Aquinas on Sinning from Certain Malice: Whether It Is Possible, and Whether Sinning from Habit Is Sinning from Malice (ST I-II q.78 a.1-2)

Orientation #

He opens with the prayer, jokes that his angel told him last time’s lecture was “sloppy,” and re-reads the prologue of q. 78 to set up the four articles. He then does the objections and body of a. 1 and all of a. 2. Neighbouring classes continue in the same questions on the causes of sin.

The class, in order #

1. Angels and the prologue of q. 78 (“why we don’t always know that they’re enlightening us”) #

Opening aside: the urge to go back and reread a book is often the angels persuading us; we don’t always notice their enlightening. He re-reads the prologue: the cause of sin on the part of the will is called malice, and four things are asked — (1) whether one can sin from certain malice or “industry”; (2) whether whoever sins from habit sins from certain malice; (3) whether whoever sins from certain malice sins from habit (“is it convertible? I don’t think it is, but we’ll find out”); (4) whether sinning from certain malice is graver than from passion (“I would guess that it is so”). Aside: does Don Giovanni sin from passion or from certain malice? He cannot repent at the end — “down he goes, screaming to hell.”

2. First objection and its reply: three ways of being ignorant (“that’s a bit a key text”) #

• Objection 1: ignorance is opposed to industry/certain malice; but every bad man is ignorant (the Philosopher), and Proverbs 14: “they err who do what is evil.” Therefore no one sins from certain malice.
• He goes to the reply first, because Thomas defends both authorities with a threefold distinction: the man sinning from ignorance, from passion, and from malice are each ignorant, but differently.
  1. Ignorance may exclude knowledge simpliciter that what is being done is bad — sinning from ignorance. Example: St Paul persecuting the Church, forgiven because he acted from ignorance, thinking he did good.
  2. It may exclude knowledge of this particular act as bad — sinning from passion; one knows the universal but does not apply it. Example: David and Bathsheba — passion makes you forget the universal “to this bathing woman.”
  3. It may exclude knowledge that this evil should not be sustained for the sake of pursuing some good, while he does know the act is bad — this is the ignorance of the one sinning from certain malice.
• Example for (3): the college sophomore who knows abortion is bad but does not know she should not sustain that evil to avoid interrupting her education. Also David having Uriah killed: he knew murder was bad, but not that he shouldn’t sustain such an evil to keep Bathsheba.
• He ties this back to his impatience with defenders of abortion: “they know it’s evil” — and the distinction shows how that is possible.
• Student: this ignorance seems a kind of willful inadvertence. He grants it, and adds: he loves the good more than the good he will be deprived of — “this will come out in another reply.”

3. Second objection: Dionysius, no one aims at evil (“no one aiming at evil does something”) #

• Objection 2: Dionysius (Divine Names 4): no one acts aiming at evil. But sinning from malice means intending evil in sinning; and what is beside intention (praeter) does not denominate the act. “A very powerful objection.”
• Reply: evil cannot be intended secundum se, but can be intended to avoid another evil (interrupting college) or to obtain a good (Bathsheba). One chooses to pursue the good per se intended without the loss of the other good; but when the two are proposed as incompatible, he wills rather to incur God’s offense than to be deprived of the pleasure. Example: the lascivious man wills to enjoy pleasure without offending God.

4. Third objection: infinite regress of sins (“sin is a cause of sin in infinitum”) #

• Objection 3: malice is itself a sin; if malice causes sin, sin causes sin to infinity, which is unfitting.
• Reply: “malice” is said three ways — (a) habitual malice, the bad habit, named malice by the Philosopher as the good habit is named virtue; one sins from malice who sins from the inclination of his habit; (b) actual malice, the choice of evil itself; (c) a preceding guilt from which a subsequent guilt arises, as when one attacks fraternal charity [transcript: “grace”] from envy. Nothing is cause of itself: the interior act causes the exterior, and one sin causes another, but not to infinity, since one arrives at a first sin not caused by a prior sin.

5. Sed contra and the body: the three principles of human acts (“as it were of industry they recede from God”) #

• Sed contra: Job 34 — “as it were of industry they recede from God and do not wish to understand his ways”; to recede from God is to sin. (Aside: “industry” here taken in a different sense than usual.)
• Body: man naturally desires the good; that his desire declines to evil comes from some corruption or disorder in one of his beginnings — as sin is found in the actions of natural things (a baby born defective from some defect in the seed or genes of the parents, which is the beginning of the child).
• The principles of human acts are understanding and desire, and desire is twofold: rational (the will) and sense — so three. Hence sin arises from (1) defect of the understanding — sin from ignorance; (2) defect of the sense appetite — sin from passion; (3) defect of the will, i.e. its disorder — which is our present subject. Aside: he has just been studying the angels, three hierarchies, three orders each, each with beginning, middle and end — “three really dominates.”
• The will is disordered when it loves the lesser good more.

6. Digression: the senses of “before,” and why first philosophy is first (“what sense of order is he talking about here”) #

Prompted by “disorder,” he runs through the senses of before from the Categories:

1. In time — today before tomorrow.
2. In being — this can be without that but not vice versa: the letter C without the word “cat,” but not “cat” without C; water without life, but perhaps not life without water (“maybe that’s a harder example”).
3. In the discourse of reason — principles before conclusion, genus before species.
4. The better before the lesser (one of the “more remote” senses).
5. Cause before effect — Aristotle adds it after the four, but he judges it is not fifth in order: it belongs alongside the second sense. Applications:

• First philosophy is first in the fourth sense: better, more divine; Aristotle calls it theology in book VI, and natural philosophy “second philosophy” (mathematics could be third). “Metaphysics” runs together meta, ta, phusika — “after the books of natural philosophy” — so-called by Andronicus of Rhodes; natural philosophy comes first only in the order of learning (third sense) and in time. Other reasons it is called first: as natural philosophy is about natural things, first philosophy is about what is first — the first cause and first being (God is first in the second and so-called fifth sense: He can be without all things, they cannot be without Him) — and about the first statements and first thoughts, the most general (“the whole is more than the part”), which is first in the third sense.
• First act: the soul defined as the first act of a natural body furnished with organs [ed.: “composed of tools”]; habit is first act relative to its use; operation is second act. That “first” is in the second sense, and also the so-called fifth: I can have a mind without thinking, but not think without a mind, and the mind in some way causes the thinking. “Aristotle uses both ways of speaking.”

7. Disordered love of lesser goods (“if you prefer the lesser to the greater”) #

• Colleagues who chose a lesser knowledge in place of wisdom. A philosopher is named from the love of wisdom; mathematikos in Greek means one fond of learning, synonym of philomathes — but to love mathematics most of all is a disorder.
• From his teacher Kasurik’s [ed.: Kocourek (inferred)] translation of Thomas’s commentary on the first two books of Natural Hearing [ed.: the Physics]: a passage of Albert the Great — whoever studies lesser things without the higher as goal has a perverted attitude toward knowledge, unless forced to it by necessity (a doctor, a mother, must attend to lesser things).
• Men who devote their lives to literature, which is less than philosophy, have a disordered desire to know. Aristotle: we know animals and plants better than the immaterial substances, yet it is better to know a little about the higher than much about the lesser — the entomologist can spend a whole life on insects, and it is nothing beside a little knowledge of God or of one’s guardian angel (“my guardian angel must be amused watching me try to understand what an angel is”).
• Everyday disorder: loving beer more than wine; himself loving soda pop as a boy (his brother Marcus: “if it wasn’t for me you’d be drinking soda pop with your dinner”); the one-armed man’s grocery store with the grape and orange soda cooler; beginners preferring white wine, later preferring red “because there’s more to taste there.”

8. Back to the body: choosing spiritual harm for temporal enjoyment (“suffer detriment in a good less loved”) #

It follows that one chooses to suffer harm in a good less loved to enjoy a good more loved. This can be good: a man knowingly submits to amputation of a limb to save his life, which he loves more (he read of such amputations in the Civil War). But when a disordered will loves some temporal good — wealth, pleasure — more than the order of reason, the divine law, or the love of God, he wills to suffer the loss of spiritual goods to enjoy a temporal good. Evil is nothing but the lack of a good; so he knowingly wills a spiritual evil, evil secundum quid [ed.: as a privation for him], to enjoy a temporal good. “That’s my friend Don Giovanni.” Contemporary example: the candidate doing badly because too pro-life, who drops the position to get elected — “he more wants to be elected than to stand up for what is right.” Aside on habit and death: “I guess when you die you’re stuck with your habits.” The priest to the Catholic woman favoring abortion: “You think Christ would support you?” — “He would respect my choice.” — “Yeah, forever and ever.”

9. Article 2, objections 1 and 2 (“not everyone who sins from habit sins from certain malice”) #

• Obj. 1: sin from certain malice seems the gravest; but one commits light sins from habit, e.g. an idle word. (Aside: the Chatterbox restaurant in his hometown St Paul, and the friend whose phone number was nearly the same.) Reply: venial sins do not exclude the spiritual good that is grace or charity, so they are not evil simpliciter but secundum quid; hence their habits too are evil only secundum quid. He connects this to the first divisions of being: substance is being simpliciter, accident secundum quid; likewise act and ability — if I know something only in ability, I do not say I know it simpliciter. “Some relief: my venial sins are evil secundum quid — but my mortal sins are simpliciter.”
• Obj. 2: acts from a habit are like the acts that generate it (Ethics II — the book where Aristotle treats moral virtue in general); but the acts preceding a vicious habit are not from certain malice; so neither are those from habit. “A difficult objection.” Reply: they are alike in species, but differ as perfect from imperfect. A brave act before the habit is done with difficulty and hesitation; after the habit, with ease. Such is the difference between sin from certain malice and sin from passion. Example: one with no experience of alcohol gets drunk ex aliqua passione, carried away; once the habit is acquired he decides to get drunk every weekend — “a stable choice almost.”

10. Objection 3: the sinner from habit is sorry afterwards (“the evil are filled with penance”) #

• Obj. 3: those who sin from certain malice rejoice afterwards (Proverbs 2: they rejoice when they do evil and exult in the worst), because achieving what one intends is pleasant, and acting from habit is connatural — habit is a second nature. But those who sin from habit sorrow afterwards: “the evil are filled with penance,” i.e. those having a vicious habit (Ethics IX) — they cannot stand themselves. Aside on second nature: breathing in and out is first nature, done all day without a thought; habit becomes like that. And the man who says “I never read Shakespeare, I can’t understand it” — “what kind of question is that? You must be reading some play.”
• Reply: one who sins from habit always rejoices in what he does so long as he uses the habit; but since he can refrain from using it, and his reason is not wholly corrupted, he can meditate something else, and then, not using the habit, be sorrowful about what he committed through it. Often such men repent not because the sin displeases them in itself but because of some inconvenience arising from it — like the man weeping because his wife left him over his womanizing. Illustration that reason is not wholly corrupt: the Spanish Civil War, the girl in the white dress shot before the church door, the blood showing through the white — the killers were stopped short; had she simply fallen, it would not have struck them. Likewise people who see the harm they have done to a body begin to repent.

11. Sed contra and body of a. 2: sinning from habit vs. sinning having a habit (“it is not the same thing”) #

• Sed contra: sin from certain malice is from the choice of evil; but what is choosable to each is what accords with his habit (Ethics VI — where Aristotle defines virtue as a habit with choice). Therefore sin from habit is from certain malice.
• Body — the distinction he flags as important: it is not the same thing to sin having a habit and to sin from a habit, because using a habit is not necessary but subject to the will of the one having it, whether it be good or bad. Definition he cites from Averroes (De Anima III, comm. 18; his text also gives one from Augustine): a habit is that which one uses when he wills. Example: a Christian who entertains a doubt is not then using the habit of faith, which would repel the doubt. Consequences: (a) one having a vicious habit can break out into an act of virtue, since reason is not wholly corrupted and something integral remains, so the sinner does something of the genus of good things — example: Jaruzelski, the Polish general, no believer but doing some good things, and (his exchange with a student) he died returning to the faith; he recalls from the biography of John Paul II the meeting where the general’s legs were shaking. Movie aside: 3:10 to Yuma [transcript: “Train to Yuma”], remade two or three times, where the man finally does not take the chance to escape. (b) One having a habit may act not from it but from a passion arising or from ignorance.
• But whenever he uses a vicious habit, he necessarily sins from certain malice — “Thomas is very strong there.” Why: what agrees with one’s own habit is per se lovable to him, since it is connatural, custom and habit being turned into nature; but what suits a vicious habit is precisely what excludes a spiritual good; so he chooses a spiritual evil to obtain the good suited to him by the habit — and that is to sin from certain malice. Conclusion as he leaves it: whoever sins from habit sins from certain malice; not everyone who sins having a habit.
• Closing aside: “these habits are dangerous things, if they’re bad” — Americans getting habituated to homosexual marriage and the like, children taught that some families have two mommies, some two fathers.

His words #

• certain malice / industry — sinning from the will’s own disorder, knowingly choosing the evil; “industry” in Job 34 taken in a different sense than usual.
• simpliciter / secundum quid — without qualification vs. in a certain respect; venial sin evil only secundum quid.
• ability [ed.: potency] — paired with act as substance with accident in the first divisions of being.
• praeter intentionem — “beside intention,” what does not denominate the act.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: the Physics] — the work Kasurik translated Thomas’s commentary on.
• the fourteen books of wisdom [ed.: the Metaphysics] — Aristotle usually calls them first philosophy; “metaphysics” = meta ta phusika, after the books on nature, coined by Andronicus of Rhodes.
• first act / second act — form or habit vs. operation; “first” here in the second (and so-called fifth) sense of before.
• second nature — his gloss on habit; contrasted with first nature, breathing.
• sinning having a habit vs. from habit — the key distinction of a. 2.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 78, prologue (four articles listed)
• Thomas, ST I-II, q. 78, a. 1 — three objections, replies, sed contra (Job 34), body
• Thomas, ST I-II, q. 78, a. 2 — three objections, replies, sed contra, body
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 (quoted in obj. 2)
• Proverbs 14 (obj. 1); Proverbs 2 (a. 2, obj. 3); Job 34 (sed contra)
• Aristotle, Ethics II, VI, IX (quoted within the objections and sed contra)
• Averroes, De Anima commentary III, comm. 18 — habit as what one uses when he wills

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories — the senses of “before” (inferred locus)
• Aristotle, De Anima II — soul as first act of a natural body furnished with organs (inferred locus)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI — first philosophy called theology
• Thomas, commentary on the first two books of the Physics (Kasurik’s translation), with a passage of Albert the Great
• A biography of John Paul II; Mozart’s Don Giovanni; Shakespeare; the film 3:10 to Yuma

His questions #

• Does Don Giovanni sin from passion or from certain malice? From certain malice — he knowingly chooses the temporal good and cannot repent at the end.
• How can a man sin from malice if every bad man is ignorant? He is ignorant too, but only of the fact that he ought not to sustain this evil for the sake of the good he pursues.
• How can evil be intended at all, if Dionysius says no one acts aiming at evil? Evil is never intended secundum se, only as attached to a good intended or an evil avoided.
• If malice is itself a sin, do sins cause sins to infinity? No — one arrives at a first sin not caused by a prior sin.
• What sense of order is meant when the will is called disordered? The fourth: it loves the lesser good more than the greater.
• How can first philosophy come after natural philosophy? It is after in time and in the order of learning (third sense), first in goodness (fourth sense).
• What sense of “first” is in “first act”? The second sense, and also the so-called fifth (cause before effect), which really belongs with the second.
• Does everyone who sins from habit sin from certain malice? Yes, whenever he actually uses the vicious habit; but not everyone who sins while having a habit.
• Is the third article’s converse true — does whoever sins from certain malice sin from habit? Left open (“I don’t think it is convertible, but we’ll find out”).