Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act 9781108986120, 9781108833646, 2021001517, 2021001518, 9781108986533

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THOMAS AQUI NAS ON THE METAPHY SICS O F T H E HU M A N A C T

This book offers a novel account of Aquinas’s theory of the human act. It argues that Aquinas takes a human act to be a composite of two power-exercises, where one relates to the other as form to matter. The formal component is an act of the will, and the material component is a power-exercise caused by the will, which Aquinas refers to as the “commanded act.” The book also argues that Aquinas conceptualizes the act of free choice as a hylomorphic composite: it is, materially, an act of the will, but it inherits a form from reason. As the book aims to show, the core idea of Aquinas’s hylomorphic action theory is that the exercise of one power can structure the exercise of another power, and this provides a helpful way to think of the presence of cognition in conation and of intention in bodily movement. can laurens lo¨ we is Postdoctoral Researcher at the HumboldtUniversität, Berlin, and a Member of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities “Human Abilities.” He has published numerous articles on medieval philosophy in journals including the British Journal for the History of Philosophy and Vivarium.

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THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE METAPHYSICS OF THE HUMAN ACT CAN LAURENS LÖWE Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities “Human Abilities,” Humboldt-Universität, Berlin

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University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108833646 doi: 10.1017/9781108986120 © Can Laurens Löwe 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Löwe, Can Laurens, author. title: Thomas Aquinas on the metaphysics of the human act / Can Laurens Löwe. description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2021001517 (print) | lccn 2021001518 (ebook) | isbn 9781108833646 (hardback) | isbn 9781108986533 (paperback) | isbn 9781108986120 (ebook) subjects: lcsh: Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274. | Human acts. | Metaphysics. classification: lcc b765.t54 l69 2021 (print) | lcc b765.t54 (ebook) | ddc 171/.2–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001517 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001518 isbn 978-1-108-83364-6 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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For Elise

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Contents

Lists of Figures and Tables Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

page x xi xiii 1

Introduction part i: the general framework

9

1

11

What Is a Human Act? 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7

Introduction The General Metaphysics of Powers Acts, Actions, and Passions Human Acts: The Choice-Based Account Aquinas against Aristotle on Choice Why Choice? The Task ahead of Us: The Two Composites

11 11 14 22 28 31 33

part ii: choice hylomorphism

35

2 Practical Judgment

37

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

Introduction Judgments: Attitude and Content Precepts about Doable and Makeable Things Precepts, Means, and Ends: The Logical Form of Precepts The Logical Form Fleshed Out: Two Distinctions

3 The Judgment of Choice 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

37 38 42 48 50

57

Introduction Precepts Not Subject to Free Assent Precepts Subject to Free Assent Free Assent and Second-Order Judgment Conclusion: The Judgment of Choice Explained

vii

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57 57 62 66 72

Contents

viii

4 Volition and Its Dependence on Judgment 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

Introduction Volitions and Their Direction of Fit Volitions and the Good in General The Dependence of Volition on Judgment: Terminological Preliminaries The Object’s Final- and Formal-Causal Influence Efficient Causation and the Will’s Self-motion Two Arguments for Intellectualism Choice and Its Dependence on the Judgment of Choice

5 Choice: Its Intrinsic and Its Extrinsic Form 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

Introduction Extrinsic and Intrinsic Forms: Original and Derivative Intentionality The Structural Difference between Volition and Judgment Volitional Form, Part 1: Attitude Volitional Form, Part 2: Content Choice Hylomorphism Explained

74 74 74 79 81 86 89 92 97

100

100 100 104 105 107 111

part iii: act hylomorphism

115

6 The Hylomorphic Structure of the Human Act

117

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9

Introduction The Act of Command, Part 1: The Suárezian Reading The Act of Command, Part 2: Instrumental Causation The Act of Use and the Commanded Act The Case for Act Hylomorphism Developing Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism: Part 1 Developing Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism: Part 2 How Choice Explains the Human Act Conclusion

7 The Ontology of Bodily Human Acts 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7

Introduction The Distinction between Immanent and Transeunt Acts Immanent and Transeunt Acts as Components of the Human Act The Distinction between Complete and Incomplete Acts Incomplete Acts: Power and Mereology Complete Acts and Their Instantaneous Character Heterogeneity and Formal Causation

8 The Ontology of Mental Human Acts 8.1 Introduction 8.2 The Sensory Power of Memory 8.3 The Commanded Act of Reminiscing

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117 117 122 126 129 133 135 139 146

147

147 149 153 160 163 171 174

178

178 179 183

Contents 8.4 Use and the Commanded Act of Reminiscing 8.5 Control and Impediments: Starting and Stopping 8.6 Conclusion

ix 186 190 192

9 Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism Today

193

Appendix: Judgment and Composition and Division Bibliography Index

203 208 222

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Figures and Tables

4.1 4.2 5.1 6.1 7.1 9.1 A.1

Figures Aquinas’s taxonomy of strivings The causal roles of reason and will in choice Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism: extrinsic and intrinsic forms The bodily human act and its two bearers Aquinas and contemporary action theories Propositional versus judicative composition

page 76 98 112 138 160 197 207

Tables 2.1 Precept types 7.1 Immanent/transeunt acts and incomplete/complete acts

x

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55 163

Acknowledgments

This monograph is based on my PhD dissertation, which I wrote at the University of Leuven under the supervision of Russell Friedman and defended in 2016. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Russ, who encouraged me to work on this topic and from whose helpful comments this book benefited immensely. I also want to thank Martin Pickavé, Carlos Steel, and Andrea Robiglio, who served as examiners of my dissertation. I am particularly grateful to Martin, who provided incredibly detailed and incisive comments on the dissertation. I am also very grateful to Jeffrey Brower, who was my academic mentor during a postdoctoral fellowship at Purdue University from 2018 to 2020. Jeff’s work inspired the book’s distinctively hylomorphic theme, and he organized a workshop in Park City, Utah, in August 2019, which allowed me to discuss an earlier version of the book manuscript with him as well as with Gloria Frost, Scott MacDonald, and Robert Pasnau. The book benefited significantly from the insightful comments of the participants of this workshop. Finally, I want to thank two anonymous referees at Cambridge University Press, whose extensive and helpful comments led to important revisions of several key chapters and thereby greatly improved the book. I also owe a debt of gratitude to several institutions. First, I am grateful to the University of Leuven for providing optimal work conditions for writing my dissertation. Second, I want to thank the Flemish Research Council for funding my graduate research as well as a subsequent postdoctoral fellowship at Leuven. Third, I want to thank Purdue University for the above-mentioned postdoctoral fellowship, which allowed me to turn my dissertation into a book. Finally, I want to thank the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities “Human Abilities” in Berlin, under the direction of Dominik Perler and Barbara Vetter, for a postdoctoral fellowship that allowed me to add the finishing touches to the book in spring 2020. xi

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xii

Acknowledgments

I am thankful to the following people for discussion and comments on parts of the book. First, I want to thank my colleagues while a graduate student at Leuven, notably Jenny Pelletier, Luca Gili, and Michael Jaworzyn. Second, I benefited a great deal from discussions with colleagues at Purdue, notably, Michael Augustin, Samuel Bennett, Morganna Lambeth, James Mollison, and Matthew Kroll. I also want to express my gratitude to the participants of the 2018 Cornell Summer Colloquium in Medieval Philosophy as well as the participants of the Midwestern Medieval Philosophy Colloquium at the University of Notre Dame in 2019. Their comments led to considerable revisions of Chapters 2 and 5. Hilary Gaskin and Hal Churchman deserve great thanks for their editorial work, and I also want to thank Vivian Knopf at HumboldtUniversität, Berlin as well as Imran Bake at Integra Software Services for proof-reading the manuscript. I am also grateful to Lisa Carter for being a great production manager and to Aloysias Saint Thomas for being a thorough and patient typesetter. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Elise Frketich, my wife, whose love, patience, and philosophical acumen have aided me immeasurably in writing this book. I am likewise very grateful to my parents, Angelica Löwe and Erdem Ergun, as well as my grandmother, Ülkü Ergun, for their continued support and encouragement.

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Abbreviations

Aquinas Comp. Theol. De 36 art. De Ver. De Virt. DEE DM DPN DSC In DA In DC In De Caus. In De Trin. In Div. Nom. In DSS In Eth. In Met. In Periherm. In Phys. In Pol. In Sent. Leon.

QDA QDP Quodl. IX

Compendium theologiae (Leon. 42) Responsio de 36 articulis (Leon. 42) Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (Leon. 22) Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus De ente et essentia (Leon. 43) Quaestiones disputatae de malo (Leon. 23) De principiis naturae (Leon. 43) De spiritualibus creaturis (Leon. 24, 2) Sententia libri De anima (Leon. 45, 1) Sententia super librum De caelo et mundo (Leon. 3) Super Librum de causis Super Boetium De trinitate (Leon. 50) Super librum Dionysii De divinis nominibus Sententia libri De sensu et sensato (Leon. 45, 2) Sententia libri Ethicorum (Leon. 47, 1–2) Sententia super Metaphysicam Expositio libri Peryermeneias. Editio altera retractata (Leon. 1*1) Sententia super Physicam (Leon. 2) Sententia libri Politicorum (Leon. 48) Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Sancti Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P.M., cura et studio fratrum praedicatorum (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 1882–) Quaestiones disputatae de anima (Leon. 24, 1) Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei Quodlibet 9 (Leon. 25, 1) xiii

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xiv SCG ST

List of Abbreviations Summa contra gentiles (Leon. 13–15) Summa theologiae (Leon. 4–12) (I, first part of ST; I-II, first part of the second part; II-II, second part of the second part; III, third part)

Aristotle DA EN Met. Phys.

On the Soul Nicomachean Ethics Metaphysics Physics

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Introduction

Human beings are beings capable of agency. Some of our actions are mundane doings, such as setting an alarm clock or buying a train ticket. Others are deeds that have a significant impact on our lives, such as joining a political resistance movement. On a now common view, it is essential to an action that it be something done intentionally (at least under some description).1 This means that we take an action to be something that we can explain and justify by appeal to reasons, that is, by appeal to considerations that speak in favor of it.2 An agent can explain why she bought a train ticket, for instance, by saying that she wanted to get from A to B, and she can justify her joining a resistance movement by appealing to her conviction that one ought to fight a totalitarian regime. Although we all know that we perform actions and that we provide reasons to explain them, it is not an easy matter to determine what actions 1

2

The ‘under some description’ addition is due to G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, 2nd edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), 37–47 and Donald Davidson, “Agency,” in Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 2nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 50. The idea is that one and the same event may be intentional under one description but not under another. If by shaving I accidentally cause a shaving cut, for instance, my shaving and my causing a shaving cut are the same event, for Anscombe and Davidson. But this event is intentional only under the description of being a shaving, whereas it is not intentional under the description of being a causing of a shaving cut. To be an action, as Davidson and Anscombe see it, an event must be intentional under at least one description. In what follows, for the sake of simplicity, I speak of ‘intentional acts’ instead of ‘acts that are intentional under some description’ because the ‘under some description’ qualification is not relevant for my discussion of Aquinas’s action theory. A brief remark about my use of quotation marks and italics: I use single quotation marks to mention terms. I use double quotation marks for quotation and to introduce terms of authors other than myself. When introducing a special term of my own, I use italics. I also use italics for emphasis and to refer to concepts rather than words. The terms ‘intentional’ and ‘reason-based’ are usually treated coextensively in contemporary action theory. Sometimes they are even treated as synonyms. See, e.g., Alvin I. Goldman, A Theory of Human Action (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 76. Anscombe, Intention, 25 has pointed out that one could do A intentionally without having any reason to do A. Anscombe has in mind idle behavior here. But see Davidson, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” in Essays on Action and Events, 6 for a (to my mind, convincing) argument to the effect that even idle behavior is reason-based inasmuch as there is a want on the part of the agent to perform this behavior, which, as Davidson argues, qualifies as a reason.

1

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2

Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act

are and how they are explained. Consider a simple example, the action of raising one’s arm. What makes this an action? Is it, as many philosophers from Aristotle onward have held, the presence of a mental act explaining the movement of the arm’s going up? If this is the case, then what is the relevant mental act – a choice, an intention, or perhaps a belief–desire pair? And how does the mental act explain the movement of the arm’s going up? Is the explanation causal or non-causal? Furthermore, what exactly is the action here? Is it the overt bodily movement of the arm’s going up accounted for by the mental act or is it rather the mental act accounting for the movement? Or is it perhaps the whole process comprising the mental act plus the bodily movement as its components? If so, what is the nature of this composition? And suppose that we have satisfactory answers to these questions regarding bodily actions, such as raising one’s arm, can we extend these to mental actions, such as trying to recall a piece of information? In contemporary philosophy, it is generally taken to be the task of the philosophy of action or action theory, as it is also called, to answer these sorts of questions. These questions are metaphysical in nature.3 They concern the ontology and aetiology of action. That is, they ask what kind of entity an action is and how it is explained. These are distinct from ethical questions pertaining to action, such as, ‘Is one morally obligated to fight a totalitarian regime?’ or metaethical questions, such as, ‘Does the goodness of an action derive from its intention or its outcome?’ Ethical and metaethical questions concern action in relation to a normative standard, asking, respectively, whether a certain action, such as fighting a totalitarian regime, fits a given normative standard and what the nature of this normative standard is. Action theory, in contrast, is an inquiry into action irrespective of its relation to such a normative standard. It is, as we might say, an inquiry into action from a descriptive point of view. This book investigates Thomas Aquinas’s (1225?–74) action theory in this descriptive sense. Aquinas developed a sophisticated theory of this kind. Its subject matter is what Aquinas calls the “human act” (actus humanus/actio humana/operatio humana4), this being, roughly, how he 3

4

See, e.g., “Action theory has traditionally addressed itself in the first place to the question of what, metaphysically, an action is” (Elijah Millgram, “Pluralism about Action,” in A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, ed. Timothy O’Connor and Constantine Sandis (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 90). To the best of my knowledge, Aquinas treats the terms ‘actus humanus,’ ‘actio humana,’ and ‘operatio humana’ equivalently. For ‘actus humanus,’ see, e.g., ST I-II, q. 6, Pr., Leon. 6: 55. For ‘actio humana,’ see, e.g., ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 6. For ‘operatio humana,’ see, e.g., In Eth. I, c. 1, Leon. 47, 1: 4, ll. 51–4. I prefer the translation ‘human act’ to ‘human action.’ The reason is that Aquinas takes an action to be only one part of the human act, the other being a passion, as we will see in Chapter 1. All translations from Latin to English in this book are mine.

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Introduction

3

refers to what we would today call an “intentional action.” (I say ‘roughly’ because, as we will see in Chapter 1, for Aquinas, a human act is not just an intentional action, but rather an intentional action that is free.) Aquinas’s theory discusses the ontology of the human act, examines its aetiology, and investigates the peculiarities of bodily as well as mental acts that we perform at will.5 Unlike philosophers of action today, Aquinas does not refer to his account of the human act as “action theory,” and it is likely that he would have found this term problematic. The reason is that the term ‘action theory’ refers to its subject of study, that is, intentional doings, simply as ‘actions’ relying on the now widespread view that actions are intentional doings (under some description). Aquinas does not share this view of action, as we will see in Chapter 1. He thinks that the terms ‘action’ (actio) and ‘act’ (actus) extend well beyond the realm of intentional agency. On his view, the term ‘action’ denotes the exercise of an active as opposed to a passive power, and to refer to the exercise of the latter type of power he uses the term ‘passion’ (passio). And ‘act’ denotes, very generally, the exercise of any kind of power, whether active or passive. For Aquinas, power-exercises, whether active or passive, are found throughout nature, even among inanimate beings. Human acts are but one kind of act among many. To facilitate the presentation of Aquinas’s theory, I follow his terminological conventions and henceforth speak of ‘human act’ where contemporary philosophers would speak of ‘action,’ and I will use ‘act’ and ‘action’ in Aquinas’s sense to refer, respectively, to a power-exercise in general and an active power-exercise more specifically. I will only use ‘action’ in the contemporary sense of ‘intentional doing’ when employing now standard terms such as ‘course of action,’ ‘action theory,’ and ‘action aetiology.’ Thus, when I speak of ‘Aquinas’s action theory,’ I thereby intend his theory of the human act, not his theory of active power-exercises. If Aquinas does not call his descriptive study of the human act “action theory,” then how does he refer to it instead, assuming he has a term at all? He does in fact have a term. He says that the investigation of the human act pertains to “moral philosophy” (philosophia moralis). This notion has a much broader meaning in Aquinas than it does today, however. Aquinas writes that the subject matter of moral philosophy is, very generally, the “human 5

Here and in the remainder of the book, I use the term ‘mental’ in the broad, contemporary sense. According to this broad sense, roughly, all acts displaying intentionality, including sensory ones, such as seeing or hearing, are mental. I do not understand by ‘mental’ what only pertains to what Aquinas calls “mens,” that is, the non-sensory, intellectual soul (housing the intellect and will) (De Ver., q. 10, a. 1, c., Leon. 22, 2, 1: 297, ll. 140–1).

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4

Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act

act ordered to the end.”6 For Aquinas, this study includes ethics, which, on his view, investigates whether a given human act is good by virtue of being conducive to human happiness, this being our ultimate end. Furthermore, it includes a series of metaethical reflections on the nature of normativity, in particular on whether claims about what ends we ought to pursue are grounded in facts about what kinds of beings we are. But it also contains a descriptive account of the human act, in particular of its ontology and aetiology, and this descriptive consideration, Aquinas thinks, is an indispensable prolegomenon to his ethics and metaethics. To see what human acts lead to happiness and why, he holds, we must first gain clarity on what the human act is and how it is explained.7 For this reason, Aquinas provides in a number of texts that belong to his moral philosophy detailed discussions of metaphysical issues related to the human act. His most detailed discussion of this sort can be found in the first fifth of his longest work on moral philosophy, the Prima secundae of the Summa theologiae, in particular in quaestiones 6–17 (1271).8 There, Aquinas investigates the powers of practical reason and will, their exercises, and the aetiology of the human act. Moreover, he offers an ontology of the human act. Only in a next step does he consider the features of “goodness and badness” (bonitas et malitia) (qq. 18–21), that is, the act’s normative dimension. Thus, Aquinas has a systematic action theory in the abovedefined descriptive sense, but he considers it a part of his moral philosophy. The present study is not the first to deal with Aquinas’s descriptive action theory. A number of scholars have investigated Aquinas’s sophisticated action aetiology as laid out in the Prima secundae, qq. 6–17.9 6

7

8

9

“[S]ubiectum moralis philosophiae est operatio humana ordinata in finem vel etiam homo prout est voluntarie agens propter finem” (In Eth. I, c. 1, Leon. 47, 1: 4, ll. 51–4). See also: “Moralis igitur consideratio . . . est humanorum actuum” (ST I-II, q. 6, Pr., Leon. 6: 55). “Quia igitur ad beatitudinem per actus aliquos necesse est pervenire, oportet consequenter de humanis actibus considerare, ut sciamus quibus actibus perveniatur ad beatitudinem, vel impediatur beatitudinis via” (ST I-II, q. 6, Pr., Leon. 6: 55). Aquinas says, e.g., in ST I, q. 84, Pr., Leon. 5: 313 that ST I-II in its entirety (which includes the descriptive action-theoretical quaestiones 6–17) is dedicated to what he calls “materia moralis.” For the dating of Aquinas’s works, I rely on Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal, rev. ed., vol. 1/2 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 211 and 332–61. See, e.g., Vernon J. Bourke, Ethics: A Textbook in Moral Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 57–66; R.-A. Gauthier, “Saint Maxime le confesseur et la psychologie de l’acte humaine,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 21 (1954): 51–100; Ralph McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 51–74; Martin Rhonheimer, Praktische Vernunft und Vernünftigkeit der Praxis: Handlungstheorie bei Thomas von Aquin in ihrer Entstehung aus dem Problemkontext der aristotelischen Ethik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 173–317; Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 119–82; David Gallagher, “The Will and Its Acts,” in The

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Introduction

5

Furthermore, some commentators have also considered Aquinas’s ontology of the human act.10 However, this book differs from previous work in three important ways. First, there is a difference in focus. Aquinas’s action aetiology, as developed in the Prima secundae, is rich, involving such diverse explanatory antecedents as “simple volition” (simplex velle), “intention” (intentio), “consent” (consensus), and “choice” (electio) (see Chapter 1). Studies dedicated to Aquinas’s aetiology have offered detailed accounts of the various antecedents leading up to choice. In contrast, the phase leading from choice to the actual performance of the human act, which, in addition to choice, comprises the elements of “command” (imperium), “use” (usus), and the “commanded act” (actus imperatus), has received comparatively little attention. It is this latter phase that the present study will focus on. This phase is of critical importance for Aquinas’s action theory both from an ontological and an aetiological point of view. It is ontologically important on account of command, use, and the commanded act. For Aquinas specifies what the human act is by appeal to these three acts, arguing that a human act is a kind of composite of use and the commanded act, with use being informed by command (see Chapter 6). The phase is aetiologically important on account of the act of choice. Among all of the aetiological antecedents that he countenances, Aquinas singles out choice as the key explanatory factor of the human act, as we will see in Chapter 1. It is because a human act proceeds from choice that it is

10

Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 69–89; Karl Mertens, “Handlungslehre und Grundlagen der Ethik,” in Thomas von Aquin: Die Summa theologiae: Werkinterpretationen, ed. Andreas Speer (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 168–97; Stephen Boulter, “Aquinas on Action and Action Explanation,” in New Essays on the Explanation of Action, ed. Constantine Sandis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 257–75; Maria Teresa Enriquez, De la Decisión a la Acción: Estudio sobre el Imperium en Tomas de Aquino (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2011), 19–142; Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, Le ragioni del contingente: La saggezza pratica tra Aristotele e Tommaso d’Aquino (Naples: Orthotes, 2012), 39–72; Thomas M. Osborne, Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 1–148. For a study of the historical sources of Aquinas’s action aetiology, see Emil Dobler, Zwei syrische Quellen der theologischen Summa des Thomas von Aquin: Nemesios von Emesa und Johannes von Damaskus, ihr Einfluss auf die anthropologischen Grundlagen der Moraltheologie (Fribourg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg, 2000). See Stephen L. Brock, Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), esp. 49–196; Servais Pinckaers, “La structure de l’acte humain suivant Saint Thomas,” Revue Thomiste 55 (1955): 393–412; Alan Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism. 1100–1600, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg, and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 642–54; McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 70–4.

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act

a characteristically human act, on his view. Thus, to understand what makes something a human act, we must examine how the composite of use and the commanded act relates not only to command but also to choice. The focus on the neglected phase leading from choice to the human act is one respect that sets my study apart from others. But it is not the only one. My study also differs from others in terms of its interpretive approach. I examine Aquinas’s ontology of the human act as well as his choice-based aetiology in light of a certain metaphysical commitment of his, namely, his hylomorphism. Generally speaking, hylomorphism is a view about material objects, according to which every material object has a material and a formal component, where the formal component makes the material object the kind of object it is by inhering in its matter. As we will see, Aquinas thinks that a human act is also structured like a hylomorphic whole. The formal and material components are, respectively, use, which is an act of the will or volition, as I shall call it,11 and the commanded act. This view of Aquinas’s, which I shall henceforth refer to as Act Hylomorphism, has for the most part gone unnoticed in the scholarly literature, and the available interpretations of the ontology of the human act in Aquinas are non-hylomorphic.12 In this book, I aim to offer a detailed account of Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism and show why the alternative, nonhylomorphic interpretations are mistaken. For Aquinas, not only the human act has a hylomorphic structure. On his view, the act of choice, which explains the human act, is likewise a kind of hylomorphic composite. It is a volition, materially speaking, and its formal component is, as I argue in Chapters 4–5, the volition’s characteristic free intentional directedness to one pursuit rather than another, where this free directedness is inherited from a preceding judgment of reason that Aquinas refers to as “free judgment” (liberum iudicium). I call this doctrine of Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism. Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism has received some attention in the literature.13 However, its details remain poorly understood because we lack 11

12

13

I will use the term ‘volition’ to denote acts of the will in general. I will not use it in the more restricted, contemporary sense, according to which it only denotes an act of the will causing a piece of (bodily) behavior. To my knowledge, the only scholars to have drawn attention to Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism are Robert Koons and Matthew B. O’Brien, “Objects of Intention: A Hylomorphic Critique of the New Natural Law Theory,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2012), 674. But they do not offer a detailed account of this doctrine because their interest in this article lies in the theory of natural law. See Westberg, Right Practical Reason, for a recent study that considers this account.

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Introduction

7

as yet a clear account of what kinds of mental acts free judgment and choice are, and we also lack a proper understanding of the way in which choice depends on judgment. In this study, I aim to fill this gap by considering free judgment and choice in light of Aquinas’s general account of practical judgment and volition. I should note, however, that I do not take a stand in the dispute as to whether Aquinas’s theory of choice is compatibilist or libertarian. In my view, answering this question would require another book, but I do not think that I have to settle this dispute here because my interpretation of choice is compatible with either reading. There is also a third and final respect in which my book differs from previous work on Aquinas’s philosophy of action. In addition to laying out Aquinas’s action theory with a view to his Act and Choice Hylomorphism, this book also assesses the philosophical merit of Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism by bringing it into dialogue with some representative contemporary theories of action. The attempt to connect Aquinas’s action theory with contemporary theorizing about human agency is not without precedent.14 However, this project has not yet been undertaken in light of a hylomorphic interpretation of the human act. The book is in three parts. The first part (Chapter 1) introduces the general framework of Aquinas’s action-theoretical project. As indicated, this theory revolves around the notion of the ‘human act’ (actus humanus), and in Chapter 1 I aim to explain this term. I argue that Aquinas understands by a ‘human act’ an intentional act that is free and that his theory of this act crucially relies on his Act and Choice Hylomorphism. The second part (Chapters 2–5) examines Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism. I first discuss free judgment (Chapters 2–3), which explains the characteristic form of the hylomorphically structured act of choice. In particular, I discuss what makes this judgment free, as this allows us to see on account of what the volitional act of choice is free. To explain what makes this judgment free, we need to first see what makes it practical, and this is the task of Chapter 2. I argue that a judgment is practical on account of the means–end relating nature of its propositional content. In Chapter 3, I then turn to an examination of free judgment more specifically, which is one kind of practical judgment, and I argue that its free character derives from the specific types of means–end relations that it is concerned with.

14

See especially Brock, Action and Conduct, who brings Aquinas into dialogue with the theories of Donald Davidson and Alan Donagan.

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act

Once the free character of judgment has been specified, the task of Chapters 4–5 is to consider choice itself and how it derives its characteristic freedom from the preceding judgment. In Chapter 4, I first examine Aquinas’s general theory of volition and the relation of dependence obtaining between volition and judgment. I argue that, on his view, judgments are both the formal and final causes of volitions and that this means that a volition derives its directedness to a certain means as ordered to an end from judgment. I also argue that the will possesses no freedom of its own and that volitional freedom is entirely derived from free judgment. In Chapter 5, I then spell out what the derivative directedness of volition is, and I argue that the core idea of Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism is that choice’s free or preferential character is an intentional directedness derived from the preceding free judgment. Having so laid out Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism and its basis in free judgment, I turn in the third part of this book to Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism (Chapters 6–9). In Chapter 6, I lay out the general framework of Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism. I argue, against nonhylomorphic interpretations, that the act of use and the commanded act together compose the hylomorphically organized human act, for Aquinas, and I discuss this doctrine in some detail. I also discuss how choice explains this composite, thereby bringing Aquinas’s Act and Choice Hylomorphism together. Chapters 7 and 8 then flesh out Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism by considering the two general types of human acts that Aquinas countenances, namely, bodily ones, such as taking a walk (Chapter 7), and mental ones (Chapter 8), such as trying to recall a piece of information. I flesh out the hylomorphic structure of these two general types of human acts by considering the temporal and causal features of use and the commanded act in both cases. As we will see, bodily and mental human acts have certain key features in common, for Aquinas, but they also differ from one another in important respects. Chapter 9, finally, compares Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism to contemporary theories of the human act and concludes that Aquinas’s view has some attractive features and advantages over contemporary theories, though, unfortunately, it also has a considerable downside.

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part i

The General Framework

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chapter 1

What Is a Human Act?

1.1

Introduction

Our first task is to gain clarity on the notion of the ‘human act’ (actus humanus), which is at the heart of Aquinas’s action-theoretical project. What does Aquinas understand by this term? To answer this question it will be convenient to proceed in two steps. First, we need to understand what makes a human act an act, ‘act’ being, as I noted in the Introduction, a broad term referring to any kind of power-exercise, according to Aquinas. This requires us to say something about Aquinas’s general metaphysics of powers and hylomorphism (Sections 1.2–1.3). In a next step, given the broad scope of the term ‘act’ in Aquinas, we need to consider what makes something a specifically human act. Here we need to consider how Aquinas differentiates human acts from other power-exercises in nature (Sections 1.4–1.6). As we will see, Aquinas appeals to the aetiological factor of choice to do so. We will also see that choice as well as the human act itself are hylomorphic composites, for Aquinas, and that the human act explained by choice is intentional and free.

1.2 The General Metaphysics of Powers To begin, we need to familiarize ourselves with Aquinas’s metaphysics of powers. Central to this metaphysics is the idea of the “powerful particular,” to borrow a term due to the twentieth-century philosophers of science Romano Harré and Edward Madden.1 By this term, Harré and Madden 1

Romano Harré and Edward Madden, Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), 5. Harré and Madden introduced this notion against the then dominant Humean trend in causation, on which there are no real powers intrinsic to objects but only relations of regularity or counterfactual dependence between events. For a Humean theory of causation, see the papers collected in David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Appeal to powers in causation has gained some traction in recent philosophy. See, e.g., Alexander Bird, Nature’s Metaphysics: Laws and Properties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007);

11

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act

understand any property-bearing entity that causes changes in the world by virtue of exercising its intrinsic causal powers. To use one of their examples, hydrochloric acid is a powerful particular because, in virtue of its corrosive nature, it dissolves metals like zinc. For Aquinas, the natural world is populated with such powerful particulars.2 Following Aristotle, he refers to them as “primary substances” (substantiae primae).3 These substances, Aquinas holds, are either inanimate or animate. Hydrochloric acid would be a modern example of an inanimate substance. An example that Aquinas likes to use is the Aristotelian element of fire, which, in virtue of its “power to heat” (potentia calefaciendi), can heat other objects. The animate substances that Aquinas countenances in the natural world are plants, nonhuman animals, and human beings, and these likewise have various powers, on his view. For instance, a lion is a powerful particular, according to Aquinas, because in virtue of its “power of sight” (potentia visiva) it can see things, and in virtue of its “power of locomotion” (vis motiva) it can hunt gazelles. According to Aquinas, the powers in virtue of which the different types of substances can behave in different ways are bona fide properties. In particular, they are “qualities” (qualitates).4 That is, they are features that make these substances be “a certain way” (esse tale).5 For instance, fire’s power to heat other objects is a quality that makes fire an entity capable of heating other things, Aquinas thinks, and an animal’s power to see makes it an entity capable of visual perception. For Aquinas, many powers follow upon a substance’s makeup, and, for convenience’s sake, we may refer to these as a substance’s natural powers.6 For instance, on Aquinas’s view, fire’s power to heat is a feature following upon fire’s characteristic nature: given what fire is, it can heat. But Aquinas also countenances a number of non-natural or acquired powers. In the

2 3 4

5 6

Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum, Getting Causes from Powers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For Aquinas, there are also supernatural particulars, namely, angels and God. I will set their case to one side in this book. See, e.g., ST I, q. 29, a. 1, c., Leon. 4: 327–8; QDA, a. 1, c., Leon. 24, 1: 7, ll. 197–207. See, e.g., ST I, q. 77, a. 1, ad 5, Leon. 5: 237. For Aquinas, these powers are necessary qualities, which he refers to as “propria.” They are not part of what the substance is, its essence (essentia) in Aquinas’s understanding of this term, but a substance cannot lack them. For discussion, see Dominik Perler, “Faculties in Medieval Philosophy,” in Faculties: A History, ed. Dominik Perler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 108–10. “Forma autem accidentalis non facit esse simpliciter; sed esse tale, aut tantum, aut aliquo modo se habens, subiectum enim eius est ens in actu” (ST I, q. 77, a. 6, c., Leon. 5: 246). See n. 10 for the text. By ‘natural’ I here only mean ‘not acquired.’ I do not understand by ‘natural’ the same as ‘physical.’

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What Is a Human Act?

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human case, he calls these “habits” (habitus), and he takes these powers to enable their bearers to do something well or poorly.7 For instance, a builder’s ability to build a house, which is acquired through extensive training, is a habit, on Aquinas’s view. It enables the builder to build houses well. While Aquinas has a rich theory of acquired powers, I shall put them to one side here because it is only the natural powers, in particular those crucial to human agency, that will be relevant for the present study.8 I said that natural powers follow upon the makeup of a substance, for Aquinas. On his view, this makeup is hylomorphic in nature. That is to say, every material substance, including human beings, consists of some “prime matter” (materia prima), as he calls it, and exactly one “substantial form” (forma substantialis) arranging this matter in such a way as to yield a substance of a certain kind.9 By arranging matter in this way, the form also endows the material substance with its natural powers. As Aquinas puts this point in the Prima pars, q. 77, a. 6: the natural powers “flow” (fluunt) from the substantial form arranging the matter.10 Some substantial forms arrange matter and yield inanimate objects, Aquinas thinks.11 Thus, on his view, the substantial form of fire arranges prime matter in such a way as to yield a substance of the natural kind fire, and it endows this substance, among other things, with the natural power to heat things. Other substantial forms arrange prime matter in such a way as to yield animate beings, in particular plants, non-human animals, or 7

“[H]abitus dicitur dispositio secundum quam bene vel male disponitur dispositum” (ST I-II, q. 49, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 309). For habitus acquisition, see, e.g., ST I-II, q. 51, a. 3, Leon. 6: 327–8. Note that while all acquired powers of human beings are habitus, for Aquinas, not all habitus are acquired. There are also some that are “natural” (naturales), such as the intellect’s habitus of knowing first principles. See, e.g., ST I-II, q. 51, a. 1, Leon. 6: 325. 8 For Aquinas’s theory of habitus, see, e.g., Bonnie Kent, “Habits and Virtues (Ia IIae, qq. 49–70),” in The Ethics of Aquinas, 116–30; Bonnie Kent, “Losable Virtue: Aquinas on Character and Will,” in Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Tobias Hoffmann, Jörn Müller, and Matthias Perkams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 91–109; Jean Porter, “Why Are the Habits Necessary? An Inquiry into Aquinas’s Moral Psychology,” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 1 (2013): 113–35. For Aquinas’s account of the influence of our habitus on human agency, see Rolf Darge, Habitus Per Actus Cognoscuntur: Die Erkenntnis des Habitus und die Funktion des moralischen Habitus im Aufbau der Handlung nach Thomas von Aquin (Bonn: Bouvier, 1996), 145–277. 9 See, e.g., ST I, q. 76, a. 3, c., Leon. 5: 220–1. For a recent study of Aquinas’s hylomorphism, see Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, and Material Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 10 At least Aquinas is happy to trace the characteristic powers of living beings back to their substantial forms: “[O]mnes potentiae animae, sive subiectum earum sit anima sola, sive compositum, fluunt ab essentia animae sicut a principio” (ST I, q. 77, a. 6, c., Leon. 5: 246). I take it, though, that the point also extends to the substantial forms of inanimate beings. 11 For Aquinas’s discussion of the various types of substantial forms, see, e.g., QDA, a. 1, c., Leon. 24, 1: 9–10, ll. 291–341.

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human beings. Aquinas refers to substantial forms of this kind as “souls” (animae), and he thinks that they bestow upon living beings powers to engage in vital activities.12 Aquinas refers to these as the “powers of the soul” (potentiae animae), and we may refer to them as vital powers.13 The organizational complexity of a living being determines what vital powers that being has.14 A plant, such as a fern, has what Aquinas calls “nutritive powers” (nutritivae), basic biological powers for vital activities, such as self-nourishment, growth, and procreation. A non-rational animal, such as a lion, has nutritive powers plus the powers to “sense” (sensus) and “desire” (appetitus) as well as a power to engage in locomotion. Human beings, finally, have all of the aforementioned vital powers, according to Aquinas, as well as the powers of “intellect” (intellectus) or “reason” (ratio), as he also calls it, and “will” (voluntas).15 Reason allows us to engage in general thought;16 and the will allows us to desire things according to general considerations supplied by reason, which is why Aquinas also defines the will as a “rational striving power” (appetitus rationalis).17 We do not share these two powers with any other kinds of material substances, according to Aquinas, and they are incorporeal, on his view, because their acts are not tied to a bodily organ, not even the brain.18 As we will see in Section 1.4, these are the powers crucially involved in the human act.

1.3

Acts, Actions, and Passions

With this thumbnail sketch of Aquinas’s metaphysics of powers and hylomorphism in hand, we are now in a position to discuss the first notion 12 14 15

16

17

18

See, e.g., ST I, q. 76, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 208–9. 13 See, e.g., ST I, q. 77, a. 1, c., Leon 5: 237. For Aquinas’s discussion of the various types of vital powers, see, e.g., QDA, a. 13, c., Leon. 24, 1: 116–20. ‘Intellect’ and ‘reason’ refer to the same power, for Aquinas. However, they describe it according to two different acts. Our power to think is called ‘intellect’ insofar as it allows us to understand something and this happens without reasoning, whereas it is called ‘reason’ insofar as it allows us to reason from one thought to another. See, e.g., ST I, q. 79, a. 8, c. Leon. 5: 274 for the distinction. To be more precise, reason is a power that is directly concerned with general matters and only indirectly with particular things, namely, via the sensory power of imagination. See ST I, q. 86, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 347. For a discussion of this view, see, e.g., Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia 75–89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 285–95. See, e.g., De Ver., q. 22, a. 4, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 620; ST I, q. 59, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 92; ST I, q. 80, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 282. I return to the appetitus rationalis definition in Chapter 4. I there also indicate why ‘appetitus’ in this definition should be translated as ‘striving power’ rather than as ‘striving.’ For the claim that the acts of these powers are not tied to a bodily organ, see, e.g., ST I, q. 77, a. 5, c., Leon. 4: 245; In Sent. I, d. 3, q. 4, a. 2, sol., Mandonnet: 116; ST I, q. 75, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 196; QDA, a. 1, c., Leon. 24, 1: 8, ll. 231–5. For a discussion of Aquinas’s arguments for the immateriality of the intellect, see Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 45–72.

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What Is a Human Act?

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of key importance to his action theory, namely, ‘act’ (actus). For Aquinas, any power-exercise of a substance, whether animate or inanimate, is an act.19 As he writes in the Prima pars, q. 77, a. 3, “a power, insofar as it is a power, is ordered to an act.”20 That is to say, a power is essentially a property for some behavior, for Aquinas, and that behavior is the power’s act. Thus, on Aquinas’s view, fire’s boiling water is an act because it is the exercise of fire’s power to heat something.21 Similarly, when a plant grows, Aquinas thinks, this is an act because the plant exercises its power to increase bulk by drawing up nutrients from the soil.22 Furthermore, when a lion sees a gazelle, it likewise acts by exercising its power of sight.23 Human beings, finally, act as well, on his view, when they take walks or buy train tickets. When we do these things, we also exercise powers, in particular reason, will, and the power to engage in locomotion.24 While Aquinas says that the exercises of powers are acts, he is careful not to claim that the powers act. Aquinas is committed to substance causation, which means that, on his view, a substance acts in virtue of its powers rather than that the powers themselves act. Aquinas grants that we sometimes single out a power rather than the substance that bears it as the cause of some effect. We might say, for instance, that the heat of the fire brought

19 20

21 22 23

24

For the broad application of ‘actus,’ see, e.g., In Sent. II, d. 1, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2, Mandonnet: 14; SCG II, c. 22, Leon. 13: 320; QDP, q. 3, a. 1, c., Bazzi: 39; ST I, q. 44, a. 4, c., Leon. 4: 461. “[P]otentia, secundum illud quod est potentia, ordinatur ad actum. Unde oportet rationem potentiae accipi ex actu ad quem ordinatur” (ST I, q. 77, a. 3, c., Leon. 5: 241, translated bit in italics). I should note that ‘act’ can have a variety of other meanings besides ‘exercise of a power,’ for Aquinas. For instance, it may also denote a substantial form or even God’s mode of existence as pure act. I will disregard these other meanings here, however, because they are not relevant for my purposes. Aquinas’s distinction between potentia and actus derives from Aristotle. See esp. Met. IX, 1, 1046a5–29. For the history of the Aristotelian concepts of act and potency, see, e.g., Stephen Menn, “The Origins of Aristotle’s Concept of ᾽Ενέργεια: ᾽Ενέργεια and Δύναμις,” Ancient Philosophy 14, no. 1 (1994): 78–87. See, e.g., De Ver., q. 20, a. 1, ad 3, Leon. 22, 2, 2: 573, ll. 85–6; ST II-II, q. 2, a. 9, ad 1, Leon. 8: 38; QDA, a. 12, c., Leon. 24: 109, ll. 145–6. See ST I, q. 72, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 5: 184; In DC II, l. 18, n. 4, Leon. 3: 193; In DA II, l. 6, Leon. 45, 1: 91, ll. 32–4; ST I, q. 18, a. 1, c., Leon. 4: 225. See QDA, a. 13, c., Leon. 24, 1: 116–9, ll. 213–334 for the acts of sensory powers, and ibid., 118, ll. 278–9 for the term ‘actus sensitivae potentiae.’ I am picking a simple example of an animal act here. The story is more complex when we consider animal behavior, such as hunting or building a nest. For Aquinas, this type of behavior is like a human act in that it involves the exercise of a series of different powers: one for sensory cognition, the other for sensory desire, and yet another for locomotion. See, e.g., DSC, a. 3, ad 4, Leon. 24, 2: 45, ll. 465–8. For Aquinas’s theory of animal thought and agency, see, e.g., Tobias Davids, Anthropologische Differenz und animalische Konvenienz: Tierphilosophie bei Thomas von Aquin (Leiden: Brill, 2017). For Aquinas, supernatural agents like God and angels likewise act. Again, I will not consider their case here.

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the water to boil or that someone’s keen intellect allowed her to understand a difficult mathematical proof. Indeed, for convenience’s sake, Aquinas himself frequently adverts to this practice in his action theory (and I will follow him in this regard), speaking of the will and its act as the cause of intentional behavior, as we will see later in this section as well as in Chapters 4–6. However, strictly speaking, this is an improper way of designating the cause, on his view. As Aquinas puts it in the Secunda secundae, q. 58, a. 2, “acts belong to supposits [i.e., substances] . . . and not, properly speaking, to parts and forms or powers.”25 In other words, it is the fire that boils the water, not its heat, and it is the human being who, in virtue of her power of reason, understands a mathematical proof, not her power of reason. By applying the term ‘act’ so broadly to any power-exercise of a substance, even to inanimate ones, Aquinas differs from the vast majority of contemporary action theorists.26 Contemporary action theorists commonly restrict the term ‘act’ to the intentional undertakings of human beings or, in some cases, more generously, of higher animals.27 In contrast, they call non-intentional occurrences in nature, such as fire’s boiling water or a plant’s growing, “events” rather than “acts.” They do this because they take it that ascribing acts to a fire or a plant implies some kind of crude anthropomorphism. The anthropomorphism worry is understandable if we take intentionality to be built into the notion of an ‘act,’ which is what action theorists today commonly do. Clearly, fire does not heat water because it sees a reason in favor of doing so, nor does a plant grow because it recognizes the benefit of this behavior. But Aquinas does not share such an 25

26 27

“Actiones autem sunt suppositorum et totorum, non autem, proprie loquendo, partium et formarum, seu potentiarum, non enim proprie dicitur quod manus percutiat, sed homo per manum; neque proprie dicitur quod calor calefaciat, sed ignis per calorem” (ST II-II, q. 58, a. 2, c., Leon. 9: 10, translated bit in italics). The text speaks of ‘action’ rather than ‘act,’ and these two terms are usually not equivalent, as we will see below, ‘act’ being broader than ‘action.’ However, in this case I take Aquinas to use ‘actio’ interchangeably with ‘actus’ because elsewhere Aquinas uses ‘actus’ to formulate the same principle: “In creaturis actus sunt suppositorum” (In Sent. I, d. 5, q. 1, a. 1, sol., Mandonnet: 151). For a discussion of the “actiones/actus sunt suppositorum” doctrine, see, e.g., Alain de Libera, “Les actions appartiennent aux sujets: Petite archéologie d’un principe leibnizien,” in Ad Ingenii Acuitionem: Studies in Honour of Alfonso Maierù, ed. Stefano Caroti et al. (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2006), 199–220; Brian T. Carl, “Action, Supposit, and Subject: Interpreting Actiones sunt Suppositorum,” Nova et Vetera 17, no. 2 (2019): 545–65. For this observation, see Brock, Action and Conduct, 7. See, e.g., Donald Davidson, “Agency,” 43; Richard Taylor, Action and Purpose (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 14. See Harry G. Frankfurt, “The Problem of Action,” American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1978), 161 and esp. Helen Steward, A Metaphysics for Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) for the view that higher animals also act.

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intentionality-laden account of the term ‘act.’ On his view, to ascribe an act to a substance is to ascribe no more than a power-exercise to it, regardless of whether the power-exercise was intended by the substance.28 And there is, arguably, nothing particularly anthropomorphic about ascribing a powerexercise to an inanimate object or a plant. In recent years, neo-Aristotelian philosophers of action, such as Maria Alvarez and John Hyman, have sought to rehabilitate this nonintentionality-laden, power-based understanding of the term ‘act.’29 Like Aquinas, they hold that substances of all stripes, including inanimate ones, act. Their rationale is that even inanimate beings are active rather than passive. Paradigm cases are, as they tell us, “stuffs or things with which we readily associate active causal powers, such as acid or radium.”30 But Aquinas’s understanding of the term ‘act’ differs also from this neoAristotelian one, and this because his is even broader than theirs. As we will see presently, Aquinas not only includes activities under the rubric of ‘act’ (actus), but also passive happenings. Here is how he puts this point in his commentary on Physics III: There is an act of what is active, and there is an act of what is passive just as was said above that there is an act of what moves and of what is moved. The act of the active is called action; but the act of the passive is called passion.31

Aquinas here calls an active act an “action” (actio), while he refers to a passive act as a “passion.” He takes the former to be an exercise of an “active power” (potentia activa), whereas the latter is an exercise of 28

29

30 31

It is true, Aquinas does write that all things that act “intend” (intendere) their respective ends – a point that I return to in Chapter 4 (Section 4.2). See, e.g., SCG II, c. 30, Leon. 13: 340. Thus, for Aquinas, fire “intends” the end of making something hot, and a plant “intends” the end of flourishing. But Aquinas’s notion of ‘intending’ differs from the now common one. Aquinas does not mean that inanimate beings and plants intend their ends in the sense of being cognizant of any reason for their behavior. What he means is rather that their behavior is goal-directed, and this requires an intellectual agent distinct from these beings that orders them to their respective ends. This intellectual agent is God. See, e.g., In Phys. II, l. 12, n. 1, Leon. 2: 90; ST I-II, q. 1, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 9. Maria Alvarez and John Hyman, “Agents and Their Actions,” Philosophy 73, no. 2 (1998): 219–45. See also P. M. S. Hacker, Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, 2010), 125; Erasmus Mayr, Understanding Human Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 198–218. Alvarez and Hyman, “Agents and Their Actions,” 244. “[A]liquis actus est activi, et aliquis actus est passivi, sicut supra dictum est quod et moventis et moti est aliquis actus. Et actus quidem activi vocatur actio; actus vero passivi vocatur passio” (In Phys. III, l. 5, n. 2, Leon. 2: 112). I am not claiming that Aquinas consistently uses ‘act’ in this broad, disjunctive sense throughout his entire career. But at least in his later works, he seems to me to do this. See, e.g., QDA, a. 13, c., Leon. 115, ll. 165–70; ST I-II, q. 1, a. 3, c., Leon 6: 10; In DA II, c. 26, Leon. 45, 1: 180, ll. 146–58.

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a “passive power” (potentia passiva).32 He differentiates between these two power-exercises in the above text by saying that an action is a “moving” (movere), whereas a passion is a “being moved” (motum esse). By this, Aquinas means that an action is the causing of a change, whereas a passion is an undergoing of a change.33 So, for instance, on his view, fire’s heating water is an action because it is a causing of water’s becoming hot.34 In contrast, water’s becoming hot is a passion because it is the undergoing of the change of being heated.35 While Aquinas draws a sharp distinction between active and passive power-exercises, he does not think that they are, in the ordinary natural case at least, two distinct types of events or, in his terminology, “changes” (motus). Rather, Aquinas argues that an action and its correlated passion, despite being elicited by two distinct powers, are one and the same change (sunt idem motus).36 Aquinas expresses this identity view by saying that action and passion are one and the same “act in reality” (secundum rem), even though they differ in “account” (secundum rationem).37 That is to say, when fire heats water, fire’s heating water and water’s being heated are not two changes, but rather one and the same change taken in different respects.38 The active account relates this change to the agent that causes it. We adopt this account when we describe the change as ‘the fire’s heating of the water.’ The passive account relates the change to the patient that 32

33 34 36

37

38

For the distinction between these two types of powers, see, e.g., “Nam potentia activa est principium agendi in aliud, potentia vero passiva est principium patiendi ab alio” (ST I, q. 25, a. 1, c., Leon. 4: 290). The active/passive power distinction is an exhaustive one, for Aquinas, but it isn’t one between two mutually exclusive types of powers. A power may also be active in one respect and passive in another. As Aquinas writes: “Est enim aliqua potentia tantum agens; aliqua tantum acta vel mota; alia vero agens et acta” (De Virt., q. 1, a. 1, c., Bazzi: 708). The will is such a power. It is moved by reason, but it moves, for instance, the power to move in place and even itself. I consider the will in its active (self-moving) and passive (reason-dependent) respect in Chapter 4. See C. L. Löwe, “John Duns Scotus versus Thomas Aquinas on Action-Passion Identity,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26, no. 6 (2018): 1027–44. 35 See, e.g., In Met. IX, l. 1, n. 1782, Cathala: 425–6 for this example. See ibid. “[A]ctio et passio sunt idem motus” (In Phys. III, l. 5, n. 3, Leon. 2: 112). For a brief discussion of Aquinas’s argument for this claim, see my “John Duns Scotus versus Thomas Aquinas on ActionPassion Identity.” See Gloria Frost, “Aquinas’ Ontology of Transeunt Causal Activity,” Vivarium 56, no. 1–2 (2018): 47–82 for a more detailed discussion. This identity view is Aristotelian. For a discussion of Aristotle’s view, see, e.g., Anna Marmodoro, “The Union of Cause and Effect in Aristotle Physics III 3,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 32 (2007): 205–32. “[N]ihil prohibet unum actum esse duorum, ita quod non sit unus et idem secundum rationem, sed unus secundum rem . . . est duorum secundum diversam rationem: agentis quidem secundum quod est ab eo, patientis autem secundum quod est in ipso” (In Phys. III, l. 5, n. 10, Leon. 2: 113). See In Phys. III, l. 5, n. 10, Leon. 2: 113, as quoted in n. 37. See my “John Duns Scotus versus Thomas Aquinas,” 1033 for the view that the difference in ratio amounts to a difference in description. See, however, Frost, “Aquinas’s Ontology,” 55 for a strong argument to the effect that ‘ratio’ means more than just ‘description’ here.

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undergoes it. We adopt that account when we describe the same event as ‘the water’s being heated by fire.’ Having sketched Aquinas’s general theory of the act, which comprises causings as well as undergoings, let us now turn to his account of the “human act” (actus humanus) in particular. The human act involves an active as well as a passive power-exercise, Aquinas maintains. As he writes in the Prima secundae, q. 1, a. 3: Human acts, whether considered as actions or passions, derive their species from the end. Human acts can be considered in both ways because a human being moves himself and is moved by himself.39

In other words, when we consider a human act, such as taking a walk, there is my setting my legs in motion, for Aquinas, and this is an action because it is my causing a change in my legs. But in addition, there is my legs’ being set in motion as a consequence of my moving them, and this is a passion because by being so set in motion my legs undergo a change.40 Given the identity view of action and passion, one might expect that these two power-exercises are one and the same change. But matters are complicated here. For in the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 4, Aquinas writes about the action and passion involved in the human act that these “acts are in some way one [emphasis added].”41 As the qualifier “in some way” suggests, Aquinas wishes to signal a difference to the ordinary natural case in which action and passion are identical, and his further discussion of the human act in q. 17, a. 4 also bears this out. For as Aquinas goes on to explain there, the action and passion involved in the human act are not one and the same act in the sense of being identical to one another in the way in which fire’s action of heating water and water’s passion of being heated are the selfsame change. Rather, as he tells us, the action and passion in the human act are to be viewed as two distinct component acts of one composite act. The composite is the human act, on his view, and the two 39

40

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“[A]ctus humani, sive considerentur per modum actionum, sive per modum passionum, a fine speciem sortiuntur. Utroque enim modo possunt considerari actus humani, eo quod homo movet seipsum, et movetur a seipso” (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 10). A different story has to be told for omissions in Aquinas, in which the agent does not set anything in motion. Aquinas’s theory of omissions is complex and cannot be dealt with here. For helpful accounts, see, e.g., Jeffrey Hause, “Voluntariness and Causality,” Vivarium 36, no. 1 (1998): 55–66; Michael Barnwell, Negligent Omissions: Medieval Action Theories to the Rescue (Leiden: Brill, 2010), ch. 4. “[S]i essent potentiae diversae ad invicem non ordinatae, actus earum essent simpliciter diversi. Sed quando una potentia est movens alteram, tunc actus earum sunt quodammodo unus: nam idem est actus moventis et moti, ut dicitur in III Physic.” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 4, ad 1, Leon. 6: 121, translated bit in italics).

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components of action and passion relate to one another as form to matter. Here is how he puts this view in q. 17, a. 4: [T]he act of the subordinate power is related as matter to the act of the superordinate power . . . the act of the first mover is formally related to the act of the instrument.42

This is Aquinas’s doctrine of Act Hylomorphism, and I discuss it in detail in Chapter 6. Here I merely provide a brief outline of it to give an idea of what the doctrine is, and I also explain why ordinary action–passion identity does not apply to the human act. To understand the doctrine, we first need an account of what the action and passion components involved in the human act are. In q. 18, a. 6 of the Prima secundae, Aquinas offers a specification. He writes: The interior act of the will receives its species from the end as from its proper object. In this way what comes from the will is related as something formal to what comes from the exterior act. For the will uses parts of the body as its instruments in acting.43

By an “interior act” (actus interior) of the will, Aquinas understands a volition, that is, a desire or striving according to a general consideration. Elsewhere, he calls a volition an “elicited act of the will” (actus elicitus voluntatis).44 In the above text, Aquinas argues that a specific kind of volition is a component of the human act, namely, what he refers to as an act of “using” (uti) an instrument. As we will see in Chapter 6, this volition is an act of actively exercising a power other than the will to a certain end, this power being the “instrument.” So, for instance, my intentionally setting my legs in motion to take a walk is a volition whereby I actively use my power to produce locomotion as located in my legs to take a walk, this power being the instrument used to carry out the walk.

42 43

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“[A]ctus inferioris potentiae materialiter se habet ad actum superioris . . . actus moventis primi formaliter se habet ad actum instrumenti” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 121). “[A]ctus interior voluntatis accipit speciem a fine, sicut a proprio obiecto. Ita autem quod est ex parte voluntatis, se habet ut formale ad id quod est ex parte exterioris actus, quia voluntas utitur membris ad agendum, sicut instrumentis” (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 6, c., Leon. 6: 132–3). In ST I-II, q. 17, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 121, Aquinas suggests that command rather than use is the form of the passion involved in the human act. He writes there: “Unde patet quod imperium et actus imperatus sunt unus actus humanus, sicut quoddam totum est unum, sed est secundum partes multa.” In Chapter 6, I argue that this is consistent with the claim in ST I-II, q. 18, a. 6, c. that use is the form of the passion component because Aquinas distinguishes between two types of forms. For the synonymy of ‘elicited act’ and ‘interior act,’ see DM, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1, Leon. 23: 33, ll. 164–5.

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The bodily change that the volitional act of use causes Aquinas refers to in the above text as an “exterior act” (actus exterior). For instance, my legs’ being set in motion as a consequence of my volitionally using my power to do so is an exterior act.45 As we will see in Chapter 8, Aquinas also thinks that we can use some of our mental powers at will. For instance, we can exercise our memory to try to retrieve a piece of information. Aquinas’s blanket term for any power-exercise caused by the will, whether bodily or mental, is “commanded act” (actus imperatus).46 The general doctrine of Act Hylomorphism, then, is, briefly put, that a human act is a composite of use and the commanded act, where the former relates to the latter as form to matter. What does it mean for the volition of use to function as the form of the commanded act? Given what has already been said about the general doctrine of hylomorphism, we can see what the main idea of Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism must be. Recall that, in material objects, a substantial form inheres in matter and thereby yields a substance of a certain kind. For instance, by informing a given chunk of matter, the substantial form of fire yields a substance belonging to the kind fire. In similar fashion, Aquinas thinks, the act of use, by informing the commanded act, yields a human act of a certain kind. As the above-quoted text from q. 18, a. 6 of the Prima secundae indicates, use does this specifically by relating the commanded act to a certain end. The thought is that the volitional act of using my legs’ power to take a walk, for instance, yields an act of the kind taking a walk by ordering the commanded act of my legs’ moving to the end of taking a walk. So much for the general idea of Act Hylomorphism. Now let us briefly consider why Aquinas adopts this hylomorphic account of the action and passion involved in the human act rather than the simpler view that they are one and the same change, as in the ordinary action–passion case. His reason for doing so is not hard to come by. As we noted in Section 1.2, the will, like reason, is a power whose act is not tied to a bodily organ, on his view. This means that the action of use, being an act of the will, is a nonphysical power-exercise. In contrast, the bodily commanded act it brings 45

46

For exterior acts and their distinction from interior acts, see, e.g., In Sent. II, d. 35, q. 1, a. 4, sol., Mandonnet: 909; ST I-II, q. 19, a. 8, c., Leon. 6: 148; DM, q. 2, a. 2, ad 6, Leon. 23: 34, ll. 208–20. For a discussion of this distinction, see, e.g., David Gallagher, “Aquinas on Moral Action: Interior and Exterior Acts,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 64 (1990): 118–29. For mental commanded acts, see, e.g., ST I-II, q. 17, a. 6, c., Leon. 6: 122. For Aquinas, we can even command volitions (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 5, c., Leon. 6: 121). That is, on his view, I can will to have a certain volition. For instance, I can will to will to exercise more. I do not consider commanded volitions in this book.

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about as well as some mental commanded acts, namely, those involving sensory powers like memory (as we will see in Chapter 8), are physical, for Aquinas. Thus, if use and these commanded acts were one and the same change, then there could be one act that is both non-bodily and bodily, but that is impossible. Accordingly, we must be dealing with two non-identical acts, but ones that are nevertheless unified as a hylomorphic whole.47

1.4 Human Acts: The Choice-Based Account We have now available to us an account of what makes a human act an act, according to Aquinas. As we have seen, this means that a human act is a power-exercise. More precisely, the human act involves two powerexercises – one active, the other passive – where these are hylomorphically related, such that the active power-exercise endows the passive one with its end-directedness. Our next task is to examine what makes the human act a specifically human act. What sets it apart from the many other types of acts or power-exercises that Aquinas countenances in nature? We have already seen that the hylomorphic arrangement differentiates our act from other acts in nature because in the natural case action and passion are identical. However, Aquinas does not appeal to this hylomorphic feature when he discusses the distinction between human acts and other types of power-exercises. Instead, he appeals to aetiology, that is, the human act’s explanatory history, as we will see in this section. The salient text in this connection is Prima secundae, q. 1, a. 1. In this article, Aquinas first offers a very general criterion for the human act, stating that it must be an act characteristic of a human being qua human being. As he writes: [O]nly those [acts] are properly called human that are proper to the human being insofar as he is a human being.48 47

48

But what happens if the commanded act is non-physical, say, an act of reason? For instance, are the volitional action of using one’s intellect to think about the Pythagorean theorem and the caused passion of thinking about the Pythagorean theorem one and the same act or distinct acts that are hylomorphically organized, for Aquinas? Given his Act Hylomorphism, Aquinas should hold that the latter is the case. However, since action and passion are both non-physical here, the above argument in favor of adopting a hylomorphic rather than an identity view does not apply. I confess that I do not know how Aquinas would motivate his hylomorphic view in this case. “[A]ctionum quae ab homine aguntur, illae solae proprie dicuntur humanae, quae sunt proprie hominis inquantum est homo” (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 6). I do not think that ‘actio’ here should be read in the restrictive sense of active power-exercise. Rather, as in the case of the text quoted in n. 25, Aquinas uses ‘actio’ in the broader sense of ‘actus.’ This is clear because later in the Prima secundae, e.g., in ST I-II, q. 6, Pr., Leon. 6: 55, he uses the term ‘actus humanus’ instead of ‘actio humana.’

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What are such acts proper to us as human beings? Recall from Section 1.2 that, for Aquinas, human beings are living beings with a number of vital powers. Some of these we share with non-rational living beings. Like plants, for instance, we have the powers for self-nourishment and growth, and like non-rational animals, we have the powers to sense and move in place. Because we share these powers with non-human agents in the natural world, they are not proper to us as human beings, Aquinas thinks. Accordingly, the acts of these powers, such as digesting or sensing, do not qualify as “human acts” (actus humani). They can be called “acts of a human being” (actiones hominis), Aquinas writes, because they are powerexercises ascribable to us. But they are not human acts because they are not characteristic of us as human beings.49 In addition to these shared powers, though, as we noted, human beings also have two powers that they do not have in common with other living beings of the natural world. These are the powers of reason and will, which enable us to engage in general thought and strive according to general considerations, respectively; and these are, on Aquinas’s view, precisely the powers involved in characteristically human acts. As Aquinas writes in the Prima secundae, q. 1, a. 1: Human beings differ from other creatures lacking reason in that they control their own acts. Thus, only those acts are properly called human over which the human being has control. Now a human being controls his acts through reason and the will, wherefore free decision is called a faculty of will and reason.50

Aquinas here explains that the powers of reason and will set our acts apart from other acts in nature because these powers account for a special feature of our acts, namely, that of “control” (dominium) or, equivalently, “free decision” (liberum arbitrium). In the Prima pars, Aquinas says that an agent has free decision or control over a given act if and only if she has the power to “choose” (eligere) between alternatives. As he puts it in q. 82, a. 1 of this text: “we control our acts insofar as we are able to choose this or that alternative.”51 49 50

51

“[A]liae actiones homini conveniant, possunt dici quidem hominis actiones; sed non proprie humanae, cum non sint hominis inquantum est homo” (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 6). “Differt autem homo ab aliis irrationalibus creaturis in hoc, quod est suorum actuum dominus. Unde illae solae actiones vocantur proprie humanae, quarum homo est dominus. Est autem homo dominus suorum actuum per rationem et voluntatem, unde et liberum arbitrium esse dicitur facultas voluntatis et rationis” (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 6). See also In Sent. II, d. 15 q. 1 a. 3, sol., Mandonnet: 375; In Sent. II, d. 25, q. 1, a. 3, sol., Mandonnet: 653 for parallel passages. “[S]umus domini nostrorum actuum secundum quod possumus hoc vel illud eligere” (ST I, q. 82, a. 1, ad 3, Leon. 5: 293). See also: “[E]x hoc enim liberi arbitrii esse dicimur, quod possumus unum recipere, alio recusato, quod est eligere” (ST I, q. 83, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 309). See also In Sent. II, d. 7,

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Thus, according to Aquinas, A is a human act if and only if the agent is able to choose between A or non-A. Such an act is clearly intentional, that is, one that is done for a reason. But it is obviously more than just that. Because it involves a choice between alternatives, it is also a free act.52 For Aquinas, then, the characteristic feature setting human acts apart from other acts in nature is that, unlike the latter, they involve a choice, which accounts for their freedom. By adopting this view, Aquinas is offering an aetiological criterion for what makes something a characteristically human act because, as he tells us in the Prima secundae, q. 1, a. 1, the human act “proceeds from” (procedit ex) choice.53 In other words, choice is an antecedent that explains the human act, on his view. In particular, it accounts for the fact that the human act is free. Being an explanatory antecedent, choice is not a component of the human act, as use and the commanded act are, on Aquinas’s view.

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q. 1, a. 1, ad 3, Mandonnet: 82. It is disputed among scholars whether Aquinas thinks that we have a genuine libertarian or merely a compatibilist ability to choose between alternatives. That is, it is disputed whether Aquinas thinks that if we choose to perform an act A at time t under circumstances C, we could have also chosen to do non-A at t under C (libertarianism), or could only have chosen differently under different circumstances C* (compatibilism). For the view that Aquinas’s alternate possibilities freedom is not of a libertarian but rather a compatibilist kind, see, e.g., Thomas Williams, “The Libertarian Foundations of Scotus’s Moral Philosophy,” The Thomist 62, no. 2 (1998), 207–8; Pasnau, Aquinas on Human Nature, 228. For the view that it is a libertarian kind of freedom, see, e.g., Patrick Lee, “The Relation between Intellect and Will in Free Choice according to Aquinas and Scotus,” The Thomist 49, no. 3 (1985), 321–42, and esp. Scott MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Choice,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 52 (1998), 325–6; Colleen McCluskey, “Intellective Appetite and the Freedom of Human Action,” The Thomist 66, no. 3 (2002), 422. In this book I do not take a stand on this issue, as indicated in the Introduction. Note that the freedom to choose between alternatives is not the only type of freedom that Aquinas countenances. Aquinas operates with a general notion of “free will” (libera voluntas) (In Sent. II, d. 25, Pr., Mandonnet: 636–42), on which freedom requires being the source of what one does (liber est causa sui). Free decision is one specific type of this freedom: it involves being the source of what one does as well as being able to do otherwise. However, Aquinas also countenances what he calls “freedom from coercion” (libertas a necessitate) (In Sent. II, d. 25, Pr., Mandonnet: 636–42), which a human being may have even when she has no alternatives available to her, provided she is the source of what she wills. For instance, our desire for happiness is free in this sense because although we must desire happiness, we are not coerced to do so (De Ver., q. 24, a. 1, ad 20, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 684, ll. 565–74). The only freedom relevant for my study is the alternative-involving one of free decision. So, when I speak of ‘freedom’ in what follows, I mean ‘free decision.’ For a recent discussion of Aquinas’s account of free will, see Tobias Hoffmann and Cyrille Michon, “Aquinas on Free Will and Intellectual Determinism,” Philosophers’ Imprint 17, no. 10 (2017), 1–36. For a discussion of Aquinas’s causa sui definition of freedom, see, e.g., Hermann Weidemann, “Freiheit als Selbstursächlichkeit: Ein fruchtbares Mißverständnis bei Thomas von Aquin?” Metaphysica 2, no. 3 (2001): 25–37; J. A. Spiering, “‘Liber est causa sui’: Thomas Aquinas and the Maxim ‘The Free Is the Cause of Itself’,” The Review of Metaphysics 65, no. 2 (2011): 351–76. “Illae ergo actiones proprie humanae dicuntur, quae ex voluntate deliberata procedunt” (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 6). ‘Voluntas deliberata’ is another term for choice in Aquinas. For the equivalence, see, e.g., In Sent. I, d. 48, q. 1, a. 4, c., Mandonnet: 1089; ST II-II, q. 88, a. 1, c., Leon. 9: 234; DM, q. 2, a. 5, Leon. 23: 44, ll. 189–94.

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In the Prima secundae, q. 1, a. 1, Aquinas claims that both of our characteristic powers of reason and will contribute to our ability to choose between alternatives, calling free decision a “faculty of will and reason.” What are their respective contributions to choice more specifically? I discuss these in detail in Chapters 2–5, but here I already provide an outline, as this will allow me to introduce Aquinas’s doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism. Aquinas offers a helpful specification of the contributions of reason and will to choice in the Prima pars, q. 83, a. 3. He writes: In the act of choosing, something of the cognitive power and something of the striving power come together. As regards the cognitive power, it is required that there be counsel (consilium), by which one judges what alternative is to be given precedence to. But as regards the striving power, it is required that what was judged by counsel be accepted by striving for it.54

The “cognitive power” referred to here is reason. For Aquinas, it is reason in its “practical” (intellectus practicus) rather than its “theoretical” function (intellectus speculativus) that is relevant for choice – that is, roughly, reason concerned with what to do rather than with what is the case.55 And, as the above text tells us, what reason contributes to choice is a “judgment” (iudicium) about what to do, which Aquinas refers to as “counsel” (consilium).56 By a ‘judgment,’ Aquinas generally understands a cognitive act with propositional content, as we will see in more detail in Chapter 2. On the above text, the judgment of counsel relevant to choice is a propositional thought that is preferential in character. By it, the agent gives precedence to one thing over another. For example, if I choose to go for a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head, then, Aquinas thinks, I judge that a walk is to be preferred to doing yoga. Because this judgment is preferential in nature, Aquinas also characterizes it in the Prima pars, q. 83, a. 1 as a “free judgment” (liberum iudicium).57 Elsewhere, in De 54

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“Ad electionem autem concurrit aliquid ex parte cognitivae virtutis, et aliquid ex parte appetitivae, ex parte quidem cognitivae, requiritur consilium, per quod diiudicatur quid sit alteri praeferendum; ex parte autem appetitivae, requiritur quod appetendo acceptetur id quod per consilium diiudicatur” (ST I, q. 83, a. 3, c., Leon. 5: 310). For the distinction between theoretical and practical reason, see, e.g., ST I, q. 14, a. 16, c., Leon. 4: 196–7. For a discussion of the distinction, see, e.g., J. E. Naus, The Nature of the Practical Intellect according to Saint Thomas Aquinas (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1959), 20–8. For practical reason in Aquinas, see also Thomas M. Osborne, “Practical Reasoning,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 276–86. For Aquinas, this judgment is sometimes, but not always, preceded by deliberation, that is, a process of assessing various options for the sake of an end. Rather confusingly, Aquinas also refers to this process as “consilium” (ST I-II, q. 14, a. 4, ad 1, Leon. 6: 107). See my discussion in Section 1.5. “[H]omo . . . agit libero iudicio, potens in diversa ferri” (ST I, q. 83, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 307).

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veritate, q. 17, a. 1, he refers to it as the “judgment of choice” (iudicium electionis).58 I employ both of these terms in what follows. In addition to reason, Aquinas holds that the will contributes something to choice. In particular, it contributes a striving or volition guided by the general considerations supplied by the judgment of practical reason just considered. We have already encountered the volition of use. The volition relevant to choice is a different one, one that immediately precedes use, as we will see in more detail in Chapter 6. In the above text, Aquinas characterizes it as an act of “accepting” (accipere) the previous preferential judgment of reason. This suggests passivity on the part of the will, and I argue in Chapters 4 and 5 that this is indeed the picture of the will that Aquinas favors, despite the fact that he also claims in a number of texts that the will “moves itself” (movet seipsam).59 On my reading, then, Aquinas thinks that when I choose to go for a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head, there is first the preferential judgment by which I settle on going for a walk rather than doing yoga, and this judgment is then followed by the volition to go for a walk rather than do yoga. The volition that follows is also preferential in character, Aquinas maintains. By it, the agent “gives precedence to one thing over another,” as he puts it in the Prima secundae, q. 13, a. 1.60 But as I argue in Chapters 4 and 5, this preferential character of volition is entirely inherited from the preceding preferential judgment.61 While Aquinas thinks that both judgment and volition are crucial to choice, he argues in the Prima secundae, q. 13, a. 1 that, properly speaking, choice ought to be identified with the volition.62 His argument is this. A choice is a striving for some good rather than another, and a striving for a good is a volition rather than a judgment. Therefore, choice is a volition. Yet, as Aquinas emphasizes, this volition has a key element of reason, namely, precisely the characteristic preferential nature that it receives from the previous judgment. And in the Prima secundae, q. 13, a. 1,

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59 60 61 62

See De Ver., q. 17, a. 1, ad 4, Leon. 22, 2, 2: 517, ll. 334–8. That liber iudicium is identical to the judgment of choice is made clear here: “Iudicium cui attribuitur libertas est iudicium electionis” (De Ver., q. 24, a. 1, ad 17, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 693, ll. 495–500). See ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 74. See Chapter 4 (Sections 4.6–4.8) for further references and my take on the topic. “[E]lectio sit praeacceptio unius respectu alterius” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 99). “[E]lectio consequitur sententiam vel iudicium” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 101). “In huiusmodi autem substantia actus materialiter se habet ad ordinem qui imponitur a superiori potentia. Et ideo electio substantialiter non est actus rationis, sed voluntatis, perficitur enim electio in motu quodam animae ad bonum quod eligitur. Unde manifeste actus est appetitivae potentiae” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 98).

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Aquinas adverts to his hylomorphism to make sense of this rational element in choice. He writes: It needs to be considered in acts of the soul that an act that essentially belongs to one power or habit receives its form and species from a superordinate power or habit insofar as the subordinate power is ordered by the superordinate one . . . Now it is clear that reason precedes the will in a way and orders its act, insofar as the will tends to its object according to the order of reason because the cognitive power presents the object to the striving power. Thus, the act whereby the will tends toward something that is proposed to it as good is by the fact that it [i.e., this act] is ordered by reason to some end, materially speaking, an act of the will, but formally one of reason.63

The details of Aquinas’s doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism are expounded in Chapter 5, but in light of what we have already learned about hylomorphism we can see what the main idea must be. By inhering in matter, a form yields an object of a certain kind. Accordingly, Aquinas must hold that by inhering in volition, the form that derives from reason, more precisely from preferential judgment, yields a volition of the kind choice. In keeping with the above passive understanding of the will, I develop a thoroughgoing intellectualist reading of this theory in Chapters 4 and 5. That is to say, I argue that while choice’s material component is its being a volition, its form is its free or preferential character, where the judgment of choice completely accounts for this form, though, as we will see in Chapter 5, the judgment is not identical to this form.64 This passive interpretation of the will in Aquinas is a controversial one. Most scholars accept that reason plays a key role in accounting for the freedom of our choice, according to Aquinas, but a number of them would deny that reason accounts for this freedom in its entirety.65 Because of its controversial character, I do not assume the correctness of this reading 63

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“Est autem considerandum in actibus animae, quod actus qui est essentialiter unius potentiae vel habitus, recipit formam et speciem a superiori potentia vel habitu, secundum quod ordinatur inferius a superiori . . . Manifestum est autem quod ratio quodammodo voluntatem praecedit, et ordinat actum eius, inquantum scilicet voluntas in suum obiectum tendit secundum ordinem rationis, eo quod vis apprehensiva appetitivae suum obiectum repraesentat. Sic igitur ille actus quo voluntas tendit in aliquid quod proponitur ut bonum, ex eo quod per rationem est ordinatum ad finem, materialiter quidem est voluntatis, formaliter autem rationis” (ibid.). “[E]lectio importat collationem quandam praecedentem, non . . . essentialiter sit ipsa collatio” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 6: 98); “[C]onsilium proprie importat collationem inter plures” (ST I-II, q. 14, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 107). Note that collatio is not just the act of comparing alternatives without reaching a conclusion about what to do. It also involves a preferential conclusion about what to do (ST I-II, q. 14, a. 4, ad 1, Leon. 6: 107). See Chapter 4 (Section 4.7) for references.

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before defending it in Chapter 4. Until then I only work with the generally accepted, weaker interpretation on which reason at least in part accounts for choice’s free character.

1.5

Aquinas against Aristotle on Choice

Aquinas’s account of choice as a volition with a rational form is very much indebted to Aristotle, as Aquinas himself makes clear. Indeed, in the Prima secundae, q. 13, a. 1, he presents his doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism as a development of Aristotle’s famous Nicomachean Ethics VI, 2 characterization of “choice” (prohairesis) as “either desiderative thought or intellectual desire.”66 Despite this Aristotelian basis, however, there is a significant difference between the ways in which Aquinas and Aristotle spell out the rational aspect of choice, and it is well to consider this difference here because it helps bring out a distinctive feature of Aquinas’s theory not often noticed by scholars, namely, the comparatively broad scope of choice. For Aristotle, choice requires “deliberation” (bouleusis). Indeed, when Aristotle says that choice is an “intellectual desire,” he means by this, as he explains in Nicomachean Ethics III, 3, that it is a striving based on deliberation.67 As he tells us in the same chapter, he understands by ‘deliberation’ a “search” (zētēsis) whereby the agent determines how to reach her desired end.68 For example, if I intend to buy a computer but do not know yet what model to purchase, I start to deliberate by engaging in a search for the best model. I will examine what the desired computer should be able to do, what a reasonable price is, etc. After having considered these factors, I will conclude what model it would be best to buy, all things considered, and it is this ultimate judgment resulting from deliberation that informs my choice to purchase one model rather than another. Aquinas differs from Aristotle because he does not think that our choices need to be based on such a sophisticated process of practical reasoning. On 66

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“In nomine electionis importatur aliquid pertinens ad rationem sive intellectum, et aliquid pertinens ad voluntatem, dicit enim philosophus, in VI Ethic., quod electio est appetitivus intellectus, vel appetitus intellectivus” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 98). The reference is to EN VI, 2, 1139b4–5. The above translation is Ross’s, revised by Urmson (as found in the Barnes edition). See, e.g., EN III, 3, 1113a4–5. I follow A. W. Price in holding that choice must be preceded by deliberation in Aristotle. See his “Choice and Action in Aristotle,” Phronesis 61, no. 4 (2016), 443–5. The view that choice must be preceded by deliberation has also been attributed to Aquinas (incorrectly, as we will see below), by Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” 643 and David Gallagher, “Thomas Aquinas on the Will as Rational Appetite,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 29, no. 4 (1991), 584. See EN III, 3, 1112b23.

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Aquinas’s view, every choice must rely on a prior judgment of reason, but this judgment can be made instantaneously without the agent’s engaging in any “search” (inquisitio) for the best means.69 As he sees it, our judgment is only preceded by such a search when we are in doubt about how to attain our desired end.70 In the computer example, for instance, I was not sure what model to buy. Therefore, I needed to deliberate. But there are a number of cases where we are not at all unsure about how to attain our end, Aquinas thinks. In the Prima secundae, q. 14, a. 4, he gives two examples: That something is not doubtful in matters pertaining to human acts happens in two ways. In one way because one proceeds to determinate ends in determinate ways, as happens in the case of skills, which have a specific way of operating. For example, a scribe does not deliberate about how he should write, this being determined by his skill . . . In another way, this is the case because it does not matter whether this or that happens.71

Aquinas’s first example here is skilled agency. A scribe who intends to copy a book does not have to deliberate about how to go about realizing this end. He knows perfectly well how to do this. There are determinate ways of copying a book that the scribe masters. Yet the scribe chooses to apply his skill to copy the book, Aquinas thinks. As he tells us, for instance, in De malo, q. 16, a. 4, in a discussion of whether angels can sin in the first instant of their creation: If it were certain what ought to be done, the angel would immediately choose in the first instant, without deliberation, as is clear in the skill of writing.72

As I understand this passage, Aquinas holds that the scribe instantaneously chooses to apply rather than not apply his skill to copy a book. The scribe could in principle choose to try out a new writing technique that he does 69

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“[E]lectio praesupponit consilium ratione iudicii vel sententiae. Unde quando iudicium vel sententia manifesta est absque inquisitione, non requiritur consilii inquisitio” (ST I-II, q. 14, a. 4, ad 1, Leon. 6: 107). See Osborne, Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, 127 for this point in Aquinas and its historical background. “De illis autem inquirere solemus, quae in dubium veniunt” (ST I-II, q. 14, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 107). “Quod autem aliquid in operabilibus humanis non sit dubitabile, ex duobus contingit. Uno modo, quia per determinatas vias proceditur ad determinatos fines, sicut contingit in artibus quae habent certas vias operandi; sicut scriptor non consiliatur quomodo debeat trahere litteras, hoc enim determinatum est per artem . . . alio modo quia non multum refert utrum sic vel sic fiat” (ST I-II, q. 14, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 107). “[E]t si certum esset quid oporteret fieri, absque consilio statim in primo instanti eligeret, sicut patet in arte scripturae” (DM, q. 16, a. 4, c., Leon. 23: 299, ll. 278–81).

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not yet master. But he sees no good reason for doing so, and so without deliberation he at once chooses to apply his skill. The second example of a choice not based on deliberation that Aquinas provides in the above text from the Prima secundae, q. 14, a. 4, is what is today called a “Buridan’s Ass case.”73 In such a situation, the agent is indifferent to what he chooses because the options he is presented with are, or at least seem to him to be, equally good. To use a non-medieval example, suppose that you are at a stationery store intending to buy a pen to take notes during a lecture. You see a box full of pens all of which look exactly alike. You choose one. Aquinas claims, plausibly, that you do not have to deliberate about which pen to pick because you immediately realize that any one of them will do. As this shows, Aquinas’s view of choice is less demanding than Aristotle’s. Aristotle requires a more or less sophisticated reasoning process to precede choice, but, for Aquinas, this stage is optional. This enables Aquinas to count many more doings as choice-based than Aristotle can, and this is, I would argue, an advantage of Aquinas’s theory. For, intuitively, the scribe and stationery store examples just considered do involve choices, and Aquinas’s account allows us to say this, whereas Aristotle’s deliberation-based account does not. What is more, Aquinas’s broad account of choice also allows him to categorize a host of other everyday doings as involving a choice that would not qualify as involving a choice on Aristotle’s theory. Consider routine activities, such as getting out of bed, showering, getting dressed, eating breakfast, and cycling to work. It is implausible to suppose that whenever agents do these things, they first deliberate about whether they should do them. Yet it is not at all implausible to suppose that people who do these things choose to do them. After all, they could have also chosen not to get out of bed, not to shower, etc. On Aquinas’s account, we can preserve this intuition. On Aristotle’s, we cannot. While Aquinas may not overintellectualize choice, one might worry that by appealing to choice as the key aetiological factor of the human act he nevertheless overintellectualizes our agency. Is it really necessary that every human act be preceded by a choice between alternatives? Contemporary action theorists, for instance, do not usually require this. They commonly 73

This term is historically inaccurate because Buridan does not actually provide the example of the ass, but it is now commonly used, which is why I am also employing it here. For a contemporary discussion of such cases, see, e.g., Peter van Inwagen, “When Is the Will Free?,” in Agents, Causes, Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will, ed. Timothy O’Connor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 233–4.

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argue that a piece of behavior is a human act if it is intentional and so done for a reason, but for this it is not necessary that the act be preceded by a free decision to perform this rather than that act.74 Why, then, does Aquinas see the need for such a prior act of choice? In Section 1.6, I propose an answer.

1.6 Why Choice? First, we should note that Aquinas did not have to appeal to choice as the key aetiological factor of the human act. As I pointed out in the Introduction, he discusses a number of other aetiological antecedents, notably in the Prima secundae, qq. 6–17. For instance, prior to my choice to go for a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head, Aquinas thinks that I must have first formed a “simple volition” (simplex velle) for the end of clearing my head. This simple volition is then followed by an act of “intention” (intentio) whereby I seek to pursue some means or other to clear my head, and if I am unsure which means to pursue, this gives rise to a process of “deliberation” (consilium). My deliberation may yield that doing yoga and taking a walk are both good options to clear my head, and I “consent” (consentire) to both of these means as suitable to clearing my head, Aquinas thinks. But I must settle on one course of action, so I conclude to the judgment that taking a walk is to be preferred to doing yoga, for instance, and on this basis I then choose to clear my head by going for a walk rather than doing yoga. Aquinas could have, in principle, appealed to any one of these antecedents as the key aetiological factor setting the human act apart from other acts in nature. Other power-exercises in nature do not involve choice, but they do not involve intention or simple volition either. Yet Aquinas appeals to choice or control in the Prima secundae, q. 1, a. 1, when specifying what makes an act characteristically human. As I now argue, he does so because he wants his action theory to be serviceable to his ethical project of evaluating human acts in light of whether they lead to true happiness.

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See, e.g., Davidson, “Agency,” 50; Alfred Mele, “Intentional, Unintentional, or Neither? Middle Ground in Theory and Practice,” American Philosophical Quarterly 49, no. 4 (2012), 370. Steward, A Metaphysics for Freedom, 19 argues that every human act (or rather every act of a higher animal) involves a kind of choice. However, she does not mean by this that a choice in the sense of an antecedent decision is required for every such act. Rather, a choice is a “settling,” as she calls it, and this can be effected by the act itself.

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To see this, we must note that in the context of this ethical project Aquinas defends a radical view about moral evaluation. As he writes in the Prima secundae, q. 18, a. 9: It is required that any given individual human act have some circumstance by which it is drawn to the good or the bad, at least as regards the intention of the end.75

In other words, any token human act (individualis actus), be it stealing, murder, cooking a stew, or rearranging one’s bookshelf, must be either morally good or bad, on Aquinas’s view. That is to say, any token human act directs you to or away from true happiness, and this on account of its circumstances or intention. Aquinas grants that there are human acts that are morally neutral on the type level (secundum speciem).76 There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about cooking a stew or rearranging a bookshelf, for instance.77 But Aquinas holds that as soon as these acts occur under determinate circumstances in the real world and in view of ends intended by agents, they acquire a definite moral quality. If, for instance, you are cooking a stew to poison your neighbor, then your cooking the stew is, given your intention, a morally bad act. If you are rearranging your bookshelf when you should be looking after your sick child, then rearranging your bookshelf is, under these circumstances, a bad deed. It is done at a bad time. I cannot examine Aquinas’s theory of moral evaluation in any detail here.78 What I want to highlight is one of its implications. If, as this theory states, every token human act is subject to moral evaluation, then this entails, for Aquinas, that every token human act must also involve free choice. The following passage from the Prima pars, q. 83, a. 1 makes this implication clear: [H]uman beings have free decision. Otherwise counsel, exhortations, precepts, prohibitions, reward, and punishment would be in vain.79 75

76 77 78 79

“Et oportet quod quilibet individualis actus habeat aliquam circumstantiam per quam trahatur ad bonum vel malum, ad minus ex parte intentionis finis” (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 9, c., Leon 6: 137). For a discussion of Aquinas’s argument, see, e.g., McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 11–14. For a contemporary defense of the view that all of our acts are morally relevant, see John Haldane, “Is Every Action Morally Significant?,” Philosophy 86, no. 3 (2011): 375–404. “[C]ontingit quandoque aliquem actum esse indifferentem secundum speciem, qui tamen est bonus vel malus in individuo consideratus” (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 9, c., Leon 6: 137). But Aquinas also countenances intrinsically good acts on the type level, such as giving alms to those in need, as well as intrinsically evil acts, such as murder. See, e.g., ST I-II, q. 18, a. 8, c., Leon. 6: 134. For a detailed discussion of the specification of moral acts, see Joseph Pilsner, The Specification of Human Acts in St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). “[H]omo est liberi arbitrii, alioquin frustra essent consilia, exhortationes, praecepta, prohibitiones, praemia et poenae” (ST I, q. 83, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 307). See also De Ver., q. 24, a. 1, c. Leon. 22, 3, 1: 680, ll. 226–30.

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As Aquinas argues here, if what you do is not subject to free choice, but rather determined by antecedent conditions beyond your control, then it would be unfair to reward or punish you for what you do. In other words, the legitimacy of evaluating a deed in moral terms is predicated on the deed’s being the result of an agent’s free choice. If this is true, and if every token human act is subject to moral evaluation, as Aquinas maintains, then this requires that every token human act involve free choice. This is why, I take it, Aquinas privileges choice over all of the other antecedents in his account of the human act. Our choices make us moral agents who are responsible for what they do.

1.7 The Task ahead of Us: The Two Composites We now have an outline of Aquinas’s theory of the human act before us. Let us briefly take stock. As we have seen, Aquinas conceives of the human act as a composite of two power-exercises – the volition of use and the commanded act – where these components are hylomorphically related. This composite is a human act, Aquinas maintains, because it is explained by an antecedent act of free choice, which Aquinas singles out as the key aetiological factor due to his ethical project. The act of choice is likewise hylomorphically structured. Its material component is a volition (distinct from use), and its formal component, I suggested, is that volition’s free directedness to one pursuit rather than another, where this directedness is, on an uncontroversial reading, at least in part inherited from the preceding free judgment. Aquinas’s theory of the human act, then, crucially revolves around two hylomorphic composites. Central to his ontology of the human act, that is, his account of what sort of entity the human act is, is the hylomorphic composite of use and the commanded act. Central to his action aetiology, that is, his account of how the human act is explained, is the hylomorphic composite of choice. The remainder of this book is dedicated to discussing these two composites and their relation to one another. The next part (Part II, Chapters 2–5) discusses Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism. The part thereafter (Part III, Chapters 6–9) turns to his Act Hylomorphism and connects it with his Choice Hylomorphism.

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part ii

Choice Hylomorphism

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chapter 2

Practical Judgment

2.1

Introduction

Even on an uncontroversial reading of Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism, choice is a volition whose free character is at least in part accounted for by a preceding act of free judgment. Accordingly, our investigation needs to begin with an account of this latter judgment and consider what makes it free. In a next step, we can then examine whether the will has any freedom of its own. My discussion of free judgment is in two parts. In this chapter, I examine Aquinas’s account of practical judgment in general.1 In Chapter 3, I then turn to his account of free judgment in particular, which is one kind of practical judgment. I begin with a general discussion of practical judgment because, as we will see, Aquinas explains the freedom of free judgment by appeal to two features that accrue to it in virtue of being a practical judgment. These are the free judgment’s attitude of assent and the means–end relating character of its propositional content. In this chapter, I introduce these two features of practical judgment (Section 2.2), and I then discuss the feature of propositional content in some detail because it is of particular importance for understanding the freedom of free judgment (Section 2.3–2.5). I also offer a preliminary account of free judgment (Section 2.3), which I then fill in in Chapter 3. 1

Aquinas uses the term ‘practical judgment’ (iudicium practicum) only once in his entire oeuvre, namely, in ST I-II, q. 93, a. 2, ad 3, Leon. 7: 163. However, he often employs the term ‘iudicium’ in his discussion of practical cognition. See, e.g., ST I-II, q. 10, a. 3, c. Leon. 6: 87; ST I-II, q. 13, a. 1, ad 2, Leon. 6: 99; ST I-II, q. 13, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 101; ST I-II, q. 13, a. 5, ad 2, Leon. 6: 102; ST I-II, q. 13, a. 6, ad 2, Leon. 6: 103; ST I-II, q. 14, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 105; ST I-II, q. 15, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 112; ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1, ad 2, Leon. 6: 118. To the best of my knowledge, there is to date no detailed study of practical judgment in Aquinas. The only two studies that I have found that broach this topic are Christian Schröer, Praktische Vernunft bei Thomas von Aquin (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1995), 199–200, and Christian Schröer, “Das normative Urteil bei Thomas von Aquin in handlungstheoretischer Perspektive,” Theologie und Philosophie 84, no. 2 (2009): 207–11. Both are rather brief, and the account that I shall offer here differs significantly from the one that Schröer favors.

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2.2

Judgments: Attitude and Content

According to Aquinas, a practical judgment is one species of judgment that the power of reason can elicit, the other species being theoretical judgment.2 To determine what a practical judgment is, it is useful to first discuss what a judgment, generally speaking, is, on his view, and to then consider what makes a judgment practical as opposed to theoretical. As I noted in Chapter 1 (Section 1.4), a judgment is, generally, a mental act with propositional content, according to Aquinas. Aquinas commonly distinguishes it from what he calls the act of “simple apprehension” (simplex apprehensio), by which he understands an agent’s grasp of a subpropositional concept.3 If I grasp the concept of atomic number, for instance, I am engaged in an act of simple apprehension. In contrast, if I think that the atomic number of gold is 79, then I am engaged in an act of judgment. Aquinas thinks that judgment requires the combination of concepts understood in simple apprehension. For instance, by judging that the atomic number of gold is 79, I must combine the concepts of atomic number, gold, and 79 by means of the copula is.4 But judgment also involves what Aquinas calls “assent” (assensus) or “dissent” (dissensus). In his Sentences commentary III, d. 23, for instance, he says that “in this operation, the intellect assents or dissents, insofar as a proposition is conceded or denied.”5 Thus, on Aquinas’s account, when I judge that the atomic 2

3 4

5

“Sicut autem omne iudicium rationis speculativae procedit a naturali cognitione primorum principiorum, ita etiam omne iudicium rationis practicae procedit ex quibusdam principiis naturaliter cognitis” (ST I-II, q. 100, a. 1, c., Leon. 7: 206). I say that these are the judgments that our power of reason elicits because Aquinas thinks that the sensory powers also allow us to make judgments of sorts. On the iudicium sensus in Aquinas, see, e.g., Joseph Owens, “Judgment and Truth in Aquinas,” in St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: Collected Papers of Joseph Owens C.Ss.R, ed. John R. Catan (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), 41–2. See, e.g., In De Trin., q. 5, a. 3, c., Leon. 50: 173, ll. 89–95; De Ver., q. 1, a. 3, c., Leon. 22, 1, 2: 10, ll. 23–7; In DA III, c. 5, Leon. 45, 1: 224–6, ll. 7–89. Many scholars take it that this is why Aquinas, in a number of texts, such as the ones referred to in n. 3, refers to judgment as an act of “composition or division” (compositio vel divisio). On this reading, an affirmative judgment is a “composition” because it is an act of combining concepts by means of the copula is. A negative judgment, in contrast, is a “division” because it is an act of holding concepts apart by means of the negated copula is not. In the Appendix, I reject this interpretation, identifying composition and division instead with assent and dissent, respectively. “[P]ropter hoc in hac operatione non potest inveniri fides, cujus est assentire. Sed in alia operatione, qua intellectus componit et dividit, in qua jam invenitur verum et falsum, sicut in enuntiatione: et propter hoc intellectus in hac sua operatione assentit vel dissentit, sicut et enuntiatio conceditur aut negatur” (In Sent. III, d. 23, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 1, Moos: 724–5, translated bit in italics). Aquinas’s view that judging is an act of assenting to a proposition is a Stoic one, as M. D. Chenu has shown. See his “Un vestige du stoicisme,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 27 (1938): 63–8. See also Benoit Garceau, Judicium: Vocabulaire, sources, doctrine de Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Librairie

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number of gold is 79, I combine the concepts of atomic number, gold, and 79, via the copula is, into the proposition ‘The atomic number of gold is 79,’ and I assent to said proposition. Aquinas contends that an agent assents to a proposition that she takes to be true (and dissents from a proposition that she takes to be false). As he writes in De malo q. 6, a. 1, “the intellect assents when it judges a conception of a thing to be true (verum).”6 Aquinas here refers to a proposition as a “conception of a thing” (conceptio rei) because he takes it to be a piece of mental content that represents some portion of the world as being a certain way.7 As he puts it in the Prima pars, q. 85, a. 5, a proposition is a kind of “likeness” (similitudo) of some portion of the world.8 And this likeness is true, on his view, just in case there is what he refers to in De veritate, q. 1, a. 1 as an “adequation of intellect and thing” (adequatio intellectus et rei), that is, just in case the likeness corresponds to the way the world is.9 For instance, the proposition ‘The atomic number of gold is 79’ is a likeness that is true because it is a representation that corresponds to the extramental fact that the atomic number of gold is 79. Put in contemporary terms, we could say that Aquinas holds that the truth of a proposition is assessed in terms of what John Searle calls the “mind-to-world direction of fit.”10 A proposition is true if and only if it fits

6

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Philosophique J. Vrin, 1968), 107–9. For a recent (Thomistic) account of judgment as an act of assenting to a proposition, see Luca Tuninetti, Persone che giudicano: Lineamenti di epistemologia (Vatican City: Urbaniana University Press, 2016) 161–3. “[A]ssentire non nominat motum intellectus ad rem, sed magis ad conceptionem rei quae habetur in mente, cui intellectus assentit dum iudicat eam esse veram” (DM, q. 6, a. 1, ad 14, Leon. 23: 151, ll. 651–5, translated bit in italics). As Ursula Coope has pointed out, for Aquinas this requires a certain kind of reflexive awareness of the proposition on the part of the knower. See her “Aquinas on Judgment and the Active Power of Reason,” Philosophers’ Imprint 13, no. 20 (2013), 9. See, e.g., QDP, q. 8, a. 1, c., Bazzi: 215 for another text in which Aquinas calls a proposition a “conception of a thing.” For a discussion of Aquinas’s theory of propositions, see, e.g., Robert Pasnau, “Aquinas on Thought’s Linguistic Nature,” The Monist 80, no. 4 (1997): 558–75. See ST I, q. 85, a. 5, ad 3, Leon. 4: 341. For Aquinas, not only judgments are likenesses of what they represent. Sub-propositional concepts are as well. See, e.g., ST I, q. 84, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 320. There is considerable debate as to what the nature of this likeness relation is. On one view, representational likeness and represented entity are “formally identical.” See esp. Dominik Perler, Theorien der Intentionalität im Mittelalter (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 2002), 33–4. Jeffrey Brower and Susan Brower-Toland have opposed the formal identity view and argued that representational likeness is a kind of primitive (non-relational) feature of representations in Aquinas. See their “Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts and Intentionality,” The Philosophical Review 117, no. 2 (2008), 225–33. I do not take a stand on this issue because it is not crucial for my argument. De Ver., q. 1, a. 1, c., Leon. 22, 1, 2: 6, ll. 186–7. For a detailed study of Aquinas’s adequationdefinition, see J. F. Wippel, “Truth in Thomas Aquinas: Part 1,” The Review of Metaphysics 43, no. 2 (1989), 307–21; Id., “Truth in Thomas Aquinas: Part 2,” The Review of Metaphysics, 43, no.3 (1989– 90), 543–67. See John Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 8.

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the way the world is, and it is false if and only if it does not. A judgment, for Aquinas, is, accordingly, an act of assenting to some mental content in the mind-to-world direction of fit. Some scholars have argued that Aquinas does not clearly distinguish between the act of combining concepts into a proposition, on the one hand, and the act of assenting to a proposition as true, on the other. Put differently, Aquinas does not draw what is nowadays known as a “force/ content” or, alternatively, “attitude/content” distinction. Giorgio Pini, for instance, contends that Aquinas simply identifies the act of formulating a proposition like ‘The atomic number of gold is 79’ with the act of endorsing said proposition’s truth.11 While there are certain passages in Aquinas that could suggest this view, it cannot be Aquinas’s. For as the seventeenth-century Thomist John of St. Thomas (1589–1644) already pointed out, Aquinas allows for a person to understand a proposition without assenting to it.12 On Aquinas’s view, this happens, for instance, when a person is in doubt as to whether a given proposition is true.13 Aquinas describes such as person in his Sentences commentary III, d. 23 as being aware of two contradictory propositions. This person “has reason [to assent] to both,” he writes, but “his judgment is determined in no way.”14 For instance, if I am in doubt as to whether there is a direct flight from Chicago to Kathmandu, Aquinas would hold, I must understand both the proposition ‘There is a direct flight from Chicago to Kathmandu’ and its contradictory opposite ‘There is no direct flight from Chicago to Kathmandu.’ But I assent to neither because I am unsure as to which one is true. It is hard to see how one could conceive of such a scenario without making a distinction between the proposition (a content), on the one hand, and the act of assenting to it (a force/attitude), on the other.15 After all, the case of doubt shows that you can have the proposition without 11

12 13 14

15

See Giorgio Pini, “Scotus on Assertion and the Copula: A Comparison with Aquinas,” in Medieval Theories of Assertive and Non-assertive Language, ed. Alfonso Maierù and Luisa Valente (Florence: Olschki, 2004), 311–16. For references to other scholars defending this reading, see the Appendix. See John of St. Thomas, Cursus philosophicus thomisticus IV, q. 5, a. 2 (Turin: Marietti, 1937), 140. For other scholars who interpret Aquinas like John, see again the Appendix. See John of St. Thomas, Cursus IV, q. 11, a. 3, 370 for the argument from doubt. “Quando vero homo non habet rationem ad alteram partem [contradictionis] magis quam ad alteram; vel quia ad neutram habet, quod nescientis est; vel quia ad utramque habet, sed aequalem, quod dubitantis est: tunc nullo modo assentit, cum nullo modo determinetur ejus judicium, sed aequaliter se habeat ad diversas” (In Sent. III, d. 23, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 1, Moos: 725–6, translated bits in italics). See also In De Trin., p. 2, q. 3, a. 1, c., Leon. 50: 107, ll. 73–84; ST II-II, q. 1, a. 4, c., Leon. 8: 13–14. Pini, “Scotus on Assertion and the Copula: A Comparison with Aquinas,” 318–20 considers Aquinas’s discussion of doubt, but argues that it does not commit Aquinas to “unasserted propositions.” I do not see why. To my mind, if the agent is confronted with p and not-p but does not assent to either, then the agent is confronted with two unasserted propositions.

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the assent, and if two things can come apart they cannot be the same thing but must be distinct. If this is right, then a judgment is, for Aquinas, not just a proposition strung together by adding concept to concept. Rather, it is a proposition plus a separate act of assenting attached to said proposition. This gives us an idea of what a judgment generally speaking is, for Aquinas. What we need to consider next is what makes a judgment practical as opposed to theoretical. As Aquinas sees it, theoretical and practical judgment do not differ from one another in terms of the attitude that they involve, but rather in terms of their respective propositional contents. He writes in q. 92, a. 2 of his Treatise on Law, which spans qq. 90–108 of the Prima secundae, that theoretical and practical judgments both involve “assent” (assentire), but that the propositional content of a theoretical judgment is an “enunciation” (enuntiatio), whereas the propositional content of a practical judgment is a “precept” (praeceptum).16 By an ‘enunciation,’ Aquinas understands a proposition that states that something that we cannot alter through our agency is the case.17 For instance, the proposition ‘The atomic number of gold is 79’ is an enunciation. It states a fact of chemistry that obtains independently of our agency. By a ‘precept,’ in contrast, Aquinas understands a prescriptive statement “about something that ought to occur” (de aliquo quod fieri debet), as he puts it in the Treatise on Law, q. 99, a. 1.18 And what the precept prescribes as having to occur, he claims, is something that we can, or at least that we believe that we can, bring about through our agency.19 As Aquinas writes in the Prima 16

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“Sicut enuntiatio est rationis dictamen per modum enuntiandi, ita etiam lex per modum praecipiendi. Rationis autem proprium est ut ex aliquo ad aliquid inducat. Unde sicut in demonstrativis scientiis ratio inducit ut assentiatur conclusioni per quaedam principia, ita etiam inducit ut assentiatur legis praecepto per aliquid” (ST I-II, q. 92, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 161). It is important to point out that both judgments involve the same kind of assent, counter to what Schröer, Praktische Vernunft bei Thomas von Aquin, 199, maintains. Schröer argues that practical judgments involve consensus rather than assensus, but the above-quoted text suggests that they both involve assensus. For a discussion of the consensus/assensus distinction, see Judith A. Barad, “Aquinas on Faith and the Consent/Assent Distinction,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 24, no. 3 (1986): 311–21. See, e.g., In Periherm I, c. 8, Leon. 1*1: 42, l. 224 for enunciation, and see, e.g., ST I, q. 14, a. 16, c., Leon. 4: 196–7 for the point that theoretical truths concern things that obtain independently of our agency. “[P]raeceptum . . . est de aliquo quod fieri debet” (ST I-II, q. 99, a. 1, c., Leon. 7: 199). Aquinas does not usually employ the modal verb ‘debere’ (‘ought’) to formulate precepts. Instead, he uses a gerundival form, writing, for instance, “bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 170) or “ab hoc concubitu es[t] abstinendum” (De Ver., q. 17, a. 2, c., Leon. 22, 2, 2: 520, l. 83). But the force of a gerundival statement in Latin is the same as that of a statement using an ‘ought.’ For a textbook account of the gerundival form in Latin, see, e.g., Frederic M. Wheelock, Wheelock’s Latin, 6th ed., revised by Richard A. Lafleur (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 147. “Unde nullus tenderet in finem, nisi per hoc quod apparet id quod est ad finem esse possibile” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 5, c., Leon. 6: 102). The appeal to belief is important because the agent may be mistaken

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secundae, q. 57, a. 6: “reason is not able to prescribe (praecipere) those things that cannot happen through a human being.”20 What are these things that we can or that we believe that we can bring about? Aquinas refers to such entities as “operable things” (operabilia).21 These comprise first of all our doings, that is, human acts, such as taking a walk or trying to recall a piece of information. But Aquinas also includes among operable things the products that result from a certain class of human acts, namely, those that involve skill. Aquinas here has in mind the products of such acts as writing, building, or healing a patient, that is, artifacts, such as manuscripts or houses, and states of affairs, such as a patient’s health.22 Aquinas calls these products of skillful agency “makeable things” (factibilia), while he refers to human acts as “doable things” (agibilia).23 On Aquinas’s view, a precept may prescribe the pursuit of a doable or the production of a makeable entity. To get a better sense of what precepts are more specifically it is helpful to consider both types of precepts more closely. Doing so will also allow us to provide a first specification of the judgment of choice.

2.3

Precepts about Doable and Makeable Things

The precepts prescribing doable things that Aquinas discusses in most detail are what he calls “laws” (leges). By a ‘law,’ Aquinas understands a “general” (universale) precept about what to do.24 In his Treatise on Law, he distinguishes between two bodies of law.25

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about what is in his power: “Quandoque est electio eius quod apprehenditur ut possibile eligenti, quod tamen non est ei possibile” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 5, ad 2, Leon. 6: 102). “[N]on enim ratio habet praecipere ea quae per hominem fieri non possunt” (ST I-II, q. 57, a. 6, c., Leon. 6: 370). See, e.g., ST I, q. 14, a. 16, c., Leon. 4: 196–7. Aquinas refers to all of these products as “artificia,” which translates to “things made by skill” (ST I-II, q. 57, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 366). For this terminology, see, e.g., ST II-II, q. 47, a. 5, c., Leon. 8: 352–3; ST I-II, q. 58, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 373; De Virt., q. 1, a. 13, c., Bazzi: 749. “Et huiusmodi propositiones universales rationis practicae ordinatae ad actiones, habent rationem legis” (ST I-II, q. 90, a. 2, ad 2, Leon. 7: 149). While, for Aquinas, laws are general in nature, not all of them hold without exception. Aquinas thinks that some laws hold only ut in pluribus, such as ‘Goods entrusted to one ought to be returned.’ See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, c., Leon. 7: 171. For a discussion of such ut in pluribus precepts and their relation to exceptionless ones, see, e.g., R. A. Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts in Thomistic Natural Law Teaching (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966). See also A. M. González, “Depositum Gladius Non Debet Restitui Furioso: Precepts, Synderesis, and Virtues in Saint Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 63, no. 2 (1999): 217–40. There are also other types of lex in Aquinas, for instance, God’s eternal law, in which our natural law participates (ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 154). I shall not consider these other types here because they are not relevant for working out the nature of precepts.

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First, there is what he calls “natural law” (lex naturalis), which is a body of moral propositions about what to do.26 Aquinas refers to the set of these laws as “natural” because he thinks that they hold independently of human convention. They are known by natural reason, and they are imprinted onto our minds by God.27 Some of these precepts are not specifically biblical, Aquinas thinks. Among the examples that he adduces are the precept that one ought to preserve one’s existence and the precept that one ought to return goods entrusted to one.28 But most of the precepts that Aquinas discusses have an explicit biblical basis. Of key importance are, unsurprisingly, the Ten Commandments, as well as the two greatest commandments of the New Testament, namely, ‘You ought to love God’ and ‘You ought to love your neighbor.’29 Aquinas argues that these two commandments ground all of the other precepts of natural law. He does not spell out this grounding relation, but it is not difficult to see what he has in mind. Consider the commandments of the second table of the Decalogue, that is, the commandments regarding our interaction with fellow human beings, such as ‘You ought not to steal’ or ‘You ought not to kill.’ If you adhere to the commandment to love your neighbor, then you must also accept that your neighbor ought not to be harmed, and this entails, one might plausibly argue, that you ought not to kill them or steal from them. The second body of law that Aquinas countenances is “positive law” (lex humanitus posita), which is any set of laws that a society, or more precisely a sovereign, establishes by convention. As Aquinas sees it, positive law, though conventionally established, ought to be grounded in natural law.30 He does not spell out this grounding relation either, but the following (non-medieval) example may help illustrate the idea. Consider the 1833 26

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See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 169. For discussions of Aquinas’s theory of natural law, see, e.g., Germain Grisez, “The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa theologiae 1–2, Question 94, Article 2,” in Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Anthony Kenny (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 340–82; Anthony Lisska, Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Martin Rhonheimer, Natur als Grundlage der Moral: Die personale Struktur des Naturgesetzes bei Thomas von Aquin: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit autonomer und teleologischer Ethik (Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlag, 1987). “[P]romulgatio legis naturae est ex hoc ipso quod Deus eam mentibus hominum inseruit naturaliter cognoscendam” (ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 1, Leon. 7: 152). See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 169; ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, c., Leon. 7: 171. The proposition prescribing the returning of goods entrusted to one can already be found in Plato, Republic I, 331c. “Illa duo praecepta sunt prima et communia praecepta legis naturae quae sunt per se nota rationi humanae vel per naturam vel per fidem. Et ideo omnia praecepta Decalogi ad illa duo referuntur sicut conclusiones ad principia communia” (ST I-II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 7: 209). “[O]mnis lex humanitus posita intantum habet de ratione legis, inquantum a lege naturae derivatur” (ST I-II, q. 95, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 175).

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British Slavery Abolition Act. This law is one established by convention – in response to the practice of slave trade in the British Empire. But the prohibition of slavery is, one might argue, a corollary derivable from the commandment to love one’s neighbor. One cannot both love one’s neighbor and treat them as one’s property.31 While Aquinas’s most detailed discussion of precepts concerns laws, which pertain to doable things, he also discusses precepts pertaining to makeable things. In his Sentences commentary IV, d. 19, for instance, he considers the precepts of medicine (praecepta universalia medicinae).32 A good physician should endorse certain general precepts, Aquinas thinks, such as, to use a contemporary example, ‘Pneumonia ought to be treated with penicillin.’ Similarly, a good builder should endorse a general precept such as, ‘Any wall ought to be erected on a solid foundation.’ Like moral or legal precepts, Aquinas thinks that such general precepts about makeable things are part of a more or less sophisticated body of knowledge, which he refers to as a “practical science” (scientia practica).33 He calls a body of laws a “moral science” (scientia moralis), while he refers to a body of precepts about what to make as a “productive science” (scientia factiva).34 For Aquinas, the general precepts of a practical science, whether moral or productive, guide our conduct, but only if the agent applies them to the particular situation in which she finds herself. Aquinas refers to such an application of a general precept as a “particular precept” (praeceptum de particularibus).35 For instance, to act on the basis of the general precept that one’s neighbor ought to be loved, I must apply it to a situation in which a particular neighbor ought to be loved, say, when a homeless person asks me for money. The particular precept that results from this application will then be something like ‘This person ought to be loved.’ Similarly, for a physician to act on the basis of the general precept that pneumonia ought 31 32

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The reasoning just sketched is one that could be provided in favor of the Slavery Abolition Act. I am not saying that this reasoning de facto drove the British Parliament to pass the law in 1833. “[P]ost generalia medicinae praecepta oportet adhiberi medicos, quibus praecepta universalia medicinae singulis infirmis, secundum quod debent, aptentur” (In Sent. IV, d. 19, q. 1, a. 3, ad 1, Moos: 983). For other passages in which Aquinas connects skill and the act of prescribing (praecipere), see, e.g., Comp. Theol. I, c. 126, Leon. 42: 128; In Phys. II, l. 4, n. 8, Leon. 2: 66. See, e.g., ST I, q. 14, a. 16, c., Leon. 4: 196–7. For the term ‘scientia practica’ in Aquinas, see, e.g., Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, “Praktisches Wissen und ‘Praktische Wissenschaft’: Zur Epistemologie der Moralphilosophie bei Thomas von Aquin,” in Handlung und Wissenschaft: Die Epistemologie der praktischen Wissenschaften im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Action and Science: The Epistemology of the Practical Sciences in the 13th and 14th Centuries), ed. Matthias Lutz-Bachmann and Alexander Fidora (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), 89–96. See In Met. XI, l. 7, n. 2253, Cathala: 535 for the distinction. “[E]tiam de particularibus quibusdam praecepta dantur” (ST I-II, q. 90, a. 2, ad 1, Leon. 7: 150).

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to be treated with penicillin, she must apply it to a situation in which a particular patient requires such treatment. The particular precept that results from this application will then be ‘This person ought to be treated with penicillin.’ The picture presented thus far could suggest that all of our precepts are sophisticated propositions of a practical science or applications thereof. But this is not what Aquinas thinks. On his view, any “choice involves a precept of reason about what to do,” as he writes in his Sentences commentary III, d. 33.36 As we saw in Chapter 1, our choices may concern mundane pursuits, such as purchasing one pen rather than another or going for a walk rather than doing yoga. These choices, then, will involve precepts such as ‘This pen ought to be bought’ or ‘A walk ought to be taken.’37 These may be applications of more general precepts like ‘Utensils ought to be purchased to take notes during a lecture’ or ‘Walks ought to be taken to clear one’s head.’ But these general precepts hardly qualify as elements of a practical science like medicine or natural law. Rather, they are more appropriately thought of as general policies of conduct that the agent sets for herself. ‘Precept,’ then, is a broad term, for Aquinas. It refers to any kind of general or particular practical proposition, be it sophisticated or mundane, stating that something doable or makeable ought to be brought about. What all of the different types of precepts have in common, Aquinas thinks, is that they are truth-evaluable – a point that will be important when distinguishing practical judgment from volition in Chapter 4. As Aquinas writes in the Prima pars, q. 79, a. 11, “practical reason cognizes truth just as theoretical reason does.”38 On his view, the truth of a practical 36

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“[E]lectio importat praeceptum rationis de his prosequendis” (In Sent. III, d. 33, q. 2, a. 3, c., Moos: 1057). For a discussion of this passage in connection with the precept of prudence, see, e.g., Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles vol. 3 (Problèmes de morale, deuxième partie) (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1949), 582; R.-A. Gauthier, “Compte rendu de ‘O. Lottin, O.S.B.: Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles. II-III. Louvain, Mont-César, Gembloux, J. Duculot, 1948–1949’,” Bulletin Thomiste 8 (1947–53): 60–86, and, more recently, Enriquez, De la decisión a la acción, 146–9. Note that I use the impersonal ‘X ought to be done/made’-schema to formulate precepts informing our choices. This is also the schema that Aquinas uses to formulate laws. I opt for this impersonal schema for consistency. But I should add that it is plausible, in my view, to take the precepts involved in judgments of choice to be self-directed. After all, I decide that X ought to be done by me. So, I can be viewed as relating to the precept ‘I ought to do X.’ This is no doubt a difference to laws, which are not self-directed, but rather hold for all agents. I have not added this self-directed qualification, however, because I have not found a text in which Aquinas explicitly appeals to it. Presumably Aquinas does not discuss it because he thinks it is obvious that the precepts guiding my choices are self-directed. “Intellectus enim practicus veritatem cognoscit, sicut et speculativus” (ST I, q. 79, a. 11, ad 2, Leon. 4: 279). For discussions of practical truth in Aquinas, see, e.g., Thomas Deman, “Appendice II: Renseignements Techniques,” in Thomas Deman (trans.), Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Somme

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proposition is, much like the truth of a theoretical proposition, determined by the way the world is.39 In other words, it has mind-to-world direction of fit. Just as there is a fact of the matter as to whether the theoretical proposition ‘The atomic number of gold is 79’ is true or false, so there is a fact of the matter as to whether precepts like ‘You ought to love your neighbor’ or ‘Pneumonia ought to be treated with penicillin,’ or even ‘A walk ought to be taken,’ are true or false. For Aquinas, we assess any given pursuit in terms of whether it is a suitable means to a given end, as we will see in Section 2.4. Loving one’s neighbor is truly conducive to human happiness, Aquinas thinks. Hence, the precept ‘You ought to love your neighbor’ is true in view of this end. Similarly, using penicillin is conducive to treating pneumonia. Accordingly, the precept ‘Pneumonia ought to be treated with penicillin’ is likewise true. Taking a walk, finally, is (at least usually) conducive to clearing one’s head. Hence, in view of this end at least, ‘A walk ought to be taken’ is true, too. Let us now, in light of this account of precepts, provide an initial characterization of the judgment of choice. Like any practical judgment it must be an act of assenting to a precept, and this precept may be either mundane or sophisticated. My choice to take a walk involves a mundane precept; a physician’s choice to use a specific drug to treat pneumonia involves a sophisticated one. But in any case, the precept involved in the judgment of choice must be particular, Aquinas maintains. As he writes in De veritate, q. 16, a. 1, “a judgment . . . about some particular operable thing . . . is . . . a judgment of choice.”40 In other words, a judgment of choice is not concerned with what to do generally speaking but with what to do in a particular situation. For Aquinas, a physician makes a choice not about the best treatment of pneumonia in general, but rather about how to

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Théologique: La Prudence, 2a-2ae Questions 47–56, 2nd edition (Paris: Desclée, 1949), 470–1; Martin Rhonheimer, Praktische Vernunft und Vernünftigkeit der Praxis, 315–7; Stephen L. Brock, “Realistic Practical Truth,” Doctor Communis: Nova Series 12, no. 1–2 (2008): 62–75. “Verum autem virtutis intellectualis practicae, comparatum quidem ad rem, habet rationem mensurati. Et sic eodem modo accipitur medium per conformitatem ad rem, in virtutibus intellectualibus practicis, sicut in speculativis” (ST I-II, q. 64, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 415). “[I]udicium . . . in particulari operabili . . . est . . . iudicium electionis” (De Ver., q. 16, a. 1, ad 15, Leon. 22, 2, 2: 507, ll. 433–4). The judgment of choice is not the only practical judgment about particular operable things. For Aquinas there is also the judgment of conscience, which is an application of a law without the motivating force of the judgment of choice. See De Ver., q. 17, a. 2, c., Leon. 22, 2, 2: 520, ll. 80–3; ST I, q. 79, a. 13, c., Leon. 5: 280–1. For a recent discussion of the judgment of conscience, see, e.g., Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 151–2.

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treat a particular patient’s pneumonia; and I do not choose to take walks generally speaking. Rather, I choose to take a particular walk. But a judgment of choice is not just an act of assenting to a particular precept, for Aquinas. On his view, it is also a free or preferential judgment, as we have seen. That is, it is a judgment to the effect that one particular thing ought to be done or made rather than another. If I make a judgment of choice I do not just judge that a walk ought to be taken to clear my head, but rather that a walk ought to be taken rather than yoga be done to clear my head. How does Aquinas conceive of this preferential character? He understands it as an act of preferential assent-giving. On his view, when making a judgment of choice an agent freely assents to one particular precept rather than another. As he puts this point in his commentary on Nicomachean Ethics III: [I]t is in the human being’s power to assent to one part of a contradiction or another, which happens . . . in particular with respect to operable things.41

By a “contradiction,” Aquinas here understands a pair of mutually exclusive propositions, and propositions that concern operable things are precepts, as we have seen. Thus, Aquinas’s idea here is that when I freely judge that I ought to, say, take a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head, I assent to the precept ‘A walk ought to be taken,’ while I dissent from the precept ‘Yoga ought to be done.’42 But how are human agents able to do this? How can we freely determine what particular precept to endorse? To 41

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“[I]n potestate habet homo, quod assentiat uni vel alii parti contradictionis; sicut accidit . . . maxime circa operabilia” (In Eth. III, l. 5, Leon. 47, 1: 156, ll. 50–4). The theory that Aquinas subscribes to here is very close to the account of human freedom that Alexander of Aphrodisias develops in his De fato, an account on which “assent” (synkatathesis) to an action-guiding proposition is up to us. The De fato was translated into Latin in the thirteenth century, but it was not widely known, and it is unlikely that Aquinas knew it, as Pierre Thillet has argued. See his Alexandre d’Aphrodise: De fato ad imperatores: Version Latine de Guillaume de Moerbeke (Paris: Vrin, 1963), 7. However, Aquinas knew of a similar theory espoused by Augustine in connection with our assent to propositions of faith. See Augustine, De spiritu et littera, Latin text with a Foreword by William Bright (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), 81 (xxxi: 54). For a discussion of the theory of free assent that Augustine defends there, see, e.g., Jonathan Barnes, “Belief Is up to Us,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106, no. 1 (2006), 191–2. In contemporary terminology, Aquinas’s view that assent is up to us can be described as a kind of “doxastic voluntarism.” But I do not like this terminology as applied to Aquinas because ‘voluntarism’ suggests that the will is the motor of freedom here, while, on my reading of Aquinas, our practical reasoning and reflection account for our freedom (see Chapter 3). For discussions of doxastic voluntarism in Aquinas, see, e.g., Eleonore Stump, “Wisdom: Will, Belief, and Moral Goodness,” in Aquinas’s Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Eleonore Stump and Scott MacDonald (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 28–62; Rudolf Schüssler, “Doxastischer Voluntarismus bei Thomas von Aquin: Wille, Intellekt und ihr schwieriges Verhältnis zur Zustimmung,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 79, no. 1 (2012): 75–107.

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answer this question we need to gain more clarity on the semantic structure of precepts in Aquinas. This is the task of Sections 2.4 and 2.5.

2.4 Precepts, Means, and Ends: The Logical Form of Precepts To investigate the semantic structure of precepts we need to revert to Aquinas’s above-mentioned claim that a precept is a statement “about something that ought to occur” (de aliquo quod fieri debet). Aquinas intends this as a general description of the semantic structure of precepts. All precepts have in common that they are ought-statements about something operable. What is the force of this ‘ought’? Since the advent of deontological ethics in modern moral philosophy, it has become commonplace to associate the term ‘ought’ and its cognate ‘should’ with what G. E. M. Anscombe has called “a special so-called moral sense, i.e., a sense in which they [i.e., these two terms] imply some absolute verdict (like one of guilty/not guilty on a man).”43 On this understanding, the term ‘ought’ expresses a duty, and what is characteristic of a duty is that it commands an agent to do something irrespective of any ends or projects that she may seek to realize by abiding by this duty. For instance, the duty not to steal binds the agent not to steal irrespective of what the agent may intend to achieve by not stealing. When Aquinas characterizes a precept as a statement “about something that ought to occur,” he does not have such a deontological ‘ought’ in mind – an ‘ought’ divorced from our ends. On the contrary, our ends play a key role, on his view. As he writes in his Treatise on Law, q. 99, a. 1: But that something ought to occur, this comes from the necessity of some end. Thus, it is clear that it belongs to the concept of a precept that it contains an order to an end, namely, insofar as something that is necessary for or expedient to some end is prescribed.44

Rather than expressing a duty holding regardless of one’s ends, Aquinas here argues that, as a matter of conceptual necessity, a precept generally 43

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G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. 3 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), 29. For an overview of contemporary deontological theories, see, e.g., Larry Alexander and Michael Moore, “Deontological Ethics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Winter 2016 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/wi n2016/entries/ethics-deontological/. “Quod autem aliquid debeat fieri, hoc provenit ex necessitate alicuius finis. Unde manifestum est quod de ratione praecepti est quod importet ordinem ad finem, inquantum scilicet illud praecipitur quod est necessarium vel expediens ad finem” (ST I-II, q. 99, a. 1, c., Leon. 7: 199).

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tells an agent that they ought to pursue something or other for the sake of some end. Aquinas commonly calls a pursuit ordered to an end a “means” (id quod est ad finem).45 Thus, on his view, an ought-statement is not deontological but rather means–end relating. If you judge that you ought to take a walk, for instance, then, you are, on Aquinas’s view, not recognizing a duty to take a walk. Rather, you are identifying a walk as something that ought to be done as a means to some end, say, to clear your head. Similarly, if you judge that your neighbor ought to be loved, then you are not recognizing a duty to love your neighbor. Rather, you are identifying love of neighbor as something that ought to be done for some end, in particular your happiness, as we will see in Section 2.5. For Aquinas, there is a relation of equivalence between the term ‘ought’ and the term ‘good’ (bonum). He defines “the good” as “what all strive for” (quod omnia appetunt), that is, as an object worth striving for.46 He refers to this definition as the “first principle” (primum principium) of natural law in his Treatise on Law, q. 94, a. 2, and, in the same text, he then claims that this definition grounds what he calls the “first precept” (primum praeceptum) of natural law, which is “The good ought to be made and pursued and the bad shunned.”47 It is clear that – unlike, for instance, ‘You ought to love your neighbor’ – this precept is not intended as a substantial one telling us what to do or make. Rather, it is meant to express a general truth about the grammar of goodness (and badness), namely, that to identify some operable entity X as good, that is, as worth striving for, is to identify X as something that ought to be done or made, and vice versa. In q. 94, a. 2, Aquinas illustrates this idea by considering natural goods, that is, goods, such as neighborly love, that are prescribed by natural law. He writes:

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For the terminology of ‘id quod est ad finem,’ which literally translates to ‘that which is for the sake of an end,’ see, e.g., ST I-II, q. 8, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 70; ST I-II, q. 13, Pr., Leon. 6: 98. We will see in Section 2.5 below that ‘id quod est ad finem’ in Aquinas has a broader meaning than the term ‘means’ has in ordinary English. “Et ideo primum principium in ratione practica est quod fundatur supra rationem boni, quae est, bonum est quod omnia appetunt” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 169). Of course, this is not a strict definition of the good, indicating its genus proximum and differentia specifica. For Aquinas, ‘the good’ is a transcendental term that is not contained under any genus. For a discussion of the good as a transcendental in Aquinas, see, e.g., Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 290–334. “Hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum et malum vitandum” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 169). For discussion, see, e.g., Grisez, “The First Principle of Practical Reason,” 340–82.

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act All of those things to which a human being is naturally inclined reason naturally apprehends as good, and therefore as something that ought to be pursued through a doing [emphasis added].48

So, to identify love of one’s neighbor as something good is to identify it as something that one ought to do. Similarly, taking a non-natural good as an example, to judge that it is good to take a walk, on Aquinas’s view, is to judge that a walk ought to be taken. Since ought-statements relate means to ends, as we have just seen, the type of goodness that the agent operates with here must be what is today called “goodness-for.” That is, if I judge that a walk ought to be taken as a means to the end of clearing one’s head, then I must identify a walk as being good for the end of clearing my head. In Aquinas’s terminology, what is good for some end is what is “useful” (utile) for that end.49 Thus, an agent’s judgment that a walk ought to be taken as a means to clearing one’s head is equivalent to a judgment to the effect that it is useful to take a walk for the sake of clearing one’s head. For Aquinas, then, the logical form of a precept can be stated in either of the two following ways: (1) Some X ought to be done/made as a means to some end Y. (2) Doing/making X is useful for some end Y. Aquinas also provides us with the resources to further flesh out this logical form by distinguishing between two different types of means as well as two different types of ends. To be able to examine the free character of the judgment of choice in Chapter 3 we must consider these two distinctions in Section 2.5.

2.5

The Logical Form Fleshed Out: Two Distinctions

The first of these two distinctions, the one between two types of means, is already contained in the text from the Treatise on Law, q. 99, a. 1 quoted at the beginning of Section 2.4. Aquinas there distinguishes between a “necessary” (necessarium) and an “expedient” (expediens) means or, as I shall put it for convenience’s sake, between a meansN and a meansE. Something is a meansN to an end, according to Aquinas, if the end cannot be attained without said meansN. In the Prima pars, q. 82, a. 1, Aquinas gives the example of a person who intends to cross the sea and must take 48

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“[O]mnia illa ad quae homo habet naturalem inclinationem, ratio naturaliter apprehendit ut bona, et per consequens ut opere prosequenda” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 170). See also SCG III, c. 10, Leon. 14: 26. “[B]onum ordinatum ad finem dicitur utile, quod importat relationem quandam” (ST I-II, q. 7, a. 2, ad 2, Leon. 6: 65).

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a vessel to do so because there is no other available means of transportation.50 Skills also frequently invoke meansN. Consider a physician who treats a malnourished patient. The end of health requires the treatment of malnutrition. Accordingly, the treatment of malnutrition is a meansN for health. Not all means are meansN, however, according to Aquinas. There are also meansE, which differ from meansN because, unlike the latter, they are not the only available ones to reach a desired end. Taking a walk, for instance, is a meansE for the purpose of clearing one’s head. It serves this end, but there are other meansE available, for instance, doing yoga. In addition to distinguishing between two types of means, Aquinas also distinguishes between two types of ends. As he writes in his commentary on Physics II: All pursuits that are intermediate between the first mover and the ultimate end are also in a way ends.51

In other words, in an ordered series of pursuits there is an ultimate end or endU, as we may call it. But a pursuit subordinate to the endU is likewise an end, albeit a non-ultimate one or endNU, provided something else is ordered to it as a means. So, an endNU is both an end of some means, but itself a means to some further end. Clearing one’s head would be an example. Taking a walk is a meansE ordered to it. But clearing one’s head in turn serves a further end. For instance, I may want to clear my head to be able to better concentrate on my work. Another example of an endNU is health, according to Aquinas. The treatment of a person’s malnutrition is ordered to it as a meansN, but health in turn serves a further end, for Aquinas, namely, one’s happiness, as we will see below. For Aquinas there are complex series of endsNU, which commentators have referred to as “end trees.”52 For instance, I may go for a walk to clear my head, and I may seek to clear my head to be able to better concentrate on my work, and I may seek to better concentrate on my work to be able to understand Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and so on. Such series can be long, Aquinas thinks, but they cannot go on forever. There must be an endU that 50 51 52

“[Q]uando ad finem non potest perveniri nisi uno modo: sicut ex voluntate transeundi mare, fit necessitas in voluntate ut velit navem” (ST I, q. 82, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 293). “[O]mnia quae sunt intermedia inter primum movens et ultimum finem, omnia sunt quodammodo fines” (In Phys. II, l. 5, n. 6, Leon. 2: 70). See Scott MacDonald, “Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinas’s Aristotelian Moral Psychology and Anscombe’s Fallacy,” The Philosophical Review 100, no. 1 (1991), 42–3. See also Gallagher, “The Will and Its Acts,” 79.

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concludes any such series. This endU, Aquinas holds, is an end for the sake of which all endsNU are pursued, and it is not sought for the sake of any other end but rather for its own sake.53 Following Aristotle, Aquinas identifies this endU with our “happiness” (beatitudo). Thus, on his view, whatever we pursue, we ultimately pursue for the sake of happiness. Aquinas thinks that people have different views about what makes them happy. Even so, he holds that we all operate with the same formal conception of what happiness is (ratio beatitudinis), namely, that it is a good willed for its own sake that fulfills all of our desires. It is happiness in this formal sense that we all seek, and necessarily so, on his view. We all want our desires to be fulfilled, though we have different views on what goods satisfy our desires.54 Although people have different views on what makes them happy, Aquinas claims that there is a fact of the matter as to what true human happiness consists in independently of what human agents believe it to consist in. In this life at least, Aquinas thinks that happiness is to be identified with an “aggregate of goods” (congregatio bonorum).55 In particular, it is to be identified with the aggregate of goods prescribed by natural law. These goods, which Aquinas groups under the three headings of “being” (esse), “life” (vivere), and “thought” (intelligere), are hierarchically organized.56 Aquinas thinks that the highest good is “thought” (intelligere), which is intellectual activity in particular insofar as it concerns the divine, this being the good prescribed by the precept 53

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See, e.g., ST I-II, q. 1, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 11–12; ST I-II, q. 8, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 70. For a discussion of Aquinas’s argument to the effect that there is such an ultimate end, see MacDonald, “Ultimate Ends.” As MacDonald shows, the argument in fact operates with two notions of the ultimate end, a weak one (which allows for multiple ultimate ends) and a strong one (which only allows for one). But I will ignore this subtlety here because it would lead us too far afield. “Ratio autem beatitudinis communis est ut sit bonum perfectum . . . Cum autem bonum sit obiectum voluntatis, perfectum bonum est alicuius, quod totaliter eius voluntati satisfacit. Unde appetere beatitudinem nihil aliud est quam appetere ut voluntas satietur. Quod quilibet vult” (ST I-II, q. 5, a. 8, c., Leon. 6: 54). “Sed in hac beatitudine imperfecta requiritur congregatio bonorum sufficientem ad perfectissimam operationem huius vitae” (ST I-II, q. 3, a. 3, ad 2, Leon. 6: 28). Happiness in the next life does not consist in such an aggregate of goods, for Aquinas. Rather, it consists in a single activity, namely, the beatific vision (ST I-II, q. 3, a. 8, c., Leon. 6: 35). For discussions of Aquinas’s arguments for identifying happiness in the next life with the beatific vision, see, e.g., Denis M. Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Science (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 432–9; Thomas Jeschke, Deus ut tentus vel visus: Die Debatte um die Seligkeit im reflexiven Akt (Ca. 1293–1320) (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 125–31. See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 170. For other passages using the being-life-thought triad, see, e.g., ST I-II, q. 10, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 83; In Periherm. I, c. 14, Leon. 1*1: 79, ll. 475–514; DM, q. 6, c., Leon. 23: 150, ll. 467–72. The triad is a neo-Platonic one. Aquinas presumably encountered it in Pseudo-Dionysius’s On Divine Names (In Div. Nom., c. 4, l. 23, Pera: 224) as well as in the anonymous Book of Causes (In De Caus., p. 12, Saffrey: 78–81).

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‘You ought to love God.’57 The subordinate goods are “life” (vivere) and “being” (esse). ‘Life’ refers to a functional social life and family, these being the goods prescribed by ‘You ought to love your neighbor,’ and ‘being’ refers to the fulfillment of basic needs for self-preservation, such as food, drink, and health.58 We can now, in light of these two distinctions regarding ends and means, return to the logical form of precepts. While Aquinas does not explicitly say so, we can see that this logical form can be fleshed out in different ways, depending on what types of means and ends we relate to one another. More specifically, since there are two types of means as well as two types of ends, it is clear that precepts come in at least four different kinds, for Aquinas. First, a precept may relate a meansE to an endNU.59 Second, it may relate a meansN to an endNU. Third, it may relate a meansN to the endU, and, fourth, it may relate a meansE to the endU. Let us consider examples of each of these four different types. An example of the first type, which relates a meansE to an endNU, is the precept ‘A walk ought to be taken as a means to the end of clearing one’s head.’ It relates a meansE to the end of clearing one’s head, and this end is, as I have suggested, an endNU. Thus, properly spelled out, this precept amounts to ‘A walk ought to be taken as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head.’ I am not claiming here that an agent who intends to take a walk to clear her head must be aware of this structure. I am here making a point about the logical form of the precept itself. I turn to the epistemological dimension of an agent’s understanding of the precept that she operates with in Chapter 3. An example of the second type of precept, which relates a meansN to an endNU, is the medical one ‘Malnutrition ought to be treated to ensure health.’ As I noted, the treatment of malnutrition is necessary for the end of health, and health is an endNU, on Aquinas’s view. Thus, properly spelled out, this 57 58

59

“Beatitudo autem imperfecta, qualis hic haberi potest, primo quidem et principaliter consistit in contemplatione” (ST I-II, q. 3, a. 5, c., Leon. 6: 31). See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 170. Note that, on Aquinas’s view, one can do without some of these subordinate goods altogether to better contemplate the divine. For instance, a person may join a religious order and in so doing renounce family life. A similar point can be made about health, as we will see in Chapter 3 (Section 3.3). For discussion, see John Boler, “Aquinas on Exceptions in Natural Law,” in Aquinas’s Moral Theory, 161–204. When I am saying that these precepts order a means to a non-ultimate end, I am not denying that there is, on Aquinas’s view, an implicit order to happiness present in each and every pursuit of ours, even in the most mundane ones (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 6, c., Leon. 6: 14). All I am claiming is that these precepts do not make explicit reference to the ultimate end but rather to a non-ultimate end. To make the force of the ‘ought’ in ‘A walk ought to be taken’ intelligible, reference needs to be made to some end, for Aquinas. But there is no need for the precept to make explicit reference to happiness to be intelligible. It can also make reference to an end such as clearing one’s head.

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precept amounts to ‘Malnutrition ought to be treated as a meansN to the endNU of health.’ What about precepts of the third type, which relate meansN to the endU? On Aquinas’s view, paradigmatic precepts of this type are laws, in particular the precepts of natural law. He contends in q. 90, a. 1 of his Treatise on Law that a law, such as ‘You ought to love your neighbor,’ “obligates” an agent to do something (obligat ad agendum), and he explains in another text that the precept’s obligatory force is derived from the pursuit’s being “necessary for some end” (ex necessitate finis).60 The end that he has in mind here is our ultimate end, as Aquinas makes clear in the Treatise on Law, writing in q. 90, a. 2 that “law most of all concerns an order to happiness.”61 Aquinas does not spell out this necessary order to the endU by examining individual laws, but we can easily reconstruct his theory. Consider the law that one ought to love one’s neighbor. Given that, for Aquinas, a functional social life is a constitutive part of true human happiness, as we have seen, this precept should be taken to say that it is necessary to love one’s neighbor in order to be happy. In other words, on Aquinas’s view, loving one’s neighbor is a meansN to happiness. You cannot be truly happy without loving your neighbor. There is no doubt something prima facie odd, if not reprehensible, about thinking of neighborly love as a means to our happiness because this suggests that other people are of merely instrumental value. But this problem only arises due to the narrow meaning that ‘means’ has in the English language. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term ‘means’ denotes “any action, behaviour, or object considered in terms of its results rather than in terms of its value, ethicality, etc., in and of itself.”62 But Aquinas’s understanding of the term ‘means’ (id quod est ad finem) is much broader than this. On his view, a means is anything that is subordinated to some end. This may be something of purely instrumental value, for instance, taking penicillin to cure pneumonia. But as Scott MacDonald has shown, for Aquinas a means may also be a partial, though not a full realization of the end to which it is ordered.63 It is 60

61

62 63

“[D]icitur enim lex a ligando, quia obligat ad agendum” (ST I-II, q. 90, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 7: 149); “[E]st necessitas ex obligatione praecepti, sive ex necessitate finis, quando scilicet aliquis non potest consequi finem virtutis nisi hoc faciat” (ST II-II, q. 58, a. 3, ad 2, Leon. 9: 11). “Primum autem principium in operativis, quorum est ratio practica, est finis ultimus. Est autem ultimus finis humanae vitae felicitas vel beatitudo . . . Unde oportet quod lex maxime respiciat ordinem qui est in beatitudinem” (ST I-II, q. 90, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 150, translated bit in italics). See “mean, n.3,” in OED Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press September 2019), www-oed-com.ezproxy.lib.purdue.edu/view/Entry/115436?rskey=qQssct&result=3&isAdvanced=false. See MacDonald, “Ultimate Ends,” 50–2. Given the narrow meaning of ‘means’ in English, MacDonald himself prefers not to translate ‘id quod est ad finem’ as ‘means’ but rather as what is

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in this latter sense that neighborly love is a means to the end of happiness. A functional social life is not of merely instrumental value for happiness. Rather, it is a key part of it, for Aquinas. But it does not exhaust the happy life because, as we have seen, happiness includes other goods as well, on Aquinas’s view, for instance, contemplation of the divine. We can also make sense of the non-biblical precept that we ought to preserve our existence along similar lines. You cannot lead a happy life unless you are alive to begin with, and this requires that you preserve your existence through food and drink and see to it that you are healthy. Self-preservation, then, is a meansN to happiness. But again, it is not of purely instrumental value. Being healthy and enjoying food and drink are part of what it is to be happy, for Aquinas, though again these goods do not exhaust happiness. This leaves us with one last type of precept to consider, namely, precepts relating meansE to an endU. For Aquinas, agents operate with precepts of this type when there are several ways in which a given meansN to happiness can be specified. In his commentary on De interpretatione I, c. 14, Aquinas gives the following example. He says that food and drink in general are necessary for happiness, but that they can be specified in multiple ways. I can eat “this or that type of food” (hunc cibum vel illum) to be happy.64 So, for example, an agent can specify the particular diet conducive to her happiness as a vegetarian one, but she can also specify it as a meat-based one. Thus, for Aquinas, a precept like ‘A vegetarian diet ought to be pursued to be happy,’ properly spelled out, amounts to ‘A vegetarian diet ought to be pursued as a meansE to the endU of happiness.’ With this, we have mapped out the logical space of Aquinas’s means– end relating account of precepts. Table 2.1 summarizes our findings, with Table 2.1 Precept types Precept types MeansE MeansN

64

EndNU

EndU

Taking a walk/clearing one’s head Treatment of malnutrition/ health

A certain type of food and drink/ happiness Food and drink in general/happiness

“subordinate” to some end, where there are different relations of subordination to an end, on his reading of Aquinas. See In Periherm. I, c. 14, Leon. 1*1: 79, ll. 509–14.

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each intersection of an end-column and a means-row yielding one of the four types of precept. We are now in a position to discuss the free character of the judgment of choice. As we will see in Chapter 3, this judgment is free because it concerns precepts other than those that relate meansN to the endU. In other words, free judgment operates with precepts that either (1) relate meansE to an endNU or (2) meansN to an endNU or (3) meansE to the endU.

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chapter 3

The Judgment of Choice

3.1

Introduction

To delineate the range of precepts that the judgment of choice concerns, I first consider precepts that necessitate our assent in this Chapter, these being precepts relating meansN to the endU (Section 3.2). I examine these precepts first because Aquinas offers a precise account of why our assent to these propositions is necessitated. He argues that this has to do with the logical structure of these precepts as well as with our understanding of this structure. I then suggest that we can tell an analogous story for why our assent is free with regard to those precepts that do not relate meansN to the endU. That is, our assent to these precepts is free because they have a certain logical structure (Section 3.3) and because we are able to grasp this structure (Section 3.4).

3.2 Precepts Not Subject to Free Assent Aquinas generally claims that our assent to what he calls “first principles” (prima principia) is necessitated. As he writes in De malo, q. 3, a. 3, for instance: [T]he intellect necessarily assents to first principles that are naturally known, and it cannot assent to propositions contrary to them.1

First principles are basic propositions that are necessarily true, Aquinas thinks. An example that he frequently uses as an illustration is a proposition of theoretical reason, namely, the Euclidian common notion that the whole is greater than its part.2 According to Aquinas, our assent to 1 2

“Unde intellectus ex necessitate assentit principiis primis naturaliter notis, nec potest eorum contrariis assentire” (DM, q. 3, a. 3, c., Leon. 23: 72, ll. 174–7). “[Q]uaelibet propositio dicitur per se nota, cuius praedicatum est de ratione subiecti . . . Quaedam sunt . . . propositiones per se notae communiter omnibus, et huiusmodi sunt illae propositiones

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such a proposition is necessitated in the sense of not being free or up to us, and it is necessitated because the proposition is “self-evident for all” (per se notum omnibus).3 This is a technical term in Aquinas. On his view, a proposition p is self-evident for all if and only if it fulfills two criteria: (1) a logical and (2) an epistemological one. The logical criterion is that p must be necessarily true in virtue of the meaning of its terms. The epistemological criterion is that no rational being could fail to understand the meaning of these terms.4 For Aquinas, then, the above Euclidian common notion is true in virtue of what the terms ‘whole’ and ‘part’ mean, and every rational agent has a sufficient understanding of these terms to see that the proposition must be true.5 In addition to countenancing first principles of theoretical reason, Aquinas holds that there are first principles of practical reason. In q. 94, a. 2 of his Treatise on Law, he writes: The precepts of natural law are related to practical reason in the same way in which the first principles of demonstration are related to theoretical reason. For both are principles.6

As this text makes clear, for Aquinas the first principles of practical reason are precepts, and he elsewhere refers to them as “primary precepts” (prima praecepta).7 These primary precepts are, like the first principles of theoretical reason, “self-evident for all” (per se nota omnibus), as Aquinas notes in q. 94, a. 6.8 Thus, on his view, a rational agent necessarily assents to a primary precept just as she necessarily assents to the principle that the whole is greater than its part. Aquinas devises a special term to refer to a practical judgment whereby an agent necessarily assents to a primary

3 4 6

7 8

quarum termini sunt omnibus noti, ut, omne totum est maius sua parte, et, quae uni et eidem sunt aequalia, sibi invicem sunt aequalia” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 170). See ibid. For a discussion of self-evidence in Aquinas, see Luca Tuninetti, “Per se Notum”: Die Logische Beschaffenheit des Selbstverständlichen im Denken des Thomas von Aquin (Leiden: Brill, 1995). See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 170. 5 See ibid. “[P]raecepta legis naturae hoc modo se habent ad rationem practicam, sicut principia prima demonstrationum se habent ad rationem speculativam, utraque enim sunt quaedam principia” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 169). See also: “[Q]uaedam statim a principio naturaliter homini innotescunt absque studio et inquisitione: et huiusmodi sunt principia prima, non solum in speculativis, ut omne totum est maius sua parte et similia; sed etiam in operativis, ut malum esse fugiendum, et huiusmodi” (De Virt., q. 1, a. 8, c., Bazzi: 727). For a discussion of the analogy between theoretical and practical reason in Aquinas, see K. L. Flannery, Acts amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Logical Structure of Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Theory (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001). See ST I-II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 7: 209. “[A]d legem naturalem pertinent primo quidem quaedam praecepta communissima, quae sunt omnibus nota” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 6, c., Leon. 7: 173).

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precept. He calls it a “judgment of synderesis” (iudicium synderesis), ‘synderesis’ being his term for the knowledge of basic precepts.9 Aquinas is slightly careless in the above text when he calls the primary precepts of natural law the “principles” of practical reason. For as we noted in Chapter 2 (Section 2.4), he distinguishes in q. 94, a. 2 of his Treatise on Law between the “first principle” (primum principium) of practical reason, on the one hand, and its “first precept” (primum praeceptum), on the other, the former being the definition of “the good” as “what all strive for,” and the latter being “The good ought to be made and pursued and the bad shunned.” But there is no tension here. Aquinas simply uses the term ‘principle’ in two senses. In one sense, it refers to the foundational equivalence relation between ‘being good’ and ‘being the object of a striving.’ In another sense, it refers to any primary precept of natural law. Since I am here interested in our necessary assent to precepts, it is only with principles in this second sense that I will be concerned with in this chapter. What are some examples of primary precepts that we necessarily assent to, according to Aquinas? The first precept ‘The good ought to be made and pursued and the bad shunned’ is one of them, on his view.10 But Aquinas also includes more substantial ones. For instance, in q. 100, a. 3 of his Treatise on Law, he writes about ‘You ought to love God’ and ‘You ought to love your neighbor’ that: [T]hese two are primary and common precepts of natural law, which are self-evident to human reason, whether by nature or by faith.11

In the Secunda secundae, q. 122, a. 1, he also includes the entire Decalogue among primary precepts, writing:

9

10 11

“[S]ynderesis dicitur lex intellectus nostri, inquantum est habitus continens praecepta legis naturalis, quae sunt prima principia operum humanorum” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 1, ad 2, Leon. 7: 168). See also In Sent. II, d. 24, q. 2, a. 4, ad 2, Mandonnet: 614; De Ver., q. 17, a. 1, ad 4, Leon. 22, 2, 2: 516–17, ll. 326–54; ST I, q. 79, aa. 12–13, Leon. 5: 279–81. For the etymology of the term ‘synderesis,’ which likely derives from a corrupted transliteration of the Greek term ‘syneidēsis’ (conscience), see Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, vol. 2 (Problèmes de morale, première partie) (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1948), 11–47. For a discussion of synderesis and its scope in Aquinas, see, e.g., D. J. Billy, “Aquinas on the Content of Synderesis,” Studia Moralia 29 (1991): 61–83. For a more detailed discussion, see the still useful Oskar Renz, Die Synteresis nach dem Heiligen Thomas von Aquin (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1911). See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2, c., Leon. 7: 169. “Illa duo praecepta sunt prima et communia praecepta legis naturae, quae sunt per se nota rationi humanae, vel per naturam vel per fidem” (ST I-II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 7: 209).

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act Precepts of the Decalogue are primary precepts of law, and natural reason immediately assents to them as it assents to the most obvious propositions.12

In his commentary on De interpretatione I, c. 14, finally, Aquinas suggests that any precept relating a meansN (ex necessitate appetibile) to our happiness is of this kind.13 And he specifies in this text that the meansN in question are the goods associated with the triad of being, life, and thought considered in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5). This means that, in addition to biblical precepts, non-biblical primary precepts, such as ‘One’s existence ought to be preserved’ or the like, must likewise necessitate practical reason’s assent, on Aquinas’s view. Since primary precepts are self-evident for all, according to Aquinas, they must fulfill the two above-mentioned criteria of self-evidence for all. Unfortunately, Aquinas does not spell out how primary precepts meet these two criteria, but in light of our means–end analysis of laws in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5), we can see what he likely has in mind. Consider first how a primary precept might be said to fulfill the logical criterion of self-evidence for all. As we saw, the basic precepts of natural law relate meansN to the endU. For instance, the commandment ‘You ought to love your neighbor,’ properly expounded, states ‘You ought to love your neighbor as a meansN to the endU of happiness.’ This proposition states a necessary truth, for Aquinas, one that cannot fail to hold. One cannot be happy without loving one’s neighbor. But in addition, this truth must hold in virtue of the meaning of its terms in order for it to qualify as self-evident for all. And Aquinas also takes this to be the case because he defines true happiness as containing love of one’s neighbor as one of its components, as we have seen. A proper definition of happiness, then, includes reference to neighborly love as a part. Accordingly, ‘You ought to love your neighbor as a meansN to the endU of happiness’ expresses a definitional truth.

12

13

“[P]raecepta Decalogi sunt prima praecepta legis, et quibus statim ratio naturalis assentit sicut manifestissimis” (ST II-II, q. 122, a. 1, c., Leon. 9: 474). See also: “[Q]uaedam enim sunt quae statim per se ratio naturalis cuiuslibet hominis diiudicat esse facienda vel non facienda, sicut honora patrem tuum et matrem tuam, et, non occides, non furtum facies. Et huiusmodi sunt absolute de lege naturae” (ST I-II, q. 100, a. 1, c., Leon. 7: 206). “Si igitur essent aliqua bona, quibus non existentibus, non posset aliquis esse felix, haec etiam essent ex necessitate appetibilia et maxime apud eum, qui talem ordinem perciperet; et forte talia sunt esse, vivere et intelligere et si qua alia sunt similia” (In Periherm. I, c. 14, Leon. 1*1, 79, ll. 501–5). The cautious phrasing of this passage should not worry us. It is owed to the dialectical context. Aquinas here does not want to presuppose too much of his own theory of happiness. But he is not in any doubt as to whether there are goods necessary for happiness, and whether these goods are being, life, and thought, that is, self-preservation, a functional social life, and intellectual activity.

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Let us now consider how this primary precept fulfills the second, epistemological criterion. On this latter criterion, ‘You ought to love your neighbor as a meansN to the endU of happiness’ must be a precept that no rational being could fail to understand as true, and this on account of the meaning of its terms. In other words, Aquinas must hold that no rational agent could fail to understand the meaning of the terms ‘loving one’s neighbor’ and ‘happiness,’ and so any agent must see that this precept is necessarily true. This seems very implausible at first, but note that Aquinas does introduce a qualification. He allows for the reasoning faculty of some human beings to be so impaired as to prevent them from acknowledging a primary precept’s truth. Aquinas makes this point specifically with respect to another primary precept, namely, the precept that one ought not to steal. This is an element of the Decalogue, and so counts as self-evident for all, on his view. However, relying on Julius Caesar’s report in De bello Gallico, Aquinas writes in his Treatise on Law, q. 94, a. 4 that the Germanic tribes did not think that stealing was wrong, and this on account of their bad mores.14 Thus, Aquinas would want to qualify the claim that no rational agent could fail to understand a primary precept’s truth as follows. On his view, not just any being with the bare ability to reason can immediately see a primary precept’s truth. Rather, he holds that only an agent gifted with reason whose exercise is not impeded by detrimental societal conventions can. This may well be a difference to our assent to theoretical first principles, such as ‘The whole is greater than its part,’ which is not similarly dependent on the presence of suitable mores. Whatever one may think of this account of the primary precepts and our assent to them, it reveals something important for our purposes. It shows why precepts relating meansN to the endU are not subject to our free assent, for Aquinas. The reason is twofold. First, there is the logical structure of the precept, its being necessarily and indeed definitionally true. Second, there is the fact that the agent also identifies said precept as necessarily true and so cannot but assent to it. In Sections 3.3 and 3.4, I argue that our free assent is similarly based on such a twofold ground. For Aquinas, an agent’s assent to a precept is free because said precept fails to establish a necessary relation

14

“[S]ed ut in paucioribus potest deficere et quantum ad rectitudinem, propter aliqua particularia impedimenta . . . et etiam quantum ad notitiam; et hoc propter hoc quod aliqui habent depravatam rationem ex passione, seu ex mala consuetudine, seu ex mala habitudine naturae. Apud germanos olim latrocinium non reputabatur iniquum, cum tamen sit expresse contra legem naturae, ut refert Iulius Caesar” (ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4, c., Leon. 7: 171).

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between a means and the endU and because it is also understood by the agent as failing to establish such a necessary relation.15

3.3

Precepts Subject to Free Assent

To see that our free assent has this twofold ground, we need to return to Aquinas’s claim, considered in Chapter 2 (Section 2.3), that the judgment of choice concerns particular precepts, that is, precepts about particular operable things. For Aquinas claims that it is on account of their particularity that these precepts do not necessitate our assent. In the Prima pars, q. 83, a. 1, he puts this point as follows: [P]articular operable things are contingent, and so with respect to them the judgment of reason has alternatives and is not determined to one.16

What makes particular goods contingent and our precepts about them subject to free assent? In his commentary on De interpretatione, I, c. 14, Aquinas offers an explanation that is the exact counterpart of his account as to why precepts about meansN to happiness necessitate our assent. He writes: Particular goods . . . are not such that someone cannot be happy without them and they are not apprehended under the concept of being such that without them happiness cannot be had either.17

In other words, when a precept concerns a particular good, it fails to establish a necessary relation between this good as a means and the endU. This is the logical feature grounding free assent. What is more, though, free 15

16 17

So, the kind of freedom I discuss here is one that is based on the agent’s correctly identifying a precept as failing to establish a necessary relation to the endU. For Aquinas, an agent’s assent to a precept may also be free on account of an error, namely, when the precept establishes a relation between a meansN and the endU but the agent mistakenly takes it to establish a relation between a meansE and the endU. See Scott MacDonald, “Practical Reasoning and Reasons-Explanation: Aquinas’s Account of Reason’s Role in Action,” in Aquinas’s Moral Theory, 150, for mention of this freedom. Though interesting, Aquinas does not discuss this error-based freedom in any detail, which is why I leave it to one side here. What he does consider in detail is our dissenting from a primary precept that we know to be true in a particular situation due to the onset of a powerful emotion. This is how Aquinas understands akrasia, which I do not examine here either. For discussion, see, e.g., Bonnie Kent, “Transitory Vice: Thomas Aquinas on Incontinence,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 27, no. 2 (1989): 199–223; Denis M. Bradley, “Thomas Aquinas on Weakness of the Will,” in Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present, ed. Tobias Hoffmann (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 82–114. “Particularia autem operabilia sunt quaedam contingentia, et ideo circa ea iudicium rationis ad diversa se habet, et non est determinatum ad unum” (ST I, q. 83, a. 1, c., Leon 5: 307). “Sed particularia bona . . . non sunt talia [quibus non existentibus, non posset aliquis esse felix], nec sub ea ratione apprehenduntur ut sine quibus felicitas esse non possit” (In Periherm. I, c. 14, Leon. 1*1: 79, ll. 506–10).

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assent also involves the agent cognizing that the precept in question fails to establish such a relation. This is the epistemological feature grounding free assent. I discuss the logical feature as well as part of the epistemological one in the remainder of this section. In Section 3.4, I then spell out the epistemological element in more detail. On the above text, the key logical characteristic of a particular precept is that it fails to establish a necessary connection between a means and the endU. As we saw in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5), there are three kinds of precepts that fail to establish such a connection. These are precepts that either (1) relate a meansE to an endNU or (2) a meansN to an endNU or (3) a meansE to the endU. Let us now consider each of these three types. I begin with precepts establishing a relation between a meansE and the endU. Return here to the food example considered in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5). Food and drink as such are a meansN to happiness, as we saw, but particular types of food and drink are merely meansE to happiness. For Aquinas, you can pursue a vegetarian diet to be happy, but you can also opt for a meatbased diet. If the agent sees that both options are meansE to happiness, she can see that she may pursue either. There is no necessary connection to the endU necessitating her to pursue a vegetarian or a meat-based diet. Put in terms of assent, this means that she can understand that she need not assent to ‘A vegetarian diet ought to be pursued as a meansE to the endU of happiness.’ She can see that she may instead assent to ‘A meat-based diet ought to be pursued as a meansE to the endU of happiness.’ Note that an agent who cognizes this does not usually judge the different meansE to be conducive to the end in the same way. Rather, Aquinas thinks that an agent cognizes each particular good as being expedient to the desired end “according to a particular respect” (secundum aliquod particulare consideratum).18 By this, he means that an agent views a particular good as expedient to a certain end from one point of view but not from another.19 An agent may think, for instance, that a vegetarian diet is a particularly expedient means to the end of happiness because, if properly designed, it is healthier than a meat-based diet and so ensures wellbeing. 18

19

“Si autem sit tale bonum quod non inveniatur esse bonum secundum omnia particularia quae considerari possunt, non ex necessitate movebit etiam quantum ad determinationem actus; poterit enim aliquis velle eius oppositum, etiam de eo cogitans, quia forte est bonum vel conveniens secundum aliquod aliud particulare consideratum, sicut quod est bonum sanitati, non est bonum delectationi, et sic de aliis” (DM, q. 6, a. 1, c., Leon. 23: 150, ll. 441–9). For a discussion of Aquinas’s notion of ‘consideratio’ in connection with practical reason, see David Gallagher, “Free Choice and Free Judgment in Aquinas,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 76 (1994), 267–9. See the text quoted in n. 18 as well as, e.g., ST I-II, q. 11, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 92; ST I-II, q. 20, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 158.

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On the other hand, the agent may find the thought of doing without meat unpleasant, and so from the point of view of pleasure a meat-based diet is more attractive. In other words, when an agent faces two opposing precepts, such as ‘A vegetarian diet ought to be pursued as a meansE to the endU of happiness’ and ‘A meat-based diet ought to be pursued as a meansE to the endU of happiness,’ she is able to consider different reasons for and against assenting to either one of the two precepts. As Aquinas puts this point in the Prima secundae, q. 13, a. 6: In all particular goods the agent can consider the character of a good and the absence of a good, which has the character of something bad, and in this way, she can apprehend any given good of this sort as worthy of being chosen or as something to be avoided.20

We can tell a similar story for our free assent to precepts relating meansE to an endNU. Return here to the precept ‘A walk ought to be taken as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head.’ An agent can understand that a walk is merely a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head because there are other particular meansE available to clearing one’s head, such as doing yoga. Given Aquinas’s doctrine that we are able to consider different reasons for and against assenting to a precept, the agent is also able to see these meansE as each being good in their own respective ways for the desired end. The agent may, for instance, understand that a walk is particularly conducive to clearing her head because it allows her to get some fresh air. But she may find that doing yoga exercises more muscles, which will take her mind off work, and this is a reason in favor of doing yoga. Because she can find these different reasons speaking in favor of either pursuit, she can freely assent to either ‘A walk ought to be taken as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head’ or to ‘Yoga ought to be done as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head.’ This leaves us with the third and last type of particular precept to consider. This is the class of particular precepts relating a meansN to an endNU. Prima facie it seems problematic to classify such precepts as subject to our free assent. For a meansN to some endNU is the only means available 20

“[I]n omnibus particularibus bonis potest considerare rationem boni alicuius, et defectum alicuius boni, quod habet rationem mali, et secundum hoc, potest unumquodque huiusmodi bonorum apprehendere ut eligibile, vel fugibile” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 6, c., Leon. 6: 103). Here one might wonder whether this claim of Aquinas’s also holds for Buridan’s Ass cases. Aquinas thinks it does. While he contends that we need not compare the relative merits or demerits of options that are equally good, he thinks that in principle “nihil prohibet, si aliqua duo aequalia proponantur secundum unam considerationem, quin circa alterum consideretur aliqua conditio per quam emineat, et magis flectatur voluntas in ipsum quam in aliud” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 6, ad 3, Leon. 6: 103).

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to that endNU, and if an agent understands this, she cannot sensibly examine the respects in which another means might be better suited to attain the end. Nevertheless, as we will now see, an agent can freely assent to such a precept – and this on account of the end that it concerns, which is itself a means to the endU of happiness.21 To see this, return to the medical precept ‘Malnutrition ought to be treated as a meansN to the endNU of health.’ An agent who sees the relation between the treatment of malnutrition and health cannot sensibly ponder whether malnutrition ought to be treated to ensure health. However, the agent can still determine not to treat malnutrition on a certain occasion if not treating it serves another end that she values more than health. This is possible because health is not the endU but rather an endNU, which is a means to the endU, as we have seen.22 Aquinas himself considers a scenario in which a person privileges her spiritual fulfillment as an endNU over the endNU of health. As he writes in q. 13, a. 3 of the Prima secundae, “for someone concerned with the health of the soul, being healthy or sick can be subject to choice.”23 An example that Aquinas might have had in mind here is a person who engages in a religious practice, such as fasting (ieiunium).24 An agent could in principle engage in this practice in express opposition to a medical precept pertaining to the treatment of malnutrition.25 For example, a person may be so gripped by a (misguided) religious fervor that she is willing to endure a state of severe malnutrition that the medical precept would command to treat immediately. This person may possess sufficient medical knowledge and so assent to ‘Malnutrition ought to be treated as a meansN to the endNU of health.’ But she will take this precept to be true only in a medical respect, and on this occasion she has resolved to privilege her spiritual fulfillment over her health in her pursuit of happiness. Thus, even if an agent assents to the truth of a precept that establishes a necessary relation between a given means and an endNU, she is free not to make this precept the one guiding 21 22

23 24 25

“Unde ubicumque occurrunt plures fines, inter eos potest esse electio, secundum quod ordinantur ad ulteriorem finem” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 3, ad 2, Leon. 6: 101). Health is generally speaking a meansN to happiness, for Aquinas. But on a certain occasion, as we will see presently, other considerations can override one’s pursuit of health, in which case it is treated as a meansE. “[A]pud eum qui habet curam de animae salute, potest sub electione cadere esse sanum vel esse infirmum” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 101). For Aquinas’s discussion, see, e.g., ST II-II, q. 147, Leon. 10: 153–66. Aquinas does not condone any such extremism, arguing that one’s natural constitution must not be harmed too much when fasting. Fasting is a practice that needs to be done “debita discretione” (ST II-II, q. 88, a. 2, ad 3, Leon. 9: 239).

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her conduct because she can subject the endNU (such as health) to further examination with respect to the endU and find that another endNU (such as spiritual fulfillment) better serves the endU on a certain occasion. There are, then, for Aquinas, three different types of particular precepts that, in terms of logical structure, fall short of establishing a necessary relation to the endU. As we have seen, agents can weigh reasons in favor of assenting to, or dissenting from, such particular precepts because they can cognize that such precepts fail to establish a necessary relation to the endU. But what exactly is the nature of this cognition of precepts? In Section 3.4, we will see that Aquinas takes it to be of a second-order nature.

3.4

Free Assent and Second-Order Judgment

Aquinas primarily develops his theory of this second-order cognition in his earlier works, in particular in De veritate (1256–9) and in the Summa contra gentiles (1260–5), but he remains committed to it throughout his entire career.26 Here is how he characterizes this type of cognition in De veritate, q. 24, a. 1: A human being, by the power of her reason, which judges about things that ought to be done, can judge about her decision insofar as she cognizes the nature of the end and the means and the relation and order of one to the other . . . and for this reason she has free decision.27

As this text tells us, an agent is free in her judgment because she “can judge about her decision,” and the judgment that she can make about her decision allows her to cognize the nature of the means and end as well as 26

27

See, e.g., the following much later texts (from 1270 to 1271): ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1, ad 2, Leon. 6: 118; ST I-II, q. 26, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 188; ST II-II, q. 154, a. 5, c., Leon. 10: 229; DM, q. 3, a. 9, c., Leon. 23: 87, ll. 208–19. This raises the question as to why Aquinas did not further develop the theory in his later work. The only answer to this question known to me is due to Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, vol. 1 (Problèmes de Psychologie) (Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1942), 258. Lottin hypothesizes that, in his later works De malo and the Prima secundae, Aquinas was concerned with a defense of his account of freedom against the 1270 condemnation and those critics, like Walter of Bruges (1227–1307) and Gérard of Abbeville (1225–72), who charged Aquinas with intellectual determinism, that is, the view that we necessarily will what our intellect deems good, and that we cannot control what we deem good. Since it is Aquinas’s focus on judgment and reflection as the sources of freedom that came under attack by the condemnation and these critics, Lottin hypothesized that Aquinas kept his theory of free judgment “in the background” (dans l’ombre) so as to forestall any further accusations of being a determinist. This story seems plausible to me, but I will not take a stand on this issue. What is relevant for my purposes is that Aquinas remains committed to the theory of free judgment throughout his career. “Homo vero per virtutem rationis iudicans de agendis potest de suo arbitrio iudicare inquantum cognoscit rationem finis et eius quod est ad finem, et habitudinem et ordinem unius ad alterum . . . et ideo est liberi arbitrii” (De Ver., q. 24, a. 1, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 681, ll. 288–94).

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their relation to one another. As the next article of De veritate, q. 24, that is, a. 2, makes clear, this judgment is a kind of “second-order judgment,” to use Scott MacDonald’s terminology.28 For in a. 2, Aquinas characterizes the agent’s judgment about her decision as a “judgment about her judgment” (de suo iudicio iudicare).29 The judgment judged about, that is, the first-order judgment, is the judgment associated with decision, and this is of course none other than the judgment of choice. Accordingly, an agent is free in her judgment, for Aquinas, because she can judge about her judgment of choice. But what is this judgment about one’s judgment of choice? On one interpretation, it is an act of reconsidering a decision so as to modify or stick with it.30 On this reading, Aquinas holds that an agent makes an initial judgment of choice, and this judgment is free because the agent is then able to step back and assess in a second-order judgment if she should indeed act upon said initial judgment. The context of the abovequoted De veritate, q. 24, a. 1 passage may be taken to support this interpretation. For Aquinas there distinguishes between human and animal agency, and one key point that he makes is that non-human animals give in to their instincts, whereas human beings need not do so.31 Seeing 28

29

30

31

See MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Choice,” 327. In “The Reflexivity of Incorporeal Acts as Source of Freedom and Subjectivity in Aquinas,” in Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Jari Kaukua and Tomas Ekenberg (Cham: Springer, 2016), 139, Therese Cory protests against MacDonald’s reading arguing that “de suo iudicio iudicare” (for the text, see n. 29) is not a second-order judgment in Aquinas but rather what she calls an act of “exercising one’s judgment with a from-the-inside awareness of one’s rationale for judging.” I myself prefer the higher-order judgment interpretation because I find that it is the most natural way to understand Aquinas’s talk of a “iudicium de suo iudicio.” Cory translates this as “judging one’s judgment,” but I think “judging about one’s judgment” is closer to the original Latin. And to me, judging about one’s judgment suggests a second-order judgment. I should note, however, that I do not think that the interpretation of reflexive cognition in human freedom that I will offer in this section needs to be cast in terms of higher-order judgment. Appeal to Cory’s fromthe-inside-awareness would also work. “Iudicium autem est in potestate iudicantis secundum quod potest de suo iudicio iudicare; de eo enim quod est in nostra potestate possumus iudicare” (De Ver., q. 24, a. 2, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 685, ll. 92–4). The view that free agency involves a judgment about a judgment is not original to Aquinas. As Odon Lottin and Joseph Lebacqz have shown, in the Middle Ages William of Auxerre (d. 1231) already had such a theory, and William explicitly appeals to John Damascene as a source. See William of Auxerre, Summa aurea, liber 2, tract. 10, c. 3, ed. Jean Ribaillier (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1982), 282; John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa II, 22, Burgundionis Versio, c. 36, ed. Buytaert, 138, ll. 110–15. For Lottin’s and Lebacqz’s respective studies, see Lottin, Psychologie et morale, vol. 1, 66; Joseph Lebacqz, Libre arbitre et jugement (Brussels: Desclée de Brouwer, 1960), 31. For an interpretation along these lines, see, e.g., MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Choice,” 323. My formulation of this interpretation is indebted to Coope, “Aquinas on Judgment and the Active Power of Reason,” 15, who (in my view rightly) criticizes this interpretation. See De Ver., q. 24, a. 1, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 680–1, ll. 266–71.

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a bowl of food, a (hungry) dog cannot but eat it. In contrast, seeing a piece of cake, a human being with a sweet tooth may initially judge that he shall eat it, but then upon reflection change his mind due to dietary concerns. But he could also determine that one piece of cake won’t harm him and so stick with his initial judgment after reflection. Plausible though it may seem, this interpretation of second-order judgment in Aquinas faces two problems. First, in a number of cases we make decisions that we do not reconsider, according to Aquinas. For advocates of the above reading, these decisions can still be called free because we could at least reconsider them. But it is unclear why a decision should be free in virtue of our ability to reconsider it when that ability remains unexercised.32 No doubt, an agent exercises control over his decision to eat a piece of cake by actually reassessing this decision in light of dietary concerns. But in what sense would the agent exercise control over this decision if he decided to eat a piece of cake without reconsidering? Second, when dealing with deliberation-based choices, Aquinas says in a number of places that these are free because the process of practical reasoning leading up to them is free.33 My choice to go for a walk rather than do yoga is free because I can freely assess the pros and cons of taking a walk as well as doing yoga and then settle on pursuing one course of action rather than another. This suggests that our judgment of choice, which concludes such a deliberative process, is free not because of what we are able to do with this judgment after we have made it but rather because of what we have done before making it. Given these two problems, I now propose a different interpretation of second-order judgment in Aquinas – one that locates said judgment prior to the judgment of choice. The starting point of my reading is another text of Aquinas’s, specifically, Summa contra gentiles II, c. 48. Aquinas writes there: Only those beings judge freely who move themselves to judging. But no power that judges moves itself to judging unless it reflects upon its act; for if it sets itself to judging it is required that it cognize its judgment.34

32 33 34

For this point, see Coope, “Aquinas on Judgment and the Active Power of Reason,” 16. See, e.g., De Ver., q. 22, a. 15, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 649, ll. 56–63; ST I, q. 83, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 307; DM, q. 6, a. 1, c., Leon. 23: 149, ll. 377–81. “[H]aec sola libere iudicant quaecumque in iudicando seipsa movent. Nulla autem potentia iudicans seipsam ad iudicandum movet nisi supra actum suum reflectatur: oportet enim, si se ad iudicandum agit, quod suum iudicium cognoscat” (SCG II, c. 48, Leon. 13: 379).

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What Aquinas here refers to as “moving” or “setting oneself to judging” is, as the context of this passage makes clear, the act of bringing about a judgment about what to do, in particular, a judgment of choice. Now, as Aquinas explains in the above text, to bring about the judgment of choice the agent must first have a reflexive cognition of said judgment. This reflexive cognition is plausibly thought of as the above-mentioned secondorder judgment because Aquinas already says in De veritate, q. 24, a. 2 about this judgment that “to judge about one’s judgment pertains only to reason, which reflects upon its act.”35 Thus, if the agent’s judgment of choice is that a walk ought to be taken rather than yoga be done to clear her head, then the above text from Summa contra gentiles II, c. 48 tells us that prior to reaching this judgment she must make a second-order judgment about this very judgment that she is about to make. What is the content of this second-order judgment? Here we need to return to the above-quoted passage from De veritate, q. 24, a. 1. As we saw there, Aquinas characterizes an agent’s second-order judgment as allowing her to understand the nature of the means and end as well as their relation to one another. This suggests that, on his view, prior to judging that a walk ought to be taken rather than yoga be done to clear one’s head, for instance, the agent cognizes, in a second-order judgment, that taking a walk is a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head and that doing yoga is a meansE, too. What is more, given our discussion in Section 3.3, the agent must also cognize that the walk is expedient from a certain point of view, say, because, unlike yoga, it guarantees the intake of fresh air, though yoga has the advantage of exercising more muscles. Thus, while the judgment of choice is the act of judging that a certain means rather than another ought to be pursued for the sake of an end, the reflexive secondorder judgment preceding the judgment of choice is a judgment about the reasons that speak in favor of, as well as against, pursuing this means rather than another. This interpretation allows us to locate the second-order judgment prior to the judgment of choice. But it gives rise to a puzzle. Why think that an agent’s judgment about the reasons that speak for and against the pursuing of a certain means to an end is of a second-order nature? At first glance, this judgment seems to be of a first-order nature. If I judge that the intake of fresh air speaks in favor of pursuing a walk to clear my head, whereas the exercise of additional muscles speaks in favor of doing yoga, am I not 35

“Iudicare autem de iudicio suo est solius rationis, quae super actum suum reflectitur” (De Ver., q. 24, a. 2, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 685, ll. 95–6).

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making a judgment about real things, the walk, doing yoga, and the end of clearing one’s head? Here we need to note that, on Aquinas’s view, when I make a judgment about different possible means to an end and what counts in favor of pursuing one of them rather than another, I am making a judgment about things that do not exist in external reality. First, the means that I will ultimately decide against pursuing – say, doing yoga – will remain an unactualized possibility, which means that it does not and will not even exist.36 Second, the means that I will pursue – say, taking a walk – has yet to be pursued, and the end that it serves, such as clearing my head, has yet to be attained. And for Aquinas, future entities do not exist in reality either.37 Now, as Aquinas explains in his De potentia, q. 7, a. 11, things that do not exist, such as future beings or merely possible entities, can only be related to one another insofar as they exist in a mind. As he writes: [W]hen [the intellect] takes two future events or one present event and another one in the future and understands one as ordered to the other . . . then these relations are only of reason.38

Accordingly, a judgment to the effect that the intake of fresh air speaks in favor of pursuing a walk to clear my head, whereas the exercise of additional muscles speaks in favor of doing yoga, is a judgment in which I establish two means–end relations that exist only in reason and not in reality. How are these relations that exist only in reason to be understood? As we saw in Chapter 2 (Section 2.4), reason orders a means to an end through a precept. Indeed, it is, for Aquinas, part of the very definition of a precept “that it contains an order to an end,” as will be recalled.39 Accordingly, prior to the real-world existence of a given means and its end, an agent’s judgment about the reasons for and against the pursuit of this means for the sake of said end turns out to be a judgment about a precept.40 More precisely, it is a judgment about the reasons that favor the assent to the precept recommending the pursuit of this means to the end as well as the reasons that favor the assent to another precept 36 38 39 40

See, e.g., SCG I, c. 15, Leon. 13: 42 for unactualized possibilia. 37 See the text quoted in n. 38. “[C]um accipit duo futura, vel unum praesens et aliud futurum, et intelligit unum cum ordine ad aliud . . . istae relationes sunt rationis tantum” (QDP, q. 7, a. 11, c., Bazzi: 212). “[D]e ratione praecepti est quod importet ordinem ad finem” (ST I-II, q. 99, a. 1, c., Leon. 7: 199). I am not claiming that an agent must know that she is making a higher-order judgment when she adduces reasons in favor of pursuing one means rather than another. I take Aquinas to be saying that an agent in fact produces a second-order judgment when adducing reasons of this kind, even though she could be ignorant of this – just as an agent in fact endorses a proposition when she judges that p, even if she has no notion of what a proposition is.

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recommending the pursuit of a different means. And since assenting to one of these precepts is the judgment of choice, the judgment about the reasons for and against assenting to said precept is a judgment about what judgment of choice to make. In our example, the agent judges that there is a reason that favors assenting to ‘A walk ought to be taken as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head,’ namely, the intake of fresh air, while there is also a reason that favors assenting to ‘Yoga ought to be done as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head,’ namely, the exercise of additional muscles. In sum, then, while the judgment of choice is the act of assenting to one precept p rather than another q, the higher-order judgment is, on my reading, a judgment to the effect that such-and-such reasons speak in favor of assenting to p and that such-and-such reasons speak in favor of assenting to q. Aquinas’s theory of free judgment is, accordingly, a theory of reasonbased assent. The agent freely assents to p rather than q, but she does this in light of a higher-order cognition of the reasons that favor assent to p as well as the reasons that favor assent to q.41 For Aquinas, our second-order judgment is in a number of cases the result of a process of deliberation, this being the procedure of figuring out what means to pursue for a desired end.42 If the agent is unsure about what to do to clear her head, for instance, then she first needs to determine what means there are and what reasons speak in favor of pursuing them. Only then can she conclude, for instance, that a reason for assenting to ‘A walk 41

42

There is of course a question here. If the agent judges that there are reasons for assenting to p as well as for assenting to q, why does she ultimately assent to p and so apparently gives the reasons favoring the assent to p more weight? For instance, if an agent assents to ‘A walk ought to be taken as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head’ rather than to ‘Yoga ought to be done as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head,’ she will likely do so because the walk guarantees the intake of fresh air. But why is this consideration more important to the agent than the exercise of more muscles, the latter speaking in favor of yoga? The answer to this question will depend on whether we think of Aquinas as a compatibilist or a libertarian. A libertarian reader will argue that Aquinas has no sufficient answer to this question, since such an answer would imply that the agent’s judgment of choice was determined by her reasons. For such a reading of choice and reasons in Aquinas, see, e.g., Lee, “The Relation between Intellect and Will,” 341. A compatibilist reader would argue that Aquinas does have a sufficient answer, e.g., one that appeals to the agent’s beliefs and her character traits. For this view, see, e.g., Williams, “The Libertarian Foundations,” 207; Pasnau, Aquinas on Human Nature, 232. One might worry here that, on my account, deliberation no longer concerns what course of action to take but rather what judgment to make concerning what course of action to take. But this seems to me a false dichotomy. On my view, deliberation’s concern with what future course of action to take just is its concern with what practical proposition to assent to. This is because future courses of action and their ends do not exist in reality, for Aquinas, and so deliberation can only relate to them insofar as they exist in the mind, which they do in practical propositions. Accordingly, my view is that what it is for deliberation to be concerned with what future course of action to take is for it to be concerned with what judgment to make.

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ought to be taken as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head’ is the intake of fresh air, while a reason for assenting to ‘Yoga ought to be done as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head’ is the exercise of additional muscles. However, as we saw in Chapter 1, not all judgments of choice rely on deliberation, for Aquinas, because the agent is not always in doubt about what she should do. Sometimes the choice of a given means is obvious to the agent, as in the scribe example considered in Chapter 1 (Section 1.5), or it does not matter what means is chosen, as in the pen example. But even in these cases, the agent cognizes reasons for and against pursuing a certain means, and so makes a second-order judgment. The scribe, for instance, makes the judgment of choice that he ought to use the writing technique that he masters to copy the book; and he does so, plausibly, in light of his cognition that one very good reason for using this writing technique is that it will allow him to complete his task faster than if he does not do so. This cognition is of a second-order nature because the copying through the known writing technique has not yet occurred when the scribe cognizes this. Accordingly, his judgment about the reasons favoring the use of the known writing technique is a judgment about the reasons speaking in favor of assenting to the precept ‘The writing technique that one masters ought to be used as a meansE to the endNU of copying the book’ rather than to the precept ‘A writing technique that one does not master ought to be used as a meansE to the endNU of copying the book.’ The pen example can be understood along similar lines. The person in the stationery store judges that she ought to buy this rather than that pen to take notes. She does this in light of her cognition that any pen will do for her purposes. Because the pen purchase and note taking have not yet occurred, the agent is again making a second-order judgment. In particular, she judges that it does not matter whether she assents to ‘This pen ought to be bought as a meansE to the endNU of taking notes’ or to ‘That pen ought to be bought as a meansE to the endNU of taking notes.’ She sees that she has equally good reason for assenting to either of these precepts.

3.5

Conclusion: The Judgment of Choice Explained

We have now before us an account of what makes the judgment of choice free, according to Aquinas. Let us briefly summarize the main results. Free judgment is an act of free assent-giving, as we have seen. When an agent makes a judgment of choice, she preferentially assents to one practical proposition or “precept” rather than another, for Aquinas. Precepts

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are generally means–end relating in character, and the judgment of choice operates with a certain class of precepts, namely, particular ones. These concern particular operable things, and these entities lack a necessary connection to our endU. As we have seen, such precepts come in three kinds: they may either (1) relate a meansE to an endNU or (2) a meansN to an endNU or (3) a meansE to the endU. Aquinas thinks that any particular operable thing may be judged good in one respect, but not good in another, and it is because a particular operable thing can be so judged that the agent can find reasons speaking in favor of, as well as against, its pursuit for the sake of a certain end. To be able to find such reasons, the agent must cognize that a given pursuit is a particular operable thing and see what reasons speak in favor of, as well as against, its pursuit for the sake of a certain end. For Aquinas, this cognition occurs before the operable entity and its end exist in reality. For this reason, it is of a second-order nature. The cognition deals with the operable entity and its end insofar as they exist in the mind. The agent determines what reasons speak in favor of, as well as against, assenting to a given means–end relating precept, and this is what it means for the agent to determine what reasons speak in favor of or against making a certain judgment of choice. Our next task is to examine how free judgment relates to the act of choice, which is a volition. A choice is also free, for Aquinas. But what is the nature of its freedom? Is volitional freedom only in part derived from free judgment? That is, does the will have some kind of freedom of its own? Or does choice’s freedom fully derive from free judgment? And what is the rational form intrinsic to choice central to Aquinas’s doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism? Is it identical to the judgment of choice or is it something different? If the latter is the case, then what is it? These are the questions that I shall be concerned with in Chapters 4 and 5.

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chapter 4

Volition and Its Dependence on Judgment

4.1

Introduction

To examine choice and its relation to the judgment of choice, this chapter as well as Chapter 5 adopt a strategy similar to Chapters 2 and 3. Just as I there argued that we cannot understand the judgment of choice unless we first examine Aquinas’s general theory of practical judgment, so I here argue that we cannot understand choice and its dependence on the judgment of choice unless we first examine Aquinas’s general theory of volition and its dependence on practical judgment. This chapter considers what a volition, generally speaking, is (Sections 4.2–4.3), for Aquinas, and discusses a significant part of his complex account of how volition depends on judgment (Sections 4.4–4.7). In the conclusion (Section 4.8), I consider choice in light of the results gained. Chapter 5 completes the discussion of Aquinas’s account of how volition depends on judgment and spells out Aquinas’s doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism.

4.2 Volitions and Their Direction of Fit Our first task is to understand the general nature of volition. What does it mean to will something, according to Aquinas? We have already seen in Chapter 1 (Section 1.2) that Aquinas thinks of a volition as a striving according to a general consideration. Here we need to work out this account in more detail. First some terminological clarifications are in order. Aquinas usually describes a volition as a kind of “striving” (appetitus).1 Unfortunately, he also uses this term to refer to the power giving rise to acts of volition, that is, the “will” (voluntas).2 At times, though, he makes a clear terminological 1 2

See, e.g., ST I-II q. 6, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 59; ST I-II, q. 13, a. 2, ad 1, Leon 6: 99. See, e.g., SCG III, c. 10, Leon. 14: 27; ST I, q. 59, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 92.

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distinction between the power and the act, referring to the will as a “striving power” (potentia appetitiva3) and to the volition as an “actual striving” (actualis appetitus4), that is, as an exercise of the striving power. I adopt this distinction, though with a minor modification. I speak of the will as a striving power, and I refer to volitions not as actual strivings but more simply as strivings. It is well known that, for Aquinas, the phenomenon of striving (appetere) is not exclusive to rational agents, nor even to agents endowed with cognition. As he sees it, all primary substances, whether endowed with cognition or not, strive for some end or other, albeit in different ways.5 Inanimate beings have what Aquinas calls “natural strivings” (appetitus naturalis).6 For instance, a rock has a natural striving to go downwards, on his view, and fire has a natural striving to move upwards. Plants also have a “natural striving,” according to Aquinas, but their striving is directed to vital activities that contribute to their flourishing, such as photosynthesis or drawing up nutrients from the soil. One level above plants, non-rational animals have what Aquinas refers to as “sensory strivings” (appetitus sensitivus).7 Unlike the natural strivings of rocks and plants, these strivings involve cognition, in particular sensory cognition. For instance, a sheep can have a sensory striving to drink water from a river that it sees. Human beings, finally, have volitions, according to Aquinas.8 Like the sensory strivings of non-rational animals, and unlike the natural strivings 3 4

5

6

7 8

See, e.g., De Ver., q. 22, a. 4, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 620, ll. 48–50; ST I, q. 80, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 284. “Ipse ergo actualis appetitus boni vocatur voluntas, secundum quod nominat actum voluntatis” (ST I-II, q. 8, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 6: 68). Anthony Kenny has argued that Aquinas’s volitions could be understood as non-episodic, dispositional states. See his Aquinas on Mind (London: Routledge, 1993), 85. I think that this is too restrictive. Some volitions no doubt are dispositional states, for Aquinas. However, use, for instance, is an occurrent mental state, as Brock, Action and Conduct, 175 pointed out. For my discussion of use, see Chapter 6. “[O]mnia bonum appetunt, non solum habentia cognitionem sed etiam quae sunt cognitionis expertia” (De Ver., q. 22, a. 1, c., Leon 22, 3, 1: 613, ll. 125–7). See also, e.g., DPN, c. 3, Leon. 43: 42, ll. 19–23. “Quaedam enim inclinantur in bonum, per solam naturalem habitudinem, absque cognitione, sicut plantae et corpora inanimata. Et talis inclinatio ad bonum vocatur appetitus naturalis. Quaedam vero ad bonum inclinantur cum aliqua cognitione; non quidem sic quod cognoscant ipsam rationem boni, sed cognoscunt aliquod bonum particulare; sicut sensus, qui cognoscit dulce et album et aliquid huiusmodi. Inclinatio autem hanc cognitionem sequens, dicitur appetitus sensitivus. Quaedam vero inclinantur ad bonum cum cognitione qua cognoscunt ipsam boni rationem; quod est proprium intellectus. Et haec perfectissime inclinantur in bonum; non quidem quasi ab alio solummodo directa in bonum, sicut ea quae cognitione carent, neque in bonum particulariter tantum, sicut ea in quibus est sola sensitiva cognitio; sed quasi inclinata in ipsum universale bonum. Et haec inclinatio dicitur voluntas” (ST I, q. 59, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 92). See ibid. See ibid. God and angels also have volitions, for Aquinas, but I do not discuss their case here.

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Natural/noncognitive

Cognitive

Natural striving of inanimate beings

Sensory striving

Natural striving of plants

Rational striving/volition

Figure 4.1 Aquinas’s taxonomy of strivings

of rocks and plants, volitions involve cognition. However, they involve a different type of cognition from sensory strivings, for Aquinas. They are guided by rational as opposed to sensory cognition.9 Accordingly, Aquinas refers to volitions as “rational strivings,” and to the power of the will as a “rational striving power” (appetitus rationalis).10 Figure 4.1 provides a taxonomy of the types of strivings just considered. As Figure 4.1 helps bring out, volitions differ from other types of strivings on account of two features. First, a volition is a cognitive striving, this being a feature that sets it, as well as sensory strivings, apart from natural strivings. Second, a volition is a rational striving, this being the specific feature that sets it apart from sensory strivings. To better understand the nature of volition, we must, accordingly, better understand these 9

10

“[T]alis appetitus, non determinatus ex aliquo alio de necessitate, sequitur apprehensionem rationis” (De Ver., q. 22, a. 4, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 620–1, ll. 98–100). See also, e.g., ST I-II, q. 13, a. 2, ad 1, Leon 6: 99. Note that, for Aquinas, this cognition need not be rational in the normative sense of ‘rational,’ that is, in the sense of involving good judgment or sound reasoning. It may rely on poor judgment and bad reasoning. It must be rational in a descriptive sense, namely, in the sense of involving general rather than particular cognition. Any judgment of reason, whether good or bad, is general in character, for Aquinas. For this disambiguation of the term ‘rational’ in connection with the will, see Eleonore Stump, “Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, and Frankfurt’s Concept of Free Will,” The Journal of Philosophy 85, no. 8 (1988), 400. See, e.g., De Ver., q. 22, a. 4, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 620; SCG III, c. 10, Leon. 14: 27; ST I, q. 80, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 284; ST I-II, q. 13, a. 2, ad 1, Leon 6: 99. For a discussion of this definition of the will in Aquinas, see Gallagher, “Thomas Aquinas on the Will as Rational Appetite,” 559–84.

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two features. I consider what makes volition a cognitive striving in the remainder of this section, and I consider what makes it a specifically rational striving in Section 4.3. To say that a volition is a cognitive striving is to say that it is a certain kind of mental state, for Aquinas. Rocks and plants strive to move downward and engage in photosynthesis, respectively, but they do not see any goodness in doing so.11 For Aquinas, they, as it were, “blindly” tend to these ends given their natural makeup. The rock strives to the ground given its characteristic heaviness, and the plant engages in photosynthesis because it is the sort of organism that requires light energy to flourish. Human beings and nonhuman animals, in contrast, do see something good in the things that they have volitions or sensory strivings for, and this is what makes their strivings mental states rather than blind tendencies.12 While a cognitive striving crucially relies on cognition of something good, Aquinas is adamant that it is not identical to such a cognition.13 On the contrary, he views a cognitive striving, be it sensory or rational, as a sui generis type of mental state that differs from cognition. The two types of mental states differ, fundamentally, on account of their direction of fit. That is, on Aquinas’s view, cognition and cognitive striving are two different types of mental states because the relation that a cognition bears to reality differs from the relation that a cognitive striving bears to reality. To see this, recall from Chapter 2 (Sections 2.2–2.3) that, for Aquinas, when we make a judgment we relate to a proposition that can be either true or false, and the truth or falsity of a proposition is determined in the mindto-world direction of fit – in terms of an “adequation of intellect and thing,” as Aquinas puts it.14 The proposition is a mental “likeness” (similitudo) or representation of some portion of the world, and it is true if and only if it fits the way the world is and false if and only if it fails to do so. For 11

12 13

14

At least they have no cognition of their own. But as I noted in n. 28 in Chapter 1, Aquinas thinks that God orders the acts of non-rational beings to their determinate ends, and this requires cognition on his part. Thus, for Aquinas, all end-directed behavior requires some intelligent agent, though the cognizing agent could be distinct from the agent engaged in the end-directed behavior. See ST I, q. 59, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 92. “[C]ognoscitivum in anima et appetitivum constituunt diversa genera potentiarum” (De Ver., q. 22, a. 10, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 636, ll. 86–102). See also ST I, q. 59, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 93. The term ‘cognoscitivum’ refers to sensory and rational cognitive powers alike, and the term ‘appetitivum’ refers to sensory and rational striving powers alike. For a discussion of these passages, see Lawrence Dewan, “The Real Distinction between Intellect and Will,” in Dewan, Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 125–50. I here consider the difference between volition and judgment because this is the difference relevant for our purposes here. However, the story that I will offer can be extended mutatis mutandis to sensory strivings and their difference from sensory cognitive acts.

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instance, the judgment that the atomic number of gold is 79 is true because the proposition ‘The atomic number of gold is 79’ fits the fact that the atomic number of gold is 79. Similarly, the practical judgment that a walk ought to be taken to clear one’s head is true because the precept ‘A walk ought to be taken as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head’ fits the fact that (usually at least) a walk is conducive to clearing one’s head. Volitions, or cognitive strivings more generally, differ from judgments, Aquinas holds, because, unlike the latter, they are not representations that are assessed in the mind-to-world direction of fit. As Aquinas writes in the Prima pars, q. 27, a. 4: [T]he will does not come to be in act insofar as there is a likeness of what is willed in the will, but insofar as the will has an inclination to the willed thing.15

In other words, if I will to take a walk, for instance, then my volition is not a representation of the walk that can be assessed in terms of whether it adequately or inadequately represents some fact about the walk, such as its conduciveness to clearing one’s head. Rather, it is a state of being “inclined” to take a walk, as the above text tells us, and, for Aquinas, an inclination is a mental state that is directed to the “good” (bonum) rather than to the “true” (verum).16 According to Aquinas, the mind’s relation to the good is the exact opposite of its relation to the true. While truth consists in an adequation of the mind to reality, the good consists in a “conformity of being to striving” (convenientia entis ad appetitum), as he writes in De veritate, q. 1, a. 1.17 Thus, when I will to take a walk, I do not relate to the walk as something that I can get anything right or wrong about. Rather, I relate to it as something that conforms or fails to conform to my desire. Aquinas’s thought is here that when a walk comes to pass, my volition is fulfilled, while when it does not come to pass, my volition remains unfulfilled. As he puts this point in the Prima secundae, q. 3, a. 4, a volition is assessed in terms of whether it comes to “rest” (requiescere in ipso) 15

16

17

“[I]ntellectus fit in actu per hoc quod res intellecta est in intellectu secundum suam similitudinem, voluntas autem fit in actu, non per hoc quod aliqua similitudo voliti sit in voluntate, sed ex hoc quod voluntas habet quandam inclinationem in rem volitam” (ST I, q. 27, a. 4, c., Leon. 4: 313, translated bit in italics). See, e.g., “[A]ppetens inclinatur in ipsam rem appetitam. Et sic terminus appetitus, quod est bonum, est in re appetibili” (ST I, q. 16, a. 1, c., Leon. 4: 206). See also ST I, q. 59, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 93; SCG IV, c. 22, Leon. 15: 83. “[C]onvenientiam ergo entis ad appetitum exprimit hoc nomen bonum” (De Ver., q. 1, a. 1, c., Leon. 22, 1, 2: 5, ll. 156–7). See also De Ver., q. 22, a. 1, ad 12, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 616, ll. 366–7; ST I-II, q. 19, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 6: 141.

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in the willed good or remains in a state of merely “desiring” (desiderare) but not attaining said good.18 In short, then, rather than being mind-to-world, the direction of fit of volition is “world-to-mind,” to use Searle’s complementary term.19 A volition does not either fit or fail to fit the way the world is; instead, the world either fits or fails to fit a volition. It either turns out to be how we want it to be or it does not.

4.3

Volitions and the Good in General

This shows what it means for a volition to be a cognitive striving. It is a mental state that, though reliant on cognition, differs from it in terms of its direction of fit. What we now need to consider is what makes a volition the specific type of cognitive striving it is, that is, what makes it a rational as opposed to a sensory striving. As I noted, Aquinas thinks that these two types of strivings differ from one another on account of the two types of cognition that they rely on. To understand the difference between these strivings, we must, accordingly, say something about the difference between sensory and rational cognition. As we already noted in Chapter 1 (Section 1.2), reason is a power for general thought, for Aquinas. Sensory cognition, in contrast, is a cognition of particulars, Aquinas thinks.20 A sheep can see and hear this river, and it can perceive drinking water from this river as being good.21 Human beings, in contrast, can think about the benefits of drinking water in general terms. I can understand, for instance, that drinking water, whether from a river or a bottle or any other source, is, generally speaking, a good means to the end of staying hydrated. This difference between the two types of cognition entails a difference between the two types of strivings that rely on them, Aquinas argues. Because a sheep can only cognize the particular good of drinking water from a certain river, its subsequent striving is no more than a striving to drink from said river.22 In contrast, because a human being is capable of 18

19 20 21 22

“Voluntas enim fertur in finem et absentem, cum ipsum desiderat; et praesentem, cum in ipso requiescens delectatur” (ST I-II, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2, Leon. 6: 29). See also: “[T]erminatio, seu perfectio actus voluntatis attenditur secundum ordinem ad operationem, per quam aliquis tendit ad consecutionem rei; nam motus voluntatis est ab anima ad rem” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 5, ad 2, Leon. 6: 102). See Searle, Intentionality, 8. “Sensitiva . . . est apprehensiva particularium” (ST I, q. 79, a. 6, c., Leon. 5: 270); “[I]ntellectus . . . intelligit universaliter et per modum necessitatis cuiusdam” (ST I, q. 84, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 314). “Quaedam vero ad bonum inclinantur cum aliqua cognitione; non quidem sic quod cognoscant ipsam rationem boni, sed cognoscunt aliquod bonum particulare” (ST I, q. 59, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 92). See ibid.

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thought about the benefits of drinking water in general, she is capable of striving to drink water from a certain source in light of such a general consideration. Aquinas’s point is not that what I will is a general rather than a particular good, say, drinking water in general rather than drinking the water in the glass in front of me. Rather, his point is that I will a particular good like drinking the water in the glass in front of me, but only insofar as this good exhibits a general feature. As Aquinas expresses this idea in the Prima pars, q. 80, a. 2: [A] rational striving even if directed to particular things (singularia) outside of the soul is directed to them according to some general character (ratio), as when it strives for something because it is good.23

Aquinas frequently characterizes the general feature in light of which a rational agent wills a particular good as “the good in general” (universale bonum).24 He means by this that a volition is guided by a general consideration of what makes a particular operable thing good; and for Aquinas, such a general consideration of what makes a particular operable thing good is a practical judgment relating said particular operable thing to an end. For instance, for me to will to drink the water in the glass in front of me because it is good for hydration just is for me to will to drink the water based on the practical judgment that this water ought to be drunk in order to stay hydrated. Aquinas makes this reliance of volition on judgment particularly clear in his commentary on De anima III. Indeed, he there argues that the rational cognition informing volition must be a practical judgment. As he writes: The striving power neither undergoes a passion nor is moved (movetur) by a simple apprehension of a thing . . . rather it is required that this thing be apprehended in light of the concept of the good or bad . . . and this is what opinion (opinio) does in human beings through judging [emphasis added].25 23

24

25

“[A]ppetitus intellectivus, etsi feratur in res quae sunt extra animam singulares, fertur tamen in eas secundum aliquam rationem universalem; sicut cum appetit aliquid quia est bonum” (ST I, q. 80, a. 2, ad 2, Leon. 5: 284). “Et haec perfectissime inclinantur in bonum . . . inclinata in ipsum universale bonum. Et haec inclinatio dicitur voluntas” (ST I, q. 59, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 92). See also, e.g., De Ver., q. 25, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 732, ll. 131–5; ST I, q. 105, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 474; ST I-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3, Leon. 6: 9; ST I-II, q. 19, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 144. See Gallagher, “Thomas Aquinas on the Will as Rational Appetite,” 563–4 for a discussion of the will and the good in general. “[A]ppetitus non patitur neque movetur ad simplicem apprehensionem rei . . . sed oportet quod apprehendatur sub ratione boni vel mali . . . et hoc facit opinio in hominibus, componendo vel dividendo” (In DA II, c. 28, Leon. 45, 1: 191, ll. 274–81). For the equivalence of ‘compositio vel divisio’ and ‘judgment’ (iudicium), see the Appendix. For a parallel passage, see, e.g., “Voluntas vero movetur ex iudicio virtutis apprehensivae, quae iudicat hoc esse bonum vel malum, quae sunt

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Merely understanding the concept of, say, drinking water does not suffice to elicit a volition to drink the water in the glass. Rather, “it is required,” as Aquinas tells us here, that drinking water be judged good for some reason or other, say, for the sake of hydration, in order to “move” the striving power. Aquinas’s thought is that a volition cannot be directed to any particular operable thing unless the agent first cognizes it as good for some end or other, and to cognize some X as Y is, as the above text suggests, to make a judgment. In sum, then, while a volition differs from judgment on account of its direction of fit, it also crucially depends on judgment to be the sort of striving it is, according to Aquinas. It is because volition is guided by a practical judgment that it is a cognitive striving that is rational rather than sensory in character, a striving in light of the “good in general” rather than one that is restricted to a particular good. But what is the precise nature of this dependence of volition on practical judgment? What does it mean for judgment to “move” volition, to put it in the terminology that Aquinas uses in the above-quoted passage from the commentary on De anima III?26 This is the question that we need to consider in the remainder of this chapter.

4.4 The Dependence of Volition on Judgment: Terminological Preliminaries As we saw in Chapter 1 (Section 1.3), Aquinas ordinarily thinks that if X “moves” (movet) Y, then X causes a change in Y. As we also saw, he calls the causing of a change an “action” (actio), which he takes to be an exercise of an active power, while he refers to the subsequent undergoing as a “passion” (passio), which he takes to be an exercise of a passive power. In a number of texts, Aquinas also describes the dependence of the will on reason as a dependence of a passive on an active power.27 To cite just one

26

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voluntatis obiecta, unum ad prosequendum movens, aliud ad fugiendum” (SCG III, c. 10, Leon. 14: 26). Speaking of reason as “moving” the will is a standard phrase in Aquinas and indeed medieval philosophers in general. See, e.g., SCG III, c. 26, Leon. 14: 71; ST I, q. 82, a. 3, ad 2, Leon. 5: 299; ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 74. Perhaps a more familiar way of putting the same thought in contemporary terms is that judgment “motivates” volition. For Aquinas, the will can also move the intellect, namely, by efficiently causing an act of thought to occur. See, e.g., De Ver., q. 22, a. 12, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 642, ll. 56–8; ST I, q. 82, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 303; ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 74. But any such act whereby the will moves the intellect must in turn be preceded by another act of the intellect whereby the agent judges that the intellect ought to be so moved. So, if I think about geometry because I want to do so, then I must have previously judged that thinking about geometry is worthy of pursuit. As Aquinas writes: “Omnem enim voluntatis

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example, in the Prima pars, q. 82, a. 3, he writes that “the intellect is prior to the will as mover to movable, and as active to passive.”28 However, as I will argue in the remainder of this chapter, reason and will do not relate to one another as ordinary active and passive powers do.29 The reason is that reason’s moving of the will does not consist in its causing any change in the will, for Aquinas. That is to say, reason does not influence volition in the sense of making an act of volition occur. Rather, reason and will relate to one another according to a different, non-change-involving dependence relation. After some terminological preliminaries in this section, I spell out what this non-change-involving dependence relation is in Section 4.5. It is one of formal and final causation, as we will see. In Sections 4.6–4.7, I then examine what accounts for the occurrence of a volition, since reason is not responsible for this. I argue that the will itself does this, though the will can only cause the occurrence of its volition because it follows a previous practical judgment. Let us begin, then, with some terminological preliminaries. To understand how the will depends on reason, we need to first consider the notion of an “object” (obiectum) because, as Aquinas tells us in the Prima secundae, q. 9, a. 1, as well as in a number of other texts, “the intellect moves the will by presenting the will’s object to the will [emphasis added].”30 Second, we need to discuss the Aristotelian doctrine of the four causes because Aquinas draws on it to conceptualize the non-change-involving way in which reason moves the will (though he makes a crucial addition, as we will see in Chapter 5). To understand the notion of an “object,” it is helpful to turn to De veritate, q. 23, a. 7. In this text, Aquinas offers a particularly clear account of this notion. He writes:

28

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motum necesse est quod praecedat apprehensio, sed non omnem apprehensionem praecedit motus voluntatis” (ST I, q. 82, a. 4, ad 3, Leon. 5: 303). “[I]ntellectus est prior voluntate sicut motivum mobili, et activum passivo” (ST I, q. 82, a. 3, ad 2, Leon. 5: 299). Aquinas maintains this throughout his career. See, e.g., In Sent. III, d. 27, q. 1, a. 1, c., Moos: 854–5; De Ver., q. 5, a. 10, c., Leon. 22, 1, 2: 169, ll. 102–3; De Ver., q. 24, a. 2, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 685, ll. 72–81; ST I, q. 80, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 284. This also explains why Aquinas sometimes adds a qualifier when describing the will as a passive power. For instance, in the Prima secundae, q. 18, a. 2, he writes: “[N]am appetitiva potentia est quodammodo passiva” (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 2, ad 3, Leon. 6: 128, emphasis added). “Et ideo isto modo motionis intellectus movet voluntatem, sicut praesentans ei obiectum suum” (ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 74). For reason’s influence on the will in terms of the obiectum, see also In Sent. I, d. 3, q. 4, a. 1, ad 8, Mandonnet: 114; In Sent. III, d. 17, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 3, Moos: 532; In Sent. III, d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, sol., Moos: 816; De Ver., q. 22, a. 4, ad 2, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 621, ll. 115–28; SCG I, c. 90, Leon. 13: 243; ST I-II, q. 10, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 86; ST II-II, q. 24, a. 1, c., Leon. 8: 174; De Virt., q. 4, a. 2, c., Bazzi: 807; DM, q. 8, a. 1, ad 11, Leon. 23: 196, ll. 458–64.

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In the object of the will, two things need to be considered: one [component] that is, as it were, material, namely, the thing willed, and another that is, as it were, formal, namely, the reason for willing [the willed thing], which is some end.31

Aquinas here advocates a hylomorphic account of the object of volition. The “thing willed” is what Aquinas calls the “material” component of the object. This is any particular operable entity, be it doable or makeable.32 In De malo q. 7, a. 3, for instance, Aquinas adduces the doable entity of walking to a place (ire ad locum) as an example of a thing willed.33 In his commentary on Physics II, he provides weight loss (macies) understood as a makeable result of a medical procedure as an example.34 The formal component of the object of volition, in contrast, is the end for the sake of which the particular operable thing is willed. For instance, if I want to go to a certain place to see a concert, then the end of seeing the concert is the formal component on account of which I will the material component of going to that place, and if a physician wants to bring about a patient’s weight loss to ensure this patient’s health, then the patient’s health is the formal component on account of which the physician wills the material component of the weight loss. In sum, then, the object of a volition is an operable entity desired for the sake of some end, or, as we may also put it, a means desired for the sake of 31

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“In obiecto voluntatis duo sunt consideranda: unum quod est quasi materiale, scilicet ipsa res volita, aliud quod est quasi formale, scilicet ratio volendi quae est finis” (De Ver., q. 23, a. 7, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 670, ll. 184–9). Aquinas’s distinction between a formal and a material component in the object of a volition is an instance of a more general distinction that he draws between a formal and a material component of the object of an act (actus) of a power. See, e.g., ST I, q. 77, a. 3, c., Leon. 5: 241. For a discussion of this general distinction, see, e.g., Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 189; Peter King, “Aquinas on the Passions,” in MacDonald and Stump, Aquinas’s Moral Theory, 107. For a discussion of the term ‘obiectum,’ see Lawrence Dewan, “‘Obiectum’: Notes on the Invention of a Word,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 48 (1981): 37–96. For a discussion of Aquinas’s account of the object of volition, see Pilsner, The Specification of Human Acts, ch. 5. “[I]n actu morali possunt considerari duo obiecta, scilicet obiectum exterioris actus, et obiectum interioris. Quae quidem quandoque sunt unum, puta cum aliquis volens ire ad aliquem locum, vadit illuc” (DM, q. 7, a. 3, c., Leon. 23: 167, ll. 174–83). For a discussion of Aquinas’s view that an interior act of the will takes a doing as its object, see, e.g., Theo Belmans, “La spécification de l’agir humain par son objet chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Divinitas 22 (1979): 336–56; Martin Rhonheimer, “‘Intrinsically Evil Acts’ and the Moral Viewpoint: Clarifying a Central Teaching of Veritatis Splendor,” The Thomist 58, no. 1 (1994), 29–31. “[M]edicus ad sanitatem inducendum extenuat corpus, et sic sanitas est finis maciei; maciem autem operatur per purgationem; purgationem autem per potionem; potionem autem praeparat per aliqua instrumenta. Unde omnia haec sunt quodammodo finis: nam macies est finis purgationis, et purgatio potionis, et potio organorum, et organa sunt fines in operatione vel inquisitione organorum” (In Phys. II, l. 5, n. 6, Leon. 2: 70).

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some end.35 For reason to move the will by presenting an object to the will is, accordingly, for it to present to the will a means ordered to an end, and it does this, of course, through a judgment stating that this means ought to be pursued for the sake of this end. But how does an object so presented through a judgment of reason move the will, according to Aquinas? Here Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes becomes relevant. As is well known, this doctrine distinguishes between a “material,” “formal,” “efficient,” and “final” cause.36 Drawing on this terminology, Aquinas argues that the object moves the will as (1) a final (causa finalis) and (2) formal cause (causa formalis), but (3) not as an efficient cause (causa efficiens).37 Rather, the will itself is the efficient cause of its own act, as we will see in Section 4.6. Claim (3) is Aquinas’s above-mentioned denial that reason causes a change in the will. Claims (1) and (2), in contrast, constitute Aquinas’s positive theory of the non-change-involving dependence relation obtaining between volition and judgment. To be able to adequately discuss these three claims, we need to first gain clarity on how Aquinas generally understands the four causes. To begin, we should note that, for Aquinas, this doctrine does not distinguish between four different types of causes in the now common sense of the term ‘cause.’ Today we usually understand by a ‘cause’ a condition for event occurrence, as Plato scholar Gregory Vlastos once pointed out.38 For example, we might ask what the cause of the avalanche was, and what we want to know is what caused the avalanche to happen. For Aquinas, ‘cause’ has a much broader meaning than this. It denotes anything that explains something or other or, to put the point the other way around, anything on which something else depends.39 The four causes, then, are best understood as four different types of relations of dependence. To see what these dependence relations are more specifically, it is useful to illustrate them by appeal to an example. Take an olive tree. As Aquinas sees it, there are four things about it that require explanation, and these 35 36 37 38 39

The only exception of course is the object of happiness itself, which is an end pursued for its own sake. “Patet quod sunt quatuor causae, scilicet materialis, efficiens, formalis et finalis” (DPN, c. 3, Leon. 43: 42, ll. 42–3). For the text in Aristotle, see Phys. II, 3, 194b16–195a5. References are provided in Sections 4.5–4.6. See his “Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo,” The Philosophical Review 78, no. 3 (1969), 294. For causation and dependence in Aquinas, see Caleb Cohoe “There Must Be a First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite, Essentially Ordered, Causal Series,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21, no. 5 (2013), 841–2. For Aquinas’s theory of causation, see also Stephen L. Brock, “Causality and Necessity in Thomas Aquinas,” Quaestio 2 (2002): 217–40.

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four things point to the four causes. First, there are two facts about what the olive tree is that require explanation. An olive tree is (1) a material object distinct from other material objects. Furthermore (2), it is a being of a certain natural kind or “species” (species), as Aquinas calls it. In particular, it is an instance of the biological kind olive tree. In his De principiis naturae, Aquinas writes that two “intrinsic causes” (causae intrinsecae) of the tree, that is, two causes internal to it, explain facts (1) and (2).40 Aquinas understands these two causes in light of his hylomorphism. The particular portion of matter that the olive tree occupies is its “material cause” (causa materialis), and it accounts for the tree’s being a material object distinct from others.41 In contrast, the tree’s substantial form is its “formal cause” (causa formalis). It arranges the tree’s matter in such a way as to yield an entity of the kind olive tree.42 In addition to these two facts explained by intrinsic causes, Aquinas holds that there are two facts about the tree that need to be explained by “extrinsic causes” (causae extrinsecae).43 The first of these extrinsically explained facts concerns the origin of the tree. How did the tree come into being? This question requires appeal to what Aquinas calls the “efficient cause” (causa efficiens). As he sees it, the efficient cause of the olive tree is the parent tree that brings it into existence, and the parent tree does this by changing a certain segment of soil, which is the matter of the future olive tree, through its seed, into the new tree.44 This is why Aquinas, in other parts of his oeuvre, also refers to the efficient cause as a “moving cause” or “acting cause” (causa movens/causa agens).45 Aquinas conceptualizes the change through which the efficient cause operates in a distinctive way, and it is important that we briefly consider it here to be able to later discuss the will’s efficient causation of its own 40 41

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See DPN c. 3, Leon. 43: 42, ll. 45–51. See, e.g., DEE c. 2, Leon. 43: 371, ll. 73–7. So, matter is a “principle of numerical distinctness,” for Aquinas, to use Jeffrey Brower’s terminology. See Jeffrey E. Brower, “Aquinas on the Individuation of Substances,” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 5 (2017): 122–50. “Per formam enim collocatur unumquodque in genere vel specie” (SCG III, c. 7, Leon. 14: 19). See also ST I, q. 44, a. 2, c., Leon. 4: 458. See DPN c. 3, Leon. 43: 42, ll. 45–51. This involves the transmission of a form: “[I]n motibus corporalibus movens dicitur quod dat formam quae est principium motus” (ST I, q. 105, a. 3, c., Leon. 5: 473). See also, e.g., QDP, q. 2, a. 1, c., Bazzi: 25; SCG III, c. 66, Leon. 14: 188. So, Aquinas adheres to a kind of “giving model” of causation, according to which the cause gives some form that it already has to some entity that lacks this form. For the term ‘giving model,’ see Ursula Coope, “Aristotle on Action,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 81, no. 1 (Supplementary Volume) (2007), 115. “Tertio modo dicitur causa unde primum est principium permutationis et quietis; et haec est causa movens, vel efficiens” (In Met. V, l. 2, n. 765, Cathala: 212). For the interchangeability of the terms ‘causa agens’ and ‘causa efficiens,’ see, e.g., ST II-II, q. 17, a. 4, c., Leon. 8: 127.

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volition. As Aquinas tells us in Summa contra gentiles II, c. 71, an efficient cause causes a change by “reducing a power to actuality” (reducere potentiam ad actum).46 More precisely, an efficient cause is a substance with an active power that reduces another substance’s passive power to actuality, which means, on Aquinas’s view, that the former makes the latter pass from a potential to an actualized state. For example, the parent olive tree exercises its active power to generate offspring by transmitting through its seed the form of an olive tree to a certain segment of the soil, and it thereby reduces the soil’s passive power to take on the form of an olive tree to actuality. Let us now consider the second fact about the tree that needs to be extrinsically explained, according to Aquinas. This is the fact that the tree (if healthy) engages in power-exercises beneficial for it. The tree’s trunk and roots grow, for instance. What explains that the tree does these things? Aquinas’s answer appeals to the characteristic end or final cause (finis) of the tree, namely, its flourishing.47 This end is external to the tree while it is still engaging in behavior like growing. For while it is still growing, it is not yet a specimen that has reached maturity. Yet, even before this end is attained, the end has explanatory power, Aquinas thinks. The reason why the tree’s trunk and roots grow, he argues, is that this serves the end of its flourishing.48

4.5

The Object’s Final- and Formal-Causal Influence

With this sketch of the four causes in hand, we are now in a position to consider Aquinas’s account of how the object moves the will. I begin with Aquinas’s positive theory, which relies on final and formal causation, and I first consider final causation. In Section 4.6, I then turn to his negative theory, on which reason does not move the will as an efficient cause. Here is a clear statement of the will’s final-causal dependence on reason taken from De veritate, q. 22, a. 12: 46

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“[A]gens . . . potentiam reducit ad actum” (SCG II, c. 71, Leon. 13: 454). See also: “[D]icitur causa fiendi quod educit formam de potentia materiae per motum, sicut faber est causa efficiens cultelli” (De Ver., q. 5, a. 8, ad 8, Leon. 22, 1, 2: 160, ll. 327–31). Note that this account only holds for created efficient causes. God does not have to rely on some preexisting subject whose power he then actualizes. I am here only considering what Aquinas calls the “end of the generated thing” (finis generati). On his view, there is also an end of the generative process leading to the generated thing (finis generationis), which I disregard here. See DPN c. 3, Leon. 43: 45, ll. 104–8 for the distinction. One might wonder here how the end can be causally salient, since it does not exist yet. Answer: the end already exists as conceptualized by God, who orders the tree to this end. See n. 28 in Chapter 1.

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Therefore, the intellect moves the will in the way in which the end is said to move.49

The claim that Aquinas wishes to make here is a straightforward one. As we saw, the object that reason presents to the will is a means ordered to some end. For instance, my volition to go for a walk to clear my head has as its object the means of taking a walk as ordered to the end of clearing my head. Thus, for an object to move my volition is for some end as attainable through some means to move my volition, and an end that moves is a final cause, for Aquinas.50 While it is still willed, this final cause does not yet exist in reality of course, but merely in the mind, namely, as conceptualized in a precept (and also as conceptualized in a volition, as we will see in Chapter 5). It is the final cause insofar as it exists in the mind that guides volition, for Aquinas.51 It is especially in his early De veritate (1256–9) and the Prima pars, which belongs to his middle phase (1265–8), that Aquinas characterizes the object as a final cause.52 Later in his career, notably in the Prima secundae, q. 9, a. 1 (1271), he adopts a different description, writing that “the object moves . . . in the mode of a formal principle” (ad modum principii formalis).53 Some scholars have taken this to be indicative of a change of mind on Aquinas’s part.54 But I disagree.55 By characterizing the object as the formal cause of volition in the Prima secundae, Aquinas is, on my view, not rejecting his earlier final-causal account. Rather, he is showing that, in addition to being describable as a final cause, the object

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“Unde intellectus movet voluntatem per modum quo finis movere dicitur in quantum scilicet praeconcipit rationem finis” (De Ver., q. 22, a. 12, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 642, ll. 76–81, translated bit in italics). See also: “[D]icitur quod finis movet efficientem. Et hoc modo intellectus movet voluntatem, quia bonum intellectum est obiectum voluntatis, et movet ipsam ut finis” (ST I, q. 82, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 303). “[F]inis, inquantum est res quaedam, est aliud voluntatis obiectum quam id quod est ad finem. Sed inquantum est ratio volendi id quod est ad finem, est unum et idem obiectum” (ST I-II, q. 12, a. 4, ad 2, Leon. 6: 97). See also ST I-II, q. 8, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 70. See De Ver., q. 22, a. 12, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 642, ll. 76–81, as quoted in n. 49. See the texts quoted in n. 49. “Sed obiectum movet, determinando actum, ad modum principii formalis” (ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 74). See, e.g., Lottin, Psychologie et morale, vol. 1, 252–6, and, more recently, Michael Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 30 and 43. I am not the first to do so. See Rosemary Zita-Lauer, “St. Thomas’s Theory of Intellectual Causality in Election,” New Scholasticism 28, no. 3 (1954), 307–9, who argues, against Lottin, that final and formal cause coincide in the case of the object’s influence on the will, which is also what I think, though my interpretation of their being the same cause differs from Zita-Lauer’s.

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of a volition is also describable as a formal cause because these two causal roles coincide.56 But how can they coincide? Didn’t the above discussion of the four causes show that formal and final causation are two different types of causation, the former being intrinsic, and the latter extrinsic? Here we must note that, in the above discussion, we considered these two types of causes in connection with a primary substance, namely, an olive tree. But volitions are not primary substances but rather power-exercises or acts, and while form and end are different in the case of primary substances, they need not be, and indeed are not, in the case of volition, as we will see presently. I should note that, in Chapter 5, I draw a distinction between the extrinsic and intrinsic form of a volition – these being, respectively, the form of the preceding judgment and the form of the volition itself. Here this distinction is not yet relevant. For the equivalence of final and formal causation holds irrespective of whether we consider volition’s intrinsic or extrinsic form. The end of a volition functions as its form regardless of whether it exists as conceptualized in judgment or volition itself, as I explain in Chapter 5. To establish the equivalence between final and formal causation, we must briefly recall the causal role that form plays, according to Aquinas. As we saw above, a form accounts for an entity’s kind or “species,” in Aquinas’s terminology. For instance, the form of an olive tree makes the tree an instance of the species olive tree. Now, this is also how we should think of the object’s role in the case of volition, Aquinas thinks. As he writes, for instance, in the Prima secundae, q. 11, a. 4, “the object is that which endows an act [of the will] with a species.”57 And in q. 10, a. 2 of the Prima secundae, he says, in a similar vein, that the object moves the will “as regards the specification of the act” (quantum ad specificationem actus).58 In 56

57 58

This interpretation has the added benefit of allowing us to explain why Aquinas says things in his later Prima secundae that also strongly suggest that reason moves the will as a final cause. For instance, he writes that “voluntas movetur ab obiecto” (ST I-II, q. 9, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 78), and he specifies, in the text quoted in n. 50, that “[Finis] inquantum est ratio volendi id quod est ad finem, est unum et idem obiectum” (ST I-II, q. 12, a. 4, ad 2, Leon. 6: 97). What is more, we can also explain why Aquinas, even in his earlier De veritate, compares the end of a volition to a formal cause: “Cum enim in qualibet actione duo considerentur: scilicet agens, et ratio agendi; ut in calefactione ignis est agens, et ratio agendi calor. In movendo dicitur finis movere sicut ratio movendi: sed efficiens sicut agens motum, hoc est educens mobile de potentia in actum. Ratio autem agendi est forma agentis per quam agit” (De Ver., q. 22, a. 12, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 642, ll. 56–63). “Obiectum autem est quod dat speciem actui [voluntatis]” (ST I-II, q. 11, a. 4, ad 2, Leon. 6: 93). “[V]oluntas movetur dupliciter, uno modo, quantum ad exercitium actus; alio modo, quantum ad specificationem actus, quae est ex obiecto” (ST I-II, q. 10, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 86). See also: “Si ergo consideremus motum potentiarum animae ex parte obiecti specificantis actum, primum principium

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other words, just as the form of an olive tree accounts for the fact that the olive tree is the kind of tree it is, so the object of, say, going for a walk to clear my head accounts for the fact that my volition to go for a walk to clear my head is the kind of volition it is. Aquinas’s idea here is the following. Just as there are kinds of things, like olive trees, so there are kinds of volitions, and just as a substantial form accounts for the substance’s kind, so a volition’s object accounts for the volition’s kind. For instance, to understand what makes my volition to go for a walk to clear my head the kind of volition it is, I must appeal to the object of going for a walk to clear my head. For it is on account of being directed to this particular object that this volition is the volition it is and differs from other kinds of volition, such as the volition to go for a run to get some exercise. Now, for Aquinas, this object, which accounts for the fact that a volition is of a certain kind, is also a final cause of volition, as we saw. It is an end as attainable through some means. As Aquinas himself puts the point in De malo, q. 7, a. 4, bringing the two causal roles together, “an interior act of the will owes its species to the end.”59 Consider again the volition to go for a walk to clear one’s head. The object of taking a walk to clear one’s head is the end of clearing one’s head as attainable through the means of taking a walk. Thus, to say that the object of taking a walk to clear one’s head accounts for the fact that the volition to go for a walk to clear one’s head is the kind of volition it is is to say that the end of clearing one’s head as attainable through a walk accounts for the fact that this volition is the kind of volition it is. For Aquinas, then, a volition of a certain kind just is a volition for a certain end (as attainable through a means), and vice versa. This is why the formal cause of volition, which accounts for the volition’s kind, coincides with its final cause.

4.6 Efficient Causation and the Will’s Self-motion So much for Aquinas’s positive theory of how reason moves the will. It is now time to turn to his negative theory, that is, his denial that reason moves the will as an efficient cause. Here is a clear statement of this view from Summa contra gentiles I, c. 72:

59

motionis est ex intellectu: hoc enim modo bonum intellectum movet etiam ipsam voluntatem” (DM, q. 6, a. 1, c., Leon. 149: ll. 339–43). “[I]nterior actus consequitur speciem ex fine” (DM, q. 7, a. 4, c., Leon. 23: 170, ll. 40–2).

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act The intellect moves the will . . . not in the mode of an efficient and moving cause.60

As I indicated in Section 4.4, when Aquinas denies that reason moves the will as an efficient cause, he is denying that reason causes a change in the will. For an efficient cause is a cause of change, on his view. As I also noted there, an efficient cause causes a change by reducing a passive power to actuality. Hence, when Aquinas denies that reason moves the will as an efficient cause, he is denying, more specifically, that by presenting an object to the will, reason reduces the will from a state of potentially willing this object to a state of actually willing it. Thus, my judging that I ought to go for a walk to clear my head, for instance, accounts for the end (as attainable through a means) of my volition to go for a walk to clear my head, and it thereby also accounts for the volition’s being the kind of volition it is. But it does not cause this volition to occur as a mental episode after my being in a state of merely potentially willing to take a walk to clear my head. What, then, is it that reduces the will from potency to actuality? Aquinas claims that the will itself does this. As he writes in the Prima secundae, q. 9, a. 3, “the will reduces itself from potency to act.”61 Or, in his preferred terminology in the Prima secundae, “the will . . . is moved by itself as regards the exercise of the act” (quantum ad exercitium actus).62 In other words, the will causes the occurrence of its own act, all the while being moved by reason in terms of formal and final causation. The reason, then, why reason is not the efficient cause of volition is that the will itself plays this role, for Aquinas, and we do not need two efficient causes where one will do.63 60

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“[I]ntellectus non secundum modum causae efficientis et moventis . . . moveat voluntatem” (SCG I, c. 72, Leon. 13: 210). There was a debate among Renaissance Thomists as to whether Aquinas truly held that reason had no efficient-causal influence whatsoever on the will. John Capreolus, Defensiones theologiae Divi Thomae Aquinatis, vol. 4, ed. Ceslai Paban and Thomas Pègues (Turin: Cattier, 1902), 223 and 225 argued that Aquinas indeed held this view. Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Commentaria in partem primam Summae theologiae (qq. 50–119), comm. ad ST I, q. 80, a. 2, n. 6, in Aquinas, Opera omnia iussu Leonis, vol. 5: 285 argued that Aquinas did not. It seems to me, in view of the above-quoted SCG passage, that Capreolus was right. For a discussion of this debate, see Jacobus M. Ramírez, De actibus humanis: In I-II Summae theologiae Divi Thomae expositio, qq. 6–21, ed. Victorino Rodríguez (Madrid: Instituto De Filosofia “Luis Vives,” 1972), 107–32. “[Voluntas] reducit se de potentia in actum” (ST I-II, q. 9, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 6: 78). “[N]on eodem modo voluntas movetur ab intellectu, et a seipsa. Sed ab intellectu quidem movetur secundum rationem obiecti, a seipsa vero, quantum ad exercitium actus, secundum rationem finis” (ST I-II, q. 9, a. 3, ad 3, Leon. 6: 78, translated bits in italics). See also ST I-II, q. 10, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 86. For a discussion of the ‘exercitium actus’ terminology, see, e.g., J. F. Keenan, Goodness and Rightness in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1992), 40–7. Unless of course (1) reason and will were both partial efficient causes of volition or (2) one of the two were the principal efficient cause, while the other were a secondary cause. Although Aquinas has a sophisticated account of concurrent causation, he does not use either of these two models to describe the role of reason and will in bringing about a volition. The partial cause model of volition

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Aquinas understands the will’s efficient causation of its own act in light of his distinction between means and ends. In the Prima secundae, q. 9, a. 4, he writes that the will “reduces itself to willing the means by willing the end.”64 Thus, the will’s self-motion is its causation of an occurrent volition for the means to an end based on a previous volition of just the end, this being what Aquinas calls a “simple volition” (see Section 1.6). Prior to actually willing to take a walk to clear my head, for instance, I merely potentially willed to take a walk to clear my head, but I already had a simple volition to clear my head, and this volition of the end allowed my will to reduce itself from potentially to actually willing the means of taking a walk.65 How does the will effect this change from potentially to actually willing the means based on actually willing the end? Here the will needs the power of reason, Aquinas maintains. As he tells us in q. 9, a. 4 of the Prima secundae, “[the will] cannot do this [i.e., move itself] except through counsel.”66 ‘Counsel’ is, for Aquinas, another word for the judgment of choice (be it the result of deliberation or not), as we saw in Chapter 1 (Section 1.4).67 Thus, Aquinas is saying here that it is the judgment of choice that I ought to go for a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head that allows my will to move from the volition to clear my head to the volition to take a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head, this latter volition being the act of choice. The doctrine of the will’s self-motion gives rise to a number of questions. One question that has elicited much interest among commentators is how one and the same power could reduce itself from potency to actuality. Does this not make one and the same power actual and potential at the same time, and is such a compresence of actuality and potency in one and

64

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was defended by the earlier Duns Scotus. See his Lectura II, d. 25, q. un., in B. Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia, vol. 19, ed. Commissio Scotistica (Vatican City: Typis Vaticanis, 1993), 258, 20–259, 16, nn. 87–8. For a discussion of Scotus’s theory of the relation between reason and will, see Stephen D. Dumont, “Did Duns Scotus Change His Mind on the Will?” in After the Condemnation of 1277, ed. J. Aertsen et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000), 719–94. “Manifestum est autem quod voluntas incipit velle aliquid, cum hoc prius non vellet. Necesse est ergo quod ab aliquo moveatur ad volendum. Et quidem, sicut dictum est, ipsa movet seipsam, inquantum per hoc quod vult finem, reducit seipsam ad volendum ea quae sunt ad finem. Hoc autem non potest facere nisi consilio mediante, cum enim aliquis vult sanari, incipit cogitare quomodo hoc consequi possit, et per talem cogitationem pervenit ad hoc quod potest sanari per medicum, et hoc vult” (ST I-II, q. 9, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 78, translated bit in italics). See also ST I-II, q. 9, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 6: 78 and DM, q. 6, a. 1, c., Leon. 23: 149, ll. 361–77 for parallel passages. See ST I-II, q. 9, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 78 as quoted in n. 64. 66 See ibid. “[E]lectio praesupponit consilium ratione iudicii vel sententiae. Unde quando iudicium vel sententia manifesta est absque inquisitione, non requiritur consilii inquisitio” (ST I-II, q. 14, a. 4, ad 1, Leon. 6: 107).

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the same power coherent? I put this question to one side here. Discussing it would lead us too far afield, and it is not necessary that we consider this question to understand what we are interested in here, namely, the dependence relation obtaining between will and reason.68 There is, however, a second question hotly debated among scholars that we do have to consider to better understand this relation. Namely: does the will’s self-motion endow the will with some kind of freedom vis-à-vis judgment? As we just saw, Aquinas says that the will cannot move itself except through the judgment of reason. What is more, in Chapter 1 (Section 1.4), I mentioned Aquinas’s claim that choice “accepts” what the judgment of choice proposes, which suggests a passive picture of the act of choice. However, as we also saw in this section, Aquinas states very clearly that judgment does not efficiently cause volition. The will itself does this, and so one might wonder whether this means that the will is itself in some sense free to determine what it wills. In Section 4.7, I argue that this type of freedom is not an implication of the will’s self-motion, for Aquinas. Rather, reason accounts for the freedom of our choice in its entirety.

4.7

Two Arguments for Intellectualism

For centuries, scholars of Aquinas have been divided on the question as to whether the will must follow our judgment about what to do or whether it need not do so and therefore has a kind of freedom of its own. Intellectualist readers claim that the will, even if self-moving, must follow reason’s judgment, at least its ultimate judgment about what to do, this being the judgment of choice.69 Voluntarist readers, in contrast, have denied this.70 As Cyrille Michon and Tobias Hoffman have helpfully pointed out, both 68 69

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For a detailed discussion of this question, see Yul Kim, Selbstbewegung des Willens bei Thomas von Aquin (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007). Some intellectualist readers are Jeffrey Hause, “Thomas Aquinas and the Voluntarists,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 6, no. 2 (1997): 167–82; MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Choice,” 315–22; John Bowlin, “Psychology and Theodicy in Aquinas,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 7, no. 2 (1998), 131; McCluskey, “Intellective Appetite and the Freedom of Human Action,” esp. 435–6; Peter Eardley, “Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on the Will,” The Review of Metaphysics 56, no. 4 (2003), esp. 844–6; Hoffmann and Michon, “Aquinas on Free Will and Intellectual Determinism,” 27–33. See, e.g., J. J. Auer, Die menschliche Willensfreiheit im Lehrsystem des Thomas von Aquin und J. Duns Scotus (Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1938), 153; Ludger Oeing-Hanhoff, “Zur thomistischen Freiheitslehre,” Scholastik 31 (1956), esp. 165, n. 6; Otto Pesch, “Philosophie und Theologie der Freiheit bei Thomas von Aquin in quaest. Disp. 6 de Malo,” Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift 13, no. 1 (1962), 12–20; Klaus Riesenhuber, Die Transzendenz der Freiheit zum Guten: Der Wille in der Anthropologie und Metaphysik des Thomas von Aquin (Munich: Berchmanskolleg Verlag, 1971), 175–82; Keenan, Goodness and Rightness, 47; Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, “Absolute

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intellectualist and voluntarist readers agree that, for Aquinas, a volition must be preceded by a judgment as a necessary condition.71 This is because, for Aquinas, a volition is a rational striving, that is, a striving moved by reason’s judgment, as we have seen.72 However, intellectualists and voluntarists disagree over whether once an agent has made a judgment of choice to pursue X rather than Y, this is a sufficient condition for a volition to pursue X rather than Y to ensue. Intellectualists believe that this is the case. If I make a judgment of choice to the effect that I ought to go for a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head, then I must as a result will to go for a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head. Voluntarists deny this, and they have proposed at least two ways in which the will may deviate from reason, according to Aquinas. The first way we may call strong deviation.73 The will strongly deviates from reason if and only if an agent makes a judgment of choice to the effect that X rather than Y ought to be pursued but then wills to pursue Y rather than X. For instance, if I judge that a walk ought to be taken rather than yoga be done, then my will strongly deviates from my judgment if it elicits a volition to do yoga instead of taking a walk. The second type of deviation we may refer to as weak deviation.74 The will weakly deviates from reason if and only if an agent makes a judgment of choice to the effect that X rather than Y ought to be pursued but then forgoes to elicit any volition in response to said judgment. For instance, if I judge that a walk ought to be taken rather than yoga be done, then my will weakly deviates from my judgment if it elicits no act of willing to take a walk rather than do yoga as a consequence. I favor an intellectualist reading of Aquinas. I do not take the will to have any freedom to deviate from judgment, whether in the strong or the weak sense. I shall offer two arguments for my reading. The first of these argues

71 72 73

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Simplicity,” Faith and Philosophy 2, no. 4 (1985), 362; Gallagher, “Free Choice and Free Judgment,” 249 and 277. Hoffmann and Michon, “Aquinas on Free Will and Intellectual Determinism,” 23–4. MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Choice,” 313, calls this view of volition Aquinas’s “Doctrine of Essential Motivation.” For strong deviation, see, e.g., Pesch, “Philosophie und Theologie der Freiheit,” 15. There are also some voluntarist readers who do not emphasize deviation so much as the will’s autonomous ability to influence reason’s judgment. See esp. Gallagher, “Free Choice and Free Judgment,” for this reading. In what follows I do not specifically discuss this latter voluntarist reading. But I do argue for the general claim that a judgment that X ought to be done is not just a necessary but a sufficient condition for a volition to do X, which this second voluntarist reading likewise denies, arguing instead that the will can elicit volitions that are not sufficiently explained by previous judgments of reason. For weak deviation, see, e.g., Keenan, Goodness and Rightness, 47.

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against strong, and the second against weak deviation. I should note that I do not profess to here make a decisive case for an intellectualist reading of Aquinas. To make such a case, a number of other texts of Aquinas’s on this topic would have to be considered – more texts than I can discuss here.75 But I do take these two arguments to provide strong grounds in favor of an intellectualist reading. The first argument, which has been put forward by various intellectualist readers, is based on Aquinas’s De veritate, q. 24, a. 2.76 Here is the relevant text: For a striving follows cognition because a striving is only for the good that is proposed to it by the cognitive power. And that a striving sometimes does not seem to follow cognition, this is due to the fact that the striving and the judgment of the cognitive power are not taken with respect to the same object. For there is a striving that concerns a particular operable entity, while the judgment of reason is sometimes about something universal, which is at times contrary to a striving. But the judgment about this particular operable entity right now can never be contrary to a striving.77

In this text, Aquinas considers whether the will can elicit a volition that is at odds with the previous judgment, which is precisely what advocates of strong deviation think is possible. He argues that this is only possible if volition and judgment differ in terms of the object that they are directed to. If I judge that, generally speaking, a walk ought to be taken to clear one’s head, I can still choose not to take a walk on a particular occasion, say, when it is snowing outside, Aquinas thinks. This deviation is possible because my volition here concerns a particular act of taking a walk under certain meteorological conditions, whereas the judgment concerns walks and their head-clearing virtues in general. But is it also possible for me to determinately judge that I ought to go for a walk here and now rather than do yoga to clear my head and yet choose not to take a walk here and now but rather to do yoga? Aquinas’s answer in the above text is very clear: this 75

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For studies that convincingly deal with a number of these texts along intellectualist lines, see especially Hause, “Thomas Aquinas and the Voluntarists,” 167–82 and MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of the Free Choice,” 315–22. In the twentieth century the argument was, to my knowledge, first considered by Lottin, Psychologie et morale, vol. 1, 231–2 and 251. Recently, Hoffmann and Michon, “Aquinas on Free Will and Intellectual Determinism,” 24–5 renewed it. “Appetitus enim cognitionem sequitur, cum appetitus non sit nisi boni quod sibi per vim cognitivam proponitur. Et quod quandoque appetitus videatur cognitionem non sequi, hoc ideo est quia non circa idem accipitur appetitus et cognitionis iudicium; est enim appetitus de particulari operabili, iudicium vero rationis quandoque est de aliquo universali, quod est quandoque contrarium appetitui. Sed iudicium de hoc particulari operabili, ut nunc, numquam potest esse contrarium appetitui” (De Ver., q. 24, a. 2, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 685, ll. 70–81).

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is “never” possible (numquam potest). In short, the will cannot elicit a volition that goes against the previous judgment of choice. This is a denial of strong deviation. The De veritate text does not explicitly rule out weak deviation, that is, the possibility that the will elicit no volition whatsoever in response to a judgment of choice. What is more, there are some passages in Aquinas’s later works that can be, and have been, taken to suggest a commitment to weak deviation on his part.78 For example, in the Prima secundae, q. 9, a. 1, Aquinas writes that the will is moved by reason “with regard to doing this or that,” but that it moves itself “with respect to acting or not acting.”79 As Aquinas explains later in the same quaestio, this is what it means for reason to move the will as regards “specification,” but for the will to move itself as regards the “exercise” of its act.80 One way this contrast can be, and has been, understood is that reason presents this or that object to the will as a formal cause, but that it is up to the will to determine whether it elicits or does not elicit a volition for said object. I do not think that this case for weak deviation is compelling, however. The reason is that there is explicit evidence against such a reading in the Prima secundae, in particular in q. 13, a. 6. As Aquinas writes there: 78

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Lottin famously argued that Aquinas changed his mind on the relation between the intellect and the will, specifically that he moved from an intellectualist account in his early thought (De veritate, Summa contra gentiles) to a more voluntarist one in his later works (starting with the Prima secundae), and Lottin speculated that this was due to the condemnation of 1270. See his “Liberté humaine et motion divine de saint Thomas d’Aquin à la condamnation de 1277,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 7 (1935): 52–69 and 156–73. The change-of-mind theory was popular until the 1990s, but most scholars, intellectualist and voluntarist alike, now hold that Aquinas’s views on the will remained constant. For a voluntarist account of the constancy thesis, see, e.g., Gallagher, “Free Choice and Free Judgment,” 249. For an intellectualist account, see Eardley, “Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on the Will,” 837. For a recent defense of the view that Aquinas did change his mind, see Timothy Noone, “Nature, Freedom and Will: Sources of Philosophical Reflection,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 81 (2008), 14. For an overview of arguments for and against the change-of-mind theory, see Daniel Westberg, “Did Aquinas Change His Mind about the Will?” The Thomist 58, no. 1 (1994): 41–60. “Dupliciter autem aliqua vis animae invenitur esse in potentia ad diversa, uno modo, quantum ad agere et non agere; alio modo, quantum ad agere hoc vel illud. Sicut visus quandoque videt actu, et quandoque non videt; et quandoque videt album, et quandoque videt nigrum. Indiget igitur movente quantum ad duo, scilicet quantum ad exercitium vel usum actus; et quantum ad determinationem actus” (ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 74, translated bits in italics). The context makes it clear that Aquinas applies this distinction between two ways of moving to the will. “[O]biectum movet, determinando actum . . . Et ideo isto modo motionis intellectus movet voluntatem, sicut praesentans ei obiectum suum” (ibid.); “Sed [voluntas] ab intellectu quidem movetur secundum rationem obiecti, a seipsa vero, quantum ad exercitium actus, secundum rationem finis” (ST I-II, q. 9, a. 3, ad 3, Leon. 6: 78). See ST I-II, q. 10, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 86 for the synonymy of ‘specification’ and ‘determination.’

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Aquinas here distinguishes between the two types of alternatives just considered, our ability to will this or that and our ability to will or not will something at all, and he clearly states that both of these trace back to reason. Since freedom of reason is freedom of judgment, this means that I am free to will to take a walk or to do yoga because I am free to make a judgment of choice in favor of taking a walk or doing yoga. Similarly, I am free to will to take a walk or not will to take a walk because I am free to make or not make a judgment of choice in favor of taking a walk. Consider now a case of weak deviation in this light. Suppose that I have made a determinate judgment of choice to the effect that a walk rather than yoga ought to be pursued to clear my head, and yet I elicit no volition to go for a walk. If our freedom to will or not will traces back to reason, as the above text tells us, then this scenario is impossible. For, as the tracing back implies, my not willing to go for a walk must be explained by some fact about my reason, such as my not making any judgment to the effect that a walk ought to be taken. But in this case I did not determinately judge that a walk rather than yoga ought to be pursued after all, counter to the initial hypothesis. In short, the above text suggests that weak deviation is not possible. If this is correct, then reason fully accounts for the will’s alternate possibilities, according to Aquinas. It not only accounts for the alternatives of specification (willing this or that) but also for those of exercise (willing or not willing at all). Freedom of choice is fully accounted for by freedom of judgment. Does this mean that, in the end, the will isn’t free at all? This would not be a desirable consequence. After all, as we saw in Chapter 1 (Section 1.4), Aquinas writes in the Prima secundae, q. 1, a. 1, that free decision is “a faculty of will and reason.”82 In other words, the will must also play a role in our freedom of choice. But what might this role be? In the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 1, Aquinas offers an answer. He writes, “the root of freedom is the will as subject, but, as the cause, it is reason.”83 As 81 82

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“Potest enim homo velle et non velle, agere et non agere, potest etiam velle hoc aut illud, et agere hoc aut illud. Cuius ratio ex ipsa virtute rationis accipitur” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 6, c., Leon. 6: 103). “Est autem homo dominus suorum actuum per rationem et voluntatem, unde et liberum arbitrium esse dicitur facultas voluntatis et rationis” (ST I-II, q. 1, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 6). See also ST I, q. 83, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 311. “[R]adix libertatis est voluntas sicut subiectum, sed sicut causa, est ratio” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1, ad 2, Leon. 6: 119). See also the earlier: “Sed homo agit iudicio, quia per vim cognoscitivam iudicat aliquid esse fugiendum vel prosequendum. Sed quia iudicium istud non est ex naturali instinctu in particulari operabili, sed ex collatione quadam rationis; ideo agit libero iudicio, potens in diversa

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I understand this claim, the will is free in the sense of being the power that elicits free choices. For choices are acts of the will, as we saw in Chapter 1 (Section 1.4). But reason is the “cause” of the freedom of these acts of choice because it is free judgment that fully accounts for their being free. It is true, the will has a causal role to play in the production of a volition not played by reason itself. In particular, the will efficiently causes its own volition. Yet the will is determined by reason in terms of what volitions it elicits (specification). It cannot choose something that the previous judgment of choice did not state it should choose. What is more, as I have argued, the will is also determined with respect to whether or not it elicits a volition at all (exercise). It cannot desist from eliciting a volition to pursue a certain good unless reason previously desisted from making a judgment in favor of pursuing said good. To say that the will is unable to deviate from the judgment of choice when it occurs is to say that the will necessarily elicits a volition corresponding to the judgment of choice or, alternatively, that a judgment of choice is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of said volition. In my view, then, the will’s self-motion is necessitated by reason. Once a determinate judgment to pursue X rather than Y has been made, the will must move itself and bring about a volition precisely for X rather than Y. The will’s self-motion does not endow the will with any freedom of its own.

4.8 Choice and Its Dependence on the Judgment of Choice This was my defense of an intellectualist reading of Aquinas. Let us now put together the main results of this chapter and see what picture of the act of choice and its dependence on the judgment of choice emerges. First, in light of our discussion of what makes a volition a cognitive striving, we can say something about choice as a volitional state. We can see that choice must be a mental state that differs from the judgment of choice in that it has world-to-mind direction of fit. If I make a judgment of choice to the effect that I ought to take a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head, then I can get something right or wrong about reality. There is a fact of the matter as to whether taking a walk is more or less conducive to clearing one’s head than doing yoga. The choice to take a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head is not like this. It is a striving that is assessed in terms of whether it is fulfilled or unfulfilled. It is fulfilled if I take a walk

ferri . . . Et pro tanto necesse est quod homo sit liberi arbitrii, ex hoc ipso quod rationalis est” (ST I, q. 83, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 309).

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rather than do yoga to clear my head, and it is unfulfilled if I do not take a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head. This shows that Aquinas views a choice, as any other volition, as a sui generis mental state distinct from the judgment of choice. However, our discussion of how volition depends on judgment shows that choice also strongly depends on the judgment of choice. For it is on account of the judgment of choice that a choice is a volition for some determinate “object,” this being the willed means as ordered to an end. By directing a choice to a certain means as ordered to an end, the judgment of choice functions as the final as well as the formal cause of choice. It does double causal duty because any volition is the determinate kind of volition it is on account of being directed to some means as ordered to an end. For instance, my choice to take a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head is the determinate kind of volition it is on account of being directed to the means of taking a walk rather than to the means of doing yoga for the sake of the end of clearing my head. I have also argued that the judgment of choice fully accounts for the free character of choice, which makes this judgment the sole cause of choice’s freedom. The will itself efficiently causes its choice on the basis of willing the end for the sake of which it chooses the means. But, on my reading, it does so only in response to the preceding judgment of choice from which it cannot deviate, neither in the weak nor in the strong sense. Accordingly, for Aquinas, what I freely choose to do is what I have freely judged that I ought to do. Figure 4.2 illustrates the causal roles of reason and will in choice.

Judgment of choice: Assent to ‘Means M1 ought to be pursued for the sake of end E,’ and dissent from ‘Means M2 ought to be pursued for the sake of E.’

Choice to pursue M1 rather than M2 for the sake of E

Simple volition to pursue E

Figure 4.2 The causal roles of reason and will in choice

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In Figure 4.2, the dotted arrow connecting the judgment of choice with choice represents a relation of formal/final causation. The solid arrow connecting choice with the simple volition for the end represents a relation of efficient causation. With this, we have spelled out a significant part of Aquinas’s account of how choice depends on the judgment of choice. However, we have yet to consider the hylomorphic structure of choice in detail. We saw in Chapter 1 that choice has a kind of rational form, for Aquinas. One might think that this rational form is the preceding judgment of choice, which after all functions as the formal cause of volition, as I argued. However, as we will see in Chapter 5, matters are more complicated. For Aquinas, the judgment of choice supplies an extrinsic form from which choice inherits its own intrinsic form. It is this derived intrinsic form that lies at the heart of Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism.

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chapter 5

Choice Its Intrinsic and Its Extrinsic Form

5.1

Introduction

To work out the nature of the intrinsic form of choice and its distinction from choice’s extrinsic form, I proceed as follows in this chapter. I first introduce the general distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic forms in Aquinas and show that there is reason to believe that Aquinas also applies it to choice, where it amounts to a distinction between the original intentionality of the judgment of choice and the derivative intentionality of choice itself (Section 5.2). In Section 5.3, I argue that these two types of intentionality are structurally different, for Aquinas, and I explain how they differ in the course of Sections 5.4–5.5 by considering judgment and volition in general. Finally, I apply the results gained there to choice and spell out Aquinas’s doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism (Section 5.6).

5.2

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Forms: Original and Derivative Intentionality

First, we need to familiarize ourselves with Aquinas’s general distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic forms. Here is how Aquinas states it in his commentary on Metaphysics V: A formal cause . . . is related to a thing in a twofold manner. In one way as an intrinsic form of the thing, and this is called a species. But in another way it is related as a form extrinsic to the thing in whose likeness the thing is said to be made, and in this sense, an exemplar of a thing is called a form.1

1

“[C]ausa formalis . . . comparatur dupliciter ad rem. Uno modo sicut forma intrinseca rei; et haec dicitur species. Alio modo sicut extrinseca a re, ad cuius tamen similitudinem res fieri dicitur; et secundum hoc, exemplar rei dicitur forma” (In Met. V, l. 2, n. 764, Cathala: 211). For a discussion of extrinsic formal or exemplar causation in Aquinas, see G. T. Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008).

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Aquinas commonly illustrates this distinction by appeal to artifacts. For instance, the arrangement of a house is a form intrinsic to the house or a “species,” as Aquinas puts it in the above text, but the plan of the house that the builder has before his mind’s eye is an extrinsic form.2 These two forms are distinct, and they stand in a relation of dependence inasmuch as the form intrinsic to the house is derived from the builder’s plan.3 This does not mean, though, that the intrinsic form depends on the extrinsic form as an efficient cause, Aquinas thinks.4 The plan does not actualize the passive power of the building materials to be shaped into a house; the builder does this through a series of coordinated bodily movements. Rather, the plan functions as a kind of model that the builder follows when building a house. To express this idea, Aquinas calls the plan an “exemplar” (exemplar), and he calls the arrangement of the house modeled on the plan the exemplar’s “image” or “copy” (imago).5 In several texts, Aquinas suggests that this distinction between two types of forms also applies to the relation between the judgment of choice and choice. In De veritate, q. 22, a. 15, he writes, for instance: [I]n choice something appears that is proper to reason, namely, giving precedence to one thing over another or preferring, and this is found in the act of the will due to an imprint of reason.6

In the Prima secundae, q. 13, a. 1, the key text for Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism, we read the following: It needs to be considered in acts of the soul that an act that essentially belongs to one power or habit receives its form and species from a superordinate power or habit insofar as the subordinate power is ordered by the superordinate one . . . Now it is clear that reason precedes the will in

2 3

4 5

6

See, e.g., In Sent. IV, d. 44, q. 3, a. 1, sol. 3, ad 2, Parma: 1102; De Ver., q. 2, a. 8, c., Leon. 22, 1, 2: 69, ll. 53–60; DM, q. 6, a. 1, c., Leon. 23: 148, ll. 292–3, for plans and the forms of artifacts. “[E]tsi una sit ratio formae existentis in agente et in effectu, diversus tamen modus existendi impedit univocam praedicationem; licet enim eadem sit ratio domus quae sit in materia et domus quae est in mente artificis,– quia unum est ratio alterius, – non tamen domus univoce de utraque praedicatur, propter hoc quod species domus in materia habet esse materiale, in mente vero artificis immateriale” (QDP, q. 7, a. 7, c., Bazzi: 203). I return to non-univocity in Section 5.3. For this point, see Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes, 35. “Similitudo autem alicuius in altero existens vel habet rationem exemplaris, si se habeat ut principium: vel habet potius rationem imaginis, si se habeat ad id cuius est similitudo sicut ad principium” (SCG IV, c. 49, Leon. 15: 24). See also ST I, q. 35, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 4: 372. “[I]n electione apparet id quod est proprium rationis, scilicet conferre unum alteri, vel praeferre: quod quidem in actu voluntatis invenitur ex impressione rationis” (De Ver., q. 22, a. 15, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 649, ll. 58–61). See also De Ver., q. 22, a. 13, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 645, ll. 185–92, where Aquinas discusses, similarly, the form that the volitional act of intention (intentio) receives from judgment.

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What these texts suggest is that there is, on the one hand, the preferential character of free judgment itself, a character “proper to reason,” as the first text has it. This is the object that the judgment of choice presents to the will as having to be pursued, and, being proper to reason rather than the will, this is extrinsic to choice. On the other hand, there is the preferential character of choice itself, which is something “imprinted” on volition, as Aquinas tells us in the first text. In the second text, Aquinas characterizes this character as a “form and species” that the will “receives” from reason. In the example of the house, the extrinsic form is a mental entity, a plan, whereas the derived intrinsic form is the spatial arrangement of the building materials. In the case of choice, in contrast, the extrinsic and intrinsic form are both mental entities, for Aquinas, the former being the object as presented by a practical judgment, and the latter being the object as desired by the volition itself. These two objects are the same final cause of the volition, that is, the end as attainable through some means. In the former case, though, the final cause exists as conceptualized in a judgment; in the latter case it exists as conceptualized in volition. We can think of Aquinas as relying on a distinction between original and derivative intentionality here.8 On the now standard understanding of this term, a feature X displays “intentionality” if and only if X is about or directed to something or other. X is “originally intentional” if we do not need to appeal to any further feature displaying intentionality to explain X’s intentionality, while X is “derivatively intentional” if we do have to appeal to a further feature displaying intentionality to explain X’s intentionality. Cognitive acts, like judgments, are prime examples of originally intentional states, for Aquinas. My judgment that I ought to take a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head, for instance, is about the 7

8

“Est autem considerandum in actibus animae, quod actus qui est essentialiter unius potentiae vel habitus, recipit formam et speciem a superiori potentia vel habitu, secundum quod ordinatur inferius a superiori . . . Manifestum est autem quod ratio quodammodo voluntatem praecedit, et ordinat actum eius, inquantum scilicet voluntas in suum obiectum tendit secundum ordinem rationis” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 98). I take this idea from Martin Pickavé, “On the Intentionality of Emotions (and of Other Appetitive Acts),” Quaestio 10 (2010), 51, who describes medieval accounts of the derivative intentionality of emotions. For the distinction between original and derivative intentionality, see, e.g., John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 78–9. Note: the sense of ‘intentional’ relevant here needs to be sharply distinguished from the meaning the term ‘intentional’ has in the action-theoretical context, e.g., in terms like ‘intentional behavior.’ ‘Intentional’ in the sense relevant here refers to a mental state’s feature of being directed to something or other. ‘Intentional’ in the action-theoretical context, in contrast, refers to an act’s feature of being done for a reason.

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object of taking a walk as something to be preferred over yoga to clear my head. And there is no other intentional state that we need to appeal to in order to explain why my judgment is directed to the walk as something to be preferred over yoga to clear my head. Volitions, in contrast, I suggest, display a kind of derivative intentionality, for Aquinas. Choice is directed to its object not on account of itself, but because it receives this directedness from the previous judgment of choice. My choice to go for a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head is directed to my taking a walk rather than doing yoga to clear my head only because the judgment that I ought to take a walk rather than do yoga to clear my head endows it with this intentional directedness.9 This gives us a way to think about the form intrinsic to choice. Choice’s intrinsic form is its object, but as intended by choice itself. Put differently, it is choice’s intentional directedness to a means as ordered to an end as inherited from the judgment of choice. The extrinsic form of the judgment of choice is the very same object but as intended by reason, and judgment’s intentional directedness is, for Aquinas, a kind of “exemplar” on which choice’s intentional directedness is modeled. This picture gives rise to the following question. How does the derivative intentionality of choice compare to the original intentionality of the preceding judgment? As we saw in Chapter 2 (Section 2.3), for Aquinas, the judgment of choice is an intentional state that is directed to its object according to two components: a propositional content relating a means to an end and an attitude of preferential assent, whereby the agent commits to pursuing said means rather than another to the end. Does the volitional act of choice relate to its object according to the same two components? In what follows, I argue that choice involves an attitudinal and a content component just as the judgment of choice does, but that the content component of choice has a different structure from that of judgment. First, I present textual evidence suggesting that there is a difference in form between volition and judgment in general (Section 5.3). Next, I flesh out this difference (Sections 5.4–5.5), and I then apply the results to choice (Section 5.6). 9

Note that this derivative intentionality of volition is a non-contingent feature of it. A volition could never lack intentionality, even though this feature is inherited from judgment. This sets Aquinas’s view apart from, say, Searle’s understanding of derivative intentionality, on which an entity possesses derivative intentionality contingently. Searle’s example of a derivatively intentional entity is a sentence in a natural language. The sentence means something because people use it to express their originally intentional states, but the sentence qua syntactical sequence could have lacked meaning altogether. See the reference in n. 8.

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5.3 The Structural Difference between Volition and Judgment Perhaps one of Aquinas’s clearest statements to the effect that the form of volition differs from that of judgment can be found in his discussion of moral virtue in the Prima secundae q. 60, a. 1. Aquinas there writes: Sometimes matter receives the form of the agent according to the same character as it exists in the agent, which happens in all univocal agents . . . For instance, from fire only something existing in the species of fire is generated univocally. Sometimes, however, matter receives a form from an agent not according to the same character as it exists in the agent, as is clear in non-univocal generating causes, for instance, when an animal is generated by the sun . . . [T]he striving power does not receive the imprint of reason univocally as it were, because it is not rational by its essence but rather by participation.10

Aquinas here states that our striving powers do not receive the “imprint of reason univocally” because they are only rational by participation, that is, derivatively so. This holds for our sensory striving powers, he thinks, that is, our powers to desire particular goods like food or drink. But it also holds for our will, on his view. For, as he makes clear in the previous quaestio, q. 59, a. 4: “not only our sensory striving power is rational by participation . . . but also the will.”11 When Aquinas says that our striving powers do not receive the “imprint of reason univocally” in the above text from q. 60, a. 1, he is drawing on a distinction between univocal and equivocal causation.12 In univocal causation, Aquinas holds, the effect is of the same kind as the cause. For instance, as the same text tells us, if a fire sets a log on fire, then the log receives a form of fire that is of the same kind as the form of the original fire. In non-univocal or equivocal causation, in contrast, the effect is not of the same kind as the cause. For instance, on a common medieval view that Aquinas appeals to in q. 60, a. 1 above, the sun directly

10

11

12

“Quandoque enim [materia] recipit formam agentis secundum eandem rationem, prout est in agente, sicut est in omnibus agentibus univocis . . . sicut ab igne non generatur univoce nisi aliquid existens in specie ignis. Aliquando vero materia recipit formam ab agente non secundum eandem rationem, prout est in agente, sicut patet in generantibus non univocis, ut animal generatur a sole. . . Non autem appetitus recipit impressionem rationis quasi univoce, quia non fit rationale per essentiam, sed per participationem” (ST I-II, q. 60, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 385). “[R]ationale per participationem non solum est appetitus sensitivus. . . sed etiam voluntas” (ST I-II, q. 59, a. 4, ad 2, Leon. 6: 383). See also In Sent. III, d. 27, q. 2, a. 3, ad 5, Moos: 882 for the claim that the will is rational by participation. See, e.g., In Sent. IV, d. 1, q. 1, a. 4, ad q. 1, ad 4, Moos: 33; In Sent. IV, d. 41, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 1, ad 1, Parma: 1038–9; SCG I, c. 29, Leon. 13: 89.

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generates larvae in a corpse, and larvae are clearly entities that differ in kind from the sun. The will’s reception of an imprint of reason is like this latter example, Aquinas suggests in the same text. In other words, the form that a volition receives from a judgment is unlike the form of the judgment itself. It is true that, in the above text, Aquinas does not say that the striving powers receive the imprint of reason non-univocally simpliciter. Rather, he says more cautiously that they receive the imprint of reason non-univocally “as it were.” But Aquinas adds this qualifier, I take it, because, strictly speaking, the distinction between univocal and non-univocal causes is one between two types of efficient causes, as the examples from heating and the generation of larvae make clear. And efficient causation is not the dependence relation at work between the will and reason, as we have seen. Now how exactly does the form of a volition differ from the form of the preceding judgment, for Aquinas? That is, how does the way in which a volition is intentionally directed to an object differ from the way in which a judgment is intentionally directed to said object? In Section 5.4, I show that volitional form involves an attitudinal and a content component just as judgment does, and I also discuss the attitudinal component, which is similar to the attitudinal component of judgment. I then consider volitional content, which, I argue, is the element that sets volitional form apart from that of judgment (Section 5.5).

5.4 Volitional Form, Part 1: Attitude Here is a text from Aquinas’s commentary on Nicomachean Ethics VI in which Aquinas strongly suggests that volitions display an attitude-content structure just as judgments do: The intellect has two acts in judging, namely, affirmation, by which it assents to the true, and negation, by which it dissents from the false. To these two correspond proportionally two acts in the striving power, namely, pursuit (persecutio), by which a striving tends toward a good and adheres to it (inhaeret ei), and flight (fuga), by which it withdraws (recedit) from what is bad and dissents from it.13

13

“Intellectus enim in iudicando habet duos actus, scilicet affirmationem qua assentit vero et negationem qua dissentit a falso; quibus duobus respondent duo proportionaliter in vi appetitiva, scilicet persecutio qua appetitus tendit in bonum et inhaeret ei, et fuga qua recedit a malo et dissentit ei” (In Eth. VI, c. 2, Leon. 47, 2: 336, ll. 65–76).

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Just as a judgment is an act of assenting to, or dissenting from, a propositional content, this text tells us, so a volition is an attitude of “adhering” to (inhaerere), or “withdrawing” (recedere) from, an object deemed good or bad.14 Just as my judgment that it is good to take a walk to clear my head, for instance, is my assenting to a proposition that I take to be true, namely, ‘It is good to take a walk to clear my head,’ so my volition to take a walk to clear my head is my “adhering” to an act that I take to be good, namely, taking a walk to clear my head. Similarly, just as, say, my judgment that I ought not to drink a glass of vodka to start my day is my dissenting from a proposition that I take to be false, namely, ‘It is good to drink a glass of vodka to start my day,’ so my volition not to drink a glass of vodka to start my day is my volitionally “withdrawing” from an act that I take to be bad, namely, drinking a glass of vodka to start my day. In the above text, Aquinas refers to a judgment by which I assent to a proposition that I take to be true as an “affirmation,” while he calls a judgment by which I dissent from a proposition that I take to be false a “negation.” To these terms correspond two terms on the volitional side, he maintains. He calls a volition by which I adhere to a good a “pursuit” (persecutio), while he refers to a volition by which I withdraw from something bad as a “flight” (fuga).15 This analogy is significant because, for Aquinas, affirmation and negation are the two fundamental types of judgment, a judgment being either an act of assenting to, or dissenting from, a proposition, as we saw in Chapter 2 (Section 2.2). In like manner, he holds, pursuit and flight are the two fundamental types of volition. He expresses this point clearly in the Prima secundae, q. 45, a. 2, when he writes that “every change of the striving power is reduced either to a pursuit (prosecutio) or a flight (fuga).”16 In other words, just as a judgment is either an act of 14

15

16

I have not found any discussion of this similarity between volition and judgment in Aquinas scholarship. There is, however, a great deal of discussion of this topic in scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of desire. For one such discussion, see, e.g., David Charles, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action (London: Duckworth, 1984), 86–7. See also, e.g., In Sent. IV, d. 14, q. 2, a. 2, ad q. 2, Moos: 597; ST I-II, q. 46, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 293; DM, q. 10, a. 3, c., Leon. 23: 223, ll. 35–7. In other texts, Aquinas also uses the terms ‘willing’ (voluntas) and ‘nilling’ (noluntas) instead of ‘pursuit’ and ‘flight.’ See, e.g., “Voluntas igitur se habet et ad bonum et ad malum, sed ad bonum, appetendo ipsum; ad malum vero, fugiendo illud . . . Fuga autem mali magis dicitur noluntas. Unde sicut voluntas est boni, ita noluntas est mali” (ST I-II, q. 8, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 6: 68). See also ST I, q. 64, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 5: 146; ST I-II, q. 6, a. 3, ad 2, Leon. 6: 59; ST I-II, q. 19, a. 10, ad 6, Leon. 6: 151. “Omnis autem motus appetitivae potentiae reducitur ad prosecutionem vel fugam” (ST I, q. 45, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 288). Note that Aquinas here uses the term ‘prosecutio’ instead of ‘persecutio,’ but these are synonymous, on his view.

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affirming something taken to be true or denying something taken to be false, so a volition is either the pursuit of something taken to be good or the avoidance of something taken to be bad. Why do volitions display this attitudinal bifurcation analogous to judgment? Aquinas suggests that this bifurcation of volition traces back to judgment. As he explains, judgments about what it is good or bad to do or make just are judgments about what object ought to be pursued or taken flight from. In the Prima pars, q. 83, a. 1, he writes, for instance: [A] human being acts by judgment, for, by her cognitive power, she judges that something ought to be taken flight from or pursued.17

In De virtutibus, q. 5, a. 1, he says, in a similar vein, “the practical intellect prescribes that something ought to be taken flight from or pursued.”18 Given Aquinas’s intellectualism, this means that an agent has a volition to pursue a certain good because she has judged that said good ought to be pursued, and that she has a volition to flee from something bad because she has judged that flight ought to be taken from said bad entity.

5.5

Volitional Form, Part 2: Content

So much for the attitudinal side of volition, which exhibits a striking parallel to judgment. Matters are different when we consider volitional content, however. As we will see presently, Aquinas holds that while judgment’s content is propositional, volitional content is subpropositional – at least where self-directed volitions are concerned. Here is a text from the Prima secundae, q. 46, a. 2 in which Aquinas says this: The cognitive power apprehends things in a twofold manner, in one way in an incomplex manner, as when we understand what a human being is, and in another way in a complex manner, as when we understand that being white is in a human being . . . . The striving power can tend to the good and the bad in both of these ways. In the manner of something simple or incomplex when a striving unqualifiedly adheres to a good or flees from something bad . . . In a complex manner when a striving is directed to something good or bad being in, or coming to be in, someone else.19 17 18 19

“Sed homo agit iudicio, quia per vim cognoscitivam iudicat aliquid esse fugiendum vel prosequendum” (ST I, q. 83, a. 1, c., Leon. 5: 307). “[I]ntellectus practicus praecipit fugere vel prosequi” (De Virt., q., 5, a. 1, c., Bazzi: 815). “Vis autem apprehensiva dupliciter aliquid apprehendit, uno modo, per modum incomplexi, sicut cum intelligimus quid est homo; alio modo, per modum complexi, sicut cum intelligimus album inesse homini . . . . [U]troque modo vis appetitiva potest tendere in bonum et malum. Per modum quidem simplicis et incomplexi, cum appetitus simpliciter sequitur vel inhaeret bono, vel refugit

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As I read this text, Aquinas makes a distinction between self- and otherdirected strivings, strivings for the good and strivings that a good “be in someone else.” And Aquinas argues that, in terms of content, a selfdirected striving is like the sub-propositional act of simple apprehension – it concerns its object “in the manner of something simple” – whereas an other-directed striving is like the propositional act of judgment: it concerns its object “in a complex manner.”20 So, for instance, my volition to go for a walk is directed to its object in a sub-propositional manner. It is a striving to take a walk, not, Aquinas would argue, a striving that a walk be taken by me, where the that-clause indicates a proposition.21 In contrast, if I want you to take a walk, I have a desire that a walk be taken by you. This volition tends to its object in a propositional manner. What Aquinas should not be taken to say here is that a subpropositional, self-directed volition is informed by an act of simple apprehension of reason, while an other-directed, propositional volition is informed by judgment. This cannot be his view because, as we saw in Chapter 4 (Section 4.3), he maintains that every volition must be motivated by a thought with propositional content.22 He adopts this view, as will be recalled, because a volition must be directed to something cognized as good, and to cognize X as Y is to have a propositional thought.

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21

22

malum . . . Per modum autem complexi, sicut cum appetitus fertur in hoc quod aliquod bonum vel malum insit vel fiat circa alterum” (ST I-II, q. 46, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 293). For a different reading of this passage, see Kevin White, “Wanting Something for Someone: Aquinas on Complex Motions of Appetite,” The Review of Metaphysics 61, no. 1 (2007), 9. White proposes that the distinction Aquinas makes in this text is not one between self- and other-directed strivings but rather between strivings for something good and strivings that concern something good as related to something other than that good, reading the key term ‘alterum’ that Aquinas uses in the last line of ST I-II, q. 46, a. 2, c. (see n. 19) as a neuter rather than a masculine form. White acknowledges, however, that the text may also be read as making a distinction between self- and other-directed desires. He even notes that Aquinas’s subsequent discussion in q. 46, a. 2 of hatred and anger and their being directed at other people speaks in favor of this latter reading, but apparently he does not take this to be decisive. I find that this subsequent discussion strongly favors reading the passage as making a distinction between self- and other-directed desires. For Aquinas, then, the volitional states of adherence and withdrawal are not propositional attitudes (at least where self-directed volitions are concerned). In adopting this view, Aquinas differs from many contemporary action theorists. For propositional attitude theories of desire, see, e.g., Roderick M. Chisholm “The Structure of Intention,” The Journal of Philosophy 67, no. 19 ( Proceedings of the Sixty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division) (1970), 635; Georg Henrik von Wright, Explanation and Understanding (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971; reprinted: London: Routledge, 2012), 96; Searle, Intentionality, 30. This sets volitions apart from sensory strivings, which, unlike volitions, may follow upon a nonpropositional cognition, on Aquinas’s view: “[I]n parte irrationali vel inferiori animae est solum simplex apprehensio ex parte cognitiva: non autem alia collatio vel ordinatio, sicut est in apprehensiva rationali. Et ideo in parte sensitiva appetitus absolute fertur in obiectum sine hoc quod aliquis ordo ex apprehensiva in appetitiva relinquatur” (De Ver., q. 24, a. 5, ad 4, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 694, ll. 103–10).

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Accordingly, for Aquinas, not only other-directed volitions, but also selfdirected ones must be motivated by judgments. If I want you to take a walk, this must be motivated by a judgment of mine to the effect that you ought to take a walk. Similarly, if I myself want to take a walk, this must be motivated by a judgment of mine to the effect that a walk ought to be taken. But if self-directed volitions are informed by judgments just as other-directed volitions are, why do they lack propositional content? As far as I can see, Aquinas does not offer any reason for this. Here I propose a hypothesis as to why Aquinas might have adopted his nonpropositional account of self-directed volitions. The hypothesis is that Aquinas was likely led by considerations about how we ordinarily talk about our volitions. Here is a pertinent observation by contemporary action theorist Michael Thompson about our volition talk: We must be struck . . . by the fact that the objects of . . . wanting are typically not formulated with a complete proposition. These states are not, at first sight anyway, what are called “propositional attitudes.” If you ask what I want, then, in the most primitive sort of case, the answer will be to get the vanilla down, or to turn on the light.23

As Thompson points out, the verb ‘want,’ ordinarily at least, does not take a propositional that-clause as its complement.24 Rather, it takes an infinitival clause. It is bad English to say: ‘I want that I go for a walk.’ But it is correct to say: ‘I want to go for a walk.’ Aquinas did not write in English of course. However, Thompson’s observation also applies to Latin. Like the English word ‘want,’ the Latin verb ‘velle,’ which Aquinas employs in his discussion of volition, takes, in the self-directed case, a simple infinitival clause as its complement. I say ‘volo ambulare,’ for instance, for ‘I want to go for a walk.’ In contrast, I say ‘volo ut ambules,’ which takes a propositional clause, for ‘I want you to go for a walk.’ Given this feature of how we talk, it may have been quite natural for Aquinas to suppose that our self-directed volitions have nonpropositional, whereas our other-directed volitions have propositional content.

23 24

Michael Thompson, Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 120. Thompson Life and Action, 122, indicates that his view is indebted to Annette C. Baier, “Act and Intent,” The Journal of Philosophy 67, no. 19 ( Proceedings of the Sixty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division) (1970), 652. For a recent discussion of objections to the view that desires are propositional attitudes, see William G. Lycan, “Desire Considered as a Propositional Attitude,” Philosophical Perspectives 26 (2012): 201–15.

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Natural though this idea may be, it is problematic. For it assumes that the grammatical surface structure of our volition ascriptions tells us something about the deep structure of the volitions that these ascriptions report. There is, however, no reason to accept this assumption. To see this, return to the idiomatic non-propositional volition ascription ‘I want to go for a walk’ and compare it to the non-idiomatic propositional volition ascription ‘I want that I go for a walk.’ The latter, nonidiomatic sentence contains a that-clause because there is a subject term embedded within the scope of the verb ‘want.’ The former, idiomatic sentence, in contrast, does not contain a that-clause because it lacks such an embedded subject term. But just because the idiomatic volition ascription lacks an embedded subject term and so does not take a propositional clause, we cannot infer that the mental state that it reports likewise lacks reference to the subject in its content. The mental state that the ascription ‘I want to go for a walk’ reports is my volition to go for a walk, and plausibly, if I want to take a walk, I must want myself, not someone else, to take a walk. Thus, my self-directed volition to go for a walk does seem to be, in terms of its deep structure, a volition that I, rather than someone else, take a walk. Hence, even if the surface grammar of the volition ascription lacks a propositional clause, the volition itself must have propositional content.25 We can only speculate as to how Aquinas might have replied to this argument. In any case, the above text from the Prima secundae, q. 46, a. 2 makes it clear that Aquinas favors a sub-propositional account of selfdirected volitional content; and this allows us to see precisely in what way the derivative intentionality of a (self-directed) volition differs from the intentional structure of the judgment that precedes it. While a volition is directed to its object according to an attitudinal and a content component just as judgment is, the content component of a (self-directed) volition differs from that of judgment because it is sub-propositional rather than propositional. This is, I suggest, what it means for the will to receive the imprint of reason “non-univocally,” for Aquinas.

25

If this is right, though, then why isn’t an embedded reference to the subject term included in the volition ascription ‘I want to go for a walk’? One suggestion, due to John Searle, Intentionality, 80, is that this non-inclusion is an instance of a general rule of transformational grammar known as “Equi NP deletion,” where ‘NP’ stands for ‘noun phrase.’ According to this rule, if a sentence contains two identical noun phrases, one may be deleted. So, in ‘I want that I am going for a walk,’ for instance, the embedded ‘I’ can be dropped because it has the same referent as the ‘I’ of the main clause ‘I want,’ and this yields ‘I want to go for a walk.’

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5.6

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Choice Hylomorphism Explained

Let us now apply these general insights regarding volitional form to the act of choice. In light of the foregoing, we can see that while free judgment is an act of preferentially assenting to one practical proposition rather than another, the subsequent act of choice (if self-directed) is, for Aquinas, an act of preferential “adherence” not to a proposition but rather to an operable entity conceived sub-propositionally. While I freely assent to ‘A walk ought to be taken as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head’ rather than to ‘Yoga ought to be done as a meansE to the endNU of clearing one’s head,’ I freely adhere to taking a walk rather than doing yoga to clear my head. This is what it means for choice to have an intrinsic form, that is, intentional directedness, that, though derived from judgment, differs from the form of judgment. This gives us all we need to spell out the doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism. As I indicated in Chapter 1, this doctrine states that the judgment of choice accounts for the fact that choice is the kind of volition it is. In light of this chapter, we can see that this means that the judgment of choice accounts for the very intentional structure of the act of choice, its preferential directedness to one means rather than another for the sake of an end. Given intellectualism, the judgment, moreover, wholly accounts for the free or preferential character of choice’s directedness. But this does not mean that the preferential directedness of choice coincides with the preferential directedness of the judgment of choice. Rather, choice has its own preferential directedness, which, though inherited from the judgment of choice, differs from the latter in terms of structure. Thus, the core idea of Choice Hylomorphism is that the central features of free practical judgment, namely its preferential and means–end relating character, are not extrinsic to choice. Rather, they come to exist in choice itself, but in a derivative manner. In this way, key features of the act of one power, namely, practical reason, so to speak, “spill over” into the act of another power, the will, and this is what makes the will rational “by participation,” to use Aquinas’s terms. To conclude this chapter, let us revisit the key passage in which Aquinas develops his doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism, namely, Prima secundae, q. 13, a. 1 in light of these results: It needs to be considered in acts of the soul that an act that essentially belongs to one power or habit receives its form and species from a superordinate power or habit insofar as the subordinate power is ordered by the superordinate one . . . Now it is clear that reason precedes the will in a way and orders its act, insofar as the will tends to its object according to the order of reason because the cognitive power presents the object to the striving power. Thus,

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act the act whereby the will tends toward something that is proposed to it as good is by the fact that it [i.e., this act] is ordered by reason to some end, materially speaking, an act of the will, but formally one of reason.26

The very first line already indicates that the will “receives its form” from reason when it elicits the act of choice, which suggests that choice itself has a form that it gets from judgment. The above text also says that the form that choice receives is its “species,” which means that it is an intrinsic form that makes choice the kind of volition it is. And Aquinas explains in the above text that this species is none other than choice’s adherence or “tending” to a certain “object” inherited from reason. In other words, the form intrinsic to choice is its characteristic preferential intentionality derived from reason. Despite this strong influence of reason, choice is, nonetheless, materially an act of the will, as Aquinas continues, and this because it is a tending to a good. This means, as we saw in Chapter 4, that it is an inclination, that is, a mental state with world-to-mind direction of fit, and this state is efficiently caused by the will. Figure 5.1 illustrates the doctrine of Choice Hylomorphism presented here.

Judgment of choice: Assent to ‘M1 ought to be pursued for the sake of E,’ and dissent from ‘M2 ought to be pursued for the sake of E.’

Adherence to M1 rather than M2 for the sake of E

Choice

Volition

Simple volition to pursue E.

Figure 5.1 Aquinas’s Choice Hylomorphism 26

“Est autem considerandum in actibus animae, quod actus qui est essentialiter unius potentiae vel habitus, recipit formam et speciem a superiori potentia vel habitu, secundum quod ordinatur inferius a superiori . . . Manifestum est autem quod ratio quodammodo voluntatem praecedit, et ordinat actum eius, inquantum scilicet voluntas in suum obiectum tendit secundum ordinem rationis, eo quod vis apprehensiva appetitivae suum obiectum repraesentat. Sic igitur ille actus quo voluntas tendit in aliquid quod proponitur ut bonum, ex eo quod per rationem est ordinatum ad finem, materialiter quidem est voluntatis, formaliter autem rationis” (ST I-II, q. 13, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 98).

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As Figure 5.1 helps bring out, choice is a composite of two entities. The quadrangular shape surrounded by the solid line refers to its being a striving of the will, which is its material component. The semi-oval shape surrounded by the dotted line represents its preferential adherence to one means rather than another, which is its intrinsic formal component. This formal component is distinct but derived from the judgment of choice represented by the oval field, and the dotted arrow now indicates that the connection is one of extrinsic formal causation. The extrinsic and the intrinsic form of choice are both the final cause of choice because they are two different ways in which the object of choice exists as conceptualized in the mind – in judgment, on the one hand, and in volition, on the other. The solid arrow below the volition component of choice represents a relation of efficient causation, and it indicates that choice depends in terms of this type of causation on the volition for the end. With this we have laid out the hylomorphic structure of choice and its dependence on free judgment in terms of extrinsic formal causation. It is now time that we turn to its explanatory role with regard to the human act. How does choice account for the human act, in particular its freedom? And what is the human act that it so explains? Part III of this book is dedicated to these questions. We will see that just as features characteristic of practical reason come to be present in volition, so features characteristic of practical reason also come to be present in the human act via volition.

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part iii

Act Hylomorphism

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chapter 6

The Hylomorphic Structure of the Human Act

6.1

Introduction

To understand how choice explains the human act, we must first understand what the human act is. Examining the nature of the human act is, accordingly, the first task of this chapter. Like choice, the human act is, for Aquinas, a kind of hylomorphic composite. To show this, I first discuss the two acts that compose the human act (Sections 6.2–6.4), namely, use and the commanded act, as well as one further act needed to understand the composite, namely, command. I then develop my hylomorphic reading of the human act in Aquinas and defend it against the available nonhylomorphic interpretations (Sections 6.5–6.7). In Section 6.8, I examine how the human act is explained by choice. I argue that the explanatory relation is one of efficient and final causation and that choice is not explanatorily salient as an occurrent state but rather as a kind of disposition.

6.2 The Act of Command, Part 1: The Suárezian Reading In the Prima secundae, Aquinas tells us that there are three elements relevant for understanding what the human act is. These are the acts of “command” (imperium), “use” (usus), and “the commanded act” (actus imperatus). What are these three acts more specifically, and what is their function in the human act? According to Aquinas, all of these acts occur after the agent has made a choice about what to do. Suppose that you have chosen to go for a walk to clear your head. For Aquinas, your choice does not directly lead to your legs’ moving, this bodily movement being what he would call the “commanded” or “exterior act” of walking. Rather, he thinks that we must interpolate two mental acts, namely, command and use, the former being 117

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an act of reason and the latter an act of the will. He expresses this view clearly in the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 3: After the . . . judgment of reason, the will chooses; and after choice, reason commands . . . And then someone’s will initiates the act of use, executing the command of reason.1

Why does Aquinas introduce these two acts in between choice and the commanded act? According to some scholars, Aquinas does not provide any reason for doing so. René-Antoine Gauthier, for instance, calls command and use “useless subtleties” (subtilités vaines) that make Aquinas’s action theory more complicated than it needs to be.2 In a similar vein, Alan Donagan refers to command and use as “excrescences” that Aquinas’s action theory ought to be “shorn of.”3 The verdict of other scholars has been more favorable, but in my view, we lack as yet a proper understanding of the precise roles that command and use play in Aquinas’s account of the human act. In the remainder of this section, as well as Sections 6.3–6.4, I hope to show what explanatory work these two acts do. I first consider the function of command (Sections 6.2–6.3), and I then discuss use and its relation to the commanded act (Section 6.4). My contention is that command and use need to be read in light of Aquinas’s theory of instrumental causation. Let us begin with the act of command. In article 1 of his longest discussion of this act, namely, Prima secundae, q. 17, Aquinas claims that “that which commands orders that which is commanded to do something by intimating or declaring.”4 He then distinguishes between two ways in which an “intimation” can be expressed.5 First, he writes, an intimation can be expressed by an indicative sentence employing a gerundive. This is the verb form that Aquinas standardly employs to express a precept or oughtstatement in a practical judgment. For instance, the Latin gerundive sentence ‘Hoc est tibi faciendum’ translates to ‘This ought to be done by you.’ 1 2 4

5

“[P]ost . . . iudicium rationis, voluntas eligit; et post electionem, ratio imperat . . . et tunc demum voluntas alicuius incipit uti, exequendo imperium rationis” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 6: 120). Gauthier, “Saint Maxime,” 98. 3 Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” 651. “Imperare autem est quidem essentialiter actus rationis, imperans enim ordinat eum cui imperat, ad aliquid agendum, intimando vel denuntiando” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 118, translated bit in italics). “Uno modo, absolute, quae quidem intimatio exprimitur per verbum indicativi modi; sicut si aliquis alicui dicat, hoc est tibi faciendum. Aliquando autem ratio intimat aliquid alicui, movendo ipsum ad hoc, et talis intimatio exprimitur per verbum imperativi modi; puta cum alicui dicitur, fac hoc” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 118).

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The second way of expressing an intimation, Aquinas writes, is by a sentence containing a verb in the imperative mood, such as ‘Do this!’ (fac hoc).6 And this is, he maintains, the linguistic expression characteristic of the act of command. By virtue of being expressed by such an imperative, Aquinas claims, command differs from other practical judgments, whose contents are precepts expressed by sentences employing a gerundive. What does Aquinas intend to convey by this linguistic distinction? What he is not saying here is that the propositional content of the act of command is a statement in the imperative mood, whereas the contents of other practical judgments are statements in the gerundive form. That is, Aquinas is not recommending that we read a grammatical distinction into a distinction between mental states. Rather, he is making a subtler point, namely, that the imperative mood, which is used to report the mental act of command, is indicative of a certain feature internal to the act of command, a feature that sets it apart from other practical judgments, which are reported by sentences employing a gerundive form. What is this feature, more specifically? The most detailed interpretive proposal known to me is due to Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), who develops it in his commentary on Aquinas’s Prima secundae, titled De fine hominis.7 Before offering my own reading, I shall therefore consider his account, which is instructive, but, in the end, problematic. Suárez thinks that command is a judgment that differs from other practical judgments in Aquinas, in particular the judgment of choice that precedes it, in terms of what we might call its situation specificity. By making a judgment of choice, Suárez thinks, an agent judges that he ought to perform some particular type of act X (rather than Y) to attain a certain end, but in so doing the agent does not yet take all of the details of the particular situation in which he is going to perform X rather than Y into consideration.8 In contrast, when an agent commands himself to do X, 6 7

8

See ibid. Other scholars’ accounts of command are not nearly as detailed. For instance, Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 181–2, writes that command is needed to “make sure” that choice is put into effect and that use is the act of putting something into effect. But it remains unclear why, on his view, we need an extra act to make sure choice is put into effect. Servais Pinckaers argues that we need command and use to add “force” to the act of choice, allowing it to cause the human act, but he does not explain why choice lacks sufficient force of its own. See his “Compte rendu de ‘Deman, Th., O.P.: Le précepte de la prudence chez saint Thomas d’Aquin.’ Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 20 (1953): 40–59’ et de ‘Gauthier, R.-A., O.P.: Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l’acte humain.’ Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 21 (1954): 51–100’,” Bulletin Thomiste 9 (1954–5), 358. As Suárez puts it, the judgment informs an “electionem . . . quae abstrahit ab executione ante usum” (Suárez, De fine hominis, disp. IX, Sect. III, n. 4, in Suárez, Opera omnia: Editio Nova, vol. 4, ed. D. M. André (Paris: Vivès, 1856), 268).

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Suárez holds, the agent does take all of these specifics into account. As Suárez puts it, command “immediately pertains to the act and all of the determinate circumstances necessary for the execution of the act.”9 For illustration, suppose that I am currently reading an article in my office. I briefly pause midway and decide to take a walk to clear my head once I am done reading. When making this choice, I will not yet settle on the exact time when I will leave the office because I do not know yet when I will have finished the article. Nor will I settle on the precise bodily behavior that will constitute my leaving the office. I do not know yet whether I will need to get up from my chair to initiate my leaving the office or whether I will already be standing, say, because I have the habit of standing while reading. But once I am done, and it is time to go for a walk, I will be able to take all of these specifics of the situation into account, and this is exactly what the act of command does. If I have finished the article at 3 p.m. while sitting at my desk, for instance, then I will command myself to now, at 3 p.m., get up from this chair to leave and take a walk. Because command concerns what the agent ought to do here and now, Suárez maintains that it has greater motivating force (vehementius movet) than the judgment of choice, and this is what the imperative mood used to report the act of command is meant to convey.10 By making a judgment of choice, Suárez suggests, an agent is disposed to pursue a particular type of means to a certain end. But the agent is not necessarily motivated to act right away, but only once the time to act has come, and this leaves open that the agent changes his mind. In contrast, when the agent commands himself to do something he is motivated to act here and now, and, if no impediment is present, he will do what he commands himself to do.11 A change of mind is no longer an option. If I now choose to take a walk later, then I might change my mind and not leave my office after all, say, because I realize that I have more work to do. But if I now command myself to leave my office to take a walk, I will leave. Suárez’s account of command and its difference to the judgment of choice makes good sense when we consider choices whose execution is deferred, as in the reading example just considered. In such cases, as Suárez 9

10 11

“Necessarium esse aliud judicium magis practicum in hoc distinctum a judicio quod praecedit electionem, quia immediate attingit opus et omnes determinatas circumstantias necessarias ad operis executionem. Et hinc est quod vehementius etiam movet voluntatem” (Suárez, De fine hominis, disp. IX, Sect. III, n. 4, Vivès 4: 268, translated bit in italics). See ibid. “Et hoc judicium merito dici solet practice practicum, seu omnino practicum; quia omnino, et prorsus ordinatur ad executionem operis, et magis inclinat ad vincendam difficultatem operis, quae tempore executionis major semper apparet, quam in consultatione et electione abstracta” (ibid.).

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rightly points out, the judgment of choice lacks a certain level of specificity because the agent, in making a choice about what to do later, does not yet work out the precise details of its execution. However, as Suárez notices, not all of our choices are like this.12 Some choices are already highly specific when they are made, and their execution is not deferred. Suppose that I am cleaning my kitchen and I suddenly feel thirsty. I judge that I ought to grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator. A second later, my hand reaches for the handle of the refrigerator door and I grab a bottle. Here my judgment of choice already takes the particular circumstances of what I am about to do into account. I decide to now take a specific bottle of water from my refrigerator to quench my thirst. What then might command add here? Suárez’s answer is: ‘nothing.’ As he sees it, if a judgment of choice is already sufficiently specific, as in the example just considered, the judgment of choice coincides with the act of command.13 Thus, on Suárez’s account, we only sometimes need an act of command in addition to the judgment of choice, namely, whenever we defer the execution of a decision. But when no such deferral occurs, we do not need command. The judgment of choice alone will do. Is this a compelling account of command in Aquinas? It seems to me that it faces one significant problem: Aquinas nowhere claims that choice is only sometimes followed by a separate act of command nor that the judgment of choice at times coincides with command. Rather, he states very generally in the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 3, that “after choice, reason commands that through which what was chosen be done [emphasis added].”14 Taken in full generality, this statement strongly suggests that command always succeeds choice.15 If this is right, then what might command add to choice even in those cases where a choice’s execution is not deferred?

12

13 14

15

“Nota, electionem duobus modis posse fieri: uno modo quasi abstractive, determinando scilicet medium, non tamen omnes particulares circumstantias, scilicet hic et nunc . . . Secundo modo potest fieri electio cum totali determinatione circumstantiarum particularium” (Suárez, De fine hominis, disp. IX, Sect. II, nn. 3–4, Vivès 4: 267). “Non sunt actus re distincti” (Suárez, De fine hominis, disp. IX, Sect. II, n. 5, Vivès 4: 267). “[N]on omnis actus voluntatis praecedit hunc actum rationis qui est imperium, sed aliquis praecedit, scilicet electio . . . post electionem, ratio imperat ei per quod agendum est quod eligitur” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 6: 120, translated bit in italics). What is more, had he wanted to Aquinas certainly could have indicated that command is only needed when the execution of a decision is deferred. For he is aware of the distinction between decisions whose execution is deferred and those that are executed immediately. See, e.g., SCG II, c. 32, Leon. 13: 344.

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6.3

The Act of Command, Part 2: Instrumental Causation

The text from the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 3 just quoted points us to an answer. By writing that “reason commands that through which (per quod) what was chosen be done [emphasis added],” Aquinas wishes to establish a connection between command and instrumental causation. This is clear because, in another text in which he discusses command, namely, his early Sentences commentary IV, d. 15, Aquinas characterizes command as “ordering (ordinando) any given instrument what it ought to do.”16 Hence, “that through which” (per quod) a choice is to be carried out is the instrument executing the choice, and command’s function consists in specifying what instrument ought to do this job. Aquinas, generally, understands by an ‘instrument’ a “moved mover” (movens motum), that is, an entity that can only bring about a certain effect thanks to something else moving it in such a way as to allow it to bring about this effect.17 Tools provide a ready illustration. A hammer, for instance, can only drive a nail into the wall if it is used by a person in the right way. But for Aquinas, the term ‘instrument’ is not restricted to tools or even items external to the agent. In fact, in the case of human agency, as Aquinas explains in his Sentences commentary IV, d. 15, “the instruments that reason applies through command . . . are the powers of the soul and parts of the body.”18 In the Prima secundae, q. 16, a. 1, Aquinas refers to these powers as our “executive powers” (potentiae executivae).19 By this, he means that these are the powers whereby we execute choices, and he takes the relevant parts of the body that we command to be the parts housing 16

17

18

19

“Praecedit quidem, inveniens per consilium quid per voluntatem eligi oporteat; sequitur autem per imperium, ordinando unicuique instrumento quod ei oporteat facere” (In Sent. IV, d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, ad q. 1, Moos: 728–9, translated bit in italics). “Haec enim est ratio instrumenti in quantum est instrumentum, ut moveat motum; unde, sicut se habet forma completa ad per se agentem, ita se habet motus quo movetur a principali agente, ad instrumentum, sicut serra operatur ad scamnum” (De Ver., q. 27, a. 4, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 805, ll. 289–94). For a recent discussion of instrumental causation in Aquinas, see Jean-Luc Solère, “Scotus versus Aquinas on Instrumental Causality,” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 7 (2019): 147–85. “Instrumenta autem quae ratio applicat per imperium ad prosecutionem vel consecutionem desiderati non solum sunt vires animae et membra corporis sed etiam exteriores homines; quia quae per amicos fiunt, aliqualiter per nos fiunt, ut philosophus dicit in 3 Ethic” (In Sent. IV, d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, ad q. 1, Moos: 728–9, translated bits in italics). I leave aside the difficult case of using other people as instruments. It is clear, though, that it is here that the distinction between self- and other-directed volition discussed in Chapter 5 (Section 5.5) becomes relevant. If I believe that I can execute a choice on my own, my command will inform a non-propositional volition of using my power to do so. But if I believe that I cannot execute it on my own, my command will inform a propositional volition that someone else use their power to carry out my choice. “Et ideo intellectus speculativus uti dicitur tanquam a voluntate motus, sicut aliae executivae potentiae” (ST I-II, q. 16, a. 1, ad 3, Leon. 6: 114).

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precisely these executive powers.20 So, for example, to execute my choice to open the refrigerator door to grab a bottle of water, my command determines that I ought to use my hand’s power to grasp things to open the refrigerator door. (As we will see in Chapter 7 [Section 7.3], for Aquinas, this power of the hand is, strictly speaking, our power to move our body insofar as it moves the hand.) Sometimes, Aquinas thinks, command also orders instruments external to the agent to carry out a choice. For instance, in the example just considered, my command will also determine that I ought to use the door handle as an instrument to open the door. But, on Aquinas’s view, our powers and limbs are what we might call our primary instruments, whereas external objects are our secondary instruments. As he writes in the Prima secundae, q. 16, a. 1: [W]e do not apply exterior things to an operation except through intrinsic principles, which are the powers of the soul . . . or their organs, which are parts of the body.21

In other words, my powers and limbs are my primary instruments because it is only by commanding my hand’s power to grasp things that I am able to use an external object, such as a door handle, to open the door. What primary and secondary instruments the agent will command to carry out her choice is determined to a large extent by what she has chosen to do. Sometimes a choice can only be (sensibly) carried out by one instrument or by a certain set of instruments. For instance, to open the refrigerator door I can only (sensibly) use my hand’s ability to grasp objects as my primary instrument and the door handle as a secondary instrument. However, not all situations are like this, Aquinas holds. He writes in De veritate, q. 22, a. 12: [C]ommand pertains to reason and will in different respects. It belongs to the will insofar as command contains an inclination, but it belongs to reason insofar as this inclination is distributed and ordered as having to be executed either by this or that [instrument] [emphasis added].22

20

21

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“[M]embra corporis sunt organa quaedam potentiarum animae. Unde eo modo quo potentiae animae se habent ad hoc quod obediant rationi, hoc modo se habent etiam corporis membra” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 9, c., Leon. 6: 125). “Sed manifestum est quod res exteriores non applicamus ad aliquam operationem nisi per principia intrinseca, quae sunt potentiae animae . . . aut organa, quae sunt corporis membra” (ST I-II, q. 16, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 114). “[I]mperium est et voluntatis et rationis quantum ad diversa: voluntatis quidem secundum quod imperium inclinationem quandam importat, rationis vero secundum quod haec inclinatio

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The phrase “this or that” (hoc vel illud) at the end of this text is a standard way for Aquinas to express alternate possibilities.23 Thus, what Aquinas has us envisage here is a situation in which the agent has several different instruments available to her, each of which would be suitable to execute her choice, this being the inclination of the will preceding command referred to in the above text.24 For illustration, suppose that I see you from a distance and choose to draw your attention to me. To execute this choice I could call you by name or walk toward you. My choice to get your attention leaves open what power I will use, whether my power to speak or walk, and it is the job of command to assign a determinate one. This suggests that, for Aquinas, command may involve some kind of freedom inasmuch as the agent, through command, can choose one of various suitable instruments to execute her choice. But this should not strike us as a particularly interesting freedom. After all, the range of alternatives is significantly constrained by the prior choice. In my attempt to execute a choice I will only command a power that I take to be expedient to execute the choice. As the foregoing allows us to see, for Aquinas, command’s primary role does not so much consist in applying the judgment of choice to the here and now of a specific situation, as Suárez would have it (though command may also do this in some cases). Rather, its primary role consists in determining how, that is, by what instrument, the choice ought to be executed. Since Aquinas appears to hold that choice is always followed by command, this means that even choices that are highly situation-specific require this additional determination of their instrument of execution. Accordingly, Aquinas seems to be committed to the view that no choice,

23 24

distribuitur et ordinatur ut exequenda per hunc vel per illum” (De Ver., q. 22, a. 12, ad 4, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 642–3, ll. 135–41, emphasis added). See, e.g., In Sent. II, d. 7, q. 1, a. 1, ad 3, Mandonnet: 82; ST I, q. 82, a. 1, ad 3, Leon. 5: 293. It is clear that the inclination of the will mentioned in the above text is that of choice given the following text: “Qui enim imperat aliquid, inclinat ad faciendum, quod voluntatis est: ipsius enim est movere per modum agentis; et iterum ordinat eum cui imperat, ad exequendum illud quod imperatur: et hoc ad rationem pertinet, cuius est ordinare. Et si duorum horum ordo consideretur, videtur primum esse inclinatio voluntatis in aliquid per electionem. Et postea in principio executionis ordinatur per quos fieri debeat quod electum est. Et sic imperium erit immediate actus rationis” (Quodl. IX, q. 5, a. 2, c., Leon. 25, 1: 113, ll. 16–23). What is more, Aquinas writes in ST I-II, q. 17, a. 3, arg. 1: “Videtur quod usus praecedat imperium. Imperium enim est actus rationis praesupponens actum voluntatis, ut supra dictum est. Sed usus est actus voluntatis, ut supra dictum est. Ergo usus praecedit imperium.” To this Aquinas then replies: “Ad primum ergo dicendum quod non omnis actus voluntatis praecedit hunc actum rationis qui est imperium, sed aliquis praecedit, scilicet electio; et aliquis sequitur, scilicet usus” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 6: 120).

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taken by itself, contains explicit reference to the relevant power or instrument by which it ought to be executed. This is a controversial thesis. For perhaps there are some choices that do include explicit reference to their means of execution, just as there are some choices that include reference to the particular situation in which they are executed, as per Suárez’s argument. Examining the plausibility of this thesis would require a detailed discussion of its own – one that I cannot provide here. What I hope has become clear, however, is that command plays a precise role in Aquinas’s action theory, namely, one of instrument specification. Counter to what Gauthier and Donagan think, then, Aquinas clearly has a reason for introducing command. Whether one finds it compelling is of course a different matter. We can now, in light of this interpretation, also make sense of Aquinas’s linguistic characterization of the act of command in terms of the imperative mood. As Aquinas explains in his commentary on De interpretatione I, c. 7, a sentence in the imperative mood always presupposes at least two persons, an issuer and a recipient who is subordinate (inferior) to the issuer.25 For instance, the military command ‘Attention!’ presupposes a military authority, such as a drill instructor, and at least one subordinate to whom the imperative is directed. Now, just as a linguistic imperative involves a relation of subordination between two persons, so the act of command involves a relation of subordination between two powers, in particular the power of reason, which issues the command, and the instrumental power that command specifies as having to carry out the choice. In the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 4, Aquinas even refers to the instrumental power as a “subordinate power” (potentia inferior).26 The subordination relation between these two powers is not a social one of course, as in the case of a linguistic imperative. Rather, it is a causal one. But the two relations are analogous: just as the recipient of a linguistic imperative does something because of the social power or authority of a superior, so an executive power is activated because of the causal power of reason. Because of this, we may even say that the instrumental power as it were “obeys” the act of command.

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“Dirigitur autem ex ratione unius hominis alius homo . . . ad exequendum in opera, et ad hoc pertinet quantum ad inferiores oratio imperativa” (In Periherm. I, c. 7, Leon. 1*1: 37, ll. 78–85). See ST I-II, q. 17, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 121.

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6.4 The Act of Use and the Commanded Act Now that we have clarified the function of command, our next task is to shed light on the function of the act of “use” (usus), this being the second mental act that Aquinas interpolates between choice and the commanded act. As we saw in Chapter 1 (Section 1.3), use is a volition by which an agent activates a power other than the will to a certain end. For Aquinas, this volition is informed by command.27 As he puts this point in the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 3, “someone’s will initiates the act of use, executing the command of reason.”28 Thus, command determines what executive power ought to be used to carry out a choice, and the act of use exercises this very power for the purpose of carrying out the choice.29 For instance, if I command my hand’s power to grasp objects to open the refrigerator door, then I use precisely this power to open the door. For Aquinas, the act of using my hand’s power to grasp the door handle must be distinguished from the subsequent exercise of my hand’s power. The former is a volition, whereas the latter is the resultant bodily change or “commanded act,” in Aquinas’s terminology. As I pointed out in Section 1.3, Aquinas himself conceives of the relation between use and the commanded act as one between an action and a passion (where these are not identical to one another, however). So, my using my hand’s power to open the door is an active power-exercise or causing, whereas the commanded act is a passive power-exercise or undergoing.30 Since the actualization of a passive power by an active power is an instance of efficient causation, for Aquinas, this means that use and the commanded act stand in an efficient-causal relation. Not surprisingly, therefore, Aquinas writes in the Prima secundae, q. 20, a. 1, that “the will is related to the exterior act as an efficient cause.”31 To clarify the distinction between use and the resultant commanded act, it is helpful to turn to a similar contemporary distinction due to action theorist Jennifer Hornsby.32 The starting point of her distinction is the 27 28

29 30

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“Sed usus eius quod est ad finem, secundum quod subditur potentiae executivae, sequitur imperium” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 120). “[P]ost . . . iudicium rationis, voluntas eligit; et post electionem, ratio imperat . . . et tunc demum voluntas alicuius incipit uti, exequendo imperium rationis” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 6: 120, translated bit in italics). “[U]ti primo et principaliter est voluntatis, tanquam primi moventis; rationis autem tanquam dirigentis” (ST I-II, q. 16, a. 1, ad 3, Leon. 6: 114). For this point, see also Stephen L. Brock, “What Is the Use of Usus in Aquinas’ Psychology of Action?” in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Âge, vol. 2, ed. B. C. Bazán et al. (New York: LEGAS, 1995), 660, who characterizes use as an act of “actively undertaking” something. “Voluntas autem comparatur ad actum exteriorem sicut causa efficiens” (ST I-II, q. 20, a. 1, ad 3, Leon. 6: 153). See Jennifer Hornsby, Actions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 2–4.

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linguistic observation that there is a class of verbs that occur both transitively and intransitively. Consider, for example, the verb ‘melt.’ We can say ‘Jonah melted the chocolate’ or ‘The chocolate melted.’ In the former case, we use ‘melt’ transitively, that is, with a direct object (‘the chocolate’). In the latter case, we use it intransitively, that is, without a direct object. ‘Move’ is also a verb of this kind, as Hornsby observes. We can say ‘John moved his hand,’ in which case we use ‘move’ transitively, or ‘John’s hand moved,’ in which case we use ‘move’ intransitively. To distinguish between these two uses, Hornsby introduces the subscript ‘T’ to indicate when a verb is used transitively and the subscript ‘I’ to indicate when it is used intransitively. Hornsby points out that the transitive and intransitive use of a verb are related according to a rule. If ‘V’ abbreviates a verb that occurs both transitively and intransitively and ‘a’ and ‘b’ stand for mover and moved object, then ‘a VTs b’ entails ‘b VIs.’ In plain English, if Jonah meltsT the chocolate, then this entails that the chocolate meltsI. Similarly, if John movesT his hand, then this entails that John’s hand movesI. According to Hornsby, this rule is indicative of a causal relation. She suggests (plausibly) that if a VTs b, then, generally, a causes b to VI.33 Thus, if Jonah meltsT the chocolate, then Jonah causes the chocolate to meltI, and, similarly, if John movesT his hand, then John causes his hand to moveI. In short, ‘a VTs b’ entails ‘b VIs’ because a’s V-ingT is the causing of b’s V-ingI. ‘John movesT his hand’ entails ‘John’s hand movesI’ because John’s movingT his hand is his causing his hand to moveI. Since a causing and its effect are distinct, Hornsby reasons, John’s movingT his hand must be one thing and John’s hand’s movingI another. We can think of Aquinas’s distinction between use and the commanded act as a version of this distinction between two types of movements. As I noted, the act of use is a causing of the commanded act, the latter being a change in an executive power. As a causing of a change, use is a movementT in Hornsby’s terminology. My using my hand’s power to grasp objects, for instance, is my movingT my hand to grasp an object, such as a door handle. In contrast, the commanded act is the resultant passion, that is, the executive power’s changing as a consequence of the agent’s using it. In other words, it is a movementI in Hornsby’s terms.34 For 33 34

See Hornsby, Actions, 13. She refers to this as a “300-year-old claim” – one that was already defended by John Locke. A caveat should be noted here. As we will see in Chapter 7, a commanded act is not just a movementI, on Aquinas’s view. It is a movementI as compared to use. But, for Aquinas, a bodily commanded act is also a movementT with respect to a further movementI.

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instance, if my hand’s power to grasp an object, such as a door handle, is exercised as a consequence of my using it, this caused power-exercise is my hand’s movingI toward the door handle. For Aquinas, these two movements are simultaneous. As he writes in the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 3, “the use of the agent using [something] is conjoined with the act of that which the agent uses.”35 In other words, the act of use goes on for as long as the commanded act does. When I moveT my hand to open the refrigerator door and my hand movesI as a consequence, then I do not just impart an initial movementT to my hand, as a consequence of which the hand’s temporally extended movementI ensues. Rather, my movingT my hand initiates and sustains my hand’s movementI.36 We are now in a position to state the precise function of use in Aquinas. Use is the continuous efficient causation of the instrumental powerexercise that the agent commands herself to carry out to execute her choice. But one might ask here: why do we need use in addition to command, for Aquinas? Why can’t command both specify the power whereby the choice is to be carried out and efficiently cause the exercise of this power? Here we need to recall that, for Aquinas, acts of reason and the will differ on account of their direction of fit. An act of reason has mind-to-world direction of fit, and this also applies to command. When I command that a choice ought to be executed by a certain instrument, I represent the exercise of said instrument as conducive to executing my choice.37 And such a representation can be either true or false, for Aquinas. There is a fact of the matter as to whether a given instrument is or is not conducive to carrying out the chosen course of action. A volition, in contrast, has worldto-mind direction of fit. Accordingly, when I use an executive power I seek to make the world conform to my volition, which means, in this case, that I seek to make the exercise of this power actually occur so that my volition to use said power is fulfilled. When I volitionally use my legs’ power to take a walk, for instance, I seek to make the exercise of my legs’ power to moveI actual. And this is what makes use an efficient causing of the commanded

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“[U]sus utentis coniunctus est cum actu eius quo quis utitur” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 120). For a similar contemporary view, see Hugh McCann, “Volition and Basic Action,” in McCann, The Works of Agency: On Human Action, Will, and Freedom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 88. This is what I take Aquinas to mean when he writes that command is a kind of “conception of the effect” in the following passage: “[I]mperium autem intellectus nihil aliud est quam conceptio effectus ordinata ad implendum” (De 36 art., ad 13, Leon. 42: 342, ll. 262–3).

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act, for an efficient causing makes something potential actual, as we saw in Chapter 4 (Section 4.4).

6.5

The Case for Act Hylomorphism

We have now discussed the elements crucial for understanding what the human act is in Aquinas: command, use, and the commanded act. Our next task is to examine how use and the commanded act together yield a human act with a hylomorphic structure and how command relates to this composite. Before doing so, however, I need to show that Aquinas is in fact committed to a hylomorphic account of the human act. In Chapter 1 (Section 1.3), I already adduced some textual evidence in favor of this reading. However, there are also two non-hylomorphic interpretations on the market. In this section, I consider these readings and argue against them. In Sections 6.6–6.7, I develop my hylomorphic interpretation. By far the most widespread non-hylomorphic reading is what I shall call the multi-phase reading. Defended by such diverse scholars as Alan Donagan, Ralph McInerny, and Daniel Westberg, this reading maintains that, for Aquinas, a human act consists of many distinct stages, which advocates of this reading commonly refer to as “partial acts” of the human act.38 The commanded act is one such partial act, on the multi-phase view. But so are the acts of command and use as well as the acts of choice and deliberation, and even the simple volition for the end is such a partial act. On the multi-phase reading, one human act is the set of all of these different partial acts taken together. Thus, my taking a walk, for instance, involves the commanded act of the limbs’ movingI as one of its partial acts, in particular as its final partial act, but it also includes my act of using my legs’ power to move as well as my command that this power be exercised, my choice to take a walk to clear my head, all the way up to the simple volition to clear my head.

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Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” 653–4; McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 55 and 179; Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 119. See also Thomas Gilby, “Appendix 1,” in Gilby, trans., St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa theologiae, vol. 17 (I/II 6–17, Psychology of Human Acts) (New York: Blackfriars, 1970), 212; Pinckaers, “La structure de l’acte humain suivant Saint Thomas,” 400. Note, however, that scholars have diverged on the precise number of stages. Gilby, for instance, posits twelve, following the eighteenth-century Thomist Charles-René Billuart, Summa Sancti Thomae hodiernis academiarum moribus accomodata; Tractatus de ultimo fine; Dissertatio III; De actibus humanis speciatim sumptis, vol. 2, Editio nova (Rome: Libraria Sacrae Congregationis De Propaganda Fide, s.a.), 262. For a more austere account, on which there are only four stages, see Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 119–35.

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The multi-phase reading, then, takes mental acts that we would ordinarily consider antecedents of the human act to be parts of it. For example, on this reading, a choice to take a walk to clear one’s head, which we would ordinarily take to be an antecedent factor explaining a walk, is somehow part of the human act of taking a walk. Why does the multi-phase reading claim this? As far as I can see, multi-phasers appeal to the following argument.39 On their view, Aquinas thinks that a human act consists of the commanded act plus all of the explanatorily salient mental acts preceding the commanded act because it is only in those cases where the human act is aborted at some stage prior to the commanded act that an agent grasps an explanatory antecedent of the commanded act in isolation from other partial acts. But when the act is not aborted, the agent experiences such an explanatory antecedent as no more than a phase of a continuous process flowing from simple volition to the commanded act. If I, for instance, will to clear my head, deliberate about how to do this, and choose to take a walk, but cannot execute my choice because of a heavy snowstorm, then I will cognize my choice as something isolated from its execution, where the execution includes the acts of command, use, and the commanded act. But if no such obstacle arises, all of these elements will be, in my experience, woven together into one process.40 This argument is problematic for two reasons. First, it is not clear why facts about the agent’s perception of her human act directly translate into facts about what the agent’s act, metaphysically speaking, is. Why should it be relevant for determining what the human act is that I (sometimes) perceive the process leading from simple volition to the commanded act as one continuous flow? This seems to be a point about the phenomenology of the human act, but it is not one that pertains to the act’s metaphysics. If multi-phasers think that this phenomenological point does in fact bear on the metaphysics of the human act, then they need to argue for this claim. But no such argument is forthcoming. There is a second reason why the multi-phase reading is problematic. There is no textual evidence to support the contention that, for Aquinas, it 39 40

Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” 653–4; McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 55 and 179. McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 55, also appeals to moral evaluation in this context. He argues that we ought to think of all of the stages as unified when giving a moral assessment of the human act. If the act is complete, i.e., with no stage missing, then all partial acts form a “moral unity,” as he puts it. Thus, my good deliberation, my good choice, and my good exterior act (e.g., giving alms) are one moral act. If, however, the process is interrupted, say, at the stage of deliberation, only those acts leading up to deliberation are subject to moral evaluation.

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is only in those cases where the human act is aborted at some stage prior to the commanded act that an agent grasps an explanatory antecedent of the commanded act in isolation from other partial acts.41 Aquinas does consider cases in which our commanded acts are interrupted due to some external impediment. For instance, he says that a commanded act, such as my legs’ movingI, may be prevented due to some obstacle on the road.42 However, he does not argue that all of the acts prior to the commanded act are only perceived as separate when a human act is aborted prior to its successful execution. In sum, then, the multi-phase reading is predicated on the controversial idea that what we would ordinarily view as antecedents of the human act are in fact parts of it. It is predicated on this idea because it does not separate the phenomenology from the metaphysics of the human act, and it lacks textual support. This reading can therefore be dismissed. The multi-phase reading is not the only one on the market. There is also a second account, which, for reasons that will become clear shortly, I shall refer to as the volitionalist interpretation. On this interpretation, defended by Stephen Brock, we should not identify the human act with the entire process leading from simple volition to the commanded act.43 Rather, we should identify it with just one element of this process, namely, the volitional act of use. On Brock’s reading, then, my taking a walk does not comprise many distinct partial acts. Rather, it is nothing but my using my legs’ power to moveI, or, put differently, my movingT my legs. As we have seen, this act is distinct from the commanded act of the limbs’ movingI that it causes. Indeed, because the commanded act is the result of use, Brock argues that the commanded act cannot be part of the human act itself. It is at best a human act in a “secondary sense,” as Brock puts it.44 Philosophically speaking, this account is not without merit. For instance, a number of neo-Aristotelian action theorists, like Jennifer Hornsby, Maria Alvarez, John Hyman, and Helen Steward, contend that a human act must be something essentially active as opposed to passive, a doing rather than an undergoing. And they hold that the best way to do 41

42 44

McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 179, adduces no texts in favor of his contention. Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” 654, lists as supposed evidence ST I-II, q. 15, a. 3, ad 3, Leon. 6: 112; ST I-II, q. 16, a. 4, ad 3, Leon. 6: 116; ST I-II, q. 17, a. 5, ad 2, Leon. 6: 121. Not one of these texts deals with aborting a human act. See ST I-II, q. 6, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 59. 43 See Brock, Action and Conduct, 173–6. See Brock, Action and Conduct, 173. Brock does say that “a complete piece of conduct is the composite of the act of will and the exterior act” (ibid.), which I think is exactly right. But he does not develop a full-blown hylomorphic theory because he insists that the volitional act is the primary or principal human act (ibid., 66).

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justice to this idea is by viewing a human act as a movementT that causes a movementI. In short, they take the human act to be something like Aquinas’s act of use rather than its commanded act.45 (I return to this contemporary view in Chapter 9.) Its philosophical merits notwithstanding, this view is not Aquinas’s. At best it is a truncated version of his view. To see this, we need to turn to Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 4, which is one key text on which my hylomorphic reading of the human act in Aquinas relies. I already quoted part of it in Section 1.3. Here I quote the passage at length: In the genus of natural things, a whole is composed of matter and form, for instance, a human being of soul and body, where the human being is one natural being, although he has a multitude of parts. Similarly, in human acts, the act of the subordinate power is related as matter to the act of the superordinate power, insofar as the subordinate power acts in virtue of the superordinate one, which moves the subordinate one. For in this way the act of the first mover is formally related to the act of the instrument. Therefore, it is clear that command and the commanded act are one human act, just as a whole is one, but is many according to its parts.46

Aquinas here claims that command is the form of the human act, while the commanded act is the matter. The claim that command is the form appears to contradict my view, stated in Chapter 1 (Section 1.3), that use is the form of the human act. I return to this issue in Section 6.6. Here the salient point is that Aquinas says that the commanded act is the matter of the human act. This strongly suggests, counter to what Brock maintains, that the commanded act is not a human act in a secondary sense, but rather an essential part of the human act just as the act’s form is. After all, matter and form are both intrinsic principles that pertain to what something is, according to Aquinas, as we saw in our discussion of Aristotle’s four causes (Section 4.4). Now, what is it for a human act to have a formal and a material component? And what exactly is the formal component? Is it use or command? Or are there perhaps two forms? These are the questions that I will turn to in Sections 6.6 and 6.7, where I develop the doctrine of Act Hylomorphism. 45 46

See Hornsby, Actions, 59; Alvarez and Hyman, “Agents and their Actions,” 229; Steward, A Metaphysics for Freedom, 33. “Sicut autem in genere rerum naturalium, aliquod totum componitur ex materia et forma, ut homo ex anima et corpore, qui est unum ens naturale, licet habeat multitudinem partium; ita etiam in actibus humanis, actus inferioris potentiae materialiter se habet ad actum superioris, inquantum inferior potentia agit in virtute superioris moventis ipsam: sic enim et actus moventis primi formaliter se habet ad actum instrumenti. Unde patet quod imperium et actus imperatus sunt unus actus humanus, sicut quoddam totum est unum, sed est secundum partes multa” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 121).

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Developing Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism: Part 1

First, we must clarify whether use or command functions as the form of the commanded act or if in some sense both do. Let us here return to the passage from Prima secundae, q. 18, a. 6, c., already quoted in Chapter 1 (Section 1.3), in which Aquinas describes use rather than command as the form of the commanded act. Aquinas writes: The interior act of the will receives its species from the end as from its proper object. In this way what comes from the will is related as something formal to what comes from the exterior act. For the will uses parts of the body as its instruments in acting.47

Aquinas here states that use is the form of the commanded act on account of being directed to an object, that is, to a means as ordered to an end, from which it receives its species. As we saw in Chapter 4 (Section 4.5), a volition is directed to an object due to an antecedent judgment of reason. More precisely, as I argued in Chapter 5, a volition inherits its own intrinsic directedness to an object from a preceding judgment. Now, the preceding act of reason from which use receives its intrinsic directedness to its object is command, use being the volition that exercises whatever power command says ought to be exercised. Hence, use’s directedness to an object, which functions as the formal cause of the commanded act, on the above text, is the directedness that use inherits from command. Suppose, for instance, that I command that I ought to exercise my legs’ power to moveI to take a walk, and I use this very power to said end. In this case, the act of use is a volition directed to exercising my legs’ power to moveI to take a walk, and this is the very object that the act of command is directed to. As we can see, then, command and use are, in a sense, both the form of the commanded act. For the form that use endows the commanded act with is the form that it inherits from command. Nevertheless, we must keep these two forms apart. For, as we saw in Chapter 5 (Section 5.5), Aquinas thinks that the form intrinsic to a (self-directed) volition is an attitude taken toward an object conceived non-propositionally, whereas the form of a judgment is an attitude taken toward an object in a propositional manner. I command that my legs’ power to moveI be exercised to take a walk. But my act of using this power is my volition to exercise this power to take a walk. 47

“[A]ctus interior voluntatis accipit speciem a fine, sicut a proprio obiecto. Ita autem quod est ex parte voluntatis, se habet ut formale ad id quod est ex parte exterioris actus, quia voluntas utitur membris ad agendum, sicut instrumentis” (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 6, c., Leon. 6: 132–3).

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What does this distinction between the two forms mean for Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism? As I shall now suggest, Aquinas wants us to view the form of use as the form intrinsic to the human act, while the form of command is an extrinsic form. Aquinas does not make this point explicitly. However, he does say something that implies it. Recall here Aquinas’s view that use is simultaneous with the commanded act, going on for as long as the commanded act is going on. In the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 3, Aquinas contrasts use and command in terms of this feature, arguing that command differs from use in that it is not simultaneous with what is commanded: The use of the agent using [something] is conjoined with the act of that which the agent uses . . . But command is not simultaneous with the act of that which is commanded. Rather, command is naturally prior to the command’s being obeyed, and sometimes even temporally prior.48

Command is always naturally prior to the commanded act because, as a matter of conceptual necessity, a commanded act can only occur if there was an act of command in the first place. What is interesting for our purposes, however, is Aquinas’s further remark in the above text that command may also be “temporally prior” to the commanded act. I take this to mean that command may have already occurred before the commanded act occurs, and this entails that command cannot be a form intrinsic to the human act, as I shall now argue. For plausibly, if something is the intrinsic form of some composite, it cannot cease to exist before the composite itself begins to exist.49 For example, the intrinsic form of a house cannot cease to exist before the house itself begins to exist. But if command may have already occurred prior to the commanded act, then command can cease to exist before the composite human act begins to exist. For the composite human act only begins to exist once the commanded act does, since a composite only begins to exist when its essential components do. Command, then, cannot be the form intrinsic to the human act. Use, in contrast, can play this role. For unlike command, it is simultaneous with the commanded act, which entails that use does not cease to exist before the composite exists. Command can still function as the extrinsic form, however, inasmuch as use’s form is derived from that of command, as we have seen. 48

49

“[U]sus utentis coniunctus est cum actu eius quo quis utitur . . . Imperium autem non est simul cum actu eius cui imperatur, sed naturaliter prius est imperium quam imperio obediatur, et aliquando etiam est prius tempore” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 120). As Aquinas writes about intrinsic forms: “[C]ausa formalis, quae est causa quasi ratio rei, simul incipit esse cum re cuius est forma” (In Met. XII, l. 3 n. 2450, Cathala: 574).

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Aquinas’s apparent wavering between describing command and use as the form inhering in the human act can now be explained. They are both forms of the human act, on his view, but they are forms of a different type. For Aquinas, when I command that I ought to exercise my legs’ power to moveI to take a walk, then this provides a model for what to do. Use is a volition whose intentional directedness to exercising my legs’ power to moveI to take a walk is modeled on this command, and it is this derivative intentional directedness of use that inheres in the commanded act of the legs’ power’s movingI and thereby functions as the intrinsic form of the human act. What we need to examine next is exactly what it means for use to be the intrinsic form of the human act, and what it means for the commanded act to be the human act’s matter.

6.7

Developing Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism: Part 2

I already stated the basic idea in Chapter 1 (Section 1.3). By inhering in the commanded act, the act of use yields a human act of a certain kind. As I have also indicated, the act of use does this by directing the commanded act to a certain end. For instance, my volition to set my legs in motion to take a walk yields an act of taking a walk by directing the exercise of my legs’ power to moveI to the end of taking a walk. Here I intend to spell out this view in more detail. The idea that an entity functions as the formal cause of something by directing it to an end is already familiar from our discussion of judgment’s causal role vis-à-vis volition in Chapter 4 (Section 4.5). As we saw there, a volition of a certain kind just is a volition for a certain end. For instance, a volition to take a walk to clear one’s head just is a volition directed to the means of taking a walk as ordered to the end of clearing one’s head. Now we can extend this idea to human acts, I suggest. For Aquinas, something is a human act of a certain kind if and only if it is an act directed to a certain end.50 To see this, consider again the act of taking a walk. It involves a series of movementsI of one’s legs as its commanded act, these being the exercise of one’s legs’ power to moveI. In principle, a person could have 50

“Quae vero habent notitiam finis dicuntur seipsa movere, quia in eis est principium non solum ut agant, sed etiam ut agant propter finem. Et ideo, cum utrumque sit ab intrinseco principio, scilicet quod agunt, et quod propter finem agunt, horum motus et actus dicuntur voluntarii” (ST I-II, q. 6, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 56). As Koons and O’Brien, “Objects of Intention,” 681, put this point: “To characterize a physical performance as a type of human behavior that is eligible to be chosen is already to characterize the performance as intrinsically apt to embody some definite range of ends and not others.”

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produced a qualitatively identical set of movementsI unintentionally, for instance, while sleepwalking. Hence the exercise of one’s legs’ power to moveI is on its own insufficient to yield a human act of taking a walk. What is missing is that this power is exercised for the purpose of taking a walk. Only when such a purposive ordering is present do we have an act of taking a walk, and, for Aquinas, it is the act of use that establishes precisely this ordering. Indeed, Aquinas says that use orders the commanded powerexercise as a means to an end. As he writes in the Prima secundae, q. 16, a. 3: Use . . . involves the application of something to something else, but what is so applied to something else is related to that something as a means. And so use always concerns something that is a means.51

As we saw, use, following command, exercises a power for the purpose of carrying out a choice. Accordingly, use exercises this power as a means to attain the end that the agent has chosen to pursue. For instance, if I have chosen to take a walk to clear my head, then use exercises my legs’ power to moveI to attain the end of taking a walk. The use of the power is the means, and taking a walk is the end. Taking a walk is itself a means to the end of clearing my head, of course, but it is the endNU for the sake of which the legs’ power to moveI is exercised. There is something prima facie problematic about viewing the exercise of one’s legs’ power to moveI as a means ordered to the end of taking a walk. For exercising one’s legs’ power to moveI to take a walk just is taking a walk: the end-directed power-exercise and the act of taking a walk coincide. But ordinarily, means and ends are distinct things. For example, if I take a walk to clear my head, then the walk is one thing and the result of clearing my head is another. Here we must note again, however, that for Aquinas the term ‘means’ (id quod est ad finem) is a broad one. We saw in Chapter 2 (Section 2.5) that Aquinas calls not only things of instrumental value “means,” but also constitutive parts of ends. Moreover, as Scott MacDonald has shown, Aquinas also countenances a third type of means, namely, specifications of ends.52 To use MacDonald’s example, a person may pursue the end of political power, but must specify this end in a determinate way, say, by leading a revolutionary army.53 In so doing, the person subordinates the specific pursuit of leading a revolutionary army to the general end of 51

52

“[U]ti . . . importat applicationem alicuius ad aliquid. Quod autem applicatur ad aliud, se habet in ratione eius quod est ad finem. Et ideo uti semper est eius quod est ad finem” (ST I-II, q. 16, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 114). See MacDonald, “Ultimate Ends,” 59–60. 53 See ibid., 60.

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political power. Here Aquinas would view leading the army as a means (id quod est ad finem) that specifies the general end of political power. We can draw on this notion of a means that specifies an end to make sense of use. Using one’s legs’ power to moveI so as to take a walk is indeed the same thing as taking a walk. Still, the exercise of one’s legs’ power to moveI is subordinated to the end of taking a walk as a specification. For the choice to take a walk does not yet specify by what power the walk is to be carried out, since no choice contains reference to its means of execution. There is of course only one plausible way to specify how to go for a walk, namely, by exercising one’s legs’ power to moveI. But this is just a feature of the example at hand. There are also several human acts that can be executed in different ways, as we have seen. Return here to the example of my choosing to draw your attention to me. To execute this choice I could call you by name or walk toward you. If I use my power to speak to draw your attention to me, I am ordering the specific pursuit of using my power to speak to call you by name to the more general end of drawing your attention to me. My calling you by name just is my drawing your attention to me, but the former is nevertheless subordinated to the latter as a means that specifies the end is to the end. So much for use’s formal-causal role in the human act, which consists in directing the material component, that is, the commanded power-exercise, to the chosen end. As we saw in Section 6.4, though, use also plays an efficient-causal role vis-à-vis the commanded act, initiating and sustaining its occurrence. Are these two causal roles compatible? Initially, it may seem that this is not the case. After all, as we saw in Chapter 4 (Section 4.4), an efficient cause is extrinsic to what it causes, but an intrinsic form must be internal to the matter that it informs, and nothing can be both intrinsic and extrinsic to the same thing. However, just as I argued in Chapter 4 that it is in the case of primary substances that their formal cause is intrinsic while their final cause is extrinsic, so I argue here that it is likewise the case for primary substances that their formal cause is intrinsic while their efficient cause is extrinsic. But we cannot expect that the same picture holds when we consider entities that are not substances, such as volitions and the commanded acts that they bring about. There is no reason to think that use cannot be both a form inhering in the commanded act and the efficient cause bringing about the commanded act. But we do of course need a story that explains how use can do double duty here. I suggest that use, like choice, has a kind of hylomorphic structure. It is materially a volition, that is, an inclination with world-to-mind direction of

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fit, but it also has a form, namely, an intentional directedness to an object, which it inherits from the previous act of reason, which is command. I suggest that use efficiently causes the commanded act in virtue of being an inclination with world-to-mind direction of fit. But in virtue of its formal component inherited from command, it functions as the formal cause inhering in the commanded act. In virtue of being an inclination, my volitionally using my legs’ power to moveI so as to take a walk, for instance, reduces the legs’ power from a state of potentially movingI to a state of actually movingI. But in virtue of having an intentional directedness to exercising my legs’ power for the sake of taking a walk, my using this power also functions as the formal cause inhering in the legs movingI by ordering it to an end. Use, then, is at once what accounts for the occurrence and the teleological structure of the commanded act, and it can account for both things because it is not just a striving but rather a striving with means– end relating content. Let us now sum up our discussion of Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism. As we have seen, this theory revolves around two forms. First, there is the form of command, which is extrinsic to the human act. This is the propositional representation that an executive power ought to be exercised for the sake of the end chosen by the agent. Second, there is the form of the act of use, which inheres in the commanded act. This is use’s sub-propositional intentional directedness to the exercise of the executive power for the sake of the chosen end. But use also efficiently causes the commanded act in virtue of being an inclination, and it does this not just by initiating but also by sustaining the commanded act. Figure 6.1 distinguishes the causal roles of command and use with respect to the commanded act.

Command: Assent to ‘Power P ought to be exercised for the sake of the chosen end.’

Form of use: Adherence to exercising P for the chosen end

Commanded act: P’s being exercised

Matter of use: volition

Figure 6.1 Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism: extrinsic and intrinsic forms

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The human act is here represented as a composite of two shapes. The semi-oval shape represents the intrinsic form of use and the hexagon shape the commanded act. Use is itself a hylomorphic composite. Its matter is its being a volition, and this is indicated in Figure 6.1 by the quadrangular shape beneath the semi-oval one. The striped arrow connecting the quadrangular shape with the commanded act indicates efficient causation because use qua volition efficiently causes the commanded act. The dotted arrow connecting command with the form of use indicates that command is an extrinsic form of use and thereby also of the human act as a whole. As we can see, then, just as Aquinas holds, as per his Choice Hylomorphism, that features characteristic of practical reason come to be present in volition, so he holds that features characteristic of practical reason also come to be present in the human act via the volitional act of use. The core idea of Act Hylomorphism is that the means–end relating character of a volition, as inherited from practical judgment, is not extrinsic to, but rather a constitutive part of, the human act.

6.8 How Choice Explains the Human Act We have now available to us an account of what the human act is, for Aquinas. This allows us to take up the aetiological question as to how choice explains it. As I noted in Chapter 1, choice’s explanatory role with regard to the human act is that it accounts for the act’s characteristic feature of freedom. Because a human act proceeds from free choice, it is free. But what is it for the human act to be explained by choice? For Aquinas, the human act consisting of use and the commanded act does not directly follow upon choice. Rather, as we have seen, it directly follows upon the act of command, which directly follows upon choice. Hence, to ask how choice explains the human act is to ask how choice explains the composite of use and the commanded act via the act of command. Aquinas’s answer appeals to the notion of “virtual remaining” (manere virtute), and it is the task of this section to spell out this notion. Here is a salient passage from the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 1: And since the power of the prior act remains in the subsequent act, it sometimes happens that there is an act of the will such that something of an act of reason virtually remains in it, as was said about use and choice. On the other hand, there is an act of reason such that something of an act of the will virtually remains in it . . . The fact that reason moves through command comes from the power of the will. Therefore, it follows that command is an

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The act of the will that Aquinas here describes as virtually remaining in the act of command is the act of choice, which immediately precedes command.55 The act of reason that Aquinas says virtually remains in the act of use is the act of command, which precedes and informs use. Thus, what Aquinas is saying here is that choice explains the human act by virtually remaining in the act of command, which, in turn, explains the act of use by virtually remaining in it. What does it mean for an act to virtually remain in another, according to Aquinas? Aquinas offers an instructive characterization in his Sentences commentary IV, d. 15. He there defines “an act’s remaining virtually [in something else]” as “a middle way [of being] between habitual being (esse in habitu) and being in act (esse in actu).”56 For an act to exist “in act” is for it to exist occurrently or episodically, according to Aquinas.57 In contrast, for an act to exist “habitually” is for it to exist merely as an ability that remains unexercised. So, for example, my choice to take a walk exists “in act” when I am actually making the choice, that is, when the mental episode of my making this choice occurs. My choice to take a walk exists “habitually,” in contrast, if I am not occurrently choosing to take a walk but merely have the propensity to do so under certain circumstances, say, when I find myself in a situation in which I need to clear my head. For an act to exist “virtually,” finally, is for an act to have occurred in the past but to continue to exercise causal influence on some other act that is presently occurring. As

54

55 56

57

“Et quia virtus prioris actus remanet in actu sequenti, contingit quandoque quod est aliquis actus voluntatis, secundum quod manet virtute in ipso aliquid de actu rationis, ut dictum est de usu et de electione; et e converso aliquis est actus rationis, secundum quod virtute manet in ipso aliquid de actu voluntatis . . . hoc ipsum quod ratio movet imperando, sit ei ex virtute voluntatis. Unde relinquitur quod imperare sit actus rationis, praesupposito actu voluntatis in cuius virtute ratio movet per imperium ad exercitium actus” (ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1, c., Leon. 6: 118). See the texts quoted in n. 24. “[A]liquis actus manet per essentiam et virtutem quandoque; sed quandoque transit actu et manet virtute, sicut in exemplo de projectione lapidis patuit; et sic manere actum in virtute est quidam medius modus inter ipsum esse et in habitu et in actu; quia quod in habitu est, neque virtute neque per essentiam actus est” (In Sent. IV, d. 15, q. 4, a. 2, ad q. 4, Moos: 740, translated bit in italics). “Alia vero tria distinguuntur secundum tres status intellectus possibilis, qui quandoque est in potentia tantum, et sic dicitur possibilis; quandoque autem in actu primo, qui est scientia, et sic dicitur intellectus in habitu; quandoque autem in actu secundo, qui est considerare, et sic dicitur intellectus in actu, sive intellectus adeptus” (ST I, q. 79, a. 10, c., Leon. 5: 277–8). For other relevant passages, see, e.g., ST I-II q. 49, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 6: 312; ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2, c., Leon. 6: 27; In Sent. IV, d. 49, q. 3, a. 2, sol., Parma: 1217; In DA II, c. 11, Leon. 45, 1: 112. The distinction between actual and habitual existence is due to Aristotle’s DA II, 5, 417a22–417b1.

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Aquinas puts this point in his Sentences commentary IV, d. 15, an act that exists virtually in another exists “according . . . to its effect.”58 In the same text, Aquinas provides an example from projectile motion to illustrate this idea. Suppose that a person throws a stone. As Aquinas explains, the person’s throwing motion or better movementT of the stone exists “in act” or occurrently “when the person positions the hand next to the stone by moving it,” that is, when the person is actually throwing the stone.59 Once the stone leaves the hand, however, the occurrence of the person’s throwing movementT has passed (transit actu).60 Nevertheless, Aquinas maintains, it continues to have causal influence on the stone’s subsequent movementI in the air because the movementT imparted a kind of “force” (vis impulsus) onto the stone that explains the latter’s continuous movementI through the air.61 Aquinas does not indicate in this text or elsewhere, as far as I know, how we ought to extrapolate from this physical example to choice’s virtually remaining in command and command’s virtually remaining in use. But if the thrower’s movementT virtually remains in the movementI as a force imparted onto the stone, then, it seems, choice must similarly remain in command as a kind of force, and the same holds for command with respect to use. The notion of “force” (vis) has a physical connotation, and it is, for this reason, not quite appropriate in the context of action aetiology. However, there is a close enough analog, namely, the notion of a causally efficacious disposition, that we can draw on to explain what Aquinas has in mind. To see what this means, suppose that I now choose to go for a walk in half an hour to clear my head. It is impossible for the mental episode of choice that occurs right now to cause my walk half an hour later because that would amount to some kind of action at a temporal distance.62 58

59 61

62

“[A]liquis actus dicitur durare dupliciter: aut secundum essentiam; aut secundum virtutem, sive effectum suum: sicut motio ejus qui lapidem projicit, durat per essentiam actus dum manum lapidi movendo apponit; sed virtus motionis manet dum lapis ex vi impulsionis primae movetur” (In Sent. IV, d. 15, q. 4, a. 2, ad q. 3, Moos: 739, translated bit in italics). See ibid. 60 See the text quoted in n. 56. See, e.g., “[S]agitta tamdiu movetur a proiciente, quamdiu manet vis impulsus proicientis” (QDP, q. 3, a. 11, ad 5, Bazzi: 75). See also In Phys. VIII, l. 22, Leon. 2: 452–4. The theory is due to Aristotle’s Phys. VIII, 10, 266b28–267a10. I take this idea from Michael Bratman, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 16. I do not want to suggest here that, in each and every case, choice only exerts causal influence on command and the human act by being present as a disposition. This happens especially when the execution of a choice is deferred, but not all choices are like this, as we have seen. In the kitchen example considered earlier, my choice to immediately take a water bottle led me to command my power to open the refrigerator door, resulting in my opening the door. In such cases, Aquinas likely holds that choice leads to the act of command and the initiation of the act

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However, after having been made, my choice can nevertheless play a causal role for the walk that I will take later. For I usually remain “committed” to executing a choice once made (unless I change my mind), to use a term due to Michael Bratman, and this commitment is a disposition that is causally salient.63 Because I am committed to my choice, I will do whatever is necessary to execute the choice once the time to act has come. For Aquinas, this means first of all that I will engage in further practical reasoning when I am about to execute the choice. In particular, I will reason about what instrument to use to carry out the choice, since choice does not include explicit reference to its means of execution. For example, if I chose to take a walk half an hour ago, then I will, once the time to act has come, command that I ought to exercise my legs’ power to moveI to take a walk. To do this I do not have to again choose to take a walk to clear my head. Rather, I can rely on my previous choice made half an hour ago, which remains in me as a disposition to do whatever is necessary to take a walk. This disposition is triggered once the time to act has come and so gives rise to the act of command. In this way, a choice can explain the occurrence of command long after the choice has been made. Choice also has a second explanatory role with regard to the execution of the human act, for Aquinas. It not only accounts for the occurrence of command, which specifies the instrument; it also accounts for the initiation of the act of use via command. To see this we need to consider again the above-quoted text from Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 1, in which Aquinas introduces the notion of virtual remaining in connection with choice. As Aquinas tells us there, thanks to choice’s virtually remaining in command, “reason, through command, moves to the exercise of the act.” I take it that command here moves to the exercise of an act of the will because command brings about use, which is the act of the will that follows upon command. Hence Aquinas maintains here that, thanks to choice, command moves the will to the act of use. Initially, it seems odd that Aquinas would say that command moves the will to the exercise of its act. For movement to the exercise of the act is an instance of efficient causation, as we saw in Chapter 4 (Section 4.6). But

63

of use not as a disposition, but rather as an occurrent state. However, as we will see below, as soon as the act of use is going on for a while, the occurrent state of choice can no longer explain it because that would amount to action at a (temporal) distance, though choice can explain it as a dispositional commitment. So, even in human acts that immediately follow upon their choices, we need to appeal to choice’s remaining present in the human act as a disposition because a human act is temporally extended. For a developed account of this notion of commitment, see Bratman, Intentions, Plans, 28–50.

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command is an act of reason, and Aquinas holds, as we also saw in Chapter 4 (Section 4.6), that the will itself efficiently causes its volition. However, Aquinas does not violate his commitment to the will’s efficient causation of its own act here. For his suggestion is not that command on its own efficiently causes the act of use. Rather, his suggestion is that command thanks to choice’s virtually remaining in it does so. The idea is that choice endows command with some kind of volitional “energy,” as it were, and this brings about use. To put the point in non-metaphorical terms, because I remain committed to the choice to take a walk to clear my head, my command that I ought to use my legs to take a walk will give rise to the volitional act of using my limbs to execute the choice. Thus, it is actually choice that efficiently causes use, but it only does so via command. And this is in keeping with Aquinas’s theory of the will’s self-motion, as discussed in Chapter 4 (Section 4.6). For, as we saw there, the will efficiently causes one volition on the basis of another via an act of judgment. For instance, the will efficiently causes the act of choice on the basis of a volition for an end via the judgment of choice. So far I have argued that choice accounts for the initiation of the act of use by virtually remaining in the act of command. As we have seen, though, the act of use may go on long after the act of command has occurred. For use must guide the entire occurrence of the commanded act. For instance, my command to use my legs to take a walk may occur at t0, but my walk will go on after t0, and this means that my act of use likewise goes on after t0 – after my command has already occurred. Does this mean that choice and command cease to causally influence use after t0? Not at all. For Aquinas maintains, in the passage from Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 1 quoted at the beginning of this section, that just as choice virtually remains in command, so command virtually remains in the act of use. That is to say, my command to use my legs to take a walk can also remain causally present in the performance of my walk even after it (command) has passed. How are we to think of command’s virtual presence in use? We have already seen that command remains in use in the sense that use inherits its form from command. But this is a relation of formal-causal dependence. Virtual remaining, in contrast, has to do with efficient causation, with moving the will to the exercise of its act. I suggest that by virtually remaining in use, command enables choice to virtually remain in use, since it is choice that allows for command to efficiently cause use, as I argued. At least the following passage from Summa contra gentiles III, c. 138 can be read to state that choice virtually remains in the human act, and therefore in the act of use, which is the human act’s component:

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act The volition preceding the [human] act remains virtually in the entire performance of the act and makes it laudable, even if the agent, while executing the act, will not think about the purpose of the volition for the sake of which he initiates the act. For it is not required that someone who undertakes a journey for God’s sake actually think about God during each part of the journey.64

I take it that the “volition preceding the [human] act” referred to here is the act of choice, choice being the last volition preceding the human act, which consists of use and the commanded act. Hence, what Aquinas is saying in this text is that the choice to undertake a journey for God’s sake explains the entire occurrence of the journey by remaining virtually present in it. Once again, it is clear that the event of choice that occurred prior to the journey cannot explain the entire journey while it is going on because the journey may go on long after this event has occurred, and there is no action at a temporal distance. However, the agent’s dispositional commitment to carrying out her choice can continuously influence her act. This commitment explains why the agent does not suddenly abort her journey, for instance. It also explains why, when asked why she is undertaking this journey, she is able to respond: ‘I have chosen to do this for God’s sake.’ Finally, this commitment accounts for the fact that the agent will try to overcome obstacles getting in the way of her pursuit. If there is a roadblock, the agent’s choice to make a journey for God’s sake will lead her to reason about ways to overcome this obstacle. By virtually remaining in the human act via command, choice’s efficient-causal influence on the act of use, then, does not just concern the initiation of use through command, but also its temporally extended occurrence. Until now I have focused on choice as an efficient cause of the volitional act of use, as a cause making use occur and continuously causing its occurrence by remaining virtually in it. However, Aquinas thinks that a volition that virtually remains in another volition also explains the latter volition in another way, namely, in final-causal terms. As he writes in De virtutibus, q. 2, a. 11: Just as the power of the first cause remains in all subsequent causes in efficient causes, so the intention of the principal end virtually remains in all secondary ends. Thus, whoever actually intends some secondary end virtually intends the principal end. For instance, a physician, while he is actually 64

“Voluntas praecedens actum manet virtute in tota prosecutione actus, et ipsum laudabilem reddit, etiam quando de proposito voluntatis propter quod actum incipit, in executione operis non cogitabit: non enim oportet ut qui propter Deum aliquod iter arripit, in qualibet parte itineris de Deo cogitet actu” (SCG III, c. 138, Leon. 14: 416).

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collecting herbs, intends to prepare a drug. Perhaps he does not think about health, yet he virtually intends health because he will prescribe the drug for the sake of health.65

The physician who collects herbs to prepare a drug engages in the volitional act of using his power to collect herbs to prepare a drug. Preparing the drug is his proximate end. However, in pursuing this proximate end, he also intends the remote end of patient health because he intends to prepare the drug to ensure patient health.66 The volition to prepare the drug to ensure patient health is the volitional act prior to the physician’s act of using his power to collect herbs to prepare the drug. This prior volitional act is choice. Hence, the volition to prepare the drug to ensure patient health is the act of choice virtually remaining in the physician’s volitional act of using his power to collect herbs to prepare the drug. What Aquinas is saying, then, is that by remaining virtually present in use, choice also accounts for the fact that the human act displays a certain final-causal order. The human act of collecting herbs is not just ordered to the proximate end that use is directed to, the end of preparing the drug, but also to the remote end of health for the sake of which the agent chose to pursue the proximate end of preparing the drug in the first place. This final-causal ordering that the act of choice endows a human act with is derived from the judgment of choice. For this judgment relates means and ends, as we have seen. What is more, this means–end ordering of the judgment of choice is a free or preferential one, for Aquinas. And this allows us to tell a story of the way in which choice accounts for the freedom of the human act. Choice makes a human act free because it brings it about according to its preferential form, which is derived from the free means– end ordering established by the previous judgment of choice. My act of taking a walk to clear my head, for instance, is free because I could have instead chosen to do something else to clear my head, say, yoga; and I could have instead chosen to do yoga, Aquinas thinks, because I could have freely assented to the precept relating the means of doing yoga to the end of

65

66

“[S]icut in causis efficientibus virtus primae causae manet in omnibus causis sequentibus, ita etiam intentio principalis finis virtute manet in omnibus finibus secundariis; unde quicumque actu intendit aliquem finem secundarium, virtute intendit finem principalem; sicut medicus, dum colligit herbas actu, intendit conficere potionem, nihil fortassis de sanitate cogitans, virtualiter tamen intendit sanitatem, propter quam potionem dat” (De Virt., q. 2, a. 11, ad 2, Bazzi: 782). I do not think that, in the above text, Aquinas uses ‘intention’ in the narrow sense of the means–end relating act preceding choice (ST I-II, q. 12, a. 1, ad 4, Leon. 6: 94). After all, he speaks of a series of nested intentions here instead of just one specific act.

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clearing my head instead of to the precept that I in fact assented to, which relates the means of taking a walk to this end.

6.9

Conclusion

We have now before us Aquinas’s choice-based aetiology as well as his ontology of the human act. To summarize the main results: for Aquinas, a human act is, ontologically, a hylomorphic composite comprising a volition and a commanded power-exercise formally and efficiently caused by said volition. It is explained by choice, which is itself a hylomorphic composite, in terms of efficient and final causation. The final-causal dependence accounts for the freedom of the human act, and it derives from the form of choice inherited from the previous judgment of choice. The human act is efficiently caused by choice not as an occurrent state, but rather as a disposition remaining virtually in the human act. The causal influence of choice guarantees a connection between the human act’s intrinsic means–end relating character, which orders an instrument to the execution of a chosen pursuit, and the means–end relating character of choice itself, which orders the chosen pursuit to a further end. In this way, a human act can display a complex teleological structure, exhibiting a nested hierarchy of means–end relations. Our next task is to flesh out this general theory by considering in detail the two basic types of human acts that Aquinas countenances, namely, bodily and mental ones. Human beings go for walks and do yoga, but they also try to recall things or engage in mental arithmetic. Given Aquinas’s commitment to Act Hylomorphism, both types of human acts must be hylomorphic composites of use and a commanded act. I shall refer to these two types of composites as bodily and mental human acts, respectively, and I shall refer to their component commanded acts as bodily commanded acts and mental commanded acts, respectively. But are there, apart from this general structural similarity, further ontological similarities between these two types of human acts? If so, what are they? Or do these two types of human acts differ in ontological terms? If so, in what ways? And are bodily and mental human acts alike in their aetiological features, for Aquinas, that is, in the way in which they are explained by choice? Or is there a difference here? Chapters 7 and 8 aim to answer these questions.

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chapter 7

The Ontology of Bodily Human Acts

7.1

Introduction

Aquinas does not think that bodily and mental human acts differ in their aetiological features. In the Prima secundae, q. 17, a. 1, he proposes his theory of choice’s virtually remaining in command and command’s virtually remaining in use as a general explanatory theory, one that holds regardless of whether use is conjoined with a bodily or a mental commanded act. The same aetiological story, then, that we considered in connection with the bodily human act of taking a walk in Chapter 6 can be told of mental human acts, such as seeking to recall a piece of information, for Aquinas. To see this more clearly, it is helpful to briefly apply this story to the mental human act of seeking to recall a piece of information.1 Suppose that I want to translate a sentence from Latin into English that contains the word ‘rubeus.’ I have learned this word, but its meaning does not immediately come to mind. I decide to figure out what the word means, and since I have learned it, I resolve not to execute this choice by looking up the word in a dictionary, but rather by applying my memory as best I can to retrieve the word’s meaning. On Aquinas’s aetiological theory, my choice to determine what the word means initiates and sustains the act of applying my memory. What is more, my choice also explains this act’s freedom. It explains the act’s freedom because it freely orders this act rather than the alternative act of using a dictionary to the end of figuring out the word’s meaning. It initiates and sustains the act because it explains why I begin to apply my memory to retrieve the word’s meaning and why I continuously do so until I have finally succeeded or given up. My choice remains virtually present in the act of applying my memory inasmuch as I remain committed to figuring 1

I say more about this process of seeking to retrieve a piece of information at will in Chapter 8.

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out what the word means throughout the act’s entire performance. If asked why I am applying my memory, I will be able to say something like: ‘I want to translate the word “rubeus.” I have learned this word, but its meaning doesn’t come to mind. I am sure it will, though, if I think a bit harder.’ Finally, if I encounter difficulties recalling the word, my choice will dispose me to try to overcome them, say, by asking myself if I created a mnemonic device for the word. Aetiologically, then, there is no difference between mental and bodily human acts, for Aquinas. But on his view, these two types of acts do differ, at least partially, when it comes to their ontological makeup, specifically when it comes to the nature of their respective commanded acts and how they relate to the act of use. It is this partially different but also partially similar ontological makeup of bodily and mental human acts that concerns me in this chapter and Chapter 8. I argue that bodily and mental human acts differ when it comes to what I call their inherential structure. By this, I mean that bodily and mental human acts differ in terms of the bearers in which their respective component acts inhere, whether in the agent performing the human act or in an external patient undergoing the act. Bodily human acts have a heterogeneous inherential structure, as we will see. Use inheres in the agent, whereas the bodily commanded act inheres in a separate patient. In contrast, mental human acts have a homogeneous inherential structure. Use and the mental commanded act both inhere in the agent. Though inherentially distinct, I also examine one important ontological similarity between bodily and mental human acts, namely, one that concerns what I call their durational structure. By this I mean that these two types of acts are alike in terms of how their component acts unfold in time. Specifically, I argue that bodily and mental human acts both have a heterogeneous durational structure, which is to say that, in both types of human acts, use and the commanded act unfold differently in time. To bring out these similarities and differences, I consider bodily human acts in this chapter and then discuss mental human acts in Chapter 8. In this chapter, I first examine the heterogeneous inherential structure of bodily human acts (Sections 7.2–7.3). I then discuss their heterogeneous durational structure (Section 7.4–7.6). Finally, I examine why Aquinas thinks that, despite their considerable heterogeneity, use and the bodily commanded act can yield one human act (Section 7.7).

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7.2 The Distinction between Immanent and Transeunt Acts To discuss the inherential heterogeneity of use and the bodily commanded act, we need to first familiarize ourselves with a distinction of Aquinas’s. This is the distinction between “immanent” and “transeunt” acts (actus manens in agente/actus transiens in materiam exteriorem).2 In this section, I consider how Aquinas understands the distinction in general; in Section 7.3, I show how it applies to use and the bodily commanded act. Here is how Aquinas states the distinction in De potentia, q. 10, a. 1: There is a twofold operation: there is an operation passing from the operating agent into something extrinsic, as heating does from fire into wood, and this operation is not a perfection of the operating agent but of the thing that is operated upon. For fire acquires nothing on account of its heating something. Rather, the thing heated acquires heat. There is another operation that does not pass into something extrinsic, but remains in the agent that operates, for instance, understanding, sensing, willing, and the like.3

The term ‘operation’ that Aquinas employs here is synonymous with ‘act.’ Thus, when he speaks of a “twofold operation,” he has in mind two types of power-exercises. As he tells us in this text, these two power-exercises differ based on whether they occur in the agent or in the patient. An immanent act, such as understanding, sensing, or willing, remains in, and “perfects,” the agent, that is, the being who engages in these mental acts. In contrast, a transeunt act, such as fire’s heating wood, passes into, and “perfects,” an external patient, namely, the entity that is being heated. What does the distinction that Aquinas wishes to draw here amount to? On a standard interpretation, it amounts to a distinction between activities characteristic of living beings, on the one hand, and activities that are not characteristic of living beings, on the other.4 On this reading, all inanimate 2 3

4

The distinction is Aristotelian. The key passage in Aristotle is Met. IX, 8, 1050a25–b4. “Est autem duplex operatio: quaedam quidem transiens ab operante in aliquid extrinsecum, sicut calefactio ab igne in lignum; et haec quidem operatio non est perfectio operantis, sed operati: non enim aliquid acquiritur igni ex hoc quod est calefaciens, sed calefactum acquiritur calor. Alia vero est operatio non transiens in aliquid extrinsecum, sed manens in ipso operante, sicut intelligere, sentire, velle, et huiusmodi” (QDP, q. 10, a. 1, c., Bazzi: 254). For parallel texts, see, e.g., SCG I, c. 53, Leon. 13: 150; SCG I, c. 73, Leon. 13: 213; SCG II, c. 73, Leon. 13: 460; ST I, q. 18, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 4: 228; ST I, q. 27, a. 3, c., Leon. 4: 311; ST I, q. 37, a. 1, ad 2, Leon. 4: 388; ST I, q. 54, a. 2, c. Leon. 5: 45. For this reading, see, e.g., Marianne Therese Miller, “The Problem of Action in the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Physics of Aristotle,” The Modern Schoolman 23, no. 3 (1945–6), 145; Edward Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (London: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 135; David Oderberg, Real Essentialism (New York: Routledge, 2007), 180. For other less committal discussions of the distinction in Aquinas, see, e.g., Alain de Libera, Archéologie du sujet, vol. 3:1 (L’acte de penser: La double révolution) (Paris: Vrin, 2014), 310–30; Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. David B. Burrell (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967),

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power-exercises are transeunt because they begin in one thing but terminate in another, and they perfect this other thing by giving it some property. For instance, heating begins in the fire but terminates in the wood heated, and it perfects the wood by making it hot. Some activities of living beings are, likewise, transeunt, such as procreation or nest building.5 However, on the standard reading, those activities crucial to sustaining the organism are immanent, and these set living beings apart from inanimate ones. Mental acts like sensing or understanding are activities of this kind. They arise and end in the living being, and they benefit it because they give it information about its environment. Similarly, a non-mental vital operation like digestion begins and terminates in the living being, and it perfects the living being by guaranteeing its growth and continued survival. Despite being widely held, the standard interpretation is problematic. In particular, as Marie George has recently shown, the standard account of what it means for an act to be immanent is flawed.6 She shows this in particular for the vital operation of digesting, and it is well to reproduce her argument here before offering an alternative account of what it means for an act to be immanent. On the standard reading, digestion is an immanent act on account of benefiting the living being. But as George points out, Aquinas views digestion as a transeunt act. She adduces the following passage from the Prima secundae, q. 18, a. 2 as evidence: [T]he transformed food is the effect of the nutritive power, but the food that is not yet transformed is related to the nutritive power as the matter with respect to which it operates.7

As this passage indicates, the undigested food is the matter or, as we may also put it, the patient on which the nutritive power operates. Since a transeunt act is one that operates on some patient, this strongly suggests that digestion is transeunt. What is more, Aquinas also tells us here that it is the undigested food, rather than the nutritive power, that undergoes a change in the digestive process. This means that the food, rather than the nutritive power, acquires a new property and so is “perfected” by this

5 6 7

119–24; Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 269–71. For procreation as a transeunt act, see QDP, q. 10, a. 1, c., Bazzi: 254. For nest building, see, e.g., De Ver., q, 24, a. 1, c., Leon. 22, 3, 1: 681, ll. 270–1. See Marie I. George, “On the Meaning of ‘Immanent Activity’ according to Aquinas,” The Thomist 78, no. 4 (2014), 537–55. “[A]limentum transmutatum est effectus nutritivae potentiae, sed alimentum nondum transmutatum comparatur ad potentiam nutritivam sicut materia circa quam operatur” (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 2, ad 3, Leon 6: 128).

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act. In particular, food becomes flesh, according to Aquinas.8 This is another reason speaking in favor of viewing digestion as a transeunt act. It is true that, to be transformed into flesh, the undigested food must be in the living being’s digestive system. But this is a fact about where the undigested food needs to be located in order for the nutritive power to act upon it, and this does not make the food any less a patient external to the nutritive power. It is also true that, once transformed, the food becomes part of the living being and so benefits it by guaranteeing its continued survival.9 But, as George points out, this is a fact about the result of the nutritive power’s operation on the undigested food, not a fact about the operation itself.10 The operation itself does not perfect the agent’s nutritive power but rather the undigested food by transforming it into flesh. As this discussion of digestion helps make clear, Aquinas thinks that an act benefiting an organism can be transeunt. Accordingly, the hallmark of an immanent act cannot be that it benefits an organism, counter to what the standard reading maintains. If this is right, then what is the hallmark of an immanent act, for Aquinas, and how does it differ from a transeunt act? I now suggest that we make sense of these two types of acts in light of Aquinas’s account of the identity of action and passion. To see that the identity of action and passion is relevant here, note first that, in the course of developing his account of action and passion in his commentary on Physics III, Aquinas raises the question as to what bearer the agent’s action inheres in. Does fire’s heating wood inhere in the fire or in the wood? Since action and passion are, on the identity thesis, the same change according to different accounts, Aquinas reasons that action must inhere in whatever bearer the change it is identical to inheres in. Aquinas maintains that the change inheres in the patient rather than in the agent.11 This is because change must be in whatever entity undergoes the change, and the fire that heats the wood does not undergo any change by heating the wood; rather the wood does.12 Accordingly, Aquinas concludes in his Physics commentary, “action is not in the agent, but in the patient.”13 If we now return to the text from De potentia, q. 10, a. 1 quoted at the beginning of this section, we can see that Aquinas uses the very same 8 9 10 11

12 13

See, e.g., QDP, q. 3, a. 4, c., Bazzi: 46 for a statement of this theory. See, e.g., ST I, q. 78, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 252 for the nutritive power’s role for the organism’s conservatio. See George, “On the Meaning,” 544. “[M]overi accidit moventi, et non per se ei competit: unde si aliquid secundum hoc movetur, secundum quod actus eius est motus, sequitur quod motus non sit actus moventis, sed mobilis, non quidem inquantum est movens” (In Phys. III, l. 4, n. 6, Leon. 2: 110). “In quocumque autem est motus, illud movetur” (In Phys. III, l. 5, n. 4, Leon. 2: 112). “[A]ctio non est in agente sed in patiente” (In Phys. III, l. 5, n. 5, Leon. 2: 112).

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argument to explain why heating is a transeunt act. As he writes there, heating is transeunt and so “perfects” something other than the fire because, to quote the salient bit again, “fire acquires nothing on account of its heating something. Rather, the thing heated acquires heat.” In other words, what makes an act transeunt is precisely that it is an action identical to a change occurring in the patient rather than in the agent. What does this mean for immanent acts? My suggestion is that these acts are never identical to changes in a separate patient, for Aquinas.14 Put differently, they are acts to which the identity view of action and passion does not apply. For this reason, they are not borne by a separate patient undergoing a change but rather by the agent itself, and it is in this sense that they “perfect” the agent rather than the patient. Consider an act of understanding for illustration, say, my act of understanding that a cat is a mammal. It is an act of the power of reason, but it is not identical to any change occurring in the cat because nothing happens to the cat by virtue of my thinking about it.15 Similarly, my seeing a rosebush, which is an act of sight, is not identical to any change in the rosebush. The rosebush remains unaltered by my seeing it. The examples of understanding and seeing could suggest that immanent acts must lack, whereas transeunt acts must have results.16 Wood, for instance, becomes hot as a consequence of fire’s heating it. This is the result of the transeunt act of heating. In contrast, no change occurs in the rosebush due to my seeing it, and no change occurs in the cat due to my understanding some biological fact about it. However, if we read the distinction between transeunt and immanent acts in light of action– passion identity, then the distinction turns out to be a subtler one. For as we saw, a transeunt act is not just an act that has a result in a patient. Rather, such an act is the very change that results in the patient thanks to the agent. Heating is not just transeunt because it results in wood’s 14

15

16

On Aquinas’s view, only mental acts fulfill this non-identity criterion. As he writes: “Divina autem actio non potest esse de genere illarum actionum quae non sunt in agente: cum sua actio sit sua substantia, ut supra ostensum est. Oportet igitur quod sit de genere illarum actionum quae sunt in agente et sunt quasi perfectio ipsius. Huiusmodi autem non sunt nisi actiones cognoscentis et appetentis” (SCG II, c. 23, Leon. 13: 324). I owe this reference to Brock, Action and Conduct, 15. Note that the view that only mental acts are immanent was not universally shared by medieval thinkers. Peter Auriol (d. 1322), for instance, writes in his Scriptum I, d. 27, pars 2, a. 2, ed. Friedman, 10. 370–5, that the shining of the light (lucere) and a flower’s flourishing (florere) are immanent acts because they do not produce any external result. “Sed videre et intelligere et huiusmodi actiones, ut in nono huius dicetur, manent in agentibus, et non transeunt in res passas; unde visibile et scibile non patitur aliquid, ex hoc quod intelligitur vel videtur” (In Met. V, l. 17, n. 1027, Cathala: 269). George, “On the Meaning,” 538 suggests this reading.

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becoming hot. Rather, it is transeunt because it is the change of wood’s becoming hot. Conversely, then, an immanent act is not just an act lacking a result. Rather, it must be an act that is not identical to any change occurring in a patient. The act of seeing a rosebush and the act of understanding that cats are mammals satisfy this criterion because they do not result in any changes whatsoever. But as we will see in Section 7.3, when discussing the act of use, an immanent act can also satisfy this criterion if it results in a change, provided that it is not identical to that change.

7.3

Immanent and Transeunt Acts as Components of the Human Act

Section 7.2 offered a general account of the immanent/transeunt act distinction in Aquinas in light of action–passion identity. The goal of this section is to apply this distinction to the components of the bodily human act. I begin with a discussion of bodily commanded acts, which I take to be transeunt, and I then consider use, which is immanent. In a number of texts, Aquinas adduces bodily commanded acts as examples of transeunt acts. In his commentary on Nicomachean Ethics I, for instance, he first states the distinction between immanent and transeunt acts and then adduces building (aedificare) and playing the kithara (citharizare) as examples of the latter type of act.17 In his commentary on Metaphysics IX, he again states the distinction and then provides weaving as an example of a transeunt act.18 Initially, it may seem problematic to characterize bodily commanded acts as transeunt. After all, on the account of transeunt acts offered in Section 7.2, this means that bodily commanded acts are actions operating on some patient. But in Chapter 6 (Section 6.4) I argued that commanded acts are passions rather than actions, with use being the action causing the commanded act. For instance, I described the commanded act of walking as the passion of the legs’ movingI as a consequence of my will’s action of movingT them. If this is right, then how can a bodily commanded act also be an action? 17

18

See In Eth. I, c. 1, Leon. 47, 1: 6, ll. 193–204; SCG II, c. 1, Leon. 13: 271; ST I-II, q. 57, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 367. One might object here that we need not take an active term like ‘aedificare’ to refer to the commanded act. It could also refer to the whole hylomorphic composite of building a house, comprising use and the relevant commanded act. However, as we will see later in this section, there is good reason to think that Aquinas does not take the hylomorphic human act as a whole to be transeunt. One component of this composite, namely, use, is immanent. In Met. IX, l. 8, nn. 1864–5, Cathala: 447–8.

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Fortunately, the answer is not hard to come by. For Aquinas, a bodily commanded act is an action in one respect and a passion in another. It is a passion insofar as it is caused by use, but it is an action with respect to another patient. To see what the other patient is, we need to shed light on the power that is exercised in bodily commanded acts. Aquinas espouses a simple theory here. He holds that every bodily commanded act is an exercise of one and the same power, namely, what he refers to as the “motive power” (vis motiva), this being the power to move our body. As he puts this point in Summa contra gentiles III, c. 10: There is an executive power, namely, the motive power, by which the parts of the body are moved to execute the command of the will. Thus, this power is moved by the will.19

The commanded acts of walking, grasping objects, or speaking, then, are all exercises of one and the same motive power because they all involve some part of the body being moved at will.20 In his Quaestiones de anima, q. 10, Aquinas writes that the motive power is housed “in a part of the body, namely, the heart, and by this part it moves the whole body.”21 So, when an agent uses certain parts of her body at will, such as her hand to grasp objects or her legs to move forward, then her will first of all activates the motive power in the heart, and this power then moves the requisite parts of the body, such as the hand or the legs. Unlike his teacher, Albert the Great, Aquinas shows little interest in offering a physiological story of how the motive power as located in the heart moves other parts of the body, such as our limbs. Following a tradition going back to Aristotle and Galen, Aquinas does indicate in the Prima pars, q. 76, a. 7 that this happens through so-called “vital spirits” (spiritus vitales), which, in De malo, q. 16, a. 1, he describes as “aerial bodies” (corpora aerea), that is, I take it, as gases of sorts.22 But 19

20 21 22

“[E]st virtus executiva, scilicet vis motiva, qua moventur membra ad exequendum imperium voluntatis. Unde haec vis a voluntate movetur” (SCG III, c. 10, Leon. 14: 27). See also ST I, q. 75, a. 3, ad 3, Leon. 5: 200. “[A]mbulare et loqui . . . a voluntate imperantur mediante potentia motiva” (ST I-II, q. 6, a. 4, c., Leon. 6: 59). “[P]rincipium enim motus corporis est in aliqua parte corporis, scilicet in corde; et per illam partem movet totum corpus” (QDA, a. 10, ad 4, Leon. 24, 1: 92, ll. 303–6). “Et primum instrumentum virtutis motivae est spiritus” (ST I, q. 76, a. 7, ad 1, Leon. 5: 231); “[C]omparatur anima ad corpus animatum ut motor; et in hac comparatione cadit medium corpus aereum, id est spiritus, inter animam et corpus animatum” (DM, q. 16, a. 1, ad 5, Leon. 23: 284, ll. 418–22). The corresponding Greek term is ‘pneuma.’ For a discussion of Aristotle’s theory, see, e.g.,

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exactly how these gases transmit the heart’s movement to the limbs, he does not tell us.23 What Aquinas does make clear – and this is important for our purposes here – is that the exercise of the motive power as housed in the heart and the subsequent movement of a limb relate to one another as movementT and movementI. As Aquinas writes in the Prima pars, q. 76, a. 4, “the soul through the motive power is the moving part, and the animated body is the moved part.”24 This is significant because it allows us to see how a bodily commanded act can be characterized both as an action and a passion, for Aquinas. It is a passion because it is an act of the motive power as housed in the heart caused by the volitional act of use. However, this passion that occurs in the heart is an action with respect to the part of the body moved by the motive power, such as a limb. And this action is transeunt. For it operates on something different, namely, another part of the body, and it thereby “perfects” that other part rather than itself. By causing the change of movingI forward in my legs, for instance, the motive power in my heart does not moveI forward. The legs undergo this change. Given Aquinas’s identity view, an agent’s transeunt action is identical to the change occurring in the patient. Accordingly, the motive power’s movementT of the limbs must be the same change as the limbs’ movingI. Thus, the action of the motive power and the passion of the part of the body moved by the motive power are one and the same change, albeit according to different accounts. But this is not yet the whole story. For, on Aquinas’s view, the movementI of a limb caused by the motive power also causes a change in a patient external to it. Consider the bodily commanded act of building for illustration. It involves a series of coordinated movementsI of the builder’s bodily extremities caused by her motive power. But these movementsI in turn moveT some entity external to them, namely, the building materials that the builder arranges into a house. Given the identity view of action and passion, the builder’s movementsT of the building materials are identical to the change that the building materials undergo, namely, the change of being

23

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Klaus Corcilius and Pavel Gregoric, “Aristotle’s Model of Animal Motion,” Phronesis 58, no. 1 (2013), 68–72. For a discussion of the Galenic account, see, e.g., Julia Trompeter, “The Actions of Spirit and Appetite: Voluntary Motion in Galen,” Phronesis 63, no. 2 (2018), 193–8. For a discussion of the reception of the Aristotelico-Galenic view in medieval medical thought, see, e.g., James J. Bono, “Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life,” Traditio 40 (1984), 92–6. Albert, in contrast, is quite specific, arguing that the heart transmits the spirits through a kind of pulsating motion: “Spiritus vero vitalis secundum omnes Philosophos a corde oritur, et per arterias pulsando per totum corpus dirigitur” (De spir. et respir. I, t. 2, c. 3, ed. Borgnet 9: 235b). “[A]nima secundum vim motivam sit pars movens, et corpus animatum sit pars mota” (ST I, q. 76, a. 4, ad 2, Leon. 5: 224).

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arranged into a house. As Aquinas puts this point in his commentary on Metaphysics IX, 8, for instance: “building exists in what is built.”25 Many bodily commanded acts are like building in that they involve an external patient movedT by the agent’s bodily extremities. To use just two further examples: in the commanded act of cutting, the material cut is movedT by the agent’s bodily extremities and some cutting utensil; and in the commanded act of weaving a garment, the fabric is, similarly, movedT by the agent’s bodily extremities.26 But are all bodily commanded acts like this? What about bodily commanded acts that do not seem to result in any product, such as raising one’s arm? Does the arm’s going up moveT any patient external to it? As far as I know, Aquinas does not discuss this question. But in my view, he should say that even an act like raising one’s arm affects some external patient. After all, because my arm goes up, the position of certain molecules in the air is altered, and it seems to me that there is no bodily commanded act that does not at least affect external matter in some such way. Accordingly, every bodily commanded act involves an external patient movedT by the agent’s bodily extremities. But Aquinas would no doubt want to draw a distinction here. Transeunt acts, such as weaving or building, are the intentional movingsT of some external patient. Weaving is the intentional altering of some fabric, and building is the intentional altering of some building materials. In contrast, raising one’s arm is not (usually) the intentional altering of the position of molecules in the air. In De potentia, q. 3, a. 6, Aquinas calls an agent who brings about an effect without intending to do so a “per accidens cause” of this effect.27 For instance, to use his example, a person who digs a grave and happens to find a treasure is a per accidens cause of finding the treasure.28 In contrast, an agent who brings about an effect that she intends to bring about is a per se cause of this effect.29 For example, the sculptor is the per se 25

26 27

28 29

“[A]ctio talium potentiarum est in facto, et actus facti, ut aedificatio in aedificato, et contextio in contexto, et universaliter motus in moto” (In Met. IX, l. 8, nn. 1864–5, Cathala: 447–8, translated bit in italics). For the example of weaving, see the text in n. 25. For the example of cutting, see, e.g., ST I, q. 18, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 4: 228. “[A]liquid operatur ad effectum; sed dicitur causa eius per accidens, quia praeter intentionem ille effectus a tali causa sequitur; sicut patet in eo qui fodiendo sepulcrum, invenit thesaurum” (QDP, q. 3, a. 6, ad 6, Bazzi: 53). See ibid. “Sicut enim effectus per se causae naturalis est quod consequitur secundum exigentiam suae formae, ita effectus causae agentis a proposito est illud quod accidit ex intentione agentis: unde quidquid provenit in effectu praeter intentionem, est per accidens” (In Phys. II, l. 8, n. 8, Leon. 2: 80). As this passage makes clear, the per se/per accidens cause distinction not only applies to the realm of voluntary agency, but also to the natural realm. In the natural realm, a per se cause is one that brings about an effect directly related to its form (secundum exigentiam suae formae), whereas a per

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cause of the sculpture that she produces, Aquinas writes in his commentary on Physics II.30 Thus, for Aquinas, raising one’s arm would count as a transeunt act that affects its external patient only per accidens, whereas building or weaving would qualify as transeunt acts that affect their respective patients per se. As we can see, then, bodily commanded acts are, in effect, doubly transeunt, for Aquinas. First, they involve the motive power’s transeunt act, which affects some part of the body; and second, they involve a transeunt act of that part of the body affecting some external matter, whether per se or per accidens. As we may put it, according to Aquinas, bodily commanded acts are transeunt in a body-internal sense, involving a part of the agent’s body as a patient, as well as in a body-external sense, involving some external patient. Given the identity view of action and passion, these are not to be viewed as two distinct transeunt acts, however. As I have argued, the action of the motive power is identical to the change occurring in the part of the body that it affects, and this change occurring in some part of the body is in turn an action identical to a change occurring in some external patient. In the case of building, for example, the action of the motive power is identical to a series of movementsI of the builder’s limbs. But these movementsI also act on the building materials by shaping them into a house, and they are identical to the change that the building materials undergo when they are being shaped into a house, as we have seen. By the transitivity of identity, it follows that these are all one and the same change. A bodily commanded act, then, is not doubly transeunt in the sense of involving two numerically distinct actions. Rather, it is doubly transeunt because it involves two distinct parts or phases of one and the same action, the first being internal to the agent’s body, and the second affecting some patient external to the body. So much for the transeunt nature of the bodily commanded act. Our next task is to examine the immanent nature of the act of use. Aquinas nowhere states expressis verbis that use is an immanent act. However, in the following passage from the Prima secundae, q. 74, a. 1, he tells us that all cognitive strivings studied by the moral philosopher are immanent, these being acts of the will as well as sensory strivings:

30

accidens cause brings about an effect that bears no such direct relation to its form. For example, Aquinas thinks that the fire that heats the water in the kettle is the per se cause of the steam’s rising. Given its form, fire is a light element that tends to move upwards, and it bestows this feature of lightness upon the steam that it produces. In contrast, the person who removes the lid from the kettle and so allows the steam to rise bestows no feature characteristic of her form on the steam. She just removes an impediment preventing the steam from its upward motion. See In Phys. VIII, l. 8, n. 7, Leon. 2: 392–3. “[P]er se autem causa statuae est faciens statuam” (In Phys. II, l. 6, n. 4, Leon. 2: 73).

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Since use is an act of the will studied by the moral philosopher, we may infer that it is immanent, too, for Aquinas. However, use is a rather peculiar immanent act. To see this, recall the immanent acts of understanding and seeing considered in Section 7.2. Neither act causes a change in an external patient. My act of understanding that cats are mammals does not cause a change in a cat. Similarly, my seeing a rosebush does not cause a change in the rosebush. Use is unlike both of these acts because it does cause a change in a patient. When I use my motive power to move my legs, for instance, the act of use causes a change in my body, in particular, in my heart, which houses the motive power. But this does not compromise use’s immanent character, I maintain.32 For, as I argued in Section 7.2, Aquinas’s criterion for being an immanent act is not simply the absence of a result. On his view, for an act to be immanent it must be an act that is not identical to any change occurring in a patient. Understanding and seeing satisfy this criterion by lacking a result altogether. But use also satisfies this criterion because, although it does result in a change, it is not identical to the change that results from it. It is not identical to the change that results from it because, as we saw in Chapter 1 (Section 1.3), use is a non-bodily mental act and so must be distinct from the bodily act that it causes. My view is, then, that, for Aquinas, use is what we might call a productive immanent act. To my knowledge, Aquinas nowhere discusses immanent acts of this kind. However, one of his earliest followers, Thomas of Sutton (d. 1316), did, and his account seems to me instructive for understanding use in Aquinas. In his Quaestio ordinaria 25, Sutton considers the act of command, which, on his view, causes the commanded act and so plays the role that use plays in Aquinas. As Sutton writes: 31 32

“Quidam vero actus sunt non transeuntes in exteriorem materiam, sed manentes in agente, sicut appetere et cognoscere, et tales actus sunt omnes actus morales” (ST I-II, q. 74, a. 1, c., Leon. 7: 35). Brock, Action and Conduct, 175 suggests that use is a transeunt act because it is productive. But if I understand him correctly, he thinks that use is also an immanent act. Thus, on his view, use is both immanent and transeunt. I do not find this plausible. Aquinas’s characterization of immanent and transeunt acts strongly suggests that they are two mutually exclusive types of acts. Immanent acts occur in the agent, whereas transeunt acts occur in the patient, and nothing can occur both in the agent and in the patient, since that would imply that an accident could exist in two bearers at once.

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For command is an operation of reason, and it remains in reason as its subject. Nevertheless, an operation is left behind in another power of the soul or a change in a part of the body, such as in the hand, the eye, or the foot.33

Note the terminology here. Command “leaves behind” (derelinquit) an operation in another power. Yet it “remains” in reason. That is, command has a change in another power as its result, but it is not therefore an act of that other power. It is not an act of that other power, Sutton presumably thinks, because command is not identical to any physical change that it causes. If my account of use in Aquinas is correct, then what Sutton says here about command also applies to use. For Aquinas, use is productive, but because it is not identical to any bodily change that it causes, it remains within the agent, in particular, her soul qua housing the will. Therefore, it is an immanent act.34 Let us now put together the results gained in this section and see what picture of the bodily human act emerges. Since such an act is a hylomorphic composite of use and the bodily commanded act, we can see that it must have what I have called a heterogeneous inherential structure. The component act of use inheres in the agent, in particular in the soul, even though it has a result in a patient, namely, the body. In contrast, the bodily commanded act that results from use comes to inhere in a separate patient. As we have seen, this latter act takes its starting point in the agent’s motive power; it then comes to exist in some bodily extremity movedI by this power; and from there it proceeds to finally inhere in some external patient movedT by the bodily extremity (whether per se or per accidens). In short, then, the hylomorphic composite of the bodily human act does not have a unitary bearer, for Aquinas. Rather, one part of it is rooted in the human agent, in particular her soul, while the other part exists in the corporeal domain and ultimately in some patient external to the agent. A bodily human act is, thus, a dual citizen, as it were: it exists in the nonphysical as well as in the physical world. Figure 7.1 serves as an illustration. 33

34

“Imperium enim est operatio rationis et manet in ratione sicut in subiecto, sed tamen derelinquitur in alia potentia animae aliqua operatio vel aliquis motus in membro ut in manu vel oculo vel pede” (Thomas of Sutton, Quaestio ordinaria 25, resp., in Thomas of Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae, ed. Johannes Schneider (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1977), 700). In his commentary on the Summa contra gentiles, the Renaissance Thomist Sylvester of Ferrara (1474–1528) makes a similar point regarding God’s action of creation. He writes that, in a loose sense, this action can be called “transeunt,” on account of having an external result, the created world. However, properly speaking, creation is immanent, he argues, because it does not inhere in the world: “Unde [creatio] potest dici actio transiens productive quia habet terminum extrinsecum productum: non autem subiective, quod est proprie esse actionem transeuntem, quia non recipitur in aliquo extrinseco subiecto, sed remanet in agente” (Sylvester of Ferrara, In II Contra Gentiles, 16, no. 6, sect. 3, Leon. 14: 302). I owe this reference to Miller, “The Problem of Action,” 163.

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Soul

Bodily extremities

Bodily commanded act

External patient

Figure 7.1 The bodily human act and its two bearers

In Figure 7.1, the horizontal, striped arrow connecting the soul to the heart, which houses the motive power, represents the act of use. The dotted arc connecting use with the soul indicates that use inheres in the soul. The two vertical arrows, the first connecting the heart with the bodily extremities, the second connecting the extremities with an external patient, represent the two phases of the bodily commanded act, the body-internal and the body-external one. The dotted arc connecting the bodily commanded act with the external patient indicates that the commanded act (ultimately) inheres in the patient.

7.4 The Distinction between Complete and Incomplete Acts The inherential difference between use and the bodily commanded act is one respect in which the components of the bodily human act are heterogeneous. But there is also a second respect. On Aquinas’s view, use and the bodily commanded act also differ in the way in which they relate to time. To see this, we need to examine another distinction of Aquinas’s, namely, that between “acts of what is incomplete” (actus imperfecti) and “acts of what is complete” (actus perfecti) or incomplete and complete acts, as I will call them for short.35 35

See, e.g., In Sent. I, d. 37, q. 4, a. 1, ad 1, Mandonnet: 881; In Sent. III, d. 35, q. 1, a. 2, sol. 1, ad 2, Moos: 1178; De Ver., q. 4, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 22, 1, 2: 120, ll. 229–36; De Ver., q. 24, a. 1, ad 14, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 682–3, ll. 433–61; SCG I, c. 13, Leon. 13: 31; SCG II, c. 60, Leon. 13: 421; In DA III, c. 6, Leon. 45,

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Aquinas provides a succinct formulation of this distinction in the Tertia pars, q. 34, a. 2: [A]n operation of the intellect and the will is immediately completed and in an instant . . . because neither understanding nor willing, nor sensing is a change that is an act of what is incomplete, which is completed successively. Rather, it is an act of what is already complete.36

As this text makes clear, incomplete acts are successive, whereas complete acts are instantaneous. That is to say, incomplete acts require time to be completed, whereas complete acts do not. Before discussing this distinction in detail (Sections 7.5–7.6), I want to clarify how it relates to the distinction between immanent and transeunt acts. The text just quoted could suggest that complete acts are equivalent to immanent acts because Aquinas adduces understanding, sensing, and willing as examples of complete acts, and these are also his examples of immanent acts, as we saw in Section 7.2. Other texts of Aquinas’s could also suggest that the notion of an incomplete act is equivalent to that of a transeunt act. For instance, in his commentary on Physics III, Aquinas writes that heating and building are incomplete acts, and these are also two of his examples of transeunt acts, as we saw.37

36

37

1: 229–30, ll. 5–36; ST I, q. 18, a. 1, c., Leon. 4: 225; ST I, q. 58, a. 1, ad 1, Leon. 5: 80; ST I, q. 105, a. 3, c., Leon. 5: 473; ST I-II, q. 31, a. 5, c., Leon. 6: 219; ST II-II, q. 179, a. 1, ad 3, Leon. 10: 421; ST II-II, q. 180, a. 6, c., Leon. 10: 430. There are not many discussions of this distinction in Aquinas. The only ones I have found are in Miller, “The Problem of Action,” 153–62; Lonergan, Verbum, 101–7. Neither is very detailed. “Subito enim et in instanti perficitur operatio intellectus et voluntatis . . . eo quod intelligere, velle et sentire non est motus qui sit actus imperfecti, quod successive perficitur; sed est actus iam perfecti” (ST III, q. 34, a. 2, c., Leon. 11: 347–8). Aquinas also inherits this distinction from Aristotle, in particular from DA III, 7, 431a4–7. Aristotle there distinguishes a kinēsis (change) that he describes, in keeping with Phys. III, 2, 201b31, as an “atelēs energeia” (incomplete act) from a kind of kinēsis that he calls an “energeia tou tetelesmenou” (act of what is complete). Anyone familiar with this distinction in Aristotle will likely wonder whether Aquinas also deals with what has come to be another, if not the, stock passage for this distinction in Aristotle, namely, Met. IX, 6, 1048b18–35. Unfortunately, this latter passage was not available to Aquinas because it was omitted in the Moerbeke translation of the Metaphysics as well as in the other translations of this text available to Aquinas. The reason why this passage was omitted is that the Latin translators of Aristotle’s Metaphysics consulted the Metaphysics according to manuscripts J (ninth century) and E (tenth century), which belong to the α tradition. It is, however, only in manuscripts of an independent β tradition that Met. IX, 6, 1048b18–35 appears. See Stephen Makin, Aristotle: Metaphysics, Book Θ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006) 150 for this point. For a detailed discussion of the Aristotelian passage, see Myles F. Burnyeat, “Kinēsis vs. Energeia: A Much-Read Passage in (but Not of) Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34 (2008): 219–92. For heating, see In Phys. III, l. 2, n. 5, Leon. 2: 106. For building, see In Phys. III, l. 3, n. 2, Leon. 2: 108.

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We must not be misled by this overlap of examples, however. For upon closer inspection it is clear that Aquinas does not view ‘immanent’ and ‘complete act,’ on the one hand, and ‘transeunt’ and ‘incomplete act,’ on the other, as coextensive terms. As the above text from the Tertia pars, q. 34 already indicates, Aquinas only applies the term ‘complete act’ to instantaneous acts. In another text, his Sentences commentary IV, d. 17, he even explicitly rules out that mental processes involving what he calls “a discursive movement from one thought to the other,” that is, a temporal sequence of thoughts are complete acts.38 In other words, Aquinas means to withhold the label ‘complete act’ from such mental operations as deliberation or, more generally, inference. But Aquinas does not similarly restrict the term ‘immanent act’ to instantaneous acts. In fact, in his proem to his commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, he cites deliberation (consiliari) as an example of an immanent act.39 So, while complete acts are instantaneous, immanent acts may be either instantaneous or successive, for Aquinas. That is, they may be either complete or incomplete. For Aquinas, a transeunt act may, likewise, be either incomplete or complete. Transeunt acts, such as building or heating, are examples of acts that take time to be completed and so are incomplete. But according to Aquinas, illumination, for instance, is also a transeunt act. It perfects not the illuminating agent but whatever thing is illuminated, and it is completed instantaneously, which means that it is a complete act.40 Rather than being equivalent, then, the distinction between complete and incomplete acts and the distinction between immanent and transeunt acts are cross-cutting ones, for Aquinas, as Table 7.1 indicates.

38

39

40

“Alius motus est actus perfecti, qui magis operatio dicitur, qui non expectat aliquid in futurum ad complementum suae speciei, sicut sentire; et talis motus non est successivus, sed subitus . . . et talis motus est motus liberi arbitrii, de quo loquimur; et ideo est in instanti. Secus autem esset, si esset motus collativus; quia tunc non posset esse in instanti, propter discursum de uno in aliud” (In Sent. IV, d. 17, q. 1, a. 5, ad q. 3, ad 1, Moos: 853–4, translated bit in italics). I return to this passage in Section 7.5. For the notion of ‘discursus,’ whose minimal meaning here is that of a temporal sequence of thoughts, see, e.g., ST I, q. 13, a. 5, c., Leon. 4: 179. “[Q]uaedam vero operetur per modum actionis operatione manente in eo qui operatur, sicut est consiliari, eligere, velle et huiusmodi quae ad moralem scientiam pertinent” (In Pol., Pr., Leon. 48: A 70, ll. 85–8). See In Phys. VI, l. 5, nn. 12–13, Leon. 2: 285.

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Table 7.1 Immanent/transeunt acts and incomplete/complete acts Act types

Incomplete acts

Complete acts

Immanent acts Transeunt acts

Deliberation Heating, building a house

Understanding, willing Illumination

7.5 Incomplete Acts: Power and Mereology Having clarified its relation to the immanent/transeunt act distinction, it is time to examine the complete/incomplete act distinction more closely. How are we to understand the notions of ‘completeness’ and ‘incompleteness’ that the distinction operates with? In what sense is an instantaneous act complete, whereas a successive act is incomplete? To answer these questions, the following passage from Aquinas’s Sentences commentary IV, d. 17 will provide a useful starting point. Aquinas writes: ‘[C]hange’ is spoken of in two ways, as is clear in book III of De anima. For there is a kind of change that is the act of what is incomplete because it is the coming forth from potency to act. And such a change has to be successive, for it always requires something in the future to complete its species . . . An altogether different change is an act of what is complete . . . which does not require something in the future to complete its species, such as sensing; and such a change is not successive but rather instantaneous; and if it were to be said that such a change were in time, this would be per accidens because it is also measured by any given instant of that time in which it is said to be.41

This passage is rich and will require unpacking over the course of this section and Section 7.6. But we can already state the main idea contained in it. Aquinas thinks that complete and incomplete acts are two types of changes, and that we can distinguish between them on the basis of how they relate to the future. An incomplete act is “incomplete” because, when it occurs, it is not yet completed. Rather, when it occurs, some additional change in the future needs to occur in order for it to be completed. This is why an incomplete act takes time to be completed. I will refer to this 41

“[M]otus dupliciter dicitur, ut patet in III De an. Est enim quidam motus qui est actus imperfecti, quia est exitus de potentia in actum. Et talis oportet quod sit successivus quia semper expectat aliquid in futurum ad perfectionem suae speciei . . . Alius motus est actus perfecti . . . qui non expectat aliquid in futurum ad complementum suae speciei, sicut sentire. Et talis motus non est successivus, sed subitus. Et si contingat dici quod talis motus sit in tempore, hoc erit per accidens, quia mensuratur etiam quolibet instanti illius temporis in quo dicitur esse” (In Sent. IV, d. 17, q. 1, a. 5, ad q. 3, ad 1, Moos: 853–4).

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dependence on additional change in the future as the future-dependence of incomplete acts. Complete acts are not future-dependent in this way. Instead, they are future-independent, as we might put it. A complete act is “complete” because, when it occurs, no further change in the future needs to occur in order for it to be completed. Rather, such an act is immediately completed when it occurs, and this makes it instantaneous. However, Aquinas adds that such an act may in principle go on for a time accidentally, though, if it does, it is completed in every instant of the time period during which it is going on. Let us now flesh out these features of future-dependence and futureindependence so as to bring the distinction between incomplete and complete acts to bear on the durational structure of use and the bodily commanded act. In the remainder of this section, I discuss the future-dependence of incomplete acts, and I apply it to bodily commanded acts, which are incomplete, as we will see. In Section 7.6, I examine the future-independence of complete acts and consider the act of use, which is complete. To adequately understand the future-dependence of incomplete acts, we need to turn to Aquinas’s definition of incomplete acts. Here Aquinas follows Aristotle, who, in Physics III, identifies an incomplete act with what he calls a “motion” (kinēsis/motus), which he defines as “an act of what exists in potency insofar as it is in potency.”42 How does Aquinas understand this definition? He thinks that the entity existing in potency referred to in the definiens is the patient undergoing the motion rather than the agent causing it.43 Specifically, it is the patient as endowed with a certain passive power. So, for instance, on Aquinas’s view, building is a motion, and it is the act of the building materials that are being shaped into a house insofar as they have a certain passive power. A passive power for what? 42

43

See Phys. III, 1, 201a10–11. Here is a statement of the definition in Aquinas: “[M]otus dupliciter dicitur. Uno modo, qui est actus imperfecti, scilicet existentis in potentia, inquantum huiusmodi, et talis motus est successivus, et in tempore. Alius autem motus est actus perfecti, idest existentis in actu” (ST I-II, q. 31, a. 2, ad 1, Leon. 6: 216). A remark about terminology: for Aristotle and Aquinas, ‘kinēsis’ and ‘motus’ can both be translated more broadly as ‘change.’ But in Physics III Aristotle only employs ‘kinēsis’ to designate a certain kind of change, specifically a successive as opposed to an instantaneous one, and Aquinas follows suit. To avoid confusion, Aquinas clarifies in De Ver., q. 24, a. 1, ad 14, Leon. 22, 3, 1: 682–3, ll. 433–6 that there are two senses of ‘motus.’ There is ‘motus’ in the proper sense (proprie), which only applies to successive changes, and there is ‘motus’ in a broad (large) sense, which denotes any kind of change, including instantaneous ones. I use ‘motion’ to translate ‘motus’ in the narrow sense, and I use ‘change’ to translate ‘motus’ in the broad sense. “[M]otus non sit alicuius inquantum est movens, sed inquantum est mobile et ideo in definitione motus positum est, quod est actus mobilis inquantum est mobile” (In Phys. III, l. 4, n. 6, Leon. 2: 110).

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Like commentators of Aristotle today, Aquinas thinks that there are two ways in which this power can be specified.44 The Aristotelian definition could be taken to state that motion is an act of the patient insofar as it has the passive power to be moved to the end state. Alternatively, it could be taken to mean that motion is the act of the patient insofar as it has the passive power to be in the end state, not to be moved to it. So, building could be either understood as the act of the building materials insofar as they are in potency to being built into a house or insofar as they are in potency to being a finished house. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics XI, 9, Aquinas favors the former interpretation. He writes: [Something] is not reduced to actuality through motion insofar as it is in potency to the end state of motion . . . Through motion something is only reduced to actuality from the power that is signified when it is said that something is movable, that is, that this something has the power to be moved.45

The fact that Aquinas takes motion to be the act of the power to be moved is significant because, as we will see presently, it is this power that accounts for motion’s characteristic feature of incompleteness or futuredependence, on his view. Aquinas makes this clear slightly later in his commentary on Metaphysics XI, 9. He writes: The power which was to be moved is taken away by motion, but not completely. For that which is now moved is in potency to being moved. For everything that is moved will be moved due to the division of continuous motion . . . Thus, it follows that motion is the act of what exists in potency, and for this reason it is an incomplete act and an act of what is incomplete.46 44 45

46

For a helpful summary of the contemporary debate, see, e.g., James Kostman, “Aristotle’s Definition of Change,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 4, no. 1 (1987), 3–6. “Neque etiam reducitur ad actum per motum, secundum quod est in potentia ad terminum motus . . . Sed solum per motum reducitur aliquid de potentia in actum, de illa potentia quae significatur cum dicitur aliquid esse mobile, idest potens moveri” (In Met. XI, l. 9, n. 2295, Cathala: 595). For a detailed discussion of this passage, see my “Mind over Matter: Aquinas’s Transformation of Aristotle’s Definition of ‘Change’,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 82 (2015): 45–68. For other discussions of the definition of motion in Aquinas, see, e.g., Anneliese Maier, “Motus est Actus Entis in Potentia . . .,” in Maier, Zwischen Philosophie und Mechanik: Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholastik (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1958), 31–5; Brock, Action and Conduct, 76–7. “[P]otentia quae erat ad moveri tollitur per motum; et tamen non totaliter, quia id quod movetur adhuc in potentia est ad moveri, quia omne quod movetur movebitur propter divisionem motus continui . . . Unde relinquitur, quod motus est actus existentis in potentia: et sic est actus imperfectus et imperfecti” (In Met. XI, l. 9, n. 2305, Cathala: 546).

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As this text tells us, when motion occurs, then the power to be moved is actualized, but this actualization is incomplete because the patient whose power is so actualized is still in potency to further motion. Consider building again. When it occurs, the passive power of the building materials to be fashioned into a house is actualized. But when this power is actualized it is not yet true to say that the house has been built. Otherwise it would no longer be true to say that the materials are presently being fashioned into a house. But this means that when the power to be fashioned into a house is actualized, further fashioning in the future needs to be done in order for the completed house to stand. This further fashioning is, like the fashioning that presently occurs, an actualization of the power to be built into a house. Accordingly, when the power to be built into a house is being actualized, there is more of this power that can, and indeed needs to, be actualized in the future in order for the house to be finished. This is why Aquinas writes in the above text that the power to be moved, when actualized, is “not completely” (non totaliter) taken away. A motion, then, is future-dependent because when it occurs, there is some unactualized potency to be moved that remains in the thing moved. Suppose now that this potency to be moved that is presently unactualized becomes actualized. Does this complete the motion? The answer is ‘no.’ Let us return to building. When some currently unactualized potency of the building materials to be fashioned into a house is actualized, then it will also be true to say that the building materials are being fashioned into a house. But then it will also not yet be true to say that the house has been completed, which means that there is still more building to be done. Accordingly, Aquinas concludes in the above text that “everything that is moved will be moved due to the division of continuous motion.” In other words, any present phase of motion points to an additional future phase, and this future phase points to yet another future phase, and so on ad infinitum. This infinity of phases is not an actual but rather a potential one, Aquinas thinks.47 That is to say, the infinitely many phases do not exist all at once (simul).48 Rather, they exist successively, that is, one after 47

48

“[I]n motu continuo est accipere infinita quaedam in potentia” (ST I, q. 53, a. 2, c., Leon. 5: 33). For Aquinas the infinity of future phases entails that there is no last instant in which motion occurs. There is, however, a first instant in which the end state obtains, on his view. For this (Aristotelian) view of first and last instants, see In Phys. VIII, l. 17, nn. 8–11, Leon. 2: 431–2. “Dupliciter enim invenitur aliquid in potentia. Uno modo sic quod totum potest reduci in actum, sicut possibile est hoc aes esse statuam, quod aliquando erit statua; non autem sic dicitur esse infinitum in potentia, quod postea totum sit in actu. Alio modo aliquid dicitur in potentia esse, quod postea fit actu ens, non quidem totum simul, sed successive. Multipliciter enim dicitur aliquid

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another. In other words, only one phase is actual at a time. How are we to conceive of such a phase? Aquinas thinks that it is itself a kind of motion and that it differs in kind from any other phase of the overarching motion that it is a part of as well as from the overarching motion itself. As he writes in his commentary on Nicomachean Ethics X: The art of building completes its operation when it completes what is intended, that is, the house, and it does this in a whole determinate time span in whose parts all generations are incomplete and differ in species from the completed whole generation and also from one another. The reason for this is that generation receives its species according to the form that is the end of the generation. It is clear, however, that the form of the whole is one thing and the forms of the singular parts are something else. Therefore, the generations differ specifically from one another. For, if a temple is built during some determinate time span, then during one part of this time span the stones are put together so as to erect a wall. During another part of this time the columns are sculpted . . . But in the whole time span the temple is being built. And these three things differ in species: the putting together of the stones, the sculpting of the columns, and the erecting of the temple . . . Thus, it is clear that the aforementioned generations of the whole and the parts differ in species, and that we cannot hold that the species of motion is completed at any given moment, but rather that it is completed in the entire time span.49

Suppose that a builder starts to build a temple on January 1, 2020 and completes it on December 31 of the same year. It is not true to say that the builder has completed the temple during any part of the year prior to December 31. Rather, he has completed a part of it, say, the erecting of a wall.50 And as this text tells us, referring to motion as a “generation,” this

49

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esse: vel quia totum est simul, ut homo et domus; vel quia semper una pars eius fit post aliam, per quem modum dicitur esse dies et ludus agonalis” (In Phys. III, l. 10, n. 4, Leon 2: 133). “Ars enim aedificativa perficit suam operationem, quando perficit id quod intendit, scilicet domum; quod quidem facit in toto aliquo determinato tempore, in cuius partibus omnes generationes sunt incompletae, et differunt specie a tota generatione completa, et etiam adinvicem. Cuius ratio est, quia generatio speciem recipit secundum formam, quae est finis generationis; manifestum est autem quod aliud est forma totius et aliud sunt formae singularum partium; unde et generationes differunt specie ab invicem. Si enim aliquod templum aedificetur in aliquo determinato tempore, in aliqua parte illius temporis componuntur lapides ad parietis constructionem. In alia vero parte temporis virgantur columnae . . . . Sed in toto tempore construitur ipsum templum. Et haec tria differunt specie: scilicet lapidum compositio, columnarum virgatio, et templi aedificatio . . . . Sic ergo patet, quod praedictae generationes totius et partium differunt specie; et quod non est accipere, quod species motus perficiatur in quocumque tempore, sed perficitur in toto tempore” (In Eth. X, c. 5, Leon. 47, 2: 565–6, ll. 55–86). What Aquinas describes as a motion comes very close to a type of process that contemporary philosophers of action refer to as an “accomplishment.” The twentieth-century philosopher and

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part is itself a kind of motion. It is a subordinate motion, as I shall put it. This subordinate motion differs in kind or, in the terms used in the above text, “species” from the overarching motion of building a temple as well as from any other subordinate motion that is part of building a temple, such as sculpting a column or designing a frieze. A subordinate motion differs in kind from every other subordinate motion as well as from the overarching motion on account of its end state, as Aquinas argues in the above text. For the end state individuates the motion.51 In a sense of course, all subordinate motions have the same end state: the completed temple. But if we consider the subordinate motions in themselves, they each have a different one. For instance, the motion of sculpting a column, taken in itself, is ordered to the end state of the column’s being sculpted, and the motion of erecting a wall, taken in itself, is ordered to the end state of the wall’s being erected. These end states clearly differ from one another as well as from the overarching end state of the temple’s being completed. Hence the subordinate motions directed to these end states must differ from one another as well as from the overarching motion. What Aquinas is telling us here, then, is that motion has a specific mereological structure: it has what we might call an anhomoeomerous change profile.52 No part of a motion is of the same kind as any other part, and no part of it is of the same kind as the whole. In more formal terms: for any motion M, if M is completed during a time period t0–tn>0, then there is no part of t0–tn>0 during which M is completed. What is completed in any given part is a subordinate motion m, where

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linguist Zeno Vendler was the first to introduce this term, and using the example of running a mile, he says that accomplishments have a determinate end point and that “even if it is true that a runner has run a mile in four minutes, it cannot be true that he has run a mile in any period which is a real part of that time.” In other words, an accomplishment is a process during no part of which the accomplishment itself is completed, which is precisely what Aquinas thinks is characteristic of motions. See Zeno Vendler, “Verbs and Times,” in Vendler, Linguistics in Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 102. See also A. P. D. Mourelatos, “Events, Processes, and States,” Linguistics and Philosophy 2, no. 3 (1978): 415–34, and more recently, Thomas Crowther, “The Matter of Events,” The Review of Metaphysics 65, no. 1 (2011), 24–5. There is ample discussion connecting Vendlerian accomplishments with Aristotle’s account of kinēsis. See, e.g., C. C. W. Taylor, “States, Activities and Performances,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 39 (Supplementary Volume) (1965–6), 90; Terry Penner, “Verbs and Identity of Action: A Philosophical Exercise in the Interpretation of Aristotle,” in Ryle: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. O. P. Wood and George Pitcher (London: Macmillan, 1971), 407; Charles, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action, 36. This is because every motion is essentially a motion to some end state. See, e.g., In Phys. V, l. 1, n. 6, Leon. 2: 229 for this claim. I take the term ‘change profile’ from Helen Steward, “Actions as Processes,” Philosophical Perspectives 26, no. 1 (2012): 373–88.

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M and m differ in kind, and where m also differs in kind from any other subordinate motion m* completed during any other part of t0–tn>0. Let us now apply this account of incomplete acts to bodily commanded acts. The motion of building a temple just considered is an example of a bodily commanded act. But are all bodily commanded acts incomplete? Must they all depend on future change and exhibit an anhomoeomerous change profile? It seems to me that this is Aquinas’s view. For, as we saw in Section 7.3, he holds that every bodily commanded act is an exercise of the motive power, and as he tells us in his Sentences commentary I, d. 27, the exercise of this power is a “motion” (motus), that is, an incomplete act.53 Therefore, all bodily commanded acts are incomplete acts. A number of examples corroborate the claim that bodily commanded acts are incomplete acts. Take the commanded act of taking a walk to the park. It is future-dependent because while it is going on, it has not yet been completed. While I am walking to the park, I have not yet walked to the park. What is more, while I am walking to the park, what I have completed is a motion subordinated to the overarching motion of walking to the park, say, walking halfway to the park, which differs not only in kind from the overarching motion of walking to the park but also from any other subordinated motion that is a part of walking to the park, such as walking a quarter of the way to the park. A similar story can be told for the bodily commanded act of weaving a garment. While I am still weaving, the garment has not yet been woven. Rather, a subordinate motion of, say, weaving the left sleeve has been completed, which differs in kind from the overarching motion of weaving the garment as well as from any other subordinate motion, such as weaving the right sleeve. But there also appears to be a counterexample to the claim that bodily commanded acts are incomplete acts. Consider here what the twentiethcentury linguist and philosopher Zeno Vendler refers to as “activities,” by which he understands physical processes lacking a determinate end point.54 An example that Vendler gives is the activity of a person’s pushing a cart. 53

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“Oportet autem ad hoc quod sit motus corporalis hominis, qui scilicet est per deliberationem, quod praecedat deliberatio et judicium in parte intellectiva. Sed quia intellectus est universalium, et operationes singularium, ideo, ut dicitur 3 de anima, oportet esse quamdam virtutem particularem quae apprehendit intentionem particularem rei, circa quam est operatio; et tertio oportet quod sequatur motus in corpore per virtutes motivas affixas musculis et nervi” (In Sent. I, d. 27, q. 2, a. 1, sol., Mandonnet: 654). See Vendler, “Verbs and Times,” 99. In fairness to Vendler, it should be said that his is a theory of activity verbs rather than activities. So, on his view, certain verb phrases imply the absence of

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This would be a bodily commanded act, on Aquinas’s view. However, here we do not seem to have an anhomoeomerous change profile, and so not an incomplete act. Rather, what we have here is a homoeomerous change profile. First, the part does not differ in kind from the whole. If you have pushed a cart for two minutes, it will also be true to say that you have pushed a cart during any part of this two-minute process. Second, no subordinate motion of this process differs in kind from any other subordinate motion. For any subordinate motion of pushing a cart is another instance of pushing a cart. This counterexample has no force, however. For Aquinas would deny that there are processes in nature lacking a determinate end point. As he writes in De veritate, q. 9, a. 3, for instance, “in every generation or change there are two termini, an initial state and an end state.”55 In other words, for Aquinas, any process of pushing a cart must be a process of pushing a cart from some initial point to some end point, say, from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill. Of course, Aquinas would not deny that a person could push a cart with no particular end point in mind. But this is a fact about the agent’s conceptualization of her pushing the cart, not about the motion of pushing the cart itself. The motion has a determinate end state regardless of whether the agent has one in mind. If this is right, then it is clear that the putative counterexample of pushing a cart can be easily dealt with. For if my pushing the cart, even if done with no particular end point in mind, actually has a determinate end point, such as the cart’s being at the top of the hill, then I have not completed the process of pushing the cart to the top of the hill during any part of the time span occupied by my pushing it to the top of the hill. Rather, I will have pushed the cart to the middle of the hill, say. And the subordinate motion of pushing the cart to the middle of the hill differs in kind from any subordinate motion completed during any other part of the process. For instance, it differs from the subordinate motion of pushing the cart up a third of the hill. In short, on account of having an end point, pushing a cart will exhibit an anhomoeomerous change profile like any other motion.

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a determinate end point, but perhaps he intends to remain agnostic as to whether there are processes in nature that lack a determinate end point. “In qualibet enim generatione vel mutatione est duos terminos invenire; scilicet terminum a quo, et terminum ad quem” (De Ver., q. 9, a. 3, c., Leon. 22, 2, 1: 285, ll. 52–4).

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7.6 Complete Acts and Their Instantaneous Character Having examined bodily commanded acts in light of Aquinas’s account of incomplete acts, let us now turn to use and discuss it in light of his account of complete acts. To begin, we need to gain more clarity on what makes an act complete. Unlike incomplete acts, complete acts occur instantaneously, as we have seen. That is to say, they do not require a time span to be completed. This does not mean that they occur outside of time, Aquinas thinks. On his view, complete acts are datable episodes just as ordinary physical events are, but they are datable to instants, which are durationless, rather than time spans, which are divisible into phases. As Aquinas puts this point with respect to the complete act of understanding in the Prima pars, q. 79, a. 6: The understanding of our soul is a particular act, and it exists at this or that instant in time, according to which a human being can be said to understand something now or yesterday or tomorrow.56

As we have seen, Aquinas thinks that complete acts are instantaneous because they are future-independent. When they occur, they require no further change in the future in order to be completed. To better understand this feature and why complete acts have it, it will be helpful to consider an example. Let us take seeing, which Aquinas regularly adduces as an example of a complete act. Suppose that you are wandering through the National Gallery in London and suddenly find yourself facing Francisco de Zurbarán’s painting St. Francis in Meditation. Let us also suppose that you are at a suitable distance, which allows you to see the whole painting. Aquinas would argue that you see the whole painting at once. As he writes in his commentary on Nicomachean Ethics X, 4: The operation of the sense of sight, which is called seeing, is completed in any given instant of time. For it requires nothing that accrues to it later which would complete its species. And this is because seeing is completed in the first instant of the time [in which it occurs].57

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“[I]ntelligere animae nostrae est quidam particularis actus, in hoc vel in illo tempore existens, secundum quod homo dicere intelligere nunc vel heri vel cras” (ST I, q. 79, a. 6, ad 2, Leon. 5: 271). Since intelligere is an instantaneous or complete act, as we saw in Section 7.4, I take it that the “in illo tempore” must refer to an instant rather than a stretch of time. “[O]peratio sensus visus, quae dicitur visio, est perfecta secundum quodcumque tempus. Non enim indiget aliquo posterius advenienti, quod perficiat eius speciem. Et hoc ideo, quia visio completur in primo instanti temporis” (In Eth. X, c. 5, Leon. 47, 2: 565, ll. 20–30).

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In other words, the moment you begin to see the whole painting, you have also completed the act of seeing the whole painting. You do not, as in the case of a motion, first see one part of the painting, say, St. Francis’s head, and then another part, say, his hands, until you have finally completed the act of seeing the whole painting. This is not to say of course that upon initially seeing the painting you have grasped all of its intricate details. Your perception of it could be superficial. Rather, Aquinas’s point is that, whatever its level of sophistication, seeing something as a whole does not proceed in temporally distinct stages but instantaneously.58 Why does he think this? In Summa contra gentiles I, c. 55, he offers an explanation. He writes: When many things are taken as unified in any given way, they are understood at once. For a person at once understands a continuous whole, not one part after another. And similarly, a person understands a proposition at once, not first the subject and then the predicate because she cognizes all parts according to one species of the whole.59

When I see Zurbarán’s St. Francis in Meditation as a whole, I see a unified entity. I see all of its parts, that is, St. Francis’s head, hands, etc., as parts of one painting, as one “continuous whole,” to use the term of the above text. And to be able to see the whole, Aquinas claims, I must see all of these parts at once rather than in succession or “one part after another.” Aquinas’s idea here is that if I saw the painting’s parts in succession, say, St. Francis’s head at t1, his hands at t2, etc., then I could not be said to see the whole painting at all. I would only see a series of distinct parts of the painting, but I would never see them as one painting. In short, then, Aquinas holds that if many things constitute a whole, then I must see them all at once if I am to see the whole that they constitute. In the above text from the Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas writes that, for a similar reason, the act of understanding a proposition must occur 58

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If this account is correct, then we can think of a complete act in Aquinas as similar to what Gilbert Ryle in Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures 1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 103–4 and The Concept of Mind (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1949), 143 refers to as an “achievement.” Ryle’s prime example of an achievement is (as in Aquinas) the act of seeing. Ryle argues that seeing is instantaneous because while we can ask ‘For how long has he looked at the painting?,’ it makes no sense to ask, ‘For what time did he see the painting?’ He also helpfully points out that verbs designating achievements behave like success verbs, such as ‘win,’ ‘score,’ or ‘solve.’ Ryle’s idea is that seeing does not occupy a time span in the same way in which winning or scoring a goal do not occupy a time span. “[Q]uando aliqua multa accipiuntur quocumque modo unita, simul intelliguntur: simul enim intelligit totum continuum, non partem post partem; et similiter simul intelligit propositionem, non prius subiectum et postea praedicatum; quia secundum unam totius speciem omnes partes cognoscit” (SCG I, c. 55, Leon. 13: 157).

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instantaneously, and this point is significant for making sense of use, as we will see shortly. Suppose that I understand the proposition ‘Taking a walk is good for one’s health.’ Like seeing, this act does not proceed “one part after another,” according to the above text. I do not at t1 understand the subject concept Taking a walk and at t2 the copula is and at t3 the predicate concept good for one’s health. If I did, I would not understand the subject, copula, and predicate as unified in a proposition at all. Instead, I would have three successive non-propositional thoughts, first the simple apprehension of the subject concept Taking a walk, then the simple apprehension of the copula is, and finally the simple apprehension of the predicate concept good for one’s health. Accordingly, if I understand a proposition, I must grasp subject, copula, and predicate all at once. As Peter Geach once put this point in his Mental Acts, referring to a proposition as a “complex content”: [I]t seems reasonable to say that unless the whole complex content is grasped all together . . . the thought . . . just does not exist at all.60

This account of the instantaneity of propositional thought also allows us to see why use must be a complete act. Recall first that use is a volition to exercise an executive power, such as the motive power, as a means to the end of carrying out a pursuit that the agent has chosen to do, such as taking a walk. Now, as Aquinas sees it, just as I must understand subject, copula, and predicate at once to understand them as one proposition, so I must will the means and the end at once in order to will the means for the sake of the end. He argues for this point in his discussion of “intention” (intentio) in the Prima secundae, q. 12, a. 3. In this article, Aquinas discusses the question as to whether an agent can intend two things at once (utrum aliquis possit simul duo intendere); and he answers in the affirmative precisely on account of our ability to will one thing for the sake of another. As he writes: Someone at once (simul) intends the proximate end and the ultimate end, for instance, the preparing of medicine and health.61

If a physician wills to prepare some medicine to ensure patient health, she does not first at t1 will to prepare the medicine and then at t2 wills to ensure patient 60

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Peter Geach, Mental Acts (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), 104. For this reason, Geach, ibid., 105, also calls a propositional thought a “non-successive unity.” For a recent discussion of Geach’s argument, see Matthew Soteriou, The Mind’s Construction: The Ontology of Mind and Mental Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 232–4. “Simul autem intendit aliquis et finem proximum, et ultimum; sicut confectionem medicinae et sanitatem” (ST I-II, q. 12, a. 3, c., Leon. 6: 95). Aquinas is not using ‘ultimate end’ in the strict sense of an endU here, but rather in the sense of a non-proximate end.

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health. Rather, on the above text, she “at once” (simul) wills to prepare the medicine for the sake of ensuring patient health. Aquinas does not explain why the agent must will both things at once. But it is clear that he can advert to a similar reason as the one I have suggested that he relies on for viewing the act of understanding a proposition as an instantaneous event.62 If the physician at t1 willed to prepare the medicine and then at t2 willed to ensure patient health, she would not will the former for the sake of the latter. Rather, she would will two distinct things in succession, the medicine and the patient’s health. We can now apply this reasoning to the act of use. Since it is an act of willing a means for the sake of an end, in particular, the exercise of a power for the sake of a chosen end, it must likewise be completed at once. When I will to exercise my motive power to take a walk, for instance, I do not at t1 will to exercise my motive power and then at t2 will to take a walk. If this were the case, then I would not will to exercise my motive power for the sake of taking a walk. Rather, I would will two different things in succession, first the exercise of my motive power and then the pursuit of a walk. Unlike the bodily commanded act that it causes, then, use is not a temporally extended process that is completed through distinct stages, for Aquinas. Rather, it is completed instantaneously. This means that the hylomorphically organized bodily human act involves another layer of heterogeneity. We have already seen that it displays inherential heterogeneity because the component act of use is immanent, whereas the bodily commanded act is transeunt. As we can now see, the bodily human act also displays what I have called a heterogeneous durational structure. While use is instantaneous, the bodily commanded act takes time to be completed. This considerable heterogeneity of the components constituting the bodily human act gives rise to at least two problems, and it is the task of Section 7.7 to address them.

7.7 Heterogeneity and Formal Causation First, there appears to be a coordination problem connected with the durational heterogeneity of use and the bodily commanded act. As we 62

Aquinas himself suggests this connection. The third objection in ST I-II, q. 12, a. 3 is: “Intentio praesupponit actum rationis sive intellectus. Sed non contingit simul plura intelligere.” Aquinas replies: “contingit simul plura intelligere, inquantum sunt aliquo modo unum” (ST I-II, q. 12, a. 3, ad 3 c., Leon. 6: 96, emphasis added). The bit in italics is an appeal to the argument for the instantaneity of propositional thought that Aquinas gives in the above-quoted passage from SCG I, c. 55, Leon. 13: 157.

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saw in Chapter 6 (Section 6.6), Aquinas argues that use, unlike command, co-occurs with the commanded act and sustains the latter. This requires that use go on for a time just as the commanded act does. But how is this possible, if use is completed instantaneously, which means that it does not go on for a time? Second, there is a unity problem. As we have seen, Aquinas thinks that the bodily human act is one entity. But how, one might ask, can it be one entity if its two component parts, use and the commanded act, exhibit inherential as well as durational heterogeneity? Why think that there is one human act at all rather than just a pair of two distinct acts? Let us begin with the first problem. To solve it, we need to revert to the text from the Sentences commentary IV, d. 17 quoted in Section 7.5. There Aquinas writes about complete acts: [I]f it were to be said that such a change were in time, this would be per accidens because it is also measured by any given instant of that time in which it is said to be.63

Here Aquinas argues that complete acts can have a kind of double life. Intrinsically, they are instantaneous, but accidentally they can go on for a time. This means that use, though intrinsically instantaneous, can accompany the bodily commanded act while it is going on. Taken by itself, my volition to exercise my motive power to take a walk is completed instantaneously, but it can continuously accompany the commanded act of my limbs movingI to take a walk. How is this continuous accompaniment to be conceived of? Does use unfold in an anhomoeomerous way just as the commanded act that it sustains does? The above text suggests that Aquinas does not take this to be the case. For a complete act is “measured by any given instant of that time in which it is said to be,” as he tells us there. That is, because a complete act is completed at an instant, it must be completed at each and every instant of the time period during which it accidentally goes on. Thus, for a complete act to go on for a time period is actually for there to be a succession of instantaneous complete acts during that period. In each instant of the time period during which I am using my motive power for the sake of taking a walk, then, I will have also completed the act of using my motive power for the sake of taking a walk. In other words, while use goes on for a time 63

“Et si contingat dici quod talis motus sit in tempore, hoc erit per accidens, quia mensuratur etiam quolibet instanti illius temporis in quo dicitur esse” (In Sent. IV, d. 17, q. 1, a. 5, ad q. 3, ad 1, Moos: 853–4). See also In Eth. X, c. 5, Leon. 47, 2: 566, ll. 139–40 for this point.

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per accidens, it does not go on anhomoeomerously but rather homoeomerously. Initially, it may seem implausible, phenomenologically speaking, that a volitional act of use occurs at each and every instant of the time period during which the commanded act is going on.64 Do I really have to will to exercise my motive power in each and every instant of my taking a walk? Here we must note that this is only implausible if we also require the agent to actively think about her volition throughout the performance of her act. For it is indeed implausible that I am always thinking about actively exercising my power to walk while taking a walk. But Aquinas does not require this. All that he requires is that use be present in each and every instant during which my legs are movingI to cause the legs’ movementsI. To be sure, the agent must have some kind of awareness of her volitional act of using her motive power throughout her walk. If asked during any moment of her walk why she was movingT her legs, she could immediately reply: ‘because I want to go for a walk.’ But this awareness need not be conceived of as the agent’s explicitly thinking about her volition in each and every instant. It is more plausibly thought of as an implicit awareness of what one is doing. Let us now turn to the second problem, which is that the components of the bodily human act appear to be too heterogeneous to yield one human act. In response to this worry, we need to note that, for Aquinas, two heterogeneous items can yield one entity, provided that they bear the right functional relation to one another, namely that of form to matter. Recall here that, for Aquinas, something is a form of a composite if it accounts for the composite’s kind by inhering in its matter. For example, the form of an olive tree arranges the olive tree’s matter so as to yield a composite of the kind olive tree. Now, by yielding a being of a certain kind, Aquinas thinks, a form also yields one being of this kind. In other words, the principle of being of a composite is also its principle of unity. As he writes in Summa contra gentiles II, c. 68: For something to be the substantial form of something else, two things are required. The first is that the form be the principle of substantial being of that whose form it is . . . From this follows the second, namely, that form and matter are conjoined in one being.65 64 65

For this worry about any theory positing volitions, see, e.g., Alfred R. Mele and Paul K. Moser, “Intentional Action,” Noûs 28, no. 1 (1994), 46–7. “Quod aliquid sit forma substantialis alterius, duo requiruntur. Quorum unum est, ut forma sit principium essendi substantialiter ei cuius est forma . . . Unde sequitur aliud, scilicet quod forma et materia conveniant in uno esse” (SCG II, c. 68, Leon. 13: 440).

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If a form yields a composite of a certain kind by inhering in some matter, then this means that form and matter together yield one composite of that kind. It does not matter here if form and matter are very different entities, Aquinas thinks. He makes this particularly clear later in Summa contra gentiles II, c. 68, when discussing the human soul, which is a special kind of substantial form, on his view. This form is very different from the matter it informs – it is wholly immaterial and capable of separate existence, whereas matter is neither. Even so, the human soul can yield one entity in conjunction with matter, Aquinas thinks, so long as it is “the formal principle of being of matter.”66 That is to say, it does not matter that the intrinsic nature of the soul differs considerably from that of the matter that it informs, for Aquinas. To yield one composite, what counts is that the soul plays the right functional role with respect to matter, namely, that of a form. For the human act, this means that use and the bodily commanded act can likewise yield one human act even if they display considerable heterogeneity. The only important thing is that use and the commanded act are related in the right way, namely, as form to matter. As we have seen, use plays the role of a form by ordering the commanded act to an end chosen by the agent. For instance, use orders my legs’ movementsI to the end of taking a walk and thereby yields an act of the kind taking a walk. Since a principle of being is also a principle of unity, as we just saw, the act of use not only accounts for there being a walk, but also for there being one act of taking a walk. Use yields one such human act by inhering in the bodily commanded act. Therefore, use and the bodily commanded act must be one entity, namely, one bodily human act. With this, we have discussed the ontology of bodily human acts in Aquinas. These are not the only human acts that exist, however. On Aquinas’s view, there are also mental human acts. It is to these acts that we must turn next. As we will see, for Aquinas, their components display greater ontological homogeneity than those of bodily human acts. 66

“Non autem impeditur substantia intellectualis, per hoc quod est subsistens, ut probatum est, esse formale principium essendi materiae, quasi esse suum communicans materiae. Non est enim inconveniens quod idem sit esse in quo subsistit compositum et forma ipsa: cum compositum non sit nisi per formam, nec seorsum utrumque subsistat” (SCG II, c. 68, Leon. 13: 440, translated bit in italics). See also, e.g., ST I, q. 75, aa. 2–3, c., Leon. 5: 196–8.

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chapter 8

The Ontology of Mental Human Acts

8.1

Introduction

Studies of mental human agency are a more recent phenomenon in analytic action theory, and they are greatly outnumbered by the many studies dedicated to bodily human agency.1 Aquinas cannot be said to have privileged bodily over mental human agency. Throughout his entire corpus, he considers a number of different examples of mental human acts, such as seeking to recall a piece of information or occurrently considering a scientific proposition that one knows.2 In his commentary on Aristotle’s second treatise of De sensu et sensato, also referred to as De memoria et reminiscentia, Aquinas even discusses some key ontological features of the mental human act of seeking to recall a piece of information at will. Since this is the most detailed account of mental human agency that Aquinas offers, the present chapter focuses on it. Like bodily human acts, Aquinas thinks that seeking to recall a piece of information is a hylomorphic composite involving use and a commanded act. The commanded act in question is an act of the power of memory that Aquinas refers to as “reminiscing” (reminisci), and the act of use is the

1

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For discussions of mental agency, see, e.g., Alfred Mele, “Agency and Mental Action,” Noûs 31, no. 11 (1997): 231–49; Brian O’Shaughnessy, Consciousness and the World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 380–406; Joëlle Proust, “A Plea for Mental Acts,” Synthese 129, no. 1 (2001): 105–28; Galen Strawson, “Mental Ballistics or the Involuntariness of Spontaneity,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103, no. 1 (2003): 227–56; Lucy O’Brien and Matthew Soteriou, eds., Mental Actions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Soteriou, The Mind’s Construction. For seeking to recall something at will, see, e.g., “[E]t hoc proprie est reminisci, quando scilicet aliquis ex intentione inquirit alicuius rei memoriam” (In DSS, t. 2 c. 5, Leon. 45, 2: 121, ll. 126–8). For using one’s knowledge of, say, geometry, at will, see, e.g., “Manifestum est autem quod ex sola voluntate dependet quod aliquis actu aliqua consideret, quia cum aliquis habet habitum scientiae, vel species intelligibiles in eo existentes, utitur eis cum vult” (ST I, q. 57, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 76). Aquinas also considers imagining something at will in In DA II, c. 28, Leon. 45, 1: 191, ll. 252–7.

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volitional act causing this commanded act.3 We have already examined the act of use in considerable detail in Chapters 6 and 7. Here we have to gain clarity on the commanded component of reminiscing and how its inherential and durational features compare to those of use. To this end, I first clarify the nature of the power involved in reminiscing, that is, memory (Section 8.2). I then consider the act of reminiscing itself (Section 8.3) as well as its relation to use (Section 8.4). Finally, I examine Aquinas’s account of the control that we have over the act of reminiscing and its limits (Section 8.5).

8.2 The Sensory Power of Memory In the Prima pars, q. 78, a. 4, and elsewhere, Aquinas describes “memory” (memoria/memorativa) as a kind of sense (sensus), in particular as what he refers to as an “internal sense” (sensus interior).4 To understand the nature of this power, it is helpful to first say a few things about Aquinas’s account of sensory cognition in general and the internal senses in particular. According to Aquinas, human beings possess nine different powers of sensory cognition, all of which we share with higher animals, such as cats or dogs. First, there are, as Aquinas tells us in the Prima pars, q. 78, a. 3, the familiar five external senses (sensus exteriores), that is, sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.5 Second, there are, as Aquinas argues in the Prima pars, q. 78, a. 4, four internal senses, namely, the “common sense” (sensus communis), “imagination” (imaginatio/phantasia), the “cogitative power” (vis cogitativa), and “memory” (memoria).6 As we saw in Chapter 4 (Section 4.3), when contrasting volitions with sensory strivings, sensory cognition involves particular content, whereas intellectual cognition involves general content, according to Aquinas. Thanks to our intellect we can think about the nature of water in general. In contrast, we see, hear, imagine, or remember some particular body of water.7 3

4 6

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“[R]eminiscentia nihil est aliud quam inquisitio alicuius quod a memoria excidit” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 5, Leon. 45, 2: 121, ll. 71–3). See also In DSS, t. 2, c. 7, Leon. 45, 2: 127, ll. 9–10; In DSS, t. 2, c. 8, Leon. 45, 2: 131, ll. 25–6. See ST I, q. 78, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 256. 5 See ST I, q. 78, a. 3, c., Leon. 5: 253–4. See ST I, q. 78, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 256. Three of these internal senses are Aristotelian, namely, the common sense, imagination, and memory. One, the cogitative power, Aquinas takes from Avicenna. The term ‘internal sense’ (sensus interior) Aquinas, likewise, takes from Avicenna. See Avicenna Latinus, Liber de anima sive sextus de naturalibus I, c. 5, ed. S. Van Riet, with an Introduction by Gérard Verbeke (Leuven: Peeters, 1972), 86, ll. 94–5. “Ex parte autem memorativae, non solum habet memoriam, sicut cetera animalia, in subita recordatione praeteritorum; sed etiam reminiscentiam, quasi syllogistice inquirendo praeteritorum

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What is more, Aquinas thinks that our power of reason is incorporeal, as we noted in Chapter 1 (Section 1.2). In contrast, he holds that all of our sensory powers are physically realized.8 The external senses are realized in the obvious places, that is, the eyes, the ears, etc., whereas the internal senses are realized in the brain, on his view.9 Aquinas thinks that it is the task of the external senses to provide human beings and other animals with information about their environment, whereas it is the task of the internal senses to further process this information. Since Aquinas makes sense of memory by comparing and contrasting it with two other internal senses, in particular imagination and the cogitative power, it is useful to say a few things about these two senses first. Aquinas explains in his Quaestiones de anima, q. 13 that imagination allows us “to have an apprehension of sensible objects not only when they are present, but also after they are absent.”10 Thanks to this internal sense we can, for instance, visualize an apple even when it is not present. For Aquinas this power is also active when we dream or engage in acts of creative imagination, say, when we imagine a mythical creature, such as a centaur. The cogitative power has an altogether different function, for Aquinas. It allows me to judge sensible objects in light of “certain intentions, which the senses do not apprehend, such as the harmful and the useful,” as Aquinas writes in Quaestiones de anima, q. 13.11 For instance, upon seeing a wolf I immediately take myself to be in danger, Aquinas thinks. The

8 9 10

11

memoriam, secundum individuales intentiones” (ST I, q. 78, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 253–4). For Aquinas, we can also occurrently consider general concepts and propositions that we learned previously. Following Augustine, Aquinas refers to our ability to retain such general items as “intellectual memory” (memoria in parte intellectiva). See, e.g., ST I, q. 79, a. 6, c., Leon. 5: 270. Here I am not concerned with intellectual memory but only with the sensory kind. See ST I, q. 75, aa. 2–3, c., Leon. 5: 196–200. See ST I, q. 78, aa. 3–4, c., Leon. 5: 253–6 for the external senses. See De Ver., q. 18, a. 8, ad 5, Leon. 22, 2, 2: 558, ll. 83–6, for the internal senses. “Tertium est quod species sensibilium receptae conserventur. Indiget autem animal apprehensione sensibilium non solum apud eorum praesentiam, sed etiam postquam abierint: et hoc necessarium est reduci in aliquam potentiam, nam et in rebus corporalibus aliud principium est recipiendi, et conservandi . . . Huiusmodi autem potentia dicitur imaginatio sive phantasia” (QDA, q. 13, c., Leon. 24, 1: 117, ll. 249–58, translated bit in italics). For a discussion of imagination in Aquinas, see, e.g., Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 280–4. “Quarto autem, requiruntur aliquae intentiones quas sensus non apprehendit, sicut nocivum et utile” (QDA, a. 13, Leon. 24, 1: 117–8, ll. 258–62). For a discussion of Aquinas’s account of the cogitative power, see, again, e.g., Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 253–7, as well as Carla Di Martino, Ratio Particularis: Doctrines des sens internes d’Avicenne à Thomas d’ Aquin (Paris: J. Vrin, 2008), 45–9 and 93–101. ‘Intention’ (intentio) understood as such a content not derived from the external senses is a technical term that Aquinas takes from Avicenna. See Avicenna Latinus, Liber de anima I, c. 5, ed. Van Riet, 86, ll. 99–100. On Avicenna’s theory, see, e.g., Deborah Black, “Estimation in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions,” Dialogue 32, no. 2 (1993):

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external senses do not provide any information about the useful or harmful properties of things in the world, on his view. They only tell us something about the colors and smells, etc., of these things. Accordingly, Aquinas argues, there must be another sense allowing me to perceive objects as useful or harmful. This is our cogitative power.12 Let us now turn to memory, which Aquinas conceptualizes with reference to imagination as well as the cogitative power. Thanks to memory, Aquinas writes in Quaestiones de anima, q. 13, “the things that were previously apprehended by the senses and internally conserved are brought back again to occurrent consideration.”13 Initially, it is not clear how this power differs from imagination. For to bring something back to occurrent consideration is, arguably, to relate to something absent as present, which is what imagination does, as we have seen. However, in the Prima pars, q. 78, a. 4, Aquinas offers a clear contrast between the two powers. The main difference between them is that memory, unlike imagination, operates with the intentions grasped by the cogitative power. Imagination allows me to recall the scent and color of the wolf, that is, those features that my external senses give me access to. But memory allows me to recall the wolf as harmful.14 What is more, memory operates with an intention of its own, Aquinas argues in the Prima pars, q. 78, a. 4, namely, the intention of being past, which, like the harmful or useful, is not a content derived from an external sense. As Aquinas puts this point:

12

13

14

219–58. It is a matter of debate whether intentions are innate or in a sense acquired, for Aquinas. For the former view, see Anthony Lisska, Aquinas’s Theory of Perception: An Analytic Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 258. For the latter view, see Dominik Perler, “Rational Seeing: Thomas Aquinas on Human Perception,” in Medieval Perceptual Puzzles: Theories of Sense Perception in the 13th and 14th Centuries, ed. Elena Băltuță (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 213–37. Aquinas calls this power the “cogitative power” in the case of human beings. In the case of nonhuman animals, he refers to it as the “estimative power” (vis aestimativa): “[Q]uae in aliis animalibus dicitur aestimativa naturalis, in homine dicitur cogitativa” (ST I, q. 78, a. 4, c. Leon. 5: 256). There is not just a terminological difference here. The cogitative power can do certain things that the estimative power cannot do, Aquinas thinks. Given its makeup, a sheep cannot but judge a wolf to be dangerous. In contrast, a judgment of the cogitative power is open to revision in light of reason. As Aquinas puts it: “Ipsa autem ratio particularis nata est moveri et dirigi secundum rationem universalem” (ST I, q. 81, a. 3, ad 3, Leon. 5: 291). “[R]equiritur quod ea quae prius fuerunt apprehensa per sensus et interius conservata, iterum ad actualem considerationem revocentur. Et hoc quidem pertinet ad rememorativam virtutem” (QDA, a. 13, Leon. 24, 1: 118, ll. 268–72, translated bit in italics). “Ad apprehendendum autem intentiones quae per sensum non accipiuntur, ordinatur vis aestimativa. Ad conservandum autem eas vis memorativa, quae est thesaurus quidam huiusmodi intentionum. Cuius signum est, quod principium memorandi fit in animalibus ex aliqua huiusmodi intentione, puta quod est nocivum vel conveniens” (ST I, q. 78, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 256).

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Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act The notion of what is past, to which memory attends, is to be counted among intentions of this kind.15

For Aquinas, all higher animals have the power of memory. However, he thinks that, unlike other animals, we have more than one way of recalling something past, and this brings us to the act of reminiscing. Here is how Aquinas introduces this latter act in the Prima pars, q. 78, a. 4: On the part of the power of memory a human being does not only have remembering through the immediate recalling of things past, as other animals do, but also reminiscing, seeking quasi-syllogistically the memory of things past.16

Suppose that a sheep once saw a wolf at a certain place. Upon finding itself in this place again, the above text suggests, the sheep can immediately remember that it encountered a wolf there. Human beings also remember certain things in this way. Upon seeing a person whom I met at a party, for instance, I may immediately recall a pleasant conversation I had with them. However, unlike other animals, we are also able to recall something thanks to an act of “reminiscing,” according to the above text. Sometimes we fail to remember something immediately, but we are able to engage in a quasisyllogistic search to retrieve the content that has fallen from our memory, and this process is an act of reminiscing. For Aquinas, reminiscing is an act that we perform at will, that is, a “commanded act,” in his terminology. As he writes in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia: [T]his is to reminisce properly speaking, when someone intentionally seeks the memory of something.17

What is the nature of this commanded act? Why does Aquinas describe it as a “quasi-syllogistic” procedure in the above text? And how does it relate to the volitional act of use that causes it? It is these questions that I examine next.

15 16

17

“Et ipsa ratio praeteriti, quam attendit memoria, inter huiusmodi intentiones computatur” (ST I, q. 78, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 256). “Ex parte autem memorativae, non solum habet memoriam, sicut cetera animalia, in subita recordatione praeteritorum; sed etiam reminiscentiam, quasi syllogistice inquirendo praeteritorum memoriam” (ST I, q. 78, a. 4, c., Leon. 5: 256). “[E]t hoc proprie est reminisci, quando scilicet aliquis ex intentione inquirit alicuius rei memoriam” (In DSS, t. 2 c. 5, Leon. 45, 2: 121, ll. 126–8). See also: “[R]eminisci contingit per hoc quod homo interius retinet quandam potentiam vel virtutem inducendi se ad motus rei quos quaerit” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 6, Leon. 45, 2: 124, ll. 52–5).

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183

The Commanded Act of Reminiscing

To begin, we need to note that Aquinas clearly distinguishes the act of reminiscing (reminisci) from the act of recalling or remembering (memorari). In his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia, he describes the act of remembering as follows: [W]hen the soul remembers, it states that it previously heard or sensed or understood something.18

Reminiscing, in contrast, is, as Aquinas explains, [. . .] a change directed to remembering. And so, remembering follows reminiscing as the end state (terminus) [of a change] the change.19

In other words, remembering or recalling is the result; it is the successful retrieval of some piece of information. In contrast, reminiscing is the process leading up to this result. It is the act of trying to bring it about that one remembers. Sometimes this attempt succeeds and leads to an act of remembering, but sometimes it does not, as Aquinas is well aware.20 Why does Aquinas describe reminiscing as a “quasi-syllogistic” procedure? The “quasi” indicates that reminiscing is not an act of syllogizing strictly speaking but rather a procedure that bears a likeness to it. Reminiscing is not an act of syllogizing in the strict sense, Aquinas thinks, because that would require it to involve general propositions. But it does not involve such propositions because it is an act of a sensory power concerned with particular content. Yet reminiscing is similar to a syllogism. As Aquinas explains in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia: Just as in a syllogism a conclusion is reached from certain starting points, so also in reminiscing someone in a way concludes that he previously saw or heard or in some other way perceived something by reaching this conclusion from a starting point.21 18 19 20 21

“[C]um anima memoratur, pronunciat se prius audivisse aliquid vel sensisse vel intellixisse” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 1, Leon. 45, 2: 106, ll. 161–2). “[R]eminiscentia est quidam motus ad memorandum. Et sic memoria sequitur reminiscentiam, sicut terminus motum” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 4, Leon. 45, 2: 118, ll. 120–2). See In DSS, t. 2, c. 8, Leon. 45, 2: 131, ll. 55–65. “Sicut in syllogismo pervenitur ad conclusionem ex aliquibus principiis, ita etiam in reminiscendo aliquis quodam modo syllogizat se prius aliquid vidisse aut audisse aut aliquo alio modo percepisse, ex quodam principio in hoc deveniens” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 8, Leon. 45, 2: 131, ll. 19–25); “[Q]uando reminiscimur, moveamur secundum aliquem priorum motuum, quousque veniamus ad hoc quod moveamur apprehendendo illo motu qui consuevit esse post primum, quem scilicet motum intendimus reinvenire reminiscendo” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 5, Leon. 45, 2: 121, ll. 66–71).

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In a proper syllogism the starting points are universal premises known to the person going through the syllogism. For instance, from the known premises ‘Prime numbers cannot be formed by multiplying two smaller natural numbers’ and ‘79 is a prime number,’ I can arrive at the previously unknown truth that ‘79 cannot be formed by multiplying two smaller natural numbers.’ In reminiscing, Aquinas explains in the above text, a person similarly proceeds from a known starting point to find something unknown. The starting point is here “a thing that one remembers” (res cuius memoratur), as Aquinas states in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia.22 The end point is the retrieval of the information that has fallen from memory. In an ordinary syllogism, inferential rules lead a person from the premises to the conclusion. How does the memory of one thing lead me to the retrieval of something forgotten? Here Aquinas appeals to what we might call rules of association. He lists three such rules in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia. First, he writes that the memory of one thing may lead to the retrieval of something forgotten “on account of similarity.”23 For instance, suppose that you want to recall the word for ‘red’ in Latin, ‘rubeus,’ but that it does not immediately come to mind. You do, however, know that the word sounds similar to an English word that you know, namely, ‘ruby,’ and on this basis the Latin word ‘rubeus’ immediately springs to mind. The second rule that Aquinas considers is contrariety.24 He adduces the following example. Suppose that the name of the greatest fighter among the Greeks in the Trojan War escapes you. You seek to recall it, but it does not come to mind. However, you do remember the name of Achilles’ opponent, Hector. If you learned the names of these two heroes in conjunction, say, when first studying the Iliad in high school, your remembering the name ‘Hector’ may directly lead you to recall the name ‘Achilles.’ The final rule that Aquinas discusses is proximity, and he provides the following example.25 Suppose that you want to recall the name of a person, but that it does not come to mind. You do, however, recall the name of that 22

23

“[Q]uandoque reminiscitur aliquis incipiens ab aliqua re cuius memoratur a qua procedit ad aliam, triplici ratione: quandoque quidem ratione similitudinis (sicut quando aliquis memoratur de Sorte et per hoc occurit ei Plato qui est similis in sapientia), quandoque vero ratione contrarietatis (sicut si aliquis memoretur Hectoris et per hoc occurat ei Achilles), quandoque vero ratione propinquitatis cuiuscumque (sicut cum aliquis memor est patris et per hoc occurit ei filius, et eadem ratio est de quacumque alia propinquitate vel societatis vel loci vel temporis)” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 5, Leon. 45, 2: 121, ll. 98–110, translated bit in italics). 24 See ibid. See ibid. 25 See ibid.

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person’s father, say, ‘Daedalus,’ and on this basis you then recall, by a relation of proximity between the father and the son, the name ‘Icarus.’ Aquinas thinks that my cognition of one thing may sometimes inadvertently lead me, through one of these rules of association, to the cognition of a thing that I have forgotten. For instance, suppose that on a certain day I am unable to recall the Latin word for ‘to open.’ Later that day, I eat at a restaurant and the waiter asks me if I would like to have an apéritif. Due to the phonetic similarity, or more precisely, etymological relation between ‘apéritif’ and ‘aperire,’ I immediately recall that ‘aperire’ is the Latin word for ‘to open.’ Aquinas does not think that this inadvertent retrieval of something forgotten or “chance remembering” (casualiter memorari), as he calls it, qualifies as reminiscing, however.26 On his view, reminiscing must be done at will. In other words, only the deliberate use of a rule of association to retrieve something forgotten is an act of reminiscing. Thus, had I sought to recall the Latin word for ‘to open’ by deliberately bringing to mind its etymological descendant ‘apéritif,’ I would have engaged in an act of reminiscing. The act that Aquinas refers to as “reminiscing” has received some attention in the contemporary discussion of mental human agency, though it does not go by this name anymore. Here is how contemporary action theorist Alfred Mele describes this act. Remembering that p . . . is never an action . . . If that is right and if the things that agents can, strictly speaking, try to do include no nonactions, you cannot, strictly speaking, try to remember what you had for dinner three nights ago. But if you are like me, you can try to bring it about that you remember this. I have various memory-priming strategies for doing this. One strategy . . . is to ask myself (silently) what I had for dinner last night and, if the answer comes to mind, work backward – which requires keeping my attention focused on my task.27

The distinction that Mele here draws between remembering and bringing it about that one remembers is precisely the distinction that Aquinas draws between remembering and reminiscing. To reminisce is to attempt to make it so that one remembers, and, for Aquinas, this is something that we do at will by using a rule of association or, in Mele’s terms, a “memory-priming 26

27

“[C]ontingit autem quandoque quod etiam illi qui non quaerunt memorari, praeter intentionem sic procedentes ex priori motu in posteriorem . . . deveniunt in memoriam alicuius rei . . . sed hoc abusive dicitur reminisci, est autem casualiter memorari secundum similitudinem quandam reminiscentiae” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 5, Leon. 45, 2: 121–2, ll. 128–39). Alfred Mele, “Mental Actions: A Case Study,” in O’Brien and Soteriou, Mental Actions, 19.

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strategy.”28 Remembering, in contrast, is the result that may or may not come about as a consequence of our reminiscing, and whether it comes about is not up to us. By speaking of the use of a rule of association or memory-priming strategy, I have already introduced the volitional act of use into the picture, which we need to distinguish from the commanded act of reminiscing. Using a memory-priming strategy is the will’s act of exercising the power of memory with the help of such a strategy in order to retrieve a certain piece of information. The commanded act of reminiscing, in contrast, is the caused act of memory’s being exercised according to such a strategy. For Aquinas, the whole human act of seeking to recall a piece of information is the hylomorphic composite of using a memory-priming strategy and memory’s being exercised according to such a strategy. Now, how exactly do these two components relate to one another, on his view? Clearly there are similarities to bodily human acts. The act of use must be the form of the commanded act of reminiscing, and it must also be its efficient cause. But are the components also durationally and inherentially heterogeneous, as in the case of bodily human acts? This is the question that I turn to next.

8.4

Use and the Commanded Act of Reminiscing

For Aquinas, use and the commanded act of reminiscing display greater metaphysical homogeneity than use and the bodily commanded act. As we will see presently, unlike the components of a bodily human act, use and the commanded act of reminiscing are inherentially homogeneous. However, like the components of a bodily human act, they are durationally heterogeneous. I consider the feature of inherential homogeneity first. Recall from Chapter 7 (Section 7.3) that, for Aquinas, use is an immanent act, though one that is causally productive. That is to say, on his view, use is an act of the power of the will that remains within the agent (specifically her soul), even though it brings about the exercise of another power.

28

Aquinas also thinks that an agent can utilize the method of loci to recall something: “Tullius in sua Rhetorica docet ad facile memorandum imaginari quaedam loca ordinata, quibus phantasmata eorum quae memorari volumus quodam ordine distribuamus” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 6, Leon. 45, 2: 124, ll. 84–7). The reference is to the Pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium. See Anonymous (Ps.Cicero), Rhetorica ad Herennium, III, 16–19, 29–32, ed. Harry Caplan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 208–12.

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For Aquinas, the commanded act of reminiscing is likewise immanent (though it is not productive, as we will see shortly). It is immanent because reminiscing is a sensory act, and, on his view, any sensory act is an immanent operation, as the following passage from De potentia, q. 10, a. 1, quoted in Chapter 7 (Section 7.2), makes clear. There is another operation that does not pass into something extrinsic, but remains in the agent that operates, for instance, understanding, sensing, willing, and the like.29

My seeing the rosebush is immanent because it does not alter the rosebush in any way, as we saw. Similarly, my exercising my memory to determine what I had for dinner three nights ago is immanent because it does not affect my dinner from three nights ago. Thus, on Aquinas’s view, both components of the human act of seeking to recall something are inherentially alike. Use is an immanent act of the will, and the commanded act of reminiscing is an immanent act of memory, though they differ in that use is causally efficacious, while reminiscing is not. Let us now turn to the durational structure of seeking to recall something. Here the picture is similar to that of bodily human acts, though there are some differences, as we will see. The similarity is that the commanded act of reminiscing is, like a bodily commanded act, an incomplete act, and so differs durationally from the act of use, which is complete. Aquinas nowhere says expressis verbis that reminiscing is an incomplete act. However, recall from Section 8.3 that he describes reminiscing in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia as “a kind of change directed to remembering,” and that “remembering follows reminiscing as the end state (terminus) [of a change] the change.”30 Aquinas adds to this slightly later in the same text that “reminiscing, since it is a path to remembering, temporally precedes remembering.”31 If we take these statements together, it is clear that the commanded act of reminiscing cannot be a complete act but must be an incomplete one. For a complete act requires that the agent reach the end state of the act as soon as she begins to engage in it. But the end state of the commanded act 29

30 31

“Alia vero est operatio non transiens in aliquid extrinsecum, sed manens in ipso operante, sicut intelligere, sentire, velle, et huiusmodi” (QDP, q. 10, a. 1, c., Bazzi: 254). For other texts in which sensing is described as immanent, see, e.g., SCG I, c. 53, Leon. 13: 150; SCG I, c. 73, Leon. 13: 213; SCG II, c. 73, Leon. 13: 460; ST I, q. 18, a. 3, ad 1, Leon. 4: 228; ST I, q. 27, a. 3, c., Leon. 4: 311; ST I, q. 37, a. 1, ad 2, Leon. 4: 388; ST I, q. 54, a. 2, c. Leon. 5: 45. See n. 19 for the text. “[R]eminiscentia, cum sit via ad memoriam, tempore ipsam praecedit” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 8, Leon. 45, 2: 130, ll. 8–10).

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of reminiscing is remembering, and this result temporally succeeds reminiscing, as we just saw. Hence, the agent has not yet reached the end state of having remembered when she begins to engage in the act of reminiscing. Accordingly, reminiscing is an incomplete act. As we saw in Chapter 7 (Section 7.5), Aquinas contends that incomplete acts are anhomoeomerous, such that no part is of the same kind as the whole or any other part of that whole. Does reminiscing also display this feature? It does seem to be the case that, in reminiscing, the part differs in kind from the whole. Return here to my attempt to recall the Latin word for ‘red,’ ‘rubeus,’ by drawing on the mnemonic device that this word sounds similar to ‘ruby.’ To retrieve the forgotten word I will first bring to mind the word ‘ruby.’ This act of bringing to mind the English word is completed when I have reached the end state of having brought that word to mind, which clearly differs from the end state of the whole act of seeking to recall the Latin word ‘rubeus.’ For that act is only completed once I have recalled the Latin word. Since different end states entail different kinds of changes, it follows that the act of bringing to mind the English word differs in kind from the act of seeking to recall the Latin word ‘rubeus.’ Accordingly, one part of the process of seeking to recall the Latin word for ‘red’ differs in kind from the whole process. But must each part of the commanded process of reminiscing also differ in kind from every other part of this process? This will depend on how complex the process is. In the word example just considered, it is not clear that the process of reminiscing actually has many parts. There may just be the initial step of considering the English word, which is then immediately followed by the recollection of the sought-for Latin word. But things are different when we consider, for instance, Mele’s example of seeking to remember what one had for dinner three nights ago. Here we can clearly discern several stages. Mele describes an agent engaged in this process as beginning with a consideration of what he had for dinner last night and then working his way backward. Thus, we first have the stage of the agent’s seeking to recall what he had for dinner last night, then the stage of his seeking to recall what he had for dinner two nights ago, and finally the stage of his seeking to recall what he had for dinner three nights ago. These are three acts of reminiscing, and they differ in kind from one another on account of their end states. For seeking to recall what one had for dinner last night is completed when one recalls what one had for dinner last night. In contrast, seeking to recall what one had for dinner two nights ago is completed when one recalls what one had for dinner two nights ago, and

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seeking to recall what one had for dinner three nights ago is completed when one recalls what one had for dinner three nights ago. This clearly resembles the way in which the subordinate motions of, say, sculpting columns or erecting a wall differ from one another as well as from the overarching motion of building a temple. In sum, then, while the commanded act of reminiscing is incomplete just as a bodily commanded act is, it need not have the complexity of stages that a bodily commanded act has. Still, reminiscing is in all cases an incomplete act inasmuch as it is never completed when it occurs, and it therefore differs from the complete act of use that causes it. Accordingly, the composite act of seeking to recall something is a durationally heterogeneous entity. As we saw in Chapter 6 (Section 6.4), use continuously sustains the commanded act, for Aquinas. This means that while the commanded act of reminiscing is going on, use must likewise be going on. Being a complete act, use can only go on for a time per accidens, however, and when it does it is completed in each instant of the time period during which it occurs. Accordingly, as in the case of the bodily human act, use must exhibit a homoeomerous change profile when it sustains the commanded act of reminiscing. If I seek to recall what I had for dinner three nights ago by considering first what I had for dinner last night and then working my way backward, then I will in each instant of this process complete the volitional act of using my memory for the end of bringing it about that I recall what I had for dinner three nights ago. In this way, use causally sustains the whole performance of the commanded act of seeking to recall what I had for dinner three nights ago. When I discussed Aquinas’s account of how use sustains a bodily commanded act, such as the leg movementsI produced by the motive power during a walk, I considered the worry that it seems phenomenologically implausible that there should be a volition to exercise one’s motive power present in each and every instant of the walk (Section 7.7). I replied that this view is only phenomenologically implausible if Aquinas were to also require that the agent be thinking about every such volitional act, which he does not. The same point can be made for the case of seeking to recall a piece of information. The agent need not be thinking about her volition to bring it about that she remembers throughout the entire process of seeking to recall something. However, it may be noted here that when we seek to recall a piece of information that has fallen from memory, we are at times very much conscious of our volitional effort in doing so. We might describe ourselves as ‘trying very hard’ to remember something or even as

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‘racking our brains.’ Here, then, an agent may be fully aware of her volitional act of use throughout the performance of this human act.

8.5

Control and Impediments: Starting and Stopping

With this we have shed light on the inherential and durational structure of the mental human act of seeking to recall a piece of information. In this last section, I want to consider one further feature of this act that Aquinas devotes some attention to in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia. This is the feature of limited control. Like any other human act, Aquinas thinks that seeking to recall a piece of information is subject to our “control” (dominium) because we can choose to perform it or not perform it. However, Aquinas holds that our control over the act of reminiscing can be limited in a very specific way. Here is how Aquinas describes this limitation in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia: Reminiscing does not seem to be up to those who reminisce, that is, in their power, such that they could stop when they want to.32

While agents can initiate an act of reminiscing at will, the above text tells us that their putting an end to it is not always subject to their control. In his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia, Aquinas says that this situation is analogous to an agent’s control over a projectile. An agent can control whether (and how) he throws a ball, but the ball’s subsequent motion through the air is literally and metaphorically out of the agent’s hands.33 Similarly, a person may intentionally initiate the process of reminiscing, but once initiated the process may continue without the agent being able to put it to rest.

32 33

“[R]eminisci non videtur esse in ipsis reminiscentibus, id est in potestate eorum, ut scilicet possint desistere cum voluerint” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 8, Leon. 45, 2: 132, ll. 78–80). “[S]icut accidit proicientibus quod postquam moverint corpus proiectum non est amplius in eorum potestate ut sistat, sic etiam reminiscens et quicumque investigans per organum corporale movet corporale organum, in quo est passio; unde non statim motus cessat cum homo voluerit” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 8, Leon. 45, 2: 132, ll. 78–87). Interestingly, Aristotle and Aquinas also use the analogy from projectile motion to discuss our control over our character traits. We can control the formation of our character traits, they argue, just as we can control the throwing of a projectile. But once we have acquired our character traits we cannot (at least not easily) cease to have them if we so wish, just as we have no control over the ceasing of a projectile’s motion once it has left our hand. See In Eth. III, c. 8, Leon. 47, 1: 154, ll. 121–32.

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Aquinas thinks that this especially (maxime) occurs in agents afflicted with “melancholy” (melancholia) or what we would today call “depression.”34 As he explains in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia: Some cannot recall [what they seek to recall] . . . and they thoroughly apply their minds to doing so, and if it happens that . . . they do not try to reminisce, thereby, as it were, desisting from trying to recall the thing at hand, nevertheless there remains in them this uneasiness of thought, and this happens especially in people of a melancholy disposition.35

In other words, melancholiacs ruminate. They fixate on past failings or the like, and if they are unable to recall something that they are looking for, for instance, what exactly they believe they did wrong on a certain occasion, they cannot put their mind to rest because an “uneasiness of thought” (inquietudo cogitationis) remains. Aquinas offers a physiological explanation of this inability to put an end to the process of reminiscing. When we seek to recall something at will, the volitional act of use, which is non-physical, acts on our brain because this is the organ housing the power of memory, as we have seen (Section 8.2). This means, Aquinas thinks, that the unfolding of the commanded act of reminiscing does not only depend on our volition, but also on features of our brain.36 In a melancholiac, as Aquinas argues in his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia, the brain displays an excess of the element of earth (terrestris natura), which entails that sensory representations are “more fixed” (magis firmantur) in such a person.37 That is to say, representations of things past do not easily vanish from the mind of a melancholiac, which results in an excessive preoccupation with them. While Aquinas’s physiological story is outdated, he is right on the mark when he says that a melancholiac is unable to put an act of reminiscing to rest. For excessive rumination, in particular about past failures, is nowadays one of the commonly acknowledged symptoms of a major depressive 34

35

36

37

I am not claiming that there is an exact overlap between melancholia and what we would today refer to as “depression,” but there is a common core, it seems to me. As Aquinas expresses it: “[M]elancholici vero de facili tristantur” (SCG II, c. 63, Leon. 13: 433). “[Q]uidam non possunt reminisci . . . et valde apponunt mentem ad reminiscendum, et si contingat quod . . . non conentur ad reminiscendum, quasi cessantes a proposito reminiscendi, nihilominus adhuc inquietudo illa cogitationis remanet in eis: et hoc maxime contingit in melancholicis, qui maxime moventur a phantasmatibus (quia propter terrestrem naturam impressiones phantasmatum magis firmantur in eis)” (In DSS, t. 2, c. 8, Leon. 45, 2: 131: ll. 55–65, translated bit in italics). “[C]onsiderandum est quod operationes quae sunt partis intellectivae absque organo corporali sunt in hominis arbitrio constitutae ut possit ab eis desistere cum voluerit; non ita est de operationibus quae per organum corporale exercentur, quia non est in potestate hominis quod, ex quo organum corporale est motum, eius passio statim cesset” (In DSS, t. 2, Leon. 45, 2: 131–2, ll. 70–7). See the text quoted in n. 35.

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disorder.38 More generally, Aquinas’s consideration of how mental illness can limit our control shows that he is sensitive to different ways in which our agency may be impeded. We saw in Chapter 6 (Section 6.5) that a bodily commanded act may be prevented due to an external impediment. For instance, my walk may be prevented by an obstacle on the road. But the case of depression makes it clear that Aquinas is aware that some impediments to our agency, indeed particularly significant ones, are internal to us.

8.6 Conclusion This discussion of seeking to recall something completes the task of fleshing out the hylomorphic account of the human act. As I argued in Chapter 6, human acts are, generally speaking, structured like material objects because they involve a formal and a material component, namely, use and the commanded act, respectively. Use is the form and efficient cause of the commanded act. It is the form because by directing the commanded act to a certain end it yields a human act of a certain kind. It is the efficient cause because it initiates and sustains the occurrence of the commanded act. As Chapter 7 argued, use and the commanded act are inherentially and durationally heterogeneous in the case of bodily human acts. As we saw in this chapter, in contrast, use and the commanded act are inherentially homogeneous but durationally heterogeneous in the case of the mental human act of seeking to recall something. Here ends my account of Aquinas’s hylomorphic action theory. In Chapter 9, I close the book by bringing this theory into dialogue with some contemporary work on human agency. Does Aquinas’s action theory have anything interesting to offer to the action theorist today? As I endeavor to show, it does. In particular, Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism has several attractive features.39 38 39

See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association, 2013), 164. In what follows I compare Aquinas to contemporary analytic action theory. There is also a rich action-theoretical tradition in phenomenology. See, e.g., Paul Ricœur, Philosophie de la volonté, vol. 1 (Le volontaire et l’involontaire) (Paris: Aubier, 1950); Alexander Pfänder, Phänomenologie des Wollens: Eine psychologische Analyse (Leipzig: Barth, 1900). Since this tradition is, regrettably, not well known in the anglophone world, discussing it here would require significantly more space than I have.

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chapter 9

Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism Today

To compare Aquinas’s theory to contemporary ones, I first provide an overview of three contemporary theories of the metaphysics of the human act, in particular of the bodily human act. I then position Aquinas’s view vis-à-vis these theories and discuss some virtues of his account over others. All of the contemporary theories that I present discuss the human act in light of a certain picture of causation. Two of these theories are eventcausal, which is to say that they take the relata of a causal relation to be events or changes. The third, in contrast, is agent- or substance-causal. It takes the relata of a causal relation to be a substance and a change caused by said substance. The three theories that I present do not exhaust the spectrum of available theories of action today, but I have chosen them because they are representative ones.1 I begin with what is arguably the best-known and most popular theory of action today, namely, Donald Davidson’s.2 Oftentimes this theory is simply referred to as the “causal theory of action.”3 This epithet is misleading because it is only one species of action theory appealing to causation, one on which a human act is an event that is caused by another event in a certain way. I shall therefore refrain from using the label ‘causal theory.’ I will instead refer to it as the Davidsonian event-causal theory.

1

2

3

There are also several theories of action that do not appeal to causation at all. See, e.g., Anscombe, Intention, 10; Hacker, Human Nature: The Categorical Framework, 225; George Wilson, The Intentionality of Human Action (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 1989), 168–204. I will not consider these theories here. Unfortunately, I won’t be comparing Aquinas’s theory to Anton Ford’s materialist account of action either. As I see it, there are important similarities between them, but regrettably I became aware of Ford’s theory too late to include a discussion of it in this book. See Davidson, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” 3–19. See also Alfred Mele, Springs of Action: Understanding Intentional Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 4–10; Michael Smith, “The Standard Story of Action: An Exchange (1),” in Causing Human Actions: New Perspectives on the Causal Theory of Action, ed. J. H. Aguilar and A. A. Buckareff (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2010), 45–56. See, e.g., Aguilar and Buckareff, Causing Human Actions.

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The main idea of Davidson’s theory is captured by Davidson’s famous phrase that human acts are “mere movements of the body.”4 The act of raising one’s arm, for instance, is, for Davidson, nothing but the overt bodily event of the arm’s going up.5 But sometimes my arm goes up unintentionally, for instance, as a consequence of a spasm, as Davidson observes. Thus, the question arises: how does the event of the arm’s going up intentionally differ from the event of the arm’s going up unintentionally? Here Davidson appeals to aetiology: what makes an event of one’s arm’s going up intentional is that it is suitably caused by certain antecedent mental events. The relevant mental events are, Davidson contends, a desire of the agent that things be a certain way and the belief that by performing the act in question the agent will make it the case that things are as she wants them to be. If the agent raised her arm to give a signal, for instance, then the arm rose due to the agent’s desire to give a signal and the belief that she will give a signal by raising her arm.6 No comparable aetiological story can be told about the arm’s rising if it occurs due to a spasm. The mental states of desire and belief constitute the agent’s “primary reason” for her act, Davidson maintains.7 What he means by this is that we appeal to these mental states to explain why the agent did what she did. If we ask, ‘Why did she raise her arm?,’ for instance, a legitimate answer may be, ‘Because she wanted to give a signal and thought that she could do so by raising her arm.’ While belief and desire explain a human act, they are not part of the act that they cause, however. Davidson emphasizes that cause and effect are two distinct events.8 Thus, for Davidson, what sets a human act apart from other events that do not occur intentionally is not something internal to the act, but rather a causal relation that it bears to a belief–desire pair extrinsic to it. While a number of action theorists adopted the Davidsonian eventcausal theory of the human act, some have found his view that motivational states are wholly extrinsic to the act problematic. Thinkers as diverse as John Searle and Irving Thalberg, for instance, have argued that we should make at least one such motivational state a component internal to the human act, with the other component being the behavior caused by this state. Their view is, accordingly, known as the “component analysis of 4

5 6 8

See Davidson, “Agency,” 59. For Davidson mental events are physical events, as per his anomalous monism. So his characterization of acts as movements of the body also holds for mental human acts. See his “Mental Events,” in Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 207–25. See Davidson, “Problems in the Explanation of Action,” in Davidson, Problems of Rationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 102. See Davidson, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” 8. 7 See ibid., 5. See Davidson, “Problems in the Explanation of Action,” 105.

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action.”9 Searle, for instance, maintains that a human act, such as raising one’s arm, is the observable bodily event of the arm’s going up plus the “intention in action” that causes said event.10 By an ‘intention in action,’ Searle understands a mental event that he refers to as a “present-directed intention.” Its content is standardly expressed as follows: ‘I am doing A,’ for instance, ‘I am raising my arm.’ Hence, on his theory, my raising my arm is the change of my arm’s going up plus the present-directed intention that I am raising my arm, which causes my arm to go up. One of Searle’s main motivations for making the intention in action part of the human act is a problem that arises for Davidson’s event-causal theory. This is the “Problem of Causal Deviance.” As we have seen, Davidson’s theory holds that an event is an intentional act if it is caused by the relevant belief–desire pair, where this pair is extrinsic to the act. However, as critics of Davidson were quick to point out, this analysis is insufficient because a belief–desire pair can cause an event in a deviant way, in which case the event occurs due to the belief–desire pair without, however, being performed intentionally. Here is an illustration of such a deviant causal chain due to Davidson himself: [A climber] might want to rid himself of the weight and danger of holding another man on a rope and know that by loosening his hold on the rope he could rid himself of the weight and danger. This belief and want might so unnerve him as to cause him to loosen his hold, and yet it might be the case that he never chose to loosen his hold, nor did he do it intentionally.11

The problem with the causal chain that Davidson describes here is that the belief and desire of the climber do not directly lead to the loosening of the hold on the rope. Rather, the belief–desire pair causes a state of agitation, and this state then causes the loosening of the hold. In short, the belief– desire pair causes the loosening of the hold, but not “in the right way,” as Davidson puts it.12 It is precisely to rule out such intervening states of agitation that Searle appeals to an intention in action, which he views as the immediate cause of the target behavior that the agent intends to bring about. What is more, Searle contends that unless we make this intention a component of the human act, the connection between the intention in action and the caused 9

10 11 12

See Searle, Intentionality, 84–90. Irving Thalberg, Perception, Emotion and Action: A Component Approach (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), 50–79, allows for a human act to comprise multiple causally salient motivational states as its components. Searle does not. See Searle, Intentionality, 85–8. He contrasts intention in action with a so-called “prior intention,” whose characteristic form of expression is ‘I will do A.’ See Donald Davidson, “Freedom to Act,” in Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 79. See Donald Davidson, “Intending,” in Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 87.

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behavior could always be deviant because there would be room for some kind of interference.13 The Searlean component analysis, then, is an attempt to improve Davidson’s theory. It retains the event-causal framework but rethinks what the human act is by including a mental event as a component. Some contemporary philosophers of action, like Jennifer Hornsby, Maria Alvarez, John Hyman, Helen Steward, and Erasmus Mayr, have rejected the event-causal framework altogether and adopted an agent-causal approach instead. On this approach, which we encountered in connection with Brock’s interpretation of Aquinas in Chapter 6 (Section 6.5), a human act is not an event such as the arm’s going up, nor yet the conjunction of this event and some intention. Rather, it is the agent’s causing of such an event, and the caused event is not the human act but rather its result.14 In the twentieth century, Jennifer Hornsby developed this theory in detail in her monograph Actions, and it is her theory that I focus on here.15 To motivate her view, Hornsby begins by conceding Davidson’s claim that human acts such as raising one’s arm are no more than “mere movements of the body.” However, as we noted in Chapter 6 (Section 6.4), she observes that ‘move’ is an ambiguous term, one that may be used transitively, as in ‘John movedT his finger,’ or intransitively, as in ‘John’s finger movedI.’16 Given this distinction, Hornsby points out that we need to distinguish between two different readings of the Davidsonian claim that human acts are bodily movements. The claim may either mean that human acts are movementsT or that they are movementsI. Hornsby argues that Davidson’s claim turns out to be true only under the former interpretation, but not under the latter. The reason that she adduces is that when asked ‘What did he do?’ we always provide answers like the following: ‘He movedT his finger’ or ‘He raisedT his arm.’ We never reply: ‘His finger movedI’ or ‘His arm roseI.’ This means, Hornsby concludes, that human acts must be movementsT. As we saw in Chapter 6 (Section 6.4), 13 14

15

16

See Searle, Intentionality, 94. See Hornsby, Actions, 2–3; Alvarez and Hyman, “Agents and Their Actions,” 219–45; Mayr, Understanding Human Agency, 198–218. These theorists take causings to be exercises of powers. Note that there are also other agent-causal theories that appeal to powers, See, e.g., Timothy O’Connor, “Agent Causation,” in O’Connor, Agent, Causes, and Events, 173–200. For earlier versions of this view in the twentieth century, see Georg Henrik von Wright, Norm and Action: A Logical Enquiry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 35–6; Hugh McCann, “Volition and Basic Action,” 87–91. It should be noted that Hornsby does not call her theory “agentcausal” in Actions. However, classifying her view as agent-causal seems appropriate because it revolves around the idea central to agent causation that a human act is an agent’s causing of some change. Not surprisingly, philosophers building on Hornsby’s theory, like Alvarez, Hyman, and Mayr, describe their respective views as agent-causal, and so does the later Hornsby. See Hornsby, Actions, 2.

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movementsT cause movementsI, on her view. For instance, Jonah’s meltingT the chocolate causes the chocolate to meltI. Since human acts are movementsT, Hornsby reasons, it follows that they are causings of movementsI.17 Accordingly, the human act of raising one’s arm is not identical to the observable event of the arm’s going up, its movingI. Rather, raising one’s arm is the act of movingT one’s arm up, and this is what causes the event of the arm’s movingI, the latter being the result of raising one’s arm rather than the act itself. Let us now position Aquinas’s theory in this debate. I think it is best to think of his view as combining elements of both Hornsby’s agent-causal theory and the Searlean component analysis. Like Hornsby’s view, Aquinas’s account is agent- or substance-causal: the human being acts by causing a change. However, for Aquinas a human act is not just the causing of a change. It is a causing plus a caused change, the former being the act of use and the latter the commanded act. This is something that his view has in common with the Searlean component view. But Aquinas’s account is unlike Searle’s in that it is a hylomorphic component view. For Aquinas, the agent’s causing, which is a volition, is the form of the caused behavior directing it to an end. The taxonomy in Figure 9.1 illustrates the position of Aquinas’s theory relative to the contemporary theories just discussed.

Causal theories

Event-causal

Agent-causal

Human acts are events caused by motivational states (Davidson)

Human acts are agential causings of events (Hornsby, Steward, Alvarez, Hyman, and Mayr)

Human acts are events plus the motivational states causing them (Searle)

Human acts are agential causings plus events caused hylomorphically arranged (Aquinas)

Figure 9.1 Aquinas and contemporary action theories 17

See ibid., 3.

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Is Aquinas’s account attractive by contemporary lights? I suggest that it is and that its merits can be brought out by considering some significant problems befalling the various other theories that it is immune to. I should note that what I offer in what follows is not a full-blown defense of Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism. My aim is more modest: I merely aim to highlight some advantages of Aquinas’s theory to show that it is interesting even by contemporary lights. As we have already seen, Davidson’s theory has to contend with the Problem of Causal Deviance. Some attempts have been made to deal with this problem in a Davidsonian framework.18 However, these have led to further counterexamples from causal deviance, and there is to this day no accepted solution to the Problem of Causal Deviance. We lack an account of the “right way” in which an agent’s primary reason causes her act. There is another pressing problem for event-causal theories, not just for Davidson’s but even for Searle’s. This is the “Problem of the Absent Agent.”19 On event-causal theories, all there is to a human act is a sequence of events: one mental, the other observable. For Searle, for instance, my raising my arm is simply the sequence of my intention in action and the event of the arm’s going up. For Davidson, it is the arm’s going up as related to some extrinsic belief– desire pair. But if this is so, then I, the agent, do not seem to play any role in initiating and controlling the human act. Rather, I appear to be no more than an arena in which one event, the arm’s going up, is caused by another event, the intention in action or the belief–desire pair. On the event-causal theory, then, an agent does not seem to be doing anything at all.20 Rather, we get what Davidson calls a “tale of two events,” and in this tale the agent is not a protagonist.21 Aquinas’s account of the human act does not fall victim to either of these two problems. First, he does not have to contend with the Problem of the

18

19

20

21

See esp. Mele, Springs of Action, 197–202. For a detailed discussion and critique of Mele’s theory in connection with deviant causal chains, see Scott Sehon, “Deviant Causal Chains and the Irreducibility of Teleological Explanation,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (1997): 195–213. For this terminology, see J. H. Aguilar and A. A. Buckareff, “The Causal Theory of Action: Origins and Issues,” in Aguilar and Buckareff, Causing Human Actions, 12. Aguilar and Buckareff trace this objection back to Melden. Usually the objection is raised against the causal theory of Davidson, but it applies to all event-causal theories, including Searle’s. As Hornsby, “Agency and Actions,” in Agency and Action, ed. Helen Steward and John Hyman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 22 puts the objection: “the fact that the person exercises a capacity to bring something about is . . . suppressed.” See Davidson, “Agency,” 53.

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Absent Agent because Aquinas adheres to substance causation. On his view, a human act is a hylomorphically organized whole of power-exercises, and it is the agent who exercises these powers. For Aquinas, then, raising one’s arm does not dissolve into the sequence of the arm’s going up and some motivational state causing this change. Rather, it is a coordinated set of power-exercises of the agent. Aquinas’s theory does not face the Problem of Causal Deviance either. He thinks that we need both a motivational state, in particular use and a caused piece of behavior to have a human act. Now, it is impossible for use to give rise to the commanded act in a deviant manner because use must inhere in the commanded act as a form, as per Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism, and there is no deviant way in which a formal cause inheres in its matter. Either it inheres in it or it does not. If use inheres in the commanded act, we have a human act, and if it does not, we don’t have a human act. Consider Davidson’s example of the nervous climber for illustration. For Aquinas, the loosening of the hold is a human act only if it is an exercise of the climber’s motive power as informed by the climber’s volition to use her motive power to loosen the hold. When the climber loosens the hold due to his state of agitation, then the volition to use said power does not inform the loosening movementI. For if use inhered in the movementI, the climber would loosen the hold for the sake of ridding himself of the other climber, which is not what happens when the climber loosens the hold due to a state of agitation. Hence, Aquinas can simply deny that we have a human act of loosening the hold here. Aquinas’s theory does not only have advantages over event-causal theories, such as Davidson’s or Searle’s, however. It also has a leg up on Hornsby’s agent-causal theory. Hornsby’s view does not face the Problem of Causal Deviance because she does not conceive of human acts as overt bodily events that are caused (in the right way) by motivational states or as composites of a motivational state and a caused event. Rather, as we saw, she conceives of our acts as causings of overt bodily changes. For this reason, her theory does not fall victim to the Problem of the Absent Agent either. In fact, one reason why Hornsby develops her agent-causal theory of the human act is to avoid precisely this sort of problem.22 However, Hornsby’s theory has to confront another serious problem. On her view, human acts turn out to be unobservable. Here is why. Hornsby takes our acts to be movementsT. Now consider my raisingT 22

See n. 20.

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my arm. Where does it take place? We cannot say that it takes place in the arm, Hornsby argues, because this is where the resultant event of my arm’s risingI takes place, and this event is a result distinct from the raisingT of my arm, as we have seen. Rather, we must locate our raisingT of our arm wherever the primary cause of our arm’s risingI is located. Neurophysiologists tell us that the primary causes of events like arm risingsI are located inside our body, in particular in our brain, Hornsby maintains. Therefore, she concludes, human acts are neural events that cause bodily movementsI.23 So, human acts occur inside the body, more specifically in the brain. This view of the human act is very counterintuitive.24 On it, human acts like raising one’s arm or taking a walk are not observable in any straightforward sense.25 Rather, all we can see are the external effects of these acts. Thus, when I thought I saw you raise your arm or take a walk, I was mistaken. What I saw instead were movementsI of your limbs, whereas the causally responsible human acts of raising your arm and taking a walk occurred inside your body. A view that is counterintuitive need not be false. But a theory that can explain the same set of phenomena equally well without sacrificing a powerful intuition is preferable. Now, on Aquinas’s component analysis, we do not have to give up our intuition that human acts are observable. Aquinas would concede that one part of a bodily human act indeed eludes our gaze, in particular the act of use, which is an immanent act that occurs in the soul. However, the other component, the bodily commanded act, is observable in a straightforward sense. This is also why Aquinas refers to it as an “exterior act” (actus exterior) of the will. Hence, Aquinas maintains that I can see the physical side of your walking, but I cannot thereby see your volition to use your motive power for the end of taking a walk. And this is in keeping with our ordinary beliefs about what we can, and cannot, see when we see people do things. We are often able to tell that a person does 23 24

25

See Hornsby, Actions, 14. See, e.g., Helen Steward, “Do Actions Occur Inside the Body?” Mind & Society 1, no. 2 (2000), 115–25 for a series of objections to Hornsby’s theory. While Steward rejects the view that the human act occurs inside the body, she does think that it is a causing of an overt change. That is, she also views raising one’s arm as the agent’s causing of her arm to go up. Where, then, does Steward locate this causing if not inside the body? She argues that it is located where the agent is located, and that no more precise location can be given. This view is an improvement on Hornsby’s theory. Regrettably I do not have the space to compare it with Aquinas’s because this would require examining the thorny issue of where human acts are located. Note that Hornsby abandoned this view in her Simple Mindedness: In Defense of Naive Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 232, n. 1.

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something, but we do not thereby know what she intends to achieve. I may see you walking, but I do not know (unless I ask you) whether you are taking a walk or going home, for instance. Aquinas’s Act Hylomorphism, then, has some merits by contemporary lights. These advantages notwithstanding, it also has a considerable downside, namely, the rampant dualism on which it is predicated. As we have seen, Aquinas thinks that use is a non-physical act that efficiently causes a bodily commanded act. Dualist theories of (efficient) causation face a series of problems, of which I just cite two.26 First, there is a scientific problem. On a dualist picture like Aquinas’s, the non-physical mind seems to inject new energy into a physical system with every exterior act it brings about, in which case the total energy of this system is not conserved. This, it has been argued, violates the scientific law of conservation of energy. This law was of course unknown to Aquinas, but if the objection succeeds, then Aquinas’s dualist theory faces a serious problem.27 Second, a number of philosophers today accept the principle known as the “Causal Closure of the Physical.” According to this principle, which is assumed by a number of the sciences, every physical effect has a complete physical cause.28 If this principle is true, then exterior acts must be accounted for by our brain states. There is nothing for a non-physical, mental state, such as use, left to explain, unless of course we reject Causal Closure or adopt causal overdetermination and maintain that even if a physical event has a complete physical cause, non-physical states may function as additional determiners. Perhaps these objections to dualism can be defused, but doing so is not an easy feat.29 Even so, I want to suggest in closing that this does not mean the end of Aquinas’s hylomorphic action theory. For his doctrine of Act Hylomorphism can be disentangled from his dualism. It is true, Aquinas espouses both views in conjunction, but an act hylomorphist need not conceive of the forms of human acts as non-physical entities in the way in which Aquinas does. She may instead think of these forms as arrangements of human acts that, though irreducible to the bodily commanded acts that 26 27 28 29

For a discussion of these problems, see, e.g., the various contributions in Jonathan J. Loose, et al., eds. The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018). For this objection and a reply to it, see Edward Averill and B. F. Keating, “Does Interactionism Violate a Law of Classical Physics?” Mind 90, no. 357 (1981): 102–7. For discussion, see, e.g., David Papineau, Philosophical Naturalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), ch. 1. See again the contributions in Loose et al., The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism, for suggestions.

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they inform, cannot exist in separation from the body.30 This is just one suggestion of how Aquinas’s hylomorphic account could be further developed in the twenty-first century. At any rate, I believe that his hylomorphic theory is deserving of our attention today, and I hope to have at least started a conversation between it and contemporary theorizing about human agency. 30

Recently, William Jaworski, Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind: How Hylomorphism Solves the Mind-Body Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 172, proposed such a view. He calls intentions the “rational structures” of our doings, where ‘structure’ is his term for what Aquinas would call a “form.” Because Jaworski’s interest in this book lies in hylomorphism about material objects, he does not develop this account of the human act in detail.

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appendix

Judgment and Composition and Division

As is well known, Aquinas, following Aristotle, refers to judgment as an act of “composing and dividing” (compositio et divisio).1 On a standard interpretation, which may be referred to as the combinatory interpretation, Aquinas means by this that a judgment is the act of combining concepts in an affirmative predication or the act of holding them apart in a negative predication.2 On this reading, my judging that the door is closed, for example, is just my combining the subject concept door and the predicate concept closed via the copula is, and my judging that the window is not open is my keeping the concepts window and open apart via the negated copula is not. If the combinatory interpretation is correct, then Aquinas’s theory of judgment faces a serious objection. The objection is that the theory lacks the resources to draw the important distinction between merely understanding a proposition p and judging that p. I considered the case of doubting a proposition in Chapter 2 to motivate this distinction. But to further drive home that such a distinction is important, another consideration may be adduced. Take the case of asking a question. Suppose that you ask me whether the door is closed. If I understand your question, I must understand the proposition ‘The door is closed,’ and this requires me, arguably, to mentally combine the concepts of door and closed via the copula is. On the combinatory interpretation, this combining already 1

2

See, e.g., “Et hoc facit [intellectus] componendo et dividendo, nam in omni propositione aliquam formam significatam per praedicatum, vel applicat alicui rei significatae per subiectum, vel removet ab ea” (ST I, q. 16, a. 2, c., Leon. 4: 208). See also In De Trin., q. 5, a. 3, c., Leon. 50: 173, ll. 89–95; In DA III, c. 5, Leon. 45, 1: 224–6, ll. 7–89. In addition to Pini, “Scotus on Assertion and the Copula: A Comparison with Aquinas,” 318–20, the following scholars have defended this reading: Owens, “Judgment and Truth in Aquinas,” 149; Louis-Marie Régis, “The Knowledge of Existence in St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Modern Schoolman 28 (1951), 125; Étienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd edition (Toronto: PIMS, 1952), 190; Wippel, “Truth in Thomas Aquinas: Part 2,” 562–3; Gabriele Galluzzo, “Il tema della verità nell’Expositio Libri Peryermenias di Tommaso d’Aquino,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 11 (2000), 251.

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amounts to judging that the door is closed. But this seems false, for perhaps I understand your question and so the proposition ‘The door is closed’ but I have no idea as to whether the door is actually closed. In this case, I can hardly be said to judge that the door is closed, for I do not take this proposition to be true. This suggests that a judgment requires more than the mere combination or separation of concepts. As I argued in Chapter 2, following a reading going back to John of St. Thomas, this additional element is assent (or dissent), which Aquinas distinguishes from the proposition.3 But if this is right and judgment is the act of thinking with assent (or dissent) and not just the combination of concepts, why, one might ask, is Aquinas referring to judgment as “composition and division?” I shall now argue that he does this to refer to assent and dissent, respectively. To this end, we need to consider an important distinction that Aquinas draws in his commentary on De Interpretatione I, c. 3.4 There Aquinas writes: If we consider those things that pertain to the intellect in itself, there is always composition where there is truth and falsity, which is only found in the intellect when it relates one simple concept to another. But when [an intellectual item] is referred to a thing [in the world], sometimes it is called composition and sometimes division. It is called composition when the intellect relates one concept to another as it were apprehending the conjunction or identity of the things that these concepts represent. It is called division, by contrast, when the intellect relates one concept to another in such a way as to apprehend that the things [that these concepts represent] are separated.5 3

4

5

See Cursus philosophicus thomisticus IV, q. 5, a. 2 (Turin, Marietti: 1937), 140. For other defenders of this (non-standard) reading, see Peter Hoenen, Reality and Judgment according to Saint Thomas (Chicago: Regnery, 1952), 14; Lonergan, Verbum, 49 and 59–61; Francis M. Tyrell, “Concerning the Nature and Function of the Act of Judgment,” New Scholasticism 26, no. 4 (1952) 393–423. For a helpful overview of the debate between the standard and non-standard reading, see Patrick Lee, “Aquinas on Knowledge of Truth and Existence,” The New Scholasticism 60, no. 1 (1986): 46–71. For a study of Aquinas’s use of the terminology of ‘iudicium,’ ‘assensus,’ and ‘secunda operatio,’ see F. A. Cunningham, “The Second Operation and the Assent vs. the Judgment in St. Thomas,” New Scholasticism 31, no. 1 (1957): 1–33. This text has become the locus classicus for the non-standard reading. Both Hoenen, Reality and Judgment, 8 and Tyrell, “Concerning the Nature and Function,” 395–7 appeal to it. My reading is close to Tyrell’s, though I understand the relation between composition and division, on the one hand, and assent and dissent, on the other, differently. See n. 8. “[S]i consideremus ea quae sunt circa intellectum secundum se, semper est compositio ubi est veritas et falsitas, quae nunquam invenitur in intellectu nisi per hoc quod intellectus comparat unum simplicem conceptum alteri; sed, si referatur ad rem, quandoque dicitur compositio, quandoque dicitur divisio: compositio quidem, quando intellectus comparat unum conceptum alteri, quasi apprehendens coniunctionem aut identitatem rerum quarum sunt conceptiones; divisio autem, quando sic comparat unum conceptum alteri, ut apprehendat res esse divisas” (In Periherm I, c. 3, Leon. 1*1: 15, ll. 55–74).

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The key idea of this passage is, I think, that there are two kinds of composition. First, Aquinas writes, we may consider the intellect “in itself” (secundum se), that is, without considering its relation to something else, in particular the world. When we do so, we can see that composition is present in each and every proposition, whether true or false. This composition is plausibly thought of as the combination of a subject and a predicate concept via the copula. If the proposition ‘The door is closed’ is true, then this involves a composition of door and closed via the copula is, but the false proposition ‘The door is open’ also involves such a composition, but this time of the concepts door and open via the copula is. This kind of composition is present in any thought with propositional content, including the act of merely understanding a proposition without assenting to it. I shall refer to it as propositional composition. Composition in the sense of judgment, that is, composition as opposed to division, is another kind of composition. Let us call it judicative composition and the division opposed to it judicative division. I think that judicative composition differs from propositional composition, according to the above text, because Aquinas there writes that composition and division, unlike propositional composition, do not concern the intellect taken “in itself” but rather the intellect as “referred to a thing” (si referatur ad rem).6 His idea seems to be that judicative composition, unlike propositional composition, is not simply an act of putting concepts together, but rather an act of relating the concepts so put together to the world, “as it were apprehending the conjunction or identity of the things that these concepts represent,” as Aquinas puts it. In other words, by judicatively combining concepts, I take a propositional composition of a subject and a predicate concept to be reflective of a real-world composition. When I judicatively compose the concepts of door and closed via the copula is, for 6

One could challenge my contention that the two types of composition are distinct in kind by offering the following alternative reading of the above text. One could argue that the composition that Aquinas first mentions in this text is a genus term meaning ‘propositional thought in general’ and that the composition that he mentions second is a species of this genus, namely, affirmative propositional thought, whereas division is the other species, namely, negative propositional thought. For a reading along these lines, see Lee, “Aquinas on Knowledge of Truth and Existence,” 62. I admit that this reading is possible, but I find it more plausible to read Aquinas here as stating that propositional and judicative composition are two distinct kinds of composition for the following reason. The first composition, he implies, is not world-relating. It concerns the intellect “secundum se” and it is merely between concepts. It is in the intellect “per hoc … quod comparat unum simplicem conceptum alteri.” The second composition concerns the intellect “si referatur ad rem.” In other words, it is not just between concepts; it is world-relating. But then there is a contrast between the first and the second kind of composition, in which case the first kind of composition cannot be the genus of the second kind because species are not opposed to genera.

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instance, I do not just formulate the proposition ‘The door is closed.’ No – I take this proposition to be reflective of the real-world composition obtaining between the door and the property of being closed.7 And when I judicatively divide the concepts of door and open via the negated copula is not, I do not just formulate the negative proposition ‘The door is not open.’ Rather, I deny the proposition ‘The door is open’ by not taking it to reflect any real-world composition obtaining between the door and the property of being open. How is this distinction between judicative composition and division related to the distinction between assent and dissent? I take these two distinctions to be identical.8 By judicatively combining concepts, I take a given proposition to reflect a real-world composition, as we have seen, and this means that I accept the proposition as true, which is to assent to it. Analogously, by judicatively dividing concepts, I take a given proposition not to reflect a real-world composition, and this means that I take the proposition to be false, which is to dissent from it. Thus, on my view, 7

8

In the above text, Aquinas puts this in terms of an identity relation. So, perhaps the idea is better put as follows: the real-world composition is the identity between the door and this particular closed object. Aquinas’s appeal to identity here is related to his identity theory of predication, on which ‘S is P’ is true if and only if the entity denoted by ‘S’ coincides with the entity denoted by ‘P.’ In ‘The door is closed,’ ‘the door’ refers to a door, and ‘closed’ refers to ‘this closed object.’ So, ‘The door is closed’ is true if and only if the door is this closed object. Aquinas endorses this theory in ST I, q. 13, a. 12, c., Leon. 4: 164. For a discussion, see, e.g., Henry Veatch, “St. Thomas’s Doctrine of Subject and Predicate,” in St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies, ed. Armand Maurer (Toronto: PIMS, 1974), 401–22. For a more recent discussion of the identity theory, which introduces the notion of “sameness without identity,” see Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, 139–47. See Tyrell, “Concerning the Nature and Function,” 409–16 for an extended argument to the effect that these are not identical. Tyrell argues that one can assent to a proposition without, as Aquinas puts it in his commentary on De interpretatione, “apprehending the conjunction or identity of the things” that the conceptual components of the proposition represent. Tyrell makes his case by considering the epistemology of propositions of faith in Aquinas. Take the proposition ‘Christ rose from the dead,’ which we may refer to as p. I may doubt p’s truth, for Aquinas, and as Tyrell sees it, this means that my intellect does not apprehend any real-world composition of Christ and the property of having risen from the dead. Nor, however, does my intellect apprehend the separation of Christ and this property. For if I am in doubt as to whether p is true, I find no decisive evidence for either p or not-p. Yet I can freely assent to p, Tyrell maintains, because I want to do so, say because I am convinced that doing so is important for my salvation. Hence, there can be assent without apprehending any composition or separation, in which case assent differs from judicative composition or division. The problem with this reading is that it presupposes that, for Aquinas, judicative composition, that is, the act of apprehending a real-world composition corresponding to a proposition, must be an act of recognizing a proposition’s truth based on evidence perceived as decisive by the knower. But this is a very narrow interpretation of what this act of apprehending a real-world composition is, and nothing forces us to adopt it. It is also possible to interpret Aquinas’s act of apprehending a real-world composition corresponding to a proposition more broadly as an act of taking a proposition to be true (even if the evidence is not perceived as decisive), and if this is right, then this apprehending can be identified with assent, which is the act of endorsing a proposition as true.

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Appendix: Judgment and Composition and Division Propositional composition

Mind:

‘S is P’

No relation to world required

207

Judicative composition

Mind:

‘S is P’

World:

S with property P

Figure A.1 Propositional versus judicative composition

judicative composition is Aquinas’s way of spelling out what assent is. To endorse a proposition as true is to take the composition that it expresses to represent a composition in the world, and to reject a proposition as false is to take the composition that it expresses not to represent any composition in the world. Figure A.1 illustrates the difference between judicative and propositional composition. In Figure A.1, the left-hand side represents the first type of composition, which consists in no more than the conjoining of subject and predicate via the copula is into a proposition, here represented by the box containing the predication schema ‘S is P.’ This composition concerns the intellect or mind taken “in itself,” and so no relation of comparing this proposition to the world obtains. The right-hand side of Figure A.1, in contrast, represents judicative composition. This time the proposition is related to the world. This is indicated by the arrow connecting the box containing the predication schema with the round figure at the bottom, which indicates the salient portion of the world that the proposition is taken to adequately reflect. For instance, if the proposition is ‘The door is open,’ then this proposition is taken to reflect the real-world state of affairs of the door’s being open. I have represented this state of affairs as ‘S with property P’ to indicate that, at least in the simplest case, it involves a particular referred to by the subject term of the proposition, here: the door, and a property referred to by the predicate term, here: being open.

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Index

act as a power-exercise, 3, 14–19 complete act, 160–64, 171–76, 187–89 immanent act, 149–53, 157–59, 161–62, 174, 186–87 productive immanent act, 158–59 incomplete act, 160–69, 187–89 transeunt act, 149–57, 161–62, 174 doubly transeunt act, 157 action aetiology, 2–6, 22–24, 30–31, 139–46, 194 action at a temporal distance, 141, 144 action theory agent-causal theory, 196–97, 199–200 and moral philosophy (philosophia moralis), 3–4 component analysis, 194–96, 198 Davidson’s event-causal theory, 193–94, 198 vs. ethics and metaethics, 2 action vs. passion action, 3, 17–22, 81, 126, 151–57 identity of action and passion, 18–19, 151–53, 155–57 non-identity of action and passion in the human act, 19–20, 21–22, 158–59 passion, 3, 17–22, 81, 126, 151–57 adherence vs. withdrawal. See volition, attitude/ content structure of volition Albert the Great, 154 Alvarez, Maria, 17, 131, 196 animal agency, 16, 67, 77, 182 Anscombe, G. E. M., 48 anthropomorphism, 16–17 Aristotle, 2, 12, 28–30, 52, 84, 132, 154, 162, 164–65, 178, 203 assent assent and judicative composition, 205–7 assent vs. dissent, 38–41, 106–7, 204 free assent. See judgment, free judgment/ judgment of choice necessitated assent, 57–62 reason-based assent, 63–64, 70–72

brain as the organ of the internal senses, 180, 191 Bratman, Michael, 142 Brock, Stephen, 131–32, 196 Buridan’s Ass cases, 30, 72 causal closure of the physical, 201 causal overdetermination, 201 causal theory of action. See action theory, Davidson’s event-causal theory cause causation and dependence, 84 efficient cause, 84–86, 89–91, 97–99, 105, 112–13, 126, 128–29, 137–39, 142–46, 186, 192, 201 equivalence of formal and final cause in the human act, 135–36 equivalence of formal and final cause in volition, 87–89, 135 event causation, 193–96, 198 exemplar cause. See cause, extrinsic formal cause extrinsic formal cause, 88, 100–2, 113, 134–35, 138–39 final cause, 86–89, 102, 113, 135–36, 144–46 four causes, 84–86 instrumental cause, 122–25 intrinsic formal cause, 84–85, 87–89, 100–3, 112–13, 133–39, 176–77 material cause, 84–85 per se vs. per accidens cause, 156–57 univocal vs. non-univocal cause, 104–5 change (motus) as an actualization of a passive power, 85–86, 90, 164–65 as an event, 18 choice Aristotle’s deliberation-based theory, 28–30 as a commitment, 141–44 as the key aetiological factor of the human act, 5–6, 22–24, 31–33, 139–46

222

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223

Index moral relevance of choice, 32–33 non-deliberation-based choice, 28–30, 72 circumstances of the human act, 32, 119–21 command, 5, 117–25, 128–30, 132–35, 137–44, 159 as a situation-specific judgment, 119–20 as an aetiological factor of the human act, 139–44 as form of the human act, 132–35, 138–39 as specifying the instrument, 122–25, 128, 142 vs. judgment of choice, 119–21, 124–25 commanded act, 5–6, 20–21, 117–18, 126–36, 137–39, 143–44, 146, 158–59, 174–77 bodily commanded act, 146, 153–57, 159–60, 169, 174, 186–90, 200–1 mental commanded act, 146, 182–92 vs. elicited act, 20, 200 commandments, 43, 59–62 consent, 5, 31 conservation of energy, 201 control (dominium), 23–24, 190–92 counsel, 25, 91 Davidson, Donald, 193–99 deliberation, 28, 31, 68, 71–72, 162 determinism, 33 deviant causal chains, 195–96, 198–99 direction of fit mind-to-world, 39–40, 46, 77–78, 97–98, 128 world-to-mind, 78–79, 97–98, 128–29, 137–38 Donagan, Alan, 118, 125, 129–30 doubt, 28–29, 40–41 dualism, 201–2 duty/obligation, 48, 54 end end state as individuator of act, 168–70, 188–89 end tree, 51, 144–45 non-ultimate end, 51, 53–54, 64–66, 69–72, 136 proximate vs. remote end. See end, end tree ultimate end, 4, 31–32, 51–55, 60–66 ethics, 2, 4, 31–33, 48 exercise of the will. See will, self-motion of the will first principles first principle vs. first precept, 49, 59 of practical reason. See precepts, primary precepts of theoretical reason, 57–58 force/content distinction, 40 free decision (liberum arbitrium), 23, 33, 66–73, 96–97 freedom freedom of choice as related to freedom of judgment. See intellectualism

freedom of specification vs. freedom of exercise, 95–97 of judgment. See judgment, free judgment/ judgment of choice of specifying the instrument, 123–24 subject vs. cause of freedom, 96–97 Galen, 154 Gauthier, René-Antoine, 118, 125 George, Marie, 150–51 good as a conformity of being to striving, 78–79 as related to ought, 49–50 good for/useful, 50 good in general, 80–81 habit, 12–13, 140 happiness. See end, ultimate end Harré, Romano and Edward Madden, 11 Hornsby, Jennifer, 126–27, 131, 196–97, 199–200 human act as a neural event, 200 bodily human act, 147–77 durational heterogeneity of, 148, 174, 186–89 human act and action theory, 2–3 hylomorphic interpretation. See hylomorphism, act hylomorphism impediments of the human act, 130–31, 190–92 inherential heterogeneity of, 148, 159–60, 186–87 mental human act, 147–48, 178–92 multi-phase interpretation, 129–31 phenomenology vs. metaphysics, 130 volitionalist interpretation, 131–32 vs. act of a human being, 23 hylomorphism about material objects, 6, 13, 84–85, 176–77 act hylomorphism, 6, 19–22, 132–39, 177, 197–202 choice hylomorphism, 6, 26–28, 101–3, 111–13 Hyman, John, 17, 131, 196 imagination, 179–80 intellectualism, 27, 92–97, 107, 111 intention (intentio), 5, 31–32 as a cognitive content, 180–81 intending two things at once, 173–74 intention in action, 195–96, 198 intentional action, 1, 4 intentionality original vs. derivative intentionality, 102–3, 110–13, 133–35 interior vs. exterior act. See commanded act, vs. elicited act

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224

Index

judgment affirmation vs. negation, 38–39, 106–7 as composition and division, 203–7 judicative composition and division, 205–7 propositional composition, 205 as intentional state, 102–3 attitude/content structure of judgment, 38–41, 103, 105–7, 110–11, 203–7 free judgment/judgment of choice, 6, 25–27, 46–48, 62–73, 91–99, 102–3, 111–13, 119–21, 145–46 judgment of synderesis, 58–62 practical judgment, 37–38, 41–42, 80–81, 83–84, 106–7 second-order judgment, 66–73 theoretical judgment, 38, 41 vs. simple apprehension, 38, 81, 108–9 law natural law, 43, 49, 52, 54, 59–62 positive law, 43–44 likeness, 39–40, 77–78, 100–1 MacDonald, Scott, 34, 67, 136 Mayr, Erasmus, 196 McInerny, Ralph, 129–30 means expedient means, 50–51, 53, 55, 63–64, 69–73 means as part of the end, 54–55 means as specification, 136–37 necessary means, 50–51, 53–55, 60–62, 64–66 melancholia, 191–92 Mele, Alfred, 185–88 memory, 147–48, 179, 181–82 metaethics, 2, 4 moral philosophy (philosophia moralis), 3–4 movement movement in the transitive and intransitive sense, 126–28, 131–32, 141, 155–57, 196–97, 199–200 object of the will, 82–84, 86–89, 94–95, 98, 102–3, 105–10, 112–13, 133, 137–38 operable things, 42–49, 83 doable vs. makeable things, 42, 83 particular operable things, 62, 72–73, 80–81 partial acts. See human act, multi-phase interpretation power acquired. See habit active, 3, 17–18, 81–82, 85–86, 91–92, 126 cogitative, 179–81 executive, 122–29, 138–39

motive power (vis motiva), 154–55, 157–60, 169, 173–76, 199 natural, 12–13 passive, 3, 17–18, 81–82, 85–86, 90, 91–92, 101, 126, 164–66 power to be moved, 164–66 vital, 14, 23 powerful particular, 11–12 practical science moral vs. productive science, 44 practical truth, 45–46, 77–78 precepts about doable things, 42–45 about makeable things, 44–45 definition of a precept, 48–49, 70–71 precepts relating an expedient means to a nonultimate end, 53, 64, 69–72 precepts relating an expedient means to the ultimate end, 55, 63–64 precepts relating necessary means to a nonultimate end, 53–54, 64–66 precepts relating necessary means to the ultimate end. See primary precepts precepts vs. enunciations, 41–42 primary precepts, 49, 54–55, 58–62 universal precepts. See law primary substance, 12, 75, 88, 137 projectile motion, 141, 190 pursuit vs. flight. See volition, attitude/content structure of volition reason as a power for general thought, 14, 23, 79 primary reason, 194, 198 reasons for action, 1, 63–64, 69–73, 194 theoretical vs. practical, 25, 41–42, 45–46, 57–59, 61 relations mind-dependent relations, 70 reminiscing, 182–92 as involving a quasi-syllogistic procedure, 182–85 vs. remembering, 183–86, 187 Searle, John, 39, 79, 194–99 self-evidence for all, 58, 60–61 senses, 14, 23, 75–76, 79 external senses, 179–80 internal senses, 179–82 skilled agency, 29–30, 42, 51, 72 soul, 14, 159–60, 177, 186 specification of volition. See will, will’s dependence on reason in formal-causal terms Steward, Helen, 131, 196

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Index striving natural striving, 75 rational striving. See volition, as rational striving sensory striving, 75–79, 104, 157 striving vs. striving power, 74–75 Suárez, Francisco, 119–21, 124–25 substance causation, 15–16, 197–99 substantial form, 13–14, 21, 85, 89, 176–77 Thalberg, Irving, 194 the problem of the absent agent, 198–99 Thomas of Sutton, 158–59 Thompson, Michael, 109 token vs. type acts, 32 triad of being, life, and thought, 52, 60 use, 5, 20–22, 117–18 as a per accidens temporal act, 175–76, 189 as an immanent act, 157–59, 186–87, 200 as efficient cause of the commanded act, 126–29, 137–39, 146, 186, 192 as form of the human act, 133–39, 146, 177, 186 as simultaneous with the commanded act, 128, 134, 174–76, 189–90 as the human act. See human act, volitionalist interpretation hylomorphic structure of use, 137–38 useful. See good, good for/useful Vendler, Zeno, 169 virtual remaining (virtute manere), 139–46, 147–48

225

vital spirits, 154–55 Vlastos, Gregory, 84 volition as a derivatively intentional state, 102–3, 110–13, 133–35, 137–39 as inclination, 78, 112, 124, 137–39 as rational striving, 26, 75–76, 79–81, 93, 104–5, 108–9, 112–13 attitude/content structure of volition, 105–10, 133 definition of volition, 6 non-propositional content of volition, 107–10, 133, 138–39 preferential volition. See choice self- vs. other-directed volition, 107–9 simple volition, 5, 31, 91, 129–30 volition ascriptions, 109–10 voluntarism, 92–93 Westberg, Daniel, 129 will definition of the will, 14 self-motion of the will, 26, 90–92, 95, 97, 142–43 will’s dependence on reason in final-causal terms, 86–89, 98–99, 113 in formal-causal terms, 87–89, 98–99, 102–13, 133, 137–39, 145–46 will’s deviation from reason strong deviation, 93–95 weak deviation, 93–96

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