Aquinas on Habit (ST I-II Q49 aa.2-3): Why Habit Is the First Species of Quality, and Its Order to Action

Orientation #

He says they are “about halfway through” the body of article 2 of question 49 and resume there; he also refers back to reading Thomas on the Eucharist in Summa Contra Gentiles IV, and to having done “a little bit” of the De Anima “a long time ago.” He does not say what comes next beyond “we go on.” The previous class covered q. 49 aa. 1-2 (habit as quality, the fourfold division of quality); the next covers a. 4 and the subject of habit.

The class, in order #

1. The Eucharist and the increase of the virtues (“to preserve us in the virtues and to increase them”) #

Opening reflection, not part of the article: reading Thomas on why the Eucharist is necessary (SCG IV; verified source: ch. 15), he was struck that the answer is “to preserve us in the virtues and to increase them.” He connects this to the special link between the Eucharist and faith, hope and charity: the middle quatrain of the Adoro te devote (a prayer singled out after Vatican II for the new Enchiridion of Indulgences) is about the three; “Do this in memory of me”; the boyhood prayer before the crucifix after communion asks for faith, hope and charity; Thomas’s own prayer after communion asks for increase of all the virtues.

• Aside: De Koninck said that every time he went through the Physics he saw something new, though he had taught it since the 1930s.

2. Simplicius’s division of the four species, and Thomas’s objections (“this distinction of the species of quality seems unsuitable”) #

Point: Aristotle in the “Predicamentis” (Categories) lays down disposition and habit first among the four species; Simplicius’s account of why the four differ is rejected. Simplicius’s division (from his commentary on the Categories):

1. Qualities are either natural (in a thing by nature and always) or adventitious (they “come to” it from outside and can be lost).
2. Adventitious qualities are habits and dispositions, differing by being difficultly or easily lost.
3. Natural qualities are either according as something is in potency (second species) or in act; and in act either in the depths (third species, sense qualities) or at the surface (fourth species, figure and form). Thomas’s objections: (a) many figures and undergoing qualities are adventitious, not natural; (b) many dispositions are natural, not adventitious, “as health and beauty”; (c) it does not fit the order of the species, for simply speaking the more natural is always prior — which, he notes, already hints at why habit will be first.

3. Quality as a mode of substance; difference and “howness” (“quality implies a certain mode of substance”) #

Point: Thomas’s own way in: properly, quality implies a certain mode of substance; mode, as Augustine says on Genesis to the letter, is “what measure prefixes,” a determination according to some measure (he notes Thomas oddly uses a term that relates to quantity, but in a more general sense).

• Argument by parallel: as that by which the potency of matter is determined to substantial being is called quality — the difference of substance — so that by which the potency of the subject is determined to accidental being is called accidental quality, also a certain difference.
• Support from the words: the species-making difference is said to signify qualiquid (“what-sort-of-what”); Boethius’s translation of the definition of difference: a name said with one meaning of many things differing in kind, “signifying how they are what they are.” “How” is the closest English to poios / qualis; one could call quality “howness” (poios adjective, poiotes noun). Aristotle treats both kinds of difference in the fifth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V], the book on names equivocal by reason.
• Then Thomas: the mode or determination of the subject according to accidental being is taken (i) in order to the nature of the subject, (ii) according to acting and undergoing, which follow the principles of nature, matter (principle of undergoing) and form (principle of acting), or (iii) according to quantity.

4. Digression: how one gets four by two or three (“the rule of two or three”) #

Point: Thomas here reaches Aristotle’s four species not by four but by a division into three with the middle doubled; several models of arriving at four.

• Crisscross of two divisions into two giving four: Categories (antepredicaments) — exists in a subject or not, said of a subject or not; yields individual accident, universal substance, universal accident, individual substance. (He stumbles over the boxes and corrects himself.)
• Crisscross giving three, the fourth box empty: Poetics, beginning/middle/end by “before something or not, after something or not” — what is neither before nor after cannot be a part of a plot; Thomas on the Trinity — proceeds from someone or not, has someone proceeding from him or not: Holy Spirit, Father, Son; the fourth case is no person, since persons are distinguished by relations of origin.
• One and three: the prologue to Thomas’s commentary on the Ethics (a text both his logic and ethics professors at Laval used to place their subjects): wisdom orders, reason considers order (“looks before and after,” as “the godlike Shakespeare” says), so the knowledge of reason is divided by the order it considers — fourfold: order reason does not make but considers (natural philosophy); order reason makes in its own acts (logic); in the acts of the will (ethics, domestics, politics); in exterior matter (art). To understand it one should see a first division into two (not made by reason vs made by reason), the latter into three, reason itself first, then the will “next door,” then exterior matter. Thomas divides at once into four “seeking brevity.”
• Two and two by subdividing the middle: his own division of Shakespeare’s 27 non-history plays — Aristotle’s tragedy (happiness to misery) and comedy (misery to happiness), with plays in between, the Renaissance “tragicomedy” (Plautus coins the word) or “romances”: ten tragedies, five comedies, twelve in the middle, the twelve splitting into six love-and-friendship plays (nearer comedy) and six mercy-and-forgiveness plays.
• A crisscross text of Thomas on signifying a person: absolute as absolute, absolute as relative, relative as relative, relative as absolute (he thinks it is in the Summa, perhaps the Sentences).

5. The three modes and the four species: good and bad, easy and hard (“without the notion of good and bad”) #

Point: the threefold mode assigns the species and explains what each can bear.

1. By quantity → fourth species, figure and form. Since quantity by definition is without motion and without the notion of good and bad, figure does not admit “well or badly,” “quickly or slowly passing.” He flags this as strange: one does talk of shape as good — the reply to the first objection will explain. Aside: geometers are proud of their science, the most certain of all, but it never says “good proposition / bad proposition.”
2. By action and passion → second (ability/inability) and third (undergoing, i.e. sensible qualities). Here easily/difficultly, quickly passing/lasting, is considered, but not good and bad, because motion and passion do not have the notion of an end, and good and bad are said with respect to the end.
3. In order to the nature of the thing → first species, habit and disposition. Physics VII: habits of soul and body are “dispositions of the perfect to the best,” perfect meaning disposed according to nature; Physics II: form and nature are the end, that for the sake of which. So here both good/bad and easily/difficultly movable are considered, as some nature is the end of generation and of motion. Hence Metaphysics V defines habit as a disposition by which one is disposed well or badly, and Ethics II defines the moral virtues as habits by which we stand well or badly to the passions: the coward is badly disposed to fear, the courageous well; temperance well to concupiscence, intemperance badly. A mode suitable to the nature is good, unsuitable is bad.

• Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet (“revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse”): nature is the measure of good and bad; on that reading Polonius’s “to thine own self be true” is defensible — true to your nature.
• Conclusion: since nature is what is first considered in a thing, habit is laid down as the first species. “It took a Thomas to understand Aristotle.”
• Asides: Thomas has no commentary on the Categories, only on the Posterior Analytics among the logical books (one must go to Albert or others); he wishes he had Thomas for the Sophistical Refutations they are reading, though Thomas constantly uses the fallacies. Laval anecdote: in SCG I, that no name is said univocally of God and creatures, Thomas uses an either-or syllogism through genus, species, difference, property, accident; he realised Porphyry’s Isagoge (the “introduction” to the Categories, useful also for division, definition, demonstration) never says these are the divisions of a name said univocally of many — Monsignor Dion agreed it should have. Little gems like this must be gathered since there is no commentary.

6. Replies of article 2: beauty and health; the two senses of disposition (“the disposition becomes a habit as the boy becomes a man”) #

Ad 1: disposition implies an order; one is disposed by a quality only in order to something; adding “well or badly” requires order to nature, the end. So figure (fourth species) or hot and cold do not admit well/badly except in order to the nature. The subtle point: figures and undergoing qualities, considered as suitable or unsuitable to the nature, pertain to the first species — figure and color to beauty, heat and cold to health, beauty and health being virtues of the body and placed under disposition because easily lost. In that way Aristotle puts hot and cold in the first species. Ad 2: thereby solved, “although otherwise by some,” as Simplicius says — Thomas toning down the knocks. Ad 3, two distinctions:

• “Difficult to move” does not distinguish habit from the other species but from disposition. Disposition is taken two ways: as the genus of habit (placed in the definition in Metaphysics V) or as divided against habit.
• As divided against habit, two ways: (a) as imperfect and perfect in the same species — disposition when the quality is in imperfectly and easily lost; the beginner in a science; his college students who get a good grade but two or three years later “it’s not there,” so they acquired a disposition, not the habitus; children raised to justice or chastity who may lose it; here “the disposition becomes a habit as the boy becomes a man.” (b) as diverse species of one subalternate genus — dispositions have by their definition easily changeable causes (sickness, one suddenly falls ill), habits immobile causes (sciences, virtues); here disposition never becomes habit. This second seems Aristotle’s intention, proved from common usage: easily movable qualities rendered hard to change by accident are called habits, and conversely one with science imperfectly, easily lost, is “more disposed to science than having science” — his own French “passing away.” Hence habit names a persisting quality; disposition does not.
• Objection anticipated: are easy/difficult to change not accidental differences (belonging to motion, not quality)? Reply: though per accidens, they designate proper per se differences, as in substance we take accidental differences for essential ones — dog as four-footed animal that barks, cat as one that meows, signs of essential differences we do not know. A whole introduction to the logic of the Categories, taken by Thomas as preliminary to virtues and vices.

7. Article 3, objections and sed contra (“habitus est quo aliquid agitur cum opus est”) #

Point: does habit imply order to act?

1. Each thing acts as it is in act; but De Anima III: the one who knows by habit is still in potency, though otherwise than before he learned — the man before learning geometry is able to become geometrical; after, not always thinking of it, he is in ability to it in a different way; compare the baby in the womb acquiring eyes yet not always seeing (first act, then seeing). So habit does not imply a beginning to act.
2. What is in a definition belongs per se; being a beginning of action is in the definition of potency or power (Metaphysics V), the second species — English “ability”; Shakespeare defines reason as a “capability,” which he shortens to ability. So it is power, not habit, that is a principle of act.
3. Health, beauty, macies (leanness, being emaciated) are habits not said with reference to act. Sed contra: Augustine, on the good of marriage: habit is that by which something is done when there is need; the Commentator (Averroes, so titled because he commented on nearly all Aristotle, a custom Thomas humbly follows): habit is that by which one acts when he wants.

8. Body of article 3: order to act by definition and by subject (“the nature of the thing, which is the end of generation”) #

1. From the definition of habit: habit implies a relation to the nature of the thing as suitable or not; but the nature, end of generation, is further ordered to another end, operation or the thing made — hearing Mozart is the end; the table, not the making; the dinner, not the cooking. So habit implies order to nature and consequently to operation. Hence Metaphysics V: disposed well or badly “secundum se” (to one’s nature) or “ad aliud” (to the end) — by faith, hope and charity one is well disposed to God.
2. From the subject: some habits chiefly imply order to act because the nature of their subject consists in order to act; the notion of power is to be a beginning of act; so every habit whose subject is a power chiefly implies order to act.

• Application: Shakespeare defining reason defines a power, not a habit; Thomas’s one-and-three division distinguishes the knowledge of reason, the habit, by the order it considers — natural philosophy knows the order of natural things, logic of premises to conclusions and genus/difference to species, ethics of human acts to each other and their end, art (mechanical arts, telescopes, a chair) how to put things together.

9. Replies of article 3: first act, order of species, health and beauty (“habit is called first act, and the operation second act”) #

Ad 1: habit is act as a quality, and so can be a beginning of doing, but is in potency to the operation; hence first act / second act, De Anima II (one should have studied the three books on the soul). Ad 2: it is not of the notion of habit to regard power but nature; since nature precedes action, which power regards, habit is placed before power among the species. He spells it out: power refers to act as such (to see, hear, digest, grow, reproduce, understand); habit always to nature, which is first — my ability to understand is well disposed to my nature with the virtues of reason, badly with the vices. “Does Thomas look before and after? Quite a bit.” Ad 3: health is a habit in order to nature, and since nature is a beginning of act, “ex consequenti” to act: History of Animals X, a man or a member is healthy when able to do a healthy man’s operation — a diseased tongue cannot taste, an ear “off” cannot hear. Student question: how is beauty related to act? Answer (consequently): beauty in a woman makes her suitable for marriage; Plato in the dialogue on love — we are drawn to the beautiful to perpetuate it; Shakespeare’s sonnet “From fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty’s rose might never die”; ordered to reproduction — “matrimony has the word mother in it.” Class breaks off: “we go on to the…”

His words #

• Predicamentis / Predicaments — Latin name of the Categories.
• adventitious — “come to” a thing from outside; able to be lost.
• undergoing qualities — Aristotle’s name for sense qualities [ed.: passible qualities].
• mode — determination according to some measure (“measure prefixes,” Augustine).
• qualiquid — what the species-making difference signifies; “how they are what they are.”
• howness — his coinage for quality; poios / poiotes, qualis.
• fifth book of Wisdom; books after the physics books — [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• rule of two or three — his name for getting four by two twos, crisscross, or three with a doubled middle.
• ability / capability — [ed.: potency, power], second species of quality.
• dispositions of the perfect to the best — Physics VII on habits; “perfect” = disposed according to nature.
• bene vel male — well or badly, added to disposition to give habit.
• difficile mobile — hard to change, distinguishing habit from disposition.
• subalternate genus — of which disposition and habit are diverse species (second sense).
• macies — leanness, emaciation.
• habitus est quo aliquid agitur cum opus est — Augustine’s definition in the sed contra.
• the Commentator — Averroes.
• secundum se / ad aliud — to one’s nature / to the end, in the Metaphysics V definition.
• first act / second act — habit / operation.
• ex consequente — consequently: how health and beauty imply act.
• Isagoge — “introduction,” Porphyry’s to the Categories.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 49, a. 2, body (from Simplicius on) and ad 1-3.
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 49, a. 3, complete.
• Boethius’s translation of the definition of difference (quoted).
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence’s lines; Sonnet opening “From fairest creatures we desire increase” (quoted); Polonius’s “to thine own self be true.” Mentioned
• Summa Contra Gentiles IV, on the necessity of the Eucharist (verified: ch. 15); SCG I, no name univocal of God and creatures.
• Adoro te devote; Thomas’s prayer after communion; Enchiridion of Indulgences.
• Simplicius, Commentary on the Categories; Aristotle, Categories (antepredicaments); Porphyry, Isagoge.
• Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram; De bono coniugali.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V; Physics II, VII; Ethics II; De Anima II, III; History of Animals X; Poetics.
• Thomas, Commentary on the Ethics, prologue; a text on signifying a person absolutely or relatively (Summa or Sentences, he is unsure); Thomas on the Trinity and relations of origin.
• Plato’s dialogue on love; Plautus (tragicomedy); Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations (being read in another course).

His questions #

• Why does Thomas find Simplicius’s division unsuitable? Many figures and sense qualities are adventitious, many dispositions natural (health, beauty), and it does not respect the order in which the more natural is prior.
• Why is habit the first of the four species of quality? Because it is a determination of the subject in order to its nature, and nature is first in a thing.
• Why does the fourth species admit neither good/bad nor easy/hard? Quantity by definition is without motion and without the notion of good and bad.
• Why do the second and third species admit easy/hard but not good/bad? Motion and passion lack the notion of end, and good and bad are said with respect to the end.
• How can beauty and health be in the first species if they are figure and sense qualities? Considered as suitable to the nature of the thing, figure, color, heat and cold pertain to habit or disposition.
• In what two ways is disposition divided against habit? As imperfect to perfect in one species (then disposition becomes habit), or as diverse species with easily changeable vs immobile causes (then it never does).
• Does habit imply order to act? Yes, consequently by its definition (nature is ordered to operation) and chiefly when its subject is a power.
• Why is habit placed before power among the species? Habit regards nature, power regards act, and nature precedes action.
• How is beauty related to act? Consequently: beauty makes a woman suitable for marriage, ordered to reproduction.