The Cardinal Virtues: Why They Are Principal, Why There Are Four, and Why Not Magnanimity, Humility or Patience (Summa I-II, Q. 61, aa. 1-3)

Orientation #

He opens question 61, De virtutibus cardinalibus, and explains that it matters because the four cardinal virtues organise the treatment of the particular virtues in the Secunda Secundae. Earlier in the course “we saw this distinction before in the talk about what a virtue is” (perfect vs. imperfect notion of virtue). He stops at a break after article 3; a student’s question about “general virtues” is left hanging. The previous class treated how the moral virtues are distinguished by their objects; the next takes up articles 4 and 5 of this question and the turn to the theological virtues. Verified sources give q. 61 aa. 1 and 2 as read in class and the stretch between as probably a. 2–a. 4; the transcript itself shows him reading a. 3 (magnanimity, humility, patience objections). A match to Summa Contra Gentiles IV ch. 15 is reported but is not identifiable in the transcript beyond his aside on the SCG’s four-book division.

The class, in order #

1. Why “cardinal”: the hinge and the door (“the door turns in its hinge”) #

He reads the quotation from De virtutibus (q. 5, a. 1, as printed on the handout) explaining the name: cardinalis from cardo, the hinge on which the door (ostium) turns, citing Proverbs 26:14 (“as the door turns on its hinge, so the lazy man [piger] in his bed”).

• Cardinal virtues are those on which human life is founded, through which one enters as by a door.
• Human life is what is proportioned to man. Three things are found in man: sensing nature (shared with the brutes), practical reason (proper to man in his grade), and the intellectus speculativus — “speculativus is the same as the word looking there in Shakespeare’s definition”; Aristotle also uses “looking”.
• The looking intellect is not found perfectly in man as in angels but by a certain partaking; so the contemplative life is not propria humana but superhumana (“very often, Thomas”). The vita voluptuosa adhering to sensible goods is bestial, not human.
• So the properly human life is the vita activa, the exercise of the moral virtues; the virtues in which the moral life turns and is founded, as in its principles, are called cardinal — hence also principales, chief.

2. The prologue: five questions, and why they matter (“it’s kind of important to understand the cardinal virtues”) #

The point: the cardinal virtues are the frame for the particular virtues in the Secunda Secundae, so this question sets up the rest.

• There Thomas takes faith, hope, charity, then prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, and with each cardinal virtue the virtues resembling it: humility and mildness (which moderates anger) go with temperance. Shakespeare’s “very wrath of love” in As You Like It: a metaphor from one species to another because of a likeness — a strong emotion that needs moderating.
• Aside on Plato’s Protagoras: Plato has something like the cardinal virtues — the four plus piety (“he’s more pious than we are”); the cardinal virtues are not altogether original with Christians. Socrates asks Protagoras whether the five names are synonyms or names of different things (like nose, ear, eye); Protagoras says different things; Socrates tries to show temperance and wisdom are the same: a thing has only one opposite, the opposite of wisdom is folly, and the opposite of temperance is folly too (making a fool of oneself over a woman — the original sense of “fond”; making an ass of oneself drinking). “You got to be careful about Socrates.”
• The five articles: (1) whether the moral virtues should be called cardinal or principal (both names are used in the De virtutibus text); (2) their number; (3) what they are; (4) whether they differ from each other — which “may seem strange at first”: sometimes the four are taken as attributes of any virtue, then appropriated to a particular one because of the special problem in that matter; (5) whether they are suitably divided into political, purgatorial, purged-soul and exemplar virtues.
• He recalls Thomas applying that fourfold division to Scripture — Proverbs as the political virtues, Ecclesiastes (“vanity, vanity”) the purgatorial, and (a student adds) the Song of Songs the purged soul — “don’t quote me there.”

3. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“those things that are divided ex opposito”) #

The point: three objections deny the moral virtues the name “principal”.

1. Things divided ex opposito are simul natura (Categories, on “together” — Aristotle takes up the four kinds of opposites, then before and after, then hama/simul): the genus is before the species but the species are on the same level. Virtues are divided by opposites, so none is principal.
2. The end is more principal than what is toward the end; the theological virtues are about the end (God himself), the moral virtues about ad finem; so the theological virtues should be called principal.
3. What is so by essence is more principal than what is so by partaking (“an interesting word, partaking — implies you gain something not in its fullness”). The intellectual virtues pertain to the rational by essence, the moral virtues to the rational by partaking. Examples: love can be reasonable or unreasonable (“I brought wine and beer and you take the beer”); anger can be reasonable, as sometimes in Christ, but is often not. So the intellectual virtues should be principal.

• Sed contra: Ambrose on Luke, on “blessed are the poor in spirit”: we know four cardinal virtues, temperance, justice, prudence, fortitude — all moral virtues. Prudence is called moral because it is about moral matter, though it is not in the desiring powers.

4. Article 1, response and replies (“the perfect is more principal than the imperfect”) #

The point: virtue simpliciter means human virtue in the perfect notion, which requires rectitude of appetite; those virtues are principal.

1. The perfect notion of virtue not only gives the ability to act well but causes good use — makes you capable and inclines you.
2. The imperfect notion does not require rectitude of appetite: it gives the ability but not the use — e.g. the medical art used for abortion.
3. The perfect is more principal than the imperfect; so the virtues containing rectitude of desire are principal: the moral virtues, and of the intellectual virtues only prudence, which is quodammodo moralis, moral secundum materiam.

• Reply 1: a univocal genus (one meaning of many differing in kind: quadrilateral of square, rhombus, rhomboid; number of odd and even) divided into species — the “subject parts”, not composing parts — has its parts ex aequo under the notion of the genus (dog is not more animal than cat), though by nature one species may be more perfect (man over the other animals; Aristotle in Metaphysics VI dividing looking philosophy into natural, mathematical and wisdom, calling wisdom first philosophy and natural philosophy second). But an analogous name is said secundum prius et posterius — “equivocal by reason”, reason being characterised by before and after — so one member can be more principal even under the common notion: being is said chiefly of substance, then accident (“when I came in here today, did I come to be? In a qualified way; when I was conceived, I came to be”). The division of virtue into its genera is of this kind: the good of reason is not found in the same order in all.
• Reply 2: the theological virtues are above man — not that man lacks them, but they are above the human status: superhuman, or divine. “Kind of fun the way we name the theological virtues.”
• Reply 3: the other intellectual virtues are more principal as to subject (reason itself) but not as to the notion of virtue, which regards the good, the object of appetite. Prudence is more a virtue than the other virtues of reason because it presupposes rectitude of appetite: unless I want to eat and drink moderately I cannot have foresight about how much; the drinker denies not the principle but that he has had too much (“a couple of lousy beers”).
• Aside: the psalm “Serve the Lord with gladness … know that the Lord is God” puts rectitude of appetite first and knowledge second; one could study the Summa Contra Gentiles with a bad appetite. Likewise Thomas gives two reasons why Aristotle treats the moral virtues (Ethics II-V) before the virtues of reason (Ethics VI): they are more known to us, and by them we are disposed to the virtues of reason — temperance helps the life of the mind (Thomas and the poker).

5. Article 2, objections: why four? (“your favorite book is divided into four books”) #

The point: the number four is suspect, since Thomas usually divides by two and three.

• The SCG’s four books are really two (books I-III, what reason and faith know of God; book IV, what faith alone knows: Trinity, Incarnation) and then three (God in himself, God as Alpha, God as Omega), with book IV itself in three parts. Aristotle at the start of the Categories gets four (universal/particular substance and accident) by crisscrossing two twos: said of another / not, in another / not. Foresight, being in reason, could be divided against the other three, which are in the three desiring powers.
• Objection 1: prudence (“foresight” — Thomas derives prudentia from foresight; “Churchill and myself use the word foresight”) directs the other moral virtues, and what directs is more principal; so foresight alone is principal. Whatever its worth, it sets one against three.
• Objection 2: moral operation is ordered by two things, practical reason and right desire; so only two cardinal virtues.
• Objection 3: to be principal one need only be principal relative to some, not all; so there are many more.
• Sed contra, Gregory Moralia II: in four virtues tota boni operis structura consurgit — “con-surgit, rises up.”

6. Article 2, response: by formal principle and by subject (“the formal principle of virtue about which we now speak”) #

The point: counted either way, there are four.

1. By formal principle: the good of reason, considered (a) in the very act of reason — one virtue, prudence; (b) as laying down an order of reason (order = before and after) about something: about operations — justice; about passions — two virtues, because the repugnance of passion to reason is twofold: a passion impelling to something contrary to reason must be repressed — temperance (moderation: desire for food and drink tends to overdo); a passion withdrawing one from what reason dictates (fear of dangers, of labour) requires being made firm — fortitude.
   • Aristotle: virtue between two vices, but sometimes one vice unnamed — for courage both are named (foolhardiness, cowardice); for temperance the excess is named, but the man who does not enjoy his food enough has no name because so rare (“I call it puritanism, inventing the word”).
   • Fear: most men are to some extent cowards; the officer says “I’ll be behind you”; Washington throwing down his hat at the raw troops in the War of Independence.
2. By subject: the rational by essence (perfected by prudence) and the rational by participation, divided into three: will (justice), concupiscible (temperance), irascible (fortitude). Greek: epithymia and thymos.
   • Plato’s Republic: gymnastic makes you “gung ho”, music tames the savage beast (West Point, “officer and a gentleman”). Mozart’s keys: G major or B flat for the concupiscible (love arias), D major or C major for the irascible; Symphonies 36 and 41 in C major represent magnanimity, the E-flat one in between; Haydn changes keys for variety, in Mozart the change is always significant.
   • In Republic II Socrates, asked whether he wanted to appear to convince or really convince, “blows it up big”: rulers, soldiers, common people match the parts of the soul, giving three virtues, with justice as their harmony — but Plato does not distinguish the will from the irascible (the soldier’s). Distinguish will from emotions and you have four. Aside: soldiers on a base scared him as a student — “you’re killing something with your own hands.”

• Student exchange: why is meekness put under temperance though it moderates anger, an irascible passion? His answer: Thomas divides by the formal aspect, the mode of the virtue — does it strengthen or moderate? — not by the subject; anger daily moves men to something unreasonable and so needs moderating, like drink or pursuing a woman. So Thomas could have put meekness under fortitude by subject, but by mode it belongs with temperance; “all of them virtually have the same mode.”

7. Article 2, replies (“foresight is simply more chief than the rest”) #

• Reply 1: foresight is simply more chief; the others are principal each in its own genus.
• Reply 2: the rational by participation is divided into three — “one and three, like in the Summa Contra Gentiles; don’t try to get away with any divisions in four.”
• Reply 3: all other virtues, of which one is more principal than another, are reduced to these four both as to subject and as to formal ratio.

8. Article 3, objections: magnanimity, humility, patience (“beautiful objections, aren’t they”) #

The point: three rivals to the four, all “beautiful.”

1. The greatest in each genus is most chief; magnanimity “does the great thing in all the virtues” (Ethics IV). Mozart’s first and last of the final five symphonies (C major) represent magnanimity; De Koninck agreed the Jupiter represents it (“you’re probably right”); the finale combining four or five melodies gives the impression of a magnanimous man doing all at once — “the highest thing you can do in music.” Aristotle, Politics VIII end: music represents not only emotions but virtue — he takes it to mean the virtues concerned with passions (marches inspire courage, “I want to be hero”); C major a key of tranquillity, D major more fortitude. Magnanimity is about great honours; the honourable is virtue; to be greatly honoured one must excel in all the virtues. Shakespeare ties magnanimity to courage; courage is the most honourable virtue — the Medal of Honor for one afternoon on the battlefield, never for a life of paying debts or not getting drunk; virtus from vir, the man’s virtue as against the woman’s (temperance).
2. What makes the other virtues firm is most principal; Gregory: who gathers the other virtues without humility carries straw in the wind (Augustine: “humility, humility, humility”; Christ: “learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart”). People think magnanimity and humility conflict; they are mistaken — Christ is both.
3. The most perfect is principal; James 1:4, “patience has a perfect work.”

• Sed contra: Tully (Cicero) in his Rhetoric reduces all the others to these four (Socrates’ list added piety, but it is these four we have).

9. Article 3, response: general conditions vs. special virtues (“put down your pipe and smoke it”) #

The point: the four are taken according to four formal notions of virtue which are found principally in certain acts or passions.

• The good in the consideration of reason is found chiefly in command, not in counsel or judgment (three acts; command perfects them — Augustine takes counsel, judges he must change, “but not quite yet”). The good of reason in operations, under the notion of the right and owed, is found chiefly in exchanges and distributions (commutative and distributive justice), to another with equality (“equity”). The good of restraining passions is found chiefly in the hardest to repress, pleasures of touch (food, sex; Mary at Fatima on the flesh; these cause more trouble even than anger). The good of firmness is found especially against the dangers of death.
• Two ways to consider the four: (A) by their common formal notions, they are principal as common to all virtues: every virtue making good the consideration of reason is foresight, every virtue making good the owed in operations is justice, every virtue restraining passions is temperance, every virtue firming the soul is fortitude — so speak the doctors and fathers and philosophers (Seneca, Cicero). This is not a division into species: not putting one virtue into another but general conditions found in every virtue; the other virtues are contained in them and the objections cease. (B) as named from what is principal in each matter: then they are special virtues divided against others — prudence commanding, justice about owed actions among equals, temperance repressing pleasures of touch, fortitude firm against death; the objections cease because other virtues have other principalities, but these are principal by reason of the matter.
• Applying it: magnanimity, about great honours, relates to fortitude as most honourable, but a great-souled man (Solon rectifying Athens by changing the laws) may be very just and prudent; humility and magnanimity “must be principal some other way — doesn’t really come out here.” Objection that Aristotle omits humility: Thomas says one is humble first towards God, then towards others in order to God; Aristotle treats the virtues disposing one for life in the city, without comparison to God. Peace in the city needs justice (“justice is the work of peace”), its survival the courage of soldiers, and its squabbles (rape, drunk-driving) temperance: “if men were just and brave and temperate, there’d be great peace in the city.”
• Break. A student begins: besides general conditions and special virtues, doesn’t Thomas also speak of general virtues? — left hanging at the break.

His words #

• cardinalis / cardo: the hinge on which the door turns; the virtues on which human life turns and is founded.
• “looking” intellect / “looking philosophy” [ed.: speculative intellect, speculative philosophy]; speculativus = looking.
• vita activa, vita voluptuosa: active life (properly human), life of pleasure (bestial).
• superhumana: the contemplative life and the theological virtues, above the human status; “divine”.
• “partaking” [ed.: participation]: having something not in its fullness.
• simul natura / hama: species of a genus divided by opposites are on the same level.
• univocal genus: one meaning said of many differing in kind; its “subject parts” are ex aequo.
• analogous: said secundum prius et posterius, “equivocal by reason.”
• “foresight” [ed.: prudence]: Thomas derives prudentia from foresight; “quodammodo moralis, secundum materiam.”
• “desiring power(s)” [ed.: appetite]; rectitude of desire.
• epithymia / thymos: concupiscible and irascible appetite.
• “puritanism”: his invented name for the unnamed deficiency opposed to temperance.
• “mode” of a virtue: whether it moderates or strengthens; the formal aspect by which Thomas files meekness under temperance.
• consurgit: “rises up” (Gregory’s tota boni operis structura consurgit).
• exchanges and distributions: commutative and distributive justice; “to another with equality.”
• general conditions vs. special virtues: the two ways of taking the four cardinal virtues.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, De virtutibus, q. 5, a. 1 (the cardo passage, from his handout), citing Proverbs 26:14
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 61, prologue, a. 1, a. 2, a. 3 (a. 3 inferred; verified sources list aa. 1-2 and “probably” the following)
• Ambrose on Luke (sed contra of a. 1); Gregory, Moralia II (sed contra of a. 2); Gregory on humility; James 1:4; Cicero’s Rhetoric (sed contra of a. 3) — as quoted within the articles

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories (opposites, before/after, simul; the opening fourfold division); Metaphysics VI (division of looking philosophy); Nicomachean Ethics II-VI and IV (magnanimity); Politics VIII, end (music and virtue)
• Plato, Protagoras; Republic I-II
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (four-book division); commentary on the Ethics (why moral virtues come first); the Secunda Secundae; a Thomas text applying political/purgatorial/purged-soul virtues to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (uncertain, “don’t quote me”)
• Shakespeare, As You Like It (“very wrath of love”); Psalm “Serve the Lord with gladness”; Augustine on humility; Seneca (cited by Thomas)
• Verified source lists SCG IV ch. 15 as matched; not identifiable in the transcript

His questions #

• What does “univocal” mean? Said with one meaning of many things differing in kind (quadrilateral, number).
• Is the dog more an animal than the cat? No; species of a univocal genus are ex aequo under the genus, though one may be more perfect by nature.
• When I came in here today, did I come to be? In a qualified way (in this room); simply, when conceived — being is said first of substance.
• Is love reasonable? It can be — moderate if it partakes of reason — but it can also be unreasonable; likewise anger.
• Your desire for the pleasure of food or drink tends to what? Overdo it; so it must be moderated — temperance.
• In Greek, what do they call those two last ones? Epithymia (concupiscible) and thymos (irascible).
• Why does Thomas put meekness under temperance when it moderates an irascible passion? (student) Because he divides by the mode of the virtue — moderating vs. strengthening — not by the subject power.
• Do you think the Jupiter Symphony is a representation of magnanimity? (to De Koninck) “You’re probably right there.”
• Why not make magnanimity the principal virtue? The four are principal by reason of the hardest matter; other virtues have other principalities — how humility and magnanimity are principal “doesn’t really come out here.”
• Doesn’t Thomas also speak of general virtues, besides general conditions and special virtues? (student) Left open at the break.