Prima Secundae
15. Summa I-II q.3 a.3–4: Beatitude, the Senses, and Why Happiness Is Not Essentially an Act of the Will
Class of 2011-03-24
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/015-summa-i-ii-q-3-a-3-4-beatitude-the-senses-and-why-happiness/

[0:00] Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Dios gracias. God, our enlightenment. 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. Help us to understand what you've written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:34] I was reading Thomas there, where you can tell how much grace and glory Saint has by the clarity of his body, right? Huh? It's got to be. So actually, when Christ or Mary appears, it's got to be blinding, right?

[0:51] But it'll be proportional, right, proportional to your increase of grace and glory. How brilliant your body will be. At least I won't blind anybody.

[1:09] Give up the article? Was it three here? In question three. To third one goes forward. Thus, it seems that beatitude consists also in the operation of the senses.

[1:26] For no operation is found in man more noble than the operation of the senses, except the intellectual. But the intellectual operation depends in us on the sensitive operation, because we cannot, be able to understand without the what, phantasm, without the image, huh? As is said in the third book about the soul. Therefore, beatitude consists also in the operation of senses.

[2:09] Moreover, Boethius says in the third book, the Consolation of Philosophy, that beatitude is a state made perfect by the bringing together, I guess you could say, of all goods, right? Grex,

[2:30] grex is the Latin for flock? grex yes, I forget. Okay. To bring, yeah, to bring in a in a. Yeah. And therefore, it seems that the operation of the senses is required for what beatitude, right? Especially with all that singing that's going to be done there too. Huh? I'm praising God and. Hmm.

[2:53] Moreover, beatitude is a perfect good, as is proven in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, huh? Which would not be, unless man were perfected

[3:11] through himself, right? No, through himself. Through himself. According to all his parts, right? Maybe, maybe through it, meaning through beatitude. So, yeah, through it. But

[3:32] the sensitive powers, the sensitive operations, are certain parts. I mean, some parts of the soul are perfected by sensitive operations. Therefore, the sensitive operation, the action of the senses, is required for what? Beatitude, huh?

[3:57] But in the sensitive operation, we come together with the brute animals. Not however do we come together with them in beatitude. Therefore, beatitude does not consist in the operation of senses.

[4:12] So you have a glass eye or something there, huh? Maybe. Thomas answers. It should be said that for beatitude, something can pertain to beatitude in one of three ways.

[4:32] In one way, what? Essentially, right. In another way, proceeding, right. Coming before. In a third way, following upon, right. Essentially, the operation of the senses cannot pertain to beatitude. Why? Because beatitude of man consists essentially in the union of it of him to the uncreated what good, which is the last end, as has been shown. To which man is joined, cannot be joined through the operation of senses.

[5:16] So I don't know about the man in the pew there, but they may be thinking, you know they've got to say, God with your physical eyes, right?

[5:31] But the word "see" instead of the beatific vision is a word equivocal by reason, right? It's a corridor from the eye. Likewise, also because, as has been shown, it does not consist. As beatitude does not consist in bodily goods, right? Which is all that we can what attain to the operation of the what senses, huh?

[6:07] What the operations of the senses can pertain to beatitude, antecedently, right? And what, consequently, huh? Before and what, after? Thomas is obviously looking before and after here, right? Shakespeare would approve of that.

[6:28] Antecedently, according to a imperfect what, Yeah. Beatitude, huh? Such as is able to be had in the present what, life, huh? For the operation of the understanding presupposes the operations of the senses in this life.

[6:53] What about that bumper sticker? Music is my life. Kind of beatitude there, huh? Listening to music. I think Aristotle in Politics here mentions the opinion of one philosopher that listening to music is the end of man, right? That's the that's beatitude.

[7:14] But here, here the reason given is that it's what presupposed to what understanding, huh? And therefore, the understanding that we that in this life, that is to say, so the understanding we have in this life, the senses in some way pertain to it, right?

[7:36] So it's hard to do solid geometry than what plain geometry, huh? There was a time when plain geometry existed, but solid geometry did not exist. I have a better imagination for doing that, right? Remember when I was just doing those last books of Euclid, which I've forgotten now probably, but trying to you know imagine the various solid figures, you know, and I make try to make a lot of little cardboard things and hang them from the the lights when the porch gate, and I get to imagine these things better, right?

[8:08] But can't imagine these things, you're you're kind of lost, right? Solid geometry, huh? Twelve sided figures and things of this sort, right? Okay. Now, how about consequently, right?

[8:32] Consequently, however, in that perfect beatitude which is expected in what Heaven. heaven, because after resurrection, from the very beatitude of the soul, as Augustine says in the Epistle to Dioscorus, there comes about a certain flow back, you might say, right? Or flow into the body and into the what bodily senses that they are made perfect in their what operations, huh? As will be clear more below when one tweets of what resurrection, huh?

[9:16] Okay. So Thomas says, you know, that there will be the pleasure of the senses that is compatible to be added to the beatific life. huh? Other places he talks about this. Huh? So you see something, you know, beautiful with your eyes, or something, hear something beautiful with your ears, right? That's not incompatible with the state of beatitude, right? There won't be any pleasure of eating steak or French fries or even sipping wine.

[9:44] You know, our Lord speaks metaphorically, right? If? You'll eat at my table and share what's. He ain't after the resurrection. Fish. Yeah, well, he was Middle Eastern,

[10:13] but not then does the operation by which the what human mind is joined to God it doesn't depend upon the senses, huh? You see God because God is joined to your own mind, right? Is that by which you see Him, right? So it's both what you see and that by which you see Him.

[10:40] You couldn't see Him as He is unless He Himself became the form of your what mind. Now the first objection, he says, that objection proves that the operation of the sense is required antecedently to imperfect beatitude, right? Such as we have in this life, right? Such as in this life is able to be had.

[11:16] Now to the second, it should be said that perfect beatitude, such as the angels have, right, has a congregation of all goods through union to the universal fountain of all good, right? Not that it needs what individual particular goods, right?

[11:43] But in this beatitude, huh, in perfect beatitude, there's required a congregation of what Sufficient goods. sufficient goods, enough goods for the perfect operation of this life.

[12:08] So it's better to say that God is is uh something or everything. which would be better to say? Yeah, it's everything in a simple way, right? Because something sometimes has the sense of something kind of particular, right?

[12:31] So it might make sense to say that everything is something except for God, and He's everything, right? But in this simple way, right, this superior way. I suppose there's some way you could say God is something. Something is opposed to what nothing, right? So you're not nothing, right? So if you're not nothing, you must be something, right? But sometimes to say something, but sometimes implies not all the time, right?

[13:00] So likewise, to say God is something might imply that there's something, but. Some particular way in which he's a thing, right? He's actually more a thing in the way of being everything.

[13:14] Strange, huh? I've been reading the treatise on the angels now, you know, and just thinking about my guardian angel. You know, he's probably calling other angels over. You know, hey, come on, what something funny?

[13:30] This guy in charge of. He's trying to understand us, and he doesn't even know what an angel is. If the angels have a sense of humor, you know, I think they must enjoy enjoy our trying to understand them, right? Our buffoonery. Yeah.

[13:56] Now, to the third, it should be said, huh? That in perfect beatitude, the whole man is what perfected, even your your body, right, I mean your toenails, if you wish, huh? But in the lower part, to a what overflowing or flowing down from the what higher part, huh? In the beatitude, however, that's imperfect of the present life, it's the reverse, huh? That from the perfection of the lower part, one proceeds to the perfection of the what?

[14:33] Yeah. Yeah. So kids in grade school should be memorizing, right? Not trying to understand too much. They try to discuss things, you know, discuss the world. Flannery O'Connor said about the eighth graders being consulted on what kind of literature they like to read. She said that's irrelevant. She said they should be—they're there to be informed. They need to be told what's good literature. They don't have they don't have a sense of taste.

[15:05] Okay. So that's interesting, huh? So Mozart and Palestrina and the rest of them might have something to show us, right? You know, Mozart died what he's in his 36th year, so. He said, "If he'd lived as long as, say, Haydn lived or somebody, you know, what would he have done? You know, he's had all these years up up there, you know, so who knows what he's what he's preparing for us?

[15:35] A grand concert, as we arrived. A special concept for Pope Benedict. when he gets there. Oh yes, oh yes, he's a Mozart lover. I don't think he's going to canonize Mozart. I don't think Mozart's going to quite make that, but I think hope he's up there where he should be. Okay, now up to article four, right? Whether beatitude is a what consists in the act of the will, right,

[16:12] or is an act of the understanding? To the fourth, one proceeds thus: It seems that beatitude consists in the act of the what? No, well, this is a kind of a controversial thing in a way. Five objections, right?

[16:30] For Augustine says in the nineteenth book of this about the city of God that the beatitude of man consists in peace. Beautiful discourse he has on peace there. And if you've seen that one, what sweet peace as it is is, huh? It's really marvelous. Whence it is said in Psalm one forty seven, qui posuit fines tuos pacem, who makes his ends what? Peace, huh? But peace pertains to the what?

[17:03] The will, huh? Therefore, the beatitude of man consists in the will, right? I often think about these things we say about the the dead, you know, eternal rest granted to him, O Lord. Is that referring to the will? Let perpetual light shine upon him. That's referring to the reason, right?

[17:30] But when you say eternal rest, you get peace, right? On his will. May you rest in peace. Yeah. Okay. Moreover, beatitude is the highest good, huh? The summum bonum. But the good is the object of the will. Therefore, beatitude consists in the operation of the will.

[18:03] Nice, nice argument. Moreover, to the first mover corresponds the last end, just as the last end of the whole army is victory, huh? That's what Gregory said, "There's no substitute for victory."

[18:23] So I say, "There's no substitute for seeing God," which is the end of the leader, right? Who moves all, right? But the first mover to operating or doing is the will, because it moves the other what? Powers, huh?

[18:47] This is you know what Thomas was saying in this thing I was reading about the angels. Why the angel doesn't know the cogitationes, of course, because the use of our what knowledge and so on depends upon our will. So he can't know it by his natural powers, huh? And then he has another article there on whether he knows. All mysteries of grace, right? Well, this depends upon the will of God, right?

[19:10] And so you can't really know it from his natural powers, but only in so far as God reveals his will for the incarnation, our salvation, and so on.

[19:28] Incidentally, he says there too that the the from the moment of their beatitude, the angels knew about the incarnation, but not all the mysteries about the incarnation. And

[19:45] so I don't know if Thomas agreed with those who said, you know, the angels were tempted to pride by the fact that what do you got to do with these human beings who are below us? Why are you going to take on human nature and so on? But as if they were not, you know,

[20:01] informed about the incarnation before they were made what blessed, right? So the other ones didn't fall because of foreknowledge, the rejection of incarnation. But some people say that I think you've heard that maybe.

[20:25] Therefore, beatitude pertains to the will, right? Because that's that moves everything, right? And the first mover corresponds to the other things. Moreover, if beatitude is some operation, it is necessary that it be the most noble operation of man. But the more noble operation, but more noble is the operation of what loving God, which is an act of the will, than of knowledge, which is an operation of the what understanding.

[20:57] As is clear through the Apostle, one at Corinthians three, that's who speaks of faith over charity, right? The greatest of these is charity, love. Therefore, it seems that beatitude consists in the act of the what will.

[21:16] Moreover, Augustine says in the thirteenth book about the Trinity that blessed is the one who has everything he wants and wants nothing badly, nothing bad. And after a few things, he adds, "There, what? There comes to the beat blessed one who wishes well whatever he wishes, right? For the good make him what blessed. Of which good things he already has something, right? Namely, the good what will.

[21:52] Therefore, beatitude consists in the act of the will. Now, against all this, he says, "Is what the Lord says in John chapter what seventeen? " There is that number seventeen showing up again.

[22:11] This is eternal life that they know you, the one true God. But eternal life is the last end as has been said Therefore the beatitude of man consists in the knowledge of God which is an act of the understanding last end, as has been said. Therefore, the beatitude of man consists in the knowledge of God, which is an act of the will. Understanding. Understanding.

[22:33] Just testing. That's Psalm sixty-two, right? We speak about seeing God, right? His power and his glory. Now what does Thomas say in goodbye to this. I answer: It should be said that for beatitude, as has been said above, two things are required.

[23:01] One, which is the essence of beatitude; the other, which is, as it were, a per se but accident, like a property. This is something that follows upon it as such, right? You can translate per se as "do itself." Do

[23:21] being blessed, you are pleased. Yeah. It follows upon beatitude as such to be pleased. Otherwise, you darn well don't have beatitude if you're not pleased. But if it is that being pleased, is that is that your beatitude, or something that follows upon it as such?

[23:46] I say, therefore, that as regards that which is essentially beatitude, beatitude itself, it is impossible. I'll never get back to impossible. It is impossible that it consists in an act of the will,

[24:03] for it is manifest from the foregoing things that beatitude is the achievement of the last what end. But the achievement of the end does not consist in the act itself of the will, for the will is carried towards the end, both when it is absent, when it is what desired, and when it is present, when it what. Delights in resting. Resting in what? When in resting in it, it is delighted, right?

[24:49] It is manifest that the desire for the end is not the achievement of the end, right? But is a motion to the end. What pleasure comes to the will from this that the end is what? Present. Yeah.

[25:12] Not, however, the reverse from this that something is present, not not from this that something is present, because the will delights in it. Therefore, it is necessary, necessary therefore, that something other than the act of the will.

[25:40] Therefore, it's necessary for something other to be right Then the act of the will, through which the end itself is present. to what? The will, huh? What do you think of that argument?

[25:56] I'll take his word for it. Notice if you say that that suppose you said love is the end, right? I suppose you said that, right? Well, you can love the end when you have it, but also when you don't have it, right? So how can love itself be the end?

[26:46] Now sometimes Thomas will argue, you know, too. I don't know if you still hear so much, but he'll argue from the fact that the

[26:57] desire or love of the end comes first for the will, right? But just as the first thing we understand is not our understanding, you have to understand something else, and then you can understand that you understand. Well, so likewise can the first act of the will have as its object the act of the will itself.

[27:31] So if the first thing you you will is the end, the last end, and the first thing you will cannot be the act of the will itself, then how can our attitude be in the what act of the will?

[27:47] It'd be a very empty act of the will, because new love wasn't an act of the will. Yeah. If you heard my little simple argument, I was trying to show the students a little bit that the first act of the reason cannot be have as its object the act of the reason, right? I used to take a simple example, you know, of my mother writing, you know, to one of my brothers, or was in a letter from one of us.

[28:15] I say, is the first letter you write about something in a in a letter? You can write about, you know, someone writes you and say, well, you know, report what someone said in this letter to you, to someone else, right? You want to pass the news on, right? We do that a lot, times, right? But can the first letter that is written be about something in a letter?

[28:38] No. Someone's got to send a letter before you can talk about what somebody said in a letter, and so the first letter is not about something in the letter. The first letter is about something that's not in the letter. And then there can be a second letter, which is about something in the letter. That can't be the first thought, right? Well, that's, the same way with the act of the reason, right?

[29:10] I have to understand something before I have an understanding to understand. I've got to will something before I can what? Have an act of will to will, right?

[29:39] But notice, obviously, you know, we distinguish maybe three basic acts of the appetite, and one is love or liking, right? And then one is desire, and then one is what pleasure or delight.

[29:55] And the most basic act there is is love, right? And so, from love arises desire and pleasure, right? But desire arises from love in the absence of what you what love, right?

[30:17] While pleasure or delight arises in the presence of the possession or attainment of what you what love, right? Now, desire or wanting would be the most obviously not the end, right? Because then you what lack the the you want when you want or desire, right? That's why when Thomas talks about God's will, he'll speak of there being love in God's will, right? And there being delight or pleasure, right?

[30:57] Joy, but there's no desire or wanting in God's will because he doesn't lack any good; he's every good, and nothing is added to his goodness by us, you know.

[31:13] So desire is is obviously not the the last end, right? Now, what about love? Is love essentially the end? As long as the object of your love is there Yeah, but then love as such doesn't require the yeah yeah. So you can be cut off from what you love and still love it, right? So how can love itself be the end?

[31:49] Now, the best candidate would seem to be pleasure, right? That's why even Aristotle talks about human happiness. His final consideration of it is in the tenth book, the last book of the Nicomachean Ethics. That's why he takes up what pleasure, right? Huh? But he concludes that pleasure is something fouling upon the good, right? Rather than the good itself. But the fact that he takes it up there is a sign that that's the best candidate, right?

[32:15] Huh? Okay. Um. But what is it that you want? Is it pleasure, or something that pleasure fouls upon getting? Something fouling upon it? Aristotle has a comparison there. He says pleasure perfects the ultimate act, as beauty perfects youth, which is not the very essence of it, right? But something is kind of fouls upon being young, right? Huh? And you lose your good looks as you get older, right?

[32:57] At least Owen does. So. Okay. Let's look at the argument again here. Pouncey, think about a little bit now. Um. For it is manifest from the foregoing that beatitude is the consecutio, right, the attaining, right, of the last end.

[33:29] But the consecutio, right, the reaching or the attaining or the getting to the end, ah, not getting to the end, the achievement of the end, I should say, does not consist in the what act itself of the will. For the will is what born, you might say, carried towards the end, both when the end is absent, right, when it desires it, huh? And when it's present, when resting in it, it is what delighted, right?

[34:06] Now it is manifest, huh, that the very desire for the end, the wanting of the end, is not the achievement of the end. That's pretty obvious, right? But it is a motus, huh, a movement towards the end, huh?

[34:23] And that incidentally is why why desire, in some senses, the act of the will or the emotions, for that matter, most what known to us, right? Because it's like emotion. And what did Shakespeare say? Things in motion, attention to eye, what nots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So even when they talk about the the faculty for the emotions or for the acts of the will, they call it the appetitive powers, right?

[34:55] Or sometimes you see that we're just appetitive, right? But appetite, as you know from you know, I used to do that word, names what. Desire, right?

[35:08] So the desiring powers, is the way you translate it in English, right? The appetitive powers, right? But they're named from what? Desire, right? It's more known. Just like Shakespeare, you know, defines reason as the ability for discourse, right? And discourse comes from the Latin word for running around, right? Running from one thing to another. But or we name reason, you know, what act of reason? What is the act of reason?

[35:40] Well, grammatically speaking, reasoning, right? The word itself would seem to show the connection between reason and an act called reasoning, right? But reasoning is the act of reason that is like a what? Motion, yeah.

[36:01] In all reasoning, reason goes. Goes from one thing to another, right? Should be going from the known or the more known or the probable, at least, right, to something else, right, the conclusion. So the act that is like emotion seems to be most known, right?

[36:22] And so the appetitus, desire, seems to be the act that's most known, right? But it's not the most basic act, which is love or liking, and it's not the culminating act.

[36:38] Now, delight or pleasure comes to the will when the end is now what present, right? So can desire or pleasure, which is a result of achieving the end, can that be the end itself?

[37:02] Not looking before and after, right? Comes after you achieve the end, right? Not necessary in time, right? But as an effect in a way, it's after a cause.

[37:22] Not, however, is it the reverse that from this, did not, yeah, from this get the grammar is a little bit or word order there. But the fact that the will delights in something, not from that, is something present, right?

[37:47] So if I like steak, right, then when the steak is present, I'm delighted. I have pleasure. The steak isn't present because I'm taking delight in it. I'm taking delight in it because the steak is present. I put that rather than salmon upon my plate, right? I had a choice.

[38:18] Told you I had that, Restoration Society thing in California. The last one where I spoke, and the last day was on Friday, so I said, I know those guys are going to have fish. Hey, salmon,

[38:33] do. So I was not pleased, but what can I do? Offer up. Okay. Now, offer up without it. That's a small sacrifice. Therefore, it's necessary for something other than the act of the will, through which the end itself is present to the what will.

[39:11] And this manifestly appears concerning sensible ends, right? Like the steak. For if to what get some money was through the act of the will, at once from the beginning, right, the one who's desiring for money, right, would have gotten money, right. It's just a dream, right?

[39:46] When he wishes to have it, right. But from the beginning, when it is absent, huh? But from the beginning, it is absent from him.

[40:01] He gets if chooses it, huh? This that he grabs it with his hand, right? What a crude man this Thomas was. Because he's always, you know, talk about this, you know, flowery, you know, examples in the modern philosophers, you know, don't don't help you to see something too well, though. They kind of delight in this marvelous flowery examples. Existential musings. And then he delights in the money what had right, got in his hands, huh?

[40:46] Thus, therefore, this also happens about the what understandable end, right? For from the beginning, we wish to what achieve the understandable end. But we arrive at it right through the fact that it is present to us by an act of the what understanding. And then the will delights. Will delighting rests in the end now what attained.

[41:18] So you first, you might say, attain God as He is in Himself. By the act of what the reason, right? You see God as He is, right. And now you arrive at the good that is every good, right? And then you have complete rest in your will.

[41:37] Thus, therefore, the essence of beatitude consists in the act of the understanding. But to the will pertains. The delight followed upon beatitude, according as Augustine says in the tenth book of Confessions, that beatitude is what gaudium de veritate kind of defining it by something that follows upon it, right? There is another quote I've seen from Augustine. where he says, "the vision is the whole reward, right? "

[42:15] Because this gaudium is the consummation of beatitude, right? Just like pleasure is the consummation of understanding the Pythagorean theorem, right? Huh? Okay. Delight when you see this beautiful theorem. Something about it all.