Summa I-II Q.49: Habits in General – The Prologue, the Senses of 'To Have', and Whether Habit Is a Quality

Orientation #

He says they are “beginning here now” question 49, after the acts and passions; he announces they will “do this first article again next week” and that the second article will take up the whole category of quality and its division. The previous class finished q. 48 on the effects of anger; the next returns to “to have” and “in” through Metaphysics V and the Categories.

The class, in order #

1. The prooemium of q. 49 and what a prooemium is (“what a premium is”) #

Point: he insists that the prooemium be read and not confused with an introduction.

• 49 is the square of 7, symbol of wisdom; a square number has the same symbolism as its root.
• Msgr. Dionne once gave a little course on what a prooemium is; its longest part was its own prooemium.
• Vatican II, Dei Verbum: the English edition says “introduction,” the Latin says proemium. Porphyry’s Isagoge means “introduction,” yet has its own “marvelous” prooemium.
• Thomas divides almost every Aristotelian text into prooemium and tractatus; the prooemium “tells you what you’re aiming at.” In the De Anima commentary Thomas says part of a prooemium is to give the order of the treatise so you can follow it and “be teachable.”
• Aside: someone (name heard as Christopher Mangiliano, [unclear in recording]) distinguishes two senses of teachable: in the will (willing to learn from one who knows better, e.g. Euclid on triangles) and in the mind (seeing the order in which one proceeds). The prooemium gives the second.

2. Reading the prooemium: intrinsic principles, powers and habits (“after the acts and passions”) #

Point: the place of habits in the order of the Summa.

• After acts and passions, the principia (beginnings) of human acts: first intrinsic, then extrinsic.
• Intrinsic principles are twofold: powers and habits. Powers were treated in the Prima Pars (the soul), so habits remain; parallel: Aristotle distinguishes the powers in the De Anima and treats habits in the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Habits in general first, then virtues and vices (he notes this begins at q. 55). Paul VI: the general before the particular is “the principle of all education”; cf. Aristotle at the beginning of the Physics.
• Four things about habits in general: (1) their substance; (2) their subject (q. 50); (3) the cause of their generation, growth and corruption (qq. 51-53); (4) their distinction (q. 54).
• Aside: St Francis de Sales’ treatise on the love of God follows a similar plan (what it is, subject, generation, growth, corruption).

3. Digression: amphiboly, “knowledge of God” (“amphiboly is to speech what equivocation is to a word”) #

Point: “the love of God” and “the knowledge of God” are amphibolous, and true in both senses at once.

• Amphiboly: more than one word, and the whole speech has more than one meaning (a technical Greek term).
• “Knowledge of God” = knowledge God has, or knowledge whereby God is known. God knows all things by knowing himself, so the knowledge God has is a knowledge about God: the knowledge of God is a knowledge of God. Likewise the love God has is primarily a love of God.
• Aristotle, beginning of the Metaphysics: wisdom is “divine in both senses” — about the first cause, and knowledge God alone (or most of all) would have. He uses the word “divine,” not the phrase; one could turn it amphibolous: wisdom is the knowledge of God in both senses.
• Pythagoras: “Don’t call me wise; God alone is wise; call me a lover of wisdom” — humility in the origin of “philosopher,” not just “lover of wisdom.”
• Shakespeare’s definition of reason is the knowledge of reason in both senses (reason’s knowledge about itself); geometry is knowledge of reason in one sense only.
• Dei Verbum: the Bible is the Word of God, but chiefly about the Word of God made flesh — the Word of God is about the Word of God.
• Student: this comes from the two uses of the genitive, objective and possessive. He agrees.

4. The articles of q. 49 (“whether habit is a quality”) #

Point: the questions to be asked about habit’s substance.

• First, whether habit is a quality: in the Categories Aristotle divides quality into four species, and Thomas asks first whether habit is in that genus — like asking whether number is a quantity (yes).
• Second, whether it is a determined species of quality. He will take them back to the Categories: Aristotle was a teacher of Thomas by the written word, as Augustine was; others teach by the spoken word.
• Third, whether habit implies an order to act: habit perfects the power with respect to its act, so that once acquired one does the act well, easily, perfectly. Habit “touches upon something very important” for us; grace is a special, new kind of habit fitting human nature. Student: “creatures of habit” — “especially us”; he notes that’s equivocal.
• He says “four things are asked” but names only three here; the fourth is not stated in the recording.

5. Objection 1 and the many senses of “to have” (“this name habit is said from this verb which is to have”) #

Point: Augustine (Eighty-Three Questions): habitus comes from habere, but we have quantity, money, etc., so habit is not a quality.

• The last chapter of the Categories is on “to have”; Aristotle knew it is equivocal by reason. The post-predicaments: opposites, before and after (ch. 12), together, how motion fits the categories, then to have; “nobody is fully explaining” these.
• His running count of senses: substance has accidents; a genus has species (plural); a species has a genus (singular) — cf. Physics IV where the genus is in the species in the third sense of “in” and the species in the genus in the fourth; the category echein; habit under quality; a thing has a name; a name has a meaning or meanings. “How many senses does to have have?”
• Aside: studying “substance” in the Categories he found about four senses, and Thomas uses all four; Thomas enumerates the senses of “before” from Categories 12 to show no person of the Trinity is before another though Son is from Father and Spirit from both.
• God: “everything He has, He is” — God has wisdom and is wisdom, has life and says “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; we have knowledge or health but are not what we have. Student: matter has form; “to have” is always connected with “in” (he says Aristotle points this out in “the fifth book”).
• Exchange on haves and have-nots: we name exterior things (cash, a car) as had, though knowledge is more in us; student: “I have a soul.” Being possessed by possessions — “not so much having the car as the car having them”; the cat has you (decides when you rise and open doors); “he has it all” — but God is all: to Moses “I’ll show you every good,” which Thomas says is God himself.
• Aside: modern philosophers “too proud to stop and figure out what the words they’re using mean.”

6. Objection 2: habit is one of the predicaments (“the ten supreme accusations”) #

Point: habitus is one of the ten predicamenta (one of the last six), and one predicament is not contained under another, so habit is not a quality.

• “Category” comes from the law courts (the word appears in the Gospels when Christ is accused): to categorize is to accuse — “you are a thief.” Warren Murray calls the ten categories “the ten supreme accusations.”
• Latin predicamentum from predicare (to be said of); Porphyry’s Isagoge is called the predicabilia (genus, species, difference, property, accident) — cf. Albert’s De praedicabilibus and De praedicamentis.

7. Objection 3 and sed contra (“words are dangerous things”) #

Point: every habit is a disposition (Categories); disposition is the order of something having parts (Metaphysics V), which belongs to situs/position — so habit is not a quality. (He: sitting now is order of parts in place.)

• Aside: in the Sophistical Refutations Aristotle gives thirteen ways of being deceived; the first six are from words. Student: some risks worth taking.
• Sed contra: the Philosopher in the Categories says habitus is a quality difficile mobilis, not easily changed.

8. Digression: how a common name is kept by one member and the other gets a new name (“equivocal by reason”) #

Point: Aristotle sometimes says habit is a disposition, sometimes divides habit against disposition; this is one way a word becomes equivocal by reason.

• Pattern: a word said of two things is later kept by one and the other gets a new name. Disposition easily lost (mood) vs disposition not easily lost: the latter adds something noteworthy (stability), so gets the name habit; the others keep “disposition.”
• “Thing” vs “person”: if she’s not a thing she’s nothing; person adds something noteworthy.
• Ethics VI divides episteme from sophia (scientia/sapientia), yet the Metaphysics calls wisdom an episteme: wisdom is a reasoned knowledge through causes, but of the very first causes, so gets the new name. English knowledge vs wisdom likewise.
• “You’ll find this over and over again… the sooner you get used to it, the better.”
• Two ways it happens: (a) the one that adds something noteworthy gets the new name (wisdom); (b) one has the common meaning only imperfectly, so the one that has it fully keeps the name and the imperfect one gets a new name: man/boy, woman/girl (boy and girl “on the way there”); man vs animals (animals keep the name; would you call man an ape? — homo sapiens).
• Understanding (intellectus) is kept for angels or God; ours is defective (Isaac: intellectus umbratus, overshadowed), so we get the new name reason. Hence Shakespeare defines reason as “looking before and after” rather than seeing it; reason is the ability to look for distinctions because we have a hard time seeing them — as with the senses of “to have.”

9. Respondeo: two ways habitus is taken from having (“something in some way has itself”) #

Point: “to have” grounds habit in two ways, and in the second habit is a quality.

1. A man or anything is said to have something. So taken, having is common to diverse genera — hence Aristotle places to have among the post-predicaments, which follow diverse genera, like opposites (the four: contradictories, contraries, having and lack, relations), prius and posterius, and motion (found in substance, in quantity as growth, in quality, in ubi). He recalls the division of the Categories into ante-predicamenta, predicamenta, post-predicamenta. Among things had, Thomas distinguishes: (a) nothing in the middle between haver and had — subject and its quality or quantity; (b) only a relation in the middle — having a companion or friend; (c) something in the middle not an action or passion but like one — one adorning or covering, another adorned or covered. Metaphysics V: habit is “as it were a pseudo-action of the haver and the had,” as in things we have about us; this constitutes the special genus, the category echein — between the man having the gown and the gown, there is a habit in the middle.
2. A thing is said in some way to have itself, in itself or towards another. This having is according to some quality; Metaphysics V: habit is a disposition according to which one is disposed well or badly, in oneself or towards another — health a habit of the body. Thus habit is a quality.

10. The replies (“disposition always implies the order of something having parts”) #

• To 1: Augustine’s argument takes “to have” commonly, so common to many genera.
• To 2: that argument takes habit as the middle between haver and had, which makes the one predicament called to have.
• To 3: disposition always implies order of parts, but in three ways, as the Philosopher adds (Simplicius: this comprehends all dispositions): according to place — bodily dispositions, the predicament position (order of parts in place); according to power — dispositions in preparation, not yet perfect, as inchoate knowledge and virtue; according to species — perfect dispositions, called habits, as complete science and virtue.
• On position vs where: being in this room says nothing about whether I stand, sit or lie; position adds the order of parts in place. There is no analogous category tied to time because time’s definition already includes before and after; so two categories for place, one for time. He notes we say “position” and also “disposition” — “crazy stuff.”
• Next time: article 1 again, then article 2 on the division of quality.

His words #

• premium / prooemium; distinguished from “introduction” (Isagoge) and from the tractatus.
• beginnings; his rendering of principia, intrinsic and extrinsic.
• amphiboly; ambiguity of a speech, as equivocation is of a word.
• predicamentum / predicamenta; Latin for the categories, from predicare; predicabilia for the Isagoge.
• ten supreme accusations; Warren Murray’s name for the categories, from the law-court origin of “category.”
• echein; the category “to have.”
• equivocal by reason; a word extended by keeping the common name for one member and giving a new name to the other.
• difficile mobilis; quality not easily changed.
• pseudo-action; his rendering of Metaphysics V on habit between haver and had.
• intellectus umbratus; “overshadowed understanding,” attributed to Isaac.
• situs; position, order of parts in place, distinct from ubi (where).
• inchoata; incomplete knowledge and virtue, dispositions according to power.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 49, prooemium
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 49, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, response, replies) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Categories: quality and its four species; ch. 12 before and after; post-predicaments; “to have”
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (habit, disposition); Metaphysics I (wisdom divine in both senses)
• Aristotle, Physics IV (senses of “in”); Physics, beginning (general before particular); “fifth book” on to have and in (as he says it)
• Aristotle, De Anima (powers); Nicomachean Ethics (habits; book VI episteme/sophia)
• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations (thirteen ways of deception)
• Augustine, Eighty-Three Questions
• Simplicius, Commentary on the Categories
• Porphyry, Isagoge; Albert, De praedicabilibus, De praedicamentis
• Vatican II, Dei Verbum; St Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I (powers of the soul); I-II qq. 50-55 (as announced)

His questions #

• Why does Thomas treat habits here and not the powers? The powers were treated in the Prima Pars; habits remain, as Aristotle treats powers in De Anima and habits in the Ethics.
• What is amphiboly? A speech of several words with more than one meaning, as equivocation is for a single word.
• Is the knowledge of God a knowledge of God? Yes: God knows all things by knowing himself, so the knowledge God has is about God.
• What is the last chapter of the Categories about? To have.
• How many senses does “to have” have? Left open; he counts at least substance/accidents, genus/species, species/genus, the category echein, habit, having a name, a name having meanings.
• Is habit a disposition or divided against it? Both, by naming: the stable disposition gets the new name “habit,” the easily lost keeps “disposition.”
• Why is there a category of position beside “where,” but none analogous to “when”? Position adds the order of parts in place; time already includes before and after in its definition.
• Is habit a quality? Yes, insofar as a thing has itself well or badly in itself or towards another.