Aquinas on Virtue I (ST I-II q.58 a.3–4): Intellectual vs. Moral Virtue, and Why Moral Virtue Needs Prudence

Orientation #

He opens with the prayer and goes straight “to the third,” i.e. article 3 of the question on virtue he was reading last time (prev. lecture); at the end he announces “now he’s asking the reverse question,” article 5. The previous class read articles 1-2 of q. 58, the next finishes prudence-without-moral-virtue and opens q. 59.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, the objections (“not sufficiently, not completely divided”) #

He stresses that Thomas asks about humana virtus, human virtue, and that this word will matter for the third objection.

• Obj. 1: prudence (“foresight”) seems something in the middle: numbered with the intellectual virtues in Ethics VI (the book devoted to the virtues of reason), yet commonly numbered among the four cardinal virtues, which are moral. So there would be three, not two.
• Obj. 2: continence, perseverance, patience are not intellectual virtues, nor moral, because they do not hold the middle in the passions. Example: the man with the urge to pursue the woman, struggling, who “has to jump into the bush”; he does the right thing but lacks the mean that is virtue. Aside: Merchant of Venice, “it’s no mean happiness to be constituted in the mean,” a pun on “mean.”
• Obj. 3: faith, hope, charity are virtues but not among the five intellectual virtues Aristotle distinguishes (science, sapientia, intellectus as the theoretical ones; prudence and art), nor moral, since not about passions, which moral virtue is most of all about (the first two moral virtues taken up, courage and temperance, are about fear and pleasure).
• He notes that when Thomas takes up whether faith, hope and charity are virtues he argues “the other way around”: virtues are moral or intellectual, these are neither, therefore not virtues.
• Sed contra: the Philosopher, Ethics II, “twofold is virtue: this intellectual, that moral.”
• Aside: his brother Richard and cousin Donald gave Uncle Jim the Nicomachean Ethics; Jim, who had volunteered for both World Wars, understood it because he had some virtues.

2. The body: two beginnings of human acts (“the beginning of human acts in man”) #

Point: the division is exhaustive because man has only two movers.

1. Human virtue is a habit perfecting man for doing well.
2. The beginning of human acts is only twofold: understanding (reason) and the appetitive power, “for these are the two things that are movers in man,” On the Soul III. Aside on the order of that book: vegetative, sense, intellectual powers, last the moving powers, because these presuppose sense or understanding plus the desiring powers.
3. So every human virtue perfects one of these two beginnings. If it perfects the speculative or practical intellect (which differ not as two powers but by their end), it is intellectual; if the appetitive part (will, irascible and concupiscible sense appetites), it is moral. Conclusion: every human virtue is either intellectual or moral, which he calls, as he told his students, “a universal affirmative statement,” a division into two.

• Aside: he says “looking reason” and “doing reason” rather than “theoretical/speculative” and “practical,” which are Greek or Latin words.

3. Reply 1: prudence, essence vs. matter (“Thomas sees here what fundamental thing”) #

Point: prudence secundum essentiam suam is an intellectual virtue; according to its matter it comes together with the moral virtues, being right reason about things to be done (how much to drink or eat, how angry to be), and on that account is numbered with them.

• Aside on the Protagoras: Socrates lists the four cardinal virtues plus piety (“he’s more pious than we are”) and asks whether they are five names of one thing or of different things “like the nose and the ear”; he argues they are one, e.g. wisdom and temperance, since each thing has only one opposite and folly is the opposite of both (the drunk acts like a fool). “That’s Socrates’ mistake,” but a beautiful argument. Shakespeare’s “fond” means foolish: to be fond of a girl is to make a fool of yourself.
• What he stresses: distinction is more basic than division, and division than definition; a definition involves a division (species into genus and differences), a division is a distinction of the parts of a whole. Shakespeare defines reason as “looking before and after,” which presupposes distinction. Thomas sees a distinction the average man would not: “a clear, clear mind he has.”

4. Reply 2: continence and perseverance are less than virtue (“get hold of yourself”) #

Argument as he reads it:

1. Continence and perseverance are not perfections of the sense-desiring power (irascible or concupiscible), because in the continent or persevering man disordered passions excel, which would not be so if that power were perfected by a habit conforming it to reason.
2. They are perfections of the rational part, which “contains itself,” controls itself, lest it be led by the passion.
3. Yet they fall short of the notion of virtue, because the intellectual virtue that has reason well disposed about moral matters presupposes right desire of the end, the beginning from which it reasons; this is lacking in the continent man (too aroused) and the persevering man (too sad).
4. Nor can an operation proceeding from two powers be perfect unless both are perfected by a suitable habit, just as the action of an agent through a tool is not perfect if the tool is not well disposed, however perfect the principal agent. The sense appetite moved by reason is the tool; if it is not perfect, the action is not, and so its beginning is not a virtue. Conclusion: continence from pleasures and perseverance from sadness are not a third category but “not virtues, period,” something less than virtue, Ethics VII.

• Examples: Much Ado About Nothing, the father of the falsely accused daughter told to calm down replies that no philosopher could put up with a toothache; he asks whether Augustine complains of a toothache in the Confessions (a student thinks so); telling an angry man “calm down” makes him angrier. The post-office clerk complimented on his patience with complainers: “he had a quarter” (i.e. the calm was not virtue). The drunk does not deny the abstract principle of moderate drinking, only that he has had too much; Charlie at the package store: the moment you start to drink you lose the ability to judge how much is too much. This shows why, without a well-disposed appetite, you lack the starting point (the end) for deliberation. St. Jerome is said to have had a temper.
• Structure of the Ethics: moral virtues in II-V, virtues of reason in VI, in VII what is above or below human virtue: heroic virtue (semi-divine, as a Greek hero had one divine parent, Achilles), which Thomas uses for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and bestiality, worse than vice; VIII-IX friendship; X completes happiness.

5. Reply 3: faith, hope, charity are above human virtue (“supra above human virtues”) #

They are virtues of man insofar as he partakes of divine grace and so of the divine nature; that is why the word human in the question mattered. Repeated: elsewhere Thomas runs the objection the other way (neither moral nor intellectual, Aristotle does not treat them, so not virtues).

6. Article 4, the objections (“moral virtue is able to be without intellectual virtue”) #

He notes articles 4 and 5 are a pair: moral without intellectual, then the reverse.

• Obj. 1: Tully says moral virtue is a virtue in modum naturae, in agreement with reason; but nature, though it consents to a superior reason moving it, need not have that reason in the same thing. Example: Aristotle in the biological works admires the mind that designed the animals, a mind the animals do not possess; migrating birds return to the same tree, even the same branch, without a map.
• Obj. 2: intellectual virtue gives the perfect use of reason, but some whose use of reason is not vigorous are nevertheless virtuous and acceptable to God. Aside: Thomas on Psalm 8 says only two kinds adhere to God as end, the wise and the simple, the latter meaning pure of heart, not simpletons (Shakespeare’s sonnet: “simple truth miscalled simplicity”); they lack vigorous reason but “have sense.” Chesterton: you don’t have to be intelligent to be an intellectual; he never calls himself one; academics hold crazier opinions than the man in the street.
• Obj. 3: moral virtue makes an inclination to do well, but some are mild or temperate by nature, without reason’s judgment (people who by nature don’t eat or drink too much).
• He grants “some truth to these objections.”
• Sed contra: Gregory, Moralia XXII: the other virtues, unless they do what they desire prudently, are in no way virtues; prudence is intellectual. Aside: Thomas uses Gregory much in the De Malo on the seven capital vices.

7. The body: moral virtue needs understanding and prudence (“a habit with what choice”) #

1. Moral virtue can be without some virtues of reason: wisdom, science, art (a student notes “intellectus” is not listed because it is had naturally).
2. It cannot be without understanding and prudence, because moral virtue is a habit with choice, one making for good choice.
3. For a good choice two things are required: (a) a suitable intention of the end, from moral virtue, which inclines the appetite to a good in agreement with reason; (b) rightly taking the things toward the end, which is only by reason counselling, judging and commanding rightly, the three acts of prudence (especially the third) and of its annexed virtues, euboulia, synesis, gnome.
4. So not without prudence, and consequently not without understanding, by which the naturally known principles are known in speculative and in practical matters; as right reason in speculative matters presupposes understanding of beginnings, so prudence presupposes understanding of the natural law, right reason about things to be done. He calls it “natural understanding.”

8. The replies (“the inclination of moral virtue is with choice”) #

• Reply 1: the inclination of nature in things lacking reason is without choice, so does not require reason; the inclination of moral virtue is with choice, “a key thing for him.” Aristotle treats choice in Ethics III and defines moral virtue in II as a habit with choice (or “habit of choice”), choosing the middle relative to us as right reason determines. Aside: the current talk of “choice” about abortion is word-craft by “masters of deceit”; a woman not told what the thing is cannot make a reasonable choice.
• Reply 2: in the virtuous person the use of reason need not be vigorous (a student offers “strong, flourishing, thriving”) in all things, only in what is to be done by virtue; hence the simplices, lacking worldly astuteness or slyness, can be prudent, Matthew 10:16, prudent as serpents, simple as doves. A student adds Paul on being children in sin but not in sense; he links this to “good sense,” which they have discussed before.
• Reply 3: natural inclination to the good of virtue is a beginning of virtue, not perfect virtue; the stronger it is the more dangerous unless right reason is joined, like a running horse that, if blind, hurts itself the more strongly it runs. So moral virtue is not right reason (Socrates’ mistake), nor only according to right reason (the Platonists), but with right reason (Aristotle, Ethics VI); Thomas prefers Aristotle to both.
• Examples of the blind horse: the young soldier is foolhardy, older he is truly courageous; Washington on the bullets whizzing by (“I was young then”); saints who went to excess in penance and hurt their health (a student names Curé of Ars, admitted later); the woman losing weight to excess; his good student who skipped lunch. “It’s better to find the mean; it’s not all or nothing.”
• Asides: Aristotle’s monument to Plato, first to show by word and example that the virtuous life is happy; Father Benigar, Franciscan, on humility: one extreme is to practise but not define it (Imitation of Christ), the other to define but not practise; virtue is both.
• Closing summary: moral virtue can be without three of the five (wisdom, science, art) but not without the other two (foresight and understanding); “now he’s asking the reverse question.”

His words #

• foresight; his rendering of prudentia [ed.: prudence]
• looking reason / doing reason; speculative and practical intellect, which differ by end, not as powers
• sense-desiring power; the irascible and concupiscible appetites
• universal affirmative statement; “every human virtue is either intellectual or moral”
• distinction, division, definition; distinction most basic, definition involves division
• secundum essentiam suam; prudence by its essence intellectual, by its matter moral
• continence; “containing yourself,” a perfection of the rational part, less than virtue
• heroic virtue; semi-divine, Ethics VII, used by Thomas for the gifts of the Holy Spirit
• in modum naturae; Tully’s phrase in obj. 1 of a. 4
• habit with choice / habit of choice; his rendering of Aristotle’s definition of moral virtue
• euboulia, synesis, gnome; the virtues annexed to prudence
• natural understanding; understanding of naturally known principles, including the natural law
• simplices; the simple, lacking worldly astuteness, not simpletons
• “with right reason” vs. “according to right reason” vs. “is right reason”; Aristotle vs. Platonists vs. Socrates

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 58, a. 3 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 58, a. 4 (whole article)
• Matthew 10:16 (quoted in reply 2 of a. 4)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II (division of virtue; definition of moral virtue), III (choice), VI (virtues of reason; “with right reason”), VII (continence, heroic virtue, bestiality), VIII-IX, X
• Aristotle, On the Soul III (two movers in man)
• Plato, Protagoras (five virtues one or many)
• Gregory, Moralia XXII
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Psalm 8; De Malo on the capital vices
• Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice; Much Ado About Nothing; a sonnet (“simple truth miscalled simplicity”)
• Augustine, Confessions (toothache, uncertain)
• Imitation of Christ; Father Benigar on spiritual theology; Chesterton

His questions #

• Is prudence a third kind of virtue between intellectual and moral? No: by essence intellectual, by matter joined to the moral virtues.
• Why can’t continence and perseverance be virtues? Disordered passions remain, so the appetite lacks the right desire of the end; a two-power operation is not perfect if the tool is not disposed.
• Why does Thomas say human virtue? Because faith, hope, charity are above human virtue, virtues of man as partaker of grace.
• What does Aristotle do in Ethics VII? Treats what is above or below human virtue: heroic virtue and bestiality.
• Can moral virtue be without any intellectual virtue? Without wisdom, science and art, but not without understanding and prudence.
• What two things are required for a good choice? Right intention of the end (moral virtue) and rightly taking the means (counsel, judgment, command, i.e. prudence).
• Do the simple lack the reason virtue needs? No; reason need only be vigorous about what virtue does, so the simple can be prudent.
• Is natural temperance already virtue? A beginning only, and dangerous without right reason, like a blind running horse.