Infused vs. Acquired Virtues, and Why Virtue Lies in the Middle (Q. 63, a. 4; Q. 64, aa. 1–2)

Orientation #

He begins “Go on to Article Four here,” continuing q. 63 from the previous session, and remarks that Thomas sees a necessity in the question “even though it seemed pretty clear from what’s gone before that they’re not the same” (prev. lecture). He ends by squeezing in q. 64 a. 2 (“looks like it’s not too long”). The previous class worked through q. 63 aa. 1–3 on the cause of virtue, and the next continues q. 64 aa. 2–3.

The class, in order #

1. Objections: infused and acquired virtue seem the same species (“the same hand, isn’t it”) #

Point: three objections claim infused and acquired virtue do not differ in species.

1. They differ only by their last end; but habits and acts take species from the proximate, not the last, end. His illustration: the same hand lifts a drink and prays; the same eyes look at pornography or at a crucifix — different ultimate ends, “still the same hand.”
2. Habits are known by acts; infused and acquired temperance have the same act, moderating the desires of touch.
3. They differ only in that one is made immediately by God, the other by a creature; but the first man formed from clay and men generated by parents are the same species, as are the eye God gives the man born blind and the eye the formative power makes in generation. “You all convinced, huh?”

2. Sed contra: any difference in a definition diversifies the species (“it’s like spelling, right”) #

Point: a definition is like a word or a number — change or drop one element and it is no longer the same.

• Spelling analogy he used with students: leave out a letter or change the order and you have a different word. Aside: reviewers of Tennyson’s Maud said there was “one too many letters” — it should be Mad.
• Definitions are like numbers (“as you were saying earlier”).
• The definition of infused virtue includes “which God works in us without us”; acquired virtue lacks it, so they are not the same species.

3. Body, first way: species from the formal reason of the object — the measure (“the mode or the measure”) #

Point: habits are distinguished by the formal reasons of their objects, and the formal element in a moral virtue is the mode or measure that reason places on the desires.

• The object of any virtue is the good in its own matter; temperance’s is the good of the pleasures of touch (aside: Aristotle on the glutton wanting a longer throat, “like a giraffe” — the emphasis on touch).
• Material side: the desires themselves. Formal side: the mode or measure from reason. Augustine quoted (via Thomas): mode is what measure fixes.
• The measure of human reason in eating: not harm the health of the body, not impede the use of reason. The measure of divine law: that man castigate his body and bring it into servitude (a quotation from 1 Corinthians) by abstaining from food and drink.
• Story of Benedict and Scholastica: she asks him to stay; he cites the monastery rule; she prays, a storm arises, he must stay; she dies a few days later. Shows the two measures: by human judgement he should have gone, but “God saw otherwise.”
• Conclusion: infused and acquired temperance differ in species because measured by different things; same reason for the other virtues.

4. Body, second way: species from what the habit is ordered to; replies (“citizens of what? The saints”) #

Point: habits also differ by what they are ordered to.

• Health of a man and of a horse are not the same species, because of the diverse natures they are ordered to.
• Politics III (the philosopher, “who’s this guy?”): the virtues of citizens differ according to the diverse types of city — a good citizen of a monarchy and of a democracy will not be the same.
• So acquired virtues (those Aristotle treats in the Nicomachean Ethics) dispose one to live well in the human city; infused moral virtues make one a citizen of the household of God, the heavenly community. “Again, a good reason why it’s going to be purgatory”; “this is very demanding” — people can feel satisfied with the acquired virtues, and most don’t even have those, but “gotta get these other ones in addition.”
• Reply 1: they differ not only by order to the last end but by order to their own objects.
• Reply 2: both moderate the desires of touch, but for a different reason, hence not the same act.
• Reply 3: God makes the blind man’s eye for the same act as nature’s eye, hence the same species; it would be the same if God miraculously caused acquired-type virtues — but that is not what is proposed; these are made for a different end and measure.

5. Question 64: number, plan, the mean in art (“first number that’s both a square and a cube”) #

Point: the four properties of the virtues, and the four articles on the mean.

• Aside on 64: the first number that is both a square and a cube — square of two cubed, or cube of two squared. (A student answers “cube of twelve”; the professor’s own formulation gives 64 = (2²)³.)
• Plan: q. 64 the middle of virtues; q. 65 connection; q. 66 equality; q. 67 duration.
• How does Aristotle approach “virtue lies in the middle” in the Ethics? By a likeness from art, which most people admit: house too hot or too cold; meat raw or burnt; too little or too much pepper (he over-pepperd the soup at home); a board cut too long or too short (“measure three times, cut once”); wine — Thomas says drink it ad hilaritatem.
• Four articles: (1) whether moral virtues are in the middle; (2) middle of the thing or of reason — Aristotle says of reason: not “half the turkey” or “half the bottle” but too much or too little for me, enough to keep strength but not get fat; Aristotle’s definition, a habit with choice in the middle “towards us,” determined by right reason; justice seems different from the other moral virtues; (3) whether intellectual virtues are in a middle — Kent: “all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so”; Falstaff: those who say more or less than the truth are villains and sons of darkness. Truth often lies between extremes: three persons and three natures vs. one person and one nature; in Christ, two persons/two natures vs. one person/one nature — the true position (one person, two natures) explains both errors, the wrong one cannot explain why anyone would hold the other; (4) theological virtues — can you love God too much, believe him too much? “We’ll see what he says.”

6. Article 1 objections: virtue seems an extreme (“no more cakes and ale”) #

1. The last is repugnant to the middle; virtue is the ultimate (Ethics I: virtue is the completion of the power, “the last word”).
2. The maximum is not a middle; magnanimity is about the greatest honours, magnificence about the greatest expenses (Ethics IV), against philotimia about lesser honours and liberality about small sums. The magnanimous man does great things in all the virtues — Caesar, Alexander weeping for no more worlds to conquer.
3. If virtue is a middle, tending to the extreme should corrupt it; but virginity (abstaining from all venereal pleasure) is the most perfect chastity, and giving all to the poor the most perfect liberality.

• Aside: in the last part of SCG III Thomas defends the religious orders and three vows against just such objections; here the objection holds these up as good yet off the mean. Shakespeare’s line: do you think there’ll be no more cakes and ale because you’re virtuous?

7. Sed contra and body: the good of the measured is conformity to its measure (“how long should you leave the tea leaves”) #

• Sed contra, Ethics II: moral virtue is a habit with choice, in the middle, determined by right reason as the wise man would (“not just any philosopher, he is the philosopher”).
• Argument:
  1. Virtue by definition orders man to the good; moral virtue perfects the desiring part about a determined matter — the part not rational essentially but partaking of reason.
  2. The measure and rule of appetite’s motion is reason. Anger doesn’t know how much to be angry: if you bump me by accident, maybe not; if high-school kids knock everyone down, a little; only reason weighs the circumstances — careless, on purpose.
  3. The good of anything measured is conformity to its measure (as in art, following the rule); evil is departure from it by excess or defect. Tea: the importer says 3 min 10 sec, he steeps four; at seven or eight, other chemicals release and it goes bitter — excess; too short and it doesn’t absorb — defect.
  4. So the good of moral virtue is equality with the measure of reason, and between excess and defect equality is the middle.
• After the definition Aristotle runs through the virtues: courage between cowardice and foolhardiness; temperance hard to name since defect is rare — between intemperance and something like puritanism. Then adds the middle is not equidistant: courage is nearer foolhardiness, temperance nearer puritanism.

8. Reply 1: middle in matter, extreme in conformity to reason (“no mean happiness to be constituted in the mean”) #

Distinction: compared to reason, virtue is one extreme (conformity) and excess/defect the other (deformity); compared to its matter (passions or operations) it is a middle. Ethics II: virtue by substance is a middle, but by “best” and “well” an extreme.

• Shakespeare: “they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing… it is no mean happiness to be constituted in the mean” — two senses of “mean.” “So is moral virtue in the middle or an extreme? Yes. Distinction.”
• Why virtue is rare (Thomas): besides men pursuing the sensible good, virtue is the centre of the target — one way to hit, many to miss (aside: the old English archery contest, splitting the arrow, Sherwood).
• Aside: Tennyson, dying, asked for his Shakespeare to reread the reconciliation of Posthumus and Imogen in Cymbeline; “the Bible in your lap” would be better, Shakespeare a good second. Americans at Laval embarrassed that De Koninck’s circle knew Shakespeare better. Tennyson’s late imitation-Shakespeare plays (Queen Mary) did not succeed; the King Arthur poems were better. “Aristotle and Shakespeare didn’t miss the distinction” [he says “didn’t see,” evidently ironic]; “maybe you guys see it too.”

9. Reply 2: extreme by one circumstance, middle by others (“where is necessary, and when is necessary”) #

Point: middle and extremes in actions (justice) and passions (courage, temperance) are taken according to diverse circumstances; something can be extreme by one circumstance and middle by the rest.

• His example: eating more on Thanksgiving when grandma has cooked the turkey — you eat “generously,” not just an apple.
• Magnificence and magnanimity: in absolute quantity they tend to the maximum, but compared to other circumstances (where, when, on account of what is necessary) they are a middle; excess is tending to the maximum when/where/why not necessary, defect is failing to when necessary. Ethics IV: the magnanimous man is extreme in magnitude, middle in what is necessary.
• Mozart’s 36th and especially the Jupiter symphony represent the magnanimous man — combining four or five melodies at the end with the greatest ease, not beyond one experiencing hope.
• Thomas in SCG I on the role of the wise man: were the professor to claim it, laughable; when Thomas does it and exceeds anticipation, he did what was necessary when it was necessary — as with defending the three vows in SCG III, necessary in the Middle Ages.

10. Reply 3: virginity and poverty, and their counterfeits (“a drunken poverty”) #

Point: virginity and poverty are like magnanimity — they abstain from all venereal things and all riches on account of what is necessary and as is necessary, i.e. by God’s command and for eternal life.

• Excess: done as not necessary — illicit superstition or empty glory — is superfluous. Defect: not done when or as it should — transgressing the vow.
• Fr. Hardon: canon law defines poverty as sober; Marxism’s envy of the poor is a “drunken poverty.”
• Terrorists blowing themselves up: excess, not virtue. Chesterton’s a fortiori: if men do such extreme things for lesser causes, all the more expect it for God — so “religion causes wars” is what one should expect.
• Abstaining from meat as sinful, teetotalers vs. abstainers: superstition, not virtue.
• Student digression on the SPCA in Massachusetts: killed roosters and pigs cannot be eaten or sold; adopters must promise not to kill and eat them; a 300-pound pig nobody will take. Jokes about promising under duress and having someone else kill it.

11. Article 2: middle of reason or of the thing (“that which is laid down by reason in some matter”) #

• Objections: (1) the good is in things (Metaphysics VI: good and evil in things, truth and falsity in the mind); (2) reason is an apprehensive power, but virtue’s middle is in operations and passions, not apprehensions (“interesting argument”); (3) the middle by arithmetical or geometrical proportion is a middle of the thing, and such is justice’s (Ethics V). Sed contra: Ethics II, the middle towards us determined by right reason.
• Body — “middle of reason” in two ways: (a) a middle in the act of reason itself — not virtue’s middle, since moral virtue perfects appetite, not reason; (b) what reason lays down in some matter — every middle of moral virtue is this: reason says how much is too much, too little, just right (“just prudence”).
• Sometimes the middle of reason is also a middle of the thing, and then virtue’s middle must be so: justice, about exterior operations where the right is instituted simply, giving each neither more nor less than is owed. In the other virtues, about interior passions, the right cannot be constituted the same way because men are diversely affected, so it is instituted relative to us. Aristotle’s example of the big eater [transcript “a mild man”; ed.: likely Milo the wrestler]: the middle for him is not the little boy’s; a working man eats more than a boy “or the professor.”
• Replies: first two proceed from the middle in the act of reason; the third from justice.

His words #

• “castigate his body… bring it into servitude”: the divine-law measure of eating (1 Corinthians).
• “the mode or the measure”: the formal element of moral virtue’s object, from reason.
• “domestic house of God”: the community the infused virtues order one to [ed.: domestici Dei].
• “the philosopher”: Aristotle — “not just any philosopher.”
• “habit with choice, existing in the middle towards us, determined by right reason”: Aristotle’s definition of moral virtue.
• “philotimia”: the virtue about lesser honours, contrasted with magnanimity.
• “ad hilaritatem”: Thomas on how far to drink wine.
• “conformity” vs. “deformity”: the two extremes when virtue is compared to reason.
• “puritanism”: his name for the (rare) defect opposed to temperance.
• “apprehensiva”: reason as a grasping power (objection 2, a. 2).
• “middle of reason” (a) in the act of reason, (b) laid down by reason in a matter.
• “a drunken poverty”: Hardon’s phrase for Marxist envy against sober religious poverty.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 63, a. 4 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 64, prologue and a. 1 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 64, a. 2 (whole article)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (virtue as ultimate), II (definition, middle, art likeness, not equidistant), IV (magnanimity, magnificence), V (justice’s middle)
• Aristotle, Politics III (virtues of citizens differ by city)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI (good and evil in things, true and false in mind)
• Augustine on mode and measure (quoted by Thomas)
• 1 Corinthians (castigate my body and bring it into servitude)
• Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles I (opening, office of the wise man); III, last part (religious orders, three vows)
• Life of Benedict and Scholastica; Tennyson, Maud, Queen Mary, King Arthur poems; Shakespeare: Kent’s line, Falstaff’s line, “cakes and ale,” “no mean happiness… constituted in the mean,” Cymbeline; Mozart, Symphony 36 and the Jupiter; Fr. Hardon on poverty; Chesterton

His questions #

• Why isn’t it the same with virtues as with the same hand used to drink or to pray? Because they differ not only by last end but by their own objects — a different measure (human reason vs. divine law).
• Do infused and acquired temperance have the same act? No: both moderate desires of touch, but for a different reason, hence not the same act.
• What’s the significance of the number sixty-four? The first number that is both a square and a cube.
• How does Aristotle approach the idea that virtue lies in the middle? By the likeness of art — too hot/too cold, raw/burnt, too long/too short.
• Should I eat half the turkey, drink half the bottle? No — the middle is of reason and towards us, not of the thing.
• Do the theological virtues consist in a middle? Left open (“we’ll see what he says”).
• Does anger know how much you should be angry? No; only reason weighs the circumstances.
• Is moral virtue in the middle or an extreme? “Yes” — a middle in its matter, an extreme in conformity to reason.
• Courage is between what? Cowardice and foolhardiness, and nearer to foolhardiness.
• Where does the middle of reason coincide with the middle of the thing? Only in justice, which is about exterior operations; the other virtues are relative to us.