Summa I-II Q59 A5 & Q60 A1: Virtue with passion; is there only one moral virtue?

Orientation #

He begins directly with the fifth article and says “we’ve got time for one more” before starting q. 60, which is cut off in reply 3. Of the Protagoras argument that temperance and wisdom are one, he says “I think I mentioned last time” (not resolvable from the context block). The previous class covered q. 59 aa. 3–4 (virtue and sadness, virtue and the passions), and the next continues q. 60 aa. 2–4.

The class, in order #

1. Q. 59 a. 5, the objections (“moral virtue is able to be without”) #

Point: three arguments that perfect moral virtue is altogether without passion, which he calls “a good objection” with “some truth to that.”

1. The more perfect virtue is, the more it overcomes the passions; so at its most perfect, no passions.
2. A thing is perfect when remote from its contrary and from what inclines to it; passions incline to sin (Romans 7, “the passions of sin”; the flesh fights against the spirit). Aside: Faustus pleading he has “more flesh” and so should be excused.
3. By virtue we are conformed to God (Augustine, On the Morals of the Church); God does everything without passion; so the most perfect virtue is without all passion.

2. Sed contra and the body: two senses of “passion” (“overflowing of joy down to”) #

Sed contra: no one is just who does not rejoice in just doing (Ethics I); joy is a passion; so justice is not without passion, much less the other virtues. He notes Thomas often cites Ethics VII on God’s rejoicing, a joy that is not emotion.

The answer turns on a distinction:

• “Passions” as disordered affections (the Stoic use) vs. all motions of the sense-desiring power.
• In the first sense, virtue is plainly without passion. In the second, the moral virtues that have passions as their matter cannot be without them: you cannot have temperance if you have no hunger or thirst.
• Reason: otherwise moral virtue would make the sense appetite altogether idle; but virtue does not make what is subject to reason give up its own acts, it makes them follow reason’s command in doing their own acts. As virtue orders the limbs to suitable exterior acts, so it orders the sense desire to ordered motions of its own kind.
• Virtues not about passions but about operations can be without passion: justice, which is in the will. Hence God is properly, not metaphorically, called just; he cannot properly be called temperate or courageous. Boundary case he presses: God can be called strong metaphorically (something like the brave man’s act), but not even metaphorically temperate (nothing like eating and drinking moderately).
• Joy nevertheless follows the act of justice, at least a joy in the will: “more joy in heaven”; the angels have no emotions, they are not discouraged or emotional about your converting, but rejoice at it.
• When this joy is multiplied by the perfection of justice there is an overflowing (redundancy) down to the sense appetite. Examples: St Teresa of Avila coming out of her cell wanting to dance and sing; the apostles’ bodily joy on meeting the risen Christ; in philosophy, when you finally see a problem you feel physically better, and when you cannot solve it the sadness overflows and the body is tired. So, “the more the virtue is perfect, the more it causes the passion. That’s interesting, right? Because it’s an overflow.”

3. Replies 1 and 2; tragedy, pity and fear (“it moves us to pity and”) #

Reply 1: virtue overcomes disordered passions but produces right, moderated ones. Reply 2: it is disordered passions that lead to sin, not moderated ones.

He is “always struck” that tragedy, as Aristotle defines it and as Shakespeare says in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, moves us to pity and fear; yet pity disposes one to help others, since concern for others means feeling pity at their sickness or misfortune; so tragedy has a civilizing effect. Shakespeare: better to weep at good fortune than rejoice at bad; some cry when something very good happens, but rejoicing at others’ bad fortune shows something wrong with you.

Aside: reading the introduction to his new Hudson edition of Hamlet, on the 19th-century actress Helen Faucit, whose letters on Shakespeare’s women became a book (about eight characters: Juliet, Desdemona, Imogen and others), dedicated to Queen Victoria, saying we owe Shakespeare an “infinite debt” for representing what is most pleasing and noble in a woman; another woman author (name forgotten, he thinks the same who wrote on the Madonnas of Europe) wrote on Shakespeare’s female characters, borrowed for him from the Thomas Aquinas College library. Shakespeare “understands woman better than they understand themselves.”

4. Reply 3: good according to the condition of nature (“the good in each thing is considered”) #

The good of each thing is measured by the condition of its nature. God and the angels have no sense appetite because no body, so their good operation is altogether (omnino) without passion, just as without body; man’s good operation is with passion, as it is with the service of the body. Aside: Thomas says certain thinkers forget they are men, “angelism.”

5. Q. 60: the five articles (“the distinction of moral virtues to each other”) #

Q. 60 asks the distinction of moral virtues from one another, in five: (1) whether there is only one moral virtue (“strange to have such an article,” but fundamental, since if one, no distinction to be made); (2) whether those about operations are distinct from those about passions; (3) whether about operation there is only one; (4) whether diverse passions give diverse virtues, courage about fear and boldness, temperance about pleasure, mildness about anger; (5) whether they are distinguished by the diverse objects of the passions.

6. A. 1, objection 1 and the Protagoras (“there is one intellectual virtue directing”) #

Objection 1: direction in moral matters belongs to reason, subject of the intellectual virtues; inclination to the desiring power, subject of the moral virtues; there is one intellectual virtue directing all moral acts, foresight [ed.: prudence]; so one moral virtue inclining in all.

Digression: in the Protagoras Socrates asks whether the cardinal virtues (with piety added, making five) are names of one thing or different things; Protagoras says different, and Socrates argues they are one. The most interesting argument: temperance and (practical) wisdom are the same, because a thing has only one opposite (white/black, virtue/vice); the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, but the drunkard or the man who makes a fool of himself over a woman is foolish too, so foolishness is opposed to both, so they must be one. He adds material for the case: “modest wisdom plucks me from over-credulous haste” (Macbeth); the scroll in the Merchant of Venice, “if you had been wise as bold”; Dionysius the Areopagite, commented by Thomas, that the source of error is bold imagination; Socrates’ fear of thinking he knows what he does not; Warren Murray on Monsignor Dionne, whose predominant passion is fear, hence he first rejects any new-hatched idea; fear makes caution; fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So why one virtue in reason for moral matters and not also one in desire? “This is an interesting argument.”

7. Objections 2, 3 and the sed contra (“habits are not distinguished according to material objects”) #

Objection 2: habits are distinguished by the formal reasons of their objects; the formal ratio of good for moral virtue is one, the mode of reason (Dionysius: for man to be good is to be reasonable); so one virtue. Objection 3: moral things take species from the end; the common end of all moral virtues is one, happiness (Augustine: the art of being happy; Thomas: virtue the road to happiness, vice the road away); the proximate ends are infinite, but the virtues are not; so one only. Sed contra: one habit cannot be in diverse powers; the desiring part is distinguished into will, irascible and concupiscible; so not one moral virtue, “at least three, more.”

8. The body: univocal and equivocal agents (“the matter of the one undergoing”) #

1. Moral virtues are habits of the desiring part; habits differ in species by the special differences of their objects; the species of a desirable, as of anything, is from the form, which is from the agent.
2. The matter of the patient stands to the agent in two ways: (a) it receives the agent’s form in the same notion as in the agent, univocal agents (if I produce a man, he is a man in the same sense I am; if I produce a cake or a steak, not); (b) not in the same definition, non-univocal generators, as animals generated by the sun; his example, Shakespeare producing a tragedy and a comedy: he is an equivocal cause of his four kinds of plays (tragedies, comedies, and between them six mercy-and-forgiveness romances and six love-and-friendship romances), since they are not four poets or four men.
3. Forms received from the same equivocal agent are not of one species but diversified by the diverse proportion of the matter to receiving the agent’s inflow; the sun’s one action generates (by the “old somewhat questionable” putrefaction) animals of diverse species. Examples: Mozart’s superiority to the Baroque composers, whose pieces transpose easily to other instruments, whereas Mozart writes for clarinet and piano each as fits the instrument, “absolute music”; the cook does not act on different things in the same way, the mix is according to the matter.
4. In morals, reason commands and moves, appetite is commanded and moved; but appetite does not receive reason’s impression univocally, since it does not become rational essentially (not man generating man) but by partaking (Ethics I). Conclusion: the desirables, under reason’s motion, are constituted in diverse species according to their diverse relation to reason; so moral virtues are diverse in species.

9. Aside: which extreme is nearer the mean (“that doesn’t mean it’s equidistant”) #

Illustration of the matter’s diverse relation to reason. Aristotle: moral virtue lies between two extremes, temperance between intemperance and (for want of a name) “puritanism,” courage between cowardice and foolhardiness, but not equidistant. Foolhardiness is nearer courage, yet is named from “fool”: the foolhardy man seems more a fool than the coward, who knows enough to get out and seems to use his reason. But in temperance the intemperate man is the more foolish and the puritan is nearer the temperate man (the wife terrified her husband will drink too much at the reception, and he does). So “the foolish man” is nearer the virtue in courage, farther from it in temperance: “you can see how the matter is different.” Fear makes people more thoughtful: run a political campaign scared, fear losing the big game and you plan more carefully; Falstaff, “discretion is the better part of valor,” is “cowardice with discretion.”

10. The replies (“the object of reason is the true”) #

Reply 1: reason’s object is the true, and the reason of the true is the same in all moral things (contingent doables), so one directing virtue, foresight; the appetite’s object is the desirable good, which has diverse reasons by its diverse relation to directing reason. He connects this to “foolish”: “fond” first meant foolish, so to be fond of a girl was to be a little foolish over her; “foolish” names the relation to reason, and that relation differs in irascible and concupiscible (courageous man nearer the foolhardy, temperate man nearer the puritan; the man who never drinks seems more temperate than the one who drinks to excess). Latin tag he throws in: “scriptura vita magnificata cor hominis” [unclear in recording; garbled]. Reply 2: the formal element is one in genus by the unity of the agent, diversified in species by the diverse relations of the receivers. Illustration: his classing of Shakespeare’s ten tragedies, three Northern European (Hamlet in Denmark, King Lear in ancient England, Macbeth in Scotland) and the Southern Italian or love tragedies (Romeo and Juliet, Othello); reason looks for a different location for the love tragedies, the South being the passionate lover; the German critics call Hamlet a “tragedy of thought” (a way of speaking he dislikes); Othello is the most tragic though not necessarily the best, as Aristotle says Euripides is the most tragic yet Sophocles the greatest. Shakespeare “adapts himself to the matter.” Reply 3: moral things take species not from the last end but from the proximate end, which is infinite in number but not in species. Cut off: “I guess you got to stop right now.”

His words #

• foresight: the one intellectual virtue directing in all moral acts [ed.: prudence]
• sense-desiring power: the sense appetite, the matter of temperance and courage
• undergoing: the will’s act is not an undergoing [ed.: passio]
• overflowing / redundancy: joy of the will passing down to the sense appetite and body
• omnino: altogether (God’s operation without passion)
• angelism: thinkers who forget they are men
• univocal agent vs. equivocal cause: form received in the same notion (man generating man) vs. not (sun, Shakespeare and his plays)
• inflow / influx of the agent: what the matter receives according to its proportion
• by partaking: how appetite is rational (not essentially)
• puritanism: his name for the defect opposed to intemperance
• foolhardiness: the excess opposed to courage, named from “fool”
• fond: originally “foolish”
• moralia: moral things, specified by the proximate end

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 59, a. 5 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 60, prologue and a. 1 (to reply 3, cut off)

Mentioned

• Romans 7 (“passions of sin”)
• Augustine, On the Morals of the Church
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (rejoicing in just deeds; appetite rational by partaking); VII (God’s rejoicing)
• Plato, Protagoras (unity of the virtues)
• Aristotle’s definition of tragedy; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet prologue, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet (Hudson edition), King Lear, Othello, Henry IV (Falstaff, inferred)
• Dionysius the Areopagite on bold imagination as source of error (commented by Thomas)
• Helen Faucit’s book on Shakespeare’s female characters; another woman’s book on the same and on the Madonnas of Europe

His questions #

• You can’t have temperance without what? Hunger or thirst; virtue does not idle the sense appetite.
• Could you say properly that God is temperate, or courageous? No; only just, since justice is in the will; strong metaphorically, temperate not even metaphorically.
• Doesn’t tragedy have a civilizing effect on people? Yes, he suggests: pity disposes one to help others.
• Whether there is only one moral virtue, who would think that? Socrates in the Protagoras, arguing all the virtues are one.
• What is the opposite of temperance? Foolishness too, hence Socrates’ argument that temperance and wisdom are one.
• Is Shakespeare a tragedy and a comedy? No; he is an equivocal cause of his four kinds of plays.
• Which is closer to courage, cowardice or foolhardiness? Foolhardiness, though named from “fool.”
• Which is closer to the temperate man, the intemperate man or the puritan? The puritan; so the matter’s relation to reason differs in the two appetites.
• Is the cook going to act on different things in the same way? No; the mix is according to the matter.