Last Replies on the Twelve Fruits, Fruits vs. Works of the Flesh (Art. 4), and Is All Knowledge Good?

Orientation #

He begins mid-article, finishing the replies of the preceding article on the fruits of the Spirit, and at the end says “we should go into the next question here now … vices and sins”, opening the discussion of the same knowledge of good and bad. The previous class worked through q. 70 on the twelve fruits and the next takes up q. 71 on vice and sin.

The class, in order #

1. Faith as a fruit: certitude is delightful (“not be disturbed in sadnesses”) #

Point: reply to the third objection of the preceding article — not to be disturbed in sadnesses has the notion of something delightful; faith, taken as a foundation, is glad and delightful insofar as it contains certitude; the gloss: faith is “certitude about invisible things”.

• Pothole story: a Frenchman roaring past kicks a stone into his new car; he knew it would leave a mark but “I’m having a blast” — being undisturbed in a sadness is itself a delight.
• Church saves you from “the conflict of tongues”: Whittaker Chambers, back at Columbia after becoming a communist, regarded academic ideas as ping-pong balls — knocked around, never taken seriously, nothing resolved, because they think truth is unattainable. “It’s great when we’re getting tenure though” (student).

2. Why Paul lists these fruits and not others (“either enumerate more or even less fruits”) #

Point: reply to the fourth objection (the sed contra was multiplied, hence four): Augustine on Galatians says the Apostle does not intend to teach what all the works of the flesh or fruits of the Spirit are, but to show the genus of what is to be avoided and what followed; hence he could have listed more or fewer.

• Nevertheless all acts of the gifts and virtues can be reduced, by a certain suitability, to those listed, since every virtue and gift orders the mind in one of the four ways said; e.g. acts of wisdom and any gift ordering to the good reduce to charity, joy and peace.
• These are named rather than others because they more imply enjoyment of good things or the sedation of bad things, which pertains to the notion of fruit as something delectable — fruit is thought of in terms of appetite. Student: is the conclusion of a syllogism a fruit? He: you think of fruit as what you enjoy.

3. Article four: the objections (“to one, one thing is contrary”) #

Point: whether the fruits are contrary to the works of the flesh Paul enumerates.

1. Contraries are in the same genus (species furthest apart in a genus); the works of the flesh are not called fruits; so not contrary.
2. To one, one thing is contrary; but Paul enumerates more works of the flesh than fruits; so no contrariety.
3. The first fruits (charity, joy, peace) do not correspond to the first works of the flesh (fornication, uncleanness, shamelessness — “how do they translate that? modesty”).

• Sed contra: the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.
• Aside on premise 2: Socrates in the Protagoras argues wisdom and temperance are the same, since each has foolishness as its one contrary; “of course they’re not, but there’s a connection” — “fond” originally means foolish, drink makes a fool of you, and Shakespeare’s “modest wisdom plucks me from over-credulous haste” links modesty and wisdom.

4. The body: contrary in general, adapted in particular (“motion up and the motion down”) #

Point: the works of the flesh and the fruits can be taken two ways.

• (a) By their common notion: contrary. The Holy Spirit moves the mind to what is according to reason or above it; the sense appetite draws to sensible goods below man (“what is a man if his chief good … be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more”). As motion up and motion down are contrary in natural things, so in human deeds — one takes you up, the other down.
• (b) By the particular notions of the individual items: no one-to-one placing is necessary, because (as said in the preceding article — “Thomas said, don’t take too seriously”) Paul did not mean to list all spiritual or carnal works.
• Yet “that indefatigable Augustine”, by a certain adaptation, pairs them: fornication (love of pleasure divorced from legitimate marriage) vs. charity, by which the soul is joined to God and in which there is true chastity — cf. the Old Testament calling those who abandon God prostitutes; uncleanness vs. [as he reads it]; service of idols (war against the gospel of God) vs. peace (“no rest for the wicked” — Isaiah); veneficia (witchcrafts), enmities, contentions, jealousies, dissensions vs. longanimity, sustaining the evils of the men among whom we live; against [unclear in recording — he reads “indignitas … forgiving … -monitas”] another fruit; heresies vs. faith; envy vs. mildness; drunkenness vs. continence.

5. Why vices are not fruits: felicitas and hap (“against the nature of the tree”) #

Point: reply to obj. 1 — what proceeds from a tree against its nature is not fruit but a corruption; works of virtue are natural to reason, works of vice against reason; so only the former are called fruits.

• Felicitas comes from the word for fruit; happiness consists in virtuous activity, so the word fits: “virtue is its own reward”.
• Word history: the Oxford Ethics said “happiness”, Thomas felicitas, Aristotle eudaimonia; but in the book on the poetic art, where tragedy goes from happiness to misery and comedy the reverse, Aristotle uses eutychia, from luck; English “happiness” is from “hap” (Two Gentlemen of Verona: “good hap … partaker of your happiness”, Proteus to Valentine). Happiness suggests where we start from, what we happen to get; fruit suggests the natural result of doing good — virtue the road to happiness, vice to misery, which literature also teaches. Schools won’t say this; a wise guy will say “my way to happiness is vice”.

6. The good is one, the bad many (“hit the bullseye is one way”) #

Point: reply to obj. 2 — as Dionysius and Aristotle say, the good happens in one way, the bad in many; hence to one virtue many vices are opposed.

• Examples of one-vs-infinite: one right length to replace a chair leg, infinitely many too long or short; many ways to misspell (“i before e” his students’ commonest error); many errors against one truth. Hence the good in nature cannot be from chance — the chances for bad outweigh those for good infinitely.
• Aristotle’s moral virtues lie between two vices: courage between coward and foolhardy; temperance likewise (he starts to pair it with cowardice and corrects to the general point). Truth too is between two extremes: saying what is not, is (more than the truth) and saying what is, is not (less) — “modest truth, nor more nor clipped”. Theology: Arius (Son and Spirit magnificent creatures, only Father God) vs. Sabellius (one person under three names from three activities); Incarnation between Eutyches/Monophysites (one nature) and Nestorians (two persons). The oath “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is not repetition: “whole truth” against saying what is is not, “nothing but” against saying what is not is.
• Obj. 3: he leaves it to follow from what has been said (Thomas: not wonderful if more works of the flesh are laid down than fruits).
• Aside: he’d explain this to the judge to be kept off the jury; called once, not taken — “maybe I was a college professor”.

7. Next question: the same knowledge, not the same love, of good and bad (“all knowledge is good”) #

Point: moving to vices and sins, he asks why the knowledge of good and bad is the same (a big thing for Plato, Aristotle, Socrates: if you know how to give health you know how to take it away; the definition of vice is as good as the definition of virtue, because all knowledge is good) but the love is not the same — “you become what you love.”

• Argument against “love is better than knowledge” (what girls say): all knowledge is good, not all love is good (loving to torture you); so how is love better? “You don’t get a second date.”
• De Anima beginning: all knowledge good, some better either for a better object or for being better known/more certain; the better object counts more; so mathematics is more certain, natural philosophy about better things (the soul).
• Objection from a questioner after a talk: sex education in schools is bad, so not all knowledge is good. Answer (with students): it is bad for that person, by circumstances, because of what he might do with it — bad accidentally, not as such. Cases: knowing how to make a bomb (useful; bad for a terrorist to know; delusional students blowing themselves up is “poetic justice”); Romeo’s apothecary — knowing this is poison lets you avoid it or use it; the desire to harm makes the knowledge accidentally bad. Cymbeline: the evil queen asks the doctor about poisons; he distrusts her and gives her a sleeping drug (like Juliet’s); it is good she is kept ignorant, but the knowledge as such is not bad. A butcher knife in the house is not bad.
• Student: what if what passes for knowledge is partly false — is it still good? He: the question is the as-such vs. by-happening distinction, hard for people to see; sex education is bad even apart from the false things taught, since the true facts lead them to experiment; that does not make the knowledge bad as such. Churchill’s speeches (1938-41, bought at a library sale) call Nazi science “perverted science” — but the knowledge as such? “No one knows better how to kill you than a doctor.” Student: a “dirty tricks” book, torture techniques — is that knowledge? left as a case.
• Positive argument that the knowledge is the same: no good logician without knowing bad forms of argument (affirming the consequent); he can deceive students with equivocal words — the “part greater than the whole” trick (his mother: man is not just an animal, animal is only part of what man is; but animal includes dog, cat, horse, elephant — so the part is more than the whole). Aristotle on rhetoric: usable to prove the guilty innocent or the innocent guilty, yet not itself bad — one misuses it; likewise medicine could not be taught if doctors killing (abortion, euthanasia) made the art bad. Cooking: knowing how much salt to put on is knowing how much spoils it. So if sameness of knowledge made knowledge bad, all knowledge would be bad.

8. Wise as serpents, innocent as doves (“the innocence is in the heart”) #

Point: student asks how “be wise in what is good, innocent in what is bad” squares with the same knowledge of good and bad. Answer: wisdom is in the mind, innocence in the heart/will — Iago is wiser than Othello, understanding things better, but not innocent.

• The word “philosopher” contains humility as well as love of wisdom: Pythagoras (per the legend) — “don’t call me wise, God alone is wise; call me a lover of wisdom”; man’s wisdom is very imperfect next to God’s. Aristotle, at the culmination of the golden age, still teaches what Pythagoras, near its beginning, said. Love of wisdom is in the will, wisdom in the reason.
• Thomas is very wise and humble: writing the Tertia Pars on the Incarnation he asked before the crucifix “is this satisfactory?” and heard “you’ve written well, Thomas” (inscribed under his statue at the College of St. Thomas); Cajetan, the famous commentator on the Summa, says Thomas so reverenced the Fathers that he seems to have inherited the mind of all of them, and likewise Aristotle’s.
• Modern philosophers: not worth comparing to Aristotle; even the first Greek philosophers are far above them; Shakespeare is wiser than any of them. Student: should they be called by another name? He: the word is equivocal — they don’t think God’s wisdom is better than theirs. Student: they all seem to have an agenda, philosophy for the sake of it. He: you can see the will in Marx’s preface to his doctoral thesis and clearly in Sartre — “we’re not atheists in the sense of exhausting ourselves proving God doesn’t exist; it doesn’t matter to us whether he does” — “you’ll find out whether it matters”; that is stupid, and it shows the will.
• Asides: the brilliant vehement atheist who died — “now he does [believe]”; Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood asked when life begins: “that question’s irrelevant.” He must get to the bank by five-thirty.

His words #

• “delectable / delightful”: his gloss on the notion of fruit — something enjoyed, hence relating to appetite
• “certitude about invisible things”: the gloss’s definition of faith
• “conflict of tongues”: what the Church saves you from; academic ideas as “ping-pong balls”
• “fond”: originally “foolish” (Shakespeare)
• “veneficia”: witchcrafts
• “shamelessness”: his rendering of impudicitia; “they translate that modesty”
• “felicitas”: from the word for fruit; better than “happiness” (from “hap”, luck; Greek eutychia); eudaimonia in the Ethics
• “virtue is the road to happiness, vice the road to misery”
• “the good happens in one way, the bad in many ways” (Dionysius, Aristotle)
• “more than the truth / less than the truth”: saying what is not is; saying what is is not
• “as such” vs. “by happening” [ed.: per se vs. per accidens]: the knowledge of poison is good as such, bad accidentally for the one who desires harm
• “you become what you love”: why not all love is good though all knowledge is
• “lover of wisdom”: Pythagoras’s term; contains humility as well as love

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 70, preceding article, replies to obj. 3 and 4 (inferred: a. 3)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 70, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies to obj. 1 and 2; obj. 3 left to follow)
• handout: “The Royal Fragment”, p. 2 (verified source; passage not identified in transcript)
• printed volume: DHB Vol I, The First Philosophers, p. 18 (verified source; likely the Pythagoras “lover of wisdom” legend, inferred)

Mentioned

• Augustine, commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (both quoted through Thomas)
• Galatians (works of the flesh, fruits of the Spirit; “the flesh lusts against the spirit”)
• Plato, Protagoras (one contrary to one; wisdom and temperance)
• Shakespeare: Macbeth (“modest wisdom”; “nor more nor clipped”), Hamlet (“what is a man … a beast, no more”), Two Gentlemen of Verona (“good hap”), Romeo and Juliet (apothecary; Juliet’s sleeping drug), Cymbeline (queen and doctor), Othello (Iago) — plays named only as he names them
• Isaiah (“no rest for the wicked”)
• Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (happiness; virtue between two vices), Poetics (“book on the poetic art”; eutychia), De Anima beginning (all knowledge good), Rhetoric (usable for good or bad)
• Dionysius (good in one way, bad in many)
• Matthew (“wise as serpents, innocent as doves”) (inferred)
• Whittaker Chambers; Churchill’s speeches 1938-41; Cajetan’s commentary on the Summa; Marx’s doctoral-thesis preface; Sartre

His questions #

• Is the conclusion of a syllogism a fruit? Fruit is something you enjoy, so it belongs more to appetite than to reason.
• Why aren’t the works of the flesh called fruits? What proceeds against the tree’s nature is corruption, not fruit; vice is against reason.
• Why does Paul enumerate more works of the flesh than fruits? The good happens in one way, the bad in many; to one virtue many vices are opposed.
• Why is there the same knowledge of good and bad but not the same love? All knowledge is good; not all love is good, because you become what you love.
• Does bad sex education conflict with “all knowledge is good”? No: it is bad for that student by circumstances, not the knowledge as such.
• Is the knowledge that this is poison bad as such? No; the man’s desire to harm makes it accidentally bad for him.
• Is it bad for me to have a butcher knife in the house? No.
• What does the Apostle mean, “wise in what is good, innocent in what is bad”? Wisdom is in the mind, innocence in the heart (Iago vs. Othello).
• Should modern philosophers be called by a different name? The word “philosopher” is equivocal; they lack the humility in its origin.