De Anima (On the Soul)
131. Summa I, Q. 82, Art. 5: Irascible and Concupiscible in the Will, and an Introduction to Free Judgment (Liberum Arbitrium)
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/131-summa-i-q-82-art-5-irascible-and-concupiscible-in-the-will/

[0:00] I'm taking a little break between the first and the second article, so we we do so people don't hit. The article five now. And when he talked about the sense desire, the desire that follows upon the senses, and by the senses I mean not only the outward senses, sight, you know, hearing, and the rest of them, but also the inward senses, right? We distinguish between the concupiscible and the irascible, okay.

[0:33] And the concupiscible was concerned with what is pleasant or agreeable to the senses, and what is painful or disagreeable to the senses, okay. And if something is agreeable to my senses, I like it, huh? So if candy is agreeable to my senses, I like candy. Okay, that's the first emotion there, regard to what is agreeable to the senses. And

[1:03] if I don't have what I like, then I want something, right? That's the second one. But if I get the candy or whatever it is I like, then I have joy or pleasure, right? Okay. And you have the same three similar ones regard to what is disagreeable, right? I find salmon disagreeable to my sense of taste, right? Doesn't please my sense of taste, huh? You know, the only good fish I see is a disguised fish.

[1:30] You can't disguise salmon, okay? So I dislike or hate salmon, so yeah, okay. And therefore, I what turn away from it when it's on the menu. But if I go to somebody's house and they serve salmon and I'm forced to eat it, then I'm. Sad, and I try to keep a cheerful face, but I am sad.

[1:55] But then, sometimes a difficulty arises in getting what you want, right? You may have to make an effort, right? Or sometimes a difficulty in avoiding something you want to avoid, okay? Or sometimes a difficulty in in getting rid of something that's causing you pain, okay? So there can arise the hope of overcoming the difficulties of the good, right? But if you don't think you can, then it falls into despair, right?

[2:32] Or there can be fear in regard to the difficulties of avoiding something bad, right? But if you think you can overcome them, then it's got a kind of boldness, you know, and confidence. And if something is, you know, if you're inflicting pain on me or something like that, and I think I can do something about it, I get kind of angry about it and try to make you stop causing me pain, huh?

[2:54] Okay. So that doesn't simply arise from the senses, the outward senses, huh? And what is agreeable or disagreeable to them? Because the fight might be what painful to the senses. But animals, as Aristotle says, they'll fight over what food and sex and so on, huh? And so the irascible is kind of the defender of the concupiscible, okay? So are there these two kinds of of desiring powers in the will, you know, or in the rational part?

[3:32] What Thomas is saying, no, because the universal that we saw of the will that extends to all things, all good things, huh? There will be acts of the will that have some likeness to the emotions we talked about, huh? But love in the will and hope in the will will be in the same will, not two different wills. There's not one will whereby we hope and another will by which we love, right?

[3:58] By the sense order, there's there's one group, one ability whereby we we like and want what is pleasant, and another one by which we are moved to what fight for it or to, you know, repel something that's preventing us from getting these things, or okay.

[4:23] So Thomas again always starts on the opposite. To the fifth, thus one proceeds. It seems that the irascible and the concupiscible ought to be distinguished in the higher desiring in the will, which is the will.

[4:42] For the concupiscible power, right, is said from, and I can translate as sense desire, right? Concupiscendo, huh? And the irascible from getting angry, right? That's the most, not the only emotion irascible, but the one that's most manifest, right? Interesting. A lot of friendship there. We had a little text there where Shakespeare has a nice metaphor. He says they're in the very wrath of love. Clubs cannot part them.

[5:17] And you know, why is he called love metaphorically, right? Wrath, right? Well, because of very dislikeness, they're both very what? Strong. Strong, yeah. Yeah. And just as when they have this sexual, let's say, concupiscence, it's hard to separate them, right? So likewise, when they're angry and they're fighting, it's hard to separate them. You need a club in both cases. But these two powers are named from those ones that kind of stand out, huh?

[5:48] That's why the virtues that regulate these, if you look at the secunda secundae Thomas will take up with the cardinal virtues, the virtues that resemble them. So when he takes up temperance, which is concerned with concupiscence, he'll take up after that mildness, which is concerned with what anger, because in both cases you have a strong emotion, a strong passion that needs to be what restrained, see? Unlike courage, where you have something that's gonna what you gotta be kind of pushed forward, right?

[6:22] These things you gotta kind of be pulled back, you know? Okay. To become milder or chaste and so on, you have to pull back, right?

[6:34] Um. For there are some concupiscence which cannot pertain to the sense desire, but only to the understanding desire, which is the will. Just as the concupiscence of what wisdom, right? About which it is said in the sixth book, sixth chapter of the book of wisdom, concupiscentia sapientiae, right? Okay.

[7:02] The desire for wisdom leads one to the what eternal kingdom, right? Okay. There's also an anger which cannot pertain to the sense desire, but to the understanding desire only, as when we are angry against what vices, huh? Whence Jerome says, his commentary on Matthew or homily on Matthew 13, uh, that the what hate of vices we possess in our what irascible, huh? Therefore, the irascible and the concupiscible, right,

[7:48] ought to be distinguished in the sense in the intellectual desire, just as there in the sense ability to desire. Okay. Now you should know this is very clear when Thomas is at the end of the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles that the names of the emotions, the eleven emotions that we talked about before, um, the names of the emotions are carried over, right, to the names of what acts of the will, or carried over to acts of the will.

[8:27] But when you carry them over, you drop out in this bodily aspect of the emotion, because the will is, as we saw before, something immaterial, right? And you keep just the formal aspect of it, huh? Okay, like in the case of concupiscence, it would be the desire for the good, right? Okay, but not the what bodily disturbance and so on, the excitement that goes with the what emotional desire for something.

[9:00] Okay, in the same way, anger, something like that, that's carried over to the will. You drop off the bodily change that takes place when you get angry. Okay, so there's a problem then with these words. And what's interesting, if you look at the the whole picture there in the Summa Contra Gentiles you'll show what how the names are carried over to the acts of the will, and then how they later on carried over to to God's will, right?

[9:27] Hmm. And none of them can be carried over to God, of course, for a reason the bodily aspect of them, right? Yeah. But for most of them, even the formal aspect can't be carried over. Yeah. So strictly speaking, there's no desire in God. Yeah. Because desire is for a good you don't have. Have. Yeah. Okay. And there's no fear in God, right? Yeah. Because nothing can harm him, right?

[9:58] And so on. And of the eleven emotions, Thomas will say only two of the names, right, can finally be carried over to God, and they are love and joy. Hmm. Okay. But all those that have to do with the bad can't be carried over, or those that deal with the good, but the good you don't have, like desire or hope, right? Hmm. They can't be carried over to God.

[10:27] And then he'll point out how sometimes you carry over these names metaphorically, right? Hmm. In fact, metaphor means carry over. Yeah. It means. Ah. The reason is some likeness, right? So God's will to punish the sinner is metaphorically called anger, right? Hmm. So just as the angry man punishes out of anger, God punishes out of His will for justice. Okay. That's a metaphor, right? Hmm. But properly only love and joy can be said in God huh

[11:07] But I just mentioned here, right? And this is one way in which things are named, where you what carry a name over, but drop part of its meaning so it can be carried over. We saw that with the word undergoing. The first meaning of undergoing is passion, where you are acted upon in a way that's what destructive of you, right? And then we carried over to the what to the senses, huh?

[11:38] They're undergoing is not what destructive, right? But there's something bodily there too, huh? But the eye is being what perfected, right? By receiving the colors of things and so on, it's seen now, right? And finally carried over to understanding, huh? Which is altogether immaterial, undergoing, right? So you keep on dropping something out in order to what? That's only one way the words are carried over, but that's

[12:11] important way, huh? But this is another example of that same way here, where the names of the emotions are carried over and placed upon the acts of the will, but you drop part of the meaning of them out of them, The whole bodily aspect of them.

[12:28] okay. Thomas will be pointing that out there in the thinking. So again, there's a possibility of equivocation here, right? But the words are equivocal by reason. Moreover, as is commonly said, charity is in the concupiscible. right. Now, charity is a kind of what? Of love, right? And love was first of all the name of a what?

[13:00] Emotion in the concupiscent appetite. I love candy, you know. Remember my daughter saying, "You know, I don't like this. I love it, right?" But that's the first meaning of love, huh? But sometimes we get stuck on that.

[13:18] Hope was one of the emotions that was in the what? Irascible, spes, huh? Because hope is involving what? An effort to overcome the difficulties of getting the good, right? Okay, that's why Shakespeare says, "A hope is a lover's staff." You see,

[13:41] so you hope to get what you love, right? But it's an effort, huh? What supports you in effort? It's hope. That's going to be carried over eventually to the will, right? And even to you know, theological virtue, huh? You see, but it implies that there's a good here, difficult to what? Obtain, right? Huh? You keep that idea, but you drop the bodily aspect of it, huh?

[14:13] So there are names that are taken from the emotions of the concubisable, right? And names that are taken from the emotions of the irascible, right? That are carried over to the will, right? But there aren't two different abilities or powers up here because what's divided at the lower level is unified at the what? Higher level.

[14:35] Moreover, in the book about the spirit and the soul, a book which falsely attributed to Augustine, right? Huh? And so Thomas is always saying that book doesn't have too much authority because that read by Augustine, you know. But sometimes he always try to you know understand it in a way that's not too critical.

[14:54] Moreover, in the book about the spirit and the soul, it is said that these powers, the irascible, concupiscible, and rational, the soul has before it should add to the body. Well, of course, Thomas says that's a mistake right there because the soul doesn't exist, right? Right. But God creates the soul when the body has been prepared already. But no power of the sense part is of the soul only, but of the what?

[15:22] Union of body and soul, as was said above. Therefore, the irascible and concupiscible are in the will. That's can be challenging in many ways.

[15:37] But against this is what Gregory, Nyssa, and some of the notes in Nemesius, another church father, I guess. That the irrational part of the soul, right, is divided into the desiderativum, in other words, for the concupiscent appetite, and the irascible appetite, and the same Damascene says in the second book of the Orthodox Faith, and the philosopher Aristotle, that's by Andronicus, says in the third book about the soul that the will is in reason, meaning in the rational part of the soul, the immaterial part of the soul, and in the irrational part of the soul are, in Greek, would be epithumia, which they translate back to concupiscentia right, et thymos ira, right.

[16:35] Now Thomas says, I answer that it should be said that the irascible and concupiscent are not parts of the intellectual ability to desire, which is called the will, because as has been said above, a power which is ordered to some object according to a very common notion is not diversified by differences that are special, and that are contained under that common reason, just as because sight regards the visible according to the

[17:18] definition of the colored, the seeing powers are not multiplied according to their various species of colors. If, however, there was some power which was of white in so far as white, and not in so far as it was colored, then it would be diversified by the power which was of black in so far as it is what black, right? Okay, but the object of the eye is what color, right?

[17:41] Colored, so it sees white as a color, and sees black as a color, and green and blue as colors, right? It's not limited, therefore, to seeing white.

[17:56] Now he says the sense power does not regard the common what definition of good, yeah, because the sense doesn't apprehend or grasp the universal, yeah, only the singular. That's why Boethius is always saying a thing is singular when sensed, universal when understood,

[18:17] and therefore he says according to diverse reasons, of particular goods are diversified the parts of the sensibility to desire, for the concupiscent ability to desire regards the proper notion of the good in so far as it is what pleasing, delectable, right, agreeable to the sense, right. And suitable to one's what nature, right? That's interesting. How the senses don't really know the good, but ultimately, then as what is agreeable to the senses, right?

[18:57] Okay. And so, if you live by what is agreeable to your senses, right, then adultery would be fine, right, and fornication would be fine, etc., etc., right, and sleeping in on Sunday morning and so on would be fine, right? Because all these things can be agreeable to your what senses, right?

[19:20] Because what is agreeable to the senses is often a reasonable thing to do, right? Then there is a conflict set up in the man, right?

[19:33] But the irascible regards the good another way, according as it is what repulsive or attacking. That infers some kind of what harm, right? Huh? Okay. What are

[19:53] you saying? Oh no, no. Actually, I translated it correctly. There, irascible regards another reason of the good, right? Namely, that it what it repulses, right, or it attacks what would infer some harm. Okay.

[20:13] So that's a little bit of higher power in a sense, irascible. And that's all Plato in the Republic. There, when he when he divides the parts of the soul, he represents the parts of the city. He has the rulers of the city, the army, and then the common people. Right, The reason, the irascible, the concupiscible, and he kind of keep the common people in line there through the irascible.

[20:41] Okay. You kind of see that even in the saints, right? You know the stories always told is of Saint Benedict, right? The patron of Europe. There, he's being being tempted with what loose woman around the place, right? And he's supposed to have jumped into a what? Brown. Yeah, yeah. That's not very pleasant to the senses, but I'm sure he got his mind off the woman, huh? See, or Thomas, you know, his own flesh and blood were going to get him out of this stupid, you know, mendicant order, right?

[21:17] And so they had some loose woman, right? And Thomas was supposed to have picked up the poker, right? And she got out of there, and he put a cross over the door, right? You see, but there was a little bit of what anger on top, yeah, irascible. You see, you see. So the irascible, in some sense,

[21:38] is a defender, and you might say the concupiscible, right? Okay, it's a different. Reason of the good, right? So the animal will fight over food, right? You throw a piece of meat between two dogs, and the two dogs will be what? Fighting, huh? Well, the meat is pleasant to eat, but the fight is not pleasant, right? And they get injured, maybe one gets killed even. But a different reason why they do that, right?

[22:09] They see this one as an enemy, right? Okay. Or the little animal may see the animal that's going to eat it, right? And it runs away, huh? It runs not because it's fun to run, at least, but maybe getting scratched as you run through the woods, but because you see this as an enemy, huh? So it involves maybe one of the internal senses, huh? And especially the the one they call the estimative power, right?

[22:38] Okay. Because not that the color of the wolf is disagreeable to the senses of the animal that runs away. It's not like if you put your paw on the something hot, you know. you see. That's disagreeable with the senses. The wolf is not like that. It's not hurting your senses, but something in the animal tells him this is what something to be fled, and so it runs away, okay?

[23:05] And the fear tends to do that, huh? There's always a bodily change involved in this, huh? One guy had been in the Normandy landing, was saying, you know, there are two kinds of guys in Normandy landing. He says, those who did it in their pants right then and there, and those who couldn't do it for a week. Yeah, yeah. But obviously, your body has been, you know, affected by this horrible situation, right?

[23:40] But the will regards good under the common definition of good, huh? And therefore, there are not diversified in it, which is which is the what intellectual ability to desire, right? One doesn't distinguish in that or not diversifying different what desiring powers, right? So that in the intellectual ability to desire, there would be one power that would be irascible and another concupiscible. Just as in making a comparison on the part of the understanding, there's not multiplied what diverse powers, although they're multiplied on the part of the what senses, huh?

[24:23] So I have one sense to know color, and I have another sense to know sound, another sense to know the taste of something, right? Okay. But reason, my reason, I can talk about color, right? I talk about painting, I talk about color. I say reason, I can talk about sound, right? I can talk about the taste of things and so on, right? So the senses are what the lower are divided into many, right?

[24:52] But there's one understanding, right, that knows all these things. Well, it's like that with the desiring powers, right? There's two different desiring powers that follow upon the senses, concupiscible and irascible, and there's only one will that follows upon what reason, huh? That's because of universality, because of the immateriality. Okay.

[25:22] Okay, now in the part of the first objection, Thomas is pointing out that when you use the word concupiscentia there for sapientia or sapientiae, you're using the word in a what different sense, right? The word has been carried over from the emotion, right, and applied to the act of the will, but you drop out. The bodily aspect of the meaning, right? And then you keep the what higher, right?

[25:51] I mean, the more formal aspect of it, but not the material aspect of it. So, as to the first, therefore, it should be said that love, concupiscence, or desire, and things of this sort, are taken in two ways. In one, sometimes as they are certain what passions, right? With a certain coming with a certain what disturbance of the soul, right? Concitazione. The the one meaning that they give in the dictionary would be disturbance of the soul, right?

[26:23] With kind of a commotion of the soul because it's a bodily thing, huh? And thus they are commonly what taken, right? Because that's what's most known to you. So, like I mentioned, I teach the love and friendship course, and I sometimes come in the first day of class, and I say, "What is love?" And they say, "What's an emotion?" I say, "Well, there is a love which is an emotion, yes, but of course, anger is an emotion, fear is an emotion.

[26:51] You're still defining it for me. But that's the answer at first that love is a what emotion, right? Because that's what's more known to us, huh? And I remember, you know, I must have been in grade school. I don't know what grade I was in, but sitting in church there and listening to the sermon on Sunday, and the priest talking about the love of God, and love to me meant something, you know, a woman or something, a girl for an object or something like that, or candy or something, right?

[27:16] And I said it didn't seem to fit, you know, talking about the love of God. It didn't. I was thinking of love in terms of what the emotion, right? And I think a lot of people do think of that, right? But the love of God is not really an emotion. There can be sometimes an overflow from the love of God and the will that affects the emotions, right?

[27:38] You know that famous scene there in Saint Teresa of Avila there, which came out of the cell there, right? And she started dancing. You know, there's an overflow, right? There's nothing there, but an overflow into the body, right? But but the love of God itself is essentially what in the will, right? And it can be there even when when the emotions are what are kind of what down, might say, huh?

[28:04] Okay. Just like there can be, you know, sometimes when a man understands some truth that he's been trying to figure out for some time, the movement of the will is so strong, rejoicing, you might say, and this truth discovered, that your body starts to feel what better, right? You see, okay. So the will can influence the emotions, but it's not the same thing.

[28:33] In another way, it signifies a simple affection without a passion or a disturbance of the soul. And thus they are an act of the will, right? And in this way, it is also attributed to what the angels and even to God, right? But as they are thus taken, they do not pertain to diverse powers, but to only one power, which is called the what will, right? Okay.

[28:59] So you know, in some of those visions that St. Teresa of Avila or someone gets to the devil, you know, he's represented as a little man that's that's all angry because he can't get her to fall for his you know temptations that he's giving her, right? You know, with God in the sense, represents the fact that there is something like anger in the will of the what devil, right?

[29:26] You see. But it's not anger in the sense that there is something bodily there, right? Yeah. And that same disturbance, but there is this, there is frustration. The devil, right? Okay. And you have a kind of fear too, you know, and the devils are going to be, when Christ's going to send them out, right? You know, come before the time they say, right, and so on, right?

[29:51] But that's a fear that is in the will, rather than this bodily fear that we have when you get in the battlefield or something. Okay, and that disturbance we have with fear, you know, can't function properly, right? Because of your fear sometimes. Ah.

[30:15] Okay, but as they are taken thus, he says they do not pertain to diverse powers, but to one power only, which is called the will. They say it's more explicit the way the name is carried over. If you look at the last part of the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, huh? Not only that there are two senses here, but the first meaning is what the emotion, right?

[30:42] You see, we name things as we what know them, become aware of them, and our knowledge starts with our senses, right? So the emotions or the feelings, as we call them, right, are much tied up with our our senses, huh? And therefore, we name the feelings, the emotions, before we name the acts of the what will, huh? And of course, you follow the history of human thought.

[31:08] You see that that same thing happens with the senses and the reason, huh? Most people have a hard time distinguishing reason from the imagination, thinking from imagining. Even John Locke, you know, and Berkeley they confuse the image with the thought, huh? You see. But the but the thought is a bit is something like the image, huh? And sometimes the Arab philosophers will say, you know, thinking is imagining to the intellect.

[31:37] You see. But but then you're using the word imagine or the word image. In a different meaning, right? But just as the image is a likeness of something singular, so the thought is a likeness of something, but universal. Yeah, so there is a likeness there between the image and the thought, but they're not the same thing. But but Locke and Berkeley and other famous philosophers they mix up the two.

[32:05] It takes an Aristotle or Thomas to really see clearly the difference between the two. The same way here, right? People are often mixing up the love, which is an emotion, with the love, which is an act of the will.

[32:19] People get married sometimes it's just a love that is an emotion. They don't really have that love which they need, and they need that love which is in the will. Right? It might start with the emotion, but that's not enough to get married. You know, you know, you're not, as I say, the the kids there. I say the the priest doesn't say, you know, you have wonderful feelings about her, and you have wonderful feelings.

[32:38] I can declare you man, and wife No, no, you're act You're choosing each other. Right, you know. Okay, I was at that funeral before I went out. Thing and the guy was talking to one priest there. No, no, it was one of the sermons, yeah, one of the sermons in the church. one of the visiting priests, but he was talking about. He had a couple there. He's preparing for marriage, right?

[33:05] He had come for a marriage preparation. So he asked the usual questions, right? And he says, "Do you think marriage is till death, right? " The girl said, "Yeah. " Okay, says no. He says, "Do you think you should be faithful? " She said, "Yeah. " No, no.

[33:23] He said, well, so the guy finally realized he used his way out, and he says, "Ah, give me another paper," he says, "and I'll sign whatever you want. " He says, "No, I want," he says. So he, he, of course, obviously refused to marry them, right? Can you imagine that kind of attitude, you know? She that she still wants to marry him after hearing? Yeah, but the priest's too nice.

[33:49] But to marry, you know, they got to really have goodwill. You got to really will this other person's good, right? And that's really, really something that the will does. Emotions, as such, don't do that because emotions really know or the senses, which are the basis of emotions. Immediate. They only know the good as what's agreeable to the senses. Yeah. See, and that's we, you know, what's good to my senses is my private good.

[34:22] You see, it's not the good of my spouse or my friend. You know, you see. Yeah, yeah. So this love of your neighbor has to be really an act of the of the will. Um. It's

[34:45] interesting, you know, if you read some of those who are. made their life to to speak of the sacred heart, right? You know, kind of interesting what they say. They say that you're supposed to start with the physical heart, the bodily heart of Christ, right? That's where you begin. You know, that's you know they represent the heart, the physical heart itself. And from there, you're supposed to go to the love, which is an emotion, right?

[35:19] The bodily love that Christ has, huh? For us. And then from there, he's supposed to ascend to the love, which is in his human will. And from there, he's supposed to ascend to the love, which is in his what divine will, right? Well, no, it's those four things there, right? Huh? The physical heart, then the love, which is an emotion. Than the love which is an act of the what will, but of his human will, right?

[35:47] And finding the love which is in his divine will, but it's just following the order in which what from the sensible, right, to what cannot be sensed, right? Okay, but as I mentioned at the end of the Summa Contra Gentiles it talked about how the name of of this emotion can be carried over to the act of what the human will, and sometimes all the way over to the what act of the divine will, right?

[36:20] But they can never be carried over at the bodily aspect, now only because the formal aspect. But only two of the eleven emotions, as a formal aspect, can be carried over to God's will, and they are love and what joy, joy, yeah.

[36:41] Aristotle speaks of God as having a simple joy, right? What's that? Aristotle speaks of the joy of God, yeah, He's in the eighth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, huh? But a simple, pure joy, God. That's right. Amazing to see that he sees that. Is this other thing this, Eudemian Ethics? That's something different from the Nicomachean Ethics? Yeah, yeah. And there is some overlap because some of the books are common, you know, to both.

[37:10] But there is, you know, some things in one that's not in the other. The Nicomachean Ethics is the more famous one. Thomas wrote a commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, you know, book by book, all ten books. He doesn't have a commentary on the Eudemian Ethics, but he knows it and he refers to it a number of times. There is some interesting things in there that aren't in the Nicomachean Ethics, but Nicomachean Ethics is the basic one to really study.

[37:33] You have a commentary too, of Thomas on it. Okay, the second objection now, right? Yes. He is talking about charity being concupiscible, hope in the irascible. Well, that's in the original what names, right? Love names an emotion in the concupiscible, hope names an emotion in the irascible, right? When those names are carried over to the will, you not only drop out the bodily aspect, but you also drop out the idea that these are acts of two different powers, right?

[38:12] Okay, but now acts of one power, namely the will. To the second, it should be said that the will can be called irascible, right? Being like irascible, in so far as it fights against the bad, right? But not from the impetus of passion, right? But from the judgment of what reason, right? And the same way it can be called concupiscible. On account of the what desire for the good, right?

[38:46] Not because of the bodily aspect, and thus, in the irascible and concupiscible we say are charity and hope. That is in, they are in the will, according as as in order to acts of this sort,

[39:03] and then he applies that to that apocryphal book on the spirit of the soul, right? Thus, also one can understand what is said in the book of about the spirit of the soul, that the irascible and concupiscible are of the soul, before you had the body. That we ever understand by this the order of nature, he says, and not of time, right? Because the soul does just.

[39:31] Although he says it's not necessary to what give much faith to the words of that book, okay? There is many things in that not correct, right? But apparently, it's a book that people thought belonged to Augustine, right? And therefore, it had authority because it was thought to be a book of Augustine, but they gradually realized it didn't. Just like there were some books they thought were of Aristotle, you know, which they gradually realized were not by Aristotle.

[39:56] So. So we're up to the liberum arbitrium right? So we got to go through that question, then we'll get to that more detailed question on the understanding. Yeah. Question eighty-four. It takes a couple sessions to get to the liberum arbitrium free judgment. He usually calls free will, but Thomas always uses that term free judgment. Interesting. Because unless you are free in your judgment, your will would not be free.

[40:39] If The judgment was simply, you know, determined by nature, right? Then the the desiring power would not be free. Are you getting that from Saint Augustine. Yeah, yeah, it's it It's it's something that you find the Latin, you know. In English, we never seem to use that, you know, but but sometimes they, you know, they'll translate free will, but that's not really the translation. I see arbitrium means judgment, right?

[41:14] And t here is a point that Thomas is making with the words that are used in Latin, you know, to with the words free will. That's pretty important. But

[41:29] but part of this this free judgment goes back to the fact of the complete universality of reason, and t here is nothing, you know, however bad in this world, right? That reason. Couldn't see something good in it, huh? If you annoy me, let's say, right, huh? Then getting rid of you, I can see some good in that, right? See, even things as horrible as murder, right? I can see something good in it, right?

[42:05] I can see something good in robbing the bank, a lot of money, right? I can see something good in adultery, right? I can see something good in in sleeping in on Sunday morning.

[42:22] It's so funny when I was in Quebec, you know, in the old days, huh? You usually go to an early mass, right, and then you go and have breakfast someplace, and you want to look at the newspaper or buy a magazine or something, you know, if you're by yourself or something, and you weren't allowed to buy a magazine there on Sunday morning until afternoon. I said, well, if anybody's kept from going to mass because of you can buy a magazine.

[42:48] in your newspaper It's kind of silly thing I thought you know the time you know but that was the idea you know interesting. It's like sometimes you can't buy alcohol someplace on Sunday you know you couldn't buy a newspaper magazine there in the the restaurant or you know until 12 o'clock or one o'clock or whatever it was. and some people got eight o'clock mass you can't buy a Sunday newspaper at nine o'clock or something.

[43:14] It's kind of silly. So I mean there's nothing you know that you know obviously going to mass is preventing from reading newspaper at eight o'clock right right. So there's nothing so bad that I can't see something good in it right. And and even you know the famous what Crime and Punishment right. Isn't Dostoevsky's famous novel the man is going to murder an old lady not that he's anything really against her she's not knowing him or offending him he wants to simply show that he's above the law right.

[43:52] Well if everybody else is under the law and I'm above the law then above everybody else right. So I see in a perverted way there something good right. You know the red light there is for you to stop not for me. i go right through you heard that joke about the red light there when the guy gets in the car into the other guy and he drives along and goes the red light.

[44:28] Did you you knew you went the red light goes on another red light he goes to that. And he said who taught you to drive it's all my uncle taught me to drive. So he goes driving along also he comes to a green light it comes to a stop. What are you stopping for? I mean my uncle might be coming too he said. Every

[44:57] one time when I was a movie or a sketch like that where a guy had invented something you know you press it and the red light turns green right. Oh. So you drive you know drive along yeah yeah right. Turns green you go right through right. You know probably they probably could make some machine that would do that. The guy invented that thing.

[45:20] So I can you know take just about anything right because of the universality of reason Yeah. And even the worst things I can see something what good in them right. Even something as terrible as say suicide you know say euthanasia all these things are going like that. But one can see oh yeah I'm leaving them when they're suffering or something right. You see, okay. So you see that the ability, right, the freedom of the judgment, right?

[45:52] That if I want something bad enough, my will can what move my reason to find something good enough, right? murdering you Or y you stand between me and a promotion, let's say. Or you, or or if you are out of the way, you know you don't know enough to retire or something or get out of my way, so I eliminate you and then I move up, right?

[46:24] So I can always find something, some some good, right? Even the most terrible acts. I mean, how many reasons can a student find for not studying? Well, there is a party, or there is a nice weather, or there is

[46:43] right. Reasons. Back my little things here, friend.