten students? Yes, formally, from the end, as the object of the interior act of the will.
• If I give you food in order to be admired, am I being kind to you? Only materially.