Prima Pars 25. Summa I, Q.5, A.4: Why We Want the Good, and the Good as Final Cause Class of 2006-03-23 https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/025-summa-i-q-5-a-4-why-we-want-the-good-and-the-good-as-final/ [0:00] Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, and help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father, the Son, the, Holy Spirit, Amen. So we're up to the fourth article of the fifth question, huh? [0:27] And we might just recall a bit here our knowledge of good that we had from philosophy, huh? And when Socrates asked the question, "What is something?" Like if he asked the slave boy or the American boy, for that matter, of what is good, right? He would get a number of examples, right? Candy's good, pizza's good, baseball's good, and so on. But then when Socrates would stop and explain to the American boy the difference between defining what something is and giving examples of it, and that the definition has to bring out distinctly what is common to all these examples. [1:13] Well, then when the boy said, "Well, what does the bicycle and vacation and pizza and all these things have in common?" Well, these are all the things that he wants, right? So he might come up with the first definition of good as the good is what all want. The good is what all desire, and that is in fact the first definition of the good. As Aristotle gives it himself in the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, he begins with a little induction to show that, and then says, "Hence he says they speak well who say the good is what all want." [1:51] And Socrates had said something like this in the dialogue called Meno that everybody wants something good for themselves, right? Then the next step is to ask the kind of question that Socrates taught us to ask in the Euthyphro, and you could ask it about this, and you could say, "Is it good because we want it, or do we want it because it is what good? Yeah." That's the kind of question you can ask about a lot of things. [2:30] This guy here, Augustine here, that I gave some books of today, in the De Veritate, if I remember rightly, but anyway, Augustine quotes the first definition of the beautiful: the beautiful is that which pleases when seen. [2:47] And he asks the Socratic kind of question: Is it beautiful because it pleases our eyes, or does it please our eyes because it is beautiful? And Augustine says, "I have no doubt that it pleases our eyes because it is beautiful." Well, if that's so, then that definition of the beautiful is that which pleases the eyes when seen, is a definition of the effect, a result of its being beautiful. [3:20] So it's not a perfect understanding of what the beautiful is, but we tend to know effects before causes, and we tend to know causes at first through their effects. So it's not surprising that we first define the beautiful as that which pleases when seen, [3:44] and how we define the good here, the good that we all want, is that the cause of the being good, or the effect of its being good. [3:58] Well, as you may recall, we went to this before. I think there is a very obvious objection to saying something is good because you want it, and that's the experience everybody has of having wanted something at some time in their life, which not other people, but they themselves later recognized was bad for them. Right. My standard example is what the guy who says at the party, "You want another drink?" [4:29] and you say, "Yes." Okay, and that drink is one too many for you, so then you realize that last drink was was bad for you, right? But it wasn't forced on you to do another drink, and you said yes. And so, if wanting was the cause of something being good, then that last drink would have to have been good for you, but obviously it was not. Right. [4:53] Take the example of the kid who drives his car 100 miles an hour down the city street. He wants to drive it 100 miles an hour, right? But after his car is is smashed around the tree and he's in the hospital and so on, even to himself he might admit it was not good for him to drive his car 100 miles an hour, but he did want to drive it that fast, right? [5:17] No one was pushing his foot down on the gas pedal. He he did it. He wanted to do it. So it's clear that something then is not good because we what we want it huh. [5:30] Now, if you say the opposite, though, that we want it because it is good, that the good is the cause of the wanting, then there are a couple objections to this too. One is that the good is not always wanted, so how is it possible to have the cause and not the effect? And then the [5:57] idea that contrary causes have contrary effects. So if the good is the cause of wanting, then the bad, which is a contrary of good, Should be the cause of the opposite of wanting, of turning away. But as his example of the last drink and so on showed, sometimes people want what is bad for them, right? So there's a little problem on either side, right? And you may recall how I tend to first try to answer the question, right, by the kind of argument that is most proportionate to us in universal things, induction, right? [6:37] And make a list of fundamental goods like food and water and reproduction and and money and so on, right? And the desire for these things, [6:49] and you can see in each particular good a reason for saying it's good apart from the desire for it. You can see a reason why food is good for man and for that matter for the other animals, apart from their hunger for food, right? So nature didn't give hunger to make food good and necessary for the animal, but because it's good and necessary for the animal, nature gave them a hunger so they would pursue what is good and necessary for them. [7:22] The same way with water and thirst, right? You can see that water is good and necessary for man and the other animals and even the plants, apart from the having thirst. So thirst did not make water good for the animals or man, but because it's good and indeed necessary for the very life, nature has implanted in them all this desire for this. And notice generally speaking, you have more hunger, more desire, more thirst when you need food more, right? [7:56] When you need water more, right? Okay. And the same with reproduction, right? Can you see a good reproduction for man and for the other animals and even for the plants apart from their desire to reproduce? Well, without man and the other animals and the plants reproducing, that kind of animal, that kind of plant would go out of existence, right? That's very. So there's a very great good that reproduction achieves—the preservation of this kind of animal, this kind of plant, huh? [8:36] So you can see reproduction is good apart from any desire that the animals have to reproduce. So nature didn't give animals the desire to reproduce to make reproduction the great good that it is, but because it's such a great good for the species, right? Especially, nature has implanted in all the animals this desire to what reproduce, huh? [9:02] And again, with money, I'm going to take a more human thing here. Um. Everybody in my class wants money, right? And I say, now, is money useful in our society for all kinds of things? Because you want it, or do you want it because it is useful to get all kinds of things? Well, obviously, you want it because it's useful for all kinds of things. And to be useful is one sense of being good. [9:35] So you can see inductively, right, that something is not good because we want it. You can see a reason why something is good apart from the wanting for it. So the wanting is not the cause of the good being good, but a really an effective result of it being good. [9:55] Now, sometimes we go and say a little more. Fully, that the the good is wanted insofar as it's known in some way by the senses or by the reason. So the good, as known in some way, you could say, is a cause of what desire, right? And that explains why the good is not always wanted. It's not always known, right? So in the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo doesn't want Juliet, even though she's as beautiful in the beginning as she is later on. [10:39] But he doesn't know about her beauty, right? He wants Rosaline. And this also explains why people can, in some sense, seem to want what is what bad, because both the senses and reason can have partial knowledge of something, right? [11:02] So they may know the good in something and not know the bad in it. So you might want to drink a delicious poison, not because it's poisonous, but because it's delicious, right? So it's the good as such that's moving the desire, not the poisonous character of this drink. [11:20] Or one is moved sometimes, or one can be deceived by the likeness, right? So people eat poisonous mushrooms not because they want to be poisoned, but because it's hard to tell the poisonous mushrooms apart from the good mushrooms, huh? So you can explain those difficulties that we saw in this side where the truth is right. [11:46] So we conclude, finding then that this first definition of the good, the good is what all want, is a definition by effect. That the thing is not good because you want it, but the good is the cause of the what the wanting, yeah. Okay. Now we're ready for Article Four, right? What kind of a cause is the good, huh? Okay. As you know, philosophy of nature and in the fifth book of wisdom, also, [12:27] we learned that there are four kinds of what cause, huh? One kind of cause is matter, that from which something comes to be existing within it, like the wooden chair. Say came to be from wood, and wood exists within the chair. And the second kind of cause is the definition of what was to be, and this is the kind of cause you might call form, right? What makes the chair to be a chair intrinsically, huh? [12:59] And then the third kind of cause is the mover or maker, huh? The mover being defined as whence there first is a beginning of motion and of rest, right? [13:15] And then the fourth and last kind of cause to really be recognized was a kind of cause called the end, purpose. Sometimes people call it the final cause, but that comes from the Latin word for end, right? And that's defined as that for the sake of which, okay? So it may be that for the sake of which something is, or it may be that for the sake of which something is done. [13:43] So the chair is for the sake of what sitting. So sitting is the end of the chair, and taking medicine is for the sake of health. So health is the end or purpose of taking medicine, okay? Or knowing is the purpose of what studying, right? [14:05] And of course, it's that fourth kind of cause that Aristotle, you may recall, sees as being connected with the good, right? When Thomas now is going to develop that in this what fourth article, right? And that's why also Aristotle says in the second book of wisdom that if you do away at the end, you do away with the good. So it's no little thing you're taking away when you take away the end, huh? [14:33] Of course, it's going to be important too in seeing the goodness of God, right? Because there'll be connection between God being the end of the whole universe and His being the supreme what good, right? [14:50] So to the fourth one proceeds thus. Now here again he's he's attacking himself, right? Huh? You know. It seems that the good does not have the notion of a final cause, but more of what other kinds of cause, huh? For as Dionysius says in the fourth book about the divine names, the good is praised as what beautiful, right? [15:28] But the beautiful implies the definition of the formal cause, huh? So we say something is shapely, right? That's form, right? Okay. Therefore, the good, if it's the same thing as the beautiful, has the definition of a formal cause. [15:55] That's an interesting objection, huh? Moreover, the good. Is diffusive of its being, its existence, as to gather or take from the words of Dionysius, [16:16] by which he says that the good is from which all things subsist and are right. But to be diffusive of being, to be diffusive, implies the notion of a what efficient cause, a maker. [16:38] Therefore, the good has the notion of an efficient cause. Now he's not going to have the third argument here for matter because matter in no way seems to be diffused huh? But it's interesting that form and mover or maker, as well as end, are all based upon actuality, as opposed to potency or ability in the passive sense. So they have something in common, right? Okay. [17:16] Moreover, Augustine says in the first book about Christian teaching, Christian doctrine, that because God is good, we are right. But we are from God as from a what efficient cause? You know, the first arguments are God is the unmoved mover and the first what efficient cause? Those were the first causes we first arguments we had for existence of God. [17:48] Therefore, good implies the notion of an efficient cause. So the second and third arguments are trying to conclude that the good is a what efficient cause, and the first one a formal cause, huh? But no argument is here to show this matter. For David of Dinant taught that God is the first matter. [18:16] But against this is what the philosopher. No, who's he? The capital P. Aristotle. Yeah, just as Aristotle calls Homer the poet, right? Okay. But against this is what the philosopher says in the second book of natural hearing, the second book of the physics, that that and kind of which right [18:41] is as the end and the good of other things, right? So he's identifying the end and the good. Sometimes we say the means is good too, by reference to the end. Okay. Therefore, the good has the notion of a final cause. [19:00] So he says, "I answer. It should be said." That since the good is what all desire, going back to that first what definition of the good by its what effect, right? But since the good is what all want or all desire, and this has the notion of a what end, okay? Now sometimes I'll say to the students when we're talking about the distinction of the four kinds of causes, and Aristotle putting good with the end, right? [19:32] If they're almost the same, sometimes we first define the good as what all want, right? And the end is that the sake of which, [19:42] but it's not too hard to see a connection there in a kind of a loose way, because if people want something, they'll act for the sake of getting that, won't they? So if they want something, it'll become an end for them, right? And vice versa, if you see that people are acting for the sake of some end, then you can kind of gather That they consider that good, that they're acting for the sake of right, okay. [20:06] So Thomas is going back to that first notion that we met of the good, and actually, if you if you study the Greek words there in the beginning, Nicomachean Ethics, which we usually translate, the good is what all want, right? But it could almost be translated the word, the Greek word is you know all aim at, right? Which is more like the idea of the end, okay? [20:29] And sometimes I think people even translate that way sometimes, okay? But it's probably better to translate first you know desire because that's the way, and it's very clear in Latin that Thomas takes it that way, huh? But it shows how close those things are together, right? It's almost like the same word to want something and to aim at it, right? Yeah. But aiming at it has more the idea of the end. [20:52] Yeah. Shakespeare uses the word aim a lot for guess. Why? To guess. Oh, guess. Because you aim at something, you don't you don't always get, you know, but you're you're trying to get to it, huh? But you see that word used in that way, and maybe not just peculiar to him, but I see it in his text because I'm familiar with that, okay? [21:25] So it's manifest that the good implies the what definition, the notion of the what end, okay? So that that first syllogism, right? He's saying the good is what all what desire, and what is desire? It is what the end, what is what they aim at. Therefore, the good is to have the end. But nevertheless, he says, the notion of the good presupposes the notion of an efficient cause, right? [21:57] And the notion or the thought of the formal cause, huh? For we see that that which is first in causing is last in the what? Cause, huh? And he gets example from the old physics, right? For fire first what heats before it induces the what form of the fire, right? [22:27] So the fire warms the paper before it sits to the fire, okay? But nevertheless, the heat in the fire follows upon the what substantial form of the fire. But in causing, however, first is found the end, the good, and the end, which moves the what efficient cause to do something. [22:56] And secondly, you have the action of the efficient cause, right? Moving the matter, whatever it is, to the form, right? And third is found the what form. [23:12] Whence a converso is necessary to be in the cause. That first is the form itself, to which it is a being. Secondly, there is considered in it its power of effecting something, according as it is perfect in being, because each thing then is perfect when it can make another like itself, as the philosopher says in the fourth book of the meteorology. [23:48] So animals are not able to reproduce, right until they're mature right. You can't teach another until you know something yourself. Okay. Um. And third follows the notion of the good, through which, in a being, right. [24:12] Perfection is what founded upon right. Okay. So he's saying, as far as the cause is concerned, you have first of all the end, right? And that moves the what. Efficient cause. Yeah, and then he induces the form, right? Okay. But now, in effect, you get your form first, and then you have a power to move other things, and you do so, and then you find you reach your what? [24:45] Your perfection, your good, your end, huh? Okay. So grace is like the form, right? Huh. You get a certain power through the grace, huh? And then you act and reach your end or goal, right? So the end is the last thing you achieve. Your end. But as far as the cause is concerned, that was the beginning. The end, huh? Okay. You see that? Yeah. Now he's going to apply to the objections. [25:22] Huh? And the first objection was about it being a form and it being same as beautiful. To first, therefore, it should be said that the beautiful and the good, in subject, he says, are the same because they are founded upon the same thing, namely upon form. And in account of this, the good is praised as what beautiful, huh? But in definition, they differ, huh? For good properly regards the appetite. [26:00] For the good is what all what want all desire, and therefore it has the notion of an end. For the appetite is, as it were, a certain motion towards a thing. [26:17] But the beautiful regards the what knowing power. For the beautiful is said to be things that please when what seen. Whence the beautiful consists in a suitable what proportion. Because the senses delight in things well proportioned, as in things like themselves, because they are certain proportion ratio. For the senses a certain ratio, in every knowing power. And because knowledge comes about through assimilation. And likeness regards the form, the beautiful properly pertains to the notion of a what formal cause. [27:00] Now it's very hard to understand the beautiful in some way, you know, because is the beautiful more the object of of the mind or the heart? What do you think? The mind for sure. Yeah, yeah, but it's kind of interesting because [27:28] a little sign here from English. We have a synonym for the beautiful. We call it the lovely, right? And so interesting. Now the one synonym for beautiful is derived from the word for love, right? Okay. And you have you know the poet Spenser there, one of the four great poets of England, right? You know, he has the the hymn to earthly beauty and earthly love, and then the hymn to heavenly love, heavenly beauty, and heavenly love. [28:04] Okay, kind of imitation of Socrates there in the Symposium and so on. But but notice now the hymns to earthly beauty and and earthly love, heavenly beauty and heavenly love, right? You seem to be identifying the beautiful with the what with love, right? Of course, this is very common in the poets, right? And Romeo sees Juliet is is the loveliest thing he's seen, right? So he falls in love with her, right? [28:32] So is the English word lovely a sign that that the beautiful is the object of of love more than of knowing? But that could bring in you see things from Heisenberg, say the great physicist, you know, on the role of beauty in the discovery of scientific theories, right? And how the scientists are naturally attracted to the beautiful theory. And if the theory is ugly, they just reject it. [29:01] You know, I mean, about that, just it's ugly. And sometimes you see them be almost, you know, excessive. It seems at times, you know, that they want the theory to be both beautiful and true. But if they have to choose between the two, they'll choose to be beautiful. Actually, saying that, they're right. Oh, they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all kind of strange, right? But it shows you how important, important beauty is, huh? [29:30] And in geometry, I think you know the simplicity of some of these things is what makes them so what beautiful. The Pythagorean theorem, right? That the square on the side opposite the right angle is exactly equal to the square. All these interesting, you know, equalities are strike the mind as what is beautiful. [29:54] You describe a hexagon and a circle and so on, right? I guess what the side of the hexagon would be equal to the radius of the circle. That Make sense. I I I can't remember. [30:06] it I think so. Yeah. Interesting, you know, connection like this. You know, the mind finds them beautiful, right? And so, but as soon as the physicists sometimes say, you know, they just reject that because it was such an ugly theory, you know. [30:24] So, but then again, we we do speak of of the beautiful as being shapely, right, or something that sort, right? And then we tie it up with what form, right? And form as form perfects the the reason, huh? What it is, huh? The proper object of reason is is what a thing is, and that's Aristotle defines the formal cause. It defines as the definition of what was to be. [30:55] So it seems to have a special connection with with reason. So if you think as the beautiful as being more tied to form than to end, then you think of as being closer to reason, right? But I remember talking to Monsignor Dion one time about this a little bit, you know, and and I was kind of maintaining that that the beautiful is more the object of the heart than of the mind, huh? [31:21] And I was using as two kind of witnesses to that. One was this word "lovely," right, which is a sign of that, and the other is that Dionysius in the Divine Names he takes up the beauty of God with the what goodness of God, right? Is that they belong kind to the same consideration? He doesn't take up the beauty of God with the truth, the God being truth itself, right? [31:41] But that God is good and God is beautiful, right? Well, how's Augustine again? the Confessions there, too late have I come to know thee thou ancient beauty. isn't that the way he says? There he talks about knowing, right? You see, and [32:03] so I could find textual, you know, where where the beautiful seems to be closer to the heart, right? In some cases, more to the mind. Well, when you define the beautiful at first by its effect, you know, the beautiful is that which pleases when seen. It does reference to the mind, right? To being seen to the senses or or to the mind, right? But to the knowing power in general, right? [32:28] But when you say pleases, right, then it shows that connection with the what heart, yeah. And sometimes they say, well, the good is that which pleases, and the beautiful is that which pleases when seen. So it's a particular kind of of pleasant, huh? But if you emphasize that it has to be seen, then you emphasize the connection with the what mind, huh? You know, and that in the in the knowing of it, the mind itself. [33:00] He's delighted by knowing this, huh? You know, and Brother Mark used to kinda joke sometimes about these beautiful things in geometry, you know. This is too pleasant, you know. Too pleasant, you know. You can't do too many of these, you know. You get too too much pleasure, you know. You got to watch your pleasures, you know. That's what's the Nicomachean Ethics? Aristotle, you know, gives the three rules there, you know, and and one of the rules is what's after the pleasant. [33:29] But some of these theorems are so beautiful, you know. But but but they're beautiful in being what known, right? And someone who's not really into these things mentally doesn't find them beautiful, right? You know, but someone who gets into them, they are beautiful, right? I remember you know, one time the chemist, well, the chemist he's retired now, but the chemist, you know talking about how how beautiful these chemicals were in the way their structure, right? [33:54] Yeah. You know, and most people wouldn't be struck by that, you know, but if you're very much into the structure of the chemicals, and and there's a symmetry there, right? Um, Aristotle in the I think it's the thirteenth book of wisdom, huh? He says the three main forms the beautiful are order, symmetry, and the and moderation or limit. But order, you know, seems to be a aspect of the object of what mind. [34:24] Mind, yeah. You know, Shakespeare defined reason as the ability for large discourse, looking before and after, right? And you may remember how Thomas divides the knowledge of reason by the order it considers, right? And he gives as a kind of a starting point what Aristotle says in the Metaphysics that belongs to the wise man most of all to order, right? But he gives the reason for that that's peculiar to reason, know order. [34:53] So wisdom, being the highest perfection of reason, most of all would be able to order things, huh? So you think of order as being, you know, central to the beautiful. Then it seems to have a connection with the what, with reason, right? Huh? Which looks for order, right? Okay. [35:19] But there's a connection between them, he said, because they can be both be based upon what form, and form can be the end of what generation and so on. Okay. Now, in [35:35] the second objection, there, the second, it should be said that the good is said to be diffusive of its being in the way in which an end is said to move. You got to be very careful about that, huh? Because we tend to borrow the word "move," right? From the third kind of cause and apply it to the fourth kind of cause, huh? So you might say, you might say, what moved the leaves? [36:08] Well, the wind moved the leaves, right? Well, then you're talking about the third kind of cause, right? But what moved Romeo to go over the garden wall of the Capulets? Or what, you know, the guy who climbed the tower to get to Rapunzel there? See, we could say her beauty moved him, right, to to climb the tower or something, or the beauty of Juliet moved him to climb over the garden wall. [36:36] This is a dangerous thing to do. But move there now refers to what? The end, right? The end is moving you, right? Okay. The philosopher is is moved by what? Wisdom to do what he does, huh? But if wisdom is his end or goal, it's moving him not in the sense of the third kind of cause, but the what fourth kind of cause, huh? And you know, sometimes we we take the word make, maker, you know, simply speaking, is the third kind of cause, the mover or the maker, right? [37:17] But sometimes we take the word make and we apply it to, like, say, the formal cause, huh? Like I might say, you know, you got a wooden chair. Let's say you got a wooden table, huh? Well, why is that a chair and this say what table, right? Well, it's the form that it has, right, that makes it to be a chair or a table. But now you say makes, are you talking about something like the carpenter, that kind of a cause? [37:47] Oh no, no. So, or if I say, you know, you take the word cat, let's say, it's made out of the same letters as the word act, right? So why isn't this the word act? It's made out of the same letters. What makes this to be the word cat? The order. of the cat Yeah, yeah. But now you say the order of the letters makes it to be the word cat, right? [38:26] Not thinking of the maker in the sense of the writer, right? Or the printer, is it? You're talking about a cause in the sense of form, right? The second kind of cause, huh? Includes formal in the sense of shape, but order, ratio, right? The the example I was talking about is is what two to one ratio of of potatoes. Yeah, yeah. Um. So we do use the word make. [38:58] Sometimes for the formal cause, right? And we tend to use the word "mover" sometimes for the what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to be careful that Aristotle, you know, is is a reasoning saying the twelfth book of wisdom that God is the first cause, that He's the unmoved mover, right? [39:24] He wants to show that not only does God not have a mover in the sense of the third kind of cause, right? But He's not acting for the sake of some. He's not moved to do what He does by some good other than Himself. See, because then He'd have a mover, not in the sense of an efficient cause, but a mover in the sense in which the end is said to move one, right? [39:52] Okay. So God is not moved by some end or some good to do what He does. Okay, it's by loving his own goodness that he, you know, communicates himself to us, right? So, so you got. I just mentioned that because both the word mover and the word maker, which properly name the third kind of cause, right, [40:24] are sometimes carried over to the formal cause and to the what, the end, right? Mover, especially to the end, and maker to the what? Yeah. Okay. Do you see that? So you got to be careful of the most common mistake in thinking, which is what? Mixing up sense of the word. Yeah. Yeah. [40:55] Okay. Now to the third. This is the objection. Now Augustine says because God is good, we are, but we are from God as on the efficient cause, right? To third, it should be said that everyone or anyone having a will, right, is said to be good in so far as he has a good what will, because the will uses all the parts of you, right? So a man is said to be good simply by having a good will, because through the will we use all that is in us, right? [41:37] All the things that are in us. Hence, one is not said to be a good man man who has a good understanding. Now think of that, you philosophers Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Okay. [41:52] But who has a good what will, right? But the will regards the end as its own what. Proper object. Yeah. And thus, what is said that because God is good, we are, refers to the what? Final cause. [42:16] Nice way of answering that objection, eh? So God cannot will us except in what willing himself, right? Loving himself, his own goodness. So the basic syllogism, though, is what the good is what all want. What all want is the end. Therefore, the good is the end, right? Okay. [42:59] And as I say, I can't bring it out in a popular way by saying, you know, if somebody really wants something, they'll aim at it, won't they? And vice versa, if you see people aiming at something, that's a sign that what they want it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So even though the definition is a little bit different of good as what all want, in the end, that for the sake of which you can see the two are going to go together, right? [43:25] Yeah. And so, in the moderns, you know, leave out this kind of cause called end doesn't appear in their natural science and things like that, right? And they don't really understand much in ethics either. Then they're really doing away with the good. [43:46] So that's a real problem, huh? Moderns.