Aquinas on Habits: How They Are Corrupted and Diminished (Summa I-II, Q. 53)

Orientation #

He opens: “we’re up to the corruption and diminution of habits” (q. 53), and in a. 2 refers back to “the growth of them … we talked about before” (prev. lecture). At the end he says “take a little break here now”; nothing about next time. Verified sources: q. 53 aa. 1-3 read through; handout “The First Definition of Reason” p. 103 (the Shakespeare/discourse aside); a passage probably between a. 3 and q. 54 a. 1 (the closing minutes). The previous class covered q. 52 aa. 2-3 on growth of habits; the next takes up q. 54 on the distinction of habits.

The class, in order #

1. Pre-class talk: the church as pillar of truth (“the pillar of truth, right, and foundation”) #

Before the text: a passage in 1 Timothy (ch. 3, “around verse sixteen”, he says) calls the church the pillar and foundation of truth; pillar is stylos, the other word “edraioma or something”, which he thinks comes from the word for a chair (cf. Mary “seat of wisdom”) but is usually given simply as “foundation”. Point: it catches sola scriptura converts, along with the question of who decides the canon.

• Asides: the Timothy passage on a bishop being the husband of one wife was read by mistake at an ordination (“Since when do bishops get married?”); brief exchange on when celibacy for bishops came in (early; East had married priests but celibate bishops, usually monks; Maronite bishops get a hood as a sign); Father Weiss, Lebanese mother, studied in Beirut, packs a parish in Northborough.

2. Q. 53 laid out; God has no habitual knowledge (“substance is not the same thing as operation”) #

Three articles: whether a habit can be corrupted, whether it can be diminished, and the way of corruption and diminution. Aside on Summa Contra Gentiles book I, chapter where Thomas shows God has no habitual knowledge: one who has habitual knowledge does not always have the operation but always has the substance, so substance and operation differ; in God they are the same; therefore no habitual knowledge. “Kind of a subtle argument … kind of beautiful.” Joke: corruption of habits is what has happened to his geometrical habit.

3. Art. 1, objections and sed contra (“nature is not corrupted, remaining that of which”) #

Read in order:

1. Habit is in one as a second nature (hence acts according to habit are delightful); nature is not corrupted while its subject remains; so neither the habit.
2. Every corruption of a form is by corruption of the subject (sickness when the animal dies) or by the contrary (sickness by health coming on). Science cannot go the first way: the understanding, its subject, is a substance and incorruptible (On the Soul I; “sometimes he uses intellectus or the intellectual soul”). Nor the second: intelligible species are not contrary, the definition of vice is not contrary to the definition of virtue.
3. Every corruption is through change; the soul is moved only per accidens with the body; no bodily change can corrupt species in the understanding, which is the place of species without the body (locus specierum, On the Soul); so neither old age nor death corrupts them. Hence science is not corrupted, and a fortiori virtue, which is “more permanent than the disciplines” (Ethics I) — he: “I could lose geometry more easily than justice.” Sed contra: On Length and Brevity of Life (“sounds like a good treatise to read”): forgetfulness and deception are corruptions of science; by sinning one loses virtue; virtues are generated and corrupted from contrary acts (Ethics II).

4. Art. 1 body: per se and per accidens; science in two subjects (“chiefly in the possible understanding, but secondarily”) #

Point: a form is corrupted per se by its contrary, per accidens by corruption of its subject.

1. A habit with a corruptible subject and a cause with a contrary is corruptible both ways: bodily habits, health and sickness.
2. Habits with an incorruptible subject cannot be corrupted per accidens.
3. Distinction he flags: some habits are chiefly in an incorruptible subject but secondarily in a corruptible one. Science is chiefly in the possible intellect, secondarily in the sense grasping powers (Thomas’s apprehensiva; “grasping power” and “desiring power” for the two), since we do not think without images. So on the side of the possible intellect science is not corrupted per accidens, but it is on the part of the lower sense powers: as your imagination declines, so does the science.

• Aside on the handout: “grasping” is from the hand, “discourse” (discursus, running) from the feet; Shakespeare’s definition of reason calls it the “discursive power”; Thomas has an article on whether God’s knowledge is discursiva (it is not). Friar Lawrence’s “wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast” has three senses: literal running, the course of one’s life (act in haste, repent at leisure), the act of reason itself. We depend on the senses even to name the mind.
• Asides: Nobel prizes are won for ideas from one’s twenties and thirties; Einstein’s three papers of 1905 vs. his later years — “the imagination goes”; the philosopher, using more just reason, is less hit by this; someone called Mozart’s Magic Flute a potpourri of borrowed melodies.

5. Art. 1 body continued: what has a contrary (“does not have some what contrary”) #

Point: per se corruption requires a contrary, either of the habit or of its cause.

1. An intelligible form in the possible intellect has no contrary (health and sickness are contrary in the body, not in the understanding); nor does the agent intellect, its cause.
2. So a habit caused immediately by the agent intellect is incorruptible per se and per accidens: the habit of first principles, speculative and practical, which no forgetfulness or deception can remove; Ethics VI on foresight [ed.: prudence], not lost by forgetfulness.
3. But the habit of conclusions, science (“reasoned-out knowledge”), is caused by reason, and its cause has a contrary in two ways: (a) on the side of the propositions reasoned from — “the good is good” vs. “the good is not good” (Peri Hermeneias II, the book on statements, which are contrary, which contradictory); (b) on the side of the process itself — a sophistical syllogism opposed to a dialectical or demonstrative one.

• His correction: “a little sloppy there, Thomas.” At the beginning of the book on dialectic Aristotle distinguishes four syllogisms: demonstrative and dialectical (good; one necessary, one probable), sophistical opposed to the dialectical, and the falsigraphus opposed to the demonstrative.

4. Hence false reasoning can corrupt a habit of true opinion or even of science: deception is a corruption of science.
5. Intellectual virtues are in reason (Ethics VI; books II-V treat the moral virtues in will, concupiscible and irascible appetite); moral virtues are in the desiring part, caused because reason is apt to move appetite. So when the judgment of reason moves to the contrary — through ignorance, passion or choice — virtue or vice is corrupted.

• Asides: Augustine against the Academics (De Trinitate): even if deceived, I know I am alive, and I know that I know it — Descartes accused of taking it. Thomas died at 49, when Aristotle says the mind is best; “I got one year left”; professors’ salaries should fall after a peak, or rise for published retractions; Thomas’s confession, “thank God for whatever has come from you, forgive whatever has come from me.” His granddaughter Sophia: “What is wisdom?” — “the knowledge of God”; feast of St Sophia and daughters Faith, Hope, Charity two days ago. “Moral” from mos, custom: repeated action.

6. Art. 1 replies (“habit is removed with what difficulty”) #

1. Ethics VII: habit has a likeness to nature but falls short of it. Categories: disposition is easily moved, habit stable; so nature is never removed, a habit only with difficulty.
2. Intelligible forms have no contrary, but statements and the process of reason do. Example of a bad process: Melissus — if being was generated it had a beginning; it was not generated; therefore no beginning. Does it follow? No: “B could follow from anything besides A.” His old classroom case: if Perkins dropped dead he’d be absent; he didn’t drop dead; therefore he’s not absent. Contrary statements: “2 is half of 4” vs. “2 is not half of 4.”
   • Aside on words: enunciation, proposition, statement; “proposition” (pro posito, placed before) was originally the premise of a syllogism, now any statement by custom; the real English word is “statement.”
3. Bodily change does not remove science as regards the root of the habit but only as an impediment to the act, since understanding needs the sense powers in its act (if I can’t imagine the figure, I can’t go back over the theorem). The intelligible motion of reason can corrupt science even at the root, and likewise virtue. “Virtues more permanent than disciplines” is true not on the part of subject or cause but of the act: the use of virtue is continuous through life (you eat every day, so you act for moderation), not so geometry — “even I don’t.”

7. Art. 2: whether habits can be diminished (“either the whole is had or the whole” #

Objections: (1) a habit is a simple form, had whole or lost whole, “like a point”; (2) whatever belongs to an accident belongs per se or by reason of its subject; not per se, else a species would be said more or less of individuals — is one man more a man, one dog more a dog than another? (joke: a lady walking two dogs is “two dogly”, but that’s number); if by the subject’s partaking, then something proper belongs to the habit apart from its subject, making it a separable form, impossible; (3) an accident is defined through its subject, so if not intensified in itself, neither by its concretion to the subject. Sed contra: contraries are about the same thing; growth and diminution are contrary; habits grow. Body: habits are diminished in the two ways they are increased (the growth question, prev. lecture); as they grow from the cause that generates them, they are diminished from the cause that corrupts them — diminution is a way to corruption, as generation is the foundation of growth.

• Asides: his brother Mark’s priest who relearned Greek every time he taught it; Bellarmine assigned to teach Hebrew he’d never learned, one lesson ahead of the class. Replies:

1. In itself a habit is a simple form and does not diminish; but the way of partaking differs, from the indetermination of the partaker’s potency, which can partake of one form in diverse ways or extend to more or fewer things. Two cases: extending to more theorems vs. understanding the same theorem better; rereading the Summa Contra Gentiles he does not extend to more conclusions but understands the arguments better — “intensifying.”
2. The argument would hold if there were no diminution at all; but the diminution has its principle not from the habit but from the partaker. Student: “So Thomas’s argument becoming stronger or weaker?” — No, our mind partakes of it more or less; the argument is fixed. A forgotten geometry proof you can’t put back on the board: partaking less.
3. Every accident depends on its subject in its definition, but differently. In the abstract the relation begins in the accident and ends in the subject — whiteness is that by which something is white — so the subject enters as difference, not genus: snubness is curvature of the nose; health a good condition of the body; wisdom the highest perfection of reason (so love of reason and love of wisdom go together; “reason is not the genus there”). In the concrete the relation begins in the subject — the white is what has whiteness, the wise are those who have wisdom — and the subject is the genus: the snub is a curved nose, the wise man is a man who knows God. What belongs on the side of the subject is attributed in the concrete: whiteness is not more or less, but white is; wisdom is not, but the wise are more or less wise. Same in habits, except some habits also grow by addition (“a theorem a day”).

8. Art. 3, objections and sed contra (“use it or lose it”) #

Whether habits are corrupted or diminished by cessation from act alone. Objections: (1) habits are more permanent than undergoing qualities [ed.: passible qualities], yet whiteness is not lessened if it does not change sight, nor heat if it heats nothing; (2) corruption and diminution are changes, which need a moving cause, and cessation implies none; (3) science and virtue are in the intellectual soul, above time, and what is above time is not corrupted by length of time. Aside: languages — use it or lose it; his French is rusty since Quebec. Sed contra: On Length and Brevity: science is corrupted not only by deception but by oblivion; Ethics VIII: many friendships are dissolved by one not calling on the other (Greek term garbled in the recording; “an interesting word”).

• Asides: the country-western lament “if my phone still ain’t ringing, I suppose it still ain’t you” — “a good definition”; a poem on friends falling out as the worst thing in the world (author unclear in recording).

9. Art. 3 body and replies: removens prohibens (“that which removes what prohibits”) #

Point: cessation from act corrupts as an accidental mover.

1. Physics VIII: a mover is per se, moving by its own form (fire heats), or per accidens, as what removes a prohibiting thing (moving the pillar so the roof falls).
2. Cessation from act is a mover in the second way: it removes the acts that prevented the contrary. Habits whose contraries grow with time, and are cut back by acts of the habit, are diminished or wholly removed by long cessation — science and virtue both.
3. Moral virtue makes one prompt to choose the mean in doings and passions; unused, many passions and operations outside the mean arise from sense appetite and exterior movers, so virtue is corrupted or diminished.
4. Intellectual habits make one prompt to judge rightly about imagined things; unused, extraneous imaginations rise, sometimes leading to the contrary; frequent use cuts them off or compresses them; otherwise one is less apt to judge correctly, sometimes wholly disposed to the contrary. “Those lazy monks, you got to watch them.” Replies:
5. Heat is corrupted by cessation from heating if thereby cold increases — a per se corruption of the hot.
6. Cessation moves to corruption as removens prohibens, an accidental cause, one kind of cause of death. Exchange: if I move the pillar am I cause of your death? Per accidens — but a student objects that if you planned it, it is hardly “accident” (he: “special kind”); his joke of releasing a rock held over someone’s head, “punish the rock.”
7. The understanding part is above time, the sensing part subject to it; in the course of time there is change in the passions and the sense grasping parts; Physics IV: time is the cause of oblivion.

• Closing asides: Physics IV is an argument against making time the cause of evolution — time is more cause of corruption than generation; a house or a desk left alone falls into disorder; Shakespeare’s sonnets on time; lying awake he tries to recall Thomas’s eight arguments that God is good, in order. “Take a little break.”

His words #

• corruption and diminution of habits — corrumpi / diminui, the two questions of q. 53
• grasping power / desiring power — his English for Thomas’s apprehensiva / appetitive [ed.: apprehensive and appetitive powers]
• discourse — from discursus, running; Shakespeare’s “discursive power” for reason
• second nature — habit as within one like a nature
• as such / by accident — his rendering of per se / per accidens
• locus specierum — the understanding as the place of species
• possible understanding / active understanding — possible and agent intellect
• habit of first beginnings — habitus principiorum [ed.: first principles]
• reasoned-out knowledge — his English for scientia, the habit of conclusions
• statement — his preferred English for enuntiatio / proposition; proposition originally pro posito, a premise
• falsigraphus — the bad syllogism opposed to demonstration (Topics, beginning)
• foresight — his rendering of prudentia (Ethics VI)
• moral — from mos, custom
• disposition vs. habit — easily moved vs. stable (Categories)
• root of the habit — Thomas’s radix; he notes the word
• partaking — participatio; the subject partakes of the form more or less
• concretion — the accident’s being concrete to its subject
• snubness / the snub — simitas, his example of abstract vs. concrete accident
• undergoing qualities — [ed.: passible qualities]
• oblivion — oblivio, forgetfulness
• removens prohibens — the accidental mover that removes what prevents

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 53, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 53, a. 2 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 53, a. 3 (whole article)
• handout, “The First Definition of Reason”, p. 103 (Shakespeare’s “discursive power”; Friar Lawrence’s line) (verified source)

Mentioned

• 1 Timothy ch. 3, church as pillar and foundation of truth; bishop the husband of one wife
• Summa Contra Gentiles I, chapter that God has no habitual knowledge
• Aristotle, On the Soul I (understanding a substance; place of species)
• Aristotle, Ethics I (virtues more permanent than disciplines), II (virtues from contrary acts), VI (intellectual virtues; prudence not lost by forgetting), VII (habit like nature), VIII (friendships dissolved by not calling)
• Aristotle, On Length and Brevity of Life (forgetfulness and deception corrupt science)
• Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias II (contrary statements)
• Aristotle, book on dialectic, beginning [ed.: Topics I] (four syllogisms)
• Aristotle, Categories (disposition vs. habit)
• Aristotle, Physics VIII (per se and per accidens mover), IV (time cause of oblivion)
• Augustine, De Trinitate, against the Academics
• Thomas’s article on whether God’s knowledge is discursive (locus not stated)
• Shakespeare’s sonnets on time; Romeo and Juliet (Friar Lawrence)
• DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 868 (verified source; not discussed on the recording)

His questions #

• Why does it seem a habit cannot be corrupted? Because it is within as a second nature, and nature is not corrupted while its subject remains.
• Every corruption of a form is by its contrary or by the corruption of its subject — which habits can be corrupted both ways? Bodily habits like health and sickness.
• Where is science chiefly, and where secondarily? Chiefly in the possible understanding, secondarily in the sense grasping powers, since we don’t think without images.
• Which habit can be corrupted neither per se nor per accidens? The habit of first principles, speculative and practical, caused immediately by the agent intellect.
• What did poor Melissus say, and does it follow? If being was generated it had a beginning; it was not generated; therefore no beginning — no, B can follow from something besides A.
• What is the distinction between habit and disposition? Disposition is easily moved; habit is stable, hardly moved.
• Is one man more a man than another, one dog more a dog? No: a species is not said more or less of its individuals; only “two dogly” as a joke of number.
• Is Thomas’s argument becoming stronger or weaker as I reread it? No, the argument is fixed; my mind partakes of it more or less.
• Is whiteness more or less, or the white? Whiteness is not more or less; white is; wisdom is not, but the wise are.
• If I move the pillar, am I the cause of your death? Per accidens, as removens prohibens — though a student notes that if planned it is a “special kind” of cause; left there.