Why Habits Are Necessary, and Where They Are: Body, Soul, Powers and Grace (ST I-II Q49 a.4; Q50 aa.1-2)

Orientation #

He refers back to “what has been said above” in Thomas (habit as disposition to nature and operation) without naming the earlier article. At the end he says Thomas “is going to talk more about it [grace] later on.” He asks “should we stop or go on?” before a. 2, and the class goes on. The previous class treated q. 49 a. 2 (habit and disposition as first species of quality); the next takes up q. 50 a. 3, habits in the sensitive powers.

The class, in order #

1. q. 49 a. 4 objections and sed contra (“man is a creature of habit”) #

Point: is it necessary that there be habits at all? He says we’ll find man is “a creature of habit” in a much more profound way than the phrase’s users realize.

• Obj. 1: a thing is well or badly disposed by its form (as it is a being and good by its form); so no need of habit.
• Obj. 2: habit implies order to act, but power/ability already suffices as a beginning of acts; natural powers act without habits. “Why does my reason have to have all these habits?”
• Obj. 3: ability, like habit, is to good and bad and does not always act; so habit is superfluous alongside power.
• Sed contra: habits are perfections (Physics VII); perfection is most necessary since it has the ratio of an end.

2. The three requirements for being disposed (“three things are required”) #

Point: a habit is a disposition in order to a thing’s nature and to its operation or end; three things are required for one thing to need disposing to another.

1. The disposed is other than that to which it is disposed, as potency to act. Hence if a nature is not composed of potency and act and its substance is its operation, habit has no place: “This is a big thing. This is important.” Clear in God.
2. What is in potency can be determined in many ways and to diverse things. Example: Heidegger’s mind is determined differently from Aristotle’s. Aside: Thomas’s joke (his word) that separated souls recognize each other because people “approach the same thing mentally quite different.” Boundary case: if the subject is in potency to one thing only, no habit; e.g. the heavenly body of “the old physics,” whose matter is in potency to no other form and to only one motion.
3. Many things must run together, measurable in diverse ways, so that one is disposed well or badly. Boundary case: the simple qualities of the elements (hot, cold, wet, dry) are not dispositions but simple qualities; health and beauty imply a commensuration of many. Example: tuning an instrument, many chords must be commensurate. Metaphysics V (“the fifth book of wisdom”): habit is a disposition, disposition the order of something having parts by place, power, or species; sitting vs. standing as order by place of many bodily parts. Conclusion: where the nature is an operation requiring many things that can be measured together in diverse ways, habits are necessary.

3. Replies 1 and 2; the Euclid digression (“theorem five, their second book”) #

• Reply 1: form perfects the nature, but the subject must be disposed to the form, and the form is further ordered to operation (the end or the road to it). If the form has one determined operation, no further disposition; if, like the soul, it can operate in diverse ways, habits are needed.
• Reply 2: a power sometimes stands to many and must be determined by something else. “People don’t think the same thing, do they?” Natural powers act without habits because they are determined to one: his reproductive part was not open to producing dogs, cats, or horses. Examples of being ill-disposed in thinking (why reason needs habit):
• Ancient real-estate crooks sold land by perimeter; the untrained think more perimeter means more land. Euclid II.5: for the same perimeter a square has more area than an oblong, and a square can even out-area an oblong of greater perimeter. The fence for the restless kid: less fence, more land. In numbers: 2 + 10 > 5 + 5, yet 5 × 5 = 25 > 2 × 10 = 20.
• Book III theorem on the tangent: no line can be drawn between the circle and the tangent at the point of contact; “a dummy like me” using imagination (“the source of error”) sees open space and thinks it must be possible. So “I’m ill disposed towards circles and tangents.”
• Even the Pythagorean theorem: one would ask “is it always going to be that way?” Euclid gives at least a disposition for habit; “I’m eternally grateful to Euclid.” Asides: Euclid of Athens and Alexandria, said to have studied with Plato; the Elements end with the five regular solids, “kind of Platonic.” He does not know how to define the one: the one convertible with being and the one that begins number “ain’t the same one”; Plato and Avicenna, two of the greatest minds, both mixed up here.

4. Reply 3 and the question of grace (“So is grace a habit?”) #

• Reply 3: the same habit does not stand to good and bad (“as will be clear below”), but the same power does; so habits are needed to determine powers to the good. Iago uses mind and will to deceive; the Boston bombers were once disposed one way, then the other. The bank robber asked by the judge why he robs banks: “that’s where the money is.” Student: is grace a habit? He: “grace is here ambiguous”; sanctifying grace is a habit; it cannot dispose to evil, only to good, like justice and fortitude. The theological virtues come from grace but are distinct from it; Thomas sometimes speaks as if grace is in the soul and the virtues flow from it as powers flow from nature. Left to be taken up later.

5. Prologue to q. 50: the six questions (“about the subject of habits”) #

Point: the six articles: (1) any habit in the body; (2) habit in the soul by essence or by power (“interesting for this question of grace”); (3) habit in the sensitive powers (“do I have a habit in my eye or my ear?”; he expects emotions more apt than sensing powers); (4) in the understanding (he is “pretty much convinced”); (5) in the will (justice); (6) in separated substances, the angels, though none in God. Aside: “What a thorough mind this guy had”; Thomas had help from Aristotle and Augustine, and never speaks as if wisdom began with him (a remark he attributes to “the Latin of Erasmus” [unclear in recording]).

6. q. 50 a. 1: objections, sed contra, body (“no habit is chiefly in the body”) #

• Obj. 1: the Commentator, De Anima III: habit is that by which one acts when he wills; bodily actions are natural, not subject to will (“Do I will to digest my food?”).
• Obj. 2: bodily dispositions are easily movable, habit is a quality hard to change.
• Obj. 3: bodily dispositions are subject to alteration, which is only in the third species of quality (Physics VII), divided against habit.
• Sed contra: Categories names bodily health and incurable infirmity habits. He notes Thomas begins with the body, “doesn’t completely neglect the miserable part of us.” Body: (a) As habit is disposition to operation, no habit is chiefly in the body: bodily operations are either from natural quality (determined to one; Metaphysics IX distinguishes natural abilities determined to one from rational abilities open to opposites; Shakespeare’s “nature not being able to be more than one thing”) or from the soul moving the body, and these are chiefly of the soul, secondarily of the body (the barbers’ skill comes chiefly from their soul). Since like acts cause like habits (Ethics II), such dispositions are chiefly in the soul, secondarily in the body as conditioned to serve promptly. (b) As disposition to form, the body can have habitual disposition, being to the soul as subject to form: health, beauty and the like.

7. Health, strength, beauty against the virtues; Alexander of Aphrodisias (“Alexander however, lays down”) #

Distinction offered by him: the three bodily goods paired with virtues: strength–courage, beauty–temperance (beauty is an integral part of temperance; Shakespeare’s chasing stars, “at least metaphor”), health–justice; but these are for the form, not for acts. Friend Jim: “strong but not healthy,” a golden-gloves boxer. Health and beauty do not perfectly have the ratio of habit, since their causes are easily changeable (Phantom of the Opera: acid in the face and beauty is gone). Alexander of Aphrodisias (“that’s his hometown, not his character”), reported by Simplicius: no first-species quality in the body; Aristotle’s health/sickness examples are only exemplifications of easy/difficult changeability. Thomas: against Aristotle’s intention, since he uses health/sickness and virtue/science in the same way, and Physics VII expressly lists beauty and health among habits. “Alexander’s got problems too, but it’s still important.”

8. Replies to a. 1; simpliciter vs. secundum quid; Simplicius (“simpliciter and secundum quid”) #

• Reply 1: the objection concerns habit as disposition to operation and bodily acts from nature, not those from the soul whose source is the will.
• Reply 2: bodily dispositions are not simply hard to move (bodily causes are mutable) but hard to move relative to such a subject or to other dispositions; qualities of the soul are simpliciter difficile mobiles because of the subject’s immobility. Hence health is not called a habit simply but ut habitus, “as a habit,” as in the Greek. Kids who never see a doctor for years: something more stable, but not simply stable, since the wrong bug “out of Asia” can still get them. “It’s a good distinction there between simpliciter and secundum quid.”
• Reply 3 (the “longer answer”): (i) some say bodily first-species dispositions differ from third-species qualities in that the latter are in coming-to-be and motion (hence “passions”), becoming first-species when perfected; Simplicius disproves: then heating would be third species and heat first, but Aristotle puts heat in the third. “Hurray for Simplicius.” (ii) Porphyry (via Simplicius): passio/passibilis qualitas and disposition/habit differ in bodies by intensity and remission: heated only, not able to heat = passio (if passing) or passible quality (if remaining); able to heat another = disposition; confirmed and hard to remove = habit. Simplicius disproves: intensity and remission come from diverse participation of the subject, not diversity of the form, and species is a distinction of form. (iii) Thomas’s own answer: the commensuration of these passible qualities according to agreement with nature has the notion of disposition; alteration in hot, cold, wet, dry brings alteration in health as a consequence (too hot or too cold kills a man), but not per se in habits. Asides: Simplicius also has a Physics commentary; a copy given to Sr. Dionne [unclear in recording] was judged to contain “nothing that wasn’t already in Thomas.” Ammonius Hermaeus the great Greek commentator; Thomas’s Perihermeneias commentary breaks off, as does a Latin translation of Ammonius. On “form” for species in English: forms of government, “forms of fiction” (epic, drama, novel, short story).

9. q. 50 a. 2 objections and sed contra (“more according to its essence”) #

Point: the objections argue habits are in the soul’s essence rather than its powers.

• Obj. 1: habits are said in order to nature; nature is the soul according to its essence, the form of such a body. Digression: sometimes the soul is divided against nature (Metaphysics IX, powers of the soul vs. powers of nature; De Anima, growth up and down, contrary directions), yet the soul is a nature and in some ways determined to one, while reason and will are open to good and bad, truth and error.
• Obj. 2: there is no accident of an accident; powers are accidents (second species of quality). He notes one accident belongs to a thing with another: taller through quantity, teacher through quality of mind.
• Obj. 3: the subject is prior to what is in it; habit (first species) is prior to power (second species). “Some prius… before and after to think about.”
• Sed contra: Ethics I: diverse habits in diverse parts of the soul (foresight in reason, justice in will, courage in the irascible, temperance in the concupiscible).

10. a. 2 body: grace in the essence, virtues in the powers (“partakers, you might say, of the divine nature”) #

Point: habit as order to nature cannot be in the soul with respect to human nature (the soul completes it; rather the body is disposed to the soul than the soul to the body); but with respect to a superior nature man can partake of (2 Peter 1:4, consortes of the divine nature), a habit can be in the soul’s essence, namely grace. “Very bold.” Grace is not the substance of the soul but something in it disposing it well toward God. As order to operation, habit is most of all in the soul, since it is not determined to one; and since the soul operates through its powers, habits are in its powers. Virtues by power: faith in reason (Augustine, cited via Fulbert [unclear in recording]: faith and reason cannot be opposed, since we are capable of faith because we have reason), hope and charity in the will; foresight, episteme/knowledge, and wisdom (highest perfection of reason) in reason; justice in the will; courage and mildness in the irascible (mildness moderates anger, which names the irascible); temperance in the concupiscible.

11. Replies to a. 2 (“accident per se cannot be the subject”) #

• Reply 1: the soul’s essence pertains to human nature not as a subject to be disposed further but as the form and nature to which one is disposed; “form” used for nature, as in Philippians, “in the form of God… form of man” (inferred: Phil. 2:6-7).
• Reply 2: per se an accident is not the subject of an accident, but there is order among accidents; the subject under one accident is subject of another, as surface is subject of color; so a power can be subject of a habit.
• Reply 3: habit is prior to power as implying disposition to nature, since power implies order to operation, which is posterior, nature being its beginning; but a habit in a power implies order to operation, not nature. Or: habit is before power as complete before incomplete, act before potency, though potency is prior in generation and time (Metaphysics VII and IX). He: potency is before in the first sense of before (time); in goodness/perfection (the fourth sense) act is before. Closing: struck that sanctifying grace is a habit of the soul itself disposing it toward the divine nature; a student says he went through the species of quality eliminating each; Thomas will say more later.

His words #

• “creature of habit”: man is one “in a much more profound way” than the phrase’s users realize.
• “ability”: his rendering of potentia [ed.: potency].
• “wisdom”, fifth/seventh/ninth book of: Aristotle’s Metaphysics [ed.: Metaphysics].
• “measured together”, “commensurate”: many things fitted together in one measure [ed.: commensuratio].
• “the old physics”: the heavenly body in potency to one motion only.
• “the source of error”: imagination, in geometry.
• “the Predicamentis”, “book called The Categories”: Aristotle’s Categories.
• “the Commentator”: author of the De Anima III definition of habit [ed.: Averroes].
• “habilitated, conditioned”: the body made prompt to serve the soul’s operations.
• “habitual disposition”: health, beauty, as disposition of body to soul as form.
• “simpliciter vs. secundum quid”: simply hard to move vs. hard to move relative to a subject or to other dispositions.
• “ut habitus”: health called a habit only “as a habit.”
• “undergoing quality”, “passion”: third species of quality (passio vel passibilis qualitas).
• “form” (English): often means species, as “forms of government,” “forms of fiction”; also nature, as in Philippians.
• “consortes”, “partakers”: of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).
• “foresight”: the virtue in reason [ed.: prudence]; “episteme / knowledge” [ed.: science].
• “mildness”: virtue in the irascible moderating anger.
• “first sense of before” (time) vs. “fourth sense” (goodness/perfection).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 49 a. 4 (whole article, translated as he goes)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 50 prologue (six articles listed)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 50 a. 1 (whole article)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 50 a. 2 (whole article) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Physics VII (habits as perfections; beauty and health among habits; alteration in third species)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (definition of habit/disposition), VII and IX (act before potency; natural vs. rational abilities)
• Aristotle, Categories (health and incurable infirmity as habits)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II (like acts cause like habits), I (habits in parts of the soul)
• Aristotle, De Anima (growth up and down); Commentator on De Anima III
• Simplicius, commentary on the Categories (reporting Alexander of Aphrodisias and Porphyry); his Physics commentary
• Ammonius Hermaeus; Thomas’s incomplete Perihermeneias commentary
• Euclid, Elements II.5; Book III tangent theorem (inferred: III.16); Pythagorean theorem (inferred: I.47); the five regular solids
• 2 Peter 1:4; Philippians (inferred: 2:6-7)
• Augustine on faith and reason (no locus given); Shakespeare (Othello’s Iago; “nature not more than one thing”; chasing stars)

His questions #

• Why does my reason or my will have to have all these habits? Because the power stands to many and must be determined by something else; natural powers determined to one need none.
• Does more perimeter mean more land? No: Euclid II.5; a square of less perimeter can enclose more area (5×5 > 2×10 though 2+10 > 5+5).
• Is grace a habit? Sanctifying grace is a habit, disposing only to good; the theological virtues flow from it but are distinct; “we’ll think about that.”
• Do I will to digest my food, or does it just go on without me? It goes on without me: bodily acts from nature are not subject to the will.
• Do I have a habit in my eye or my ear? Left open for a. 3; he expects habit more apt in the emotions than the sensing powers.
• Which of health, strength, beauty is like which virtue? Strength–courage, beauty–temperance, health–justice (“a little bit like that”).
• Why did the bank robber rob banks? “That’s where the money is.”
• Are reason and faith opposed? Augustine: they cannot be, since we are capable of faith because we have reason.
• In what sense is act before potency? In goodness and perfection (fourth sense of before); potency is before in time and generation.