Summa I-II Q50 aa4-5: Habits in the Understanding and in the Will

Orientation #

He opens mid-stream in article 4 (“one goes forward”) and does not refer to last time. At the close he says it is “time to find what the angels are not” (article 6), but next Thursday is Ascension Thursday, a holy day with a different schedule, so there is no class. Verified sources: q. 50, a. 4 (matched, 20 min) and a. 5 (matched, 9 min), with the digression between them.

The class, in order #

1. Article 4, the objections (“habits are conformed to what operations”) #

The point: three reasons why there seem to be no habits in the understanding.

• Obj. 1: habits are formed by operations; man’s operations are common to soul and body (De Anima I); the understanding is not the act of a body (De Anima III); so no habit in it.
• Obj. 2: what is received is received according to the mode of the receiver; a form without matter is act only, while the composite is potency and act together (matter : form :: potency : act); habit has potency together with act, “a middle existing between both”; the understanding is a form without matter; so habit can be only in the conjunction of soul and body. His comment: this “makes sense to the natural philosopher”, but the objector lacks the universal understanding of act and ability one gets in “the ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX].
• Obj. 3: habit is a disposition by which one is well or badly disposed (Metaphysics V, “the fifth book of after the book of natural philosophy”); being well or badly disposed to the act of understanding comes from a bodily disposition, as De Anima II says those soft in flesh are well fit in mind (the perfection of their sense of touch); so knowing habits are in some power that is the act of a bodily part.
• Aside on obj. 3: the neglect of the sense of touch; the basic thoughts (good, love) come from touch. Joke that the more intelligent girls were mostly bad-looking in his teaching years, and Socrates was the ugliest man in Athens.

2. Sed contra and the parts of the soul (“does the soul have parts”) #

The point: Ethics VI places science, wisdom and understanding in the understanding part of the soul; what “part” means here.

• The three: scientia (Greek episteme), sapientia (sophia), intellectus (nous), which he calls “natural understanding, the habit of principles”.
• Does the soul have parts? Yes, in some way: potential parts. Aristotle in Metaphysics V distinguishes only the integral (composed) whole and the universal whole; Thomas puts the potestative whole “in between” those two. Thomas is an “outlier” here, as Aristotle is in the Poetics, distinguishing only tragedy and comedy and not the two forms Shakespeare is in between. But Aristotle himself uses “part” in the sense of potestative part (part of the power) in the De Anima, “about the part of the soul by which it understands”, a sense different from the two of Metaphysics V.

3. Respondeo: against putting habits in the interior senses (“the possible understanding was something one in all men”) #

The point: Thomas’s two reasons that the habit of science is in the possible intellect itself.

1. Some (Averroes) held the possible intellect one in number in all men; since men are manifestly diversified in habits (some have better memories), they were forced to put knowing habits in the interior sense powers, which are diverse. Thomas “always argues against that position”.
2. First reason, from Aristotle’s intention: the sense powers are rational not per essentiam but by partaking (Ethics I); the philosopher places wisdom, science and understanding, virtues of the theoretical reason, in what is rational by essence (Ethics VI). So they are in the understanding itself. Confirmed by De Anima III: when the possible intellect “has thus become each thing” (reduced to act through the species, “singular” not in the individual sense), it is in act as the one knowing scientifically is, i.e. able to operate through himself (he could go to the board and demonstrate the Pythagorean theorem now); still in potency in some way, but not as before learning from another or discovering by oneself. So the possible intellect is that in which is the habit by which one can consider even when not considering.
3. Second reason, from the truth of the thing: of that of which is the operation, of that is the habit; to understand and consider is the proper act of the understanding; so the habit by which one understands is in the understanding itself. He restates: “to understand means the act of reason”, so the habit for the Pythagorean theorem must be in reason too.

• Digression on essential vs. by participation: like through-itself vs. through-another, where the through-itself is before (in the second sense of before) and a cause: sugar can be sweet without lemonade, not the reverse, and the lemonade is sweet through the sugar; the dishcloth is wet through the water, not through being a dishcloth. Applied to evil: the Manichaeans thought there must be an evil-itself that bad things partake of; but the bad is the lack of something one should have, and a lack is not partaking, so there is no evil-itself. “This is a very important distinction”: God is being through his essence; “my essence is, but my essence itself is not to be.”
• Structure of the Ethics: end of Book I defines human virtue (involving reason) and distinguishes moral virtues from virtues of reason; Books II-V moral virtues; Book VI virtues of reason.
• Aside on the word “of”: “man of wisdom” = wise man, “man of justice”, “man of mercy” — “of” does the work of the adjective; here “that of which is the operation” is what the habit belongs to.

4. Reply 1: object vs. power (“this reason doesn’t coerce us”) #

The point: an operation’s being common to soul and body does not put the habit in the composite.

• Simplicius (on the Predicaments): every operation of man is somehow of the union (De Anima I), so no habit is of the soul only, so none in the separated intellect. He asks the class: is it I, Duane Berquist, that understands, or my mind? Answer: the man (“I got a body as well”).
• “Ista ratio non cogit”: habit is not a disposition of the object to the power but of the power to the object; so it must be in the power that is the beginning of the act, not in what is related to the power as object. Understanding is common to soul and body only by reason of the phantasm (De Anima I); the phantasm is compared to the possible intellect as object (De Anima III). So the habit is principaliter on the side of the intellect — he stresses Thomas is “not denying altogether that it’s in the images”. To be subject of a habit belongs to what is in potency to many, and this most of all is the possible intellect.
• Aside: in the history of modern philosophy everybody has “gone over one direction or another” on this.

5. Student: habit vs. the intellect’s memory (“what do you mean by memory now”) #

The point: if “memory” means the intellect’s habitual retaining of forms, it is the same as the habit.

• The retained form is not always in use but subject to the will: he can pull up a definition of reason at will. Student presses: what you learn once and don’t repeat you forget. He adds that there is also memory as an interior sense power, tied to the singular. Anecdotes: lying in bed unable to recall whether he had said his daily prayers; pill box open on Wednesday proves it is Wednesday. If he could not recall the image of the triangle he might not recall the argument.
• Aristotle’s “beautiful proportion”: images are to reason as exterior colours are to the eye. He cannot see the monk on the wall without its being there, yet the seeing takes place in his eye; likewise reason does not understand a square without imagining one; the proper object of reason is the what-it-is as imagined or sensed, yet that object is not that in which it understands — “kind of a subtle thing”.

6. Is the brain the organ of thought? (“the light bulb is the organ of sight”) #

The point: interference on the brain touches the object of thought, not the power.

1. A student’s argument: a blow on the head, or alcohol in the brain, interferes with thinking as a blow on the eye interferes with seeing; so the brain is the organ of thought.
2. Counter-case: a room lit only by a bulb in another room; a blow on the bulb interferes with your seeing me, but the bulb is not the organ of sight. Both blows interfere, but the bulb interferes on the side of the object. So which is the brain — organ or object? “You’ve got to give me a reason.”
3. The reason comes from a separate argument that the understanding is not material: inductively, each sense must lack the object it knows (a sweet tongue could not taste); the understanding knows all material things, so it lacks any material nature; or, it knows universally, so it is separated from matter subject to quantity, the source of individuation. Hence a blow on the brain interferes with the object, not the power — as taking a pen out of the room interferes with his seeing it without touching his power.
4. Conclusion for the article: the understanding of the universal is not in the body, so the habit perfecting that operation is in the understanding, “because the thing that has the operation is also that which has the habit”.

• Student: curious how the intellect has habits, inclinations to operate one way. Answer: the habit of the mind is basically an order of the thoughts, an order of the forms; “the habit consists in seeing the order.” Young philosopher at dinner who took the first definition of the Ethics to be that of the purpose of life (“No”). His brother Mark correcting geometry exams: a student proves an earlier theorem by a later one; it may follow, but he has taken the less known to prove the more known, so the order must be there. Msgr Dionne asked why he did not see Father Boulay more; “he doesn’t have the order — De Koninck and Dionne have the order.” Even among the naturally understood things there is an order: being before one, one before true, true before good.

7. Reply 2 and the three orders of the sciences (“goes towards matter”) #

The point: potency in the possible intellect is a different kind of potency, and the objector’s mistake is a natural philosopher’s.

• Reply 2: as potency to sensible being belongs to bodily matter, potency to understandable being belongs to the possible intellect: a different potency because a different act; so nothing prevents a habit, “something in the middle between pure potency and perfect act”, in it. No habit in God, since no potency of any kind. Aristotle on the mind: in potency before learning or discovering; after, potency “in another way” (first act / second act); God is always in second act, actually understanding everything — Chesterton: “being all the being could possibly be.”
• Metaphysics IX begins with the act called motion and the ability to move or be moved; only in the second part act and ability universally, other senses of act besides motion. The objector is “stuck on the first occurrence”: Physics I teaches form is act, matter potency, form something godlike (Plato shares this), and God is pure act — but that knowledge of act and ability lacks the universality of the wise man.
• Natural philosophy proceeds from general to particular and toward matter (proemium), twice: Physics (motion in general) → De Caelo (locomotion) → Generation and Corruption; then the soul, toward the body. Wisdom does the contrary: Dionne’s “ferre et separare” [unclear in recording; as heard], toward the immaterial, from material to immaterial substance, ending in God; and from less to more universal: Metaphysics IX has three parts in Thomas’s exposition (act and ability in a particular way; universally; the before and after of act and ability, where God is first act); substance in Books VII-VIII starts from material substance and reaches a general notion usable for angels; the one that is the beginning of number rises to the one convertible with being, which even Plato and Aristotle had not quite seen (Thomas). So the more a man immerses himself in natural science, the further down into matter he goes, which makes it hard to be a wise man.
• Geometry is a third way: simple before composed, equal before unequal. Euclid’s definitions: equilateral, isosceles, scalene; square, rhombus, rectangle, last other quadrilaterals (the first four parallelograms); even number (divisible into two equal parts) before odd, defined as different from even; axioms of equality, and “the whole is more than the part” (unequal); I.47 Pythagorean theorem, I.48 its converse; only in II.12-13 the obtuse and acute cases (how much more or less than the sum), proved by the Pythagorean theorem. Modern science’s “equation” is a statement of equality used to calculate everything else (E = mc², F = ma). Plane before solid; triangle first; Book IV squares and circles before pentagons and hexagons. In wisdom the simplest thing, God, is last. Biology imitating mathematics starts with the cell (or, a student: the molecule, protons) where life is not most known; Aristotle starts with the soul known by inward experience; a biology major’s first course is chemistry. Break.

8. Reply 3: habit secondarily in the inner senses (“prepare for the possible intellect its own object”) #

The point: the grasping powers prepare the object (the agent intellect separates out the common), so their good disposition, aided by bodily disposition, makes a man suited to understand; an intellectual habit can be in them secondaria, chiefly in the possible intellect.

• His cardboard models of solids for the last books of Euclid; his son’s five regular solids in metal, which the granddaughters take. If you cannot imagine the solid you cannot follow the argument step by step: his knowledge of geometry is in his reason, but “in some secondary way” in his imagination.

9. Article 5, objections and sed contra (“in the will there is no habit”) #

The point: three reasons against habits in the will, and justice against them.

• Obj. 1: intellectual habits are intelligible species; the will does not act through species. Aside: “species” is a name of the second Person of the Trinity, to whom “beautiful” is applied more than to the third.
• Obj. 2: no habit in the agent intellect, an active power; the will is most of all active, mover of all powers. Aside: the modernists like the will more than reason.
• Obj. 3: natural powers, determined to something, have no habits; the will by nature tends to the good ordered by reason. Aside: the will naturally wills beatitude; seeing God as he is, reason cannot be deceived about beatitude, so the will cannot change any more — “if you want to enjoy the freedom of will, you better…”
• Sed contra: justice is a habit by which people will and do just things (Ethics V, the book on justice); justice is in the will.

10. Article 5, respondeo and replies (“a moved mover”) #

The point: a power orderable in diverse ways to acting needs a habit disposing it well; the will, a rational power, is such.

• Respondeo: habit appears to have a principal order to the will, since habit is “that which someone uses when he wishes” — quoting Averroes, the Commentator (“he takes over some things from the Arabs”). Hence choice is in the definition of moral virtue, and moral virtue has more the character of virtue than the virtues of reason: his logic does not incline him to use it to deceive rather than teach; that depends on his will.
• Reply 1: species in the intellect is a likeness of the object; in every desiring power there must be something inclining it, not a similitude. Where the power is sufficiently inclined by nature no quality is needed; but the end of human life requires it be inclined determinately to what it is not inclined to by nature, since it has itself to many and diverse things (shown by men’s actions); such inclining qualities are habits. Will and emotions can be habituated to follow right reason. Aside: grandchild “DDD”, director of destruction; his mother’s lament about him wrecking her things.
• Reply 2: agent intellect is acting only, in no way undergoing; will and any desiring power is a movens motum, moved mover (De Anima III, the good being the unmoved mover); being subject of a habit belongs to what is in some way in potency.
• Reply 3: the will is by nature inclined to the good known by reason, but that good is diversified in many ways, so it needs a habit inclining it to some determined good of reason for prompter operation.

His words #

• “the ninth book of wisdom” — Metaphysics IX [ed.: Metaphysics]; “wisdom” throughout for metaphysics.
• “ability” — his rendering of potentia [ed.: potency]; “act and ability”.
• “the fifth book of after the book of natural philosophy” — Metaphysics V.
• scientia / episteme, sapientia / sophia, intellectus / nous — science, wisdom, understanding; nous he calls “natural understanding, the habit of principles”.
• “potestative whole/part” — Thomas’s whole between integral and universal.
• “the understanding” / “reason” — intellect; “the possible understanding”, “the agent understanding” / “acting upon understanding”.
• per essentiam vs. “by partaking” — essentially vs. by participation.
• “through itself / through another” — per se / per aliud.
• “ista ratio non cogit” — “this reason doesn’t coerce us”.
• principaliter — chiefly; secundaria — secondarily.
• “phantasm or image” — phantasma.
• “Natural Hearing” — the Physics [ed.: Physics].
• “looking sciences / looking reason” — speculative (theoretical) sciences and reason.
• “ferre et separare” — Dionne’s phrase for the procedure of wisdom [as heard; unclear].
• species, speciosa — a name of the Word.
• movens motum — moved mover.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 50, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies 1-3).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 50, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies 1-3).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima I (operations common to soul and body; phantasm), II (soft in flesh), III (intellect not act of body; possible intellect become each thing; phantasm as object; moved mover).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (sense powers rational by participation; definition of human virtue), V (justice), VI (intellectual virtues).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (part and whole; habit as disposition), VII-VIII (substance), IX (act and potency, three parts).
• Aristotle, Physics I (form act, matter potency), and the proemium to natural philosophy; De Caelo; Generation and Corruption; Poetics.
• Simplicius, commentary on the Predicaments (Categories).
• Averroes (“the Commentator”), on the possible intellect and on habit as what one uses when he wishes.
• Euclid, Elements I (definitions, axioms, props. 47-48), II (12-13), IV; the later books on solids.
• Chesterton (God “being all the being could possibly be”); Plato; Augustine (on “part of the soul”).

His questions #

• Is it I, Duane Berquist, that understands, or my mind? The man; “I got a body as well.”
• Can I see that monk on the wall without it being there? No; but the seeing takes place in the eye — the object is not that in which one sees.
• A blow on the light bulb interferes with seeing; is the bulb the organ of sight? No; it interferes on the side of the object.
• Does a blow on the brain interfere with the organ of thought or the object? With the object, since the understanding is shown separately to be immaterial.
• Is there a habit in God? No; no potency of any kind in God.
• Does the soul have parts? Yes, in some way: potential (potestative) parts.
• What is the first definition in the Nicomachean Ethics? Not the definition of the purpose of life (“No”); the point is that one must start with the order — left otherwise unstated.
• Is the habit in the intellect distinct from the intellect’s memory? If memory means the habitual retaining of the form, they are the same; sense memory is another thing, tied to the singular.