Summa I-II, Q. 66, Arts. 2–4: Equality of the Virtues, Intellectual vs. Moral Virtue, and Justice as the Chief Moral Virtue

Orientation #

He opens “I guess we’re up to question sixty-six, Article Two,” and closes “should we take a break now? … On to wisdom here” (i.e. a. 5 next). He refers back to “the class last night” (chance vs. luck) and to his “introduction to logic” (the Meno). The previous class finished the connection of the theological virtues and began q. 66 on equality of virtues; the next takes up a. 5 on wisdom and then charity among the theological virtues.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“each one has his own gift from God”) #

The question: are all virtues in one and the same man equally intense?

• Obj. 1: Paul, 1 Cor 7, “each one has his own gift”; no gift would be more proper to one than another if all infused virtues were had equally.
• Obj. 2: if all were equal, whoever exceeds another in one virtue would exceed him in all; but diverse saints are praised for diverse virtues — Abraham for faith, Moses for mildness (“that’s interesting”), Job for patience; and the common of confessors sings “there’s not found anyone like him … who can serve the law of the Most High,” each having a prerogative of some virtue. He says he “would be convinced by that argument” and is surprised Thomas resists it, since that is how the confessors text is always interpreted. Aside: the genealogy “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob” is read in a spiritual sense as faith begot hope, hope begot [charity].
• Obj. 3: the more intense a habit, the more delightful and prompt the act; but experience shows one man does the act of one virtue more promptly than another.
• Sed contra: Augustine, De Trinitate VI: whoever are equal in fortitude are equal in prudence and temperance, and so of the rest. “He’s somebody, this Augustine” — like Aristotle. Equality will follow from connection through prudence and charity.

2. Article 2, body: equality of proportion (“just as the fingers of the hand”) #

Point: virtues differ in species, but in one man they are equal by proportion.

1. Quantity of virtue is taken two ways: according to the ratio of the species (so one virtue is greater than another — charity than faith and hope) or according to the partaking of the subject (more or less intense).
2. In the second way, all the virtues of one man are equal by an equality of proportion, since they grow equally in him — as the fingers of the hand are unequal in quantity but grow proportionally. (Aside: a painting of Thomas at TAC, seen from the lectern, showing five fingers — he had “stolen” it for the five senses, will steal it for this too.) His own example: arms and legs, unequal, but growing proportionally; twelve-year-olds seem “all arms and legs.”
3. The reason for equality is the same as for connection, since equality is a connection according to quantity. Connection is assigned two ways:
   • Augustine’s way: prudence, fortitude, temperance (etc.) taken as four general conditions of every virtue in every matter; so if this man is equal in fortitude but stands out in prudence, the other’s fortitude is less prudent, hence not equal in fortitude either.
   • Aristotle’s way: virtues with determined matters; connection through prudence (which counsels in all matters) for moral virtues, through charity for infused — but not through inclination, which is on the side of the subject.
4. So equality is taken from prudence as the formal element: reason equally perfect in one man sets the middle in each matter proportionally according to right reason. But materially — the inclination to the act — one man may be more prompt to one act than another, by nature, custom, or grace. “That’s how he’s going to solve the second and the third objections”: not that one man has this virtue better and the other that, but that he is more prompt in the act.

3. Article 2, replies; gratia gratis data (“gratia gratis data and gratia gratum faciens”) #

• Reply 1: Paul may mean the gratiae gratis datae — miracles, tongues, interpretation, healing — not common to all nor equal in one; or the measure of gratia gratum faciens, by which one abounds in all the virtues more than another, through greater prudence or charity.
• His aside on the naming: both graces are freely given, but the one that has something notable added — makes you “God’s favorite,” acceptable — gets a new name, and the other keeps the common name. Same pattern: chance vs. luck (luck is chance in human affairs, gets the special name; chance in nature keeps “chance”); habit vs. disposition in Aristotle (a habit is a firm disposition). Opposite of gratum faciens: persona non grata. Bad habits hard to lose: his teacher Kasurik, on meeting De Koninck, took a long time to shed “bad habitual ideas.”
• Reply 2: a saint praised for one virtue has a more excellent promptitude to that act; the one person has a greater amount of all the virtues. His example: the Lord’s two sons — one says “I’ll go” and doesn’t (“all talk”), the other goes and does it (Matthew 21, inferred).
• Reply 3: same, in terms of inclination (not read separately).

4. Article 3, the knot tied (“too hard a knot for me to untie”) #

Question: are moral virtues preeminent over intellectual?

• Obj. 1: the more necessary and permanent is better; moral virtues are more permanent than the disciplines (Aristotle, Ethics) and more necessary for life. “We’ll have to see what Lady Wisdom has to say … she excels in both.”
• Obj. 2: virtue makes its possessor good; a man is called good by the moral virtues, not the intellectual (except perhaps prudence). A good geometer or carpenter is not thereby a good man; Chesterton on the man who can shoot his mother-in-law between the eyes at fifty paces — a good shot, not a good man.
• Obj. 3: the end is nobler than what is toward the end; Ethics VI: moral virtue makes the intention of the end right, prudence the choice of means. “I’m convinced, aren’t you?” — “not a stupid position.”
• Sed contra: moral virtue is in the part rational by partaking, intellectual in the part rational essentially (Ethics I); the essentially rational is nobler.
• Digression on the knot: Twelfth Night, “O time, thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me to untie.” Aristotle: a plot consists in tying and untying the knot (Hudson Shakespeare divides plots that way); philosophy likewise — argue both sides with probability, the mind is tied in a knot (Aristotle on dialectic, “third book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics III]), then untie it; “time is a good help.” His own knot: years unresolved, relevant to his doctoral thesis, untied while following a lecture of Monsignor Dionne, who greeted him with “Know where you’re going, Duane?” Cymbeline’s last scene unties many knots at once; Tennyson on his deathbed asked to reread the reconciliation of Imogen and Posthumus. Plato’s Meno: Socrates argues virtue can be taught, then that it cannot, then finds the weak side. “I think it’s a good example of dialectic”; the ability to look before and after includes looking for distinctions.

5. Article 3, body: simpliciter vs. secundum quid (“to philosophize than to make money”) #

Point: intellectual virtues are nobler simpliciter, moral virtues nobler in order to act.

• The distinction: something is more or less simply, or secundum quid — met “over and over” in Aristotle and Thomas. In the Meno, you cannot investigate what you don’t know — but secundum quid you can know what you don’t know (researchers seeking the cause of cancer). Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations treats the fallacy of confusing them. Aristotle’s example: to philosophize is better simply than to make money, which is better secundum quid, i.e. for one in necessity.

1. A thing is considered simply according to the definition of its species; virtue takes its species from its object; so the virtue with the nobler object is nobler simpliciter.
2. The object of reason is nobler than that of appetite: reason grasps in general (Shakespeare’s “large discourse,” about the universal), appetite tends to particular existents. “That he should say this is impressive” — “kind of a strange argument.”
3. Hence intellectual virtues, perfecting reason, are nobler simply.
4. But considered in order to act, moral virtue is nobler, since appetite moves the other powers to act; and since virtue is named as principle of act, the definition of virtue belongs more to moral virtues — though intellectual virtues are nobler habits simpliciter. “My God, distinctions there.”

6. Reply 1: permanence, the speculative virtues, beatitude begun (“you got to eat every day”) #

• Moral virtues are more permanent because exercised in common life: you eat every day, so temperance is exercised daily; “I try to do geometry every day, but I don’t get in every day.” But the objects of the sciences, necessary and always the same, are more permanent than particular things to be done — this individual piece of cake before me.
• Being more necessary shows nobility only secundum quid.
• Speculative (Latin, “looking”; Greek theoretical). Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues: art and prudence/foresight (practical: making and doing); understanding, reasoned-out understanding (nous, episteme), wisdom (sophia) — the speculative three.
• The speculative virtues, not ordered to something useful, are of more worth, because in them beatitude, which is knowledge of truth, is in a way begun in us. The Lord: I am the road (hodos), the truth, the life; Thomas at the start of Summa III: Christ as man is the via to beatitude, as God truth and life itself — the end.
• Student exchange: is faith more speculative or practical? Speculative, as Thomas argued theology is speculative because chiefly about God, about whom you can do nothing; yet He is the end. The definition of faith: “substance of things hoped for, conviction of things not seen” — substance (hypostasis) as foundation; you believe what you will see, so beatitude is begun.
• Reason “godlike” (Shakespeare): most godlike when it has wisdom; Aristotle at the start of the fourteen books “meta ta physika” calls the science divine in two senses — about God, and the knowledge God alone has fully. Lady Wisdom: knowledge of God in both senses; God knowing himself knows all; theology even more God-like than first philosophy. Shakespeare works out the definition of reason, and there is the image of the Trinity: reason understanding itself, then loving itself once it sees how good “large discourse, looking before and after” is — and God gave it not “to fust in us unused.”
• Asides: SCG IV on the Incarnation — refutes heretics, then a chapter that it is impossible, then whether suitable, twenty-some objections and eight beautiful reasons (“why do I want to get to that? … not exactly”). Original sin: Thomas says one can estimate it with probability even apart from revelation; its worst effect is the clouded mind unable to control emotion — evidence “you got to be blind” to miss. A student adds Anthony Daniels, agnostic prison physician, who accepts original sin as the only explanation of what he saw; he adds Chesterton’s atheist who found the Church “the only sensible thing left,” and Chesterton’s answer that Thomas’s first answer to whether God exists was “it seems not.”

7. Article 3, replies 2 and 3 (“prudence not only directs the moral virtues”) #

• Reply 2: by moral virtues a man is called good simply, because appetite moves the other powers; yet this proves moral virtue better only secundum quid — “a subtle thing,” good simply, better secundum quid.
• Reply 3: prudence directs moral virtue not only in choosing means but in putting forward the end itself, since the end of each moral virtue is the middle in its own matter, determined by right reason of prudence (Ethics II and VI). Aristotle defines moral virtue in book II as a habit with choice in the middle toward us as determined by right reason, and says in VI what right reason is. So, with qualifications, virtues of reason are placed before moral virtues.

8. Article 4, objections and “the philosopher” (“if everybody’s somebody, then no one’s anybody”) #

Question: is justice chief among moral virtues (the same to be asked of wisdom among the virtues of reason).

• Obj. 1: giving of one’s own (liberality) is greater than rendering what is owed (justice). Aside: magnificence, about great sums, is greater than liberality — one who finishes a building at TAC gives a “magnificent gift,” not justice.
• Obj. 2: James 1, patience has a perfect work; the most perfect is greatest.
• Obj. 3: magnanimity does great things in all the virtues (Ethics IV): the magnanimous man seeks to excel in honor, and what is honorable is acts of virtue. Shakespeare couples magnanimity with courage, an honorable virtue — the Medal of Honor for one day on the battlefield, none for a lifetime of temperance.
• Sed contra: “the philosopher,” Ethics V (the book on justice): justitia est praeclarissima, most brilliant of virtues. Antonomasia: Aristotle calls Homer “the poet”; the Federalist Papers cite “the poet” for “long farewell to all my greatness” (Henry VIII); Gilbert and Sullivan, “if everybody’s somebody, then no one’s anybody.”

9. Article 4, body: the good of reason shines through (“justice among all the moral virtues excels”) #

• Simpliciter/secundum quid again — “he’s milking it for all it’s worth.” It is found in being itself: substance is being simpliciter, accident secundum quid; act simply, ability secundum quid; and it grounds one of the thirteen fallacies, which run through everything, dialectic being universal like wisdom.

1. Simply, a virtue is greater as the good of reason shines more in it — a good human act, in a word, is a reasonable act (Dionysius: live according to reason).
2. Justice excels as nearer to reason: from its subject, the will, the rational appetite (hence will in God but no emotion in God) — and Aristotle’s order: books III-IV virtues of emotion, V justice, VI virtues of reason, justice closest to reason; and from its object, operations ordering a man not only in himself but to another. Hence praeclarissima — “the evening star,” as in the Ethics.
3. Among virtues about the passions, the good of reason shines more the greater the things in which appetite is subjected to reason; greatest is life, on which all else depends; so fortitude, subjecting appetite to reason in matters of life and death, is first among them — courage above temperance — but below justice, where reason shines even more. Aside: Solomon, “divide the baby” — wisdom shining through.
4. Rhetoric I: the greatest virtues are the most honored, the brave and the just; fortitude in war, justice in war and peace.
5. After fortitude, temperance, about what is merely ordered to life — of the individual (food) or the species (reproduction). These three with prudence are the chief.
6. Secundum quid, a virtue is greater as prop or ornament of a principal virtue — as an accident (health, say) perfects substance in accidental being.

10. Article 4, replies: liberality, patience, magnanimity (“magnanimous man is very hard to find”) #

• Reply 1: liberality must be founded on justice — no liberal giving unless of one’s own (“liberals like [other] people’s money”); justice can be without liberality, so is greater simply, as more common and foundation; liberality greater secundum quid as ornament. So James: mercy prevails over justice, in that sense. Aristotle in the books on friendship puts friendship even higher, since a friend gives more than what is owed — “it’d be pretty rough” to get only what is owed. Element of truth in the objection.
• Reply 2: patience has a perfect work in tolerating evils: excludes unjust revenge (as justice does), hate (charity), anger (mildness), and also disordered sadness, root of all these, which it “extirpates,” pulls up by the root — Don John in Much Ado, sadness at bottom, cannot bear others’ joy. But not simply more perfect: fortitude not only bears molestation without disturbance (patience) but goes to meet it when needed; whoever is courageous is patient, not conversely; patience is a part of “prudence” [ed.: transcript reading; likely “fortitude”].
• Aside: Mozart’s last five symphonies as a symmetry A B C B A: 36 and 41 (both C major) magnanimity; 38 courage strictly, 40 patience; 39 in E flat the odd one. Same symmetry in the Mass (Kyrie/Agnus Dei mercy, Gloria/Sanctus praise, Credo the odd one) and in Midsummer Night’s Dream — “I keep looking at the symmetry everywhere.”
• Reply 3: magnanimity cannot be without the other virtues preexisting (Ethics IV), so it is their ornament, greater secundum quid, not simply. Warren Murray’s student, writing on magnanimity, could find no example but Christ.

His words #

• “quantity of virtues”: in species vs. in the subject’s partaking (intensity).
• “equality of proportion”: virtues growing equally in one man, like fingers.
• “connection of the virtues”: through prudence (moral) and charity (infused), not inclination.
• “prompt / promptitude”: readiness to a particular act, the material side.
• “gratia gratis data” / “gratia gratum faciens”: grace freely given vs. grace making acceptable; the notable one gets the new name.
• “simpliciter / secundum quid”: simply vs. in a certain respect; grounded in substance/accident, act/“ability” [ed.: potency].
• “large discourse, looking before and after”: Shakespeare for reason grasping the universal (Hamlet, inferred).
• “tying and untying the knot”: dialectic’s arguing both sides, then resolving.
• “speculative” (Latin, looking) = “theoretical” (Greek).
• “understanding, reasoned-out understanding, wisdom”: nous, episteme, sophia; “foresight” [ed.: prudence]; “art”.
• “road” for via, hodos [ed.: usually “way”].
• “the attitude” [ASR for beatitude]: knowledge of truth, begun in the speculative virtues.
• “Lady Wisdom”: his personification of wisdom as knowledge of God in both senses.
• “praeclarissima”: most brilliant, “most shining,” the evening star.
• “antonomasia”: “the philosopher,” “the poet.”
• “prop or ornament”: what makes a virtue greater secundum quid.
• “extirpates”: pulls up by the root (patience and sadness).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 66, a. 2 (whole article, Latin glossed)
• Summa theologiae I-II, q. 66, a. 3 (whole article)
• Summa theologiae I-II, q. 66, a. 4 (whole article)
• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, “O time, thou must untangle this” (quoted twice)
• Shakespeare, “large discourse … godlike reason … fust in us unused” (Hamlet, inferred; his source-title unclear in recording)

Mentioned

• Augustine, De Trinitate VI (sed contra a. 2)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, II, III-IV, V, VI; books on friendship
• Aristotle, Rhetoric I; Sophistical Refutations; Metaphysics (“third book,” “fourteen books of wisdom”); Poetics on plot (inferred)
• Plato, Meno
• 1 Corinthians 7; James 1; John “I am the way”; Hebrews 11 definition of faith (inferred); Matthew 21 two sons (inferred); Matthew 1 genealogy; 1 Kings 3 Solomon (inferred)
• Thomas, Summa III prologue; Summa contra Gentiles IV on the Incarnation and original sin
• Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Henry VIII, Much Ado About Nothing, Midsummer Night’s Dream; Federalist Papers; Gilbert and Sullivan; Chesterton; Tennyson’s life; Anthony Daniels

His questions #

• Are all the virtues in one man equally intense? Yes, by an equality of proportion; unequal only in species and in promptness to particular acts.
• What is Thomas doing in naming gratia gratum faciens against gratia gratis data? Giving a new name to the one that stands out; the other keeps the common name (like luck/chance, habit/disposition).
• If I’m a good geometer, am I a good man? No; a man is called good simply by moral virtue, not intellectual.
• Is faith more speculative or practical? Speculative — chiefly about God, of whom nothing is to be done; a beginning of beatitude.
• When is reason most godlike? When it acquires wisdom, knowledge of God, and knows and loves itself.
• Whether moral virtues are preeminent over intellectual? Intellectual nobler simpliciter by object; moral nobler secundum quid, in order to act.
• Whether justice is chief among the moral virtues? Yes, simply, as nearest reason; fortitude then temperance after it; liberality, patience, magnanimity greater only as ornaments.
• Is there an element of truth in the liberality objection? Yes — liberality is greater secundum quid, as ornament of justice.