Circumstances and Moral Species; The Will's Goodness and Its Object (Aquinas I-II q.18 a.10–11, q.19 a.1)

Orientation #

He opens at “Article 10… ten and eleven here, you should think about them together,” noting that the doctrine that species comes from forms as conceived by reason “has been said before.” At the end of q.18 he says the goodness of human acts “in general” is done; q.19 takes up the interior act of the will “in particular,” and q.20 the exterior act. He breaks off after the replies of q.19 a.1 (“take a break now”). The previous class covered q.18 a.7–9 and the next continues q.19 (object, circumstances, reason, eternal law).

The class, in order #

1. Article 10, objections and sed contra (“place is a certain circumstance”) #

Point: it seems circumstances cannot constitute a species of good or bad act.

• Obj. 1: species is from the object; circumstances differ from the object.
• Obj. 2: circumstances are as accidents of the moral act; an accident does not constitute species. He sends this back to Porphyry: genus and difference are essential to the species, property follows upon it, but accident is “outside the nature, not connected with it.”
• Obj. 3: of one thing there are not many species, but one act has many circumstances.
• Sed contra: place is a circumstance, but to steal from a sacred place is sacrilege, so place constitutes a moral act in a species of bad.
• Examples of the sed contra: the poor box in church back home that had to be made more secure after a break-in; the sign in the downtown Minneapolis church, “watch your purse, all do not come to pray,” thieves taking purses left in the pews while the ladies go to communion — theft that is also sacrilege by the circumstance of place.

2. Article 10, the body: how reason lets a circumstance become the object (“the process of reason is not determined to something one”) #

Point: species of natural things come from natural forms; species of moral acts from forms “as conceived by reason,” and this makes the moral case different.

1. Nature is determined to one and cannot proceed forever, so it arrives at a last form from which the specific difference is taken, after which no further difference can be. Hence in natural things an accident cannot be a specific difference: “white man is not a species of man.”
2. The proceeding of reason is not determined to one; anything given, it can proceed further.
3. Therefore what in one act is taken as a circumstance added to the object can also be taken by reason ordering as a principal condition of the object, determining the species.

• Worked example: to take what belongs to another has its species from the notion of “the other,” constituting theft. Aside: a real friend who takes your thing when he needs it (Warren telling him “I just took this thing you’ve written” — “no, that’s okay”) is not theft: “one knowing and willing, there’s no injury done.” Student: so if everyone knows the president’s a crook… — “no, that’s not.”
• If one considers in addition the ratio of place or time, this is the notion of circumstance; but because reason can order about place and time too, the condition of place can be taken as contrary to the order of reason (reason orders that one not do injury in a sacred place). So taking another’s thing from a sacred place adds a special repugnance to reason, and place, before a circumstance, is now a chief condition of the object.
• What he stresses: “notice the distinction there between circumstance and object… is not as something absolute”; some circumstances “crawl into the object.” He previews a.11: not every circumstance does this.
• Conclusion as read: whenever a circumstance regards a special order of reason, for or against, it gives species, good or bad.
• Asides: whether the government still respects fleeing to a church for sanctuary (“they’ll invade him right now”); the earlier class issue of sterilization — “I don’t have a right to do what I want with my body. It belongs to somebody else.”

3. Article 10, replies; the Electra digression (“if your mother has killed your father”) #

• Reply 1: he asks “does he deny that [species comes from the object]? Well, no.” A circumstance, as it gives species, is considered a condition of the object and its specific difference.
• Reply 2: a circumstance remaining in the ratio of a circumstance has the ratio of an accident and gives no species; as changed into a principal condition of the object it does.
• Digression on Sophocles’ Electra (he has just read Women of Trachis, next reads Electra): if your mother killed your father, can you kill her? Even if she is worthy of death, reason must take into account “that you are… the son of this woman” — Orestes pursued by the Furies in Aeschylus. Should you turn your parents in if they steal? Students raise the bishop–priest case: the Church historically opposed civil trial of clerics (Henry II’s quarrel), though the Vatican now supports prosecution of priests who abuse children — “a change in custom, I think, but I’m not sure”; Thomas More takes it up in Utopia; Euthyphro prosecuting his father for impiety “sounds impious itself.”
• Reply 3: not every circumstance implies consonance or dissonance with reason, so one act with many circumstances need not be in many species; yet it is not inconvenient that one moral act be in many disparate species. He flags this as “quite different for a natural species” — cf. Thomas on genus and species in the angels, where it cannot be as in us (genus from matter, species from form) since angels are entirely formal; “you wouldn’t have [this] in a natural thing, dog and cat.”

4. Article 11, objections and sed contra (“this is the famous distinction of more or less”) #

Point: does every circumstance adding to goodness or badness give a new species? Thomas: not always.

• His framing distinction: more or less by partaking more or less of the same does not diversify species; more or less that is not of the same thing can. Example: why is the end better than the means — more of the same, or a kind of goodness the means lacks at all?
• Obj. 1: good and bad are specific differences; what makes a difference in goodness makes a difference in species; a circumstance adding to goodness does so. Example: stealing a hundred dollars rather than fifty is worse, “but is it worse of the same kind rather than adding a new kind of badness?” Student: stealing from a man with only a hundred dollars vs. a millionaire — “I’m depriving one person of the means of living.”
• Obj. 2: either the circumstance has in itself some reason of goodness or badness or not; if not it cannot add (what is not bad cannot make more bad); if so, it makes a species. He tests it: is the difference between a hundred and fifty “a new kind of badness in my act? No” — but a hundred from the church box is a kind of evil, place.
• Obj. 3: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4, bad is caused from individual defects; any aggravating circumstance has a special defect. Aside: species “should not be multiplied without necessity; moral matter is hard enough.” Confirmation: one unit added makes a new species of number, and good consists in number, weight and measure — “the devil can quote scripture.”
• Sed contra: more and less do not diversify species — which he notes Thomas will often qualify, since sometimes it does.

5. Article 11, body and replies; pilgrimages and ladders (“presupposing some other circumstance”) #

1. A circumstance gives species insofar as it regards a special order of reason (a.10).
2. Sometimes a circumstance regards the order of reason only presupposing another circumstance from which the act already has its species: taking a great or little amount is against reason only presupposing that the thing is alien, not yours.
3. So large or small quantity does not diversify the species of sin but can aggravate or diminish it; likewise other circumstances, good or bad. Conclusion: not every aggravating circumstance varies the moral species.

• Student objection: the poor man — could depriving him of livelihood be a second sin? His answer: yes, a very different species, “two sins there” (“he stole his camel in the desert, so he died”). Student: petty vs. grand larceny might be measured by the loser — a hundred dollars is the poor man’s food for the week.
• Reply 1: in things intensified or diminished the difference does not diversify species, as whiteness more or less is not another species of colour — partaking the same thing more or less.
• Reply 2 (the “interesting objection”): an aggravating circumstance sometimes has goodness or badness not by itself but by order to another condition; the badness of the hundred dollars “comes from the fact that it’s not yours.”
• Reply 3: not every circumstance induces an individual defect by itself but in order to something else, so it does not always vary the species. Example: a pilgrimage of one mile vs. ten — better, but the same kind of act. Students: the marked walk at Ste Anne de Beaupré and where one starts (“that’s in your fervor”); the stairs on one’s knees at St André’s Oratory in Montreal, with wood over the stone; the polished path at Fatima, mothers on their knees holding babies, husbands walking beside — “she’s getting more benefit.”
• Fr Smith / Fr Michael of Dunwoody’s saying on circumstances: if your neighbour borrows your ladder you may go take it back — “but not while he’s on it painting his house.”
• Aside: the Greeks punished double what was done drunk; ethics classes can argue all afternoon over a particular case without deciding it.

6. Transition to q.19; the number 64 (“go from the general to particular”) #

Point: q.18 treated goodness of human acts in general; q.19 the interior act of the will in particular; q.20 the exterior act. General to particular is the rule of teaching (Paul VI in one of his speeches; Aristotle at the beginning of the Physics; Euclid treats the quadrilateral before the square).

• Digression from his reading of SCG III: chapters 1–63 show God is the end of the universe and of the rational creature (general); ch. 64 begins divine providence directing things to that end. Memory device: SCG I begins divine perfection at ch. 28, the second perfect number (6 the first); 64 is the first number both square (8×8) and cube (4×4×4) — the cube of the first square number (4) and the square of the first cube number (8); a cube has six surfaces; 2 six times gives 64 — fitting for providence, which “can bring the square and the cube together.” The radio “sixty-four dollar question” of his boyhood.

7. Question 19 prologue: the ten articles; “depends from” (“hanging from something”) #

He reads the ten questions: (1) goodness of the will from its object; (2) from the object alone; (3) from reason; (4) from the eternal law; (5) whether reason erring — “wandering,” as in Shakespeare’s “we wander in illusion” — obliges (the mistaken conscience); (6) whether will following erring reason against God’s law is bad; (7) whether goodness of the will depends on the intention of the end; (8) whether its quantity follows the quantity in the intention; (9) conformity to the divine will (“thy will be done”); (10) conformity in the thing willed — St Paul willing the stimulus removed, “my grace is sufficient”: was he wrong to will it?

• Translation aside: Latin pendere, to hang; Greeks and Latins imagine the cause above and the effect hanging from it (pendant), while the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon imagine the cause under, holding up — the native word for cause is ground (“grounds for divorce”). Hence understanding: to know what stands under; Latins say impositio nominis, placing the name upon. Understanding and substance are etymologically the same; he finds “understand” more useful than nous, and at least as good as intelligere. Ratio “drives you crazy” to translate — De Koninck asked in class how to translate it; “translation a thankless task.”

8. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“a good will is a will that wills the good”) #

• Obj. 1: the will can only be of the good, since bad is outside the will (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4); so judged from the object every willing would be good. Aside: reminds him of an argument he developed that you can’t be mistaken in your thinking — “I’ll give you that sometime.”
• Obj. 2: goodness is found more in the end, whose goodness does not depend on another; a good action (actio) is an end (Ethics VI), whereas making (factio) is always ordered to a thing made; so the will’s goodness does not depend on an object. Distinction doing vs. making: making passes into something exterior; doing divides into doing and making, and making gets a new name because there is a product. Listening to Mozart is doing, not making; the boss who refused a ten-minute break because the smokers “are doing something.”
• Obj. 3: each thing as it is makes another as it is; the object is good by goodness of nature, so cannot bestow moral goodness. Aside on grammar: “I kick you” and “I see you” look alike grammatically but differ in reality.
• Sed contra: Ethics V, justice is that by which one wills just things, so virtue is that by which one wills good things; the good will wills something good. “Contrary to what Kant thinks… very strange.”

9. Article 1, the body (“good and bad are per se differences of the act of the will”) #

1. Good and bad pertain per se to the will, as true and false to reason, whose acts are distinguished by true and false (a true or false opinion).
2. So good will and bad will differ in species.
3. Difference of species in acts is by objects (previous question). Conclusion: good and bad in acts of the will are noted properly by their objects.

• Illustrations: sizing someone up means seeing whether his will is in the right place, since (Metaphysics VI) good and bad are in things and the will goes to the object — “I left my heart in San Francisco”; knowing is the reverse, the thing is put into me. Those involved in abortion: hard to see how their heart is in the right place.

10. Article 1, replies (“the will is not always of the true good”) #

• Reply 1: the will is sometimes of the apparent good, which has some ratio of good (he pauses on translating ratio: aspect, notion, character — suitable for desiring), not simply; hence acts of will are sometimes bad. Aside: his teacher Kasurik quoting malum in specie humana; Washington Irving’s History of New York on men inventing new ways to fight, and paraphrasing Hesiod: some think for themselves, some as others think, some not at all.
• Reply 2: though some act can be the last end of man in a way, it is not the act of the will. Thomas holds the end of man is an act of reason: John 17 defines eternal life as knowing Him whom you sent (the beatific vision). One can love God in himself in this life but not see him; if loving were the end, “you’d be there already” — charity remains in heaven, faith and hope do not, so love there is greater but not essentially different. Thomas’s argument: in powers reflective on themselves the first object is not their own act; the first thing willed is the last end, so it cannot be the will’s own act. “Some confusion about that today.”
• Reply 3: the good represented by reason is the will’s object; as under the order of reason it belongs to the moral genus and causes moral goodness, for reason is the beginning of moral acts. Reason is more proper to man than desire: animals desire, plants have natural desire (the tree — magnolia? — whose roots seek your water pipes); man has will because he has reason, so man is defined as animal with reason, not with will (Ethics X).

His words #

• “species… from forms in so far as they are conceived by reason” — species of moral acts, vs. natural forms.
• “principal (chief) condition of the object” — what a circumstance becomes when reason orders it, giving species.
• “special order of reason” — what a circumstance must regard, for or against, to give species.
• “consonance / dissonance to reason” — agreement or disagreement; “sounding with.”
• “ratio” — reason, notion, aspect, character; he says it resists translation.
• “more or less” — of the same, partaken more or less: no new species; not of the same: possibly new species.
• “intensified or diminished” [ed.: intensio / remissio] — his rendering of “intention or emission.”
• “disparate species” — one moral act may be in several.
• “depends from” — his literal rendering of pendere, hang from.
• “reason wandering” — his rendering of erring reason.
• “doing / making” [ed.: actio / factio] — doing stays in the agent; making passes into a product.
• “apparent good” — has some ratio of good, not simply.
• “natural desire” — wanting in plants and all things.

Texts #

Read in class

• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, a. 10 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, a. 11 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 19, prologue (ten articles)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 19, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies) Mentioned
• Porphyry (Isagoge, inferred): genus, difference, property, accident
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 (bad from individual defects; bad outside the will)
• Aristotle, Ethics VI (action as end), V (justice), X (reason makes man); Metaphysics VI (good and bad in things); Physics, beginning (general to particular)
• Sophocles, Women of Trachis, Electra; Aeschylus (Furies); Plato, Euthyphro; Thomas More, Utopia
• Summa Contra Gentiles I ch. 28, III ch. 1–63 and 64
• John 17 (eternal life as knowing); St Paul, “my grace is sufficient”
• Thomas on genus and species in angels (no locus given)
• Euclid (quadrilateral before square); Kant; Washington Irving, History of New York; Hesiod

His questions #

• Does Thomas deny that the species comes from the object (a.10 obj. 1)? No — the circumstance giving species is taken as a condition and specific difference of the object.
• If your mother has killed your father, can you kill your mother? Reason must take into account that you are her son (Orestes and the Furies); left open.
• Does stealing a hundred dollars instead of fifty make a different species of sin? No; worse of the same kind, since the badness is that it is not yours.
• Is stealing from a poor man a different sin from stealing from a millionaire? Same species of theft, but depriving him of subsistence adds a second, very different species.
• Is walking ten miles on pilgrimage rather than one a different kind of act? No, still a pilgrimage, though better.
• Can the same number be both square and cube? Yes; 64 is the first, 8×8 and 4×4×4.
• Would you say in English “the goodness of the will depends from its object”? No; Latin imagines the cause above (hanging from), English below (ground, understand).
• Why does doing keep the common name and making get a new one? Because making has a product, something exterior.
• Is the last end of man an act of the will or of reason? Of reason: eternal life is knowing God (John 17); the will’s first object is not its own act.
• Why define man as animal with reason rather than animal with will? Wanting is in animals and plants; will follows on reason, which makes man man.