Aquinas on Habits: How They Are Distinguished — by Power, Object, Good and Bad, and Unity (Summa I-II, Q. 54)

Orientation #

He refers back to “distinction, division, definition” as something “you heard me talk about” and to what “has been said above” in Thomas on habits as dispositions (prev. lecture). He says at the end that the distinction of parts of virtues “will come out more later on” in the Secunda Secundae. The previous class treated the corruption and diminution of habits; the next treats q. 55 on virtue in general.

The class, in order #

1. Distinction as the basic act of the mind (“the cause of their distinction”) #

Preface before reading: distinction is “kind of the basic thing for the mind.”

• Thomas speaks of God as first cause, distinct from all things and the cause of their distinction; he there refers to Anaxagoras, who introduced mind to distinguish (separate) material things.
• Shakespeare’s definition (“looking before and after”) presupposes the ability to see distinction.
• The four articles of q. 54 stated: (1) many habits in one power — “going to be a very interesting question”: one theological virtue (faith) in reason, two in the will; at least five intellectual habits in reason, some subdivisible; art of carpentry, art of cooking; (2) distinguished by objects; (3) by good and bad — “a very strange one”; (4) whether one habit is constituted from many — “that sounds crazy. Why does he even ask that?”

2. Article 1: many habits in one power (“Are you convinced temporarily by that argument”) #

Point: one passive power can be the subject of many habits. Objections read: (1) powers and habits are distinguished by the same thing (acts and objects), so multiplied together; (2) a power is simple, and from one simple subject only one accident proceeds (virtus here used for power); (3) as a body is formed by figure, a power by habit; one body cannot have diverse figures at once — “the easy one to see.” Sed contra: the understanding is one power with habits of diverse sciences. Respondeo, as he reads it:

1. Habits are dispositions of something in potency, either to nature or to operation.
2. Dispositions to nature: many can be in one subject because the parts can be taken in diverse ways — humours disposed according to nature: health; similar parts (nerves, bones, flesh): strength (or its lack — “leanness or meagreness”); members (hand, foot): beauty. So health, strength, beauty are many habits in one subject. Aside: men wonder more whether they are strong, women whether beautiful; his friend Jim the ex-Golden-Gloves boxer, “I’m strong, man, but not healthy” — Berquist was healthier, Jim stronger; the store’s ex-football-player escort to the bank.
3. Dispositions to works belong to powers. The subject of habit is a power in some way passive (an active power alone is not the subject of habit, “made clear before”). A passive power is compared to a determined act of one species as matter to form; as many objects can move one passive power, so one passive power can be subject of diverse acts and perfections in species.
4. Habits are qualities or forms inhering in powers, inclining them to determined acts in species; hence many habits pertain to one power as many acts differing in species do. He admits: “It’s not as clear as it could be.”

3. Article 1 replies: genus, simplicity, figure (“the triangle is in the quadrilateral”) #

• Reply 1: diversity of species is by form, of genus by matter (Metaphysics V); diversity of objects in genus distinguishes powers (Ethics VI: to things other in genus, other parts of the soul), diversity of objects in species distinguishes acts and so habits. Whatever differs in genus differs in species, not the reverse; and there are genera of genera and species of species, so diverse species of both habits and powers. He underlines the distinction between distinction by genus and by species.
• Reply 2: a power simple in essence is multiple in its potency, extending to many acts differing in species.
• Reply 3: figure is the proper termination of a body; habit is not the termination of a power but a disposition to act as its ultimate term. So one power cannot have many acts at once except as one is comprehended in another — as one body has many figures only as one is in another, the triangle in the quadrilateral (he notes Thomas’s Latin uses Greek-derived words, trigona, quadratum). The intellect cannot understand many things at once but can know many habitually — unlike God, who knows all things actually: “Amazing.”

4. Article 2 objections and sed contra (“the same habit of science is the contraries”) #

Point: are habits distinguished by objects?

• Obj. 1: contraries differ in species, yet the same science is of contraries — medicine of health and sickness. He adds: Aristotle’s one book of the Politics on the preservation and corruption of governments is the same knowledge; Plato and Aristotle both stress knowledge of opposites is the same (know ugliness, know beauty; know error, know knowledge).
• Obj. 2: the same knowable pertains to diverse sciences — the earth is round is demonstrated by naturalist and astronomer. He notes “astronomer” here is not the negative sense of astrologer, and asks: can philosophy and theology know the same thing? Comparison: sight knows the rectangular shape of a book by how far the colour extends, touch knows the same shape another way; same thing, not the same way — if they knew it the same way, why different powers? Aside: the blind feel your face to know you; they are focused in the senses they have.
• Obj. 3: the same act can pertain to diverse virtues if referred to diverse ends: giving money for God is charity, to pay a debt is justice.
• Sed contra: acts differ in species by objects, habits are dispositions to acts. He recalls Aristotle on the soul: powers distinguished by acts, acts by objects — sight and hearing by seeing and hearing, both sensing, but of colour vs. sound. Habits carry this over with a more particular distinction: red vs. green is more particular than colour vs. sound.

5. Article 2 respondeo and replies: three ways habits are specified (“according to three things, habits are distinguished”) #

Respondeo as read:

1. A habit is both a form and a habit; so it can be distinguished as forms commonly are, or in the way proper to habits (form is more general — the soul is a form too).
2. Forms are distinguished by diverse active principles, since every agent makes something like itself in species.
3. Habits imply an order to something, and things said with an order are distinguished by what they are ordered to — to nature and to operation following nature.
4. Hence habits differ in species in three ways: by active causes, by nature, by objects differing in species; the next three replies and the next article unfold these.

• Reply 1: consider the object materially but the ratio of the object as differing in species or genus. Contraries differ as things but have the same way of being known, one known through the other; so they fall under one knowing habit. “That’s a very subtle thing.” His gloss: in the body one contrary excludes the other (health excludes sickness), but in the mind knowledge of one is not excluded by the other — you cannot know blood pressure is high without knowing normal blood pressure.
• Reply 2 (“a famous example”): the earth’s roundness is demonstrated by the natural philosopher through a natural middle (motion of heavy things to the middle) and by the astronomer, who has the mathematical science of nature, through a mathematical middle (shape of eclipses — the earth’s circular shadow on the moon). The whole power of demonstration depends on the middle term; diverse middles are diverse active principles diversifying scientific habits. Like the common sensible: more than one sense knows shape, each through its proper sensible (sight through colour, touch through hardness), and the eye is distinguished by colour, not shape.
• Reply 3 (“what about this idea about ends?”): Physics II and Ethics VII: the end in doings is as a principle (premise) in demonstrations; so diversity of ends diversifies virtues as diversity of active principles does. Ends are the objects of interior acts, which most pertain to virtues — “a very important portion there.” His gloss: we reason from premises to conclusions and from end to means; the word “reason” serves both: the reason why I did that is the end, the reason for a theorem in Euclid is its premises.

6. Article 3: good and bad habits (“according to agreement to nature”) #

Objections: (1) good and bad are contraries and there is one habit of contraries; (2) good is convertible with being, a transcendental, so cannot be a specific difference (Topics IV), and bad, a privation and non-being, cannot be either — “That’s pretty good. Vindicates me”; (3) about one object there are diverse bad habits (about concupiscences, intemperance by excess and insensibility by defect — Aristotle says there is no name for the defective one because it is so rare; Berquist’s suggestion: “puritanism”) and diverse good habits (Ethics VII: human virtue vs. heroic or divine virtue; Thomas’s gifts of the Holy Spirit are like heroic virtue). Sed contra: good habit is contrary to bad as virtue to vice, and contraries differ in species — “a different kind of opposites, then.” Respondeo:

1. Habits are distinguished not only by objects and active principles but by order to nature, in two ways.
2. By agreement or disagreement with nature: a good habit disposes to an act suitable to the agent’s nature, a bad one to an act unsuitable (he instances homosexual acts as “frustration of nature as such”). Acts of virtue are according to reason and so suitable to human nature; acts of vice are against reason and “discordant” from human nature.
3. By lower and higher nature: human virtue disposes to acts suitable to human nature; divine or heroic virtue to a higher nature. Aside on “stumbling”: Shakespeare’s “revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse” (Romeo and Juliet; also “wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast”) shows the excellence of his mind — revolt from true birth is the rejection, stumbling is going against nature; the Gospel’s “if your hand causes you to sin” is really “causes you to stumble” in the Greek, likewise “cause one of these little ones to stumble”; he annotates rather than changes scripture translations. Aside: praying for Obama’s conversion; the new head of the March for Life does the same.

7. Article 3 replies: about good and bad vs. good or bad (“the same habit cannot be both good and bad”) #

• Reply 1: contraries can be one habit as they come together in one notion (he struggled to translate rationes — “reasons”? “characteristics”? “common aspect”?); but contrary habits are never one species, because their contrariety is by contrary rationes. “This is a very subtle distinction.” Good and bad habits are distinguished insofar as one habit is good and the other bad, not because one is of the good and the other of the bad. The Ethics is of both virtue and vice; logic is about correct and incorrect reasoning; medicine about health and sickness. Formula: the same habit cannot be both good and bad, but can be about the good and the bad opposed to it; cannot be both in harmony and disharmony with nature.
  • Board exercise: “if A is so, B is so” four times, with A / not A / B / not B affirmed — “four victims”; students mix up which follow, which “shows the need for logic.” Aristotle: it does not follow that if being did not come to be it had no beginning; his own example: if it rains the sidewalk is wet; not raining — sidewalk wet.
  • Cooking: the same art knows how to make pork loin juicy and how to overcook it (the upset wife); knowing the right salt is knowing what is too much.
  • Student question: is this true of moral virtues or only intellectual? He sees it more in intellectual virtues, but something like it: justice inclines me to pay debts and is aroused by another’s injustice — by the same virtue toward the good act and away from the bad. Even in vice: honour among thieves; the thief knows the seventh commandment and wants everyone else to keep it — “like the IRS.” (Brief confusion whether replies remained; he relocates the sentence ita secundum bonum et malum habitus distinguuntur.)
• Reply 2: the good convertible with being is not a difference constituting the species of a habit; it is a determined good, suited to a determined (human) nature. Likewise the bad that constitutes a habit is not pure privation but something determined repugnant to a determined nature: intemperance is not just lack of reason but a real inclination to eat or drink too much, with privation of reason attached.
• Reply 3: many good habits about the same object are distinguished by suitability to diverse natures; many bad ones by diverse repugnancies to what is according to nature — the Puritan is contrary to reason differently from the intemperate man, the coward differently from the foolhardy.

8. Article 4: is one habit constituted from many? (“the habit is a simple quality”) #

Objections (“who’s going to take the opposite side?”): (1) what is generated successively seems constituted of parts — a house, foundation first; habit is generated successively by many acts; (2) a whole is made of parts, and Tullius assigns many parts to fortitude, temperance and the other virtues; (3) about one conclusion there can be science in act and habit, yet many conclusions belong to one science, geometry or arithmetic — “I can buy that now.” Sed contra: habit is a quality, a simple form; nothing simple is constituted from many. Respondeo:

1. An operative habit is a perfection of a power; every perfection is proportioned to its perfectible.
2. As a power is one and extends to many things as they come together in one general notion of object, so a habit extends to many things as ordered to something one — a special object, one nature, or one principle.
3. Considered as extending, the habit has multiplicity; but that multiplicity is ordered to one, so the habit is a simple quality, not made of many habits, having its unity from the one thing it regards. Replies:

• 1: succession in generation is not part after part, but the subject does not immediately reach a firm disposition hard to remove; it begins imperfectly and is perfected paulatim (little by little) — “wisely and slow”; going too fast is a stumble, i.e. not acquiring the virtue; the subject partakes of the virtue.
• 2: parts of cardinal virtues are not integral parts but subject parts (species — temperance about food and drink vs. about sex) or potential parts (lacking the full power of the virtue). This threefold division runs through the whole Secunda Secundae; “don’t worry about that too much right now.”
• 3: one who demonstrates one conclusion has the habit imperfectly; a further demonstration does not generate another habit but perfects the first, extending to more, since the conclusions of one science are ordered and derived one from another. Closing discussion: what gives unity to theology? One object — God and other things in comparison to God, as in the first question of the Summa; visible in its plan: God in himself, God as beginning of things, God as end of things (Alpha and Omega). A student adds: the light of faith; he replies that is another way of seeing its unity — God’s knowledge as active principle of our thinking vs. God as the object known — and notes Christ’s title in the Apocalypse, “the faithful witness,” testifying to a light we see only through the witness. “A good time to stop.”

His words #

• distinction, division, definition — the basic operations of the mind, distinction first.
• power / ability — his rendering of potentia; virtus in obj. 2 also used for power [ed.: potency].
• undergoing power — passive power, the subject of habit.
• disposition for the nature vs. disposition for works — the two kinds of habit.
• Natural Hearing — his name for Aristotle’s Physics [ed.: Physics].
• the Places — the Topics [ed.: Topics].
• ratio / rationes — “notion,” “reason,” “common aspect”; he finds no adequate English.
• discordant, stumbling on abuse — vice as clash with nature; “stumble” from the Greek of the Gospel.
• of the good and the bad vs. is good or bad — his formula for reply 1 of a. 3.
• paulatim — little by little, of habit’s perfection.
• integral, subject, potential parts — parts of the cardinal virtues; subject parts are species.
• heroic or divine virtue — virtue for a higher nature; compared to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 54, prologue and aa. 1–4, translated and commented throughout. Mentioned
• Thomas on God as cause of the distinction of things, citing Anaxagoras (locus not stated).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (genus by matter, species by form).
• Aristotle, Ethics VI (parts of the soul for things other in genus); Ethics VII (human vs. heroic virtue; end as principle; unnamed vice of insensibility).
• Aristotle, Physics II (end as principle in doings).
• Aristotle, Topics IV (good not a specific difference).
• Aristotle, Politics, the book on preservation and corruption of governments.
• Aristotle on the soul: powers by acts, acts by objects (De Anima, inferred).
• Tullius (Cicero) on the parts of fortitude and temperance.
• Shakespeare: “looking before and after”; Romeo and Juliet on stumbling.
• Gospel (Luke, he thinks): hand or eye causing to stumble; Apocalypse: “the faithful witness.”
• Summa Theologiae I q. 1 on theology as one science; the plan of the Summa; Secunda Secundae on parts of virtues.

His questions #

• Are you convinced temporarily by that argument (obj. 1 of a. 1)? A student: “I am. I’m a pushover” — answered by reply 1: genus distinguishes powers, species distinguishes habits.
• Why does he even ask whether one habit is constituted from many? Because generation is successive, virtues have parts, and sciences have many conclusions; answered that the habit is one simple quality ordered to one thing.
• Can philosophy and theology know the same thing? Yes, as sight and touch know the same shape but not the same way; through diverse middle terms.
• Is the same habit able to be about the good and the bad? Yes; but the same habit cannot itself be both good and bad.
• Does that hold for moral virtues or only intellectual? He sees it more in intellectual virtues, but something like it in justice, inclined to the good act and against the bad one.
• What gives unity to theology? One object — God and other things in comparison to God; a student adds the light of faith, which he accepts as another way of seeing the unity.