Aquinas on the Subject of Virtue (ST I-II q.56, aa.1–3): Virtue in the Powers of the Soul, and Why Faith and Foresight Are Virtues Simply

Orientation #

He opens by re-reading the proemium of q. 56 (“the subject of virtue”) and refers back to article two of this same class as the foundation for article three; he mentions a final-exam question on what foresight and faith have in common. He does not name the previous class; article four (irascible and concupiscible) is left for after the break. The previous class finished q. 55 (definition of virtue) and opened q. 56; the next continues with aa. 4–6.

The class, in order #

1. The proemium: six questions about the subject of virtue (“about this six things are asked”) #

He lists the six articles: (1) whether virtue is in the powers of the soul as in a subject; (2) whether one virtue can be in many powers; then individual powers: (3) the understanding — “why should there be a question about that?”; (4) the irascible and concupiscible (Greek thumos and epithumia, the sense desiring powers); (5) the sensitive grasping powers; (6) the will. He flags a.3 as “most interesting article in some ways.”

2. Article 1: virtue in a power, not in the essence (“virtue is the ultimum of the power”) #

Point: virtue is in a power of the soul as in a subject.

• Obj. 1 (Augustine, On Free Judgment II): virtue is “that by which one lives rightly”; to live is through the essence, not a power. He notes at once: “an equivocation in the word ’to live’.”
• Obj. 2 (Ethics II): virtue makes its haver good and his work good; the haver is constituted through the essence, so virtue pertains no more to the power than to the essence.
• Obj. 3: power is in the second species of quality, virtue (habit) in the first; “of quality there is not a quality” — “we got to know those categories.”
• Sed contra (Aristotle, On the Universe): virtue is the ultimum of the power; the ultimate of something is in that of which it is the ultimate.
• Body, three arguments (aside: the parallel Summa Contra Gentiles chapter has eleven; “usually the Summa, he cuts it off at three”):
  1. the definition of virtue implies a perfection of power; a perfection is in that of which it is the perfection (= the ultimum potentiae);
  2. virtue is an operative habit, and every operation is from the soul through some power — the powers are not the same as the soul, “like properties of it”;
  3. virtue disposes to the best, i.e. the end, which is the operation (or the thing made through it), proceeding from a power.
• Reply 1, “to live” in two senses: the being of the living thing (the sense in which one “dies”) vs. its operation, in which one “lives rightly” by virtue. Aside: in SCG Thomas argues from both senses that God is life itself — his substance is his being and his substance is his operation; the distinction is also in Aristotle’s books on the soul. “The most common kind of mistake is the mistake from equivocation.”
• Reply 2: good is said fundamentally of the end (“if you do away with the cause called end, you do away with the good” — Aristotle), secondarily of what is ordered to the end; illustrated by the Our Father, where the first petitions ask for the end, the next for the means, then those dealing with impediments. So a man is called good because of the virtue in his operating powers.
• Reply 3, a question “that comes up a lot”: can one accident be the subject of another? Not by sustaining it, but because one accident exists in the substance by means of another — colour in the body by the surface, so the surface is the subject of colour; so the power is subject of virtue.
• Aside: he asked students “can you think without words?” — if you cannot say it, do you yourself know what you think?

3. Article 2: one virtue in many powers only in an order (“not ex aequo, but in a certain order”) #

Point: one virtue cannot be in two powers equally, but can be in several in an order.

• Obj. 1: habits are known by acts; one act (walking) proceeds from reason as directing, will as moving, motive power as carrying out.
• Obj. 2 (Ethics II): for virtue three things are required — to know, to will, to act immobiliter; knowing belongs to understanding, willing to will. Aside: three ethics come down from Aristotle — Nicomachean, Eudemian, Magna Moralia; the Eudemian has things on the influence of God on the will.
• Obj. 3: prudence is in reason (right reason about things to be done, Ethics VI; art is right reason about things to be made) but also in the will, since it cannot be with a perverse will. His English for prudentia: foresight — providentia is an integral part and the principal part names the whole.
• Sed contra: the same accident cannot be in many subjects.
• Body: “the first thing the mind has to see is distinction” (Anaxagoras on mind, distinction presupposed to order). Something is in two things (a) ex aequo — impossible for virtue, because powers are diversified by more general conditions of their objects, habits by more special ones: reason’s object is truth in general, geometry’s the truth about lines, angles, figures, arithmetic’s about numbers; so diversity of powers entails diversity of habits, not the reverse, “a little bit like the genus and species”; (b) in an order — one virtue in one power chiefly (principally), extending to others by diffusion (one power moved by another) or by disposition (one power takes from another, as memory takes from the senses).
• Reply 1: the same act pertains to diverse powers not equally but under different reasons and in a diverse order (“you got to look before and after”).
• Reply 2: knowing is presupposed to moral virtue (it operates according to right reason), but moral virtue consists essentially in desiring — a reasonable love, but still essentially a love.
• Reply 3 (anticipating a.3): foresight is in reason as subject but presupposes rectitude of will as its beginning. Example: unless I want to eat moderately, reason will not figure out how much is too much; the drinker does not deny the principle, “I only had a couple of lousy beers,” but cannot judge because his desire is unreasonable; the package-store worker: once you start drinking you lose the ability to judge how much is too much (the drunk who could not unlock the bathroom door). Noah: not a perverse but an immature love of wine — inexperienced.
• Aside: “predicament” comes from predicamenta; if you are in the genus substance (man, dog, tree) you cannot wander into quality; the number seven is stuck in quantity, “double” in relation.

4. Article 3, objections and sed contra: Augustine against Augustine (“every virtue is love”) #

Point: the difficulty whether the understanding can be a subject of virtue at all.

• Obj. 1 (Augustine, On the Morals of the Church): every virtue is love; love’s subject is the desiring power. Aristotle divides human virtue into moral and virtues of reason — “these great minds disagree, what can you say?” (brother Mark on Pinot noir vs. Warren Murray on Cabernet Sauvignon, a “perpetual seminar”). But there is an element of truth in Augustine; Augustine grew suspicious of the Manicheans because they did not know the liberal arts — “didn’t know lower things.”
• Obj. 2: virtue is ordered to the good, which is object of desire, not understanding.
• Obj. 3: a habit perfecting the understanding does not make its haver good — one is not called good for science or art. “So we’re thoroughly confused now” — “it’s the business of the teacher to confuse the issue.”
• Sed contra: the mind is most of all the understanding, and Augustine’s own definition makes the mind (qualitas mentis) the subject of virtue — “so Augustine is in contradiction with himself.” He announces the key tool: the distinction simpliciter / secundum quid.

5. Body, first move: faculty for a good act vs. right use (“a grammarian can speak like a barbarian”) #

• A habit is ordered to a good act in two ways: (a) giving the faculty — grammar gives the ability to speak rightly but does not make one always do so (“you is my students, and I are your teacher”; a grammarian’s solecism); likewise sciences and arts — the cook can ruin the steak, “Daddy put too much pepper in the soup” ignorantly, not by art; (b) also making one use the faculty rightly — justice makes a man prompt to and actually operate justly. The difference: grammar enables, justice both enables and inclines.

6. Digression: good, like being, is said simply of act, not potency (“simply and in some way, but a diminished way”) #

Point: the principle underlying the whole article, that potency does not count “simply.”

• Are there chairs, tables, doors in the trees on campus? Only in ability, not simply. The early Greeks said everything that comes out of matter must already be in there.
• Socrates in the Meno makes the same mistake: the slave boy first says double the side (which gives a square four times as big), then is led to see the diagonal is the side of the double square; Socrates says “I didn’t teach him” — but the boy did not know, he was mistaken; knowing in potency taken for knowing simply. Meno’s own puzzle, “how can you direct yourself to what you don’t know?”: I don’t know how many students are in class, yet direct myself with ease to counting twenty-four — I knew what I was looking for in some way, not simply.
• “Do you know my brother Mark?” — knowing what a man and a brother is, you know him in some way; a wine tasted: “it’s a wine” — known in general, not perfectly; generic knowledge is knowing in potency; knowing the difference between something and nothing, you know everything in some way — “not to know simply but in some diminished way.”
• Aside: diminutives — Annette (“little Anne”) wants to be called Anne; daddy vs. dad.

7. Body, second move: virtue simpliciter vs. secundum quid (“plurimum, science and art are divided against virtue”) #

• Because good, like being, is said simply according to act, habits of the second sort (just, temperate) make a man simply operate well and be good, and are simply virtues; the first sort (grammar) render the work good only in ability and make the man good only secundum quid — a good grammarian, a good carpenter, “a good geometer, not a good man.” Hence science and art are for the most part (plurimum) divided against virtue, yet sometimes called virtues (Ethics VI); “it doesn’t say it’s about foresight.”
• General doctrine of names becoming equivocal: a name said of two things; one keeps it, the other gets a new name, in two ways: (i) one adds something noteworthy and gets a new name (person vs. thing — priests say “treat her as a person, not a thing,” yet a person is a thing); (ii) one has the common meaning imperfectly, in potency, and loses the name (habit vs. disposition: a stable disposition gets the name habit, a mood changed by coffee keeps “disposition”; reason vs. understanding: angels have understanding, man reason, intellectus obumbratus, overshadowed).
• Aside on episteme: Shakespeare defines reason by “looking before and after,” discourse; episteme from coming to a halt, Boethius: understanding is to reasoning as rest to motion; so he translates episteme “reasoned-out understanding,” which scientia does not convey; Euclid is a reasoned-out understanding of lines, angles, figures, and (Books VII–IX) of numbers; “understanding” itself contains “standing,” a rest; natural understanding is at the beginning, episteme comes after motion.

8. Body, conclusion: which understanding, in what order to the will (“no one believes unless he wills”) #

• Subject of virtue secundum quid: the understanding, practical and speculative, without order to the will — science, wisdom, natural understanding, and art, the intellectual virtues of Ethics VI.
• Subject of virtue simpliciter: only the will, or a power as moved by the will, since the will moves all the powers that are in some way rational (even the emotions); a man acts well in act, not just in ability, from a good will. Example: his knowledge of the “art of deception” (the physical demonstrations that the whole is not always more than the part, by equivocation of “whole” and “part”) could be badly used to leave students deceived.
• The understanding is moved by the will (“one considers in act because he wants to” — “I want to do some geometry now”), so as ordered to the will it is subject of virtue said simply: the speculative reason is subject of faith, assent commanded by the will, Augustine: no one believes unless he wills. Faith is in the speculative, “looking” reason because its object is God, known “just to know Him.”
• Aside: the element of truth in saying proselytizing is nonsense; a Northern Ireland convert (radio) told by God “can’t you be a fool for me”; the Pope’s remarks; Christ’s “pull your eye out,” “cut off your hand” as rhetorical, shocking, not literal.
• The practical intellect is subject of foresight, which requires that a man stand well toward the beginnings of things to be done, the ends, through rectitude of will — as the speculative stands to its beginnings by the natural light of the agent intellect (“the whole is more than a part” underlying geometry). If I don’t want to be just I won’t figure out what to do; excessive desire to drink, “might even argue with the policeman.” “A beautiful, beautiful proportion and comparison.” This is why a.2 came first: one virtue in two powers in an order, the end being the beginning of foresight, held concretely by the will. Final-exam question: what do foresight and faith have in common, and why are art and scientia not virtues simpliciter? Aristotle: without moral virtues no true foresight, only worldly wisdom.
• Student: is temperance’s word sophrosyne, “saving reason”? Yes; and you cannot have the moral virtues without foresight in some measure, since it concerns the means.

9. Closing digression: knowledge or love, which is better? (“a perverse and immature love of reason”) #

• Dionysius: the good of man is to be according to reason. Aristotle’s proemium to On the Soul: all knowledge is good, one better than another by its object or certainty. So sex education, a father’s question: knowledge of such details is not bad as such but unsuitable because of the passions; his answer to his little children on the sixth commandment, adultery is “stealing somebody’s mother or father” — not false, appropriate.
• All knowledge as such good, but not all love: Augustine, De Trinitate, “a perverse and immature love of reason” (the academic world, “reason” magazines); a man’s perverse love of a woman (the neighbour’s wife) vs. immature love (“puppy love”), both not good; only ordered, mature love. So knowledge seems to order love — yet here rectitude of will comes before foresight: “chicken or the egg,” which comes first, rectitude of reason or of will? He leaves it: some knowledge precedes rectification of the will, then rectification of the will precedes foresight — “very subtle,” Aristotle saw it; Augustine himself says “the order of love.”
• Student: foresight depends on experience — yes, but on rectitude of will and even of the irascible and concupiscible appetites. Break.

His words #

• “haver” (of virtue): the one having it.
• “ultimum of the power”: the limit/utmost of a power [ed.: ultimum potentiae].
• “to live,” two senses: being of the living thing vs. its operation.
• “foresight”: his English for prudentia, from providentia, its principal integral part.
• “ex aequo” / “in a certain order”: two ways one thing is in two.
• “diffusion” vs. “disposition”: one power moved by another vs. one power takes from another.
• “predicament”: from predicamenta, a genus you cannot get out of.
• “simpliciter” / “secundum quid”: simply vs. in some way, a diminished way.
• “faculty”: the ability given by a habit [ed.: facultas].
• “solecism”: a grammatical mistake.
• “reasoned-out understanding”: his rendering of episteme [ed.: scientia, science], from “coming to a halt.”
• “intellectus obumbratus”: overshadowed understanding, i.e. reason in man.
• “looking” reason: the speculative understanding, after Shakespeare’s definition.
• “perverse” vs. “immature” love: Augustine’s phrase, both not good, not the same.
• “sophrosyne”: temperance, “saving reason” (a student’s suggestion, confirmed).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 56, proemium; a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies); a. 2 (all parts); a. 3 (all parts).

Mentioned

• Augustine, On Free Judgment II (virtue is that by which one lives rightly).
• Augustine, On the Morals of the Church (every virtue is love).
• Augustine, De Trinitate (perverse and immature love of reason).
• Augustine (quoted in a.3): no one believes unless he wills.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II (virtue makes haver and work good; know, will, act immobiliter), VI (prudence, art, intellectual virtues); Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia.
• Aristotle, On the Universe (sed contra of a.1).
• Aristotle, On the Soul, proemium (all knowledge good) and books on the soul (senses of “to live”).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (chapter with eleven arguments; God as life itself) — unlocated.
• Plato, Meno (slave boy, doubling the square).
• Euclid, Elements, Books VII–IX (inferred; he says “Book Seven, Eight, and Nine”).
• Boethius (understanding to reasoning as rest to motion); Dionysius (man’s good is according to reason); Anaxagoras on mind; Shakespeare on reason as “looking before and after.”

His questions #

• Why should there be a question whether the understanding is the subject of virtue? Because science and art perfect it yet do not make a man good — resolved by simpliciter/secundum quid.
• Can one accident be the subject of another accident? Not by sustaining it, but as surface is subject of colour: one accident in substance by means of another.
• Can you think without words? Only imperfectly — you hardly know yourself what you think (left as an aside).
• What is the English word for prudence? Foresight.
• Are there chairs, tables and doors out in the trees on campus? Only in ability, not simply.
• Did the slave boy in the Meno know in the beginning? No — he was mistaken; Socrates confuses knowing in potency with knowing simply.
• Do you know my brother Mark? In some way, knowing what a man and a brother is — not simply.
• Which is better, knowledge or love? All knowledge is as such good; not all love is — only ordered, mature love; left open which rectitude comes first.
• What do foresight and faith have in common? (announced exam question) Both are in reason as subject but are virtues simpliciter because reason there is ordered to and moved by the will.