Summa I-II Q.20 aa.2-4: The inner will and the outward act, one goodness or two, and what the deed adds

Orientation #

He opens mid-article on q.20 a.2 and reads through a.4, repeatedly leaning on what “has been said above”: the twofold goodness of the exterior act (from matter and circumstances vs from order to the end) and Dionysius’s “bonum ex integra causa” (prev. lecture). The previous class ended q.19 and began the question on the goodness of exterior acts; the next continues into the last articles of q.20 and the opening of q.21.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“a good tree is not able to produce bad fruits”) #

Point: three arguments that the whole goodness and badness of the exterior act depends on the will.

1. Matthew 7: good tree cannot bear bad fruit; by the gloss (Augustine, per his footnote) the tree is the will, the fruit the work. So interior good and exterior bad, or the reverse, is impossible.
2. Augustine, Retractions: one does not sin except by the will; no sin in the will, no sin in the exterior act.
3. Good and bad are per se differences of the moral act; per se differences divide the genus, not per accidens (the Philosopher, “seventh book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics VII, inferred]); an act is moral because voluntary — he notes “moral” here does not mean “good” — so good and bad are taken only from the side of the will.

• Sed contra: Augustine, Against Lying: some things cannot come about well by any good end or good will. Aside: “some people deny that… crazy theologians nowadays.”

2. Article 2, body and replies (“in order that something be bad, it suffices one singular defect”) #

Point: the goodness from order to the end depends wholly on the will; the goodness from suitable matter and circumstances depends on reason, and the will’s goodness in turn depends on that, as it is carried to the act.

• Recalls Dionysius: bonum ex integra causa, bad from any defect (a “great quote”, prev. lecture). So: will good from object and end → exterior act good; “this is the key point now”: it does not suffice that the will be good from the intention of the end alone; if the will is bad from either, the exterior act is bad.
• Reply 1: the good tree is the will good both from the act willed and from the end intended — this “corrects that understanding” of Matthew.
• Reply 2: one sins by the will not only in willing a bad end but in willing a bad way. Robin Hood, stealing to give alms: “Good intention is good enough”? “Tough… Scorpions for breakfast.”
• Reply 3: the objection takes “voluntary” too narrowly, as the will’s act alone; exterior acts are voluntary as proceeding from will and reason, so both admit the difference good/bad.
• Aside: St Alphonsus to worried new confessors — nobody can do it, but if he has not been negligent and prays for the grace, he need not worry; “the patron of confession.”

3. Article 3, objections (“the beginning of the source of the interior act”) #

Point: three arguments that the goodness of the interior and exterior act is not the same.

1. The source of the interior act is a power of the soul, grasping (apprehensiva) or desiring; the source of the exterior act is the executive power; diverse principles, diverse acts; acts are subjects of goodness; the same accident (numerically) cannot be in diverse subjects — whiteness in your face and in mine, same in kind, not in number. So not the same goodness.
   • Digression on apprehensiva: his sophism from last night’s logic class — a square is an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral; that is the definition of square; therefore a square is the definition of square. Student’s refutation: the definition is not four-sided. Yet some truth in it: the nature of the square is somehow contained in the definition. Mistake: simply vs not simply. Hence “grasping”: what the hand grasps is contained in the hand, what the mind grasps is contained in the mind in some way; the old name “simplex apprehensio” for the first act of the mind. Contrast the will: its act is more in the object than the object in it — “where your treasure is, there your heart shall be” (treasure in heaven, heart in heaven). Grasping is not the will’s perfection — that would be avarice.
2. Aristotle, Ethics II: virtue makes its haver good and renders his act good. But intellectual virtue is in the commanding power, moral virtue in the commanded (Ethics I, end: virtues of reason vs of will and emotions). So the goodness of the interior (commanding) act is other than that of the exterior (commanded) act.
   • Making virtue accessible: Uncle Warren’s plaque “much virtue in herbs, little in men”; a thawed herb has “lost its virtue”; salt of the earth losing its savour; the knife — its virtue is not cutting well but the quality (sharpness) that enables it; its vice, dull; man’s virtue is harder to know — “got to be sharp too.”
3. Cause and effect cannot be the same, nothing is cause of itself (an axiom); but the goodness of one is cause of the other’s; so not the same.

• Sed contra: shown above that the will’s act is to the exterior act as form to matter; from form and matter one thing; so one goodness.
• Asides: “keep on getting convinced of the false… put it on the index”; Bellarmine’s Controversies objected to for giving Protestants better arguments than their own — “Yeah, but I answer that.” Aristotle and Thomas proportioning things to us as higher angels to lower; reading an Aristotle book Thomas did not comment on is hard.

4. Article 3, body and replies (“a bitter potion from this alone is good”) #

Point: interior and exterior act are one in the genus of the moral act, but one act in subject may have one or many reasons of goodness; so the goodness is sometimes the same, sometimes other and other.

• Something ordered to another may be good only from that order: the bitter potion is good only as ordered to health — one goodness with health. Or it may have its own ratio of good besides: savory medicine is delightful apart from being sanative. His childhood cinnamon-coated medicine: sucked too long, “potio amara” — lesson learned.
• Conclusion: exterior act good only from order to the end → altogether the same goodness as the will’s (which regards the end per se, the exterior act regarding it through the will). Exterior act good by matter or circumstances → its goodness is one, the will’s goodness from the end another; yet the end’s goodness redounds from the will onto the exterior act, and the goodness of matter and circumstances redounds onto the will.
• Reply 1: the argument proves the two acts diverse in the genus of nature; from these diverse things is constituted one in the genus of morals — “a subtle distinction.”
• Reply 2 (Ethics VI): moral virtues ordered to the ends of the virtues, prudence in reason to the means; hence diverse virtues; but right reason about the end has no other goodness than the virtue’s, as the goodness of reason is partaken in each virtue — “that’s interesting.”
• Reply 3: derivation from a univocal agent gives another in number, same in species — father and son; the heat of heater and heated. Derivation by analogy gives one in number — healthy animal, healthy medicine (makes it), healthy urine (signifies it): no other health than the animal’s. Aristotle’s “humble example” for metaphysics being one science; Aristotle son of a physician, court physician to Philip, teacher of Alexander. So goodness derives from will to exterior act or the reverse according to the order of one to the other. “Awfully subtle stuff.”
• Aside: the phone machine; Bernardo, a Mexican student, cannot stop over in Toronto without a Canadian visa — $400 lost, “the convenience of the modern world.”

5. Article 4, objections (“the will is what is rewarded”) #

Point: three arguments that the exterior act adds nothing to the goodness or badness of the interior.

1. Chrysostom on Matthew: the will is rewarded or condemned; works are witnesses of the will; God does not seek works for their own sake but for others’ sake; God’s judgment outranks men’s.
2. The previous article said the goodness is one; growth is by adding one to another; “Duane Berquist plus Duane Berquist is no more than Duane Berquist.” He flags: this article “seems contradictory to the previous one… very very subtle.”
3. The creature’s goodness adds nothing to the divine goodness, being wholly derived from it; the exterior act’s goodness is sometimes wholly derived from the interior, or the reverse.
   • Digression: God and creatures no better than God alone. Thomas’s two ways of leading by the hand: not shorter line to longer line (which would lengthen), but point to line — a line plus a point is no longer; and partaking = taking a part, whole plus part no more than whole — “you and your arm.” We “default” to thinking of goodness as a quantity in a pile.

• Sed contra: every agent intends good or to avoid bad; if the deed added nothing, doing a good or bad work would be in vain — unfitting, since (Aristotle, Ethics) “with truth all things fit.”

6. Article 4, body and replies (“which it can happen in three ways”) #

Point: as to the goodness from willing the end, the deed adds nothing unless the will itself becomes better or worse; as to the goodness from matter and circumstances, the deed adds, being the will’s term.

• Three ways the will itself changes: (1) number — wills, does not do, later wills and does: act doubled, twofold good or evil; (2) extension — one meets an impediment and desists, another continues the will’s motion to the deed: a longer will, better or worse (Buckley’s “tenacious ill will” of his opponents; tenacity as perseverance); (3) intensity — exterior acts pleasant or painful intensify or remit the will; a more intense will is better or worse.
• Goodness from matter and circumstances: compared to the will as limit and end; every inclination is perfected by reaching its term; a will is not perfect unless, given the opportunity, it acts. If the possibility is absent while the will is perfect, the missing perfection is simply involuntary, and the involuntary neither merits punishment or reward nor takes anything away from them. (He stumbles over the translation here, first reading “takes away something”, then corrects.)
• Reply 1: Chrysostom speaks of the consummated will, which ceases from act only through inability.
• Reply 2: that argument holds of the goodness the exterior act has from willing the end; its goodness from matter and circumstances is other than the will’s goodness from the end, but not other than the will’s goodness from the act willed, to which it stands as reason and cause. Reply 3 thereby clear.
• Asides: don’t try to figure this out in the confessional; St Leopold Mandić, the Capuchin of Padua, a Padre Pio figure “about this tall”, kept the Summa on his desk.

His words #

• “grasping” / apprehensiva; the knowing power contains its object as the hand contains what it grasps [ed.: apprehension]
• “simplex apprehension”; the old name for the first act of the mind
• “the power carrying out the motion”; source of the exterior act [ed.: executive power]
• “haver”; virtue makes its haver good and his work good (Aristotle’s definition)
• “prudence or foresight”; in reason, ordered to the means
• “identical agent”; the univocal cause producing something like itself, other in number [ed.: univocal agent]
• “potio amara”; bitter potion (his childhood medicine)
• “redounds, flows over”; goodness of end onto the exterior act, of matter/circumstances onto the will
• “number / extension / intensity”; the three ways the will itself becomes better or worse

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 20, a. 2 (from the objections; his own translation)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 20, a. 3
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 20, a. 4 Mentioned:
• Matthew 7 (good tree / bad fruit) with the gloss (Augustine)
• Augustine, Retractions; Against Lying
• Aristotle, Ethics II (virtue), Ethics I end, Ethics VI (prudence and moral virtues), Ethics (“with truth all things fit”)
• “The Philosopher, seventh book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics VII, inferred]
• Chrysostom on Matthew
• Dionysius, bonum ex integra causa
• Aristotle on metaphysics as one science (healthy example)
• Bellarmine, Controversies; St Alphonsus on confessors; St Leopold Mandić

His questions #

• How do you know it is false that a square is the definition of square? The definition is not four-sided; the truth in it is only “not simply” — the nature is contained in the definition in some way.
• Is grasping the perfection of the will? No; the will’s act is more in the object than the object in it — like avarice if it grasped.
• What is the virtue of the knife, and its vice? Not cutting well but the quality enabling it (sharp); vice, dull; man’s virtue harder to know.
• Can the same whiteness be in your face and mine? Same in kind, not the same numerically.
• Is stealing to give alms good enough? No — one sins by willing a bad way, not only a bad end.
• Is God plus creatures better than God alone? No: like a line plus a point, or a whole plus its part.
• Does the exterior act add to the goodness of the interior? Not as to the goodness from the end, unless the will itself changes (number, extension, intensity); yes as to matter and circumstances, as term of the will.