Summa I-II Q21 a.1–3: Malum, Peccatum and Culpa, Praise and Blame, and Merit and Demerit Toward the Community

Orientation #

He opens still on the body of article 1 (“the same point that he makes in the body of the first article that malum is in plus”), then reads articles 2 and 3 of q. 21. He announces that “next two articles we’re going to do is merit and demerit”; the class ends having done a. 3, with a. 4 still to come. The previous class covered the end of q. 20 and the opening of q. 21; the next completes q. 21 with a. 4 and turns toward the treatise on the passions.

The class, in order #

1. The De Malo gloss: malum wider than peccatum, peccatum wider than culpa (“malum is in plus”) #

Point: the Marietti edition’s quotation from De Malo fixes the three words before a. 2 uses them.

• Malum is more common than peccatum: in anything whatever, subject or act, the privation of form, order or due measure has the ratio of bad.
• Peccatum is said only of an act lacking its suitable order, form or measure. Example: a tibia curva (crooked thigh) is a mala tibia but not a peccatum; the claudicatio, the lame walking, can be called a peccatum.
• General statement: quilibet actus inordinatus potest dici peccatum vel naturae vel artis vel moris — any disordered act is a sin of nature, of art or of morals. “Kind of surprises us.”
• Culpa: a peccatum has the ratio culpae only from being voluntary, since no disordered act is imputed to anyone except what is in his power. So peccatum est in plus quam culpa, as malum in plus quam peccatum.
• Thomas adds that by communis usus loquendi apud theologos, peccatum and culpa are taken for the same; “that’s our use of the word too… it already crept in.”
• Greek has the same use: hamartemata in what he read “last night” in the “Book of Places” [ed.: likely Topics]; a sin of art, of logic; an artist who blunders in executing his work commits a peccatum and doesn’t know it — “the way so many modern arts do.”
• Student: what do we call a disordered act now? Often “a mistake or blunder.”
• Aside: Sherlock Holmes in the Norwood Builder story (“Norfolk builder” in recording): the criminal “lacked the supreme gift of the artist, knowing when to stop” — said also of Titian and Mozart; not knowing when to stop is a peccatum of art.

2. The Sentences gloss: rectum and the straight line (“whose middle does not go out from the extremes”) #

Point: the second Marietti quotation lights up rectum from a. 1.

• Rectum is that whose middle does not go out from the extremes (cuius medium non exit ab extremis); an act is considered as between two extremes, the principium agens and the finis intentus.
• This goes back to the first meaning of beginning and end: a point at the beginning of a line and a point at its end; Euclid’s straight line, where nothing gets out from the line between two points (one translation: “all the points lie evenly”).
• Aristotle in “the fifth book” (Metaphysics V, inferred) gives end-as-purpose as the third meaning of end; the first is the end of a line, the end of the table. “It’s kind of beautiful to see the way the mind is carried over from one to the other.”

3. Digression: reason is not the center of a circle (“some statements are closer to the mind”) #

Point: statements are not equidistant from reason; some are known through themselves and used to judge others.

• Center of a circle is equidistant from all points on the circumference; but statements are not equidistant from the mind. The mind uses closer statements to know further ones: the Pythagorean theorem is Prop. 47 of Book I, and most of what precedes is there to get to it. If reason is the center, statements lie along a radius, nearer or further.
• Axiom: “the through itself is before the through another,” and you cannot go on through another forever; so some statements must be known through themselves.
• Against this: the “democratic mind” (a talk-show remark) is more interested in equality than freedom; treating all statements as equal, none “privileged,” is “crazy” — some statements should judge the truth of others, “like one man judging other men.” The agnostic mind: everything relative, nothing known.
• Asides: cholesterol experts now blaming inflammation instead; bloodletting of George Washington — the medical arts “not altogether a crapshoot.”

4. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“praiseworthy or blameable”) #

Point: does a human act, from being good or bad, have the ratio of praiseworthy or blameworthy (laudabile vel culpabile)?

• Obj. 1: peccatum happens also in things done by nature (Physics II), but natural things are not praised or blamed. You don’t praise a tree for growing straight or castigate the crooked one. Should you praise a woman for being beautiful? “Depends on how much work she did”; aside on early-American witch trials judging women by their looks.
• Obj. 2: sin happens in acts of art as in morals (cf. the De Malo sentence just read); Physics II: the grammarian sins in not writing rightly, the doctor in not giving the right potion. Yet the artist is not held guilty for a bad work, because it belongs to the artist’s skill to be able to make both a good and a bad work when he wishes. Example: Mozart’s Musical Joke (“Kershaw Five Twenty Six, something like that” [ed.: Köchel]), written to show how not to write music — obvious mistakes plus subtler digs at contemporary composers; “is that a sin of Mozart?” Asides: sour wine from the Italian father-in-law; Father Basil on Brazilian wine, “let it sit a little longer and made a great vinegar”; a book “101 Plots Used and Abused” (attributed to Ben Jonson in the recording); Shakespeare taking plots from elsewhere and making them better; the British general’s dispatch “Peccavi, I have sinned” after taking Sindh; Cardinal Sin of Manila, “Welcome to the house of sin.”
• Obj. 3: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 — the bad is weak and impotent; weakness takes away or diminishes guilt; so a bad act is not culpable as bad.
• Sed contra: Aristotle — praiseworthy are the works of virtue, blameworthy (vituperabilia) the contrary; virtue is what makes its possessor good and his work good (the knife: sharpness makes it a good knife and its cutting good — “good cut of salmon,” corrected from steak after a “great cuts” barbershop joke). Good acts are acts of virtue, so praiseworthy; bad ones blameworthy.
• Aside: Aristotle’s inscription for Plato — the first man to show by both word and deed that the virtuous life is a happy life; “most men couldn’t do both.”

5. Article 2, body: imputation, power, will (“imputed to the agent”) #

Point: praise or blame is nothing but imputing the goodness or badness of the act to the agent, which happens only when the act is in his power.

1. Malum is in plus than peccatum, and peccatum in plus than culpa (from De Malo).
2. An act is culpable or laudable insofar as it is imputed to the agent; praising or blaming is nothing other than imputing to someone the badness or goodness of his act.
3. An act is imputed when it is in his power, when he has dominion over it — which is true of all voluntary acts, since through the will man is lord of his act.
4. So good and bad only in voluntary acts constitute praise or guilt; there malum, peccatum, culpa coincide.

• Series of “more universal / less universal” triads he lines up beside malum-peccatum-culpa: principium / cause / element (Thomas on Metaphysics V and the opening of the Physics — every element a cause, every cause a beginning, not vice versa); next / touching / continuous (next: nothing of the same kind between, e.g. the next house or chair; touching: extremities together; continuous: one); distinction / division / definition (every definition a division, every division a distinction; the Persons of the Trinity are distinct, never divided). Illustration: “C” is element, cause and beginning of the word “cat”; likewise a voluntary act is malum, peccatum and culpa at once.
• Student translations: evil, sin, guilt.

6. Article 2, replies: nature, art, and the willing sinner (“in art the one willingly sinning is more”) #

• Ad 1: natural acts are not in the power of the natural agent, since nature is determined to one (“like Shakespeare says, nature not being able to be more than one thing”); so peccatum in nature, but no culpa. Aside: culpa in the Confiteor rendered “fault” in the new translation.
• Ad 2: reason stands otherwise in art and in morals. In art reason is ordered to a particular end thought out by reason; in morals to the common end of the whole of human life, to which the particular end is ordered. Since sin is deviation from order to an end, in art there is a twofold sin: (a) deviation from the artist’s particular end — proper to the art — intending a good work and making a bad, or intending bad and making good; (b) deviation from the common end of human life — intending a bad work and making it, whereby another is deceived — a sin not of the artist as artist but as man. From (a) he is guilty as artist, from (b) as man. In morals sin is always by deviation from the order of reason to the common end of human life, so man is guilty as man.
• Hence Aristotle’s “famous thing”: in art the one willingly sinning is better; in prudence and the moral virtues, worse. Mozart shows he knows how to write music by knowing how to write bad music.
• His own example: teaching logic he knowingly makes bad arguments the students take for good — “man is animal but not just animal, so animal nature is a part of man; but animal includes dog, cat, horse, so sometimes the part is more than the whole,” mixing two senses of whole and part. Knowingly bad → good command of logic; unknowingly bad → poor logician; but knowingly deceiving students → “I’m a bad guy.” An early Platonic dialogue where Socrates gets mixed up because what is done knowingly seems better.
• Asides: clowns’ skit cutting table legs, one cut comes out even — “no, that can’t be right,” he didn’t intend it; a grill master who knowingly burns a steak; Professor Kasurik in Quebec sending back steak until the French chef says “I’ll burn it for you” — you cannot criticize him as a cook, only as a man.
• Ad 3: the infirmity in voluntary bad acts is subject to human power, so it neither removes nor diminishes guilt.

7. Article 3, objections and sed contra (“merit and demerit are said by order to retribution”) #

Point: does a good or bad human act have the ratio of merit or demerit?

• Obj. 1: retribution has place only toward another; but some good and bad acts are toward oneself. Cf. the division of sins against God, self, neighbor — “how can you sin against yourself?”
• Obj. 2: no one merits punishment or reward for disposing as he wishes of what he is lord of; destroying your own thing is not punished like destroying another’s. “Do I take my car home tonight and smash it up, you’re going to punish me?” Asides: families throwing TVs off a cliff, a father smashing the set after “Shut up, Daddy, I’m watching TV,” his own house without TV — “you must be a Neanderthal,” internet as a basic need.
• Obj. 3: acquiring a good for oneself does not merit that another do good to one; a good act is a good and perfection of the agent, a bad act his evil; so no merit or demerit.
• Sed contra: Isaiah 3 — say to the just man that it is well, he eats the fruit of his inventions; woe to the impious, the retribution of his hands will come to him.

8. Article 3, body and replies: the common good (“part and member of the whole society”) #

Point: merit and demerit are said in order to a retribution according to justice, which arises from acting for the good or harm of another; “this is going to bring in the common good… very striking.”

1. One living in a society is a part and member of the whole society; whatever is done for the good or bad of anyone in it redounds to the whole — as he who hurts one’s hand hurts the whole man.
2. Acting for the good or bad of a single person carries a twofold merit or demerit: retribution owed from that person, and from the whole collegium.
3. Ordering the act directly to the good or bad of the whole collegium: retribution owed first from the whole, second from all its parts.
4. Acting toward one’s own good or bad: retribution owed insofar as it bears on the common, since one is a part of the collegium; not as the good or bad of a singular person (the agent himself), except by a certain likeness, insofar as one can speak metaphorically of justice of a man to himself. Aside: the priest’s advice, “be good to yourself — give yourself what you deserve, penance for your sins.”

• Thomas’s summary of the three articles: praiseworthy or culpable according as the act is in the power of the will; rectitude or sin according to its order to the end; merit or demerit according to the retribution of justice to another.
• Ad 1: acts not ordered to another individual are still ordered to the good or bad of another, the community itself — “contained in the communion of saints.”
• Ad 2: man, lord of his own act, is also of another, the community; he merits or demerits by disposing his acts well or badly, as with other things he ought to serve the community with.
• Ad 3: the good or bad one does to oneself redounds to the community.

His words #

• malum in plus quam peccatum: bad is “said of more” than sin; wider extension.
• peccatum: any disordered act, of nature, art or morals; “sin” in the broad sense.
• culpa: guilt; a sin insofar as voluntary, imputed to the agent; in the Confiteor, “fault.”
• communis usus loquendi apud theologos: the theologians’ custom of taking peccatum and culpa as the same, which “already crept in.”
• hamartemata: the Greek term for sins, including sins of art.
• rectum: that whose middle does not go out from the extremes; the act between agent and intended end.
• “through itself before through another”: his axiom for self-known statements [ed.: per se prior to per aliud].
• “imputed”: praise or blame is imputing the goodness or badness of an act to its agent.
• “dominion / lord of his act”: man’s power over his act through the will.
• next / touching / continuous: his rendering of Aristotle’s series; touching = extremities together, continuous = made one.
• collegium: rendered “college,” the whole society as a body.
• “retribution”: the return owed according to justice, ground of merit and demerit.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, De Malo, passage quoted in the Marietti edition (locus not stated): malum / peccatum / culpa.
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences, passage quoted in the Marietti edition (locus not stated): definition of rectum.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 21, a. 2, whole article.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 21, a. 3, whole article.
• Isaiah 3 (in the sed contra of a. 3).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics II (peccatum in nature and in art: grammarian, doctor); Physics I opening (principium, cause, element).
• Aristotle, “fifth book” (Metaphysics V, inferred): meanings of end; of beginning, cause, element.
• Aristotle, Ethics (locus not stated): works of virtue praiseworthy; the willing sinner better in art, worse in prudence.
• Aristotle, “Book of Places” [ed.: likely Topics], read “last night”: hamartemata.
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4.
• Euclid, Elements, definition of straight line; I.47 (Pythagorean theorem).
• Plato, an early dialogue (unnamed) on knowing vs. unknowing wrongdoing.
• Conan Doyle, “The Norwood Builder” (inferred from “Norfolk builder”); Mozart, Musical Joke; Shakespeare (unnamed passage on nature).

His questions #

• Should you praise a woman for being beautiful? Only insofar as it is her work; natural goods are not praised or blamed (obj. 1’s point).
• Is the Musical Joke a sin of Mozart? A peccatum of art done knowingly, which shows he possesses the art; no culpa as artist.
• Who is better, the man who knowingly does something bad or unknowingly? In art, the knowing one; in morals (prudence), the knowing one is worse.
• Is our reason to statements as the center of a circle to points on the circumference, all equidistant? No; some statements are closer to the mind and are used to know the further ones.
• How do the English texts translate malum, peccatum, culpa? Evil, sin, guilt (and culpa as “fault” in the Confiteor).
• How can you sin against yourself? Raised by obj. 1 of a. 3; answered in the body: what one does to oneself bears on the community of which one is a part.
• Do I take my car home tonight and smash it up — you’re going to punish me for that? No one is punished for destroying his own thing as for another’s (obj. 2); but insofar as one is part of the community, retribution is still owed.