Summa I-II q.74, Part 1: Two Ways the Mind Stumbles; Can Sin Be in the Will? (Arts. 1–2); Virtue, Prayer and Friendship

Orientation #

He does not refer to last time. He signals what comes next only by deferring a student’s question about exterior acts to “the next article” (a. 2) and by noting that articles 6-10 on higher and lower reason “would be more difficult”. The previous class finished q. 73 on the gravity of sins; the next continues q. 74 on the members, sensuality and reason as subjects of sin.

The class, in order #

1. Why evil is “for the most part” in men, not angels (“malum in specie humana ut in pluribus”) #

Point: Thomas and Augustine say more angels were saved than lost, because natural inclination is to the good; but in the human race evil is ut in pluribus — which is why sins must be studied.

• His reason (Thomas’s): we begin with the senses; senses and emotions dominate the child and often lead to something unreasonable. “Watch out for those senses and those emotions.”
• Aside: a seminary teacher who said “the floor of hell is paved with the heads of priests.”

2. Friar Lawrence and the two kinds of stumbling (“they stumble that run fast”) #

Point: Friar Lawrence’s two lines on stumbling name the two ways the mind errs, which he will use to test each objection in the articles.

• Three meanings of “run”: (1) with the legs (mother running upstairs with laundry, stumbles); (2) in action (“in the course of human events” — course from running; applied to Romeo); (3) the discourse of reason — jumping to a conclusion.
• Two ways the mind stumbles:
  1. “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast”: the beginning is true, but one runs too fast and the conclusion does not follow — the form of the argument is bad.
  2. “Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse”: something natural has been corrupted; since nature is what is first in a thing, the beginning is corrupt — the matter is bad, and “nothing’s more serious than a mistake about the beginning.”
• Hamlet’s uncle (poisons his brother, takes throne and wife) suffers the second: revolt from natural brotherly love. Laertes (father stabbed, sister mad and drowned, talked by the uncle into blaming Hamlet) suffers the first: rushing to conclusions.
• He ties it back: man’s double nature — the sense nature is stronger to begin with — is the mystery behind evil for the most part.

3. Question 74: the ten articles (“about the subject of vices or of sins”) #

Point: he reads the prologue of q. 74 and lists the ten articles in order. 1 whether the will can be the subject of sin; 2 whether the will alone; 3 whether sensuality (= the passions, emotions); 4 whether sensuality can be subject of mortal, not only venial, sin; 5 whether reason (“notice the order there”); 6 whether delectatio morosa (“morosa … kind of a dwelling”) or non-morosa is in reason as a subject; 7 whether the sin of consent in act is in superior reason; 8 whether inferior reason can be subject of mortal sin; 9 whether superior reason can be subject of venial sin; 10 whether in superior reason there can be venial sin about its own object. Augustine introduced the higher/lower reason distinction; articles 6-10 “would be more difficult.”

• This carries out “Know thyself” of the seven wise men: study the soul, then the virtues and vices. Aside: St Paul’s man who looks in the mirror and forgets; the little girl at daily Mass corrected by her sister to genuflect toward the tabernacle.

4. Article 1, the objections and a digression on the four causes (“the will is not able to be the subject of sin”) #

Point: he reads the three objections, asking of each whether a stumble here would be from a bad beginning or from running too fast — in each case the beginning looks sound.

1. Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4: evil is apart from the will and intention; sin has the ratio of evil; so sin is not in the will. “Dionysius is a pretty solid character … not a bad beginning.”
2. The will is of the good or the apparent good — exhausting the possibilities, like odd/even or prime/composite. Willing the good is no sin; willing the apparent good seems a defect of the “grasping” (knowing) power. So sin is in no way in the will.
3. From Aristotle, Physics II: the efficient and the material cause do not come together; the will is the efficient cause of sin (Augustine, De duabus animabus: the first cause of sinning is the will); so it cannot be the subject.

• Digression on dividing the four causes: (a) two and two — inside causes matter and form, outside causes mover/maker and end; (b) one and three — by the most universal division of being, act and ability (ability taken passively): matter is the ability to be formed and moved, while form, mover and end rest on actuality. For God, use the one-and-three division: he is exemplar (an extrinsic form, in the genus of form, as Aristotle says), first mover and maker, and end — but not matter, because he is pure act. Aside: “pure act” as almost a middle term for all five elements of the substance of God (simplicity, etc.) — “brevity is a soul of wit.”
• Sed contra: Augustine, Retractationes — the will is that by which one sins and by which one lives rightly.

5. Article 1, the body: two kinds of act (“some go over into exterior matter”) #

Point: sin is in the will as a subject because sin is an immanent act, whose subject is the power that begins it.

1. Sin is a certain act (said above).
2. Acts divide (Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, “the ninth book of wisdom”): some pass over into exterior matter (to burn, to cut — “your sign there … should pass over from you to the wood”); their subject is that into which the action passes, since (Physics III) motion is the act of the movable, from the mover. “If I kick you, my kicking is … in you.” Others remain in the agent (to desire, to know), and all moral acts, of virtues or sins, are of this kind.
3. So the proper subject of the act of sin is a power that is a beginning of the act; moral acts are voluntary; the will is the beginning of voluntary acts, good or bad. Conclusion: sin is in the will as in a subject. “That was easy.”

• A further distinction he adds: in a transient act the act stands between actor and object (my kicking, between me and you); in knowing and loving the object is first joined to the power and the act proceeds from that (the woman, or the piece of Mozart, makes an impression on my heart, then I start to like it; colour or sound acts on eye or ear, then I see or hear). Thomas, following Aristotle, sees the before-and-after of these three.
• Student: doesn’t a moral act like killing with a knife also pass into exterior matter? Answer: that is the next article (“you’re anticipating the master”); this article asks only whether the will is a subject. Preview: the hand is “a slave of the mind” and not meant to kill, whereas the emotions have a life of their own and can share more in sinfulness.
• Asides: his resistance to “this three stuff”, yet in the creation account the Fathers have heavens, water, earth, distinguished on days 1-3 and adorned on days 4-6; Thomas quotes Pythagoras’s “beginning, middle, end” from Aristotle’s On the Heavens (three dimensions). Terrorists and abortionists both lack respect for human life; the abortionist “tears every limb.”

6. Article 1, the replies (“bad is said to be praeter voluntatem”) #

Point: each objection is answered by showing how the will reaches evil under the appearance of good and how the defect of knowledge is itself subject to the will.

• Ad 1: evil is praeter voluntatem because the will does not tend to it under the ratio of evil; but since evil is an apparent good, the will many times desires evil; thus sin is in the will.
• Remark on the ordering of objections: dialectic comes before a thinker knows the truth and after; after, he orders it toward the truth. Plato’s Socrates searches; Aristotle, having reached the truth, uses dialectic to help the student. So Thomas’s first objection naturally leads into the second (“isn’t it then in the reason that tells the will this is good?”).
• Ad 2: “grasping” is taken from the hand, applied to knowing because the known must be in the knower — the first act of reason, simple apprehension. If the defect of the knowing power were in no way subject to the will, there would be no sin in will or knowing power, as in invincible ignorance (“a lot of that around today … a lot of crass ignorance too”). Insofar as it is subject to the will, the defect is a sin. He glosses: applying the mind and looking at all the circumstances depends on the will; not taking the whole picture is willful ignorance — St Alphonsus: “willful inadvertence.”
• Ad 3: the Physics argument holds for efficient causes whose actions pass into exterior matter and which move other things, not themselves; the contrary is true of the will, so the argument does not follow.
• Aside: Thomas patiently leading a young student through his objection, though scandalised; compared to Heisenberg’s objection at the “Bohr Festival” and the two-hour mountain walk with Bohr that shaped his thinking on the atom.

7. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“the will alone is the subject of sin”) #

Point: three objections argue the will alone is subject; the sed contra answers from the contrariety of sin and virtue.

1. Augustine, De duabus animabus: non nisi voluntate peccatur; sin is in the power by which one sins; so the will alone. “If I’m not running too fast … this passed by me.”
2. Sin is evil against reason (Dionysius, Aristotle); good and bad pertaining to reason is the object of the will alone. “That convinces me.”
3. Augustine, De libero arbitrio: sin is so voluntary that if not voluntary it is not sin. Other powers’ acts are voluntary only as moved by the will, which does not suffice, otherwise the exterior members moved by the will would be subjects of sin — clearly false. “Did my hand sin in … cutting your head off?”

• Sed contra: sin is contrary to virtue; contraries are about the same thing; the other powers besides the will are subjects of virtues (said above); therefore not only the will is subject of sin.

8. Article 2, the body, and the plan of the Nicomachean Ethics (“virtue is the road to happiness”) #

Point: every power that begins a voluntary act — elicited or commanded — is a subject of sin, and of moral good, since act and habit have the same subject.

1. Everything that is a beginning of a voluntary act is a subject of sin (from a. 1).
2. Acts are voluntary not only when elicited by the will but when commanded by it (said above, on the voluntary).
3. So not only the will but the powers that can be moved to their acts, or repressed from them, by the will are subjects of sin; and the same are subjects of moral goods and evils, since the subject of the act and of the habit is the same.

• Hence one must understand the virtues as in reason and in the emotions, not only the will. Shakespeare’s line — “that part of philosophy that treats of happiness by virtue specially to be achieved” — is a concise statement of the Ethics: books 1 and 10 on happiness, the middle books on virtue. Thomas: virtue is the road to happiness, vice the road to misery; ask the miserable people in the newspaper which road they took.
• Books 2-5 moral virtues, book 6 virtues of reason. Why moral first: (Thomas’s two reasons) they are more known to us, and they dispose us for the virtues of reason. Gregory the Great (quoted by Thomas): the moral virtues are needed before entering the fortress of contemplation.

9. Psalm 99 and the three kinds of prayer (“enter his gates with thanksgiving”) #

Point: the order of Psalm 99 (correct numbering; 100 in others) mirrors moral virtue leading to contemplation, and thanksgiving as the step between petition and praise.

• Order of the psalm: “sing joyfully … serve the Lord” (the moral part); “come before him … know that the Lord is God” (Summa contra Gentiles I), “he made us” (II), “the flock he tends” (III); then “enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise” — courts more inside than gates.
• Three senses of prayer: asking (the Our Father), thanking, praising. Thanksgiving is in the middle: less selfish than asking, still about what I received; praise forgets self and considers only God’s excellence — a stepping stone to praise. Thomas in the Psalms nearly identifies thanksgiving with praise; he sees a small distinction.
• Order of things to thank God for: (1) his freely choosing me to be (God necessarily wills his own goodness but is free toward us; not in time — Boethius: the standing now makes eternity, the flowing now makes time — so he is choosing you when you see him face to face); (2) creating my immortal soul; (3) my body; (4) my parents meeting, else no body and no soul made to fit it; (5) brothers and sisters; teachers; grandchildren (“all eighteen of them”).
• Asides: he learned the psalm as a cheerful song to teach children; Teresa of Avila, “spare us sad saints.”

10. Ethics books 7-9: heroic virtue, bestiality, friendship (“what was he doing in seven, eight, and nine”) #

Point: after virtue (2-6) and before happiness in contemplation (10), Aristotle treats what is more or less than virtue and friendship.

• Book 10: natural happiness consists most of all in contemplating God, first philosophy, “the last sense of before”.
• Book 7: more or less than virtue or vice — heroic virtue and bestial vice (ISIS “almost bestial”); Thomas returns to this text on the gifts of the Holy Spirit; Aristotle glimpses something higher than human virtue.
• Books 8-9: friendship — the highest friendship is based on virtue, and friendship contributes to happiness; for us, charity is a form of friendship (Thomas’s article).
• Student: Aristotle saw friendship as the bond of the polis enabling civil discourse; the modern utilitarian view of relationships destroys political friendship. His reply: a big country separates friends by employment and distance (his brothers Mark on the West Coast, Richard in the Midwest, himself on the East Coast); good for commerce and military strength, but people end up with “interchangeable friends,” not friends in the deepest sense.

His words #

• malum in specie humana ut in pluribus: evil in the human species for the most part (Thomas).
• stumbling: Friar Lawrence’s word for error, extended from legs to action to the discourse of reason.
• revolt from true birth: corruption of a natural beginning — matter of the argument bad.
• running too fast: conclusion does not follow — form of the argument bad.
• sensuality: the passions, emotions (sense appetite).
• delectatio morosa: “morosa … kind of a dwelling.”
• grasping power: the knowing power, from the hand; first act of reason is “simple grasping” [ed.: simple apprehension].
• Natural Hearing / Physicorum [ed.: Physics].
• ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX].
• ability [ed.: potency], taken passively, opposed to act.
• praeter voluntatem: apart from the will.
• non nisi voluntate peccatur: one sins only by the will (Augustine).
• willful inadvertence: St Alphonsus’s term for willful ignorance.
• elicited vs. commanded acts of the will.
• Book of Attractions [ed.: Retractationes].
• Book about the two souls [ed.: De duabus animabus].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 74, prologue (ten articles).
• ST I-II, q. 74, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• ST I-II, q. 74, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body).
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence’s lines on stumbling.
• Psalm 99 (100), first lines.

Mentioned

• Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 4.
• Aristotle, Physics II (efficient and material cause); Physics III (motion the act of the movable); Metaphysics IX (act and ability); On the Heavens (three dimensions, Pythagoras); Nicomachean Ethics, books 1-10.
• Augustine, De duabus animabus; Retractationes; De libero arbitrio.
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (the uncle; Laertes); the line on “that part of philosophy” (play not named).
• Thomas on creation (the six days), on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, on charity as friendship, commentary on the Psalms — no loci given.
• Boethius on the now of eternity and time. Gregory the Great on contemplation. Teresa of Avila. Summa contra Gentiles I-III.

His questions #

• Why is there evil for the most part in the human race but not among the angels? Because we begin with the senses; senses and emotions dominate the child and lead to the unreasonable.
• What are the two ways the mind is deceived? Running too fast from a true beginning (conclusion doesn’t follow) or starting from a corrupt beginning (nature corrupted).
• Which difficulty does Hamlet’s uncle suffer from, and which does Laertes? The uncle revolts from true birth; Laertes rushes to conclusions.
• If I kick you, where is my kicking? In the movable — in you.
• Which division of the four causes do you use for God? One and three: God is exemplar, mover and end, never matter, being pure act.
• Did I stumble in this objection by running too fast or by going against nature? Each objection’s beginning (Dionysius, good/apparent good, Aristotle) is sound; the stumble is in running too fast.
• Why does Aristotle take up the moral virtues before the virtues of reason? They are more known to us, and they dispose us for the virtues of reason.
• What is the first thing you should thank God for? His freely choosing me to be; then the immortal soul, then the body.
• Did my hand sin in cutting your head off? No — something before that; the hand is a slave of the mind (a. 2 obj. 3, taken as clearly false).