Replies on the seven capital vices, then the effects of sin (Question 85, article 1): does sin weaken the good of nature?

Orientation #

He picks up immediately at the replies to the objections of the article on the capital vices (“now he’s got to reply to all those horrible objections”), then moves on to a new question on the effects of sin, announcing a break between the two. He says he will “talk about eternity next time” with his other students — not about this class. The previous class worked through I-II, q. 84, aa. 3-4 and the derivation of the seven capital vices.

The class, in order #

1. Reply 1: why vices are not one-to-one with virtues (“there is not the same reason of origin”) #

Point: the objection demanded a vice for each virtue; Thomas denies the parallel.

• Virtues are caused by the order of desire to reason, or to the unchangeable good (bonum incommutabile), God — which is one.
• Vices arise from desire of some commutable good — and commutable goods are multiplied. Hence no requirement that principal vices answer to principal virtues.
• His first instinct was cruder: “evils in many ways”; Thomas is more precise.
• Digression on the soul’s likeness to God: Aristotle, after treating sense and reason (Nicomachean Ethics III, inferred), says the soul is in some way all things — sense open to all sensibles, reason to all intelligibles. Thomas quotes God to Moses, “I will show you every good,” and says that is myself: God is every good. The soul is all things too, but imperfectly and confusedly, through universals (being in metaphysics covers everything; number covers an infinity). So man is, at a great distance, like God — “Shakespeare calls reason godlike.”

2. Reply 2: why pleasure and sadness, not hope and fear (“the most principal passions”) #

Point: the capital vices are taken from the concupiscible, not the irascible.

• Fear and hope are irascible passions; all irascible passions arise from the concupiscible, which are ordered to pleasure and sadness. We act for what pleases, avoid what saddens.
• Hence pleasure and sadness are not merely principal but principalissime — most principal.
• Order of passions: love and hate first; then when difficulty arises the irascible enters to overcome it; then back to the concupiscible at the end. Examples: beat up the fellow (anger) and take joy in it; hope to get the girl, get the girl, joy. Anger needed when someone stands on your toe and says “so what”; when someone uses your kids for target practice; “you talking about my mother?”
• Autobiographical example of a mistaken inference: since the Poetics on tragedy names pity and fear, and comedy is the contrary of tragedy, he inferred comedy moves the contrary passions — joy and confidence/boldness. Studying the passions in Thomas (De Veritate and elsewhere) he found confidence is not among the principal passions; hope is. So comedy is concerned with mirth (a form of joy) and hope. “So I was mistaken — though it wasn’t a bad idea.” A writer on the Roman comic dramatists had said that for the comic poet the greatest of faith, hope and charity is hope.
• Principle invoked along the way: contrary things have contrary effects — Empedocles, love brings the atoms together, hate separates them.

3. Reply 3: why anger is listed at all (“a special reason of appetitive motion”) #

Point: anger is neither principal nor principalissime, yet it has its own note.

• Thomas’s reason: anger has a special reason of appetitive motion, in so far as one fights against the good of another under the notion of something honourable/just — punishing, avenging.
• His own addition (what “something could be developed a little bit more here than the master does”): anger is a very strong and very manifest passion — you can see at once when someone comes in angry.
• Evidence from the Secunda Secundae: Thomas attaches the lesser virtues to the cardinal ones; mildness, the virtue about anger, he attaches to temperance — because anger, like desire for food, drink and sex, needs restraining, whereas courage concerns what one must be pushed forward into (a man freezing before an audience must practise).
• Shakespeare’s pun, As You Like It: “in the very wrath of love… clubs could not part them” — wrath compared with love because both are strong; clubs are what you part fighting dogs with, and parents must part young lovers (hence: marry them off quickly). Also Orlando on seeing happiness “through another’s eyes.”
• Contrast with envy: envy is insinuating and unacknowledged — nobody will admit to it, because admitting makes it worse. Examples: the girl cycling past shouting “don’t you wish?” (trying to rouse envy in him — “the last person I want to be with”); the girl who gets all the attention, the others begin saying bad things about her; the same in the academic world and among clergy — a student calls it “the tyranny of gossip”; the Pope called it one of the illnesses of mankind.

4. Digression: doubling the square in the Meno (“give me the side of a square twice as big”) #

Point: a long aside on geometry and wonder, which he then turns to the natural law.

• The Meno: Socrates claims learning is recollection; Meno asks for evidence; the slave boy, who by Meno’s testimony never studied geometry, is asked for the side of a square twice as big. He answers “twice as long” — which gives four times (2×2=4; 4×4=16).
• Socrates’ construction: four equal squares making one four times as big; draw the diagonals; the four half-squares make a square that is twice the original, whose side is the original’s diagonal. “Something marvellous — because of its simplicity.”
• The Pythagorean theorem is here in a particular case (the isosceles right triangle); only later, Elements I.47, is it seen of all triangles. “This is the way some of these things were discovered” — seen in a particular kind, the universal later.
• What struck him again: for a square four times as big, multiply the side by two. For one twice as big, by what? Not two, not one — something between. Try inches: 12×12 = 144, half is 72, not a square number. And no smaller unit, however small, will ever measure it. So it cannot be done arithmetically at all, only geometrically — by the diagonal. “Oh my God… I don’t believe that.” This, he says, is Aristotle’s own example of wonder.
• Aside: Elements Book IV (inferred) — one would guess a circle can be drawn through the three vertices of an equilateral triangle, but Euclid shows it for any odd-shaped triangle too. “I should envy him, right? He’s so far ahead of me.”
• Aside on publishing: a censor “detecting things left and right”; too many books published, “catching people and wasting their time.” “I need glory, right? Get my book published.”

5. From the Meno to the natural law (“something naturally known”) #

Point: the slave boy episode really proves, not recollection of geometry, but that some things are naturally known.

• Occasion: judging pro-life essays by seventh and eighth graders; one of the ladies asked him what the natural law is. Question: how do you lead someone to admit there is a natural law?
• Argument: the slave boy did not recall how to double the square — he was worse than ignorant, he was mistaken. But Socrates hit a real truth: in learning a new theorem you must recall what you already know, so as to be able to know the new one; and to be able to know is not to know actually. You must put things together and see what follows.
• Where does it begin? With definitions, axioms and logic — something he did not come to know by recalling something else, but naturally knows: the whole is greater than the part; quantities equal to the same are equal to one another (if I am your height and he is your height, we are the same height; this table’s length, that table’s).
• Socrates exaggerates: not the whole of geometry is naturally known, only the very beginnings.
• Order of proceeding: Aristotle in the Rhetoric begins with the positive law and goes on to the natural law, the natural order; Thomas in the Summa proceeds theologically, from divine law down, so natural law is defined as a partaking of the divine law. His old teacher Kasurik’s dinner with lawyers on the treatise on law: they could understand no law except the law on the books — “you’ve got to begin there with these guys.”
• Aristotle hints at the other law by quoting — he first says Sophocles, corrects himself to Aeschylus, and a student supplies Antigone [ed.: the play is Sophocles’] — the king’s law that the man not be buried, against which Antigone appeals to the natural law.

6. Replies 4 and 5: pride as queen, and sins from other causes (“not numbered among them”) #

• Reply 4: pride is the beginning of every sin according to the notion of an end, and by that same ratio one takes the principality of the capital vices; therefore pride, being a universal vice, is not numbered among them but laid down as the queen of all vices (Gregory). Avarice is called the root by another ratio — feeding, supplying them.
• Reply 5: the vices are capital because from them ut frequentius — more often — others arise; nothing prevents some sins from arising sometimes from other causes.
• On ignorance: all sins from ignorance can be reduced to acedia — not simply “laziness” (too broad: laziness covers not doing your work, your exercise), but the negligence by which one excuses himself from acquiring spiritual goods. Examples: “am I supposed to read the Bible? I go to church every Sunday — except when I don’t feel like it”; Kasurik’s reply to the man who didn’t think God would send him to hell for missing church: “I think you better think about that again”; people who won’t learn logic.
• The ignorance that causes sin is not invincible but the ignorance of negligence. Sinning from a good intention also pertains to ignorance — ignorance that one ought not do evil that good may come.
• Why murder is not a capital sin: it is too obviously bad; it must arise from something else. Lust and abortion; and why did they kill Christ? — out of envy (Pilate knew it). “See how envy gives rise to really tremendous sins.”

7. The new question: the effects of sin (“if you’re a misanthrope, you’ll especially enjoy this”) #

Prologue divided: (1) the corruption of the good of nature; (2) the stain (macula) of the soul; (3) the debt of punishment. Six articles on the first: whether the good of nature is diminished by sin; whether it can be wholly taken away; the four wounds which Bede lays down; whether privation of mode, species and order is an effect of sin; whether death and bodily defects are effects of sin; whether these are in some way natural to man.

8. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“it seems that sin does not diminish the good of nature”) #

1. Man’s sin is no graver than the demon’s; but the natural goods in the demons remain whole after sin (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4). — “We’re all good. Wrong. I’m okay, you’re okay.”
2. What comes after being changed does not change what is before: substance remains with accidents changed. Nature is before voluntary action; so a disorder in the act of will does not change nature.
3. Sin is an act; diminution is a passion; no agent undergoes from the fact that it acts. So the sinner does not diminish his own good.
4. No accident acts on its own subject, since what undergoes is a being in ability while the subject is already in act according to that accident; sin is in the good of nature as accident in subject; to diminish is a kind of acting upon.

• Sed contra: Luke 10, the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho — that is, into the defect of sin — was despoiled of his gratuitous goods and wounded in his natural ones (Bede). Aside on Bede: Thomas quotes him a lot in the Catena Aurea.
• His flag on the objections: “Thomas, I’m all confused now by this” — “that’s your duty, to sort of confuse the issue first.”

9. The body: threefold good of nature (“the good of human nature can be said three ways”) #

1. The very principles of nature out of which nature is constituted, and the properties caused from them, as the powers of the soul.
2. The natural inclination to virtue.
3. The gift of original justice given to the first man. (Asked what happened to it: “tossed out” — “it wasn’t lost; it was thrown away.”) Conclusion: the first is neither taken away nor diminished by sin; the third is wholly taken away by the sin of the first parent — gratuitous on God’s part, though some probable reason can be given why he gave it in the beginning; the middle is diminished.

• Reason for the middle: from human acts there comes an inclination to similar acts; if someone is inclined to one of two contraries, his inclination to the other is diminished; sin is contrary to virtue; therefore by sinning the inclination to virtue is diminished.
• His own case: could an inclination to geometry be diminished? Students complained when he gave geometry examples in logic class — “I paid good money to learn logic.”
• Marvels at the distinction: “How does he see these distinctions that I don’t see? He’s got better eyes.”

10. The replies of article 1 (“whiteness makes white”) #

1. Dionysius speaks of the first good of nature — to be, to live, to understand — as is clear from his words; and of the angels.
2. Nature, though before voluntary action, has an inclination to voluntary action. Nature as such is not varied by the variation of voluntary action, but the inclination is varied on the side by which it is ordered to its end.
3. Voluntary action proceeds from diverse powers, one active and one passive; hence through voluntary actions something is caused in, or taken from, the man acting — as was said in the treatment of the generation of habits. (“Well, you all remember that, of course.”) Aside: Thomas can pull a theorem from two books back and apply it, like a back-reference by number.
4. An accident does not act on its subject as an efficient cause but formally — the way whiteness makes white. So sin diminishes the good of nature in that way, as a disorder of the act. As regards the disorder of the agent, it is caused because in the acts of the soul there is something active and something passive: the sensible moves the sense power, sense desire inclines reason and will. So the disorder comes not from an accident acting on its subject but from the object acting on the power and one part acting on another.

• Illustration of the last: watching television, the senses are acted upon and then disorder the other faculties — emotions, and even the will — and then a practical judgment is made about what is seen. He instances how much films now show that they never used to (the separate beds of old movies), the person who goes regularly and “didn’t notice,” living together before marriage taken for granted. “Between your fallen nature and the corruption of the movies… most people don’t go astray” [ed.: he appears to mean it is a wonder if they don’t]. The bride in the white dress who has been living with her boyfriend: “what does that white dress signify?” The priest who married his brother Richard and discourages marrying people because he thinks the marriages will not last; a reported survey in which clergy said weddings were what they disliked most — the couples are not formed, not interested, “they just want the ceremony.” A wedding with no priest, the justice of the peace dressed as Merlin the magician; the marriage lasted three and a half months. “At least it wasn’t a real marriage.”

His words #

• bonum incommutabile — the unchangeable good, God; virtues are caused by ordering desire to it.
• commutable good — the changeable goods, which are many; source of vices.
• principalissime — “the most principal,” said of pleasure and sadness among passions.
• concupiscible / irascible — the two appetites; irascible passions arise from concupiscible and return to them.
• ut frequentius — “more often”; why vices are called capital.
• acedia — not simply “laziness” (too broad); the negligence by which one excuses himself from acquiring spiritual goods.
• queen of all vices — Gregory’s title for pride, as universal vice and end.
• root — avarice, under another ratio: feeding and supplying the vices.
• macula — the stain of the soul; second topic on the effects of sin.
• “good of nature” in three ways — principles and powers; inclination to virtue; original justice.
• “acts formally” — as whiteness makes white, opposed to acting as efficient cause.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 84, a. 4, replies 1-5.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 85, prologue; a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Luke 10 (Jerusalem to Jericho), quoted in the sed contra with Bede’s gloss.
• Dionysius, On the Divine Names, ch. 4, quoted in objection 1 and reply 1.
• Plato, Meno — the slave boy and the doubling of the square, retold at length.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics III on sense and reason, and the soul as in some way all things (inferred).
• Aristotle, Poetics — pity and fear in tragedy; the lost book on comedy.
• Aristotle, Rhetoric — positive law before natural law.
• Thomas, De Veritate on the passions; Secunda Secundae on mildness under temperance; Catena Aurea (quotes Bede).
• Euclid, Elements I.47; Book IV on inscribed and circumscribed circles (inferred).
• Gregory — pride the queen of all vices.
• Shakespeare, As You Like It — “the very wrath of love, clubs could not part them”; Orlando; reason called godlike.
• Sophocles, Antigone (he first said Aeschylus; a student supplied the title).
• Empedocles — love and hate joining and separating the atoms.
• Exodus (inferred) — “I will show you every good.”
• Bede — the four wounds of nature; the gloss on Luke 10.

His questions #

• Why is there not a one-to-one correspondence between principal virtues and principal vices? Virtue comes from order to the one unchangeable good; vices from the many commutable goods.
• Why are the capital vices taken from pleasure and sadness rather than hope and fear? Because irascible passions arise from concupiscible ones, and pleasure and sadness are principalissime.
• Why is anger listed among the capital vices if it is not even a principal passion? Because it has a special reason of appetitive motion — fighting the good of another as something just — and, he adds, because it is a strong and manifest passion.
• To which cardinal virtue does Thomas attach mildness? To temperance, because anger, like desire for food and sex, needs restraining rather than urging on.
• Why is pride not numbered among the capital vices? Because as the end of every sin it is universal — the queen of all vices, not one of them.
• To what are sins of ignorance reduced? To acedia, as the negligence in acquiring spiritual goods; the ignorance in question is not invincible but of negligence.
• Why is murder not listed as a capital sin? Because it is too obviously bad; it must arise from some other vice.
• How do you lead someone to admit there is a natural law? By showing, as the Meno unintentionally does, that learning requires something naturally known — the whole is greater than the part, equals of the same are equal.
• What is the side of a square twice as big? The diagonal; it cannot be given arithmetically by any unit however small — Aristotle’s example of wonder.
• Is the good of nature diminished by sin? The first good (principles and powers) not at all; the third (original justice) wholly taken away by the first parent’s sin; the middle (inclination to virtue) diminished.