Summa I-II Q.55 aa.1-2: Is Virtue a Habit, and Is It an Operative Habit? (with the plan of the Summa Contra Gentiles)

Orientation #

He opens by saying “we’re starting in question fifty-five”, on habits in particular, the good and the bad; the prooemium’s “as has been said before, habits are distinguished by good and by bad” refers back to the previous question (prev. lecture). He closes mid-question (“still not sure whether it’s a good habit yet”), leaving a. 3 for next time. The previous class covered q. 54 on the distinction of habits; the next continues with q. 55 aa. 3–4 and the opening of q. 56.

The class, in order #

1. Prooemium of q. 55 (“five things to be considered”) #

The point: the plan of the treatise on virtue.

• Good habits first: virtues “and other things joined to them”, the gifts, beatitudes, fruits of the Holy Spirit.
• Five things about virtue: essence, subject, division, cause, properties. Four articles on the essence: is human virtue a habit; an operative habit; a good habit; the definition of virtue (“the thing that he announced first” he does last).
• He asks why subject comes before division. Student: division is based on the object, and different subjects have different kinds of object. His gloss: later the virtues of reason and the moral virtues “differ by their subject”, one in reason itself, the others in the will or in the concupiscible and irascible appetites; “maybe part of the reason”.
• “Very basic, this guy” — Thomas asks even whether virtue is a good habit.

2. Digression: how fourfold divisions are made (“crisscrosses two divisions”) #

The point: a four is made either by crossing two twos, or by dividing into one and three, or otherwise; the Summa Contra Gentiles is a case of its own.

• Aristotle divides into four in the beginning of the Categories, and the syllogism into four, by crisscrossing two divisions.
• Thomas on the four kinds of opposites: one against the other three, then the three subdivided — one and three. Likewise his fourfold order in comparison to reason: the order reason considers but does not make, then three orders reason makes.
• Summa Contra Gentiles (“really my favorite book”): neither. He crisscrosses a two (what reason can know about God as well as faith; what is known only by faith) with a three (God in himself; God as beginning of things; God as end of things), like the six governments in the Politics (one, few, many × good, bad). Books I–III do the three for the first member; Book IV does the same three (Trinity; Incarnation “the greatest thing God made”, with sacraments attached; last things, resurrection) as three parts of one shorter book. So six parts, four books.
• Aside: for laymen Augustine (epitome on faith, hope, charity) and Thomas (Catechetical Instructions at Naples; Compendium of Theology, unfinished, written for a friend to carry around) divide instead by faith, hope and charity, with prayer under hope; “very proportioned to people”, and that is where the Catechism is.

3. Article 1, the objections (“it seems that human virtue is not a habit”) #

The point: the five objections all turn on the word virtus, which “our English word virtue doesn’t really carry”.

1. Aristotle, first book “on the universe” (De Caelo; aside that Latin needs De Caelo et Mundo to name the whole universe, Greek one word): virtue is the ultimum of a power, “as far as you can go”. The last of anything is reduced to the genus of which it is last, as the point to line (though the point is not a line). So virtue is in the genus of power, not habit.
2. Augustine, De libero arbitrio II (“Thomas gives about five reasons why he does” have free judgment): virtue is the good use of free judgment; use is an act, like the use of reason; so virtue is an act.
3. We merit by acts, not habits, “otherwise a man would merit continually, even when sleeping”; we merit by the virtues; so virtues are acts.
4. Augustine, De moribus ecclesiae: virtue is the order of love (“really marvelous”, he used to quote it teaching love and friendship); and 83 Questions: to enjoy what should be enjoyed and use what should be used, not the reverse (“the habit of fallen human nature”). Order names an act or relation.
5. As there are human virtues so there are natural virtues; natural virtues are powers; so human virtues are powers.

• Sed contra: the Philosopher in the Categories: science and virtue are habits. Aside: Augustine quoted “twice as much as Aristotle” here; “the Philosopher” with capital P is a figure of speech.
• Aside: cell phones at Mass; the pastor who smashed a phone on the floor; “a real addiction”.

4. Article 1, the body (“virtue names a certain perfection of a power”) #

1. Virtue names a perfection of a power.
2. The perfection of a thing is considered most of all in order to its end. Digression on Metaphysics V, “perfect” in creatures: (a) what has all its parts (a chair missing a leg is imperfect); (b) what has all the ability of its kind — Homer the perfect poet (plot, characters “like a diamond with all these facets”, Hegel’s contrast with the one-dimensional French tragic characters; words, the similes), Mozart the perfect musician (every kind of music, for every instrument; the human voice; the fifteen-year-old’s opera); (c) what has reached its end, the culminating and chief sense. God’s perfection is a different sense altogether.
3. The end of a power is its act; a power is perfect as determined to its act.
4. Some powers are determined to their acts of themselves, the natural active powers (digesting, reproducing); these by themselves are called virtues (“the virtues of plants”).
5. The rational powers proper to man are indeterminate to many things — “that’s why when people are living at random they end up with something bad, usually: many ways to be bad, and one way to be good” — and are determined to definite acts through habits. Conclusion: human virtues are habits.

5. Article 1, the replies (“virtue is said to be that to which there is virtue”) #

• Ad 1: “virtue” is sometimes said of that to which virtue is, the object or the act. Faith: “this is our faith” (the creed) = what is believed; the act of believing; the habit. Justice likewise: “that’s justice” means the rectified thing. When Aristotle calls virtue the last of a power, virtue is taken for the object, that to which the power can go last: one who can carry a hundred pounds and no more has his virtue measured by a hundred pounds. Shakespeare defines reason by “large discourse”, though reason is even more capable of small discourse, because the large is its ultimate — discourse about God, the universe, happiness. The objection proceeds as if virtue were essentially its object.
  • Aside: the First Folio portrait (1623) and Ben Jonson’s verses — could the artist have captured his wisdom, it would be the greatest painting; to get that “you’ve got to go read him”.
• Ad 2: the good use of free judgment is called virtue in the same way, as that to which virtue is ordered as to its act; the act of virtue is nothing other than the good use of free judgment.
• Ad 3: we merit by something in two ways: as by the meriting itself (as we run by running) or as by the cause of meriting (as we run by our motive power). “Do I run by running or by my muscles? Both, in two senses.” “Do I teach by my words or by my knowledge?” Aside: Thomas’s commentary on Psalm 48 (inferred locus) divides “who teaches teaches either things or words”: commenting Scripture one teaches the words (of Matthew, Mark…) which signify things; writing a summa one talks about God or virtue directly.
• Ad 4: virtue is called the order of love as that to which virtue is: by virtue love is ordered in us. A student supplies the wine cellar and “he ordered charity in me”; charity in the soul orders the love I express. “Beautifully said.”
• Ad 5: natural powers are of themselves determined to one thing: “I don’t have to habituate my reproductive power to produce a man rather than a dog or a cat”; but reason can be applied to God, or virtue, or to cooking turkey marsala, and that needs perfecting.

6. Digression: “wisely and slow” (“stop to distinguish the meaning of the word”) #

The point: Thomas’s slowness over the word virtus is the wisdom Aristotle shows in Metaphysics IV–V.

• Shakespeare: “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast.” Aristotle spends almost all of Metaphysics IV defending the principle of contradiction, what is most known, and all of book V distinguishing senses of words, because being and one are said in many ways; “perfect” above is from there.
• Summa Contra Gentiles on God’s will: the objection that willing a thing to be or not be puts potency in God is solved by the sense of “possible” not according to any power, distinguished in Metaphysics V.
• Graduate-school thesis on Marxism: dialectical materialism rests on opposites (Lenin quotes Heraclitus, “war is the father of all things”), yet no Marxist distinguishes the four senses of opposites; the thesis stops and goes to the Categories and Metaphysics V.
• Student: Heraclitus, the wise man is strong in what is common, and these words are common. His gloss: mixing up meanings of words is “the most common source of mistakes” (Sophistical Refutations); Metaphysics V would be a good introduction to metaphysics.

7. Article 2, the objections (“just as health and beauty of the body”) #

Aside: how to translate ratio — Monléon’s student did not know what a difficult question it was; proprium as “private” (see ad 2 below).

1. Tully (= Cicero, always “Tullius” in Thomas), Tusculan Questions IV: as health and beauty of the body, so virtue of the soul; health and beauty are not operative; so neither is virtue. His gloss: we do speak so — vice as sickness, the Pope on healing by preaching. His old exercise: which bodily perfection goes with which virtue — strength with courage, health with justice, beauty with temperance. Every perfection in a creature is a likeness to God: Two Gentlemen of Verona, “heaven lent her such grace” — beauty lent, since a woman loses it with age.
   • Aside on wine: Tuscany, Chianti; Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, then Sangiovese; Barolo at forty dollars.
2. In natural things there is virtue not only to doing but to being (De Caelo I: some things have the virtue to be always, others for a determined time — some animals, some men live longer). So human virtue is also for being. (He notes a reason “human virtue” is used just for doing: control of one’s actions is proper to man.) Aside: the doctor’s visit at 77; “you don’t want to know” about the eighties; “how to count”.
3. Physics VII: virtue is a disposition of the perfect to the best (“that’s theology”); the best is God (Augustine, De moribus II), to whom the soul is disposed by assimilation; so virtue is a quality in order to God, not to operation. His remark: “those really aren’t contradictory”.

• Sed contra, Ethics II: the virtue of each thing is what renders its haver good and its work good. The knife: its virtue is sharpness, its vice dullness (“moron”). Warren Murray’s kitchen plaque: “much virtue in herbs, little in men” — herbs kept too long lose their virtue; “I hope that doesn’t happen to us”.

8. Article 2, the body (“there is a twofold power”) #

1. Virtue by the meaning of its name implies the perfection of a power; power is twofold, to being and to doing, and the perfection of each is called virtue — Thomas admits obj. 2’s distinction.
2. The power to being is on the side of matter, which is being in potency; the power to act on the side of form, “each thing acts insofar as it is in act”.
3. In man the body is matter, the soul form — hence the soul defined as first act of a natural body with tools, i.e. its substantial form.
4. In the body and in the powers common to soul and body man agrees with the other animals; only the rational powers, reason and will (more complicated, he adds, because of the agent understanding), are proper to man.
5. Human virtue, being what is peculiar to man, cannot pertain to the body but only to what is proper to the soul. Conclusion: human virtue implies order to doing, not being; it is of its meaning to be an operative habit.

• Aside: trees have “more virtue to being than we do” — two-thousand-year olives, a neighbour’s ash of two or three hundred years, the Sherwood Forest tree, Muir Woods redwoods still standing after the 1845 fire; man compared rather to grass and flowers; a line of John Paul II, “man dies more often than the tree”.

9. Article 2, the replies (“the mode of the action follows the disposition”) #

• Ad 1: the way of acting follows the disposition of the agent, “as each thing is, so does it operate”; since virtue is a source of operation there must pre-exist in the agent a conformed disposition. So virtue is a suitable disposition of the soul, its powers ordered to each other and to what is outside, and as such is likened to health and beauty, suitable dispositions of the body — without excluding that it is also a principle of operation. Jim the boxer: strong but not healthy (collapsed lung). Beauty moves us but “itself doesn’t do anything”; strength is more able to do.
• Ad 2: the virtue to being is not private (propria) to man; only the virtue for the works of reason is. Translators’ “proper” is not always the best rendering; “private” is closer.
• Ad 3 (“very subtle”, “beautiful the way he turns it around”): since God’s substance is his action, the highest assimilation of man to God is by operation — “God is love, God is knowledge”. So happiness (felicitas, from “fruitful”) or beatitude (idea of coming down from God), by which man is most conformed to God, consists in operation: seeing and loving God. In seeing God one sees everything one naturally wanted to know. Students: do saints ever stop praising? — no reason to stop; one never tires of praising Shakespeare or Mozart, whose perfection is little beside God’s.
• Asides: MacArthur and Liddell Hart (“they’re entitled to their opinion”); Mother Teresa and the Hindu shrines (“as if I wasn’t human”), which he calls apocryphal.

10. Close: the dumb ox and Niels Bohr (“still not sure whether it’s a good habit yet”) #

Thomas “awfully slow” — Bohr’s Copenhagen institute (Oppenheimer, Gamow, Heisenberg), where the last to get a new idea turned out to be the first to have it right; likewise those who came to help the dumb ox found how far behind him they were. Friar Lawrence’s two lines on stumbling. “Let the guy go on at his slow rate.”

His words #

• prooemium: the little preface to a question.
• virtus / virtue: perfection of a power; “the English word virtue doesn’t really carry all these senses”; said also of the object or act of virtue.
• ultimum potentiae: virtue as “the last of a power”, “as far as you can go”.
• De Caelo / “on the universe”: Aristotle’s first book on the heavens [ed.: De Caelo et Mundo].
• “book of wisdom”, fourth/fifth/seventh: Metaphysics IV, V [ed.: Metaphysics]; “seventh book of the physics”.
• free judgment: liberum arbitrium [ed.: free will].
• perfect: (a) has all its parts; (b) all the ability of its kind; (c) has reached its end.
• secundum seipsas: by themselves (natural powers determined to their acts).
• ratio: “always a hard thing to translate”, rendered “notion” or “meaning”.
• Tully: Cicero.
• proprium / propria: “private”, not always “proper”.
• felicitas vs beatitudo: fruitful vs coming down from God; “synonyms here”.
• operative habit: habit for doing rather than being.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II q. 55 prooemium, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, five replies), a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Categories (fourfold division; four opposites; science and virtue are habits); Prior Analytics (inferred; syllogism divided into four); De Caelo I; Metaphysics IV and V; Physics VII; Nicomachean Ethics II; Sophistical Refutations; Politics (six governments; locus inferred).
• Augustine, De libero arbitrio II; De moribus ecclesiae; 83 Questions; epitome on faith, hope and charity.
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (structure; God’s will); Catechetical Instructions; Compendium of Theology; commentary on Psalm 48 (inferred).
• Cicero, Tusculan Questions IV.
• Shakespeare: “wisely and slow”, “large discourse”, Two Gentlemen of Verona (Silvia); Ben Jonson, First Folio verses.
• Song of Songs, wine cellar (student).
• Hegel on Homer; Lenin on Heraclitus.

His questions #

• Why does he treat the subject of virtue before the division of virtues? Because the virtues of reason and the moral virtues differ by their subject (reason; will; concupiscible and irascible appetites).
• How does Thomas get the four books of the Summa Contra Gentiles? By crisscrossing a twofold division (known by reason and faith / by faith alone) with a threefold one (God in himself, as beginning, as end).
• Do I run by running or by my muscles? Do I teach by my words or by my knowledge? Both, in two senses: by the act itself, and by the cause or beginning of the act.
• Why does Shakespeare define reason by “large discourse” when it is more capable of small? Because a thing is defined by its ultimate, and virtue as “last” is taken for the object.
• Which bodily perfection goes with which virtue? Strength with courage, health with justice, beauty with temperance.
• What would be the virtue of a knife, and its vice? Sharpness; dullness.
• Do saints ever stop praising God? No reason to stop; one never tires of praising even Shakespeare or Mozart.
• Is virtue a good habit? Left open — “still not sure yet”; next article.