Prima Secundae
53. Circumstances and Moral Species; The Will's Goodness and Its Object (Aquinas I-II q.18 a.10–11, q.19 a.1)
Class of 2012-02-02
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/053-circumstances-and-moral-species-the-wills-goodness-and-its/

[0:00] The Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo gratias. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain illuminate images, and rouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Really? And help us to understand all that you've written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay, up to I guess Article 11 here, huh?

[0:37] Article 10. 10, Okay. Ten and eleven here. Ten, eleven. You should think about them together. To the tenth one proceeds thus. It seems that circumstances are not able to constitute some species, some particular kind of good or bad act. For the species of an act is from its object, huh? But the circumstances differ from the object, huh? Therefore, the circumstances do not give species to the act.

[1:25] Moreover, the circumstances compared to the moral act are as accidents of it, but an accident does not constitute the species, huh? They can go back to porphyry there, right, huh? Genus difference are essential to the species, right? Property follows upon it, but accident is outside the nature, not connected with it. Therefore, circumstance do not constitute some species of good or what bad, huh?

[2:01] Moreover, of one thing there are not many what species, not many what it is, but of one act there are many circumstances. Therefore, a circumstance does not constitute a moral act in some species of good or bad.

[2:21] But against all this is that place is a certain circumstance, huh? But place constitutes a moral act in some species of what bad. For to steal something from a sacred place is a what sacrilege. See that little box that come out of church there, you know?

[2:46] If you can figure out how to open, you can take what's in it. I remember in my parish back home, you know, somebody breaking into that little thing they had, you know, for people give things, and they had to make it more secure, you know, because yeah, this would get you taken up and walked. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, one time I was downtown Minneapolis there. I went into the Catholic church there, which kind of a big thing, you know.

[3:08] It's a little sign that come in, you know. Watch your purse. All do not come to pray. They must have people, you know. You know, stolen, you know, and and they always have bombs downtown, you know. And they come in, they see the woman praying, and he seems kind of distracted, you know, and they take the purse. It's when the ladies go to communion. They come out front.

[3:32] Yeah. These guys take out the bandit. Their purse is behind in the pews. Yeah. So that's a circumstance, right? You steal the truth. Yeah. But to steal something from a sacred place is a sacrilege, right? That that keeps you from taking that thing when I come out. Okay. Therefore, circumstances circumstance constitutes a moral act in some species of good or what bad. I draw the line somewhere.

[4:16] Okay. Answer should be said, huh? That the species of natural things, right, are constituted from their natural what forms. So also the species of moral acts are differently. They are constituted from forms in so far as they are conceived by what reason. This has been said before. It's a little different. The kind of species you have here.

[4:49] Because nature is determined to something one, nor can the what proceeding of nature go on forever, is necessary to arrive at some last form, from which is taken the specific difference. After which another specific difference cannot be.

[5:16] And hence it is that in natural things that which is an accident to something cannot be taken as a difference constituting a species. So white man is not species of man, right?

[5:33] But the process of the going forward proceeding of reason is not determined to something one. But any thing being given, it is able to what proceed further. And therefore, in one act, that what in one act is taken as a what circumstance added to the object, right, which determines the species of the act. It is also able to be what taken by reason, ordering as a principal condition of the object, determining the species of the act.

[6:20] But to take what belongs to another, as a species from just as to take what does not belong to oneself, right, To belong to another, As its what species from the what notion of the other, right, and from this it is constituted in the species of what theft, huh.

[6:47] Now, from private, you know how you get to be a real good friend of somebody, and if they need something, they'll take it without what. Yeah.

[7:01] Warren was giving me a talk one time, and he says, "Oh, I needed something. I just took this thing that I've written, you know." He used a private. I don't even mind where. I said, "No, that's okay." But you see, that's not theft, or it does he do? I would not have no idea. Well, that's

[7:21] what they say. One knowing and willing, there's no injury done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So if everyone knows that the president's a crook, no, that's not.

[7:43] And if one considers, in addition to this, right, the ratio, the thought, the aspect of place or what time, this has itself is a notion of circumstance, right? But because the ratio also about place or about time and other things of this sort is able to be ordered by what reason, huh?

[8:13] It happens that the condition of place about the object can be taken as something contrary to the order of what reason. For example, that reason orders that one not not to do an injury in a sacred what place. I'm not the observing right, but I don't know if they observe anymore I don't think the government does taking, you know, fleeing, you know, and you're arrested, fleeing to church, and yeah, yeah, they'll invade him right now.

[8:52] Whence to take something alien from a sacred place adds a special what repugnance to the order of reason, and therefore place, which before is considered as a circumstances, right. Now is considered as a principal or chief condition of the object, making it repugnant to what reason.

[9:20] So notice the distinction there between circumstance and object. There is not as something absolute, is it? Some circumstances can what crawl into the the object, is the word? Huh? Okay.

[9:37] Now the next article is going to say not every circumstance is this, right? And you'll see a little more the whole truth about this, right?

[9:47] And in this way, whenever some circumstance regards a special order of reason, right? Either for or against, right? It's necessary. That the circumstance gives what a species to the moral act, either good or what bad.

[10:16] It's like that with the issue we discussed before about sterilization, because I don't have a right to do what I want with my body. It belongs to somebody else. The absolute thing you want to be done.

[10:32] I know somebody says in regard to the first objection there, which is saying that the species comes from the object, right? Well, does he deny that? Well, no, he answers it. To the first, therefore, it should be said that a circumstance, according as it gives some species to the act, right, is considered as a condition of the object itself, huh?

[10:59] And as a what specific what Differ difference of it, huh? Now, what about the circumstances being accident? Well, if they remain as accidents, is going to say, right? Then they don't give any species, huh? To the second, it should be said the circumstance remaining in the what ratio of a circumstance, since it has the ratio of an accident, does not give the species, right? But according as it is changed into a principal condition of the object, according to this, it gives a what species, right?

[11:56] So I was looking at the put me a bookmark there in my reading of Sophocles, you know. I just got to reading the woman of Trachis I was going over the tragedies, you know. But now I'll read next Electra Electra, right?

[12:10] Now, if your mother has killed your father, right? Can you kill your mother? You say your mother is should be maybe you know worthy of death, right? Huh? Maybe you have to take into account the fact that you are what. Not the person punished. Yeah, yeah, the son of this woman, right? Of course, I see it on some of those trilogies there in Aeschylus. I know you know he's pursued by the Furies afterwards, you know, and so reason takes into account those things, right?

[12:56] Or should take them into account, right? Do you turn your mother or father in if they've stolen? I don't let them steal. Those are. Don't think so. Yeah, so the current one is as to you know, what about the bishop and priests?

[13:25] You know, the bishop that that whole issue should be turned in as priests that has done such and such. There is a certain question about the propriety of it actually on the priest-bishop relationship. Yeah, there's. I know. I have. I don't have grasp of the subject in terms of history, but I know that it was. Church always opposed civil authority having anything to do with trying and punishing clerics.

[13:52] Although that has obviously changed, the Vatican supports criminal prosecution of priests who abuse children. If that's the case, they deserve to be tried and punished. So there's a kind of a change in custom, I think, but I'm not sure. But the church, that's that's what got some one of the things I'm thinking in trouble with Henry the Second was he insisted that clerics are not to be tried by civil law.

[14:13] That's it. There's there's no judgment of clerics. And it's interesting because Thomas More takes it up in Utopia too. I don't remember what he

[14:41] thinks. Pitt has a style like Uthifro, right? For Uthifro, he's going to prosecute his father for impiety. It sounds impious itself, right? Anyway. Now to the third, huh? Fear not; going to have many species, right? To the third, should be said that not every circumstance constitutes or puts a moral act in some species of good or bad. Because not just any circumstance implies some what agreement, some consonance, sounding with or dissonance to what reason, huh?

[15:10] Whence is not necessary, although there are many circumstances of one act that one act be in many what species, huh? But then he goes on to say, although it is not what inconvenience that one moral act should be in many what disparate species of moral right.

[15:34] It's quite different for an actual species, then, right? Thomas talks about the angels. You know, he's have a chapter on how the genus and species in the angels. You know, because it can't be like in us, where the genus comes from what's material and the species from what is formal, because the angels are entirely formal, right? So that'd be that'd be a question, right? Huh? Well, I mean, here you got different.

[16:02] How do you determine? Genus and species here, right? Or species in particular, right? And there's things that you wouldn't have in an actual thing, right? You know, talk about dog and cat, you know. What's your problem problem? Now the eleventh article. To the eleventh, one goes forward. Thus, it seems that every circumstance pertaining to goodness or badness gives species to the what act?

[16:36] So if a circumstance makes the act better or worse, does it give a different species? Thomas says not always. This is the famous distinction of of what more or less, right? Distinction more or less give you a difference in species. Well, if the more or less is from partaking more or less of the same, it doesn't give you different species, right? But if it is what

[17:09] not particularly the same thing, right? Then it could be what difference in species, right? So I mean, I could talk about the the why is the end better than the means, right?

[17:24] Yeah. Just because it has more of the same, or that the end has a goodness, a kind of goodness that the that the means doesn't have at all.

[17:39] So the first objection says good and bad are specific differences of moral acts. What therefore makes a difference in the goodness or badness of a moral act makes it differ according to a specific difference, which makes it differ according to what species? Huh? Just to differ according to species. But that which adds something in goodness or badness of the act makes it differ in goodness and badness, right?

[18:10] Therefore, it makes them differ according to species. Therefore, every circumstance adding in goodness or or the badness of an act constitutes a species, right? So if I steal what a hundred dollars from you instead of fifty dollars, does that make a different different species of sin? It's worse what I've done, right? But is it worse of the same kind rather than adding a new kind of badness to it, right?

[18:39] Huh? I wonder if I steal from a person who has only hundred dollars, a person who has a million dollars. Carbon tax material. No, I'm depriving one person the means of of living, right? Yeah. Which I'm not doing the case. Donald Trump.

[19:20] Moreover, either the circumstance coming has itself, in itself, somewhat reason of goodness or badness, or it does not. If not, it cannot add in goodness or badness to the act, because what is not good cannot make something more good, and what is not bad cannot make something more bad. Now, is that true?

[19:51] Well, see, if I'm stealing, you know, let's say you're a rich man, I'm stealing a hundred dollars from you instead of fifty dollars. Hey, then, there's a difference between a hundred dollars and fifty dollars. Is that a new kind of badness in my act?

[20:09] No, no. So it's not making a new species, huh? Okay. If I steal a hundred dollars in that box out there, that much in there.

[20:24] Then it's something that's in church, right? Huh? And therefore, there's a, there is a, a kind of evil there. That's, yeah. But he says it's got to have an objection saying it's got to have in itself a reason of goodness or badness, right? From this, it has then to do what? Some species of good or bad. Therefore, every circumstance increasing the goodness or badness constitutes a new species of good or bad.

[21:02] Moreover, according to the great Dionysius, in the fourth chapter, the divine names, the bad is caused from what individual defects, huh? But any circumstance aggravating the evil has a special what defect. Therefore, any circumstance adds a new species of what sin, huh? Well, you could say you know species should not be what multiplied without necessity.

[21:42] Moral matter is hard enough to think about, right? Therefore, any what circumstance adds a new species of sin, and for the same reason, any one increasing the goodness seems to add a new species of what good, huh? Just as any as one unit added to a number makes a new species of what number? Yeah, that's good. But the good consists in number, weight, and measure, right? The devil can quote scripture, right?

[22:23] But against this is that more and less do not diversify species. Now Thomas will will often what correct that right? I mean, I mean qualify that right? Because sometimes it does involve it, right?

[22:44] But more and less is a circumstance adding in goodness or badness. Therefore, not every circumstance adds in goodness or badness. constitutes the moral act in species of good or bad, right? There's some truth that, Thomas.

[23:03] I answer, Thomas says that as has been said, a circumstance gives a species of good or bad to a moral act in so far as it regards some special order of reason.

[23:22] Now, is there special some special order of reason when I think you know of taking a hundred dollars instead of I look at your box and got a hundred dollars in there, which I take fifty dollars, I take a hundred dollars, right? You know, is there a special reason of evil there in taking a hundred rather than what fifty? The robber

[23:48] might leave you leave a little to get you home. He's going to get you home. There's nothing to be said for that. but you'll get a smaller penance in confession. yeah, if you tell them that you wanted to steal a hundred, you only stole this because it was a church.

[24:14] Now it can happen sometimes, huh? That a circumstance does not what regard the order of reason in good or bad, except presupposing some other circumstance from which the moral act has a species of what good or bad?

[24:38] Just as to take something in a great amount, right, or a little amount, does not regard the order of reason in good or bad, except presupposing some other condition to which the fact that the act has what? Yeah, and that said, it's what alien is not yours, right? And this is repugnant to reason. I take what belongs to what another, right? Whence

[25:11] to take another's in a large or small quantity does not diversify the species of what sin, huh? Nevertheless, is able to what aggravate or diminish the what sin, right?

[25:31] And likewise, also another what circumstances, other good things or bad things, right? Whence, not every circumstance adds in goodness or bad, adding in goodness or badness varies the moral species of the what act. Well, they take fifty dollars or hundred dollars; it's still the same kind of bad act, right? Except it's worse to take hundred dollars, I guess, than take fifty dollars, huh? It's the same way.

[26:02] If you had that other idea, if it's It's a millionaire versus a poor guy, it just it still doesn't change the species that it Yeah, unless unless you unless you're really doing the guy, his means us, you know. His existence Yeah Yeah.

[26:18] Maybe. could you say on that one, that that it just could be just another sin? Could you say that it would be, um, in the instance of a poor man that you would harm more, and on one hand there would be a sin, but then it's also depriving him of livelihood? Yeah, I would think so. Yeah. Especially with repugnance to the reason, right, To deprive someone else of their means of subsistence.

[26:50] So it stays in the same species, but you add the second species to it. No, a very different species, I would think. You know. Yeah. So I could say there's two sins there. You could say I think they. He stole his camel in the desert there, right? So he died there. Yeah. Yeah. Or you could say, you know, the distinction between, you know, petty larceny and grand larceny.

[27:17] Well, in some ways, at some time, you could say you could, in some way, measure that by the one who's being losing. So it's petty to a millionaire those a hundred bucks, but for the poor guy on the street, 100 bucks is going to be his food for the week.

[27:40] So to the first, huh? It should be said, in those things which are intensified, right, or diminished, the difference of intention or emission does not diversify the species, just as something differs in whiteness according to more and what less. It does not differ according to the species of the color. So they're partaking of the same thing, more or less, right? Doesn't give a different kind of thing, right?

[28:11] And likewise, what makes a diversity or a difference in goodness or badness according to intensity or emission does not make a difference in the moral act in species.

[28:27] Now the second one, that interesting objection there, right? To the second, it should be said that a circumstance aggravating the sin or increasing the goodness of the act sometimes does not have goodness or badness by itself, right? Huh? But by order to some other condition of the act, as has been said, huh? And therefore, it does not give a new species, but it increases the goodness or the badness, which is from another condition of the act, right?

[29:05] So a hundred dollars as opposed to fifty dollars doesn't give you a different sense of what the bad. The badness comes from the fact that it's not yours.

[29:28] In reply to the third objection, it should be said that not just any circumstance induces what an individual defect by itself, but only according to what order to something else. And likewise, it does not always add a new perfection, except in comparison to something else. And in this way, it what, although it increases the goodness or badness, it does not always what vary the species of what good or bad.

[30:07] So I go on a pilgrimage, right? I go a mile, and someone else goes what ten miles, right? He might be more what, yeah, might be better, but he did right than I what I did right. Was it a different act, kind of act, different species of act, or is it still just a pilgrimage?

[30:46] Yeah, I remember Quebec. You got the Saint Anne de Beaupré, right? There used to be, you know, a marked walk out there, you know. The question is, where do you start from? That's in

[31:01] your fervor. Yeah. Something start from the Oratory now. People only got how far then? The one is one of blessed of Saint Andre in Montreal Montreal. I mean, that's you know, it's way up there, and a lot of people they take the stairs and go on their knees from the bottom to top. In fact, they have they have wood over these steps to help them do that because instead of being stone, but they do.

[31:27] They do, it in Fatima and furthermore, they do that thing. Well, they built the new church, and they did this huge piazza. Yeah. Before they built the church, they said you could fit a million people in there, and they had they they laid down some stones, like polished stone, as a path down to the little chapel, and the pilgrims just and it was oh, I'd say a good quarter mile, if not more.

[31:51] And people start at the other end, and you'd often see mothers with the babies on their knees with the rosary, and the husbands walking beside. He's right. She's holding the baby on her knees. She's getting more benefit. I think. She knows what she's got to work for.

[32:09] So, we have Father, Father Smith, Father Michael from Dunwoody, the old theologian. Oh my, same, yeah. yeah. He used to have a saying about circumstances. sure, if your neighbor borrows your ladder, you should return it and go over and take it. But not while he's on it painting his house.

[32:29] Yeah, that's the circumstance that changes. You have a right to get it back, but not while he's up there. Did the Greeks have one place? They had a rule that if you did something when you were drunk, you were punished double, right? No. Yeah.

[32:52] I'm interested more, more question. yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People like ethics course, they can sit around all afternoon, you know, argue about some particular thing, and maybe not deciding it either. Okay. So that was talking about the goodness or badness of human acts in general, right? Now he's going to take up the interior act of the will. For its goodness or badness, in particular, right? And then he's going to take up as the twentieth question here about the exterior act, now, and its goodness or badness in what particular, right?

[33:40] And this is Paul Paul VI says as the rule of teaching, right? Go from the general to particular. Aristotle says in the beginning of the physics, right? Where does Pop Paul say that? Where does Pope Paul say that? Oh, I saw one of his sermons, yeah, one of one of his speeches, yeah.

[34:01] Makes sense, huh? So Euclid talks about what a quadrilateral is before he talks about what a square is, yeah. I was reading the third book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, and I remember kind of where the breaks come in the text, right? And the first sixty-three chapters are showing that God is the end of the whole universe and of the rational creature, especially, right? But general. But then sixty-four starts the second part there, which is dealing with divine providence, right?

[34:40] Directing things towards the end, which He is, right? So I said, now how can I, you know, what significance is there in the number 64 that I can remember it, right? Because I told you about in the first book, he starts the consideration of divine perfection in chapter twenty-eight, and twenty-eight, of course, is the second perfect number. Six is the first perfect number. Twenty-eight is the second perfect number.

[35:04] That fits very well, you know. Won't forget where he starts talking about that. I said, what what significance is there in the number sixty-four? What is significant about that number?

[35:23] Well, do you know what an odd what a square number is? And do you know what a cube number is? Okay. Sixty-four. Now, can the same number be both a square number and a cube number? Say.

[35:49] Well, sixty-four, in fact, is both a square number because eight times eight is what sixty-four, and four times four times four is what sixty-four.

[36:05] So it's it's the first number that is both square and what cube, right? Okay. So I was thinking about this. That's interesting, right? Because this shows divine providence, right? It can combine the square and the cube, right, together and so on. But you could also say that, you know, what is the first square number? It's four, right? And what's the first cube number? Nine. No, nine is a square number.

[36:39] Eight, yeah. And so sixty-four is the what? Cube of the first square number and the square of the first cube number. So it's really beautiful the way the square and the cube come together. This number, right? And therefore, you know, kind of dishonor to the divine providence, right? He can bring the square and the cube together in those several ways, huh? You know, a square has four sides.

[37:11] Has a two-dimensional figure. A cube has six surfaces. That's one thing. What's another thing about about six, which is the first perfect number? If you take two times two times two times two times six times, and you get sixty-four.

[37:31] Now, as a little boy, I used to always have on the radio there the sixty-four dollar question. You know, it was kind of a cool thing. I don't know what why they why they decided sixty-four dollars was the prize to give would be, you know, look too small nowadays, you know, with the inflation we had, you know. But in those days, a big deal winning the sixty-four dollar question.

[37:48] You know, sixty-four dollars. Okay, we're up to question nineteen now on the goodness and badness of the interior act of the will. Then we're not to consider about the goodness of the interior act of the will, and about this, ten things are asked, right?

[38:17] First, whether the goodness of the will depends on its what? Yeah. Secondly, whether it depends from the object alone, right? Interesting. You use the word "from" there, right? No, probably say something different.

[38:42] Would you say in English the goodness of the will depends from its object? Yeah, fine. You can see in that previous text, saying how how hard it is to translate the word "ratio" into English, right? Give it, you know, the same sense it has. As I say, I remember De Koninck being asked in class, "What? How do you translate ratio?" You know, that's why I call translation a thankless task, right?

[39:16] You know, it's just. Well, in in Latin, I guess that pender means to hang, and we said hang from something. Maybe that's the sense it still has in Latin: it's hanging from something. We say depend on. Yeah, yeah. Well, you see, the the Greeks and I guess the Latins, to some extent, they imagine the cause to be above the effect, and the effect is hanging from it, right?

[39:44] Huh? Why the the the Germanic tribes and Anglo Saxons and so on regard the cause as what holding up it, right? Huh? Now sometimes you'll see maybe even Latin too, speak of the underlying cause, you know, but we kind of imagine the cause to be under the effect, holding it up, huh? And so the the native word for cause in the Anglo Saxons is really ground, huh?

[40:11] So he's speaking the courtroom. He still said grounds for divorce, right? Cause for divorce, right? Um. And of course, our word understanding goes with ground, right? Huh? So to understand an effect means to know what stands under it, right? To understand a word, know what stands under the word, right? But the Latins will say impositio nominis right? They're placing the name upon, right? And they'll do that, huh?

[40:40] So they'll imagine the thing named and the meaning to be under the word. In terms of cause, they'll talk about it as you know above, right? And therefore, they speak of the cause that something depends upon, hangs upon, right? Like a dependent, like a woman's ring is called a pendant, I guess, you know, and it's hanging from there, right? And those are the difference in the languages, right?

[41:07] It's just you can't. Different way of thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes one is more, you know. I think the English word understanding is is more useful than the Greek word nous, you know. And even better than intelligere, intelligere is good too. Intelligere, at least when they explain it to, but the word understand is really like very good. It fits in, you know. It fits in with the word substance too, right?

[41:41] Which means to stand under, right? Huh? It's the understanding that those substances senses don't know it, right? And so etymologically, understanding and substance are what the same, right? So you have to kind of look at these words a little bit. But Thomas, the word ratio drives you crazy when you try to to get the best. It translated by reason in some cases, obviously you can, but other cases that's kind of you know that's easily forcing itself in English.

[42:20] Whether it depends on what eternal law? Only from reason. Yeah, upon reason, right? From reason, right? Whether it depends from the eternal law? Found the eternal law, right?

[42:45] Whether reason making a mistake, huh? Whether reason wandering, huh? It means actually the word wandering. Okay. We wander in illusion, Shakespeare says. Whether reason wandering or being mistaken obliges, right?

[43:08] You gotta follow that. You have to follow that mistaken conscience, as they say. Whether the will following reason erring. or Mistaking against the law of God, right, is what bad.

[43:32] Seven. Whether the goodness of the will in those things which are what, yeah, depends upon the intention of the end. Eight. Whether the quantity of goodness or badness in the will follows the quantity of good or bad in the intention.

[44:00] Nine. Whether the goodness of the will depends upon its conformity to the divine will. Thy will be done, huh? See, beautiful, great teaching on this coming out the divine will.

[44:20] Um. Ten. Whether it is necessary for the human will to be conformed to the divine will in the thing willed, right? In order that it might be what good, huh?

[44:39] St. Paul, one in this stimulus stimulus, whatever it was, removed, right? My grace is sufficient for you. Was it? Was he wrong in first willing that?

[44:55] Okay, so to the first, then one goes forward. Thus, it seems that the goodness of the will does not depend from the object upon the object, right? On the object,

[45:17] for the will cannot be except of the good, huh? Because the bad is outside the will, right? As Dionysius himself says in the fourth chapter about the divine names.

[45:34] If therefore the goodness of the will is judged from its object, it follows or would follow that every willing was good, and none what bad.

[45:56] That reminds me of the special argument I developed, you know, to show that you can't be mistaken. You're thinking. I give you that sometime. You get too far off. More of the good is found before in the what end, huh? Because the goodness of the end, as such, does not depend upon something else, right?

[46:31] But according to the philosopher in the sixth book of the ethics, a good action is an end, right? Although making is never what the end. In the Case of making the end is a thing made, right?

[46:54] What's the distinction we make sometimes between doing and making? You've seen that distinction. The one passes into something exterior. Yeah, yeah. Now, if someone says to me, "You know, wasn't making a chair doing something?" See, well, what you'd say is, "Is what this is the kind of thing you say that doing can be divided into doing and making, right?" And why does this doing keep the common name, right?

[47:43] And this doing get a new name. Yeah, and that is some product, right? Okay. So listening to music of Mozart is doing something. It's not making anything, right? Your wife often notices those things. Not doing anything, right? I got I got in trouble at work one day because the guys were smoking cigarettes. Could go take a cigarette break for ten minutes. So I asked the boss, "Can I go over to the break room and just stand around for ten minutes?"

[48:17] No, I said, "Why not? Those guys are doing that." He said, Yeah, well, they're doing something. They're smoking a cigarette. Maybe I should take up smoking. Smoking is doing something. For the latter facio is always ordered as an end to something What is made is always ordered as an end to something. What made? Therefore, the goodness of the act of the will does not depend upon some what object.

[48:51] Just the act of something, you know, extrinsic. Notice how grammar proceeds, right? You kind of, you know, I kick you, and I see you, right? You know, grammatically, they're they're similar, right? But in reality, are they similar?

[49:14] Each thing as it is makes another as it is, right? But the object of the will is what is good by the goodness of what nature. Nature. Therefore, it cannot bestow upon the will moral goodness.

[49:36] Therefore, the moral goodness of the will does not depend upon the what object. Against this is what the philosopher says in the fifth book of the ethics: the justice is that by which some will what just things, right? And for the same reason, virtue is according is that by which some will what good things, right? Therefore, a good will is but a good will is that which is according to virtue.

[50:18] Therefore, the goodness of the will is from this that it wills something what good. So that kind of a fundamental beginning, huh? A good will is a will that wills the good. Contrary to what Kant thinks, you know, you wanted to put that, huh? Very strange. The bad will is the one that wills something bad, right?

[50:52] Well, I, Thomas, answer: it should be said that good and bad are per se differences of the act of the will, right? For good and bad pertain per se as such to the will, right? Just as true and false to what reasons, whose act per se are distinguished by the difference of what true and false. In so far as we say that an opinion to be what true or false,

[51:34] whence will good and bad right are acts differing in species. But the difference of species and acts is according to their objects. This has been said in the previous question.

[52:00] And therefore, good and bad in the acts of the will is properly to be noted according to their what objects, huh? So what do you do when you size up somebody?

[52:25] See whether his will is in the right place or not, because the the will is said to be and it's what, Yeah. Aristotle says in the sixth book of the metaphysics good and bad are in things? Good and bad are in things, right? So the will is said to go to the object, right? I left my heart in San Francisco, right? huh? There, your heart shall be, yeah.

[52:50] Well, in the case of knowing, it's more reverse, right? You put it into me. So I think somebody's heart is now in the right place. I I give them a little distance, right? It's hard to see these people who are so involved in in abortion how their heart came in the right place. I mean, it's hard to. Yeah they ever reflect on what it is

[53:35] Okay. Now, in regard to this text from Dionysius in the first objection, right? To the first, thereof, it should be said that the will is not always of the true what good, but sometimes of the what parent good, right? Which has some what ratio of good, huh?

[54:01] What is the proper translation of those? It's almost that use I understand is character notion notion of character has some aspect of good, you know. Yeah, I mean, aspect like ratio has a reference to some knowing power right

[54:20] just you know, it's this whole idiomatic there. They use the word ratio there in Latin that has some ratio of good, but not simply. Is it suitable for what desiring, right? Okay, so we're loving something what bad because it's good in some diminished sense, you know.

[54:53] And an account of this, the act of the will is not always what good, but sometimes bad. Okay. The first thing is I'd hear my teacher Kasurik saying, you know, quoting Thomas malum in specie humana

[55:18] Yeah. I was reading fun of it a little bit of Washington Irving there. You know, the history of New York. I don't know if you ever read that. You know, and it's kind of making fun of our forefathers, but anyway, he's talking about you know how the other animals you know the some of them have got you know claws and some got horns you know and so on and they fight with these things and they've been fighting with the same thing for all these years but we keep on inventing new ways to fight each other.

[55:48] How much more advanced, you know? They tell you how he's paraphrasing Hesiod there. You know, he says some people think for themselves, some people think as others think, and some don't think at all.

[56:10] Because most of them are these last two categories there. Okay. Now, the second objection here, right? To second, it should be said that although some act is able to be what the last end of man in some way, right? Huh? However, such an act is the act of the will. Now, Thomas maintains, you know, that the end of man is an act of the what reason, right?

[56:53] Now, the Lord defines what eternal life there in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, right? Then he says it's to know what.

[57:09] Him whom you have sent right, he seems to make it in the act of the the reason, right? Huh? We call that the beatific vision, right? Huh? Okay.

[57:26] Of course, you can love God in Himself in this life, right? But you don't see God as He is in this life, huh? So, if loving God were the end, you'd be there already. You know, even though the love the love you know of God in heaven is greater than the love that you can have of God in this life, right? But it's not a what essentially different thing, right?

[57:54] Huh? So the the theological virtue of charity that can remain in heaven does remain in heaven, right? But but hope and faith do not, right? Huh?

[58:09] So Thomas will argue there, you know, that the chief end of man is going to be the act of the reason rather than the act of the will. Seems some confusion about that today, you know. But you argue from the fact that the in these powers that are reflective on themselves, right? Their first object is not their own what act, right? And this is true about the reason as well as about the the will, right?

[58:40] Huh? So the first will is not your will to will, but it's something other than willing that you will, right? Just like the first thing reason understands is not its understanding, but it understands something else, right? Once it understands something else, then it can understand its understanding, right? So the first thing the will wills is the last end, and that can't therefore be its own what act, huh?

[59:08] So that's one way Thomas shows this more in the act of the reason than the last end, huh? Okay. And let's touch upon here right then. Okay. Goes back to the. Okay.

[59:43] Now what about the third thing here? Third objection. To the third, it should be said, that the good, by reason, is represented to the will as its what? Object. And in so far as it comes under the order of reason, it pertains to the genus of the moral, and it causes the moral goodness in the act of the will. For reason is the beginning of human and what?

[1:00:16] Moral acts. At times to point that out, you know that reason, in sense, is more proper to man than desire, right? Because you have desire even in the animals, right? And you have even you know what they call natural desire in the plants and so on, right? So you know the the they'll say this plant wants a lot of sun or wants a lot of water or something.

[1:00:49] You know these what's that tree that uh magnolia is it? The one that I just get some of your your your pipes your water pipes and so on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of this really dangerous thing, I guess, because I really want water, right? And something in your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so so wanting is not peculiar to man, right? Everything in the universe wants in some way either by natural wanting or by you know sense.

[1:01:18] So, but it's because he has reason that he has this particular kind of wanting that we call the will, right? So it's really the reason makes man to be what man. So we define man as an animal that has what reason, right? Rather than animal that has will. That that follows upon the fact that he has reason. So it's reason that more than anything else that makes man to be man, as Aristotle says there in the tenth book of the Ethics, huh?

[1:01:46] Okay. Now does the goodness of the will take a break now? Just take a break.