Imitation, Humility and the Love of Wisdom; Mozart's Music; ST I-II Q.71 a.1: Is Vice Contrary to Virtue?

Orientation #

He says he cannot get beyond the first and second articles of q. 71 today; the second article (“whether vice is against nature”) is named as what he will talk about “particularly” next. The previous class treated the fruits of the Spirit against the works of the flesh; the next takes up q. 71 aa. 2-4 (vice against nature, habit vs. act, sin with virtue).

The class, in order #

1. Imitation: John XXIII, Aristotle’s Poetics, and how to begin philosophy (“Man is the most imitative of animals”) #

Point: imitation (likeness) is where learning begins, both in the spiritual life and in philosophy.

• John XXIII was attached to the Imitation of Christ and called it “the Golden Book”; St Thérèse of Lisieux likewise attached to it (he says this is the way to begin).
• Aristotle, before treating tragedy, comedy and epic in the Poetics, makes three statements: (1) man is the most imitative of animals (a student supplies this); (2) imitation delights him very much (why we watch films and read novels); (3) at first we learn by imitation.
• Plato’s dialogues are imitations of people in philosophical conversation, hence an introduction to philosophy; in the ancient world, he says, one read the dialogues under a student’s direction before entering the Academy. Aristotle also wrote dialogues, mostly lost.
• Aside: at Assumption the four required courses were in perfect order (logic, natural philosophy/physics, De anima, ethics); after “the Great Revolution” the requirements were cut and an “introduction to philosophy” course was needed. His version of it: Plato’s dialogues, Meno for logic, Phaedo for a little natural philosophy, Apology for ethics.

2. Love of God, love of wisdom, and humility (“Can you have the love of God without humility”) #

Point: you cannot love God, or wisdom, without humility.

1. Legend: Pythagoras, asked to be called wise, refused (“God alone is wise”) and accepted “lover of wisdom.” So the word philosopher contains not only love of wisdom (sophia, wisdom; philia, love) but humility.
2. Wisdom is most of all God; so loving wisdom is a way of loving God, and that love is impossible without humility.
3. Conclusion: what is wrong with modern philosophy is that there is no humility, hence no love of wisdom.

• Socrates is always hesitant to say “I know”; so it is worth noticing when he is sure of something and asking why.
• Augustine, City of God: the love of God usque ad contemptum sui builds the city of God; love of self usque ad contemptum Dei builds the city of man.
• A student’s card from St Thérèse: she says the same connection between humility and charity poetically.

3. What Mozart’s music is (“beautiful and interesting likeness of the emotions”) #

Point (came to him that morning, “my guardian angel was helping me”): Mozart’s music is a beautiful and interesting likeness of the emotions, partaking more or less of reason, in sounds, to which harmony and rhythm are added.

• “More or less”: some emotions partake of reason more than others. The B-minor solo piano piece: suffering, but at the end it turns and does not stay there.
• Mozart’s letter to his father on Osmin’s aria (Seraglio): Osmin loses self-control; music must imitate this but not become displeasing to the ear, i.e. cease to be music. Thomas: the angry man hears reason, but imperfectly, so an emotion needing correction is represented “the right way.”
• Emotions that do not partake of reason cannot be beautiful; they are ugly.
• Student asks whether the irascible partakes of reason more than the concupiscible because of difficulty. His answer: no, because “this is for the sake of that.” Concupiscible goes straight at what pleases sense; the angry man is angry because you did this and punishes for this, and fear and hope likewise have a reason.
• Symphonies 36 and 41 (both C major) represent magnanimity, the virtue that does great things in all the virtues, concerned basically with hope; 40 and 38 imitate courage, also irascible. The English critics named the last the “Jupiter.”

4. The prooemium of q. 71 and pride as cause of error (“Question 71 here”) #

Point: he reads the plan of the treatise on vice and sin and the six articles of q. 71.

• The same knowledge is of opposites: having spoken of love of God, one must speak of hatred of God. Six things: vices and sins in themselves; their distinction; their comparison (which are worse); the subject of sin; its cause; its effect. He remarks this “looks before and after.”
• Six articles: (1) whether vice is contrary to virtue (“a nice fundamental way to begin”); (2) whether vice is against nature; (3) which is worse, vice or the vicious act; (4) whether a vicious act can be together with virtue; (5) whether in every sin there is some act (a student adds: or a sinful omission); (6) Augustine’s definition of sin, Contra Faustum XXII: something said, done or desired against the eternal law (“that’s enough for a definition”).
• Faustus: Augustine waited to hear him; he talked highly of great things, but did not know the liberal arts, so how could he know the most difficult things? “A little bit of pride.”
• Thomas: pride causes error in two ways. (a) Thinking you are better than you are, you attempt to judge what is above your powers, or above them now (his own refusal to answer a question at a talk in California: “I’ll think about it”). Story of Fr Boulay seeking a teacher: the Montreal professor answered every question instantly, so he rejected him; Monsignor John hesitated and was careful, “this man is my teacher.” (b) Refusing to put your mind under greater minds: “I’m going to do my own philosophy”; you would never discover a reason for the Pythagorean theorem (Euclid I.47) on your own, and geometry is the easiest science. Student aside on Thomas’s explanation of the ten categories: the only place he has seen the distinction of the ten explained. Diogenes story: “Why ask me? You’ve got Thomas” — “that kind of humility.”

5. Article 1: the objections and the sed contra (“vice is not contrary to virtue”) #

Point: four objections that vice is not the contrary of virtue, answered by Augustine’s authority.

• Obj. 1: to one thing there is one contrary (Metaphysics X). He traces the principle to Plato’s Protagoras: Protagoras says the five virtues differ like ear, eye, nose; Socrates argues by induction that a thing has only one contrary; folly is the contrary of wisdom, and (a drunk acts like a fool) of temperance; hence wisdom and temperance would be the same. Not true, but there is a connection, and humility is placed under temperance in II-II because it has temperance’s mode, restraining the desire for excellence. Aside: Shakespeare’s “fond” originally means foolish, so “fond of a girl” is acting foolish. But sin and malice are contrary to virtue, so vice cannot be.
• Obj. 2: vice also names an unsuitable disposition of bodily members or of anything (his example: a dull knife is a vicious knife, not morally).
• Obj. 3: virtue names a perfection of power (some angels are named Powers, some Virtues); vice names nothing pertaining to power.
• Obj. 4: Tullius (Cicero, “multivoca”) in the Tusculan Questions: virtue is a health of the soul; to health is opposed sickness rather than vice. Aside: the three bodily virtues health, strength, beauty, matched by the class to justice, fortitude, temperance.
• Sed contra, Augustine De perfectione iustitiae: vice is a quality by which the soul is bad; virtue a quality that makes its haver good (Aristotle: makes its haver good and its activity good). Asides: Thomas’s reverence for Augustine on the Trinity and Genesis; Bishop Power of Antigonish, whose motto was Potestas.

6. The respondeo: nature five times (“virtue is a disposition of the perfect”) #

Point: virtue is opposed to several things but most directly to vice; the key word is nature.

1. In virtue consider its essence and that to which it is ordered; in its essence, something direct and something consequent.
2. Directly, virtue implies being suitably disposed according to the mode of one’s nature (first use of “nature”). Hamlet: “What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more” (the Indians of The Oregon Trail, interested chiefly in eating and sleeping: “not good enough for a man”).
3. “The philosopher,” Physics VII: virtue is a disposition of the perfect to the best (the best being operation); “I call perfect what is disposed according to nature” (second use). Hence virtue is a certain goodness, but not the only kind: each thing’s good is to have itself suitably according to the mode of its nature (third). What virtue is ordered to is a good act.
4. Three things are therefore opposed to virtue: sin, on the side of the act (sin properly names a disordered act, as the act of virtue is ordered); malice or evil, on the side of the goodness that follows; vice, on the side of the definition: not being disposed as suits its nature (fourth). Augustine, De libero arbitrio III: what you see lacking to the perfection of nature, I call vice (fifth). “It’s very striking” that he repeats the word.

• Antonomasia: a common word applied to one that stands out: “the philosopher” (the Arabs already so called Aristotle); “the Bible” (the book); “the gospel” (good news before there was any); “Christ” (many were anointed, David included, but he is the anointed); Homer “the poet” in the Poetics; Shakespeare “the poet” in the Federalist Papers; Dirksen nominating Taft as “Mr Republican.” A student’s etymology (naming again?) he waves off: onoma is in it, but the etymology does not give what is peculiar.
• Why he raised the Poetics: “imitation” has been degraded by commerce to mean a cheap copy, so he prefers “likeness.” Aristotle’s three: represent men as they are, as they are thought to be, as they ought to be. Plato’s dialogues represent men as they were in Greek society, where homosexuality was accepted; this does not make Plato a homosexual. Proof: in the Laws the Athenian Stranger proposes a law against it, contra naturam. So Plato sees what Aristotle sees: vice is against nature, the topic of article 2.

7. Shakespeare: nature the measure of virtue and vice (“O’erstep not the modesty of nature”) #

Point: Hamlet’s speech to the players is perfectly ordered on the same principle as Thomas.

• The First Folio (1623, by fellow actors) called him the most gentle imitator of nature; Kittredge takes the players’ speech as Shakespeare’s own view of what plays should be.
• The order: (1) hold the mirror up to nature; (2) show virtue her own feature and scorn her own image, “scorn” standing for pride, queen of the vices, and so for vice, said beautifully rather than pedantically; (3) the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Nature is the measure of virtue and vice (as the Athenian Stranger’s reason shows); virtue and vice are the measure of the age, by which predominates. The age is worse than the 50s and “the corruption is sinking in deeper.”
• Compare Jefferson’s life, liberty, pursuit of happiness: ordered in the order of being (life before liberty, liberty before pursuit), so an attack on life undermines everything; Shakespeare’s order is instead that of measure.
• Friar Laurence: nothing so vile that gives no good, nothing so good but, strained from that fair use, “revolts from true birth” (birth = the original meaning of nature) “stumbling on abuse.” Aside: Planned Parenthood “revolts from true birth.”
• Shakespeare, Augustine, Thomas, Aristotle, “those four guys”; Shakespeare wiser than any modern philosopher.

8. The replies (“those three things are not contrary to virtue”) #

Point: the objections are answered by the distinction the first objection forced.

• Ad 1: sin, malice and vice are not contrary to virtue according to the same thing: sin as virtue is operative of good, malice as virtue is a goodness, vice properly as opposed to the quality of virtue. He notes the objections are ordered so that the first demands the distinction.
• Ad 2: virtue implies not only perfection of power (a principle of acting) but a suitable disposition of the one whose virtue it is; because each thing acts as it is in act, it must be well disposed in itself in order to be operative of good. Aside: in the Categories Aristotle’s four species of quality: habit/disposition, natural power and lack of power, sensible qualities, figure and shape; Thomas explains disposition comes first because what comes first to a thing is its nature, and by disposition one is well or badly disposed toward it. “Pretty subtle… amazing.”
• Ad 3, Tully, Tusculan IV: sicknesses are parts of viciousness. In bodies morbus is corruption of the whole (a fever), aegrotatio sickness with weakness, vice when parts are in conflict; there can be morbus without aegrotatio, being badly disposed inwardly without being impeded in customary operations. In the soul these cannot be distinguished even by thought: inward bad disposition is disordered affection, which renders one weak for the operations one ought to exercise. “Each tree is known by its fruit.” Vice of the soul is a habit or affection inconstant in the whole life and dissenting from itself (Polonius, “to thine own self be true… thou canst not then be false to any man”: otherwise you are in conflict with yourself). So vice is more than sickness, as virtue is more than health (health being a certain virtue of the body); vice is the more suitable opposite.
• Asides: “blessed is the fruit of thy womb”: no greater fruit, so what does that say of the Virgin? (the Journey Home converts hesitant about her). Closing: crazy proposals in the newspaper make one say “sick,” “insane”; the National Review quoting the Mad Hatter, “if I were in charge I’d make life nonsense”—“sometimes it doesn’t seem far from that.”

His words #

• imitation / likeness: he prefers “likeness,” since “imitation” now means a cheap copy [ed.: mimesis].
• lover of wisdom: Pythagoras’s self-description; the word carries humility as well as love.
• amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui / amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei: Augustine’s two cities.
• “partaking more or less of reason”: his phrase for the emotions as represented in Mozart.
• irascible / concupiscible: the former “for the sake of” something, hence partakes more of reason.
• the same knowledge of opposites: why vice follows love of God.
• multivoca: Tullius and Cicero as two names for one man [ed.: synonymous names].
• antonomasia: a common name given to the one that stands out (“the philosopher,” “the Bible”).
• “disposition of the perfect to the best”: Physics VII on virtue.
• direct vs. consequent in the essence of virtue; “that to which it is ordered.”
• sin / malice / vice: disordered act; evil opposed to goodness; quality unsuited to nature.
• contra naturam: the Athenian Stranger’s reason.
• true birth: Friar Laurence’s word for nature.
• morbus, aegrotatio, vitium: Tully’s three bodily conditions.
• haver: Thomas’s “makes its haver good.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 71, prooemium (six topics, six articles)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 71, a. 1, objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies 1-3
• Shakespeare, Hamlet, speech to the players; “What is a man”; Polonius to Laertes
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence (“Nor aught so good…”)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Poetics (three statements on imitation; three ways of representing men; Homer “the poet”)
• Aristotle, Physics VII (definition of virtue); Metaphysics X (one contrary to one); Categories (four species of quality, with Thomas’s explanation)
• Plato, Protagoras; Laws (Athenian Stranger); Meno, Phaedo, Apology
• Augustine, Contra Faustum XXII (definition of sin); De perfectione iustitiae; De libero arbitrio III; City of God; his treatment of the Trinity and Genesis
• Cicero, Tusculan Questions (book IV)
• Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia; II-II on humility under temperance
• Thomas Kempis, Imitation of Christ; Euclid, Elements I.47; The Oregon Trail; Kittredge’s Hamlet; Federalist Papers; Mozart’s letter on Osmin’s aria; symphonies 36, 38, 40, 41

His questions #

• What three statements does Aristotle make about man and imitation? Man is most imitative of animals; imitation delights him; at first we learn by imitation.
• Can you have the love of God without humility? No; nor love of wisdom, since wisdom is most of all God.
• What is Mozart’s music? A beautiful and interesting likeness of the emotions partaking more or less of reason, in sounds.
• Why does the irascible partake more of reason than the concupiscible? Because it is “for the sake of” something; the angry man gives a reason.
• In what two ways is pride a cause of error? Judging what is above one’s powers; refusing to put one’s mind under greater minds.
• Which dialogue of Plato brings out that one thing has one contrary? The Protagoras (folly as contrary of both wisdom and temperance).
• What does antonomasia mean? A common name given to the one that stands out; the Greek etymology does not capture it.
• How is nature the measure in Hamlet’s speech to the players? Nature measures virtue and vice; virtue and vice measure the age.
• Why does Aristotle put disposition first among the qualities? Because what comes first to a thing is its nature, to which disposition disposes well or badly.
• Why is vice more suitably opposed to virtue than sickness? In the soul, inward bad disposition is already disordered affection and weakness; vice is more than sickness as virtue is more than health.