Counsel, Judgment and Command: Eubulia, Synesis and Gnome as Parts of Prudence (Q57 A6)

Orientation #

He opens straight into “Article six” with “these funny words” from the Greeks; he refers back to “that thing we were talking before about Augustine” (giving up a sinful life) and to his brother Mark’s joke “I told you about” (prev. lecture, not resolved by the context block). He says Thomas will treat the integral and subjective parts of foresight in the Secunda Secundae “but we’re not into those details,” and ends at the break. The previous class covered q. 57 a. 5 on whether prudence is necessary for living well, and the next moves on to q. 58 on moral virtue.

The class, in order #

1. The four objections (“unsuitably are joined to foresight”) #

He translates the three Greek names — eubulia (eu = good, boulia = counsel), synesis and gnome (two kinds of judgment, “one in more ordinary areas and one in special difficulties”) — and reads the objections.

1. Eubulia is the habit of taking counsel well (Ethics VI); but counselling well pertains to foresight; so eubulia is not joined to prudence but “is prudence itself.”
2. It belongs to the higher to judge about the lower, so the supreme virtue should be the one whose act is judgment; synesis is bene iudicativa; so it is not joined to foresight but seems higher. Aside: in logic they distinguish “iudicative logic,” the Posterior Analytics, “the high point of logic” — but that is perfection of knowledge, not action; in action something higher than judgment is wanted, foresight.
3. The things one takes counsel about are as diverse as those one judges about; yet one virtue, eubulia, covers all counsel; so why two for judgment, synesis and gnome? — “What the heck? Why do you have two here?”
4. “Tullius, and that’s Cicero,” in his rhetoric gives three other parts of foresight: memory of past things, understanding of the present situation, foresight of future things; Macrobius on the Dream of Scipio adds others, e.g. caution (about impediments that might arise) and docility (“no man is sufficient to see all the circumstances by himself”). So these three should not be the only virtues joined to foresight.

Sed contra: “some guy called the philosopher” in Ethics VI lays down these three as joined to foresight.

2. The respondeo: three acts, command is chief (“the chief act is to command”) #

The point: in ordered powers the chiefest is the one ordered to the most principal act.

1. About human things to be done there are three acts of reason: to take counsel, to judge, to command.
2. The first two have counterparts in “looking understanding” [ed.: speculative]: to inquire (“like dialectical investigation” — counsel is “a certain inquiry”) and to judge.
3. The third is proper to practical understanding “insofar as it does something” (operativus): reason does not command what cannot come to be by man — “we don’t command the Pythagorean theorem… we just try to find and judge it.”
4. So in things done by man the chief act is command, to which the others are ordered; hence the virtue that is bene praeceptiva, prudence, is chief, and eubulia (counsel), synesis and gnome (judicative) are joined to it as secondary. Brother Mark’s joke (Quebec, three friends): one imaginative fellow proposed all kinds of things to do, Mark “the man of judgment” said which, the third said “go” — “we had divided the three acts among the three of us.” Thomas is “always looking before and after”: you must see the order of the three acts to see why one is principal.

Student: isn’t prudence also used in a more general sense to include all this? — “You could, yeah,” but these are ordered to the act of command, with a lesser virtue for judgment and a lesser still for counsel; without counselling and judging well you couldn’t command well. Student: so you wouldn’t be a prudent man — yes. Examples of judgment without command: Augustine deciding to give up sinful life “but not today”; “I got to lose weight” once judged is “not there yet”; the drinker who smashes the car judges he should give it up but is “a long way from curing himself.” Student: a book on prayer “about the heart” (Brother Harding) lists three things — learn what God wants, figure out how He wants you to do it, then do it; that last is what foresight does. Student: an article on “analysis paralysis” — people who know all the options and which is best but never stop analysing: “they never command.” He: you see command perfecting higher foresight, military or political — Lincoln, Patton, MacArthur; student adds that sometimes one must judge and command quickly, “the window of opportunity… is very small.”

3. Reply to 1: counsel through a subject virtue (“not as if bene consiliari”) #

Prudence is bene consiliativa, but taking counsel well is not immediately its act; it perfects that act through a virtue subject to it, eubulia — so eubulia, if not foresight itself, is subordinated to it. Example: MacArthur calling his officers together to discuss what to do, then doing the judgment and the command himself.

4. Reply to 2: judgment in action is ordered further (“the ultimate compliment”) #

In “looking reason” judgment is highest (Dionysius’ “marvelous judgment” — he thought twice before saying anything). But judgment in things to be done is ordered to something further: one can judge well about doing something and nevertheless not do it. Examples: leaves he can’t command himself to rake — “tomorrow, tomorrow”; “never do today what you can put off for tomorrow.” The completion is when reason already commands well. He stresses “a lot of understanding here [of] human nature… fallen human nature”; Brother Harding’s book calls this “the big downfall of most people.”

5. Reply to 3: judgment by a thing’s own principles (“its own private principles”) #

He notes the “rule of two or three”: three acts, one then divided into two; this reply is longer than the first two together.

1. Judgment about each thing comes about through propria principles — he rejects “proper principles” as translation: “its own,” “its own private principles.”
2. Inquiry is not yet through a thing’s own principles; when these are had “there is no need for further inquisition, the thing has already been found.”
3. So one virtue for counselling well, two for judging well, because the distinction lies not in common principles but in private ones. Winemaking (son-in-law in California): what is good for one grape is not good for another; the right terroir, temperature, barrel wood and seasoning are “private to this particular grape” — judgment goes to what is its own. Comparison to speculative matters: one dialectica inquisitiva de omnibus, but the demonstrative sciences that judge are diverse about diverse things. Albert the Great and Thomas divide the logic of the third act (arguments) into a iudicativa part (Prior and Posterior Analytics) and an inquisitiva part (the “book of places” [ed.: Topics] and the book on “permutations” [ed.: Sophistical Refutations]). You can use the eight books of places in any philosophy; the Posterior Analytics does not give the private principles of each science, it tells you to go find them — “a very subtle thing.” Many forms of reasoned-out knowledge, one dialectic ruling them all; sophistic likewise is tied to no science — the first mistake in Sophistical Refutations, mixing up senses of a word, can be exemplified from any science, and dialectic’s second tool, distinguishing senses, is not proper to any one science. Metaphysics IV: dialectic is like wisdom because about everything, but wisdom demonstratively, dialectic with probability, sophistic in appearance — “makes you a wise guy.” Plato’s Socratic dialogues talk about “just about anything” from probable opinions.

6. Digression: the philosophy of the continuous (“what is the philosophy of the continuous”) #

Illustrating that each science has its own “private road.” A student who teaches Euclid at a college was asked: where is the philosophy of the continuous? Quantity divides into continuous (geometry: lines, angles, figures) and discrete (arithmetic: numbers), so one might say geometry — but Euclid has no consideration of the continuous in general; that is in the sixth book of “natural hearing” [ed.: Physics VI], where Aristotle shows the continuous as such is divisible forever and no continuous is composed of indivisibles, true of line, motion over the line and its time. Why? Geometry goes from simple to composed (plane to solid, circle to sphere — rotate a circle about its diameter — square to cube with six square sides), not from general to particular; natural philosophy goes from general to particular. “That’s an awful subtle thing”: it goes back to what is private to geometry’s way of proceeding versus natural philosophy’s. “You can’t judge well if you don’t know what road to follow in each science.” Classical text: Boethius De Trinitate distinguishing the roads of natural philosophy, mathematics and wisdom. Monsignor Dionne’s course at Laval inspired his doctoral thesis comparing Descartes and Aristotle on the three roads. Aristotle at the start of the Physics reasons from the natural road to the road of natural philosophy — possible because natural philosophy proceeds rationabiliter (Thomas gives several senses), above all observing the common road of reason, from senses. Boethius: in divine things you must give up imagination — you cannot picture the Trinity (painter’s dove), you must understand it; otherwise “wandering illusions” (Shakespeare).

• Aside: Warren told a Heideggerian “that stuff’s poetry” — “yeah, but it’s beautiful poetry.”

7. Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel: the order of thought and things (“the order in our thoughts”) #

Student: Descartes wants to proceed by the method of mathematics everywhere? — Yes, continued by Spinoza, who makes it a principle that the order in our thoughts and the order in things is the same. Geometry is the exception to how our mind works: naturally we know effect before cause (every “why” knows the effect, not the cause), but geometry goes from cause to effect — intersecting straight lines make two right angles, and because they are straight, not bent, the opposite angles are proved equal. In things the cause is before the effect; in our knowledge, for the most part, the reverse. Hegel, influenced by Spinoza, deduces the universe from the most general thought, being, passing into non-being (it says nothing of what a thing is), then becoming — generating reality from the most confused idea, which is first in our mind. “Descartes to Spinoza to Hegel. That’s a very big mistake.” Descartes said natural science resembles pure math as a compliment — “he wants it to resemble it.”

• Aside: a (now doubted) interview, “with the Pope,” said Descartes never lost his faith — he made the pilgrimage to a shrine; unlike Kant, who refused his minister at death.

8. The many terms of judgment across the sciences (“many ways of judging”) #

Natural philosophy judges by going back to the senses — Aristotle and Einstein both: it begins and ends with the senses. Geometry: no surface here is flat enough; the geometer separates surface from sensible matter and imagines it perfectly flat, so judgment goes back to imagination. Logic: “my teacher Albert the Great” says the first thing considered is the universal, judged by going back to reason. Venn diagrams (“some women are beautiful”): shading part of a circle makes “some” mean “some are and some are not,” but “some means some” and says nothing of the rest; they replace the universal with the class, a multitude that can be imagined — “a student” is not the collection of you four but said of each, a true universal. They confuse the universal whole with the integral whole and misjudge by resolving to imagination. Hence logic is closer to wisdom, where one judges of separated substances, angels, God, by reason — you can’t imagine Father, Son, Spirit “rolled into one big ball.” Theology: Scripture is “the soul of theology” (“Article 13” — as he cites it); three persons in God is found in Scripture, tradition, councils; faith supplies “sensuum defectui” (garbled in recording); you don’t judge the Eucharist by chemical analysis of the host. But dialectic proceeds from probable opinion anywhere: Einstein (three Nobel-worthy hypotheses in one year; “a scientific hypothesis is freely imagined”), Mozart (in opera words must serve the music), Pythagoras — “highly probable if Einstein said so” — but one cannot judge with certainty by probable opinion. “A beautiful comparison Thomas is making, because he sees all these things.”

9. Synesis vs gnome (“according to the diverse rules”) #

So one should not be shocked that judging is divided. Synesis judges things to be done by the common law; gnome by natural reason where the common law is lacking (more later). Example: times to exceed the speed limit — getting someone to hospital; the ambulance on Route 9 in Shrewsbury going into the left-turn lane, the others almost starting up; or a bomb about to go off — “maybe I should slow down.”

10. Reply to 4: integral and subjective parts (“compared to it as integral parts”) #

Memory, understanding of the present, foresight, caution, docility and the like are not virtues diverse from prudence but its integral parts, all required for its perfection. There are also subject parts — species of prudence: household (father’s or mother’s), regnativa (the king’s); in II-II Thomas distinguishes four species — the individual’s (counsel, command for oneself), the father’s, military, and [the fourth, political, only gestured at]. MacArthur in Japan after the war showed political foresight, during the war military; George Washington had both — “they’re kind of connected.” Break at “three thirty-three.”

His words #

• foresight — his rendering throughout [ed.: prudentia, prudence]
• eubulia — good counsel; bene consiliativa, taking counsel well
• synesis — bene iudicativa, judging well by the common law
• gnome — judging by natural reason where the common law is lacking
• looking understanding / looking reason [ed.: speculative intellect]
• operativus — practical understanding “insofar as it does something”
• bene praeceptiva — well commanding, of prudence
• propria principles — “its own,” “its own private principles,” not “proper principles”
• dialectica inquisitiva de omnibus — one dialectic inquiring about all things
• iudicativa / inquisitiva parts of the logic of arguments
• book of places [ed.: Topics]; book on permutations [ed.: Sophistical Refutations]
• natural hearing [ed.: Physics]
• private road of each science; rule of two or three
• rationabiliter — how natural philosophy proceeds (Boethius)
• universal whole vs integral whole
• integral parts / subject parts (species) of foresight; regnativa

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 57, a. 6 — objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies 1-4

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Ethics VI (eubulia; sed contra)
• Aristotle, Posterior and Prior Analytics; Topics (“eight books of places”); Sophistical Refutations
• Aristotle, “fourth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IV] on dialectic, wisdom, sophistic
• Aristotle, Physics VI (the continuous); Physics I (the natural road)
• Cicero, rhetoric; Macrobius, On the Dream of Scipio (obj. 4)
• Boethius, De Trinitate (three roads; give up imagination)
• Albert the Great and Thomas on the division of logic
• Summa Theologiae II-II (integral parts; four species of prudence), “Article 13” on Scripture as soul of theology (as cited)
• Euclid; Plato’s dialogues; Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel, Kant; Brother Harding’s book on prayer

His questions #

• Why is command, not counsel or judgment, the principal act in things to be done? Because reason commands only what can come to be by man; counsel and judgment are ordered to it.
• What is superior in action — counsel, judgment, or something higher? Something higher than both: foresight, whose act is command.
• Why two virtues for judging and one for counsel? Judgment goes by a thing’s own private principles, which are diverse; inquiry is not yet by them.
• How should propria be translated? “Its own,” not “proper principles.”
• What is the philosophy of the continuous? Not geometry but Physics VI — natural philosophy goes general to particular, geometry simple to composed.
• Why does geometry go from cause to effect, unlike our mind’s natural way? It is an exception; Spinoza wrongly made it a principle that the order of thought and things is the same.
• Where do you go to judge the universal in logic? Back to reason, not senses or imagination — hence logic is closer to wisdom.
• What is the soul of theology? Scripture; the Word of God, tradition and councils.
• What distinguishes synesis from gnome? Diverse rules: the common law vs. natural reason where the common law fails.