The Thomist 64 (2000): 337-74

ST. THOMAS, JOHN FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL
GOOD
LAWRENCE DEWAN, 0.P.
CollegeDominicain
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

I

n our observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the United
Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is
worthwhile to recall that the role of the philosopher is to
provide, as Jacques Maritain said, the true philosophy of those
rights. 1 The present paper is focused upon the nature of political
society, with the view that this is the best thing there is, at least in
the line of practical life, in human affairs. 2 Not to be allowed to
live the full life of political society is to be gravely deprived, and
philosophical teachings that tend to diminish our awareness of
the nobility of political or civic life should prompt us to work
hard toward their refutation. Thus, I see myself here as defending
the universal right to live in a true city (using this word to
translate the classical "civitas" or "polis"). While many articles in
the Universal Declaration relate to this, I would cite especially
article 28:
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and
freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized. 3
1 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 80:
"With regard to Human Rights, what matters most to a philosopher is the question of their
rational foundations" (d. pp. 76-80). The present paper was originally composed for a
symposium on human rights sponsored by the Canadian Maritain Association and held in
Ottawa, June, 1998.
2 I limit my consideration to the natural order, as distinguished from the domain
altogether proper to revealed religion.
3 "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (1948), reprinted in The New Encyclopaedia
Britannica:Micropaedia(Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1984).

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

In the early 1940s there was a rather acrimonious dispute
among Thomists in North America, involving principally Charles
De Koninck and Ignatius Eschmann, 0.P. De Koninck had
published a book on the primacy of the common good "against
the personalists. " 4 Eschmann regarded it as an attack on Jacques
Maritain, and also as a conception of the common good at odds
with the Christian tradition. His vitriolic attack on De Koninck 5
provoked a response much longer than the latter's original essay. 6
It has always seemed to me that De Koninck had by far the
better of the argument, and that the important point brought
forth by the debate was the idea of an intrinsically common good,
a type of object of experience that, even if one were the only
creature of God, one would have to encounter as a participable
or communicable object. Much of the debate turned on the nature
of the object of the beatific vision. Eschmann stressed the
"personal" and "private" nature of a contemplative experience.
De Koninck insisted that, even if there were only one creature
capable of having such an experience, that creature would be
encountering God as a common good. For De Koninck, the
nobility of the human person lay, not his private goods, but in
the fact that he is a being meant to participate in the more
universal good.
It was very much in the line of De Koninck's thinking that if
a member of a political community has certain rights that lie in a
zone untouchable by the leaders of the body politic, the reason is
especially that that member is not only a member of the civii or
properly political community, but also and even primarily a
member of a more universal and noble community. Thus, there
was great insistence on the nobility of the common good as such. 7
4 Charles De Koninck, De la primaute du bien commun contre !es personnalistes (Quebec:
Editions de l'Universite Laval, 1943).
5 I. Th. Eschmann, "In Defense of Jacques Maritain," The Modern Schoolman 22 (1945):
183-208.
6 Charles De Koninck, "In Defense of Saint Thomas: A Reply to Father Eschmann's
Attack on the Primacy of the Common Good," Laval theologique et philosophique 1 (1945)
(my offprint runs to 103 pages).
7 Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 21, a. 4, corpus and ad 3. The universe and
especially rational creatures are seen as a community under God, transcending the political
community.

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As we come to the end of the twentieth century, it seems that
we are better and better advised to seek good reasons to oppose
the all-encompassing power of political leaders. Newly invented
machines threaten the "privacy" of the whole of human life. "Big
Brother" has taken on many faces, some in government and some
at the head of "multinational" commercial enterprises. It is not
surprising, then, that we reflect on the grounds for resisting the
omnipresent imposer of policies.
The present paper questions John Finnis's interpretation of
Thomas Aquinas on the specifically political common good. 8 It is
evident that Thomas limits the zone of human life subject to
direction by the human legislator. Not only is God to be obeyed
rather than man (where the two conflict), but man's jurisdiction
over man is not all-embracing, and leaves room for personal
responsibility in such key areas as marriage. Finnis finds Thomas's
justification of the limits not altogether clear (239), and proposes
(on the basis of select texts) a clearer conception of specifically
political society that he identifies as Thomas's. The said
conception seeks to present political society as something less
than a "basic human good" (a key element in Finnis's conception
of the moral life).9 The basic good of "society" is found directly
instantiated in such situations as family life and religious
community. Political society is "instrumental" in maintaining such
a basic good. The "natural" status of political society is
questioned, as is also the idea that the goal of the human
lawmaker is the development of virtue in the citizens. In short,
the focus is heavily upon the role of politics as maintaining
external order, leaving free a space for the inner life and private
life of the human being.
I contend that the "society" mentioned by Thomas in Summa
Theologiae1-11, q. 94, a. 2 is primarily politicalsociety (and so, in
the language of Finnis, that political society is a "basic human
8 John Finnis,"The State: Its Elements and Purposes," chapter 7 of his Aquinas: Moral,
Political,and LegalTheory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), covering pages 219-54.
References to this chapter will usually be in my text, and indicate simply the page number.
9 For a general criticism of the Finnis conception of our knowledge of the moral
principles, see my "St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order," Angelicum 67
(1990): 285-308.

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

good"), that we have a natural inclination to life in political
society, and that the goal of the legislator is the development of
virtue in the citizen. Thomas gives good reasons for limiting the
role of the legislator, and indeed limits the common good of
political society (to merely human virtue). Contra Finnis, I would
see those limits as due to the wider common good of the whole
of reality, not the primacy of the private or personal.
I. THE TEXT ON OBEDIENCE

First, let us note the sort of text of Thomas that provides the
basis for discussion. STh 11-11, q. 104 deals with the virtue of
obedience. Article 5 asks whether subjects are morally obliged to
obey their superiors in all matters. The answer is no. Two lines of
escape are indicated. If there is a hierarchy of command, one
should not obey the inferior commander if his command is at
odds with that of the superior commander (thus, one should obey
God rather than the emperor commanding something at odds
with God's commandments). And if the commander gives a
command that does not fall within the domain of his superiority,
one need not obey: thus, concludes Thomas, one is not obliged to
obey human beings, only God, as regards the inner movement of
the will.
One human being should obey another in things that are done
exteriorly (as compared to the will) by bodily action. And yet here
again there are limits, for all men are equal as regards the very
nature of their bodies (i.e., in the domain of bodily nutrition and
the production of offspring). Thus, a slave is not required to obey
his master, a son is not required to obey his father, as regards
such matters as the contracting of marriage, remaining a virgin,
etc.
This reference to equality as a reason for escaping the
supervision of another person relates directly to the very first
presentation Thomas makes of obedience. He asks, is one man
obliged to obey another? It is to be noted that in giving an
affirmative answer, Thomas uses a comparison between the

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natural world and the world of human action. In the natural
world superiors move inferiors to their actions by means of
superior powers bestowed by God. He continues, "So also it is
necessary in human things that superiors move inferiors by their
[the superiors'] will, from the power of the divinely ordered
authority" (STh 11-11, q. 104, a. 1 [1964b5-8]). 10 Thus, where
there is no such superiority, there is obviously no requirement of
obedience. 11
Otherwise Thomas insists that obedience is due a human
superior in matters of human acts and human affairs, but only in
the very line of the superiority: the soldier should obey the
military superior in those matters which pertain to the conduct of
warfare. More vaguely, Thomas speaks of the slave or servant
obeying the master in "servile works," the son obeying the father
in those matters pertaining to "the discipline of life and the
domestic interest." He ends by saying, "and so on"; in other
words, we should be able to work out what is the line of suitable
limited authority in particular cases.
Thomas notes that in all matters, external and internal, one is
unqualifiedly subject to God. In only some matters is one subject
to a human being, and thus in these matters the superior is an
intermediary between oneself and God. In all other matters, one
is immediately subject to God, and is instructed by Him by the
natural or the written (divine) law. 12

10 Parenthetical

page and line numbers refer to the Ottawa edition (1941).
I, q. 96, a. 4, where Thomas discusses the situation of man in the state of
innocence, the reasons why there was government are two: (1) man, being a social animal,
needs to have one person from among the many to consider the interests of the common
good; and (2) since, as pointed out in article 3, some people would be superior to others as
to both science and justice, it would be unsuitable that such talent not be used to the benefit
of all.
12 A text that seems important to me, as suggesting the need to leave room for a zone of
liberty, is STh 1-11, q. 91, a. 4 (1212bl3-24), that if one tried to have a human law which
prohibited and punished all that was bad, much good would be done away with, and one
would impede utilitas boni communis, let us say "the convenience of the common good,"
which is necessary for human society (conversationem humanam).
11 In STh

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II. THE FINNIS POSITION

Finnis begins his discussion by disagreeing with the claim,
made by Germain Grisez, 13 that Thomas held that the general
promotion of virtue and suppression of vice should be the main
component of the common good of political society. Finnis
wishes to make dear the limits of the nature and goal of political
society as Thomas conceived it.
The line of argument proposed supposes a certain conception
of ethics and of Thomas's ethics that depends heavily on a
reading of STh I-H, q. 94, a. 2, as to the multiplicity of precepts
of natural law. In that text, Thomas presents the first principle of
practical reason, namely, "that the good is to be done and
pursued, and the bad is to be avoided," and goes on to present an
order of derivative precepts, in accordance with the order of
natural indinations found in the human being. These inclinations
are in a threefold order. The first level is indination as common
to all substances. Every substance whatsoever is inclined to
maintain its own being in accordance with its own nature; thus,
those things by which the life of man is preserved and its contrary
repelled pertain to natural law. The second level is inclination
towards more special items, in keeping with the nature shared
with other animals: sexual intercourse and the raising of children.
Third, there is an inclination proper to the rational nature: man
has an inclination to know the truth about God and to live in
society. Thus, there are natural laws such as "avoid ignorance"
and "do not offend those with whom you ought to live."
13 Germain Grisez, "Patriotism, Politics, and Citizenship," chap. 11 of The Way of the
Lord Jesus: Living a Christian Life (Quincy, Ill: Franciscan Press, 1993), 835-69, at 850 n. 16.
Grisez expresses his disaccord with St. Thomas on this point. He sees Aristotle and Thomas
as being out of step with "recent Church teaching regarding the instrumental character of
political society's common good, the principle of subsidiarity ... and religious liberty." I say
that Finnis begins with this because he does so in "Public Good: The Specifically Political
Common Good in Aquinas," another redaction of the chapter we are discussing, presented
in Robert P. George, ed., Natural Law and Moral Inquiry (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown
University Press, 1998), 174-209, at 174-75. The book is a Festschrift for Grisez, published
at about the same time as Finnis'sAquinas; the Finnis contribution is the same as the chapter
we are commenting upon, save for the opening on Grisez.

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In Finnis's use of this text, the doctrine of natural inclinations
becomes a doctrine of "basic human goods" which control all
ethical decision.
In human affairs which are matters of deliberation and choice, what is natural
is settled by asking what is intelligent and reasonable. That in turn is settled by
looking to the first principles of practical reason, to the basic human goods. So
the civitas could be called "natural" if participation in it (a) instantiates in itself
a basic human good, or (b) is a rationally required component in, or
indispensable means to instantiating, one or more basic human goods.
Aquinas's opinion, rather clearly, is that it is the latter. At the relevant point
in his lists of basic human goods he mentions nothing more specific than living
in fellowship (in societate vivere)-something that is done also with parents and
children, spouse, friends, and other people in various more or less temporary
and specialized groups (of pilgrims, of students, of sailors, of merchants, and
so forth). (246-47)

It appears that the criterion for whether something is directly
a basic human good is whether it is the object of a natural
inclination. Thus, in beginning his concluding judgment of
Thomas's doctrine of political society, just prior to the above
remarks, Finnis says:
Contrary to what is often supposed, Aquinas's many statements that we are
"naturally political animals" have nothing particularly to do with political
community. So they cannot be pressed into service as implying that the state
or its common good is the object of a natural inclination, is an intrinsic and
basic good. Strikingly, they do no more than assert our social not solitary
nature. (245-46)

He goes on to construct a sort of aporia by pointing out the
following:
On the other hand, Aquinas accepts Aristotle's opinion that we are "naturally
civil animals" because we are naturally parts of a civitas, which stands to other
natural communities as an end. (246)

Finnis's task then becomes one of explaining this
"naturalness." In the passage quoted first above we see his
proposal of two possible senses of "natural" in this case, and the

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

option for the second. Political society is not a basic human good;
it is not the object of a natural inclination. It is an "indispensable
means," we shall see, for instantiating one or more basic human
goods.
He says:
The thought that we cannot live reasonably and well apart from a civitas is
consistent with the proposition that the common good specific to the civitas as
such-the public good-is not basic but, rather, instrumental to securing
human goods which are basic (including other forms of community or
association, especially domestic and religious associations) and none of which
is in itself specifically political, i.e., concerned with the state. If that
proposition requires qualification, the qualification concerns the restoration of
justice by the irreparable modes of punishment reserved to state government.
(247)

This is really the heart of Finnis's position. Is political society a
basic good or not? This seems to be the issue. The "qualification"
amounts to proposing, after having answered in the negative, a
bit of an affirmative. Let us see how this is spelled out.
Finnis points to two areas in which the non-political human
groups are insufficient for the good life:
(1) to secure themselves well against violence (including invasion), theft, and
fraud, and (2) to maintain a fair and stable system of distributing, exploiting,
and exchanging the natural resources which, Aquinas thinks, are in reason and
fairness-"naturally" (not merely "initially")-things common to all. (Ibid.)

Finnis calls this "the public good of justice and peace" (ibid.).
What he calls the "basic goods" are not as well maintained by the
family and other such groups as they are by law and political
institutions. This is what is meant by saying that the civitas is
merely "instrumental" and not itself a "basic good." What is to be
understood here is the rather "thin" character the "public good"
has in this picture. Its limitation to externals is stressed.
However, there is the "qualification." Finnis notes that while
Thomas holds that there would be need for government and
direction of free people, even if there were no badly disposed
people, still Thomas does not say that in that state of "original

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innocence" before original sin there was a need for law and
specifically political government. Thus, Finnis views law as
inextricably bound up with the need to punish wrongdoers, and
indeed to punish them in ways that do irreparable harm to the
punished. He notes that, for Thomas, the family has not the right
to impose such punishments. It is precisely the right and duty of
the political society or its governors to coerce in that way. Thus,
in his approach to his "qualification" of the idea that political
society is merely instrumental relative to basic goods that pertain
to the individual, the family, or other non-political associations,
Finnis asks why there can be no "law, in the focal sense" within
such non-political groups. Why is Thomas so "insistent on
distinguishing public from private" (249)?
Finnis sees the answer in the need for judgment according to
publicly established law in order to impose the irreparable
measures that may be needed to restore justice and peace. He sees
the need for "the detachment which becomes possible in principle
when the persona publica is differentiated from the persona
privata" (250).
It is because of this quality of law that Finnis seemingly sees a
need to "qualify" his contention that properly political society is
not a basic human good. Having said that "for Aquinas the whole
construction of a strictly 'public' realm is by law and for law"
(251) and having stressed that this does not require the subjects
of the law to be truly virtuous, but merely that they "uphold
justice and peace" (ibid.) in their externals, Finnis maintains a sort
of hesitation to the end, as to the political society being a "basic
good." Thus we read:
The human common good-now understanding that phrase without restriction
to the state's or political community's good-is promoted, and love of neighbor
is intelligently put into practice, when the common good that specifies the
jurisdiction of state government and law is acknowledged to be, neither allinclusive nor (with one qualification) basic, but limited and (save perhaps in
respect of restorative justice) instrumental. (252)

The emphasis on "perhaps" is mine. Finnis is not quite ready, it
would seem, to say that there is "basic good" here. That is

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perhaps why he calls the introduction of the idea that a basic
good is involved only a "qualification."
Thus far I have been using Finnis's conclusion. My challenge
to his argument consists of three chief points. The first has to do
with whether the lawmaker has the virtue of citizens as his goal or
end, the good in view. Finnis stresses as much as possible the
limitation to "externals" of behavior as the proper domain of
politics. Indeed, his position consists in the main in isolating as a
sort of "thing in itself" this very behavioral ordering of people.
The second point concerns the "completeness" of the political
society.
The third point is the presentation of goods that are not the
proper business of political society as "private" goods of the
person or family. I am concerned that it will not be seen that
these goods are really common goods of even more noble social
life. In other words, Finnis's denial that the political is a basic
human good tends to undermine the social as such.
HI. VIRTUE AS THE END OF GOVERNMENT

A) The Goal of the Legislator
First, then, the
of the governor. We could very weH entitle
this part "Thomas's philosopher-king." It is the constant teaching
of Thomas that the end or goal or good of political society is
virtue, that is, human goodness, and that for this to obtain it is
necessary that the governors themselves be truly virtuous. 14
part:4 of Finnis's chapter, entitled "The Virtue Required for
Peace and Just Order," there is a toning-down of Thomas's idea
that the end of the law made by civil society is the life of virtue.
STh I-II, q. 95, a. 1, to which Finnis refers us (232 n. 56) as an
item he has to explain, views the entire existence of human law
in the light of the desirability of becoming virtuous. This is not
presented merely as something that will accomplish some other
goal of civil society; it rather is something all agencies have to
14 Cf., e.g., STh I-H, q. 92, a. 1, ad 3.

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347

further, but which they prove inadequate to bring about in certain
cases. Here is Finnis's explanation:
The answer seems to be this. Human law must inculcate virtues because it will
only work well as a guarantor of justice and peace if its subjects internalize its
its purpose of
norms and requirements and-more important-adopt
promoting and preserving justice. (232)

This is quite a different approach than the line of argument in
STh I-II, q. 95, a. 1 would lead one to expect. On the Finnis
reading, the prompting towards virtue seems to have become
something that happens because of something else more limited
("justice and peace" conceived in terms of mere external
behavior).
In STh I-II, q. 96, a. 2, ad 2, to which Finnis refers us (n. 59)
so that we may see virtue as merely "a legitimate hope and
important aim [finis] of government and law" (232, emphasis
added), Thomas deals with an objection that the acts of the
virtues cannot be commanded by law, because the acts of the
virtues presuppose the existence of the virtues (i.e., are ex virtute),
whereas virtue is the goal, end, finis, of law. Thomas replies that
we must distinguish between the two ways of performing the act:
as coming from the virtue, and as merely the material act which
the virtue requires. All the law can oblige is the latter, but the
former is the end of the law. This hardly gives a picture of law
having virtuous acts as merely "an important aim."
The next reference in note 59 (i.e., STh I-II, q. 100, a. 9, ad 2)
is even more telling. The article asks whether the "mode of
virtue" falls under the precept of the law. By the "mode of virtue"
Thomas means that the act would be performed as by someone
really having and using the virtue (i.e., knowingly, willingly, and
in a firm or decided way). 15 The article teaches that what is
required by a law is that concerning which the lawmaker can
adequately judge (and so inflict punishment for transgression).
Thus, human law requires that an act be done knowingly, and so
it takes ignorance into consideration when meting out
is Thomas makes this explicit at 1270a34-b10.

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punishment. However, it does not require the inner act of the will
to be in conformity with virtue. Human law does not punish the
one who merely wishes to kill but refrains from doing so. God's
judgment, however, does bear upon this and require good will.
Neither divine nor human law requires that the act be done as by
one having the virtue, as regards the firmness or steadiness which
is the proper fruit of the established habit.
The objector argues as follows:
That most of all falls under the precept which belongs to the intention of the
legislator. But the intention of the legislator primarily bears upon this, viz. that
it make men virtuous, as is said in Ethics 2 [1103b3]. But it pertains to the
virtuous person to act virtuously. Therefore, the mode of virtue falls under the
precept. 16

And Thomas replies:
the intention of the legislator bears upon two items. One of them is that unto
which he intends to lead through the precepts of the law, and this is the virtue.
The other is that upon which he intends the precept to bear, and this is that
which leads or disposes towards the virtue, viz. the act of the virtue. For the
end of the precept is not identical with that about which the precept is given,
just as neither in other matters is there identity between the end and that which
is for the sake of the end [ad finem]. 17

Thomas is very dear. Virtue is not merely "an important aim" of
the law. It is the end of the law. The limited matter upon which
the law is obliged to bear is rather an ad finem situation relative
to virtue.
The measures in their limited character that can be exacted by
just law should not be viewed merely as things in themselves.
They are rather to be seen as imbued with the goal of the
legislator, that is, as properly ad finem behavior. Political life is
life on the way to virtue.
STh 1-11, q. 96, a. 2, on the limited prohibitions coming from
human law, is important for our purposes. The question asked is
whether it pertains to human law to restrain (cohibere) all vices.
16

ITh I-II, q. 100, a. 9, obj. 2.

17 Ibid., ad 2.

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349

The second objection uses the premise that the intention of the
legislator is to make citizens virtuous, and argues that this will
only happen if all vices are eliminated. The sed contra cites
Augustine, who sees human law as permitting some things for
which divine providence will eventually inflict punishment.
Thomas, in his main reply, says:
the law is established as a rule and measure of human acts. But a measure ought
to be homogeneous with the thing measured, as is said in Metaph. 10
[1053a24]; for diverse things have diverse measures. Hence, it is necessary,
also, that laws be imposed on men in accordance with their own condition,
because, as Isidore says, the law ought to be "possible and in accordance with
nature, and in accordance with the custom of the country [patriae]."
Now, the power or capacity for operating proceeds from interior habit or
disposition: for the same thing is not possible for someone who does not have
the habit of virtue and for the virtuous [person]; just as also the same thing is
not possible for the boy and for the mature man. And for that reason the same
law is not laid down for children as for adults: many things are permitted for
children which in adults are punished by law, or severely criticized. And
similarly, many things are permitted to men not perfected by virtue which
would not be tolerable in virtuous men.
Now, human law is laid down for the multitude of men, in which the
greater part consists of men not perfected by virtue. And so, not all vices are
prohibited by human law, but only the more grave, from which it is possible
for the greater part of the multitude to abstain; and especially those [vices]
which are harmful to others, without prohibition of which human society could
not be preserved: as, for example, homicides and thefts and such things are
prohibited by human law.

We have here a limiting of the action of the lawmaker, who
makes laws tailored to the condition of those who are to be
guided. Such a limitation pertains, not to the limited character of
the lawmaker, whose goal is indeed virtue, but to the limited
character of the subjects.
In the replies to objections, the second stresses the need for
moderation on the part of lawmakers. Thomas does not deny the
premise that making citizens virtuous is the intention. But he says:
human law intends to lead men to virtue [lex humana intendit homines inducere
ad virtutem ], not suddenly but rather gradually. And so it does not immediately
impose upon the multitude of the imperfect those things which already are

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, OJ>.

[found] in the virtuous, i.e. that they abstain from aU evils. Otherwise, the
imperfect, not being able to bear such precepts, would break out into even
greater evils.

Thus, Thomas very firmly makes the goal of the legislator the
virtuous ddzen. The reason for going slowly is precisely the good
order towards such a goal, working on the sort of subjects
available. If Finnis were right in stressing a sort of limited "sodal
engineering" picture of lawmaking, this would be the place for
Thomas to say so. Instead, he affirms the goal to be the
development of the virtuous citizen.
In order to bring out this "development of virtue" dimension
of political society as conceived by St. Thomas,
thus present
its unquestionable character as a fundamental human good, one
must take into account what he says about two virtues: legal
justice, primarily to be found in the governor, and the prudence
proper to the governoL Indeed, this relates to the view that,
while the good citizen and the good man are not necessarily
identical, the good ruler and the good man are necessarily
identical: to be a governor requires the possession of virtue.

B) LegalJustice
In Finnis's view, the political society and its common good are
"natural/' in the sense that they are instrumental relative to
certain basic human goods. Political society, conceived as the
establishment of legal order, the order brought about by law, is
necessary because of sin, which requires coercion. Thus, political
society is essentially a remedy for evil, rather than something
having its own proper goodness. (I leave aside for the moment
Finnis's "one qualification.") Against this, I would argue that a
virtue corresponds to a natural inclination, and that legal justice
is a virtue, and a very primary or basic virtue.
Thus, at STh II-II, q. 108, a. 2, asking whether vindicatio (say:
"the disposition one has to punish the wrongdoer") is a
distinctive or "special" virtue, Thomas replies in the affirmative:

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

351

as the Philosopher says in Nicomachean Ethics 2 [1103a23], the aptitude
towards virtue is present in us by nature, though the completeness of the virtue
is through habituation or through some other cause. Hence it is clear that
virtues perfect us for following through, in due measure, on our natural
inclinations, which pertain to what is naturally just [ad prosequendum debito
modo inclinationes naturales, quae pertinent ad ius naturale]. And therefore
some special virtue is ordered towards each determinate natural inclination. 18

Now, there is a virtue of legal justice. I have noticed (in
discussions with him) that this was not something Finnis seemed
to wish to admit, or at any rate not in the way that I wished to
present it. 19 We should underline the way Thomas presents it. In
STh 11-11, q. 58, a. 3, he teaches that justice is virtue. Justice
rectifies human action, and so renders human acts good. He
quotes with approval Cicero saying that men are called good
especially because of justice. Next (a. 4), he locates this
virtuousness in the will, as distinguished not only from the
intellect but also from the sense appetites. Article 5 asks whether
justice is "all-inclusive virtue" (virtus genera/is). The line of
thinking Thomas pursues here is as follows. Justice has to do with
our treatment of another:
Now this can be in [either of] two ways. In one way, towards the other
considered in his singularity. In the other way, towards the other communally
[ad alium in communi], inasmuch as someone who serves some community
serves all the humans who are contained within that community. Thus, justice,
according to its very own notion, can relate to both [ways of taking the other].
Now, it is evident that all those who are contained within a community stand
related [comparantur] to the community as parts to a whole. And the part, as
to its very substance [id quod est], belongs to the whole [totius est]; hence, also,
any good of the part is orderable to the good of the whole. Therefore, in
accordance with this, the good of any virtue, whether ordering some human
being towards himself or ordering him to other individual persons, is referable
to the common good, to which justice is ordered [ad bonum commune, ad quod
ordinatur iustitia]. And in accordance with this, the acts of all the virtues can
pertain to justice, according as it orders a man to the com1J1on good. And to
this extent, justice is called all-inclusive virtue. And because it pertains to the
law to order to the common good, as was said earlier, thus it is that such
justice, all-inclusive in the explained way, is called legal justice, because, i.e.,
18 Ottawa

ed., 1984b5-15.

19 He wanted it to pertain to any community,

not just political.

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, 0.1:'.

through it a man is in accord with the law ordering the acts of all the virtues
to the common good. 20

HI understand him, Finnis wants to insist on "some community/'
and so see nothing necessarily political here. I want to insist on
"legal," and underline that it is through the item (the virtue)
Thomas has presented that one is in accord with the
ordering
towards the common good. Of course, if law is per accidens to the
whole picture of goodness, then Finnis is right.
Finnis holds that the doctrine of legal justice contrasts any
community with the individual as an individual. One could have
this sort of general justice inasmuch as one is a member of a
commercial enterprise, such as IBM. This seems to me quite
wrong. Doubtless, there are dispositions one must have if one is
to work well in a common enterprise. However, here we are
speaking of human virtue, and just as we contrast perfect and
imperfect prudence, inasmuch as perfect prudence concerns the
whole of human life, so also with such a virtue as justice. The
imperfect justice needed for business enterprises even a bad man
can have. 21
A more significant point is the interpretation of article 6:
whether aH-indusive justice is identical as to its very essence with
every virtue. The idea here is that legal justice is going to be
presented as one virtue among many, essentially or substantially
distinct from the others.
As we read Thomas in STh H-U, q. 58, a. 6, we see that the
generality we are here considering is not the generality of
predication.Hit were, all the virtues would be justice essentially.
It is rather the generality as pertaining to a universal cause relative
to its effects. Thus, even though all the virtues fall under general
justice, they need not be identified with it, because such effects are
not identifiable with the universal cause.

20 Ottawa ed., 1722a36-b13.
21 Cf. STh H-II, q. 47, a. 13 (1675a7-32):

true but imperfect prudence, the sort of thing
which pertains to business dealings (IBM), is found in the good and the bad. True and perfect
prudence alone rates the title "prudence," speaking unqualifiedly.

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

353

General or all-encompassing justice, legal justice, orders the
acts of a:ll the virtues to its own proper end (the common good):
this is to "move" by commanding (per imperium). Thomas
accordingly compares the role of legal justice to that of Christian
charity:
For just as charity can be called an all-encompassing virtue inasmuch as it
orders the acts of all the virtues towards the divine good, so also legal justice
[can be called an all-encompassing virtue] inasmuch as it orders the acts of all
the virtues to the common good. 22 Therefore, just as charity, which relates to
the divine good as to its proper object, is a certain particular virtue, as to its
own essence, so also legal justice is a particular [specialis] virtue, as to its own
essence, inasmuch as it relates to the common good as to its proper object. And
thus it is in the governmental leader [in principe)23 principally and, as it were,
architectonically, but in the subjects [in subditis] secondarily and, so to say,
administratively. 24

The very comparison with charity argues for the view that the
common good being envisaged as regards legal justice is the
common good of a complete community. It is certainly a natural
inclination to life in a complete community that we are seeing
perfected by the virtue of legal justice.

C) Governmental Prudence
Let us now look at another virtue that seems to be proper to
the ruler of the political community, namely, the primary sort of
prudence. It too would be the development of a definite natural
inclination, or so one would think.
If we look at STh II-II, q. 47, a. 10, which asks whether
prudence extends to the ruling of a multitude (ad regimen
multitudinis), we are told, of course, that it does. But of what
"multitude" is Thomas speaking, and about what "common
good"? Consider the first objection and reply. The objector says:
22 Here, Finnis (I assume) would like to translate by an expression such as a common good
as distinct from the common good. I doubt that he is right.
23 Here again, I suppose that Finnis would translate in a way which would make princeps
apply even to the president of IBM.
24 0ttawaed., 1723b17-31.

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

"the Philosopher says in Ethics 5 [1129b17] that the virtue
related to the common good is justice. But prudence differs from
prudence is not related to the common good."
justice.
Thomas replies:
h is to be said that the Philosopher is speaking there of moral virtue. But just
as every moral virtue related to the common good is called "legal justice," so
also prudence related to the common good is called "political prudence"; for
the political [prudence] stands related to legal justice, the way prudence
unqualifiedly so called stands to moral virtue.

We are using the word "political" here just as we used the word
"legal" when speaking of justice. Finnis has told us that we are
not to take "legal" seriously in
expression "legal justice":
general justice has to do with the good of just any group (e.g.,
this passage, so that
IBM). To say the same about "political"
Thomas does not mean a virtue having to do specifically with the
ruling of the properly "political" multitude, would be to take
words out of Thomas's mouth.
Article 11 of the same question asks whether the prudence
with respect to one's own good is identical with the prudence
with respect to the common good. Interestingly, the sed contra
argument distinguishes carefuHy between the "common good" of
the household or family and that of the state or city. It argues for
diverse virtues of prudence for the individual, the householder,
and the citizen. In the body of the artide, we have a most
important line of argument as regards our present interest, since
the properly political common good seems to have the status of
a quite distinct and important end or good.
the species of habits [habituum] are diversified in accordance with the diversity
of object, which is caught sight of as regards its [the object's] formal character.
Now, the formal character-of aH those [items] which are "towards an end" [ad
finem] is caught sight of on the side of the end [ex pane finis] .... And so it is
necessary that from the relation to diverse ends the species of habit are
diversified. But the good proper to one, and the good of the family, and the
good of the city and kingdom [bonum civitatis et regni] are diverse ends. Hence
it is necessary that prudences differ as to species in accordance with the
differences of these ends; in such fashion that one [prudence] is prudence

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

355

simply so called, which is ordered to one's own good; another is domestic
[oeconomica], which is ordered to the common good of the household or the
family; and the third is political, which is ordered to the common good of the
city or kingdom. 25

Finnis is right in thinking that sometimes the expression
"common good" refers to something less than the common good
of the city. However, Thomas definitely identifies a species of
virtue, a species of the virtue of prudence, that has to do properly
with the common good of the city, and he calls this "political."
And it is this that he related, seemingly, to "legal" justice, in
making his earlier comparisons. If specific virtues relate to their
proper natural inclinations, the human being must have, in
Thomas's eyes, a natural inclination to political society.
We should note as well the reply to the third objection, which
not only considers the hierarchy of goals or ends, but gives us a
rule of primacy. Indeed, where we, in arguing with Finnis, are
trying to make room for the distinctively political virtue, lest we
be forced to say that the really primary sort of virtue is that which
(for example) rules in family life, the problem for Thomas and his
objector is more one of making room for the lower, more
particular, which is tending to get eaten up by the more allinclusive. Thus, Thomas says:
even diverse ends one of which is ordered to another diversify the species of
habit; for example, horsemanship and the art of war and politics differ
specifically, even though the end of one is ordered to the end of the other. And
similarly, though the good of one [person] is ordered towards the good of the
multitude, nevertheless this does not prevent such diversity from bringing it
about that a habit differ specifically. But from this [situation] it does follow
that the habit which is ordered to the ultimate end is more primary
[principalior], and commands the other habits. 26

This whole line of thinking clearly means that the political
prudence, properly having to do with the common good of the
city or kingdom, has primacy over the other types of prudence,
such as that which pertains to family life.
2-' STh 11-11, q. 47, a. 12 (Ottawa
26

STh 11-11, q. 47, a. 11, ad 3.

ed., 1673a41-b8}.

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

Lastly, in this reading of STh 11-11, q. 47, let us look as a. 12,
asking whether prudence is only in governors or also in the
governed. The answer here (that it is in both) ties the discussion
very much to reason, and our ability rationally and freely to
follow the commands of the governor or ruler.
Even more significant than question 47 is STh 11-11, q. 50, aa.
1 and 2. In providing a question on the subjective parts of
prudence, that is, the species which fall under the genus, Thomas
begins by asking whether there is a prudence properly called
regnativa. This should translated as something like "kingly," since
he explicitly relates it to the king. 27 It might be called
monarchical, but the monarch (elected on considerations of
virtue) would be much more like our prime minister or president
than like what we mean in English by a king. However, the
surprising thing is that the second article asks whether there is a
prudence called political, and by this is meant something distinct
from the kingly prudence.
The first article seems to make an iron-dad case against Finnis.
This is especially so if one accepts the view that Thomas presents
in the article on vindicatio, namely, that virtues perfect natural
inclinations. I take Finnis to be saying that such virtues as legal
justice or general justice pertain to just any multitude; and it
seems to me he should be saying the same thing about the
prudence which relates to a multitude. The interesting thing about
the corpus of STh 11-11, q. 50, a. 1 is that it is so explicit as to what
multitude it is considering.
It is to be said that, as is clear from things already said [q. 47, a. 8], to
prudence it pertains to rule and command [regere et praecipere]. And therefore,
where one finds a special type [ratio] of rule and command in human acts,
there also one finds a special type of prudence. But it is evident that in him
who has not only himself to rule but also the perfect community which is the
27 "King" suggests to us an hereditary office, but this is not included in Thomas's

meaning.
Thus, in his presentation of the best form of human government, at STh I-II, q. 105, a. 1, he
treats of Teg1'1Um as pertaining to having one top ruler in a society, but quite explicitly ruling
"secundum virtutem," an elected ruler, elected from the people and by the people. The best
form also includes a group of governors, under the top ruler, also elected from and by all the
citizens, and ruling in accordance with virtue.

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

357

city or the kingdom [communitatem perfectam civitatis vel regni], one find a
special and [indeed] the perfect type of rule [perfecta ratio regiminis]; for, just
to that extent a rule is more perfect, viz. to the extent that it is more universal,
extending itself to a greater number and attaining a more ultimate end. And so,
to the king [regi], to whom it pertains to rule a city or kingdom, prudence is
due [or befitting: competit] as having a special and [indeed] its most perfect
type [perfectissimam sui rationem]. And for that reason the kingly is proposed
as a species of prudence.

Obviously, here we are at that highest in the genus, which is the
cause of all the others in the genus. 28 If there is a natural
inclination to be reasonable in matters social, it is here that it
finds its proper perfection.
It seems to me that these texts present well enough the sort of
primacy we have always associated with the political common
good and political society. The move of Finnis, to make it more
instrumental as regards such things as family common good, is to
be rejected, if the goal is to interpret Thomas Aquinas.

IV. COMPLETE SOCIE1Y
The part of Finnis's argument we have considered so far
concerns the possibility of understanding Thomas's doctrine as a
coherent one. Section 6 (pp. 239-45) of his chapter, entitled "The
State's Elements, Private and Public," shifts the argument to "the
challenge of principle" (239): "Are there good grounds for
judging that the state's specific common good is this limited
public good of justice and peace?"
Finnis does not want the reason for limitation to be merely
what I would call "prudence" -that is, making laws in this matter
would cause more trouble than it would eliminate. He wants the
fact that law does not seek to bear upon complete virtue to flow
from a principle, a goal presumably: "But why judge the effort
wrong in principle, an abuse of public power, ultra vires because
directed to an end which state government and law do not truly
have?" (ibid.).
281 refer to an oft-used doctrine ofThomas's; cf., e.g., IIMetaphys., lect. 2 (Cathala ed.,
#292-294); SI'h I, q. 77, a. 6 (469a34).

LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

358

I will here consider only what Finnis calls "a second argument"
(242):
[it] asks the questioner to go behind the proposition that states are complete
communities, and to consider the grounds for it, on the tacit assumption that
the institutions which give this community its completeness-law and
government-need justification in the face of the natural equality and freedom
of persons, and need to show just why and when their authority overrides the
responsibility of parents and the self-possession of free persons above the age
of puberty.

Finnis begins by stressing the independence and necessity and
even adequacy of individuals and families. He quotes a text to the
effect that the human being is more naturally conjugal than
political (243 n. 118, quoting
Eth., lect. 12 [1720]). In fact,
this passage presents the human being at its most "animaL" It is
hardly related to the human being as a person exercising liberty,
at least as the primary angle. Even
paragraph 1721, where
Thomas goes on to argue that man is naturaHy conjugal in a
special, human way, the presentation is that the husband is suited
for outside work, while the wife is suited for inside work. What
keeps them together is the common good which is children. What
constitutes justice in their treatment of each other is a subject that
pertains more to domestic morality or even to political morality,
and so is set aside for later (1725). Indeed, Finnis limits his
discussion to 1721-24, thus ignoring the move back to the
political in 1725.
Finnis exaggerates the completeness of the totum bene vivere
of the household. He daims that Thomas comes to the
conception of the "completeness" of the city community only by
attending to the deficiencies of such a community's elements or
"parts" (244-45). Of course, it is true that we only appreciate the
whole body when we see what the eye can and cannot do, what
the ear can and cannot do, etc.
Finnis wants to present the priority of the parts in the
following way:
These parts [fundamentally, individuals and families] are prior to the complete
community not historically but in a more important way: in their immediate

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

359

and irreplaceable instantiation of basic human goods. The need which
individuals have for the political community is not that it instantiates an
otherwise unavailable basic good. By contrast, the lives of individuals and
families directly instantiate basic goods, and can even provide means and
context for instantiating all the other basic goods: education, friends, marriage,
virtue. (245)

This is really the heart of his contention.
The main objection to it is in terms of the interpretation of the
STh 1-11, q. 94, a. 2 inclination to life in "society." I conceive of
it as a rational communion beyond what we get in the family: a
perfect society is a city. Even if they "instantiate basic human
goods," individuals and families can still have a material role, the
role of parts, relative to the complete society. What one needs is
a consideration of hierarchy in basic goods. Which ends are more
ultimate than others? Which goods are more common than
others, in the same order? For St. Thomas, the political governor
gives direction to the lives of his subjects, direction pertaining to
the promotion of virtue. His work gives that unity of order
towards goodness of human life which families as such cannot
provide. This is quite clear in Thomas's commentary on
Aristotle's Politics.29
Earlier Finnis says of Thomas:
he has stipulated that a state is a complete community, and given complete
community a purely formal description: a community so organized that its
government and law give all the direction that properly can be given by human
government and coercive law to promote and protect the common good, that
is, the good of the community and thus of all its members and other proper
elements. (221-22)

Is Thomas's description of the completeness of the community as
purely formal as Finnis contends? The stipulation that the state is
a complete community we do find in the texts to which Finnis
refers. However, just how "purely formal" is the description?
That the state gives all the direction that can be given is formal
29 The critical edition is Sententia libri Politicorum, in Opera omnia, t. 48 (Rome: Ad
sanctae Sabinae, 1971). The commonly accepted time of composition is Thomas's second
Parisian professorship (1269-72), thus the very mature Thomas.

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

enough. That this direction is given for the common good, and
that that means the good of the community, is also formal
enough. But there is material relevant to the description that
Finnis does not mention. When Thomas presents the city in I Pol.,
c. 1/b, commenting on Aristotle at 1252b27-31, he tells us qualis
concerning the city: what sort of thing is it? The condition of the
city is presented as regards three features. It is "out of several"
neighborhoods or quarters (ex pluribus uicis). It is a perfect
community, having whatever is necessary for life. It is orderedto
virtue:
Thirdly, he [Aristotle] shows to what the city is ordered. For it is originally
made [primitus facta] for the sake of living, i.e. so that men find sufficient of
those things by virtue of which they can live; but from its actually being [ex
eius esse] it comes about that men not only live, but that they live well,
inasmuch as through the laws of the city the life of men is ordered to virtue.
(Leonine lines 26-32; emphasis added)

This is proper to the nature of the city, as Thomas sees it. Thus,
in the same chapter, a little later, Thomas clearly conceives of the
establishing of the city by linking city and virtue:
Then, when he [Aristotle] says: "Therefore, nature indeed ... " [1253a29], he
deals with the establishing [institutione] of the city, concluding from the
preceding that within all human beings there is present a natural impetus
towards the community of the city, just as also towards virtues; and
nevertheless, just as virtues are acquired through human exercise, as is said in
Ethics 2, so cities are established by human endeavor. But he who first
established a city was the cause for humans of the greatest of goods
[maximorum bonorum ].

Man is the best of the animals, if the virtue to which he has a
natural inclination is perfected in him; but if he is without law
and justice, man is the worst of all the animals. Aquinas proves
the point thus:
injustice to that extent is crueler the more arms it has, that is, aids for
wrongdoing; now, to man according to his own nature belong prudence and
virtue which in themselves are ordered to the good; but when a man is bad, he
uses them as arms for wrongdoing, as when through astuteness he thinks up

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

361

fraudulent schemes, and through abstinence he is rendered able to tolerate
hunger and thirst in order to persevere in wickedness, and similarly with other
such things. And thus it is that man without virtue as regards the corruption of
the irascible is maximally abominable and wild, as being cruel and without
affection; and as regards the corruption of the concupiscible he is worst
concerning sexual matters and concerning voraciousness as regards food.
But man is led back to justice by the political order: which is shown from
this, that among the Greeks the order of the political community is called by
the same name as the judgment of justice, that is, "diki." Hence, it is evident
that he who establishes a city takes away from them that they be worst, and
leads them to this, that they be best as regards justice and virtues. (lines 200235)

Thus, Thomas conceives the completeness of the community as a
completeness that leads to virtue. This takes us beyond the
formalism which Finnis spoke of. The common good of the city,
so considered, seems very close to the ultimate end of human life.
The imperfect "felicity" or "beatitude" possible in this life is seen
by Thomas as primarily in contemplation of the divine, but
secondarily in the operation of the practical intellect ordering
human actions and passions. 30
A state (Finnis's term for Thomas's civitas or gens) may only
be able to give a limited "type of direction" if it is prudently to
aim at the goal which is the ultimate end of human life. Thus, we
considered earlier STh 1-11, q. 100, a. 9, ad 2: virtue is the goal,
and the act of the virtue is the means. Still, city living imbues the
whole community with order towards virtue. 31
3°Cf. STh 1-11, q. 3, a. 5 (731b18-24), referring to Aristotle, Eth. Nie. 10 (1177a12 and
1l78a9). Thomas even uses expressions such as "active felicity" in contrast to "contemplative
felicity": cf. STh 1-11, q. 4, a. 7 (742a32-37). The general doctrine is, of course, that the
happiness possible in this life consists in virtuous operation: Aristotle, Eth. Nie. 1 (1102a5).
At STh I, q. 26, a. 4, speaking of God's own happiness as including whatever is desirable in
any happiness, and itemizing the various forms of happiness, Thomas, after "contemplative
felicity," lists "active [felicity]," regarding which God possesses "the governing of the entire
universe."
31 The text to which Finnis refers which gives most support to the sort of thing he has in
mind is, I would say, STh 1-11, q. 98, a. 1 (1246a44-49): "the goal of human law is the
temporal tranquillity of the city, to which goal it comes by restricting external actions as
regards those evils which can trouble the peaceful state of the city."I do not believe that it
expresses the deepest level of Thomas's position.

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362

V. PRIVATE GOOD?

The third point I wish to mention is Finnis's tendency to
promote the good that falls outside the properly political as a
"private" good. There is no doubt that for Thomas the terrestrial
political society is a limited good. We see this in the discussion of
obedience, where it is taught that one must obey God in all
matters whatsoever, both as to external actions and as to internal
operations (i.e., of the will), but that subjection to human
superiors is as regards determinate issues.32 Finnis does indicate
that Thomas regards the Church as "also" (i.e., besides the civitas)
a perfect community, and thus there is another "common good"
besides that of the civitas. 33 However, he goes on to claim:
the common good of the political community does not, as such, include certain
important human goods which essentially pertain to individuals in themselves,
such as the good of religious faith and worship; the fact that such individual
goods are goods for many people, or for everyone, does not convert them into
the good of the community. (226)

Here, in order to show that he is echoing Thomas, he quotes a
passage from Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 80:
In human affairs there is a certain [type of] common good, the good of the
civitas or people (gentis).... There is also a [type of] human good
which-[though it] benefits not merely one person alone but many
people--does not consist in community but pertains to one [as an individual]
in oneself (humanum bonum quod non in communitate consistit sed ad unum
aliquem pertinet secundum seipsum), e.g. the things which everyone ought to
believe and practice, such as matters of faith and divine worship, and other
things of that sort. (226)

The translation is Finnis's own; he carefully quotes the Latin in
his endnote c (253-54).
32 STh II-II, q. 104, a. 5 in its entirety,

and especially ad 2. Cf. also STh Il-11, q. 152, a. 4,

ad3.
33 An interesting text in this regard is STh 1-Il, q. 63, a. 4 (1041b29-43): the infused moral
virtues differ specifically from the acquired, in that they pertain to a different political reality;
Thomas refers to Ephesians2: 19, that believers are "fellow citizens of the saints and members
of the household of God."

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

363

The text bears upon the angelic hierarchy and their assigned
tasks. It deals with the lowest part of the hierarchy, which part,
according to the Dionysian schema, is to be divided into three
levels, the Principalities (principatus), the Archangels, and the
Angels. This lowest hierarchy is responsible for the execution of
divine providence in the merely human order (as contrasted with
the whole cosmic order). Thomas tells us that by "human things"
here he means "all inferior natures and particular causes which
are ordered to man and fall into human use." He then explains
the three levels of angel in terms of three levels of human good,
moving from the more universal to the less universal. Thus we are
told:
Among these [human things] there is an order. For in human things there is a
common good, which is the good of the city or people, which seems to pertain
to the order of Principalities. . . . And thus, the disposition of the kingdoms,
and the change of domination from people to people, necessarily pertains to
the ministry of this order. Also, the instruction of those who have the role
among men of governors, concerning those things which pertain to the
administration of their regime, seems to look to this order.

Next, we move to a middle position, between the common good
and the individual good. Thomas continues:
There is also another human good, which does not find its place [consistit] in
the community, but pertains to some one [person] in himself, but [a good] not
merely of service [utilia] to one alone, but to many: for example, those things
which are to be believed and observed by all, such as the things of faith and of
divine worship and the like. And this pertains to Archangels, concerning whom
Gregory says that they announce the highest things; for example, we call
Gabriel an "archangel," who announced to the Virgin the incarnation of the
Word, to be believed by all.

Thus, one sees what is meant by the limitation to the one
individual: it is the Virgin Mary to whom the message is
announced, yet the message is one for all the people. The idea is
not that faith in general pertains to the people on a sort of
individual basis outside the community of the Church. The
"pertaining to one person" is the dimension of the angelic task, a

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

message to one person. The nature of the message keeps us in a
middle position, pertaining somewhat to the more universal or
common good.
We then move to the lowest level, that of the individual
believer. Thomas says:
There is a human good pertaining to each one singly. And such [good] pertains
to the order of Angels, concerning whom Gregory says that they announce the
lowest things.

Thomas goes on to say that the middle group have something in
common with the highest and with the lowest. Concerning the
relation to the highest, he says:
having something in common ... with the Principalities, inasmuch as they
confer authority to the lower angels, and not unworthily, because the things
which are individual [propria] in human affairs should be dealt out in keeping
with what are common [communia].

One sees then that what Finnis singled out is rather misleading.
The faith and worship is the general thing, and the individual
concerned is the Virgin Mary, not just any individual believer.
Moreover, there is the usual insistence thatthe particular must be
ordered towards the common.
In fact, Thomas considers religious practice as pertaining to
the natural law. Thus, to offer sacrifice is presented by him
explicitly as a duty decreed by natural law. And he then sees it as
altogether appropriate that the human political community enact
positive laws in this regard. These laws are distinct, of course,
from the divine positive laws.34 That such enactment of laws is
possible only "somewhat" in any give group of people is, of
course, the point of the need to limit the enforcement of virtue.

34 STh 11-11, q. 85, a. 1 in its entirety, and especially ad 1. In STh I-II, q. 99, a. 3 (1254b414), Thomas speaks of the different points of view of human and divine law in directing in
matters of divine worship.

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365

VI. THE BASIC GOODS APPROACH
Finnis's main contention is that the common good proper to
political society, for Thomas Aquinas, is not a "basic human
good," but is rather "instrumental" as regards those goods. As we
have already noted, he adds the "qualification" that it may
perhaps be a basic good as concerns retributive justice.
I see this as an important issue, quite simply because any
diminution in nobility which the political as such suffers relative
to the eye of our mind cannot fail to affect the way politics is
lived, and especially as to what we expect from our leaders.
Finnis's focus on the limitation of political jurisdiction moves us
from a definitely moral conception of political life to something
much less obviously so. Saint Thomas's view by contrast stresses
that the goal of the political society and its leaders is authentic
human virtue, that accordingly the leaders must be virtuous, and
that the limitations in lawmaking relate properly to the licit
means of moving the multitude of the people towards that goal.
As I have said, Finnis sees STh 1-11, q. 94, a. 2, on the unity
and multiplicity of the precepts of natural law, as locating certain
"basic human goods" on the basis of some natural inclinations
present in the human being. 35 Thus, he can challenge the status of
political society as a "basic human good" by questioning the
existence of a natural inclination towards it.
First of all, I would like to shake up the vocabulary of "basic
human goods." Thomas, in the text in question, speaks of our
naturally apprehending the notion of the good. Beyond that, he
also speaks of our naturally apprehending certain bona humana,
human goods. These naturally apprehended human goods are
then pointed out to be ends (bonum habet rationem finis). And so
the naturally apprehended goods are seen as the ends towards
which we have natural inclinations.
Obviously, Thomas does no more in the article than provide
a sketch of the multiplicity and order of these natural inclinations.
The extent to which the doctrine of order in this article has been
35 See above, pp.

342-43.

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

obscured is remarkable. Thus, interpreters such as Grisez, May,
and Finnis have denied the moral significance of the presented
order. 36 Even Benedict Ashley, while insisting on an order, has,
I believe, missed the true interpretation. He speaks of four basic
goods, and this in the teeth of the three levels of inclination
presented. He sees the first level as exclusively concerned with the
preservation of the individual. 37
The first level of inclination spoken of by Thomas should
rather be considered in terms of the great universality it has. It
pertains to all substances as such. Thus, it has not to do merely
with the individual as an individual, but rather with the being and
well-being of being as such. It is the inclination of the creature as
a creature. This is the inclination present in each thing, but
present according to the proper mode of being of the thing. Thus
we read:
For there is present firstly in man an inclination towards the good according
to the nature which he has in common with all substances, inasmuch as all
substances have appetite for the conservation of their own being according to
their own nature. And according to this inclination those things through which
the life of man is preserved and the contrary impeded pertain to natural law.
(1225b41-49)

36 John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 95: "In
ethical reflection the threefold order should be set aside as an irrelevant schematization."
Most recently, see William E. May, "Germain Grisez on Moral Principles and Moral Norms:
Natural and Christian," in George, ed., Natural Law and Moral Inquiry, 3-35, at 8: "Thomas
has provided an illustrative, not taxative list of such goods in Summa Theologiae 1-2.94.2."
See also my paper, "Jacques Maritain and the Philosophy of Cooperation," in Michel
Gourgues and G.-D. Mailhiot eds., Alterite: Vivre ensemble differents (Montreal and Paris:
BellarminandCerf, 1986), 109-17,at 115-16.
37 Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., "What is the End of the Human Person? The Vision of God
and Integral Human Fulfillment," in Luke Gormally, ed., Moral Truth and Moral Tradition
(Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1994), 68-96, at 83: "Aquinas .•. enumerated at least four basic
goods of life, family, society, and truth." He refers to STh HI, q. 94, a. 2 (and also mentions
ScG III, c. 129). He also says, "But I prefer Aquinas's separation of the physical and the
reproductive good, since the reproductive good pertains to the species and not just the
individual" (ibid., 86). My complaint is merely that the threefold order, which is carefully
proposed by Thomas, is somewhat buried, and that the first level is not understood
adequately. I contend that it is not limited to the individual merely as an individual.

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

367

This should not be read, for example, as though it did not include
the tendency to reproduction, by which the species is preserved.
The second level of inclination to which St. Thomas refers, the
more special one, concerns what man has in common with the
other animals, such as male-female relations and the upbringing
of offspring. This is not just reproduction, but a special setting for
reproduction.
Each thing has inclination for its own preservation, not only
as to the individual, but as to the species. Here the best
interpretation comes from Thomas himself in STh I, q. 60, a. 5,
ad 3. The objector argues against a natural love for God more
than for oneself, precisely because nature tends to selfpreservation, and tending to favor another over oneself would be
against nature. Thomas replies:
nature turns back towards itself not only as regards that in it which is singular,
but much more as regards the common: for each thing is inclined to preserve
not only its own individual self, but also its own species. And much more has
it a natural inclination towards that which is the unqualifiedly universal good.

We are talking about the inclinations that pertain to what
Thomas calls, in STh I, q. 45, a. 5, ad 1 (288b36-38), "if I may so
put it, the nature of being" (ut ita dixerim, naturam essendi),
which is participated in by all creatures. This is part of the view
of all reality as the divine effect, and so as naturally "turned
towards God": cf. STh II-II, q. 106, a. 3, on the philosophy of
gratitude, with its quotation from Pseudo-Dionysius: "God turns
all things back towards himself, as the cause of all. "38
Thus, the best commentary on the first level of inclination in
STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2 is S1h I, q. 60, aa. 1-5, which is a detailed
discussionof the natural love found in angels and human beings. We
see that the inclination common to all substances is a natural love for
38 Notice that the inclination to perpetuity is had by species in a measured way; thus,
Thomas views the species of plants and animals as inclined to perpetuity only for a particular
phase of cosmic existence: De Pot. q. 5, a. 9, ad 3. This inclination is towards maximal
association with the divine: cl. Thomas Aquinas, II De anima, c. 7 (Leonine lines 69-157,
concerning Aristotle at 415a26-b6).

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LAWREN CE DEWAN, O.P.

itself as an individual, and even more for its species, and even more
for the author of being, God himself.
In this respect, one should notice that in STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2 the
third level of inclination, concerning what is proper to the human
species, has to do, not with love of God, but with knowledge
concerning God. It mentions our desire to know the truth concerning
God. It is the desire to know that is being considered, an inclination
not found in all substances. The precept Thomas formulates in its
connection is: "avoid ignorance." Love of God, on the other hand,
is presented everywhere in Thomas's writings as present in every
substance as such, and indeed such that every being loves God
naturally more than it loves itself.39 It is this domain of what might
be called "transcendentalinclination" that is being referred to in the
first place in STh I-11, q. 94, a. 2. The other two particularizing sorts
of inclination are dearly relative to the genus and the species.40
As regards the third level of inclination, Finnis holds that the
"society" referred to, where we read
there is in man inclination to the good in function of the nature of reason [secundum
naturam rationis], which is proper to him; for example [sicut], man has natural
inclination to this, that he know the truth about God, and to this, that he live in
society [in societatevivat]. (STh I-II. q. 94, a. 2 [1226a3-8])

is merely the "basic good" of friendship (243; cf. 246) However, just
as the inclination to know was focused by Thomas on knowing about
God, so one would do well to consider that the society he has in
mind is the most perfect form of society, the complete society. And
that, as Thomas teaches, is the civitas, not just the friendship found
within the limits of domesticity.
39 See, e.g., STh II-II, q. 26, a. 3: "upon the communication

of natural goods to us, [goods]
made by God, is founded natural love, in function of which not only man in the wholeness
of his nature loves God above all and more than himself, but even every creature whatsoever
at its own level [so loves God], i.e. either by intellectual or rational or animal or at least
natural love, as for example the stones or other things which lack knowledge; because each
part naturally loves the common good of the whole more than its own particular good."
(1555b21-32).
40 In N Sent., d 33, q. 1, a. 1, where Thomas asks whether polygamy is againstthe natural law,
he simply presents a division in tem:iS of genus and species, with no mention of the first level at all.

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369

It is worth noting that, while Finnis seems to doubt that there is
a natural inclination towards life in the political society, he does note
in a footnote (n. 13 7) that Thomas, paraphrasing Aristotle, speaks of
a natural impetus to political community. 41 The word "impetus"
Thomas finds in his translation of Aristotle at 1253a30. In explaining
this and the following few lines, Thomas himself, as we have already
seen, says, "Man is the best of animals if virtue, to which he has
naturalinclination,is perfected; but if he is without law and justice,
man is the worst of all the animals. "42 The natural inclination to legal
justice, which is found in all (otherwise it could not be in the
governed even as "secondtzrieet administrative"[STh II-II, q. 58, a.
6 (1723b30-31)]) is identical with the natural inclination to live in a
political society or civitas.
If we look at some of the other places where Thomas expresses
what is essentially the same doctrine on the natural inclinations as in
STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2, we see even more clearly that the object of legal
justice, the end or good sought by legal justice, has a certain primacy
among naturally apprehended human goods. Thus, in the discussion
of prudence in the Secundtz secundtze, it is asked whether prudence
presents the end to the moral virtues. The general answer is that it
does not. 43 Rather, prudence has to do with those things which are
ordered towardsthe attainment of the end. The virtues prescribe the
end to prudence, but the virtues themselves presuppose the natural
ability of reason to apprehend the primary ends.
The end of moral virtues is the human good. But the good of the human soul is to
be in accordance with reason.... Hence, it is necessary that the ends of the moral
virtues preexist in reason. . . . in practical reason there preexist some items as
naturally known principles, and of this sort are the ends of the moral virtues,
because the end has the same standing in [the domain of] things to be done as has
See I Pol., c. 1/b (103), concerning Aristotle at 1253a29.
"Homo enim est optimum animalium, si perficiatur in eo uirtus ad quam habet
inclinationem naturalem; set si sit sine lege et iustitia, homo est pessimum omnium
animalium" (Leonine lines 209-12).
43 In STh 1-11, q. 66, a. 3 Thomas says that prudence does present the ends to the moral
virtues; this seems to be because in the Prima secundae he is ready to use the term "prudence"
even concerning the understanding of the first practical principles: cf. the reasoning in STh
I-II, q. 58, a. 4.
41

42

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

the principle in [the domain of] things observed. (STh II-II, q. 47, a. 6 [1669a50b14])44

In the same line, at the end of the treatment of prudence, speaking
of the Ten Commandments, Thomas makes the point that the
Decalogue itself is not about the objects of prudence, precisely as
such, but about the ends of human life:
the precepts of the decalogue, just as they are given to all the people, so also they
fall under the grasp of all, as pertaining to natural reason. But paramount among
things commanded by natural reason are the ends of human life lfines humanae
vitae]. (STh II-II, q. 56, a. 1 [1712b5-10])

Of course, all the precepts of the Decalogue in a way pertain to
prudence: "Nevertheless all the precepts of the decalogue pertain to
[prudence] inasmuch as it is directive of all virtuous acts" (1712b1720).
We see what should be thought about the ends of human life
when we look at what Thomas says about the suitability of the first
three commandments of the Decalogue:
it pertains to law to make men good. And therefore it is necessary that the precepts
of the law be ordered in accordance with the order of coming-to-be,i.e. by which
a man becomesgood. But in the order of coming-to-be two things are to be noted.
The first of which is that the first part is constituted first, for example in the
generation of the animal firstly the heart is generated, and in the [case of] the house
firstly the foundation is laid. And in the goodness of the soul the first part is the
goodness of the will, [starting] from which the particular man makes good use of
every other goodness whatsoever. But the goodness of the will is seen [by looking]
towards its object, which is the end. And therefore in him who was to be set on the
road to virtue through law, firstly it was necessary to, as it were, lay down a
foundation of religion [iacere quoddam fundamentum religionis],through which
man is duly ordered to God, who is the ultimateend of the human will. (Sib II-II,
q. 122, a. 2 [2034b42-2035al

rn

44 Notice SI'h I-II, q. 63, a. 2, ad 3: "the natural rectitude of reason is more noble than the
rectification of the appetite which is effected through participation in reason, which latter
rectification pertains to the moral virtue."

AQUINAS, FINNIS, AND THE POLITICAL GOOD

371

Thomas goes on to discuss a second need for the order of coming-tobe, explaining the order among themselves of the first three
commandments. But we need only note the above. If the "basic" in
"basic human good" is that foundation,compared to the foundation
of the house, of which Thomas speaks, then we see that the basic
human good is the ultimate end of man, and that goods will be more
basic to the extent that they pertain more closely to that end.
If we consider the moral virtues and the goodness that pertains to
them, we see the preeminent goodness of justice. In fact, the text is
so decisive that one wonders that it is not cited more frequently. The
question asked is: whether justice is pre-eminent among the moral
virtues?
If we are speaking about legal justice, it is evident that it is more splendid among all
moral virtues, inasmuch as the common good has pre-eminence over the singular
good of one person. And in that regard the Philosopher says in EN 5 [1129b27] that
"justice seems to be the most splendid of the virtues, and neither is Hesperus nor
Lucifer so admirable." (Sib 11-11, q. 58, a. 12 [1728b19-27])

Thomas goes on to show how even the particular justice of one
person to another singular person is a reality more noble than other
moral virtues, but that need not concern us. It is precisely the
common good with which the la.w has to do that makes legal justice
so unquestionably noble.
It is, of course, true that Thomas presents prudence as even more
noble than legal justice. This is inasmuch as prudence is not merely
a moral virtue but is an intellectual virtue.
The good of reason is the good of man. . . . But prudence, which is the perfection
of reason, has this good essentially.Justice, however, is -productiveof this good,
inasmuch as it pertains to Oustice]to put the order of reason into all human affairs.
But the other virtues have aconservationalrole regarding this good, inasmuch as the
passions are given measure lest they remove a man from the good of reason ....
Hence, among the cardinal virtues, prudence is better; secondly, justice; thirdly,
fortitude; fourthly, temperance. (Sib 11-11, q. 124, a. 12)

However, we have seen that Thomas sees the supreme instance of
prudence in the person of the ruler.

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

VII. "INSTRUMENTAL"
Finnis presents the good of political society as "instrumental"
regarding the basic human goods found in the friendship of marriage,
etc. One supposes that this makes of such a good, not an end in itself,
but an ad finem item having in itself nothing to recommend it.
Thomas sometimes uses the example of a bad-tasting medicine to
portray such a "good. "45
Of course, nothing prevents something from being both a primary
goal of human life and an instrument in the service of still more final
goods. In fact, this is how Thomas does present political society. The
political order is not the best thing in man. The political is
"instrumental" relative to the contemplative order, and the
intellectual virtues are more noble than the moral, wisdom than
political prudence. In STh I-II, q. 66, a. 5, ad 1 he concludes:
For it does not belong to prudence to inject itself into [consideration of] the highest
things, which wisdom considers; but it gives orders concerning those things which
are ordered towards wisdom, viz. how men ought to arrive fpervenire] at wisdom.
Hence, in this, prudence, or politics, fprudentia,seu JJOlitica]is the servant [ministra]
of wisdom; it introduces to it, preparing the way for it, like the door-keeper for the
king [sicut ostiariusad regem]. (1058a12-20)

Thomas is quite explicit. Politics is the servant, and so the instrument,
of wisdom. 46
Thus, what we object to in Finnis' s conception is not that the
political order is considered as "instrumental" towards human good.
Cf. STh I, q. 5, a. 6, ad 2.
There are admirable texts in the Summa contra Gentiles where the whole of human life
is presented as ordered towards such wisdom. Take for example ScG III, c. 37 (para. 7: Ad
bane etiam omnes ... ): "To this [operation, viz. the contemplation of truth], all other human
operations are seen to be ordered, as to an end. For bodily well-being [incolumitas] is
required for the perfection of contemplation, towards which [well-being] are ordered all the
artificial things which are necessary for life. Quiet from the disturbances of the passions is
also required, to which one comes through the moral virtues and through prudence; and
quiet from external disturbances, to which the whole rule of civil life is ordered [ad quam
ordinatur totum regimen vitae civilis]. So that, if they are rightly considered, all human
undertakings are seen to serve those contemplating truth." Again, the little said of civil society
in a text like this might foster the Finnis conception, but I do not think Thomas is here
aiming to express the whole truth about the end of political society.
45

46

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373

It is rather that, with his system of "basic human goods," he sees such
things as family life as absolute, and so as an unqualified human good
in contrast to the instrumentality of political life. He sees the "basic
good" of "living in society" as fulfilled primarily in such things as
family life and other relatively private associations.
As an interpretation of Thomas Aquinas on the status of political
society, this seems to me quite off the mark. One should consider the
family as a family. What is proper to this mode of human socializing
as such? Thomas does not see it as more noble than the city. He sees
it as a part of the city, an element, we might say. Like other ways of
human association, it can and should be ordered towards the higher
life, the contemplation of truth and the life of religion. However,
precisely as family life, it is ordered towards the life of the city. Thus,
in I Pol., c. 11 (Thomas commenting on Aristotle, 1260b8 and
following), we see that the discussion of the virtue involved in the
relationships of husband and wife, father and children, is postponed.
It cannot be determined until one gets into "politics," that is, into the
discussion of "cities." Two reasons are given.
First, one must discuss the disposition of the part by making a comparison to the
whole, as one determines concerning the foundation by considering what pertains
to the house as a whole. Now, the household is a part of the city; and these two
relationships or conjunctions, i.e. father and son, man and wife, pertain primarily
to the household; hence, one must consider the formation [qualitersint erudiendt]
of the child and the wife in the light of what is said of the city. (Leonine ed., 95103)

A second reason is as follows:
Those things whose disposition makes a difference as to the goodness of the city are
to be considered in politics [in politiis]; but of this sort are the instructions
[instructiones]of children and women as to how the two are good, since women are
half the free human beings who are in the city, while from the children grow the
men who must be those who dispense in the city: therefore, it is in politics that one
must determine concerning the instruction of children and women. (Leonine ed.,
105-13)

This suggests a different relation of the household or family to the
political society than one finds in Finnis. It need not at all violate any

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

"principle of subsidiarity,"47 which means simply authentic causal
hierarchy: there really is a role proper to the lower thing, and it
belongs to the higher thing to foster, not destroy the lower thing. 48
CONCLUSION

In the present paper I have had a limited purpose. I have not
attempted to go into detail as to what are the good reasons for the
limitations on law and government. I have rather focused on what I
see as an unhappy effect of Finnis's interpretation, namely, to
diminish the goodness proper to law and government, as understood
by Thomas. My aim has been mainly to argue for a (Jrimary "basic
(or foundational) human good" in the civitasas such. While Thomas
certainly uses the need to provide coercion to approach the need for
the political order, seen as the source oflaw, 49 the actual portrait of
that order, especially as found in the suitable governor, is of the
richest of goods that practical reason provides.

47 The violation of "the principle of subsidiarity" was one of the charges brought by Grisez
against Thomas Aquinas in the aforementioned critique.
48 For the role of part and whole, a text to consult is STh I, q. 65, a. 2 (397a55-bl3),
where we see the ends which are assigned to the different parts and to the whole. Each part
is for its own act; the less noble part is for the more noble; the parts are for the sake of the
whole; and the whole is for an extrinsic end.
49 Cf. especially STh I-TI, q. 95, a. 1.

The Thomist 64 (2000}: 375-99

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS AND HUMAN FINALITY:
PARADOX OR MYSTERIUM FIDEI?
PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR
WheelingJesuit University
Wheeling, West Virginia

"Then who can be saved?" Jesus ... said, "For man it is impossible; but for
God all things are possible." (Mt 19:25-26)

I. NATURALLAWTHEORY:
METAPHYSICAL OR PuRELY DEONTOLOGICAL?

A

s Heinrich Rommen and Yves Simon have observed, the
tradition of natural law is far from monolithic. Within this
tradition one can distinguish between "thin" (deontological) and "thick" (metaphysically robust) types of natural law
theory. "Thin" theories emphasize the primacy of the notions of
right and duty, whereas "thick" theories stress the priority of the
notions of good and human finality. Thomas Aquinas is among
the best-known proponents of a "thick" natural law theory
embedded within a properly theological framework. One may
ask, however, whether a "thick" natural law theory is accessible
to unaided reason. Stated differently, must a "thick" natural law
theory presuppose divine revelation? The answer to this question
depends on whether reason left to itself could know that there is
a transcendent, unparticipated good in which alone man could
find his ultimate completion-perfect happiness. On this issue
scholars are divided.
Some Thomistic commentators hold that rational creatures are
absolutely incapable of perfect natural happiness, and that this
view is strictly consonant with Aquinas's own teaching. From an
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PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

Aristotelian-Thomistic standpoint happiness is an act of the
speculative intellect engaged in the contemplation of God. This
act is strictly natural insofar as it does not exceed the connatural
limits of the spiritual creature's intellective power. And the act is
perfect insofar as the intellective power is fully actualized. So
perfect natural happiness, if it is not absolutely impossible, would
consist in a contemplative grasp of the divine nature that fully
actualizes the spiritual creature's intellect in accordance with its
connatural noetic limits. Aquinas argues in more than one place,
however, that the final end of spiritual creatures must be the
immediate vision of God. Moreover, Aquinas holds that this
vision surpasses the natural powers of finite intellectual natures.
Consequently, it would seem that from a Thomistic standpoint
spiritual creatures are strictly incapable of a happiness that is both
perfect and purely natural simultaneously.
The opinion that perfect natural happiness is intrinsically
impossible is reflected in the view that man is endless by nature,
a view endorsed recently by Denis Bradley. 1 This view is not new.
And the contrary view, that man could have been ordered to a
natural final end equivalent to perfect natural happiness, has
become increasingly controversial, particularly since the publication of Henri de Lubac's influential Surnaturel. 2 The point at
issue surfaces when considering the following question: Within
their own proper order of being and operation, could rational
creatures have been fully perfected had they not been foreordained to a supernatural final end? Thomists would acknowledge that without grace finite intellectual natures in the present
historical order cannot reach their concrete final end. But Catholic thinkers are divided as to whether unaided reason could know
that human nature in the present historical order cannot be fully
perfected within the proper limits of its own order of being and
operation.

1 Denis Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold

Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness
in Aquinas's Moral Science (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1997). Hereafter abbreviated asATG.
2 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Etudes historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946).

HUMAN FINALITY

377

An affirmative answer to this epistemological query would
appear to suggest that an inherently supernatural finality, at least
as a theoretically achievable possibility, is within the purview of
unaided reason if a natural desire, in this case the desire for
perfect fulfillment, cannot be in vain. One could not easily avoid
the semi-rationalistic overtones of the foregoing affirmative
answer without sacrificing the tenet that a natural desire cannot
be in vain, that is, without granting that man is endless by nature.
But can the claim that man is endless by nature withstand
sustained metaphysical scrutiny? And if not, what are the
theoretical implications from the perspective of a Catholic
philosopher?
In this paper I will examine whether the claim that man is
endless by nature is in any sense problematic. For instance, would
a purely philosophical natural law theory based on a
teleologically sensitive philosophical theology be precluded in
principle if man is endless by nature? 3
Bradley's position on this question is particularly noteworthy.
He opens his recent book with a significant observation:
There has been a long history, rooted in the late medieval and early modern
disjunction of faith and reason, of misconstruing the integrally theological
character of Aquinas's rational argumentation. (ATG, xi)

I think Bradley is correct regarding the nature of Aquinas's mode
of discourse. Almost immediately thereafter he declares:
I reject ... the conceptual possibility and coherence of an autonomous or,
equivalently, systematic Thomistic moral philosophy .... Of course, Aquinas's
moral science incorporates rational doctrines, congruent with but not logically
dependent upon revealed beliefs. But it does so . . . without thereby . . .
licensing Thomist epigones to extract a systematic Thomistic moral philosophy
from its native theological setting. (ibid.)

3 By "teleologically sensitive natural theology" I mean a theology that in the state of pure

nature would be fully equipped to address man's final end without reference to divine
revelation. By "pure nature" I mean nature in precision from grace, as contradistinguished
from elevated nature ordered to an intrinsically supernatural final end.

PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

378

H Bradley is saying only that Aquinas would deny that a purely
natural moral philosophy is practically sufficient in the present
historical order, one could hardly differ. But Bradley's line of
argumentation goes far beyond that modest daim. His position at
least implies the claim that a purely natural and complete moral
philosophy is intrinsically impossible. For such a philosophy
would necessarily rely on a purely natural final end, and, in
Bradley's view, such an end is absolutely impossible in itself. If
Bradley's position is correct, then the very notion of a complete
philosophy independent from sacra doctrina involves not simply
a paradox but an internal contradiction. 4 that case the triumph
of (some form of) fideism or traditionalism (or nihilism) would
seem unavoidable. More concretely, the possibility of the state of
pure
theory intended to preserve the gratuity of the
supernatural order and the integrity of reason within its own
proportionate sphere of operation-would be left without any
ultimate justification.
H. GRATUHY COMPROMISED OR
METAPHYSICALLY UNINTELLIGIBLE POTENCIES?

Let us suppose that man is endless by nature. What are the
implications and why? Either the principle of finality understood
as a universal and necessary philosophical tenet must be
abandoned, or nature possesses a natural exigency for an
intrinsically supernatural act, namely, the immediate vision of
God. The admission of such an exigency would, from Aquinas's
standpoint, compromise the gratuity of the supernatural order,
for the immediate vision of God is humanly impossible without
grace, and it would seem contrary to the divine goodness that
God would create man with an ontological exigency for a final
end without intending that it should ever be fulfilled under any
circumstances.
In response, one might object that the order of divine justice
would not have been compromised had God chosen to create
4

Cf. ATG, xiii, 530.

HUMAN FINALITY

379

rational agents without intending that their natural desire for
perfect completion should ever be fulfilled, because their one and
only possible final end is intrinsically supernatural and, as such,
it is not owed to created nature. This objection is an important
one from a juridical perspective. From a metaphysical standpoint,
however, it is beside the point. Had God chosen to create rational
beings in the state of pure nature, and had they all failed to attain
any truly final end through no voluntary fault of their own, surely
they would have been aware of their unenviable predicament,
namely, the everlasting frustration of their inalienable desire for
ultimate and perfect completion. And, from a classical Thomistic
standpoint, the proposition that an intelligent secondary cause
could not be created without simultaneously being divinely
ordained and summoned to the beatific vision is strictly
incompatible with the gratuity of the supernatural order. 5 The
metaphysical problem, then, consists in justifying the assertion
that in the state of pure nature the divine Wisdom might have
permitted the everlasting frustration of natural desire even apart
from any spiritual creature's moral failure. A purely juridical
solution ignores the deeper metaphysical issue at stake. In the
order of intention the final end cannot be everlasting frustration
of natural desire, for such frustration is not good in itself, and the
good is that at which all things aim.
Furthermore, if the perfect completion sought through a
strictly natural desire could not be anything but the immediate
divine vision, it would appear that the intrinsic principles of
nature alone would suffice to establish the absolute possibility of
an intrinsically supernatural final end. But it is not obvious that
this possibility could be positively established without reference
to intrinsically supernatural principles-grace and the theological
virtues. For, if Aquinas is correct, man's de facto final end, the
immediate vision of God, depends unconditionally on these
supernatural principles, inasmuch as this supernatural end wholly
transcends the noetic capacities of unaided nature.

5 Cf. Pope Pius XIl,

Humani generis, no. 26.

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PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

III. THREE OPTIONS
Two possible responses to the problem offer themselves
immediately: (1) to deny the principle of finality as a universal
and necessary philosophical tenet, and (2) to affirm the possibility
of perfect natural happiness as a truly final end. Should we elect
to deny the principle of finality, other difficulties would surface.
First, the very debate over man's ultimate end would be rendered
problematic from a Thomistic standpoint. Apart from the
principle of finality it is not clear how one could justify in nonfideistic terms the claim that man has a final end, natural or
supernatural. And no Catholic thinker involved in this debate 6 is
prepared to endorse a fideistic solution or to deny the
metaphysical truth that man must have a final end. The
philosophical principle of finality is absolutely indispensable to
rational theological discourse on the objective and universal
meaning of human existence. Second, the denial of the principle
of finality would entail that there could be a real potency that is
not for the sake of act. But if the principle of a thing's
intelligibility is to be found not in potency as such but in act, then
a potency not ordered to act would be wholly devoid of
intelligible meaning. A potency is intelligible only to the extent
that it partakes of the intelligibility of its associated act. In other
words, a potency not ordered to act would be indistinguishable
from nothingness or the total negation of being.
So much for the denial of the philosophical principle of
finality. We are left, then, with the second option, namely, the
affirmation of the possibility of perfect natural happiness as a
truly final end. But this option would appear to be no less problematic from a Thomistic standpoint. For Aquinas maintains that
our natural desire for knowledge cannot come to rest within us until we know
the first cause, and that not in any way, but in its very essence. This first cause

6 For instance, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Maurice Blonde!, Henri Bouillard, Etienne Gilson,

Bernard Lonergan, Henri de Lubac,Joseph Marechal,Jacques Maritain, William O'Connor,
Joseph Owens, Anton Pegis, and Karl Rahner.

HUMAN FINALITY

381

is God .... Consequently the ultimate end of an intellectual creature is the
vision of God in His essence. 7

It seems, then, that natural happiness cannot be perfect as long as
the immediate vision of God is lacking. In other words, it appears
that a purely natural end consisting in a strictly natural knowledge of God cannot be a truly final end, for truly perfect rest
requires more than a strictly natural knowledge of God. Another
argument cited by Bradley (ATG, 473) in support of the putatively
Thomistic view that man could not have a strictly natural final
end is the argument found in De malo, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1:
Man would have been created frustrated and in vain if he were not able to
attain beatitude, as is the case with anything that is not able to attain its
ultimate end. Lest man be created frustrated and inane, because he is born with
original sin, God proposed from the beginning a remedy for the human race,
through which man could be liberated from this inanity-the mediator, himself
God and man, Jesus Christ. Through faith in Him the impediment of original
sin is able to be taken away.

I will comment briefly on this argument later.
A third option might be to object that human nature's
obediential potency for the supernatural is sufficient to establish
the theoretical possibility of the immediate divine vision as man's
last end, so that the possibility of this supernatural good could be
positively known without presupposing on our part any
knowledge of grace. This appears to be the approach of Steven
Long. In a recent article, Long pursues the obediential potency
option vis-a-vis man's final end, 8 Contrary to Long, however,
Bradley argues that Aquinas's teaching on man's final end neither
employs nor mentions the notion of obediential potency (ATG,
448-55), Bradley argues that
Miracles . . . serve as the Thomistic prototype for understanding the
obediential potency of a creature. Aquinas, however, never calls the beatific
vision ... a "miracle." ... [For] a miracle precisely does not realize or perfect
Compendium theologiae I, c. 104; cited by Bradley inATG, 525.
Potency, Human Knowledge, and the Natural Desire for
God," International Philosophical Quarterly 3 7 (1997): 45-63.
7

8 Steven A. Long, "Obediential

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PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

the natural tendency of a being but goes contrary to it. But while the beatific
vision is supernaturally attained, it is, according to Aquinas, profoundly in
accordance with the intellect's natural tendency: "Every intellect naturally
desires the vision of the divine substance." (ATG, 449-50)

In support of the view that man's immediate vision of God does
not, according to Aquinas, involve any obediential potency for
the same, Bradley notes that Aquinas distinguishes the beatific
vision from miraculous forms of knowledge, such as prophetic
knowledge (ATG, 450), and that the notion of obediential
potency is properly applicable to infused miraculous knowledge,
precisely because such knowledge is entirely beyond the natural
capacity of created intellects. In contrast, the immediate vision of
God is an act for which created intellects have in some sense a
natural capacity, Bradley argues, inasmuch as the natural desire
to know God cannot be thoroughly actualized without this
immediate vision (ATG, 455). In addition, he observes that
Aquinas does not use the term "obediential potency" when
attempting to establish that man's final end is the beatific vision.
He suggests, however, that if the divine ordination of spiritual
creatures to the beatific vision could not properly be understood
without reference to an obediential potency, it would seem
reasonable to expect that Aquinas would mention this potency
when attempting to show that a spiritual creature's final end is
the immediate vision of God (ibid.). 9
As a possible reading of Aquinas's teaching, the restriction of
the notion of obediential potency to the realm of the miraculous
seems plausible enough, since there are Thomistic texts that
appear to support Bradley's interpretation. 10 Nevertheless, his
treatment of Aquinas's understanding of obediential potency is
not compelling. If the act of prophetic knowledge requires an
obediential potency, and if the immediate divine vision as
participated act is more excellent than the act of prophetic
knowledge, then how can this intrinsically supernatural vision not
9 This line of argumentation is not new. See, for instance, William O'Connor, The Eternal
Quest: The Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Natural Desire for God (New York:
Longmans, Green and Company, 1947), 37.
10 SeeATG, 450 n. 130.

HUMAN FINALITY

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require an obediential potency? If an inferior act wholly exceeds
the natural capacity of spiritual creatures, surely the same must be
true of a superior act. Thus, although Aquinas may not explicitly
employ the term "obediential potency" in arguments intended to
show that man's last end consists in the immediate vision of God,
these Thomistic arguments necessarily presuppose the notion of
obediential potency. For no efficient cause other than God can
raise a spiritual creature's intellect to the immediate vision of
God, and an obediential potency in one sense is a remote passive
potency that can be reduced to act by no efficient cause other
than God. As Long recognizes, Bradley's interpretation is
questionable insofar as it completely reduces the notion of
obediential potency to the notion of extrinsic susceptibility to
miraculous transmutation. It is true that for Aquinas this
susceptibility is an obediential potency. Bradley has not shown,
however, that every obediential potency must be a susceptibility
to miraculous transmutation. 11
Unless God reduces an obediential potency to an act that
completely transcends a spiritual creature's natural capacities, no
finite intellect could be raised to the supernatural vision of God.
But, if Aquinas is correct, the obediential potency in question
cannot be a susceptibility to miraculous transmutation. Consider
an example. A horse, say, "Mr. Ed," is obedientially capable of
philosophical dialogue. But notice that the horse would cease to
be a horse at the precise moment when this obediential potency
is divinely actualized. By divine omnipotence the horse would be
essentially transformed into a rational creature, for the activity of
philosophical dialogue presupposes reason, and a horse as such
lacks reason. In this case the obediential potency of the horse is
a susceptibility to miraculous transmutation. In contrast, when the
11 In his Disputed Questions on the Virtues in General, a. 10, ad 13, Aquinas argues that
man's potency for infused virtues is generically other than his natural potency for acquired
virtues. And the potency for infused virtues, which are ordered to an end that completely
transcends the end to which the acquired virtues are ordered, is an obediential potency.
Moreover, Aquinas does not think the reduction of this obediential potency to act implies any
corruption of human nature. In other words, this obediential potency for infused virtues is
not an extrinsic susceptibility to miraculous transmutation, at least not according to Aquinas.

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PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

human mind is elevated supernaturally to the immediate vision of
God, there is no question of a miraculous transmutation of
human nature within the framework of Aquinas's theology of
grace. Aquinas would deny that human beings cease being human
the moment they receive the beatific vision. Bradley has not,
therefore, succeeded in justifying the assertion that the notion of
obediential potency serves no essential function in Aquinas's
arguments concerning man's de facto final end.

IV. OBEDIENTIAL POTENCIES DISTINGUISHED
In emphasizing the notion of obediential potency, Long offers
a more faithful interpretation of Aquinas's teaching on man's last
end. In this regard Long seems less prone to elide the orders of
nature and grace. By relying on the notion of obediential potency,
he believes he can demonstrate on strictly philosophical grounds
that the immediate divine vision as participated act is absolutely
possible, not that we are in fact called to the beatific vision. Given
that important qualification, his position seems more modest but
not insignificant. Nevertheless, at this juncture I think Long, who
relies heavily on Maritain, overstates his otherwise excellent case.
My reservation is chiefly epistemological in nature. Insofar as it
is defined as a remote passive capacity that can be reduced to act
by none but the first efficient cause, obediential potency is
accessible to philosophical reason left to its own resources.
Unaided reason can know in principle that an omnipotent
Creator exists and that He created finite beings ex nihilo. Truths
of this sort fall within the broad ambit of natural theology. If
unaided reason can know that there is an omnipotent God who
creates finite beings ex nihilo, one can also know without the
infused light of faith that an ass is obedientially capable of
philosophical acts by means of a miraculous transmutation of
substance. As no logical contradiction is implied, such
transmutation could occur if God willed it. But it is
metaphysically impossible that the individual engaged in
philosophical activity be an ass simultaneously.

HUMAN FINALITY

385

Now, in saying that man is obedientially capable of the
immediate divine vision, Long would affirm that a man who is
transformed and raised to this supernatural vision does not
thereby cease to be a man, that the obediential potency in question is not an extrinsic susceptibility to miraculous transmutation.
But if one is not cognizant of the availability of intrinsically
supernatural principles such as grace, how can one know that this
same obediential potency is not in fact a mere susceptibility to
miraculous transmutation? Of course one way to skirt the
problem is suggested by Duns Scotus. He denies that the
immediate vision of God is an intrinsically supernatural act in the
Thomistic sense. From a Scotistic perspective, the obediential
potency in question is indistinguishable from a susceptibility to
miraculous transmutation. This view is defended in a recent study
by Peter Ryan, S.J.:
De Lubac, MS, 78, n. 16, rightly points out that the nature lacking innate
desire for supernatural beatitude could be fulfilled by it only by being so
profoundly altered that it would become a completely different nature. As we
have noted, the same is suggested by Scotus: "if knowledge of the divine
essence were above the nature of our intellect, the blessed will never see God;
for no potency can be elevated above its specifying object, as [corporeal] vision
cannot be elevated to understanding. Otherwise this potency would transgress
the limits of its essence, and would not remain specifically the same. " 12

Long, however, would not endorse the Scotistic solution,
which appears to be supported by the Scotistic doctrine of the
univocity of being. But if one follows Aquinas's doctrine of the
analogy of being, it seems reasonable to hold that the ontological
divide between the sense power of sight and an angel is relatively
insignificant in comparison with the ontological chasm between
human reason and God's suprageneric existence. 13 Moreover, the
intuitive vision of an angel's essence absolutely transcends the
perceptual capacities of nonrational animals apart from a
12 Peter F. Ryan, S.j., Moral Action and the Ultimate End of Man: The Significance of the

Debate between Henri de Lubac and His Critics (Th.D. diss., Gregorian University, 1996),
278 n. 10.
13 See Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 54.

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PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

miraculous transmutation of substance. So it does not seem
unreasonable to hold that the immediate vision of God absolutely
transcends man's noetic faculties apart from a similar miraculous
transmutation. And even then it is not clear that a miraculous
transmutation of substance would suffice to produce the
intrinsically supernatural act in question. 14
Aquinas, however, maintains that man's elevation to the
immediate vision of God is not accomplished without intrinsically
supernatural principles, and that these principles (including the
entitative habitus of grace, the theological virtue of charity, and
the lumen gloriae) are strictly indispensable conditions of the
immediate divine vision as participated act. Furthermore, he
teaches that these principles are inaccessible to unaided reason.
Now, unless one is relying on the absolutely impeccable testimony
of God Himself, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, one
could hardly know that an intrinsically supernatural end is
attainable without also knowing the availability of the
intrinsically supernatural means without which this end could not
be attained. If the strictly indispensable means are removed, so is
the end. Objectively speaking, there is no obediential potency for
the immediate divine vision as participated act apart from the
requisite supernatural principles. Stated differently, the purely
philosophical notion of obediential potency falls short of the
properly theological notion of the same, and the latter is required
to establish the absolute possibility of the immediate divine vision
as participated act. Thus the philosophical notion of obediential
potency available to unaided reason will not suffice by itself to
demonstrate what Long thinks he can demonstrate on strictly
philosophical grounds.
14 One might, of course, assert_that the ontological chasm between sense powers and
separate substances is fundamentally unlike the ontological chasm between human reason and
God's suprageneric existence (cf. ibid.). For instance, one might argue that the ontological
divide between sense powers and separate substances involves a difference in kind, whereas
the ontological divide between human reason and God's supra-generic existence involves a
difference not in kind but in degree or something along those lines. Therefore, the human
intellect can be elevated to the immediate divine vision. It is not evident philosophically,
however, that an argument of this sort can succeed without prejudice to the divine nature's
absolute transcendence.

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387

If Aquinas is correct as regards his theology of grace, no sound
demonstration of the absolute possibility of the immediate vision
of God can avoid referring to the strictly indispensable means,
including grace. With the aid of divine faith, however, a believer
can grasp a mysterium fidei that a first-rate philosopher such as
Aristotle could not possibly anticipate without benefit of divine
revelation. 15 Concerning this divine mystery, human reason left
to itself is able to posit nothing more than an inherently fallible
"judgment of credibility," an act of acquired opinion based on
miraculous evidence. Such a judgment is not to be confused with
an act of theological faith, an intrinsically infallible supernatural
act of intellectual assent to a revealed mystery based on the
supreme authority of Self-subsistent Truth. 16 Apart from theological faith and divine revelation, then, the absolute possibility,
let alone the historical actuality, of the immediate divine vision as
participated act is beyond both proof and disproof.
V. THE ANALOGY OF NATURAL DESIRE

One might still object that my perspective does not seem
entirely consistent with the Thomistic texts, because Aquinas
offers various rational arguments to support the claim that the last
end of spiritual creatures must consist in the immediate vision of
God. In response, one may readily concede that such arguments
are scattered throughout the Thomistic corpus, like the argument
15 Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 57, a. 5; q. 64, a. 1, resp. and ad 4; I-II, q. 62, a.
1; q. 109, a. 1. Also see Joseph Owens, Towards a Christian Philosophy (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 91: "The potentiality for elevation through
grace escapes the philosopher's investigation ... and is known only to the theologian. The
philosopher discovers no contradiction in the elevation of a created intellect to the beatific
vision, as he could in the case of a non-cognitive faculty, yet he cannot show positively that
it is possible. He does not know that there is a Trinity to be contemplated, nor that there are
supernatural powers to equip the soul for that destiny. As with other revealed truths, the
possibility cannot be positively demonstrated even though the arguments that aim to show
a contradiction in it tum out to be inapplicable."
16 On the distinction between the judgment of credibility and the judgment of faith see
Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith and the Theological Eife (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 59-60.

PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

388

cited earlier from Aquinas's De malo. These arguments can easily
be misunderstood apart from their proper context, however. One
must recall that Aquinas, unlike Duns Scotus and others, held that
spiritual creatures were in fact created in the state of grace, not in
the state of pure nature. 17 Given this presupposition, the
Thomistic arguments at issue cannot properly be viewed as
complete without reference to the intrinsically supernatural
principles possessed by spiritual creatures in the original state of
nature. Contrary to Scotistic interpretations, the Thomistic arguments are meant to show that nature as originally constituted, not
pure nature, is ordered to the immediate vision of God.
For example, in the De malo argument cited earlier Aquinas is
obviously arguing on the basis of the notion of fallen nature, not
that of pure nature, and the theological notion of fallen nature
presupposes the theological notion of grace. Consider, also, the
famous argument found in Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 50.
Aquinas argues that the natural desire of separate substances
cannot attain perfect rest short of the immediate vision of God.
If, as Aquinas believes, separate substances were created in the
state of grace, it would be a mistake to infer that the natural
desire in question is a desire that does not presuppose grace and
the theological virtues. Furthermore, if he thought that the
natural-desire argument contained in ScG III, c. 50 was entirely
conclusive, it is not easy to grasp why he went on to argue in ScG
III, c. 54 that the immediate vision of God does not in every sense
transcend the noetic limits of separate substances. To show that
this supernatural vision is not absolutely impossible, he refers
explicitly to intrinsically supernatural principles in ScG III, cc. 5 254. This significant theological development of the natural-desire
argument set forth in ScG III, c. 5 0 is commonly overlooked.
Indeed, Scotistic interpretations of Aquinas's argument concerning man's last end are not rare. One is tempted to speculate that
the Scotistic reading of the natural-desire argument offered in ScG
Ill, c. 50 stems partly from the debate between Thomists and
Scotists over the necessity of the lumen gloriae (treated in ScG III,
17 See Henri Rondet, S.J.,

The Grace of Christ:A Brief History of the Theology of Grace,

trans. Tad W. Guzie (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1967), 205.

HUMAN FINALITY

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c. 5 3) in relation to the immediate vision of God. 18 In any event,
in view of the foregoing considerations, the claim that unaided
reason can neither prove nor disprove the absolute possibility of
the immediate divine vision as participated act seems wholly
consistent with Aquinas's (theological) arguments concerning the
de facto final end of spiritual creatures. 19
Must we infer, then, that unaided reason cannot but conclude
that man is endless by nature, as Bradley believes? I think not.
Earlier I mentioned the objection that the affirmation of the
absolute possibility of perfect natural happiness as a truly final
end could not be reconciled with Aquinas's teaching that man's
"natural desire for knowledge cannot come to rest within us until
we know the first cause ... in its very essence." The force of this
objection rests on what appears to be a Scotistic rather than a
Thomistic interpretation of the natural desire to know God. 20
From a Scotistic viewpoint man has a natural desire for the
immediate divine vision, and this natural desire is understood
univocally. That is to say, whether the desire issues from graced
nature or pure nature is irrelevant in the present case. From a
Thomistic standpoint, however, natural desire is understood
analogically. Although not completely unrelated, the natural
desire of graced nature and that of pure nature are not of the
same order; they have different formal objects. The former is
directed to God recognized as triune Godhead and as knowable
18 In this connection see Thomas J. Clarke, The Background and Implications of Duns
Scotus' Theory of Knowing in the Beatific Vision (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1971).
19 My reading of natural desire on this question can be classified as an example of the kind
of interpretation inspired by Cardinal Cajetan (1469-1534). On Cajetan's position see
O'Connor, The Eternal Quest, 33-38.
2° Concerning the widely varying interpretations of natural desire, see O'Connor, The
Eternal Quest; idem, The Natural Desire for God (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,
1948); idem, "The Natural Desire for God in St. Thomas," New Scholasticism 14 (1940):
213-67; idem, "The Natural Desire for Happiness," The Modern Schoolman 26 (1949): 91112; idem, "Natural Appetite," The Thomist 16 (1953): 361-409. Here one might note in
passing that Long disowns quasi-Scotistic interpretations of the natural desire to know God
insofar as these deny that this desire is an elicited act of the rational appetite, a volitional act
based on a prior act of intellectual cognition. It seems dear to me that Long is quite correct
on this key point. See my unpublished dissertation, A Thomistic Defense of Perfect Natural
Beatitude (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1998), secs. 3.8-3.9.

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PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

through intrinsicaHy supernatural principles, whereas the latter is
directed to God recognized as first efficient cause and as
knowable through means other than intrinsically supernatural
principles. It would appear, then, that the natural desire for
knowledge in the state of pure nature could come to complete
natural rest within human nature by attaining an exalted
analogical knowledge of the divine nature through the relatively
supernatural instrumentality of divinely infused species. Such
knowledge would faH infinitely short of the immediate vision of
God, but the absence of the latter would not necessarily entail an
objective frustration of natural desire in the state of pure nature.
For in the state of pure nature the desire to know the divine
essence directly would be nothing more than a pure velleity. 21
Thus, one could maintain consistently that in the state of pure
nature the natural desire to know God could come to complete
natural rest in spiritual creatures lacking the immediate divine
vision. As Aquinas observes: "It is ... necessary for the last end
so to
man's appetite, that nothing is left besides it for man to
desire. It cannot be his last end if something more be required for
his perfection. " 22 But in the state of pure nature man would
require for his commensurate perfection not a supernatural but a
strictly natural
end, namely, an exalted analogical
means of divinely infused spedes.
knowledge of God's nature
And to unaided reason the present historical order is
indistinguishable from the order of pure nature. 23
use of the notion of velleity see, for example, STh I-H, q. 13, a. 5, ad 1;
Supplement, appendix 1, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2.
22 STh I-II, q. 1, a. 5.
23 The state of fallen nature qua fallen is not strictly demonstrable without reference to
the state of elevated nature qua elevated, and Aquinas considers the latter a divine mystery.
Moreover, as intrinsically supernatural principles completely transcend the commensurate
limits of nature and its intrinsic powers in the state of pure nature, one cannot prove solely
by means of truths accessible to unaided reason that intrinsically supernatural principles are
"natural" to nature in its present (de facto fallen) state. For, as far as unaided reason is capable
of discerning, the present historical order is philosophically indistinguishable from the state
of pure nature. The contrary view would seem to imply, in opposition to Aquinas's
theological vision, a suppression of "the difference between fallen md restored human
nature" (Romanus Cessario, O.lP., The Godly Image: Christ and Salvation in Catholic
Thought from St. Anselm to Aquinas [Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1990], 186).
21 On Aquinas's

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This interpretation, however, would not completely satisfy
either Long or Maritain. According to the latter,
Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to
his nature .... Such desires . . . are natural, but one may also call them
transnatural. It is thus that we desire to see God . . . it is thus that we desire
beatitude.
To say that our intellect naturally desires to see God is to say that it
naturally desires a knowledge of which nature itself is incapable. This desire is
transnatural, it moves toward an end which is beyond the end for which the
nature of man is constituted. According as it reaches thus for an end which
transcends every end proportioned to nature, the desire to see God is an
"inefficacious" desire-a desire which it is not in the power of nature to satisfy,
and it is a "conditional" desire-a desire whose satisfaction is not due to
nature.
Yet, according as it emanates from nature, it is a natural and necessary
desire. It is not a simple velleity, a superadded desire, a desire of

In other words, since the theological mystery of original sin is inaccessible to unaided reason,
unaided reason cannot know in any demonstrative sense that historical nature is actually
fallen and internally wounded. Divine revelation and not human experience alone is needed
to grasp positively the existential difference between elevated nature and nature outside the
state of grace. A purely philosophical analysis of human nature cannot prove anything about
nature's original state other than what unaided reason could establish on the basis of nature
qua nature, nature within its own proportionate order of being and operation.
Here one might object that a world that includes Christ and his Church is radically
different from a world that does not include Christ and his Church. But the state of pure
nature, unlike the present historical order, would not have included Christ and his Church.
Consequently, unaided reason can distinguish between the present historical order and the
state of pure nature. This argument is plausible but inconclusive, since the truth of the second
premise exceeds the grasp of unaided reason. It is (obviously) the case that this created order
includes Christ and his Church, but it also includes numerous other religions and religious
icons. Moreover, contrary to the doctrine of religious indifferentism, Aquinas would deny
the claim that each and every religion is supernatural in origin or sufficient from a
soteriological standpoint. This diversity of religious worldviews is hardly surprising if, as
Aquinas maintains (STh 11-11, q. 81, a. 5), religion is a natural virtue and if unaided reason is
prone to error in matters of religion. Without the infused light of faith, the natural light of
reason is not equipped to distinguish infallibly between natural religion ancl revealed religion
qua revealed. The argument presupposes the truth of the proposition that Christ and his

Church are of supernatural origin. The proposition is accessible to unaided reason, of course,
but its inherent truth is not; the proposition is credible, but its truth is not positively
demonstrable without the aid of divine faith. Cf. Cessario, Christian Faith and the
Theological Life, 59-60.

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PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

supererogation. It is born in the very depths of the thirst of our intellect for
being....
And because this desire which asks for what is impossible to nature is a
desire of nature in its profoundest depths, St. Thomas Aquinas asserts that it
cannot issue in an absolute impossibility.24

Maritain cites STh I, q. 12, a. 1 in support of his contention. He
proceeds to argue thus:
It is in no wise necessary that [this natural desire] be satisfied, since it asks for
what is impossible for nature. But it is necessary that by some means (which is
not nature) it be able to be satisfied, since it necessarily emanates from nature.
In other words it is necessary that an order superior to nature be possible in
which man is capable of that of which nature is incapable but which it
necessarily desires. It is necessary that there be in man an "obediential potency"
which, answering to the divine omnipotence, renders him apt to receive a life
which surpasses infinitely the capacities of his nature. It is necessary that we be
able to know God in His essence through a gift which transcends all the
possibilities of our natural forces. It is necessary that this knowledge,
impossible to nature alone, to which nature inevitably aspires, be possible
through a gratuitous gift.

He adds in a footnote:
Thus the argumentation of St. Thomas in the question 12, a. 1, of the Prima
Pars, establishes rationally the possibility, I do not say of the supernaturalorder
such as the faith presents it to us and as it implies the specifically Christian
notion of grace, but of an order superiorto nature, the notion of which remains
still indeterminate, except in this, that through the divine generosity man can
therein be rendered capable of knowing God in His essence.25
24 Jacques Maritain, Approaches to God, trans. Peter O'Reilly (New York: Macmillan
Company, 1965), 98-99.
25 Ibid., 99. It could be argued that Maritain's thought was slowly moving in this direction
based on what he wrote in an earlier work:

Thus, the desire of nature to see the First Cause [in Himself] is conditional in that
it is simply natural. That is why, if man had been placed in the order of pure nature,
wherein the means of reaching a vision of the Divine Essence would have been
lacking to him, that natural desire would have been frustrated (or only satisfied by
lesser substitutes procuring a relative and changing beatitude) without any violation
of the principle of finality which protests against the possibility of an unconditional
desire of nature being in vain .•.. We believe this manner of considering the

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393

Maritain's qualification suggests that he is keenly aware of the
risk of eliding the natural and supernatural orders. But one may
question whether his interpretation of Aquinas on the natural
desire for God is strictly correct. He seems driven to argue as he
does because he is not sufficiently attentive to the distinction
between the "natural" desire that issues from graced nature and
the natural desire that would emanate from nature in the state of
pure nature. Hence, despite his apparent intentions, his reasoning
actually exceeds the proper scope of natural theology. Maritain
rightly affirms man's obediential potency for the immediate
divine vision. Without reference to intrinsically supernatural
principles such as the theological virtue of charity, however, it is
not evident that this potency is other than a mere susceptibility to
miraculous transmutation, involving a substantial corruption of
nature. 26
In addition, Maritain's distinction between "the supernatural
order" apprehended through divine faith and "an order superior
to nature" can hardly justify the claim that unaided reason could
know positively that the supernatural vision in question is
absolutely possible, at least not according to Aquinas's theology
of grace. For if the relevant "order superior to nature" is actually
the supernatural order of nature elevated by grace, then it would
elude the grasp of unaided reason. And if the "order superior to
nature" did not include intrinsically supernatural principles such
question is quite in harmony with St. Thomas' argument (Sum. Theo/., I-II, 3, 8, and
I, 12, 1). St. Thomas only demonstrates the possibility of man's seeing the Divine
Essence-because without it a desire of nature would be vain-by proceeding as a
theologian and not as a mere philosopher, by presupposing the possibility of man's
attaining perfect or absolute beatitude (faith alone assures us of that, for that kind
of beatitude is beyond nature ..• and, consequently, reason all by itself can only
bring arguments of suitability to bear on it) and, thus, only by envisaging a desire of
nature made unconditional by the supernatural desire that perfects it and proceeds
from the knowledge of faith. (The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan
[Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995], 303 n. 91; emphasis added)
This condensed footnote, which is more than a page in length, is open to diverse
interpretations, insofar as the complex line of thought expressed therein appears to be
following different trajectories simultaneously.
26 Nor is it clear that a miraculous transmutation of substance would suffice.

PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

394

as grace and the lumen gloriae, then from Aquinas's standpoint
the immediate vision of God would be no more within the reach
of nature situated within this superior order than it would be
within the reach of nature in the state of pure nature. Unlike
Duns Scotus, who thought that the theological virtue of charity
is contingently necessary for the human performance of
meritorious acts, 27 Aquinas taught that intrinsically supernatural
principles are absolutely indispensable to the human performance
of intrinsically supernatural acts. 28 For Aquinas, then, the absolute
possibility of man's elevation to the immediate vision of God
cannot be dissociated from intrinsically supernatural principles of
being and operation, because this vision is an intrinsically
supernatural act. From Aquinas's standpoint what is involved
here is a sublime mystery of faith. Ever since the original sin
(another theological mystery), human persons must be
transformed radically-regenerated-without
being corrupted in
nature. For Aquinas there is no other option if we are to attain
the immediate vision of God. And, following Aquinas's principles,
a Catholic philosopher can infer that any positive knowledge of
the theoretical possibility of this intrinsically supernatural vision
presupposes positive knowledge of the absolutely indispensable
conditions of this same act. In other words, the absolute
possibility of the immediate divine vision as participated act is
itself a theological datum
unaided reason can neither prove
nor disprove.
thought here is influenced largely by his own understanding of both God's
potentia absoluta et pote-atia ordinata and the relationship be1:weenfreedom and nature. See
Mary Elizabeth Ingham, Ethics and Freedom: An Historical-Critical Investigation of Scotist
Ethical Thought (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989), 198-200, 219-21, 22328, 237 nn. 24-25. See also Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Grace (St. Louis: B. Herder Book
Co., 1952), 124-26, 368, 382.
28 It appears that Scorns thought that the difference belWeen acquired love of God and
infused charity is one of degree, whereas Aquinas held that the difference is one in kind. "As
27 Scotus's

for ... the need for a habit of charity, I reply ... that this habit adds to the substantial
intensity of the act a further intensity, which the will alone could also have given to the act
by exerting an equal effort" (Allan B. Wolter, trans., Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality
[Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986], 443). See also Cessario,
Christian Faith and the Theological Life, 4 n. 6.

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395

Contrary to the position espoused by Maritain, a purely
natural desire, unlike a simple velleity, for what is conceived as
strictly impossible to unaided nature is questionable
philosophically. Within a Thomistic framework, if a purely
natural creaturely desire for the immediate vision of God were
possible, and if this desire emanated necessarily from nature in
precision from grace, then this desire would certainly have
obtained in a state of pure nature in which God did not intend
under any circumstances to bestow the immediate vision of
Himself upon His creatures. Therefore, in that possible world this
desire would have been frustrated necessarily, contrary to the
philosophical principle that a natural desire is not inane.
Moreover, from the perspective of unaided reason it will not
suffice to say: "This principle would not have been violated in
that possible world, because God could have fulfilled this desire
had He chosen to do so." Obviously God can fulfill any ordinate
creaturely desire for the good if He so wills, assuming that the
fulfillment of the given creaturely desire is absolutely possible in
itself. The metaphysical issue is whether the fulfillment of the
desire in question is not absolutely impossible, whether this desire
is more than a simple velleity. And, according to Aquinas's
theology of grace, it seems that one cannot positively demonstrate
that the fulfillment of this desire is not absolutely impossible
without recourse to intrinsically supernatural principles. 29
29 That is not to say that God's power is limited by reason of the fact that He must have
recourse to these supernatural principles so that human nature may be raised to the
immediate divine vision. On the contrary, the limitation is proper to human nature in
precision from grace, a limitation overcome by divine omnipotence through intrinsically
supernatural principles. Unlike the nature of an ass, human nature has an obedientia! potency
to be regenerated and elevated to participate in a supernatural order of existence and
operation without being essentially corrupted. And the obediential potency for intrinsically
supernatural acts is not the same obediential potency that is accessible to unaided reason.
Grace does not destroy human nature, according to Aquinas. Instead, he affirms that human
nature is raised through grace to a transnatural realm of divine being. The interior
reformation accomplished is truly radical, but it does not involve a miraculous transmutation
of substance, according to Aquinas, who held that the justification of sinners is not a miracle
in the strict sense (STh I, q. 105, a. 7, ad 1). By means of grace finite persons are truly "born
again" in spirit and become genuine likenesses of God, creatures fit to participate in the
immediate divine vision. Therein lies the mystery, impenetrable to unaided reason.

PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

396

VI. INTRINSICIST OBJECTIONS

At this point defenders of what could be denominated
"theological intrinsicism" might object that my reading of the
natural desire to know God stems from an exaggerated
conception of the gratuity of the supernatural order, from an
"extrinsicist" theology of grace foreign to the mind of Aquinas.
Critics maintain that an extrinsicist theology of grace entails that
the divinely impressed inclination to the supernatural final end
must be external to human nature. Accordingly, it is thought that
extrinsicism implies that man's supernatural final end is nothing
but a superfluous bonus, an optional good that one could turn
down without experiencing a profound frustration of natural
desire. One critic articulates the objection in this way:
Rabner pointed out the religious dangers of extrinsicism .... The supernatural
may be very beautiful and very desirable, but in what sense is it obligatory?
How could it be shown, in such a case, that man must seek a beatitude to
which he is not proportioned by nature, under pain of absolute frustration of
nature? There could be no serious argument again[st] naturalism. 30

Illtyd Trethowan expresses a similar reservation:
If one is not allowed to say that nature requires completion by grace in any
sense, if nature is an entirely closed system, then we are faced with the
apparent irrelevance of the supernatural which was the starting-point for
[Maurice] Blondel's thought. It was the need to show his contemporaries that
the supernatural is not simply imposed as an alien element but means
something for man which remained the motive force [underlying Blondel's
speculations] for some sixty years. 31

Maritain seems to have in mind a similar objection when he
writes that the natural desire for the divine vision must be more
than a simple velleity, a desire of supererogation.

30 Vincent Potter,

S.j., typescript.
"Introduction" to Maurice Blonde!, ''The Letter on Apologetics"and
"History and Dogma," trans. Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994), 102.
31 Illtyd Trethowan,

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397

This objection cannot be taken lightly. Here I cannot elaborate
at length on the intricate debate between intrinsicists and
extrinsicists, 32 but I can offer a brief response to the preceding
objection. The supernatural is far from irrelevant in the actual
historical order. In this order we are not free to dismiss our
supernatural vocation without the most tragic of consequences.
On the contrary, we are obliged to affirm that without Christ's
grace human nature cannot attain its de facto final end, the
immediate divine vision. From the supraphilosophical perspective
of infused faith one can affirm, through an infallible act of
intellectual assent, that a purely philosophical ethics is incomplete
not de jure but de facto. But the practical inadequacy of a purely
philosophical ethics in the present divine economy is cognitively
inaccessible to unaided reason. Likewise, one must acknowledge
that the absolute possibility of the immediate vision of God,
unlike the reality of moral failure, is not strictly demonstrable to
unaided reason. In this (fallen) world human wisdom without
faith will not ultimately suffice vis-a-vis the natural human quest
for supreme Truth. Similarly, one will be ill-prepared to defend
the depositum fidei without a firm commitment to metaphysical
realism and objective truth. As the recent encyclical letter Fides et
ratio makes abundantly clear, the extremes of rationalism
(including immanentism) and fideism must be eschewed. An
extrinsicist theology of grace properly understood is wholly
consistent with Fides et ratio, and in my judgment this theology
is the very one developed so admirably by the Angelic Doctor.
Regarding the disputed question of natural desire, it is not
dear how the desire for the divine vision, insofar as this desire
emanates from nature left to itself, can be anything more than a
simple velleity, unless one is prepared to sacrifice either the
32 This important controversy is examined in greater detail in my doctoral dissertation,
A Thomistic Defense of Perfect Natural Beatitude, chaps. 3-4. There I argue, based on a
distinction between nominalist and existential extrinsicisrn, that the various objections of
intrinsicist critics apply to the former but not the latter type of extrinsicism. For one
intrinsicist's perspective on this disputed question see Stephen}. Duffy, The Graced Horizon:
Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press,
1992), 55-59.

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PETER A. PAGAN-AGUIAR

gratuity of the supernatural order (reason without faith) or the
natural integrity of reason (voluntarist faith without reason). And
this wish is not, pace Maritain, a desire of supererogation. A
desire of supererogation aims at a good in excess of what is
strictly required. In the present context, however, the moral
grammar of obligation is quite foreign to the relevant notion of
velleity. In the state of pure nature the velleity in question would
focus on a supernatural perfection that, barring sin, would be
actively sought with the greatest volitional intensity were it
known that the immediate divine vision could be attained by
nature with the aid of intrinsically supernatural principles. Once
such knowledge is gained through properly supernatural means,
the velleity is instantaneously and irrevocably transformed into an
act of complete willing in the strict sense. Only when the latter act
is present can one rightly begin to speak of a genuine frustration
of natural desire insofar as this desire remains unfulfilled. But an
unfulfilled velleity does not by itself entail a frustration of the
relevant natural desire. In the state of pure nature an intelligent
creature's natural desire could come to complete natural rest if it
possessed every authentic good of which it were capable by nature
in precision from grace. In this way it seems that both the
principle of finality (Aristotle) and the radical gratuity of grace
(SS. Paul and Augustine) can be preserved widiout compromise,
granted that the notion of natural desire is employed analogically
(Aquinas) rather than univocally (Scotus). One need not elide the
really distinct orders of nature and grace, then, and one can
thereby minimize to some extent the risk of falling into the errors
of rationalism and semi-rationalism (e.g., Frohschammer,
Gunther, Hermes), on the one hand, and those of fideism and
traditionalism (e.g., Barth, Bautain, Bonnetty), on the other.
VII. CONCLUSION

The long-standing debate over the relationship between nature
and grace is relevant to numerous fundamental questions,
including the relationship between reason and faith, the radical
distinction between Christian and non-Christian ethics, and the

HUMAN FINALITY

399

possibility of a metaphysically robust natural law theory. Clearly
these related questions cannot be treated adequately in a brief
presentation. I chose to focus on one particular aspect of a much
broader set of issues. In particular, my chief objective here has
been simply to raise a few basic questions concerning the natural
scope of human reason in connection with the possibility and
nature of man's last end, questions intimately related to the recent
work of Bradley and Long. These two thinkers have relied in
different ways on Maritain's keen speculations on the perennial
topic of human finality, and, despite my reservations, I believe
they have made an important contribution to the scholarly
literature on this key anthropological issue. This paper is not
intended to offer a final solution to a long-standing and complex
controversy, a solution that would satisfy all parties involved. My
hope, rather, is to encourage further scholarly discussion of an
issue that merits far more attention than it has received in recent
years. 33

33 I wish to thank Richard Cain, David Hammond, and Thomas Michaud for commenting
on an earlier draft of this paper. Regarding the central issue examined above, Steven Long's
recent article, "On the Possibility of a Purely Natural End for Man," The 1homist 64 (2000):
211-37, merits serious consideration. Although the present paper was completed before that
article was published, several of the views expressed therein reflect views discussed in our email correspondence and conversations that began in July 1998 after I read his remarkable
1997 article (see above, n. 8).

The Thomist 64 (2000): 401-22

NON-ARISTOTELIAN PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA
SECUNDAE
ROBERT C. MINER
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

I

t is often assumed that Thomas Aquinas teaches an Aristotelian
doctrine of prudence in the Summa Theologiae. Impressed
both by the richness of Aristotle's conception of phronesis and
by the extent to which Thomas seems to rely on Aristotelian
authority for his own notion of prudentia, some commentators
have held that Aquinas's doctrine is essentially Aristotelian. 1 The
non-Aristotelian authorities that do appear in the inquiry can be
regarded as marginal figures to be reconciled to the dominant
Aristotelian teaching, accidents incapable of changing the
Aristotelian essence. However eclectic Thomas might be in his
metaphysics or in his theology as a whole, at least the doctrine on
prudence is straightforwardly Aristotelian. Against this view,
R.-A. Gauthier has argued that while Thomas uses Aristotelian
formulae to articulate his notion of prudence, he does so by
systematically misreading Aristotle and doing violence to the
spirit of his texts. 2 Both views of the relation between Thomas
1 This is implicit, for example, in Yves Simon's writing on the virtues. Simon dissents from
Gilson's view that Aquinas is not best regarded as an "Aristotelian" on the ground that "to
say . . . that Thomas Aquinas is not an Aristotelian obscures rather than clarifies our
understanding of historical developments in philosophy" (Yves Simon, The Definition of
Moral Virtue [New York: Fordham University Press, 1986], 125). For a nuanced defense and
expansion of Gilson's view, see Mark Jordan, The Alleged Aristotelianism of Aquinas
(Toronto: PIMS, 1990).
2 R.-A. Gauthier, "Introduction," in Aristote, L'Ethique a Nicomaque, introduction,
translation, commentary by Rene Antoine Gauthier and Jean Yves Jolif, 2d ed., with a new
introduction, 3 vols. (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1970), 1:276. A spirited reply to

401

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ROBERT C. MINER

and Aristotle have exerted significant influence beyond the
narrow circles of academic Thomism. References to "AristotelianThomistic" virtue are commonplace. 3 Almost as plentiful are
versions of the sentiment, recently expressed by Allan Bloom, that
the medieval use of Aristotelian authority "was, of course, an
abuse of Aristotle. "4
The goal of the present essay is to reject both extremes by
paying close attention to what Thomas says about prudence, and
how he says it, in a cluster of questions within the Prima secundae
of the Summa Theologiae.
The reading will be set out in a series of steps. First, I will
consider the presentation of prudence as an intellectual virtue in
questions 5 6-57 of the Prima secundae.Here the central elements
of the Aristotelian doctrine of prudence with which Thomas
seems to identify his own teaching will emerge. The second
section of the paper will examine the handling of prudence
among the moral virtues. Close reading of questions 58-61 will
show that, while the recognition of the circle between prudence
and the moral virtues is indeed similar to that of Aristotle, the
consideration of prudence as one of the four cardinal virtues
affords Thomas the opportunity to qualify and enrich the
teaching with doctrines taken from other authorities, including
the Augustinian linkage of prudentiaand ars. The third part of the
paper will focus on article 4 of question 61. In attending to this
absolutely vital text, I will show that Aquinas situates Aristotelian
phronesison the lowest rung of a hierarchy consisting of various
levels of prudence. The highest prudence attainable by human
beings turns out to be essentially contemplative. Here the
preferred authority is Neoplatonic rather than Aristotelian. The
fourth and final section will take up the issue of infused prudence

Gauthier can be found in Ralph Mcinerny, Aquinas and Human Action (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 161-77.
3 One author even speaks of the "Aristotelian and Aquinian [sic] systems" (Anthony J.
Lisska, Aquinas' Theory of Natural Law [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 99).
4 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987),
252. Later in his book, Bloom is somewhat more generous to Aquinas (see, e.g., 376).

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

403

and its relation to acquired prudence, analyzing the dependence
of both on the un-Aristotelian virtue of caritas.
Two comments about what my interpretation aims to reject,
and what it does not intend to reject, might be useful. First, I
want to reject the claim that Aquinas's conception of prudence as
a whole is Aristotelian; Some might regard the rejection of this
claim as trite, since one may simply point to passages in which
Aquinas says things about prudence that lack any parallel in
Aristotle. However, one could argue that Aquinas's intent in these
passages is to reconcile non-Aristotelian authorities to what
remains a fundamentally Aristotelian doctrine. The rejection of
this argument demands more than a set of mere gestures toward
particular non-Aristotelian texts. The issue turns on precisely how
these texts are to be read.
Second, my view that Aquinas's conception of prudence as a
whole is not well-described as Aristotelian does not require me to
deny that something like an Aristotelian account of prudence may
be abstracted from Aquinas's texts. Aquinas may well hold an
Aristotelian account of prudence, in the sense that none of the
statements he makes about prudence are logically inconsistent
with an Aristotelian account. However, the pressing issue for
Aquinas is not whether Aristotle's doctrine can or cannot be
exhibited as logically consistent with that of, for example,
Augustine. His concern, rather, is to compose a text that sets the
multiplicity of known doctrines in their proper pedagogical
relation-the relation that proves most instructive and useful for
the Christian believer en route to a supernatural end. Whether
Aquinas's Ambrosian or Augustinian lines of thought are
"consistent" or "inconsistent" with Aristotelian theses is an
essentially modern question. It betrays presuppositions and
preoccupations that are antithetical to the teaching of St. Thomas.
I. PRUDENCE AS INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE

Questions 55-67 of the Prima secundae form an exceptionally
compact, tightly organized treatment of the topic of virtue, under

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ROBERT C. MINER

five aspects: essence, subject, inherited divisions, cause, and
particular attributes.
The first mention of prudence comes when Thomas takes up
the subjectum of virtue. In article 2 of question 5 6, an objector
contends that one virtue can be in several powers of the soul by
arguing that prudence is in both the intellect and the will. The
objector uses the Aristotelian definition of prudence as recta ratio
agibilium to maintain that it is in the reason; he appeals to the
incompatibility of prudence with a bad will to show that it is in
the will. Thomas responds that while the real subject of prudence
is indeed reason, it presupposes the rectitude of the will. How this
is possible is clarified in article 3, which distinguishes between
"facility" and "right use," and divides habits into those which
produce (facere) only facility in action (facultas ad bonum actum;
facultas bene agendi) and those which produce both facility and
right use of something (aliquis recte facultate utatur). The
intellectual virtues are instances of the former, while the moral
virtues are instances of the latter, as illustrated by the contrast
between the habits of grammar and justice.
Prudence, however, appears to disturb the dichotomy. It
confers both facility and right use, and yet is seated in the reason.
Prudence may be an intellectual virtue, but its intimate relation to
the will makes it unlike any other intellectual virtue. Without
rectitude of the will, which ensures right disposition toward ends,
prudence can hardly operate, just as genuine scientia of
conclusions cannot be had without the correct grasp of starting
points by intellectus.
The analogy between moral virtue/prudence and noetic
grasp/ demonstration suggests a particular division of labor. Moral
virtues dispose the agent to the end, which is the principle in
moral things, and prudence chooses the means. But, an
Aristotelian objector wonders in article 4 of question 5 6, how can
this division be taken seriously, since the principal act of moral
virtue itself is choice? Thomas answers Aristotle with Aristotle,
arguing from book 6 of the Ethics that any act of electio contains
two things: the intention of the end (intentio finis) and the right

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

405

disposition regarding things directed to the end (praeacceptio eius
quod est ad finem). The former is the function of moral virtue; the
latter is the task of prudence. Thus Thomas affirms the division
of labor, while adding the point that the dispositio of moral virtue
is to be understood as intentio. This recalls question 12 of the
Prima secundae, where intention is located as an act of will that
concerns the end.
Thomas, then, has been principally concerned to argue that the
intellect can be the subject of particular virtues, even as the
principal subject of virtue, in the most proper sense of the term,
is the will. As a virtue that seems to occupy both territories,
prudence affords a unique opportunity for Thomas to clarify his
teaching on the subject.
The next question (57), begins the sequence of questions on
the first great division of virtue-the Aristotelian distinction
between the intellectual and moral virtues. Thomas begins with
the intellectual virtues; the issue of prudence as an intellectual
virtue arises in article 4. Here Thomas has an opportunity to
address the nature of prudence more squarely than in the
previous question. We learn that prudentia and ars are both forms
of recta ratio, that their distinction is grounded in a difference
between their objects, and that the relevant difference is between
things to be made and things to be done. The distinction between
factibilia and agibilia restates and clarifies from the side of the
object the distinction that has already been approached from the
side of the subject-that is, the distinction between habits that
produce only facility and habits that produce both facility and
right use.
A new element of the teaching comes in the response to an
objector who denies any generic difference between prudence and
other arts. Since the duty of prudence is to give good counsel,
claims the objector, it is a member of the class to which other arts
belong (e.g., warfare, seamanship, medicine). Thomas answers by
asserting that prudence as such is not reducible to good counsel
within particular contexts of action. It is the excellence of counsel
"concerning things that pertain to the entire life of man, and to

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ROBERT C. MINER

the ultimate end of human life."5 We may allow a sort of
prudence in particular areas, for example, warfare or seamanship,
and hence speak of prudent officers or prudent pilots. But in its
most proper sense prudence embraces as its end the whole of
human life-the ultimate end that includes all particular ends.
The final two articles of question 57 complete the teaching.
Article 5 reaffirms the distinction between prudence and art and
underscores the sense in which prudence is said to be in the
reason. While prudence is necessary for both the production of
good actions and the living of a good life, art is necessary only for
the production of good works, not for good living as such. The
location of prudence in the reason is emphasized by recalling the
dual concern of electio with end and means. Since choice
essentially concerns things directed to an end, and not the end
itself, right choice requires good counsel, which is an act of
reason. The virtue that perfects reason in this capacity is
prudence. The last article of the question adds that, while counsel
is the function of prudence, it does not exhaust the function of
prudence, the other two acts of which are judgment and
command. Command, in fact, is the most proper act of prudence.
The acts of counsel and judgment are subordinated to command,
because they exist only for the sake of command. They are,
therefore, more properly assigned to a set of virtues annexed to
prudence (counsel to eubulia, judgment to sunesis and gnome).
Questions 56 and 57 seem to produce a complete, selfcontained teaching on prudence. In order to establish the sense in
which prudence is seated in the reason, Thomas has been required
to say much about other properties of the virtue. But has he told
us what is essential about prudence as such? He has yet to discuss
prudence within the other great division of virtue, the cardinal
virtues. As a good teacher, Thomas never says everything he
thinks about a topic all at once. The full teaching must be allowed
to emerge poco a poco, in accordance with the dialectical progress
of the inquiry. As the questions about the cardinal virtues and
their relations to the theological virtues unfold, so we may expect
5 STh 1-11, q. 57, a. 4, ad 3: "de his quae pertinent ad totam vitam hominis, et ad ultimum
finem vitae humanae."

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

407

the teaching on prudence to receive addition and qualification as
it is considered under non-Aristotelian rubrics.
II. PRUDENCE AMONG THE MORAL VIRTUES

Thomas holds that prudence is an intellectual virtue, but not
without positing its dependence on moral virtue. His favorite
device for illustrating the dependence is the analogy between
primary understanding of first principles and subsequent
demonstration in the speculative realm, and primary intention of
the end and subsequent action in the practical realm. Near the
end of question 58, on the differences between moral and
intellectual virtues, however, Thomas indicates a radical disanalogy. In the speculative realm, there is no sense in which
principles depend upon conclusions. With prudence and the
moral virtues, things are different. If the moral virtues are to
intend the end rightly, they must be directed by prudence. The
earlier division of labor between moral virtue and prudence that
seemed so straightforward is now subverted, because moral virtue
itself is an habitus electivus that depends on prudence. This means
that not only does prudence require the moral virtues, but also
that the moral virtues require prudence. Hence Thomas concludes
that while "moral virtue can be without some of the intellectual
virtues, viz. wisdom, science, and art; but not without understanding and prudence. " 6
The reciprocal dependence of prudence and the moral virtues
echoes rather than opposes Aristotle. Some commentators have
located a contrast at a slightly different point. While Aristotle
associates prudence with knowledge of both means and end, these
interpreters claim, Thomas unambiguously restricts prudence to
the selection of means. The end is grasped by synderesis rather
than prudence, as Gauthier emphasizes, citing article 6 of
question 47 of the Secunda secundae. 7 The text of the Prima
secundae, however, complicates this simple contrast between
Thomas and Aristotle-and it is not self-evident that the Secunda
6

STh I-II, q. 58, a. 4.

7 Gauthier, "Introduction,"

1:277-78.

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ROBERT C. MINER

secundae is to be preferred to the Prima secundae on this point.
The third objector of article 3 in question 66 asks whether the
moral virtues are better than the intellectual virtues. Presupposing
the division of labor between intention of end and choice of
means, the objector argues that the moral virtues are better than
prudence, just as the end is better than the means. Thomas rejects
the argument outright by holding that "prudence directs the
moral virtues not only in the choice of the means, but also in
appointing [praestituendo]the end. " 8 The analogy between the
dependence of scientia on intellectus and the dependence of
prudentia on intentio is useful, insofar as it indicates that
prudence requires the rectitude of the will, and hence the moral
virtues. But it cannot be taken as ultimate, since prudence
concerns both the end and the means, even if its knowledge of the
end consists principally in determining and specifying for the
purposes of human action an end that is inchoately given by the
intentio of the rightly disposed will, as perfected by the moral
virtues. 9
Thomas, then, preserves in a highly Aristotelian fashion both
the reciprocity between prudence and the moral virtues and the
ambiguous relations of prudence to knowledge of the human end.
He also seems to follow Aristotle in regarding prudence as an
intellectual virtue rather than a moral virtue. Responding to an
objector in article 2 of question 58, Thomas says that prudence is
"essentially an intellectual virtue. But considered on the part of its
matter, it has something in common with the moral virtues: for
it is right reason about things to be done, as stated above. It is in
this sense that it is reckoned with the moral virtues. " 10 This alone
does not take Thomas far from Aristotle.
That Thomas in fact regards the fourfold classification of the
cardinal virtues as not merely different from, but somehow
superior to, the Aristotelian division is evident from the ascending
character of the ordering of the questions on the division of
SJ'h 1-11, q. 66, a. 3, ad 3.
Right PracticalReason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 29££.
10 SJ'h 1-11, q. 58, a. 3, ad 1.

8

9 See Daniel Westberg,

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

409

virtue. 11 The text begins with the Aristotelian dichotomy
(questions 57-60), moves to the cardinal virtues (question 61),
and culminates in the theological virtues (question 62). While
Thomas may regard the Aristotelian division as adequate on its
own terms, he gives it only the first word. The final word must be
reserved for higher authorities. The first of these higher
authorities is Ambrose. The sed contra of article 1 of question 61
uses Ambrosian authority to name temperance, justice, prudence,
and fortitude as the four cardinal virtues, identifying each of them
as precisely moral virtues. In the clarifying response, Thomas
associates the most complete idea of virtue with moral virtue,
because moral virtue essentially concerns the rectitude of the
appetite. But prudence also concerns the appetite essentially. This
means that prudence is not only an intellectual virtue, "but is also
something of a moral virtue. " 12 In the next article, the first
objector assumes the legitimacy of regarding prudence as "the
directing principle of the other moral virtues" and argues that it
is the only principal virtue. Thomas responds to the objection by
distinguishing between two senses of "principal," but does not
question the objector's inclusion of prudence within the set of
moral virtues. 13
Thomas continues to regard prudence as if it were a moral
virtue in the closing article of question 61. Affirming the sense in
which the cardinal virtues are distinct from one another, Thomas
cites Augustine in the sed contra, quoting a passage that identifies
four parts of virtue. The parts of virtue are plural, because they
are individuated by distinct "affections of love" (affectus
amoris). 14 While prudence may be an intellectual virtue in the
Aristotelian lexicon, Thomas does not hesitate to cite an
Augustinian textual authority in which it is understood by
reference to the affections. To be sure, the Augustinian authority
is qualified in the respondeo, where prudence is once again
11 Its

superiority is confirmed by its structural role in the treatment of virtues in the

Secunda secundae.
12 SI'h 1-11, q. 61, a. 1.
13 SI'h 1-11, q. 61, a. 2, ad 1.
14 SI'h 1-11, q. 61, a. 4, SC.

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ROBERT C. MINER

connected with reason on the ground that it has discretio, a
general property that belongs essentially to reason. But Thomas
adds that distinguishing the cardinal virtues by their general
properties is less satisfactory than distinguishing them according
to their proper matter. (And as we have seen, it is precisely
respect to its matter that prudence is a moral virtue.) He also
proceeds to amplify Gregory's connection of the cardinal virtues
in terms from the Dionysian vocabulary. "It may also be said that
these four virtues qualify one another by a kind of overflow. " 15
A subde but important and potentially far-reaching
modification of the Aristotelian teaching on prudence is to be
found in artide 2 of question 58. Here the first objector questions
the distinction between prudentia and ars, arguing from
Augustine's De civitate Dei (4.21) that "'virtue is the art of living
righdy:' 16 Thomas responds not by denying the appropriateness
of regarding virtue as an ars, but rather by endorsing it himself.
He adds that the Augustinian dictum applies essentially to
prudence, and to other virtues by participation, insofar as they
are directed by prudence. The implication is that however
justified the distinction between prudentia and ars may be, higher
authority allows us to go beyond the strict limits of the
Aristotelian distinction. We may indeed think of prudence in
art-like
as long as we understand that prudence is the art
of human living as such, and therefore infinitely more important
than any particular art whose object is something less than the
final end.
But what positive reasons might we have for connecting
prudence to ars? In what senses does the practice of living well
significantly resemble an ars? One may first ask the question with
reference to human artes, perhaps expecting to find structural
features common to all operatio. Or one may pose the issue as a
question about the relation of prudentia to the divine ars,
especially
its participatory relation to providentia, as indicated
by question 22 of the Prima pars" Both of these strategies might
I-ll, q. 61, a. 4, ad 1.
STh I-II, q. 58, a. 2, obj. L

15 STh
16

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

411

be pursued in the interest of constructing a fuller reading of
Aquinas on moral matters. 17 Here I will simply suggest that the
membrane that separates prudentia and ars may be more
permeable than supposed by commentators who want Thomas to
make adamantine distinctions. 18
Thomas departs, ·then, from a strict Aristotelian view of
prudence in at least two respects. First, he weakens the distinction
between prudentia and ars by subsuming it within a theology of
creation and providence unavailable to the Philosopher. Second,
he assumes the fittingness of speaking of prudence as a moral
virtue in senses not recognized, at least explicitly, by Aristotle
himself. As long as we are careful not to derationalize it, or
otherwise eliminate its directorial capacity, we may regard
prudence as if it were a moral virtue. Doing so, in fact, manifests
some of its properties and relations that are concealed by the
Aristotelian division. Thus does Thomas honor the precedent of
placing all of the cardinal virtues, including prudence, among the
moral virtues.

III. PRUDENCE AND CONTEMPLATIVE WISDOM
We have a traced a sequence that begins with an Aristotelian
doctrine of prudence and gradually complicates it through the use
of other authorities: Cicero, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory. A
more striking transformation of prudence occurs in article 5 of
question 61. In this article, which serves as both the climax of the
treatment of the cardinal virtues and the point of transition to the
question on the theological virtues, Thomas adds to the catalogue
17 For some suggestions as to how to begin, see Mark Jordan, "The Pars moralis of the
Summa theologiae as Scientia and asArs," in Scientia und ars im Hoch- und Spiitmittelalter,
ed. Ingrid Cramer-Ruegenberg .and Andreas Speer (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1994 ),
468-81.
18 An example may be found in Jacques Maritain: "the practical order itself is divided into
two entirely distinct spheres which the Ancients termed Action (agibile, prakton) and Making
(factibile, poieton)" (see Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism and the Frontiers of Poetry,
trans. Joseph W. Evans [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962], 7). On the tendency of
Maritain to make "adarnantine" distinctions, see Yves Congar, Fifty Years of Catholic
Theology, ed. Bernard Lauret (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 73.

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ROBERT C. MINER

of inherited classifications by asking whether the cardinal virtues
are fittingly divided into the quartet of political virtues, purgative
virtues, virtues of the purified soul, and exemplary virtues. 19 The
quartet is taken from Plotinus as read by Macrobius in the first
book of the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. 20
Thomas begins a positive answer to the question
speaking
of each extreme. The exemplary virtues exist in the divine mind.
In God, Aquinas says, implicitly recalling the questions early
the Prima pars about divine practical knowledge and its human
participations, the divine mind itself may be caHed prudence. 21
Without exemplars in the divine intellect, no other virtues would
exist. Moving from the most exalted to the most lowly, Thomas
speaks of the political virtues, the virtues that enable human
beings to conduct themselves rightly in the city. These are the
virtues that exist in human beings according to the condition of
their nature. In a sentence that dramaticaHy qualifies the whole of
the previous discourse, Thomas declares, "It is in this sense that
we have been speaking of these virtues until now." 22
Up to this point, everything the reader has learned about
prudence has been about prudence as a political virtue. He has
not learned, as it turns out, what is most essential about the virtue
of the person moving toward his supernatural end-the person to
whom the entire moral discourse of the Summa is directed, as the
beginning of the Prima secundae has already established. Since
man must strive for divine things, as even Aristode (etiam
Philosophus) realizes, there must be some virtues that exist
"between" the political virtues and the exemplary virtues. These
are the second and third members of the Plotinian quartet, the
19 STh I-H, q. 61, a. 5: "utrum virtutes cardinales convenienter dividantur in virtutes
poliricas, purgatoaia, purgati animi, et exemplares."
20 See Macrobius, Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis 1.8, trans. W. H. Stahl,
Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952). As Mark
Jordan observes, the passage was familiar to Thomas from many texts, including Albert's
Lectura on the Ethics. See Jordan, "Theology of Philosophy," in The Cambridge Companion
to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 238 and 250 n. 37 with references.
21 Cf. STh I, qq. 14,15, and 22.
22 STh I-H, q. 61, a. 5.

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

413

purgative virtues and the virtues of the purified soul. The
purgative virtues belong to men in via to the divine similitude; the
virtues of the purified soul are possessed by those who have
already attained it.
Aquinas redescribes all four cardinal virtues in accordance with
each category. We learn that prudence, as a purgative virtue, has
qualities that have scarcely been revealed until now: "Thus
prudence, by contemplating the things of God, counts as nothing
all things of the world, and directs all the thoughts of the soul to
God alone. " 23 The difference from this-worldly Aristotelian
phronesis is striking. It may still be that the principal act of
prudence is command, involving the subordinate acts of counsel
and judgment. Each of these acts, however, must be informed by
contemplation, if they are directed to the ultimate end. Only thus
will prudence be able to do its purgative work, after which it will
assume its next form as a virtue of the purified soul, which "sees
nothing else but the things of God. " 24
The form of prudence most appropriate to the creature on the
way to God turns out to be contemplative. Thomas regards it as
a virtue that directs its possessor to a world beyond this one.
Prudence thus conceived may include aspects of political
prudence, but it does so by transforming and ordering it to a
larger end. Thomas does not deny the utility of political
prudence, since civic goods are to be reordered rather than
destroyed. The reordering is potentially radical, however, insofar
as it implies that civic goods are to be counted "as nothing" in
relation to the infinite good.
We can now see that the initial discussion, conducted under
the auspices of Aristotelian authorities, is not meant to offer a
complete, self-contained doctrine of prudence. It is, rather, a
starting point from which the learner might rise with the help of
non-Aristotelian philosophy.

23 Ibid.: "prudentia omnia mundana divinorum contemplatione despiciat, omnemque
animae cogitationem in divina sola dirigat."
24 SI'h 1-11, q. 61, a. 5.

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ROBERT C. MINER

IV. INFUSED PRUDENCE

If Thomas does not regard Aristotle as the final word on
prudence, he equally denies it to Plotinus. The article that invokes
Neoplatonic authority is the hinge that opens into the wider
expanses of Christian theology. Thus immediately after analyzing
the cardinal virtues under the Plotinian rubric, Aquinas takes up
the theological virtues in question 62. This question never
explicitly mentions prudence. It is, nevertheless, crucial for
apprehending the full teaching on the subject. After discussing the
virtues of faith, hope, and charity, Aquinas declares in the
question's final article that "charity is the mother and the root of
all the virtues, inasmuch as it is the form of them all. " 25 Here
Thomas is speaking of both the theological and the cardinal
virtues. No exception is made for prudence. Prudence is not
self-sufficient, but depends on charity as its formal cause. The
type of prudence in question is not infused prudence-a category
yet to be introduced-but acquiredprudence. The requirement of
charity as its formal cause differentiates this prµclence decisively
from Aristotelian phronesis.26
In postulating the formal causality of charity, Thomas once
again concludes the final article of a question in a way that serves
as the point of transition to the next question-in this case,
question 63 on the "cause of virtues." Here Aquinas is entering
into a problematic bequeathed to him by the rich tradition of
25 STh I-II, q. 62, a. 4. Thomas tells us that the matter will be taken up later (STh II-II, q.
23, a. 8). Against those who would like to find an autonomous ethics in the Prima
secundae-amoral philosophy that is detachable from the "theological" Secundasecundae-it
merits emphasis that the teaching on charity as form of the virtues first appears in the Prima
secundae, in its central part.
26 Daniel Mark Nelson notices that prudence depends upon charity, but tries to relativize
the dependence to the "theological perspective"; see The Priority of Prudence (University
Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 71. There may be yet a "level of
prudence" that, according to Nelson, we can "strive to attain on our own and which leads
to the kind of natural happiness that is possible in this life" (72). But in the absence of charity,
is this type of prudence a virtue? ls the "happiness" to which it leads anything more than a
false relation to the last end? Such "Augustinian" questions seem to make some Thomists
nervous, but Aquinas himself was content to raise the questions, and to answer them, in a
very Augustinian fashion.

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

415

speculation on grace and nature. 27 He will return to the topic
more fully in the final questions of the Prima secundae. We must
confine ourselves to observing how the first two articles of this
question serve to introduce the category of "infused moral
virtues."
Article 1 takes up two antithetical views on the cause of virtue.
One is the view that Aquinas associates with the Platonists,
namely, the doctrine that full-fledged virtues naturally preexist in
the soul, being inhibited only by the body. The other view is the
Avicennian teaching that virtues are imposed upon human beings
by the single agent intellect, as if from without. Aquinas holds for
an Aristotelian mean between these views. The virtues are natural
to human beings, but only by aptitude and inchoation. The
exception, of course, is the theological virtues, which are entirely
from without.
Article 2 continues to assert the "Aristotelian" position,
holding that the virtues natural to human beings are formed by
habituation. Note, however, that the authorities in this article are
entirely non-Aristotelian. Against the appearance that grace
precludes the acquisition of virtues by natural habituation, the sed
contra invokes Dionysius. If evil acts are able to cause vicious
habits, as they manifestly are, then so are good acts able to cause
virtuous habits. Thomas presents this as a consequence of the
Dionysian principle that good is more powerful than evil. The
respondeo is more subtle. Thomas begins by distinguishing two
sets of virtues: those that direct us to the good as defined by the
rule of human reason, and those that direct us to the good as
defined by divine law. Only the former set of virtues are caused
by habituation. The latter set, by contrast, comprise the virtues
that God works in us without us (Deus in nobis sine nobis
operatur). Here Thomas reinvokes the Augustinian definition of
virtue that was defended at the closing of question 55. 28
One might suppose that Thomas has in mind a simple
distinction between natural virtues caused by habituation and
27 See Bernard].

F. Lonergan, Graceand Freedom (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971),

1-19.
28 Cf. SI'h 1-11, q. 55, a. 4; 1-11, q. 63, a. 2.

ROBERT C. MINER

416

theological virtues caused by grace. Prudence, it would appear, is
entirely on the side of the former. The question, however, is
precisely which virtues direct us to the good as defined by divine
law. Article 3 raises this question, asking whether the moral
virtues, including prudence, are also in us by infusion. The
objectors argue on various grounds that only the theological
virtues are infused. The sed contra is a verse from the Book of
Wisdom: "She teaches temperance and prudence and justice and
fortitude. "29 Thomas illuminates the sense of the scriptural
teaching in the respondeo,arguing that the creature on the way to
his supernatural end requires not two but three kinds of virtue.
The need for the natural acquired virtues and the infused
theological virtues has already been established. What needs to be
shown now is the necessity for a third class-the infused
counterparts of the acquired cardinal virtues.
Thomas argues the need for infused moral virtues by
constructing an analogy in a passage that requires some
explication.
Effects must be proportionate to their causes and principles. Now all virtues,
whether intellectual or moral, that are acquired by our own actions proceed
from certain natural principles pre-existing in us, as was said above in article
1 of this question and in article 1 of question 51. In place of these natural
principles, the theological virtues are bestowed upon us by God. By these
virtues we are directed to a supernatural end, as stated above in article 3 of
question 62. Therefore it is necessary that other habits caused by God in us
correspond in proportion to the theological virtues. These habits are to the
theological virtues what the moral and intellectual virtues are to the natural
principles of virtue. 30

29

SI'h 1-11, q. 63, a. 3, sc.

30 SI'h I-II, q. 63, a. 3: "respondeo

dicendum quod oportet effectus esse suis causis et
principiis proportionatos. Omnes autem virtutes tam intellectuales -taam morales, quae ex
nostris actibus acquiruntur, procedeunt ex quibusdam naturalibus principiis in nobis
praeexistentibus, ut supra dictum est, art. 1 huius quaest., et quaest. 51, art. 1. Loco quorum
naturalium principiorum conferuntur nobis a Deo virtutes theologicae, quibus ordinamur ad
finem supernaturalem, sicut supra dictum est, quaest. 62, art. 3. Unde oportet quod his etiam
virtutibus theologicis proportionaliter respondeant alii habitus divinitus causati in nobis, qui
sic se habent ad virtutes theologicas, sicut se habent virtutes morales et intellectuales ad
principia naturalia virtutum."

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

417

To understand this analogy, we must review, if only briefly, the
relationship Thomas has already located between the natural
beginnings of virtues and the moral and intellectual virtues.
Article 1 of question 51 on the generation of habits identified the
natural principiaof virtues with the seminalia virtutum, the seeds
of virtue that are the principles of common law. 31 They are the
potencies that are multiply actualized in the moral and intellectual
virtues. In one sense, then, it is legitimate to regard the virtues as
the ends of the seminalia. Thomas qualifies this, however, by
suggesting that just as principles are superior to conclusions, so
are the seminaliasuperior to their outgrowths. 32 If the analogy is
to hold between (1) the seeds of virtue and their actualizations in
the acquired virtues and (2) the theological virtues and the infused
moral virtues, then we would expect to find both that the infused
moral virtues grow out of the soil of the theological virtues, and
that the theological virtues set the ends at which the infused
moral virtues aim.
The first aspect of the analogy demands immediate
qualification. Infused moral virtues cannot properly be said to
"grow" out of theological virtues, because there is no temporal
process that generates one from the other. On the contrary, all
the infused virtues are given simultaneously by grace. There is,
nevertheless, a sense in which the theological virtues are prior to
the infused moral virtues. The work of the former is to show us
the supernatural end; the function of the latter is to enable human
beings to take particular steps in attaining the end. 33 Hence the
questions on the theological virtues come before the questions on
the cardinal virtues in the ordering of the Secunda secundae. But
with respect to the bestowal of infused virtues, there is no
"before" or "after." The language of habituation does not apply;
the virtues are given all at once. Thus in the final article of the
question on the cause of virtue, Thomas holds that the acquired
virtues and their infused counterparts remain different in kind.
The acquired virtues are formed from seeds that exist in us
31 SI'h 1-11, q. 51, a. 1. Cf. SI'h 1-11, q. 27, a. 3; 1-11, q. 67, a. 1, ad 3.
32 SI'h 1-11, q. 63, a. 2, ad 3.
33 This is the analysis given at SI'h 1-11, q. 65, a. 3.

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ROBERT C MINER

naturally, developed by habituation, and
at the mean as
contrast, are given
discerned by natural reason. Infused virtues,
directly by grace, do not develop by habituation, and aim at the
end as known by faith, aspired to by hope, and willed by charity.
How does this add to
teaching on prudence? At the very
least, Thomas has located a species of prudence that cannot be
conflated with the Aristotelian virtue, since the origin, development, and end of the former differ radically from the latter. This
might be taken, however, as merely asserting the banality that
Aquinas is supplementing an essentially Aristotelian teaching with
another type of prudence not recognized by Aristotle, since
Aristotle was not a Christian and lacked the concept of grace.
Against this view, at least two things need to be said. The first is
that infused prudence is not simply another, supplemental species
of prudence. It is prudence in its proper sense, because it
corresponds most dosdy to the proper notion of virrue as expressed by the Augustinian
of virrue as a quality of
34 It is at least a
that God works
nobis sine
necessary prerequisite of the prudence that will be possessed by
the creature
via to his ultimate end. However complex the
relations to acquired prudence may be, it cannot be said that
Thomas's teaching on infused prudence is merely an addendum
to a more fundamental doctrine of acquired prudence. The
second point is that even
character of acquired prudence has
taken on subtle but important changes, because it has now been
situated
a new conceptual economy. It is now «informed" by
charity
operates
the horizon now set by infused
prudence. This is dearly a decisive difference from Aristotelian
phronesis.
Thomas says relatively little in the Prima secundae about the
relationship between acquired and infused moral virtue. We have
seen that the final artide of question 63 on the cause of virtue
teaches that they are specifically different. The specific difference,
Thomas
us, is twofold; it involves formal object and end. He
uses the example of temperance to illustrate" The common matter
34

The definition is invoked once more in the sed contra of STh I-II, q. 63, a. 4.

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

419

of each is the set of tactile pleasures. The formal object of
acquired temperance is the mean as determined by purely human
reason: "food should not harm the health of the body, nor hinder
the use of reason. "35 The mean as determined by the divine rule,
by contrast, is more stringent, enjoining man to castigate his own
body and reduce himself to servitude before the Lord by
abstinence in food, drink, and other sensual pleasures. 36
With respect to the difference in end, Thomas does not give an
example of a particular virtue. He simply distinguishes between
virtues that enable one to live well in human affairs, and virtues
that enable one to live well in the community that includes the
saints and domestics of God. It is plausible that Thomas is
alluding, inter alia, to the difference between the worldly
prudence of the city and the three higher levels of prudence
mentioned in article 5 of question 61 on the cardinal virtues. If
this is correct, then he would not have to give a specific example,
because he has already provided one in the earlier question.
Does the specific difference between acquired and infused
prudence, as construed by Thomas, imply their basic independence from one another? Are we to regard each class of virtue as
existing in a separate compartment? The remaining questions on
the particular attributes of virtue, which constitute the final
section of the sequence of questions on virtue in the Prima
secundae, show that any strong idea of the autonomy of acquired
prudence cannot be ascribed to Thomas. Not only do nature and
grace cooperate, but all the virtues in a well-ordered soul are
unified in charity. Question 65 on the connection of virtues
begins with a distinction between virtues in their complete state
and virtues in their incomplete state. Some of the moral virtues
can exist without the others, but they will not exist as moral
virtues except in an- improper sense. From this alone it would
seem to follow that acquired prudence will not exist in its most
perfect state as a virtue unless it is accompanied by the other
virtues, including the infused moral virtues. Thomas confirms this
impression in article 2 of question 65, which asks whether the
35 STh

36 lbid.

I-II, q. 63, a.4.

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ROBERT C. MINER

moral virtues can exist in the absence of charity. An objector
juxtaposes the teaching of book 2 of the Ethics, which argues that
moral virtues can be acquired through human acts, and the
scriptural teaching on the infusion of charity by the Holy Spirit.
He draws the conclusion that the moral virtues are not connected
with charity and can exist without it. Thomas answers the
objector by acknowledging that his suggestion holds true of
acquired virtue. 37 But acquired virtues without charity, Thomas
adds in the respondeo, are virtues only secundum quid. They
"direct man well in respect of the last end in some particular
genus of action, but not in respect of the last end simpliciter. "38
And the proper function of prudence, as Thomas has argued from
Aristotle's own principles, is direction "concerning things that
pertain to the entire life of man, and to the ultimate end of
human life."39 Unless it is informed by charity and,
concomitantly, infused prudence, acquired prudence is not a
virtue in the full sense.
Acquired prudence is not sufficient to direct the creature in
respect of the ultimate end because it requires that prior
disposition toward the ultimate end which is given by charity. A
corollary is that acquired prudence also requires infused
prudence, since infused prudence is included within charity, along
with the other cardinal virtues, as Thomas reminds us in article 3
of question 65. Without charity and the infused cardinal virtues,
acquired prudence may still exist, but it will not exist as a virtue.
Thomas does not hesitate to quote the Augustinian gloss on
Romans 14:13, "He that fails to acknowledge the truth, has no
true virtue, even if his conduct be good. " 40 Acquired prudence
may enable individuals to lead "good lives." But unless the acts
governed by acquired prudence are themselves ordered to the
supernatural end, the virtue that directs these acts will count as a
virtue only in an analogous, derivative fashion. If charity is the

37 STh 1-11, q. 63, a. 4, ad 2.
38 STh 1-11,

q. 65, a. 2.

39 STh 1-11, q. 57, a. 4, ad 3.
40

Quoted in STh I-II, q. 65, a. 2.

PRUDENCE IN THE PRIMA SECUNDAE

421

mother of all the virtues, as Thomas has said, then the virtues
without charity are simulacra. 41
If the infused virtues are virtues in the proper sense, then
where is the need for acquired virtues? Does the prudence infused
by grace obviate the need for acquired prudence? It is true that
infused prudence can operate without acquired prudence; the
operation of grace can never be said to require nature. For
Thomas, if not for Aristotle, it is possible for a person to act, and
act repeatedly, in accord with prudence despite a settled
disposition to the contrary. 42 Nonetheless, grace ordinarily
involves the cooperation of nature. The creature on the way
toward his ultimate end will hope to possess both types of virtue,
and integrate them into a unified habit of prudence. 43 The
concept of acquired prudence, then, survives the introduction of
infused prudence. Yet it does so only after being placed within a
new teleology that is foreign to Aristotle. Aquinas preserves what
he can of Aristotelian thinking and observation about acquired
prudence, but he does not pretend that acquired prudence, having
been brought into the service of charity, can remain exactly what
it was for Aristotle. Both the similarities and the differences are
crucial.
Thomas says little more about the relations of acquired and
infused prudence, not only because the Prima secundae treats of
41 This view has repelled many interpreters. Bonnie Kent, for example, has sought to
distinguish Aquinas's view from the "moral particularism" of Augustine, citing passages where
Thomas describes virtues without charity as "imperfect" and even "true" in a sense (e.g., cases
in which the intended good is something as vital as preservation of the civitas). But this does
not warrant the ascription of anything like a "moral cosmopolitanism" to Aquinas. It is
revealing that in the course of reading Aquinas as an anti-Augustinian, Kent neither mentions
his approval of the Augustinian gloss nor attends in general to the play of Aristotelian and
Augustinian authorities. See Bonnie Kent, "Moral Provincialism," Religious Studies 30 ( 1994):
269-85.
42 Alasdair Macintyre, in informal conversation, has compared this aspect of the relation
between Aristotle and Aquinas to the pessimism of Freud and comparative optimism of
Melanie Klein.
43 Rejecting the absolute priority of either infused or acquired prudence, Josef Pieper
stresses the "pre-eminence of that 'fuller' prudence in which the natural and the supernatural,
the acquired and the given, are combined in a felicitous, in a literally 'graced' unity" (Pieper,
Prudence [Pantheon Books: New York, 1959], 31).

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ROBERT C. MINER

moral matters in general, but also because it would be difficult to
say more without entering directly into the wider problematic of
nature and grace. This he takes up in the final sections of the
Prima secunda.e, before returning to the theological and cardinal
virtues in the Secunda. secunda.e.
The interpretation of prudence as presented in the Secunda.
secunda.e poses special challenges of its own. These cannot be
confronted here. Doing so would require not only dose attention
to the (non-Aristotelian) ordering of questions 4 7-5 6 and the
complex dialectical movement within those questions, but also the
exposition and defense of a view on the logical relation of the
Prima secunda.eto the Secunda.secunda.e.I suspect, however, that
such an effort would confirm the conclusion proposed by my
reading. While the teaching of Thomas Aquinas on prudence
makes crucial use of Aristotle, and does so in a way that does not
unscrupulously distort the Philosopher, as Gauthier thinks, the
doctrine itself must on the whole be judged as non-Aristotelian. 44
When taken up in the human creature's ascent to God and
transformed by charity, prudence becomes something more than
Aristotelian phronesis. It becomes a participation in divine
Providence. 45

44 In Whose justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1988), Alasdair Macintyre points to the link between human prudence and divine providence,
ascribes to Aquinas the view that Aristotle's teleology is "radically defective," and observes
that for Thomas even the natural virtues require charity (205). Yet he weakly holds that
"there is a dimension to Aquinas' discussion of prudentiawhich is not Aristotelian" (196). His
own evidence seems to point to a stronger formulation: that there is an Aristotelian
dimension of a Thomist teaching that is not itself Aristotelian.
45 An earlier version of this paper was read at the 33rd International Congress of Medieval
Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I thank Mark Jordan, Rebecca DeYoung, and Michael
Dauphinais for their suggestions and comments.

The Thomist 64 (2000): 423-48

THE DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT
AND THE DOMAINS OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
DENIS F. SULLIVAN
St. John's University
Jamaica, New York

T

he most common version of the doctrine of double effect
maintains that a distinction should be drawn between two
domains of moral responsibility. In the one domain are
those effects that an agent brings about as ends or as means to his
ends. In the other are those effects that an agent only foresees he
will bring about, even if he is certain he will bring them about.
The distinction made between these two domains is such that
there are certain kinds of effects that could never be justified if
they were brought about as means or ends, but that could be
justified if they were brought about as foreseen side effects, even
if the agent were certain that his action would bring them about.
There is another, much weaker version of double effect, which
creates a different line of demarcation between the two domains
of moral responsibility. In this version there are kinds of effects
that could never be justified if they were brought about as ends or
means, and that could be justified if brought about as foreseen
side effects, but only if the agent was less than certain that his
action would bring them about. Here the agent is only justified in
taking the risk that he will bring these side effects about. If he is
certain that his action will bring such effects about, then they
belong in the same moral domain as means.
Saint Thomas Aquinas has often been identified as at least the
implicit source of the strong version of the doctrine of double

423

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DENIS F. SULLIVAN

effect. 1 It is argued that, for Aquinas, intention defines a special
domain of moral responsibility. While we are responsible for
everything we knowingly bring about, we are responsible in a
special way for what we knowingly and intentionally bring about.
And it is argued that, for Aquinas, what we intentionally bring
about are the ends we pursue and the means we employ-hence
the strong version of double effect.
Recently, however, Thomas Cavanaugh has argued that
Aquinas only accepts the weak version. 2 I believe that Cavanaugh
is correct, but his argument is less than convincing because he
relies on the same use of the concept of intention employed by
those who defend the strong version. I shall argue that this use of
the concept of intention is mistaken both as an interpretation of
Aquinas and as a philosophical position.
For Aquinas, I will argue, we intend only the end, not some
complex of end and means. Once this is recognized, it will
become clear that Aquinas subscribes only to the weak version of
double effect, and this in turn will show that, in his thought,
intention does not define a special domain of moral responsibility
in any way that is relevant to the doctrine of double effect.
Finally, I will argue that in his analysis of the moral act Aquinas
provides us with strong grounds for justifying the position he
takes.
I

In describing Aquinas's position Anthony Kenny writes: "The
end is wanted, the means are chosen; what is intended is neither
the end itself, nor the means in themselves, but the end through

1 See Joseph Boyle, "Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas," The Thomist 42
650. In this
paper I will concentrate mainly on the arguments of Boyle since he has done most to defend
the strong version of double effect.
2 Thomas Cavanaugh, "Aquinas's Account of Double Effect," The Thomist 61 (1997):
107-21. In a more recent article Cavanaugh has himself rejected the position he ascribes to
Aquinas and has argued in favor of the strong version of double effect. See Thomas
Cavanaugh, "Double Effect and the Ethical Significance of Distinct Volitional States,"
Christian Bioethics 3, no. 2 (1997): 134. We shall consider this argument later.

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

425

the means. "3 Cavanaugh tells us that, for Aquinas, "we will the
end, we choose the means, we intend the complex end-throughmeans. "4 Joseph Boyle is the most cautious. He admits that, for
Aquinas, the agent does not intend the means as such. But still he
goes on to say that the means as means are "within intention. "5
I believe that all these comments reflect an inaccurate
interpretation of the position of Aquinas; intention is not for
some complex of means and end, but only for the end.
To be sure, in the language of Aquinas the kinds of actions we
would usually identify as means, such as calling for a doctor or
taking medicine, are intended-but intended as an end, not as a
means. Means as means are not intended or included within the
object of intention. This point might seem to be a slight one, but
if it is acknowledged it then becomes easier to understand the role
that, for Aquinas, a consideration of intention is supposed to play
in moral assessment.
One can see why it is so easy to believe that, for Aquinas, one
intends not only the end but also the means as means. In
contemporary philosophical circles there is virtual unanimity that
one intends both the end and the means, and this unanimity
probably accurately reflects contemporary usage. This makes it all
too easy to assume that Aquinas holds the same. But a careful
look at the text reveals that Aquinas used the term "intention" in
a different way.
At first glance, it does seem that the text of Aquinas supports
the inclusion of the means as means within the object of
intention. This apparent support is found in Aquinas's discussion
of the distinction between simple volition and intention. 6 Aquinas
tells us that while volition is simply (absolute) for the end,
intention is for an end as a term towards which something
(aliquis) or something else (aliquidaliud) is ordered. But what is
this 'something else'? The characteristic examples of this
3 Anthony Kenny, The Anatomy of the Soul: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Mind
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), 138.
4 Cavanaugh," Aquinas's Account of Double Effect," 113.
5 Boyle, "Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas," 653 and 657.
6 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 12, a. 1, ad 4.

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DENIS F. SULLIVAN

'something else' that Aquinas gives are examples of what we
would ordinarily call means. Thus one intends to attain health
(the end) by taking medicine,7 or by calling for a doctor. 8 This has
led commentators and translators to assume that this 'something
else' must always be something we would call a means.
Consequently it is concluded that the concept of intention
involves an essential reference to means and that thus the means
as means must somehow be within the scope of intention. 9 But I
believe that it is inaccurate to say that this 'something else' that is
ordered to the end must always be a means. Consequently it is
inaccurate to say that, for Aquinas, the means as means are part
of the object, or are within the scope of the object of intention.
In the body of the article in which Aquinas makes the
distinction between volition and intention, he states that intention
involves a movement towards an end, and that this movement
involves a mover and a moved. It is obvious that the mover is the
will. But the moved, he tells us, is the other powers of the soul,
that is, the ability to reason, imagine, see, hear, move from place
to place, and so on. 10 It is dear then, that what distinguishes
volition and intention is the fact that while volition consists
simply in actually desiring an end, intention involves using the
other powers of the soul in doing something to achieve a desired
end. Thus the essential difference between volition and intention
is the fact that intention implies action in a way in which simple
volition does not. And the 'something other' to which the concept
of intention must refer is the other powers of the soul.
When we act to realize an end, very often we employ means.
But sometimes we do not. There are some actions, such as
speaking, that I might intend to do and do straight off. In such an
action I must employ some of the other powers of my soul, the
ability I have, for example, to control my lungs, larynx, mouth.
But I do not use anything we would ordinarily call means. Thus
while intention must always refer to 'something other' which is
7 STh

I-II, q. 14, a. 4.

8 STh I-II, q. 8, a. 3.

"Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas," 653.
I-II, q. 12, a. 1.

9 Boyle,

10 STh

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

427

ordered to the end, and while this 'something other' must always
consist, at least in part, of some of the powers of my soul which
are to be employed by my will in attaining the end, it need not
necessarily involve what we would ordinarily call means. Thus it
cannot be claimed that the means as means are within intention
because the concept of intention necessarily involves a reference
to means. It simply does not necessarily involve such a reference.
It might be objected that the term 'means' can be interpreted
to include any use I make of the other powers of the soul. Thus
one might say that even in just speaking I must make use of
various muscles and the use I make of these muscles could be
called the means by which I speak But it would be misleading to
treat this use of muscles as the same kind of thing as picking up a
pen in order to write. Picking up a pen is something one can
simply do, and consequently it is something one can do for any
number of reasons. But how can one use the various muscles one
uses in order to speak? Clearly, only by speaking. It would be
more accurate to say not that I speak by moving these muscles,
but that in speaking I move these muscles (although in the context
of some kind of medical test it could be accurate to say that I
speak in order to move these muscles). Thus it would be
misleading to stretch the notion of means so that it includes both
what we would ordinarily call means and any use we make of the
various powers of the soul.
Perhaps this point needs belaboring. I am not claiming that for
an act to count as what we would ordinarily call a means it must
be temporally distinct from the act that is the end for which it is
the means. As we shall discuss later, the very same act can be
identified, under one description, as an end, and, under a
different description, as a means to that end. For example, I
might be waving my arm and when asked, "Why are you waving
your arm?" I might answer that I am waving my arm in order to
get my friend's attention. Thus my action under the description
"waving my arm" would be identified as a means by which I
achieve the end of attracting my friend's attention. But in answer
to the same question, I might simply say: "I am attracting my
friend's attention." In this second case I would be describing this

428

DENIS F. SULLIVAN

act as an end" But what we ordinarily call means-for example,
calling for a doctor, taking medicine, waving my arm-can aU be
picked out with a description that could also be used to identify
some other act than the act by which some particular end is
achieved. Thus I can "wave my arm" not just to get attention, but
also to exercise, to signal approval, and so on, In contrast, "using
my muscles
such a way as to speak" can only be used to
identify the act of speaking.
for this reason it is significantly
different from what we usually call a means.
But if the 'something other' to which intentions refer is not
necessarily a means, why, when Aquinas gives us examples of this
something other, does he give us examples of means? And why,
when he exp Heidy discusses this 'something other', does he
discuss only what we would ordinarily call means? There is one
obvious reason: a means is a dear and legitimate example of this
'something other'. There are further reasons as well why it is
natural that Aquinas should choose only this kind of example.
First of all, foHowing Aristotle, Aquinas wants to discuss desiring
ends and then deliberating about and choosing means. This makes
something that is a means the obvious choice of example. But a
much more important reason is that Aquinas formulates his whole
theory of human action not as part of an abstract debate in action
theory, but solely as part of a discussion of moral assessment.
Now the only kind of evaluation we make of the movements of
our musdes and limbs is in terms of the actions that these
movements are involved in. Thus such movements, in themselves,
would be of no interest to Aquinas. Consequently it should not be
surprising that when Aquinas discusses this 'something other', he
discusses only what we ordinarily call means. In other words, it
is not his concept of intention that leads Aquinas to using only
means in his examples of this 'something other', but rather an
extraneous commitment to a discussion of moral assessment.
Unfortunately this choice of examples seems to have misled many
of his interpreters.
One cannot argue, then, that for Aquinas the means as means
must somehow be within the scope of the object of intention on
the grounds that the concept of intention involves an essential

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

429

reference to means: it does not. But Boyle also offers two other
grounds for claiming that the means as means must be within the
scope of the object of intention.
Boyle cites two texts in which Aquinas seems to say that what
is outside intention lacks an order to the end. 11 These texts would
seem to provide grounds for claiming that the means as means
must be within intention, for since the means just as means do
have an order to the end, these texts would seem to imply that
they could not be outside intention. However, the texts that Boyle
cites do not necessarily support his position. The first text, which
is from the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, seems
to be irrelevant because it has nothing to do with human action. 12
The second text is about human action, but here Aquinas doesn't
say that what is outside intention lacks an order to the end. 13
Rather he says that what is both outside intention and by chance
(casu) lacks an order to the end. Thus neither of these texts
provides a compelling reason to claim that the means as means
are within intention.
Boyle also takes Aquinas's claim that in what is numerically
one act the agent can will both the end and the means to be
evidence that the means as means can be within the scope of the
object of intention. 14 But the article he refers to can be plausibly
interpreted to lend more support to the position of this paper
than to the position of Boyle. Aquinas explains his point by
referring to Aristotle's remark that the same slope could be
identified differently depending on whether it was described as a
steep ascent or a steep descent. 15 Aquinas's position, then, would
u Boyle, "Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas," 654.
ad 4 (Boyle incorrectly cites this text as a. 1, ad 2). In this
text we are told that even the damned retain on their souls the character which they have
received in baptism. But this is "praeter intentionem imprimentis characterem." He goes on
to say: "Et ideo non est ibi ordinatus ad aliquem finem, quia quae praeter intentionem
accidunt, carent ordine ad finem." In this text it would seem that "praeter intentionem
accidunt" would be best translated as "what happens outside an end or purpose." And
obviously what happens outside an end or purpose lacks an order to an end.
13 STh I-II, q. 102, a. 1.
14 Boyle, "Praeter Intenionem in Aquinas," 654. The text he refers to is STh I-11, q. 12, a.
4.
15 STh I-II, q. 12, a. 4, ad 3. Aquinas cites Aristotle's Physics, 3.3.
12 See IV Sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 3,

430

DENIS F. SULLIVAN

seem to be that the same action could be identified as a means
under one description and as an end under a different description. Thus I might take medicine in order to maintain my health.
This action, under the description "taking medicine," could be
identified as a means. But if when asked what I was doing I were
to reply, "I am taking care of my health," I would be describing
it as an end. 16 Thus the action, described not as a means but as an
end, could be an object of intention.
II

So far I have argued that, for Aquinas, one intends only the
end. This point is significant for understanding his position on
the role that a consideration of intention should play in moral
assessment. But before turning to this position, it is necessary to
consider in more detail the relationship of intention and end to
action.
In a familiar text Aquinas argues that intention need not be for
a last end:
Intention regards the end as a terminus of the movement of the will. Now a
terminus of movement may be taken in two ways. First, the very last terminus,
when the movement comes to a stop; this is the terminus of the whole
movement. Secondly, some point midway, which is the beginning of one part
of the movement, and the end or terminus of the other. Thus in the movement
from A to C through B, C is the last terminus, while B is a terminus, but not
the last. And intention can be of both. 17

What Aquinas seems to have in mind in this text is a process in
which there are a number of steps leading to a conclusion. Thus
I might want to consume medicine in order to restore my health.
But I might first have to buy the ingredients and then mix them
in order to make the medicine. Each of these steps would have to
have its own end even though it was just one step in the overall
16 As we shall see, it is also the case that one and the same action, under the same
description, can be described in one context as a means, and in another context as an end.
17 STh 1-11, q. 12, a. 2 (translation in Aquinas, Summa theologica, trans. Fathers of the
English Dominican Province [New York: Benziger, 1947]).

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

431

process. In this kind of situation we can see another way in which
what is a means in one context can be identified as an end in
another context Thus while my mixing of the medicine is a
means which will enable me to take it, the successful mixing is the
intended end of this particular act Thus the means is intended,
but again only as an end.
There is an apparent problem involved in Aquinas's position.
In his analysis the overall movement toward the end is broken up
into temporal segments. But what is to keep this process from
being arbitrary and open ended? This would seem to remain a
question even if one insists that the temporal segments have to be
actions, for what can be accurately described as an action can
often be resolved into temporally discrete, more precisely defined
actions. Thus in the act of mixing the medicine I might first add
so much of one ingredient to a second ingredient and then mix
for several seconds before adding a third ingredient and so on.
And each of these steps might constitute a different act. What is
to place a limit on this process of resolution?
Aquinas's use of the word terminus supplies an answer to this
question. Terminus literally means the point in time at which an
action stops, and the point at which an action stops need not be
some goal or objective. I might stop mixing the medicine because
I am knocked over or because I faint. But it is dear, given the way
in which Aquinas uses tenninus as interchangeable with finis (goal
or objective), that this is not what he means. In this text the
action ceases because the goal has been reached and the action has
been successfully completed. This is what places a limit on the
process of segmentation. Each segment must be an action. And for
a segment to count as an action there must be some description
that an agent would recognize as a description that could be used
to identify that point in time at which that action had been
successfully completed. This is a description of the term of the
action, that is, the end that the agent was trying to achieve in (as
opposed to by) the very performance of the action. Thus with
respect to tying my shoelaces someone might say "First you
moved your right finger into opposition to your right thumb."
But I might not recognize that as a description of the successful

DENIS F. SULUVAN

432

completion of anything I tried to do. And, if that is the case,
while it would be part of the behavior involved in tying my
shoelaces, it would not be one of the actions that was part of
what went on when I tied
shoelaces. In fact it is possible that
the only description I could recognize as a description of what I
was trying to achieve in tying my shoelaces was "tying my
shoelaces."" If this were the case, this action would not be subject
to any process of resolution into more elementary actions.
In his discussion of moral assessment, and elsewhere, Aquinas
makes a distinction between the object of the act and the end of
the act. This terminology might seem misleading because what he
caHs the object of the act is also an end of the act, a proximate as
opposed to a more remote end of the act. 18 However, what he
caHs the object of the act is not just an end that happens to be
more temporally proximate to the act than any other end. It is the
end that constitutes the terminus of the action, the point at which
the action has been successfully completed, and as such it provides
the grounds for identifying the segment of behavior referred to as
an action. Thus what Aquinas calls the object of the act is not just
something that, as end, explains why the agent performed an
action; it also enables us to say that it was an action that he
performed.
Since intention is only for the end, whether in terms of the
object or in terms of the end of the action, the role intention wHl
play in determining moral responsibility will be based on some
consideration of the end. We shall eventually see that intention
plays two different roles in determining moral responsibility, but
only one of these roles is relevant to the issue of double effect:
namely, the role intention plays in determining the kind of action
to be moraHy assessed.
Intention, as we have seen, determines the end of the action.
But, Aquinas tells us, it is the end of the action, whether in terms
of the object of the act, 19 or in terms of some further end of the
action, 20 that determines, for the purposes of moral assessment,
STh I-II, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3.
STh I-H, q. 18, a. 2.
20 STh I-II, q. 18, a. 6.
18

19

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

433

the species of the act. 21 So it is intention through its determination of the end of the action that determines whether the
kind of action we are morally assessing is one of shoelace tying,
or vainglory, or homicide, and so on. This has an obvious
relevance to double effect. If an effect results from the agent's
action, and the agent intends this effect, then the effect enters into
the very description of the kind of act to be morally assessed.
Thus if the death of a human being results from the action of the
agent, and the agent intends this effect as an end, the act is a
homicide. If the agent does not intend this effect as an end, then
the act is not one of homicide.
The fact that intention determines in this way the kind of
action performed might lead one to conclude that, for Aquinas,
intention defines a special domain of moral responsibility and
consequently that he accepts the strong version of double effect.
In other words, one might be tempted to conclude that, for
Aquinas, the agent has a special responsibility for all and only
those aspects (including effects) of his action that enter into a
description of the kind of act performed. But this is not the
position he takes. He holds that the agent has the same
responsibility for those effects which are the particular concern of
the strong version of double effect, whether he intends them or
not. We can see this in his discussion of killing in self-defense.
III

Aquinas begins his discussion of killing in self-defense by
noting that an action can have two effects, one of which is
intended and the other of which is outside intention, praeter
intentionem. 22 This distinction is often seen as the basic point of
the article. 23 But it is not. For Aquinas, it is only the starting point
for moral analysis.
21 An act could have several ends and thus be classified in several ways. Thus one might
give alms for the sake of vainglory. This would be an act of both almsgiving and vainglory.
See STh I-II, q. 18, a. 4, ad 3.
22 STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7.
23 Cf. Boyle, "Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas," 657.

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DENIS F. SULLIVAN

In the text
Aquinas actually says is that an action receives
its species from the object of the agent's intention. As we have just
seen, this means that the intention of the agent enables us to
identify, for the purpose of moral assessment, the kind of action
Thus if the end of the action is the killing of
we are dealing
a human being the act is a homicide or an attempted homicide. 24
If, on the other hand, the effect is not intended by the agent, if it
is outside the agent's intention, then, as Aquinas teUs us, it is per
accidens, that is, it is not involved in
essence of the act; it is
not a factor in determining the kind of action that occurred. 25
The point, then, and the only point of Aquinas's reference to
intention and to what is outside
has to do with
determining the kind of action with which we are dealing. This
is the obvious place to start the process of moral assessment-but
it is only a start, and only sometimes does it give us conclusive
results. 26 If the end of an act is adultery, then it is an adulterous
act, and on that basis alone it would be judged to be wrong. But
often just identifying an act as a kind of act is not enough to
ground any moral condusion. Thus in the text we are dealing
with, if we discover that the end of the action is the death of the
assailant, then we would know that we could classify this action
as a homicide. But this, in itsdf, unlike the case of the adulterous
24 Following Aquinas, I am using the term "homicide" as a morally neutral term indicating
the taking of a human life.
25 In STh HK, q. 72, a. 1, Aquinas says, "Now it is evident that a thing derives its species
from what is essential and not from what is accidental." Thus since intention determines the
end, and the end determines the species of the act, what is outside intention would have to
be accidental, that is, not involved in determining the kind of action performed.
16 Cavanaugh suggests a different interpretation. He translates Aquinas as saying "moral
acts receive their character according to what is intended, not according to what is praeter
intentionem" (Cavanaugh, "Aquinas's Account of Double Effect," 113). from this he
concludes that "what is praeter intentionem is not essential to establishing the agent's action
as good or bad"(ibid.). Here he seems to be assuming that intention simply and directly
determines the moral character of the act. This enables him to conclude that a consideration
of what is praeter intentioneni is not necessary in determining the act as good or bad. But such
an interpretation is dearly untenable. As Cavanaugh himself notes (ibid.), Aquinas states that
in morally assessing "1ll action one must consider the object of the act, the end of the act, and
the circumstances of the act (STh I-H, q. 18, a. 1). And while the object of the act and the end
of the act are determined by the intentions of the agent, such circumstances as who performs
the act are not. Thus some consideration of what is praeter intentionem is essential in
establishing the act as good or bad.

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

435

act, would still not give us enough to ground a moral judgement.
We would have to look into the circumstances. Who was the
agent? If we discover that the person who performed the action
was not an agent of the state, acting as such, then we would know
that the act was wrong. If this person was an agent of the state
acting as such, then the action, so far considered, would not be
wrong. Even here we would have to be careful, because if this
agent was "moved by private animosity" 27 once again the action
would be wrong. Thus while determining the intention and thus
the end of the act gives us a classification of the act, this
sometimes provides not the conclusion but only the start of the
process of moral assessment.
In the case where the agent intended only to protect his own
life and did not intend to kill the assailant we would not have an
act of homicide even if the assailant were killed, but rather an act
of self-defense. Self-defense, like homicide, can be either right or
wrong. Again, we would have to look at the circumstances; in this
case we would have to consider, not whether the person acting
was an agent of the state, but whether the force used in selfdefense was moderate, that is, no more than what was necessary
to get the job done. If it was more than necessary, then the act
was wrong.
But there is more to consider here in the way of circumstances.
One of the circumstances of the act under consideration is the fact
that the assailant dies as a result of the action of the agent. So just
as we had to consider the way in which force is used, we would
also have to consider the way in which the action results in the
death of the assailant. On this issue Aquinas is clear. In an answer
to an objection, he remarks that the kind of action he is referring
to is one from which the death of the assailant follows sometimes
(quandoque). In other words, if it is necessary, one can
legitimately use in self-defense a kind of action from which the
death of the assailant will sometimes follow. If it is necessary, one
can risk the life of the assailant.

27

STh 11-11, q. 64, a. 7.

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DENIS F. SULLIVAN

This same position is also found in the body of the article,
although there it is stated in an admittedly oblique fashion. We
can see it in the use of the verbs evitare and providere.Aquinas
tells us that the agent need not omit the use of moderate force in
order to avoid (evitare) the death of the assailant. Now evitare,
"to avoid" or "to shun," implies taking steps to see to it that
something doesn't happen. Thus Aquinas is telling us that in
confronting the assailant, the agent is not obliged to take steps to
see to it that the assailant doesn't die. In other words, he is not
obliged to see to it that the assailant survives. All this seems to
imply is that he can risk the life of the assailant.
Furthermore, Aquinas justifies the position he takes by saying
that one is bound to take more precautions, plus providere, for
one's own life than for the life of another. In the context of the
article this means that when faced with the choice of taking
precautions for my own life or taking precautions for the life of
another I can legitimately take precautions for my own life. Thus
I need not take precautions to see to it that the assailant survives.
Here again it would seem that the most natural reading of this
text is that the agent can risk the life of the assailant.
Cavanaugh correctly recognizes the significance of Aquinas's
comment that the death follows only sometimes, and uses it to
argue that, in this text, Aquinas accepts only the weak version of
double effect. But he interprets Aquinas, in this comment, to be
referring to the conditions under which the death would not be
intentional. On his interpretation killing in self-defense can be
justified if two conditions are met: the death is not intended and
moderate force is used. He argues that for the death to be not
intended it is necessary that it follow only sometimes from the
kind of action employed by the agent. 28 This, however, is a
difficult interpretation to defend. As Boyle points out, 29 and as
Cavanaugh admits, 30 there are texts in which Aquinas identifies
as being outside intention properties that are necessarily and
always associated with the kind of action performed. Why, then,
28 Cavanaugh,

"Aquinas's Account of Double Effect," 110-12.
in Aquinas," 660-63.
3 Cavanaugh, "Aquinas's Account of Double Effect," 118.
29 Boyle, "Praeter Intentionem

°

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

437

in this case would Aquinas hold that for the death to be not
intended it is necessary that it follow only sometimes? My
position, on the other hand, is that the use of the term
"sometimes" does not relate to the question of whether the death
is intended or not. The death of the assailant is not intended, for
Aquinas, simply because it is not the end of the act. The use of the
term "sometimes" is meant to clarify not the content of the
intentions of the agent, but rather one of the circumstances
required for a legitimate act of self-defense.
If we can generalize from Aquinas's discussion of self-defense,
it would seem that even if it would be wrong for an agent to bring
about a kind of effect as an intended effect, it might still be
possible to justify bringing about that kind of effect as an
unintended or circumstantial effect, but only if the effect followed
with less than certainty from the agent's action. If the agent were
certain that such an effect would follow from his action, then it
would be wrong for him to bring about this effect as an intended
or unintended effect. This is obviously equivalent to a rejection of
the strong version of double effect along with its underlying
assumption that intention always defines a special domain of
moral responsibility. For on this underlying assumption the kind
of responsibility that an agent has for those effects he intends he
has only for those effects he intends. On the contrary, my reading
of Aquinas's account is that, in the situation we have described,
the agent would have the same responsibility for the effect
whether it was intended or not. One could see why some would
resist this interpretation. It does seem strange that there are
situations in which there is no moral significance in whether or
not an agent intends an effect. But this position does have a clear
justification in the thought of Aquinas.
IV

Before turning to the justification of Aquinas's position, it is
necessary to define more sharply the issue under debate. As we
have seen, the doctrine of double effect is traditionally formulated
in terms of a distinction between ends and means on one side and

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DENIS F. SULUVAN

side effects on the other. But this formulation rn less than
adequate because it fails to take explicitly into account the
distinction between those ends that are wanted in themselves, and
thus final, and those intermediate ends that are of merely
instrumental value. Furthermore, it should be dear that virtually
everything we ordinarily identify as means could also be
identified as such intermediate ends. Thus,
discussing double
effect it would be more precise and useful to distinguish between
effects that are brought about as final ends, effects that are
brought about as intermediate ends, and side effects. And once
one adopts this three-part distinction, it becomes dear that there
are not two but rather three correlated domains of moral
responsibility. There are effects that could never be permissible if
brought about as final ends, but that might be justified if brought
about as intermediate ends, that is, as means" For example, whHe
it would never be permissible to inflict physical or psychological
pain on another just for the sake of inflicting the pain, it could be
permissible to inflict such pain as an instrumental end. In military
training one can deliberately inflict physical and psychological
pain on recruits in order to test and to enhance their endurance. 31
This implies that there is one domain of moral responsibility that
consists of those effects the agent brings about as final ends, a
second domain that consists (roughly) of those effects the agent
brings about as intermediate ends, and a third domain that
consists (roughly) of side effects.
These three domains a:re correlated in such a way that the
domain of effects that are final ends is most restrictive and the
domain of (roughly) side effects is least restrictive" Thus if a kind
of effect is permissible as a final end, obviously it would be
permissible as an intermediate end or as a side effect. But even if
31 The notion that there are kinds of effects that could be justified as means but never as
ends does seem to be present in the thought of Aquinas. As we have seen in his discussion of
homicide, Aquinas claims that the death of a human being can be a legitimate end of human
action, but only if it is done by an agent of the state and only as a means to preserving the
common good. Thus if an agent of the state acts out of private animosity-that is, if the
person's death is something he also wants for its own sake-the act is wrong. Thus, for
Aquinas homicide is something that even a public official can never pursue as a final end, but
it is something that he can pursue as an intermediate end. See STh H-Il, q. 64, a. 2.

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

439

a kind of effect is not permissible as a final end, it might be
justified as an intermediate end. On the other hand, if a kind of
effect is never permissible as an intermediate end, it could never
be permissible as a final end. In the same way, if a kind of effect
is permissible as an intermediate end, then obviously it could be
justified as a side effect. But even if a kind of effect is never
permissible as an intermediate end, it might be justified if brought
about as (roughly) a side effect.
We are now in a position to define more precisely the point of
the doctrine of double effect, and the point of disagreement
between the strong and weak versions of this doctrine. The first
point to be noted is that the tradition.al doctrine of double effect
has nothing to do with final ends. We have found two
distinctions with regard to moral responsibility. The first is the
distinction between effects brought about as final ends and effects
brought about as intermediate ends. The second is the distinction
between effects that are brought about as intermediate ends and
(roughly) side effects. The traditional doctrine of double effect
deals only with this second distinction. The only point of the
doctrine of double effect is that effects that could never be
justified as intermediate ends might be justified if brought about
as (roughly) side effects. 32 And the point of contention between
the strong version and the weak version of this doctrine has to do
with where to draw the line of moral demarcation between
intermediate ends and side effects. According to Boyle, even if it
were never permissible to bring about a kind of effect as an
intermediate end, it might still be possible for an agent to justify
bringing about this effect as a side effect even if he were certain
this effect would follow from his action. In Aquinas's account,
32 This formulation of double effect is more precise than, but not inconsistent with, the
traditional formulation. Traditionally the doctrine of double effect is said to deal with the
justification of effects that it would never be permissible to bring about as either ends or
means. This of course implies that it has to do with the possibility of justifying effects that
could not be justified as ends and could not be justified as means. And of course this implies
that it has to deal with the justification of effects that could not be justified as means, which
is equivalent to my suggested formulation. My point is that the reference to final ends in the
traditional formulation is otiose. If it were impermissible to bring about a kind of effect as a
means, then surely it would be impermissible to bring such an effect about as a final end.
Furthermore, as we shall see, the reference to final ends has tended to generate confusion.

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DENIS F. SULLIVAN

even if it is never permissible to bring about a kind of effect as an
intermediate end, it might still be possible for an agent to justify
bringing it about as a side effect, but only if he was less than
certain that it would follow from his action. If he was certain,
then this effect would belong in the same domain as instrumental
ends and he could not be justified in bringing it about.
The failure to recognize that there are not two, but rather
three correlated domains of moral responsibility has led to
confusion in some discussions of double effect. Thus Anthony
Kenny gives the following as an example of double effect.
It is an unfriendly act for a hostess deliberately to seat one of her guests at table
next to another guest whom she knows he dislikes. The act is not unfriendly if
she assigns the place to the guests not deliberately, but because such is the
unintended outcome of a placement which takes account of the conventions
about alternating between sexes, separating husbands and wives, and so on. 33

Again, the point of the doctrine of double effect is that there are
effects that cannot be legitimately brought about as intermediate
ends (means), but that might legitimately be brought about as side
effects. But this is not the kind of situation that Kenny is
describing. Certainly it would be wrong to seat a guest next to
someone he disliked as an end in itself, as a final end. This would
be unfriendly. But one could imagine drcumstarn::es in which one
might justifiably seat a guest next to someone he disliked in order
to strengthen his character or to enhance his social graces. Thus
because seating a guest next to someone he disliked could be
justified as an intermediate end (a means), no spedal argument
from double effect is required to show that one could be justified
in doing this as a foreseen side effect. Thus Kenny's example is
not relevant to the traditional doctrine of double effect. 34
33

Anthony Kenny, "PhilippaFoote on Double Effect," Morality and Objectivity: A Tribute

to J. L. Mackie, ed. Ted Honderich (New York: Rutledge, 1985), 84.
34 I have distinguished between a strong and a weak version of double effect. There is
another possible version that might well be called the weakest. In this version the point of the
doctrine of double effect is to help people deal with irrational guilt. Thus it is wrong to get
others upset thoughtlessly or maliciously. But in such cases it is not the effect that is wrong,
but rather the fact that the effect is brought about thoughtlessly or maliciously. There is
nothing wrong with producing such an effect if one is engaged in a proper activity, for

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

441

I bring this point up because I will argue that Aquinas is
justified in holding that it is only those side effects that are less
than certain that can be justified by the doctrine of double effect.
There are many side effects that come to mind, like the pain that
accompanies dental work or the discomfort one produces in
returning a paper with a poor grade, that can be certain and still
be justified as side effects. But such examples are of effects, which,
while they could not be justified as final ends, could be justified
as intermediate ends. Hence they are irrelevant to the discussion
of double effect.
The distinction between the three domains of moral
responsibility also reveals a confusion in one of the arguments
that Boyle uses in support of the doctrine of double effect. 35 Boyle
says that the agent is most responsible for what he freely chooses
to bring about in his action. He claims that "what one chooses is
not an indeterminate set of foreseeable results of one's performance, but the bringing about of a definite state of affairs
regarded as worthwhile and valuable. " 36 And this set of affairs has
a special moral significance because it is the state of affairs that
the agent "sets his or her heart on. It is the commitment to these
states of affairs which is the basis upon which a person forms his
character and makes himself a certain kind of person. " 37
What Boyle says in this argument is, I believe, correct. But it
is relevant only to the ends that the agent pursues as valuable in
themselves, the ends that he pursues as final ends. I said earlier
example returning a poor paper with a poor grade. Perhaps this is what Kenny has in mind.
But this principle is more therapeutic than moral.
35 Joseph Boyle, "Toward Understanding the Principle of Double Effect," Ethics 90
(1980): 533-37. It should be noted that, in addition to the argument that we are about to
consider, Boyle also argues that the doctrine of double effect can be justified as a necessary
condition for any morality that involves absolute moral prohibitions. See Joseph Boyle, "Who
is Entitled to Double Effect?" The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1991): 475-94.
While I believe his claim is correct, l also believe that the weak version of double effect will
suffice for the role that he describes. This response becomes more plausible if we consider
that in the performance of actions true certainty with respect to effects is rare. But my reply
would also require a defense of the moral significance of the distinction between actions and
omissions and a discussion of the difficulty involved in formulating exceptionless
prohibitions.
36 Boyle, "Toward an Understanding of Double Effect," 536.
37 Ibid., 537.

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DENIS f. SULLIVAN

that in addition to providing the grounds for identifying the
of act under moral assessment, there is also a second role intention can play in connection with moral assessment. We see here
what this second role is. The intentions that an agent has for final
ends do define a special domain of moral responsibility. The
agent does have a special responsibi!ity for all and
those
effects that he brings about as final ends. But
is not relevant
to the doctrine of double effect. The doctrine of double effect, if
I am correct, has to do only with the distinction between
intermediate ends (means) and side effects. But this is not what
Boyle is talking about, for the agent "sets his heart" on unwanted
intermediate ends (means) as little as he "sets his heart" on
unwanted side effects.
Of course Boyle does intend his argument to cover more than
just final ends. Thus in one place in this argument (and only in
one place) he mentions states of affairs the agent sees as
"instrumentally valuable" " 38 He seems to be assuming that what
is instrumentally valuable somehow shares in the value that the
agent sees in the final end. But if this is his assumption, it seems
to apply also to those side effects that define the strong version of
double effect. For to the extent that unwanted means are
instrumentally valuable, those side effects, which the agent is sure
his action will bring about, are concomitantly valuable. The agent
brings about undesirable means because by them he achieves an
end he desires. He brings about undesirable side effects because
with them he achieves an end he desires. I see little reason why
we should attribute an ethical significance to the preposition "by"
and refuse to attribute this significance to the preposition "with."
So if an agent has a special responsibility for what he finds
instrumentally valuable, he has that same responsibility for what
he finds concomitandy valuable.
I suspect that the reason that Boyle is willing to attribute to
"by" a special significance is his implicit acceptance of the
metaphor of the inner eye. Intention is thought of as an inner eye
that the agent can direct at wiH to certain aspects of what he
38 Ibid., 535.

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443

brings about and not to others. Thus Boyle remarks that the
doctrine of double effect implies that a person can "direct his
intention to the good effects of his action and withhold it from
the bad. "39 It then seems natural that the agent should be more
responsible for what is in focus than for what is peripheral. And
what is in focus is supposed to be the end and the means by which
the end is to be attained. But the concept of the inner eye is just
a misleading metaphor that provides no real logical support for
the doctrine of double effect.40

v
The place to look for the basic justification of Aquinas's
position on moral responsibility is not in his use of the concept of
intention, but in his identification of moral acts as voluntary acts,
that is, as acts that arise from the agent's reason. 41 In other words,
the degree of moral responsibility an agent has for an effect that
he brings about is determined by the extent to which that effect
is integrated into his life as a rational agent. 42 The role intention
plays in determining moral responsibility is to be explained and
justified in terms of the proposition that the moral act is the act
of a rational agent.
39 Boyle, "Praeter Intentionem

in Aquinas," 649.
The metaphor of the inner eye may even be present in certain translations of Aquinas.
Thus in Vernon Bourke's translation of the Summa contra Gentiles (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1975), he translates Aquinas as writing "In the case of voluntary agents,
the intention is directed to some particular goal" (46). But the word "directed" is not found
in the Latin. "In agentibus autem voluntariis intentio est ad bonun aliquod particulare." And
again he translates, "For the intention is directed to an ultimate end a person wills for its own
sake"(47), while Aquinas writes, "lntentio enim est ultimi finis quern quis propter se vult."
It could be that the only thing behind these translations is a desire for felicitous English. But
in this same passage Bourke also translates Aquinas as writing "That a person may frequently
direct his intention to goods of this kind"(46), when the text could be more simply and
accurately translated, "That a person frequently intends goods of this kind" ("Quod autem
hujusmodi bona aliquis intendat in pluribus").
41 Aquinas tells us that the study of morality treats of human actions (STh 1-11, q. 6) and
that human actions are those actions which proceed from reason (SJ'h 1-11, q. 1, a. 2).
Following Aristotle, he also says that praise and blame pertain only to voluntary acts, that is,
acts which proceed from reason (STh 1-11, q. 6, a. 1).
42 "Dicuntur autem aliqui actis humani vel morales secundum quod sunt a ratione" (STh
1-11, q. 18, a. 5).
40

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DENIS F. SULLIVAN

I will argue that the notion of the moral act as the act of a
rational agent provides a justification for the distinction between
the three domains of moral responsibility, and it provides this
justification in such a way that it implies a rejection of the strong
version of double effect. But before turning to this argument I will
briefly consider a somewhat similar argument that Cavanaugh
uses to support the strong version of double effect.43 Cavanaugh
also recognizes a distinction between the responsibility an agent
has for those effects he brings about as final ends and the
responsibility he has for the effects he brings about as means. But
he formulates this distinction in a different way. He states, with
respect to an effect that should be avoided, that the worst thing
that one could do is to bring about such an effect as a final end,
and that it is not as bad to bring it about as a means. He then
states that this distinction requires an explanation, and this
explanation is to be found in "the intensity and depth" of
willing. 44 What the agent wills as a final end, he wills most
intensely and deeply and that is why, if an agent brings about an
effect which should be avoided as a final end, his action is "most
intensely and most deeply wrong. ,,45
Cavanaugh's distinction provides an argument for the strong
version of double effect. Just as one wills the means less intensely
than one wills the end, so one wills the concomitant side effects
less intensely than one wills the means. And since the difference
in the intensity of the willing establishes a difference in responsibility between end and means, so a difference in intensity of
willing must establish a difference in responsibility between means
and side effect, whether this side effect is probable or certain.
Hence the strong version of double effect.
It is certainly true that there is a difference in responsibility
between the effects one brings about as ends and the effects one
brings about as means. But what does it mean to will more or less
intensely? Cavanaugh seems to have a muscular conception of
43 Cavanaugh, "Double Effect and the Ethical Significance of Distinct Volitional States,"
136-39.
44 Ibid., 138.
45 Ibid.

DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECT

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will. Just as one can push with all one's strength, or push with less
than all one's strength, or push just a little, so one can will with
all one's might, or less than all one's might, or just a little bit. I
find this conception of will far less clear than the distinction it is
meant to explain. Therefore I see no reason why we should use
it to explain the difference in responsibility between what is
brought about as an end and what is brought about as a means,
especially when a far clearer alternative is available.
Let me start by considering first the distinction made in the
weak version of double effect, the distinction between means and
probable side effects. If an agent brings about an effect as a
means, then he brings it about for a specific reason, and
consequently this effect is essentially related to his life as a
rational agent. But take the case of a surgeon who undertakes a
very high-risk operation and the patient dies as a result. The
surgeon knew that his action might very well result in the death
of the patient. But if he were to be asked, "Why did you kill the
patient?" he would obviously reply that he was hoping that the
patient would survive. And this reply would not just be a denial
that he had a reason for bringing about the death of the patient;
it would be an assertion that the very request for a reason was out
of place. 46 Thus the death of the patient would be clearly
removed from his life as a rational agent.
If an agent is to be thought of as rational, however, it is not
enough that, on the occasions when he acts, he is generally able
to specify a reason why he acts. It is even more essential that
reason be found in the agent's life as a whole; in other words, it
is even more important that the reasons he cites for his actions
have to fit into some sort of coherent pattern. In order for this to
be the case, his life, on the whole, has to be governed by a
generally coherent set of final ends that are, more or less,
consistently pursued. Thus the final ends an agent pursues are of
fundamental ethical importance, because they determine what

46 This use of the "Why?" question was introduced by Elizabeth Anscombe. See G. E. M.
Anscombe, Intention (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), 9-28.

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DENIS F. SULLIVAN

kind of rational agent he is.47 This is why it not unreasonable to
hold that a rational agent is to be judged good or bad, not just for
the acts he performs, but even more for the final goals he pursues.
Consequently the demands of morality should be greatest with
respect to the agent's goals and this would justify our belief that
kinds of effects that might never be permissible as final ends
could, under certain conditions, be justified as means. It would
also, to refer to Cavanaugh's approach, explain why, if it were
wrong to bring about an effect as a means, it would be even worse
to bring about such an effect as an end.
The distinction, then, between effects that are pursued as final
ends and effects that are pursued as intermediate ends or means,
and the distinction made in the weak version of double effect can
both be justified in terms of Aquinas's notion of the moral agent
as the rational agent. But what of the distinction made by the
strong version of double effect? What of the distinction between
means and those side effects that the agent is certain will result
from his action?
There is, to be sure, one kind of side effect that might be
foreseen with certainty and yet would not be integrated into the
rational life of the agent. These are the effects that the agent
foresees, but with respect to which he has no interest whatsoever.
I go into a room and turn on a light in order to look for a book.
I realized that when I turned on the light I would illuminate a
bush outside the window. But if asked, "Why did you illuminate
that bush?" I could answer that I didn't care about that, I was just
looking for a book. In this kind of response I would be rejecting
the relevance of the question "Why?" Thus illuminating the bush
was not something I did as a rational agent, or at least it was not
integrated into my life in the same way as are those effects which
47 The intimate relationship between morality and rationality does lead to a question about
whether an agent could be thoroughly rational and thoroughly bad. Thus we have the
possibility of an agent who consistently pursues a coherent set of goals, many of which are
bad. But, at least according a version of the natural law tradition, for an agent to be rational
the goals that he pursues must not only be consistent with each other, but also with the nature
of the agent as a human being. In fact it is suggested that what would make goals evil would
be their inconsistency with the nature of the agent as a human being. Thus, in this tradition,
the ideal of the rational agent and the ideal of the morally good agent tend to coincide.

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447

I brought about as means or ends. Such effects, however, are not
relevant to the doctrine of double effect. The agent does have an
interest in those effects that are relevant to double effect because
he has some reason not to bring them about.
The agent would obviously have an interest in those kinds of
side effects that he finds completely attractive. But one can have
a reason for doing something, and do it, but not for that reason.
So here it might be possible that the agent would bring about a
side effect that he found completely attractive, and yet not bring
it about for any reason. Paradoxically such effects do not demand
reasons precisely because the agent has nothing but reasons to
bring them about. Such side effects, if they occur, could also be
foreseen with certainty and not integrated into the life of the
agent as a rational agent. But again such side effects are not
relevant to double effect.
Finally we turn to the kind of side effects that are relevant to
double effect. These are effects that the agent must have an
interest in because he has good reason not to bring such effects
about. These are side effects that, prima facie, should be avoided.
Thus if the agent is certain that he will bring about such an effect,
he cannot reject the question "Why?" as irrelevant. A contravening reason is required. Furthermore, in the kind of situation
that is considered in double effect, the agent would have a reason
for bringing about the side effect. He would bring about the side
effect because with the side effect comes another effect which he
desires. Thus it would seem that such side effects are virtually just
as much a part of his life as a rational agent as those effects which
he brings about as means. For in both cases the question "Why?"
is relevant, and in both cases this question has an answer.
Consequently there would seem to be little or no ground for any
distinction in moral responsibility between the two. Therefore,
since it would be wrong to bring such effects about as means, then
it would also be wrong to bring them about as side effects. And so
the strong version of double effect should be rejected. 48
48 Since I have been using Anscombe's "Why?" question, I should note that in her book,
Intention, she apparently takes a position which is contrary to the one I am taking here. See
Intention, 89-90. I would add, however, that this book was originally published in 1957. In

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DENIS F. SULLIVAN

The doctrine of double effect is supposed to establish the
grounds for a distinction between the kind of responsibility an
agent has for those effects he brings about as means and the kind
of responsibility he has for those effects he brings about as side
effects. I am arguing that there are such grounds when one is
dealing with effects that are probable, but that these grounds
disappear when one is dealing with those effects that are certain.
Probable effects are brought into the life of the agent as a rational
agent in a special way if they are pursued as means, because then
they are brought about for a specific reason. If they are not
pursued as means, then they are not brought about for any
reason, and so they are not integrated into his life as a rational
agent in the same way. 49 Consequently the responsibility an agent
has for those probable effects which he brings about as means is
different in kind from the responsibility which he has for those he
brings about as side effects. But if these effects are certain, and
they are the kind of effects that are relevant to double effect, then
he brings them about for a specific reason whether he brings them
about as means or not, and so the grounds for a significant
distinction in responsibility are not to be found.
We have seen that the most plausible reading of what Aquinas
says about killing in self-defense supports the weak but not the
strong version of double effect. We can now see that Aquinas's
identification of the moral act with the act of a rational agent
provides a justification for this position. My overall conclusion,
then, is that Aquinas rejects the strong version of double effect,
accepts the weak, and leaves us with good reason to do the same.

a later discussion, specifically about double effect, she seems to indicate that for double effect
to apply we must be able to talk about "taking the risk that that (the effect) will happen"
"Action, Intention, and Double Effect," Proceedingsof the American Catholic Philosophical
Association56 (1982): 23. Also in the introduction for one of the volumes of her collected
papers, she wrote that her prior papers "represent a struggle to treat all deliberate action as
a matter of acting on a calculation how to attain one's ends. I have now become rather
doubtful of this" (G. E. M. Anscombe, Ethics, Religionand Politics, Collected Philosophical
Papers, vol.3 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981): viii.
49 I am here putting aside effects that are pursued as final ends. As we have seen, that is
a different issue.

The Thomist 64 (2000): 449-72

AQUINAS'S METAPHYSICS AND DESCARTES'S
METHODIC DOUBT
jOHNF. X. KNASAS
Center for Thomistic Studies
Houston, Texas

I

quinas variously expresses the subject of metaphysics. It is
ns inquantum ens, ens qua ens, ens commune. These
xpressions stand for an intelligibility, an abstractum, that
spans the sensible and non-sensible orders. 1 But this immateriality
is not what is distinctive of the ratio entis, for Aquinas assigns the
same immateriality to the notions of substance, act, and potency. 2
Rather, Aquinas characterizes the ratio entis in terms of esse, or
actus essendi. Just as a runner, a currens, is a man plus his
running, his currere, so too a being, an ens, is a thing plus its act
of existing, its esse.3 Ens is a "quasi habens esse."4 In sum, the
1 "We say that being [ens] and substance are separate from matter and motion not because
it is of their nature to be without them, as it is of the nature of an ass to be without reason,
but because it is not of their nature to be in matter and motion, although sometimes they are
in matter and motion, as animal abstracts from reason, although some animals are rational"
(Aquinas, In Boet. de Trin. q. 5, a. 4, ad 5; translation in Armand Maurer, trans., The Division
and Methods of the Sciences [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963), 4849).
2 "In this [second] way being [ens], substance, potency, and act are separate from matter
and motion because they do not depend on them for their existence •..• Thus philosophical
theology [also called "metaphysics"] investigates beings separate in the second sense as its
subject" (In Boet. de Trin., q. 5, a. 4 [Maurer, trans., Division and Methods of the Sciences,
45)). See Aquinas, I Metaphys., proem.
3 "Aliud autem significamus per hoc quod dicimus esse, et aliud per hoc quod dicimus id
quod est; sicut et aliud significamus cum dicimus currere, et aliud per hoc quod dicitur
currens. Nam currere et esse significantur in abstracto, sicut et albedo; sed quod est, id est

449

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

en.tis is a composite notion whose parts are some thing or
nature plus its esse.
The key to unlocking the philosophical door to Thomistic
metaphysics appears to He in discovering the account
how this
composition characteristic of the ratio entis is revealed to the
mind's eye. Since the composition is that of a commonality and
for Aquinas human knowers abstract commonalities from data, it
should foHow that the philosopher abstracts the ratio entis
understood as habens esse from data comprised of individual
things plus their esses. such data the commonality is ens in the
habens esse sense.
But whence the data? Is it obviouuhat an existent, a being, is
a thing plus its actus essendi? Aristotle did not think so. He said
that "'one man' and 'man' are the same thing, and so are 'existent
man' and 'man; and the doubling of the words in 'one man and
one existent man' does not express anything different. " 5 Echoing
ens et currens, significantur in concreto, velut album" (In de Hebd. C. 11). Also, "Cum autem
in re sit quidditas ejus et suum esse, veritas fundatm in esse rei magis quam in quidditate,
sicut et nomen entis ab esse imponirur" (I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 1); "Sicut autem morns est
actus ipsius mobilis inquanturn mobile est; ita esse est actus existentis, inquanrum ens est" (I
Sent., d. 19, q. 2, a. 2); "Ratio autem entis ab actu essendi sumitur, non ab eo cui convenit
actus essendi" (De Verit. I, 1, ad contra 3); "esse dicirur actus entis inquantum est ens, idest
quo denominamr aliquid ens actu in rerum natura" (Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 3); "et ipsum esse est
quo substantia denominatm ens" (ScG H, c. 54). For further texts on the composite nature
of ens, see Gerald B. Phelan, "A Note on the Formal Object of Metaphysics," in Arthur G.
Kirn, ed., G. B. Phelan Selected Papers (foronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1967), 64-66; "The Existentialism of St. Thomas," in ibid., 74-7 5, 80-81. Also Joseph Owens,
"The Accidental and Essential Character of Being in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas,"
in St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: Collected Papers ofJoseph Owens, ed. John
R. Catan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), 78-81.
4 "Nam ens dicitur quasi esse habens" (XH Metaphys., lect. 1, no. 2419 (Cathala ed.). The
qualification indicated by the "quasi" refers to the fact that unlike the thing's other
"possessions" that are all posterior and subsequent to the thing, the esse "had" by the thing
is prior and fundamental to the thing. Hence, "esse est accidens, non quasi per accidens se
habens, sed quasi actualitas cuiuslibet substantiae" (Quodl. H, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2). And at Quodl.
XH, q. 5, a. 1, the priority of angelic esse to the angel itself is used to deny that esse is an
ordinary accident: "quia accidens intelligitur inesse alicui praeexistenri. Angelus autem non
praeexistit ipsi esse." For Aquinas's texts on the priority of esse, see STh I, q. 8, a. 1; I, q. 44,
a. 2.
5 Aristode, Metaphysics 4.2.1003b25-30.
On Aristode's non-existential sense of the
question "An est?," see Owens, "Accidental and Essential Character," 59.

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451

Aristotle while criticizing Avicenna, Averroes argued that a
substance was essentially a being and not a being by reason of an
addition. 6 Kant would observe that there is no difference between
one hundred possible thalers and one hundred actual ones. 7 Also,
contemporary logicians treat existence as a second-order
predicate that in the first order disappears into just the fact of
individuals of a certain nature. 8 Even the Thomistic tradition
lacks unanimity. In The Elements of ChristianPhilosophy,Etienne
Gilson, describes the situation this way:
Existence may mean either a state or an act. In the first sense, it means the state
in which a thing is posited by the efficacy of an efficient or of a creative cause,
and this is the meaning the word receives in practically all the Christian
theologies outside Thomism, particularly those of Augustine, Boethius, Anselm,
Scotus, and Suarez. In a second sense, existence (esse, to be) points out the
interior act, included in the composition of substance, in virtue of which the
essence is a "being," and this is the properly Thomistic meaning of the word.
The problem under discussion now is: how did Thomas Aquinas achieve the
awareness of the very possibility of this notion? . . . The majority of
philosophers will concede that it is a far cry from a possible thing to an actual
thing .... This will be conceded by all, but if an actually existing being has
been produced by its cause, why should one attribute to it an "existence"
distinct from the fact that it exists? ... What has divided the Thomist school
from other schools of theology, ever since the thirteenth century, is a general
reluctance to conceive the act of being (esse) as a distinct object of

6 Averroes, Destructio Destructionum, disp. 5, Juntas ed. (1574), 78A. Aquinas repeats
Averroes' argument at IV Metaphys., lect. 2, no. 555. For an Averroistic criticism of
Aquinas's position, see the text of Siger of Brabant as edited by Armand Maurer in "Esse and
Essentiain the Metaphysics of Siger ofBrabant," MediaevalStudies1 (1946): 71. Siger points
out that if existence results from the principles of the thing, yet is not an accident, it must be
the thing itself.
7 "The content of both [viz., the object and the concept of the object] must be one and the
same; nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses merely what is possible,
by my thinking its object (through the expression 'it is') as given absolutely. Otherwise stated,
the real contains no more than the merely possible. A hundred real thalers do not contain the
least coin more than a hundred possible thalers" (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason A
599/B 627, trans. Norman Kemp Smith [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965], 505).
8 See Patrick Lee, "Existential Propositions in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas," The
Thomist 52 (1988): 605-26.

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

understanding. To tell the whole truth, even the so-called "Thomists" have
been and still are divided on this point. 9

Aquinas recognizes that the data are not obvious. Usually we
make a distinction between a subject and its act by catching the
subject apart from the act. For example, we draw a distinction
between me and my tan by finding me later without it. But do we
ever find me apart from my existence as I am found apart from
my tan? It seems not. Without my existence, I am not found at
alt In a previously published article on Aquinas's metaphysical
employment of the duplex operatio intellectus, 10 I presented
Aquinas as taking another approach. Instead of trying to find the
thing existing without its real existence, Aquinas finds the real
thing itself with another existence. He calls this further existence
"esse spirituale" and "esse immateriale" and ascribes it even to
sense cognition. 11 Speaking in general about the nature of
cognition, and so also of sense cognition, Aquinas says
knowledge is the existence of the known in the knower, that the
perfection of the knower is that the known is in some way in the
knower, and that cognition is the existing perfection of one thing
brought to be in another. 12 But for Aquinas actual sensation
attains individual things existing externally. For example, sight
attains the color in the body. 13 Hence, the known that comes to
9 Etienne Gilson, The Elements of Christian Philosophy (New York: Doubleday &
Company, Inc., 1960), 142-43.
10 "The Fundamental Nature of Aquinas' Secunda Operatio Intellectus," Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 64 (1990): 196-202.
ll "In the [object sensed, the form] has a material mode of being [esse naturale], but in the
sense, a cognitional and spiritual mode [esse intentionale et spiritualer (Il De Anima, lect. 24,
no. 553 [Foster and Humphries, ttans., Aristotle's De Anima in the Version of William of
Moerbeke and the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1965), 340). "Color habet duplex esse, unum naturale in re sensibili, aliud spirituale in sensu"
(Ill De Anima, lect. 2, no. 589 [Pirotta ed.]).
12 Respectively: De Verit., q. 2, a, 5, ad 15; q. 2, a. 2; and ibid.
13 "The §ell§e-objectswhich acruate sensitive activities-the visible, the audible, etc.--exist
outside the soul; the reason being that actual sensation attains to the individual things which
exist externally" (H De Anima, lect. 12, no. 375; Foster and Humphries, ttans., 249; "what
is seen is color which exists in an exterior body" (HI De Anima, lect. 8, no. 718; Foster and
Humphries, trans., 419).

AQUINAS AND DESCARTES

453

exist in the knower is a real existent. Sensation is the real thing
itself genuinely existing in a different way. Joseph Owens remarks
that "Aquinas writes as though this notion of cognition is
apparent to immediate reflexive observation. He offers no
demonstration of it, nor does he illustrate it by any comparison
or analogy. " 14
Metaphysically speaking, the fact that the real thing also exists
cognitionally implies that no type of existence belongs to the
thing of itself. To be able to have various types, the thing must
possess none. An intrinsic reality for the thing would make it
impervious to taking on genuinely another way of existing. But
the thing does also truly cognitionally exist. On the other hand,
if the thing is of itself a cognitional existent, then it exists only
cognitionally. Its real existence would be bogus, or illusory.
Again, if the real is also cognitional, then the real must not be real
of itself. This conclusion alerts the mind to the presence of an act,
distinct from the thing, in and through which the thing is real.
Therefore, a crucial claim in Aquinas's approach to
understanding a really existing thing in terms of a thing with its
real existence is that in sense cognition the real thing also exists
cognitionally. Neo-Thomists have called this Aquinas's direct or
immediate realism. Especially since Descartes, most philosophers
have disparaged direct realism. Since direct realism seems to be
oblivious to many factors that go into sensation, thus rendering
suspect the objectivity of what is sensed, philosophers label direct
realism "naive realism." And since in the face of objections direct
realism simply insists that sensation "sees" or "knows" something
real, philosophers also label it "dogmatic realism."
For purposes of defending the direct realist component in the
basis of Aquinas's metaphysics of actus essendi, I want to take on
that paradigm of critical philosophers, Rene Descartes. In the
exercise of "methodic doubt," Descartes argues that we must
remain skeptical about the realism of the senses. He offers a series
of supposedly legitimate hypotheses concerning the character of
14 Joseph Owens, "Aquinas on Cognition as Existence," Proceedingsof the American
Catholic PhilosophicalAssociation48 (1974): 76.

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

sensation, all of which are designed to loosen any claimed
cognitive grasp of things other than ourselves. I will cover the
series, beginning with the dream possibility.
II

In the beginning of Meditation I, Descartes remarks:
I am in the habit of sleeping, and in my dreams representing to myself the same
things or sometimes even less probable things, than do those who are insane in
their waking moments. How often has it happened to me that in the night I
dreamt that I found myself in this particular place, that I was dressed and
seated near the fire, whilst in reality I was lying undressed in bed! At this
moment it does indeed seem to me that it is with eyes awake that I am looking
at this paper; that this head which I move is not asleep, that it is deliberately
and of set purpose that I extend my hand and perceive it; what happens in
sleep does not appear so clear nor so distinct as does all this. But in thinking
over this I remind myself that on many occasions I have in sleep been deceived
by similar illusions, and in dwelling carefully on this reflection I see so
manifestly that there are no certain indications by which we may clearly
distinguish wakefulness from sleep that I am lost in astonishment. And my
astonishment is such that it is almost capable of persuading me that I now
dream. 15

In sum, I have dreamed that I was composing a philosophy
article. How do I know that I am not dreaming right now? A
standard answer to the dream possibility is that I know that I am
not dreaming right now because right now I am directly aware of
something real, which never happens in a dream. And to a reader
of the above quotation it might seem that Descartes shares this
answer because Descartes insists that he only "almost" convinces
himself that he is dreaming. 16
15 Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Works of
Descartes,trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1911), 1:145-46.
16 "ut obstupescam, & fere hie ipse stupor mihi opinionem somni confirmet" (2d Latin
ed., in Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, eds., Oeuvres de Descartes[Paris: J. Vrin, 1964],
7:19); "mon estonnement est tel, qu'il est presque capable de me persuader que je dors"
(ibid., 9/1: 15). Descartes begins the next paragraph by "supposing" that he is dreaming: "age
ergo somniemus ... " and "Supposons done maintenant que nous sommes endormis."

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455

But Descartes's remark could be taken another way. That
Descartes "almost" convinces himself could mean that he is "on
the fence" about knowing whether he is awake or dreaming. The
reprise in Meditation VI of the methodic-doubt exercise shows the
correctness of the "on the fence" interpretation. The reprise
indicates that Descartes's methodic doubt has an assumed context.
In setting the stage for the reprise, Descartes describes what he
believes the senses present. Besides his own body with its
appendages, his senses present outside of himself other bodies
with extension, shape, motion, tactile qualities, and qualities like
color, taste, sound, all of which serve to distinguish the sky, the
earth, and the sea. And then comes the revealing comment:
And certainly, considering the ideas of all these qualities, which presented
themselves to my mind and which alone I perceived properly or immediately,
it was not without reason that I believed myself to perceive objects quite
different from my thought, to wit, bodies from which those ideas proceeded;
for I found by experience that these ideas presented themselves to me without
my consent being requisite. 17

"Ideas" here seems to refer to mental existents, for Descartes
describes them as presented to his mind as objects of perception
and he distinguishes them from the bodies from which they
proceed. Even before methodic doubt is initiated, Descartes is of
the mind that sense awareness has only ideas for its proper and
immediate objects. Since, obviously, dreaming also would have
only ideas as its objects, the difference between sensation and
dreaming could only be extrinsic. Hence, I would know that I am
sensing only because I would somehow know that my ideas derive
from other bodies; I would know that I am dreaming only
because I would somehow know that my ideas derive from me.
of sensation makes
This ideative understanding of the
sensation an easy target for methodic doubt. Since I am
17 Haldane and Ross, trans., 187-88. The second and third editions are respectively: "Nee
sane absque ratione, ob ideas istarum omnium qualitatem quae cogitarioni meae se offerebant,
& quas solas proprie & immediate sentiebam" (Adam and Tannery, eds., 7:75); "Et certes,
considerant !es idees de toutes ces qualitez qui se presentoient a ma pensee, & lesquelles
seules ii sentois proprement immediatement" (ibid., 9/1:59).

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

immediately aware only of ideas and, as Descartes remarked back
in Meditation I, "no certain marks" exist to distinguish the waking
from the sleeping state, then on the available intrinsic evidence
one must doubt whether one is sensing or dreaming. Descartes is
a fence sitter. 18
Sometimes this assumed context is taken to mean that we are
always aware of subjective existents only, of items existing in our
awareness only. This understanding of ideas as the proper objects
of awareness belongs more to the empiricist tradition. It fails to
do justice to Descartes.
the course of giving his proof for God
in Meditation III, Descartes distinguishes two facets to our ideas:
their objective reality and their formal reality. The idea's "formal
reality"' expresses that the idea is a mode of consciousness, a
subjective existent; the idea's "objective reality" expresses what
the idea is of. 19 Descartes is quite serious that the idea effects a
18 In reply to Objections V (Gassendi), Descartes insists that he is not feigning doubt as
Gassendi presents him: "for you pretend that I speak in jest when I am quite serious and take
as serious, and as uttered and asserted as true, what I propounded only as a question and as
arising out of common opinion for the purpose of enquiring further into it. My statement
that the entire testimony of the sense must be considered to be uncertain, nay, even false, is
quite serious and so necessary for the comprehension of my meditations, that he who v.ill not
or cannot admit that, is unfit to urge any objection to them that merits a reply" (Haldane and
Ross, trans., 2:206). For a contemporary discussion, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, "What is
Cartesian Doubt?" American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1993): 467-95.
19 Haldane and Ross, trans., 1:161-63. In his reply to Objections IV and in going along
with Arnauld's use of terms, Descartes employs the phrase "formal aspect of ideas" for ideas
as they represent something; see ibid,, 2: 105. At the start of the first set of Objections to the
Meditations (ibid., 2:9-10), Catems objects to what Descartes calls the objective reality of
ideas by denying ideas simply. Asking what is meant by "an idea," Cateirus answers his own
question by repeating the thesis of his teachers: an idea is "a direction of an act of mind."
Hence, "being thought" or "being perceived" is only an extrinsic attribute for the thing
thought or seen. Neither involve new or further actual existence. In his reply, Descartes
insists that "being thought" involves more than an extrinsic attribution and that the "idea of
the sun," for example, does not signify the mind's operation (operatio) determined in the
mode due to an object. Rather, the idea of the sun is an intramental existent described as the
sun existing in the mind in the way in which objects are wont to exist in the mind. This
characterization seems to make sense in terms of the objective reality existing in the formal
reality of some inttamental object of awrureness.Yet in a tour de force article, "Objective
and Suarez," Journal of the History of Philosophy 28
Reality of Ideas in Descartes,
(1990): 33-39, Norman Wells argues that the idea that is representative is no object of a
mental activity but the mental activity itself. Wells quotes Descrurtesthat the word "idea" is

AQUINAS AND DESCARTES

457

transportation to something else. At least we seem to go to
something else. The idea is more than a formal reality; it is also
enlivened by an objective side. In virtue of this objective facet,
even Cartesian ideas seem to get us out of ourselves and enable us
to forget ourselves. Hence, Husserl's Cartesian Meditations
construal of Descartes' cogito as intentionally impoverished, as
lacking a cogitatum, misses the objective facet of the ideas in the
cogito. 20
Of course, a problem remains. The transporting produced by
the idea is no guarantee of the veracity of the transporting. And
this fact is what methodic doubt fastens upon. We have no way
of telling whether the formal reality has been formed in the
correct way to enable a truthful transportation to occur.
Somewhat similarly, police witnesses in the 0. J Simpson trial
swore under oath that when they called up their memories, they
recalled placing the glove in a protective bag. The memory
transported them to that event. Nevertheless, videotape showing
handling of the glove without the bag dramatically illustrates the
lack of veracity. Only by checking out the idea with reality could
a Cartesian be confident about the truth of the idea's objective
reality. But if ideas are always the immediate objects of our
equivocal between the representing operation of the intellect and the thing represented. For
Wells Descartes acknowledges no representative object sense of idea. Wells also notes that
Descartes says that some of my thoughts (cogitationes, operations of thinking, not cogitata,
objects of thought) are images of things and that to these the name "idea" properly belongs.
The difficulties with Wells's thesis are: (1) in his reply to Caterus Descartes explicitly sets
aside thinking of the idea as an operatio intellectus; (2) it is odd to understand an activity as
such to be an "image," "a picture," or "similar" to a body, for example; yet these are all terms
Descartes uses to describe an idea; (3) as noted, Meditations VI seems to present ideas as
immediate objects of perception and as perceived by the senses and not as the activity of
perceiving. What then does Descartes mean when he says that "idea" properly belongs to
cogitationes and that these are images? I think that he should be understood to mean the
cogitatio as inclusive of the merely mental object that represents the thing. Ideas as
representative objects would also be presupposed in his "Praefatio ad Lectorem" description
of ideas as "pro operatione intellectus."
20 "The transcendental heading, ego cogito, must therefore be broadened by adding one
more member. Each cogito, each conscious process, we may also say, 'means' something or
other and bears in itself, in this manner peculiar to the meant, its particular cogitatum"
(Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations [fhe Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 33).

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

awareness, the checking out becomes impossible. On this
interpretation methodic doubt is a deadly serious game whose
result is to impale us on the fence between knowledge that we are
sensing and knowledge that we are dreaming.
III

At this point it is instructive to consider a standard neoThomist reply. Thomists like Yves R. Simon and Jacques Maritain
concede Descartes's point that awareness is always in terms of
two-sided ideas. 21 For them memory images are paradigmatic for
both external sensation and intellection. These Thomists agree
with Aristotle and Aquinas, who compare the memory image to
a painting. A painting is something in itself and so one can
contemplate it. But a painting is also a likeness of something else.
Like the painting, one can consider the memory image as an
existent in the act of memory or as the likeness of something else.
While agreeing with Descartes on the two-sided nature of all of
our ideas, these Thomists do not concede the skepticism that
21 See Yves R. Simon, An Introduction to Metaphysics of Knowledge, trans. Vukan Kuic
and Richard J. Thompson (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990), 14-22. See also
idem, "Essay on Sensation," in Philosophy of Knowledge, ed. Roland Houde and Joseph P.
Mullally (Chicago: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1960), 74-76; idem, "To Be and to Know,"
Chicago Review 14, no. 4 (Spring 1961): 94-96. For Simon's expressed liaison of his notion
of "two-sided" ideas with Jacques Maritain, see Metaphysics of Knowledge, 22 n. 32. Even
though I believe that in the last analysis Simon correctly allies his position with Maritain's,
some precisions should be noted in fairness to Maritain. The two-sided ideas which Simon
says are present in all cognition and which he paradigmatically identifies with memories,
Maritain calls formal signs. But Maritain does not want the impressed species, both on the
sense and on the intellectual levels, called formal signs. He reserves "formal sign" for species
expressae, or elaborated presentative forms, that are present at the end of the act of knowing,
not at its beginning. See also Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, or, The Degrees of
Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), 120. If we
concede Maritain all of that, his temporal division between impressed species, that is, received
presentative forms, and expressed species, that is, elalmrated presentative forms, does not
mean to exclude an essential similarity. Like the expressed species, the impressed species are
still regarded as two-sided entities, for both are called "a pure means of knowing [quo]" in
the sense of bringing our attention to something else first rather than to the species first. As
I will explain, this two-sided view to all cognitive species is problematic for maintaining a
direct realism.

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Descartes insisted must follow. 22 Skepticism is avoided because an
epistemological primacy belongs to the intentional facet. One first
knows things, then one knows the ideas, not vice versa. This
correction solves any doubts about the realist nature of
knowledge.
But does skepticism disappear? I will not dispute with these
Thomists the epistemological primacy of the intentional in our
ideas. My problem is that I find this primacy congruent with the
need for validation. If the Simpson trial has taught us anything,
it has taught us that memory images, for all their intentionality
and ability to transport us to something else, are not selfvalidating. If they were, we would never bother to check them out
against the historical record. With memory images, anyway,
intentional primacy does not render validation otiose. Finally, if
the play of intentionality in memory images is considered
paradigmatic for even sensation, then the validation issue is quite
legitimately extended to sensation.
Maritain appears to sense this weak spot. In his "Critical
Realism" chapter from The Degrees of Knowledge, he adopts a
different defense of sensation. He expresses his critical realism in
terms of an undeniable unity of the real "thing" and the "object"
of thought. But for purposes of critique, it is crucial to realize that
the starting point is the unity of the real as possible and the object
of thought. Here are some expressions of this:
In fact, the intellect, in virtue of its own proper activity, perceives that
necessary law of all possible being [viz., the principle of identity] in an actual
(and contingent) existent grasped by it through the sense .... But for critical
reflection it is well to give distinct consideration to the primary datum
(revealed by psychological and logical analysis) of the intellectual perception
as such. And that is why we say ... with R. Garrigou-Lagrange, that awareness
12 Simon, "To Be and to Know," 99. Also, "In the whole theory of knowledge, there may
not be any problem more significant, doctrinally and historically, than this: are ideas
representative things, like photographs, paintings, and sculptures, or are they a distinct kind
of entities, defined by the primacy of representing, defined by the primacy of objectivity,
defined by the primary function of bringing about objective rather than matter-form unions,
defined in short, by the primacy of objective over natural existence?" (ibid., 95). The point
is reiterated in "Essay on Sensation," 71-72. On Simon's view that Descartes is a proponent
of two-sided ideas, though according primacy to the non-intentional facet, see ibid., 97-98.

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JOHN lF. X. KNASAS

of the irrefutable certitude of the principle of identity as the law of all possible
being is part of the first conscious (philosophical) grasp that constitutes the
starting point of critique. 23

And also:
Starting from that certainty [that the intellect's first apodictic and absolutely
irrefragable ceaitude has to do with possible extramental being of which it
knows in an entirely and eternally certain and necessary way that insofar as it
is, it is not nothing] [the intellect] reflexively confirms for it itself ("justifies"
to itself) the veracity of sense and its own certitude of the existence of the
sensible world. Thus, it is nonsense to posit (as is constantly done) the problem
of the import of intellectual knowledge by bringing into question, as real being
other than the ego, not, first of aH, possible extramental being, but only the
existence or non-existence (in act) of the sensible world. 24

If I understand him, Maritain's position is astonishing. As noted
the first quotation, Maritain admits that the intellect draws the
principle of identity (and the notion of being that it expresses)
from actually existing things given in sensation.
short, the
intellect abstracts the principle. However, for purposes of
initiating a critique of knowledge, this abstractive origin can be
put aside. The critique should begin just with the "intellectual
perception as such." For simply at that point we already know
that we are in possession of an object that holds at least for the
possibly reaL This undeniable feature of the inteUigible object
illustrates the unbreakable unity between thing (as at least
possible) and object. The principle of identity is more than
subjectively necessary; it expresses what anything must be if it is
to be an actual being.
How does Maritain's thinking defend the truthfulness of the
ideas of sensation? To see the connection, one must turn to the
second quotation. Maritain says that from our certitude about the
real as possible, we can reflexively confirm the veracity of sense.
He leaves unelaborated the reflexive justification, but what he
may have had in mind is this. The veracity of our ideas of
sensation is no difficult matter because we already know that our
23 Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, 92 n. 1.
2• Ibid., 102 n. 2.

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idea of being is true for all possible real being. But we can grasp
something true of all possible real being only by taking it from
some actual real being. Now being is taken from the object of
sensation. Hence, the object of sensation is an actual. In sum, the
unity of thing and object on the intellectual level is used
reflexively to confirm the unity of thing and object on the sense
level.
My problem with Maritain's exercise of critical realism
concerns its first part, namely, the unity of thing and object on
the intellectual level. In the absence of a perceived abstractive
derivation of the notion of being from some actual existent-that
is, just with the intellectual perception as such-how do I know
that I am dealing with anything objective at all, even the real as
simply possible? Might the notion be expressing simply an
ineluctable way of thinking? Maritain fastens on this ineluctability
to justify the principles of metaphysical wisdom and to show that
idealism is an absolute impossibility. 25 But ineluctability is also
true for the merely a priori. It is no sure-fire sign of realism.
Maritain's move is strikingly reminiscent of the retorsion or
performative self-contradiction defense of the Transcendental
Thomists Joseph Marechal, Karl Rahner, and Bernard Lonergan.
Consider Lonergan's remarks on objectivity. For Lonergan, at the
fundamental level of consciousness we do not have true objective
knowledge by seeing that our judgments are confirmed by the
facts. Such a view is identified with Etienne Gilson's perceptualism and with a naive realism. 26 The view is dogmatic and
arbitrary because the facts as facts are all congruent with
phenomenalism and idealism. 27 Lonergan insists that there is no
25 Ibid., 74.
26 On

Gilson, see Bernard Lonergan, "Metaphysics as Horizon," in F. E. Crowe, ed.,

Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 208-10.

On nai've realism see Bernard Lonergan, "Cognitional Structure," in ibid., 231-33.
27 "Still, you will ask, just where did existence come in? Was it some one of the data, or
was it their totality: no, any and all the data are quite compatible with phenomenalism,
pragmatism, existentialism; but none of these philosophies include Aquinas's actus essendi.
Did then existence come in with the insight, or with the concept, or with the particularized
concept? No, idealists and relativists know all about insights, concepts, and their
particularization" (Bernard Lonergan, "Insight: Preface to a Discussion," in Crowe,

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

intuition of existing singulars. Such an idea he associates with the
illegitimate extrapolation of the ocular version of objectivity to
the intellect's grasp of the objective.28
How do we know that we have an objective knowledge of real
things? Lonergan describes objective knowledge as grasping the
virtually unconditioned. He describes the grasping in these terms:
a reflective judgment bearing upon the knower reveals the knower
to be asking no more questions about the data. 29 A quieting of the
intellect is the tell-tale sign of objectivity. The quieting indicates
that somehow the data fit into being, the object of the intellect's
pure disinterested desire to know. In a summary text with clear
echoes of Marechal and Rahn er, Lonergan says,
It is not true that it is from sense that our cognitional activities derive their
immediate relationship to real objects; that relationship is immediate in the
intention of being; it is mediate in the data of sense ... inasmuch as the
intention of being makes use of data in promoting cognitional process to
knowledge of being. 30
Collection, 162). In "Cognitional Structure" (233-35), Lonergan insists that the nafve realist
has no way to stop the idealist from describing the data in terms of appearances only.
28 "Is it a fact that our intellectual knowledge includes an apprehension, inspection,
intuition, of concrete, actual existence? Or is it a fact that our intellectual knowledge does
not include an apprehension, inspection, intuition, of concrete, actual existence?" (Lonergan,
"Insight: Preface," 162-63). Lonergan's subsequent elaboration of the second alternative
clearly shows that he favors it. On the nai'.ve realist's illegitimate extrapolation of the ocular
vision model of objectivity, see "Cognitional Structure," 232-33.
29 "But when there are no further questions, the insight is invulnerable ...• Such an insight
is correct, if there are no further, pertinent questions" (Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study
of Human Understanding [New York: Longmans, 1965], 284). Likewise, Gerald McCool
comments: "And when the knower saw in the act of reflective insight that no further relevant
questions remained unanswered, he could safely give the answer, 'yes, it is'" (Gerald McCool,
"History, Insight and Judgment in Thomism," Proceedings of the Jesuit Philosophical
Association [Chicago: Loyola University of Chicago 1985]: 44). Lonergan is aware of the
subjectivism here and insists that it is insufficient to say that objectivity is achieved when no
further questions occur to me (Lonergan, Insight, 284). Yet his attempt to clarify himself by
introducing the self-correcting process of learning (ibid., 286) does not return, as far as I can
tell, to any trappings of the ocular vision model. Rather, the process is subjectively described
as reaching its limit in "familiarity" with the concrete situation and in "easy" mastery of it.
30 Lonergan, "Cognitional Structure," 235-36; d. Marechal: "Considered as a moment
in the intellect's ascent towards the final possession of the absolute 'truth,' which is the
spirit's 'good,' [affirmation] implicitly (exercite} projects the particular data in the perspective
of this ultimate End, and by so doing objectivates them before the subject" CTosephDonceel,

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In sum, just as a savage would not know whether something is
nutritious simply by looking at it but only by noticing if its
ingestion quiets the growling of his stomach, so too the knower
understands that something is real not by looking at it but by
seeing how it fares in his intellectual dynamism. If the datum
quiets the dynamism, we know the datum is truly objective.
Obviously, objectivity rests upon confidence in the objectivity of
the dynamism itself. That confidence is based upon the fact that
the dynamism is ineluctable and so is affirmed even in the doubt
of it. But again, is ineluctability in thinking a sure-fire sign of
contact with reality? Could not the ineluctability indicate that one
is trying to buck merely mental machinery ?31
There is no substitute for abstraction. Unless the notion is
intellectually seen in the real as given by sensation, a division
between thing and thought will be thinkable. In his Thomist
Realism and the Critique of Knowledge Gilson speaks more
correctly than the previous Thomists. In the last two chapters, he
repeatedly defends realism by portraying the intellectual
apprehension of being as an abstraction, the apprehension of the
universal in the particular given by sense. Speaking of classical
realism, he asks:
Is it so difficult, then, to understand that the concept of being is presented to
knowledge as an intuitive perception since the being conceived is that of a
sensible intuitively perceived? The existential acts which affect and impregnate
the intellect through the senses are raised to the level of consciousness, and
realist knowledge flows forth from this immediate contact between object and
knowing subject. 32

ed., A Marechal Reader [New York: Herder and Herder, 1970], 77); and Rahner: "Because
it is apprehended in this dynamic tendency of the intellect ... the particular sensible thing
is known as finite, i.e., as incapable in its limitation of filling up the space of this dynamism.
Because of this comparing of the particular thing to the absolute and ideal term of knowledge,
the particular thing appears as existent (concrete being) in relation to being" (Karl Rahn er,
"Aquinas: The Nature of Truth," Continuum 2 [1964]: 67).
JI For an elaboration of the problem, see John F. X. Knasas, "Intellectual Dynamism in
Transcendental Thomism: A Metaphysical Assessment," American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 69 (1995): 23-25.
32 Etienne Gilson, Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, trans. Mark A. Wauck
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 206.

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

Also, "'The apprehension of being by the intellect consists of
directly seeing the concept of being in some sensible datum. " 33
Again, "When the concept of being is abstracted from a concrete
existence perceived with the senses, the judgment which
predicates being of this existent attributes being to it ... as 'seen'
in the sensible datum from which [the concept of being] was
abstracted. " 34 In sum, Gilson identifies the grasp of a notion's
objectivity with the grasp of its abstraction from the sensible real.
For Maritain and the Transcendental Thomists the objectivity
the notion of being is independently recognizable. The intellectual
perception as such suffices. No reference to being's abstraction
from sensible things need be considered. Hence, according to
Gilson,
H you feel that abstraction should not presuppose its object, it would be far
better to stop treating it as an abstraction, since there is no longer anything
from which it could be abstracted. Make it the idea of some Cartesian thought,
but do not try to play nvo tables at one time. 35

IV

These difficulties spotlight the need for realists to reassess
Descartes's noted assumption that consciousness is always
terms of two-sided ideas. Does the assumption withstand
scrutiny? Such ideas certainly are involved in memory and
imagination. lin both cases reflection uncovers a cognitional
entity, a device, in and through which one remembers or imagines
one sense, the terms "a memory" and "an image"
this or that.
refer to this entity. As mentioned, because of their ability to
transport us to remember or imagine this or that, memory images
are fascinating items. In fact, Descartes's two-sided ideas make
dreams and hallucinations perfectly understandable. Absent the
reflection necessary to apprehend the formal reality of the idea,
33 Ibid., 197.
34

Ibid., 205.

35 Ibid., 193. For another

excellent presentation of abstraction as the validation of our
concepts, see Robert J. Henle, Method in Metaphysics (Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press, 1980).

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the dreamer or hallucinator is lost in the idea's objective reality.
It is no wonder that both think that the object of awareness is
real. Neither can escape the dream or the hallucination because
neither can remove himself from the idea. And neither individual
can get out of the idea because neither can reflect and objectify
the idea in its formal reality. Such is how we get out of a dream.
Awareness transits back through the intentionality of the idea's
objective reality and then beyond the idea itself so that we are
now aware of the idea in and through which we were dreaming.
Upon waking we can still vividly be aware of these ideas so that
we can plunge back into them and begin dreaming again. The
same is true with imagination. We can use the images of
imagination to frighten ourselves. For example, let us imagine
tarantulas crawling up our backs. We are frightened because for
a second we are lost in the intentionality of the images. We regain
our composure, we "come out of it," by our awareness obtaining
some distance from the image. We see that we were just
"imagining" it. But consider someone who would be locked into
the intentionality here because of an inability to reflect. His fright
would become a torture for him. Such happens with victims of
delirium tremens and schizophrenia.
Despite the legitimate doubts about their objectivity, the
intentional power of two-sided ideas is an intriguing hint of the
realism of human consciousness. Can these ideas do what they do,
namely, so vividly transport us to something else, and belie on the
part of consciousness the possibility of becoming the really other
in order to be aware of it? Whether that becoming of the really
other ever actually takes place is, of course, the crucial question.
But what Descartes called the "objective reality" of ideas is a sign
of a strong surge of intentionality that must always be troubling
to the idealist. In other words, as Descartes practices methodic
doubt in terms of two-sided ideas, not only is realism neutralized
but so too is idealism. If a realist has to wonder about the
objectivity of our ideas, so too the idealist has to wonder about
their subjectivity. We may have strongly intentional ideas because
consciousness at another point involves a direct and immediate
awareness of something real.

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

I want to argue that we do find a level of awareness whose
intentionality does not involve two-sided ideas. At this level,
reflection confirms that my object of awareness is simply
something real; it simply makes me aware of my awareness of
something real. The reflection does not objectify a two-sided
Cartesian idea in and through which I am aware of something.
The level of awareness of which I am speaking is my present one
in which I am at least looking this way and listening. In the
Aristotelian tradition, it was called sensation. In Aquinas's taking
up of the point, the absence of any two-sided ideas was strictly
and scrupulously respected. Sensation did not proceed in and
through the generation of any such entities. Sensation came about
by the sensor taking on the form of the thing sensed "without the
matter." The excluded matter encompassed not only the matter
of the external thing but also the matter of the sensor. At its
penultimate stage sensation involved reception of form by form.
Formal reception of form assures that the received form remains
numerically identical with the form of the real thing. 36 Formal
reception engenders no Cartesian "formal" reality for which the
received form would be the "objective facet"; any way one turns
it, the received form remains the form of the thing. The received
form manifests none of the two-sidedness characteristic of
Cartesian ideas. So impressed, the sensor was in sufficient
actuation to cause an operation of sensation with a real thing as
object.
Thanks to these doctrines of Aristotle and Aquinas one can
construct in the vein of direct realism an understanding of the
sensor. There is nothing about material things, hylomorphically
understood, that makes immediate realism impossible. But
guiding the entire construction is the fact that our reflection
36 "The form into which the percipient or knower is brought by the efficient causality is
the same individual form that actuates the child in real life. It is not just specifically the same,
as is human form in child and parents. It is individually the same form, actuating both child
and percipient in two different ways of existing. It makes the percipient be the individual that
exists in reality" Uoseph Owens, Cognition: An Epistemological Inquiry [Houston: Center
for Thomistic Studies: 1992], 41-42). "From this viewpoint there is reception of form into
form instead of form into matter. The result is that the one and the same form makes the
sensible particular thing exist both in the real world and in the percipient" (ibid., 42-43).

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outstrips the two-sided ideas of memory and imagination and
confronts us with a mode of awareness whose intentionality is of
real things in a direct and immediate way. Because of a physical
or chemical lesion between the organs of imagination and sense,
it may be true that someone cannot perform this reflection and so
is unable to come out of an hallucination. A persistent and even
incurable hallucination is a possibility. But this admission fails to
entail that presently I might be hallucinating. I confidently
exclude that scenario in and through the reflection that I perform
right now. While this reflection notices ideas for memory and
imagination, it sees none for sensation. Hence, in Summa
TheologiaeI, q. 84, a. 8, ad 2, Aquinas remarks that if one ingests
a sleep-inducing volume of food or drink and if the vapors'
movements are slight, "not only does the imagination retain its
freedom, but even the common sense is partly freed; so that
sometimes while asleep a man may judge that what he sees is a
dream, discerning, as it were, between things and their images
[similitudinesdiscernata rebus]."Notice that as the more external
senses are freed, one's attention is taken away from the
similitudes to the things. Is this not Aquinas acknowledging my
described reflexion to sensation and its realistic findings? The
presence of this reflection and its results are distinguishing marks
of human sensation as opposed to dreaming or hallucinating. 37
This articulation of the direct and immediate presence of the real
shows that realism need not be dogmatic.
37 Using Wells's thesis (see supra, n. 19), a Cartesian might try to regroup and to insist that
sensation includes a two-sided item. The double item is the composite of object sensed and
sensing activity. And just as the activities of dreaming or imagining immediately bring
nonexistent objects before us, who is to say that sensing does not do the same? But are
activities like dreaming, imagining, and sensing on a par phenomenologically? When I reflect
aware of the act itself, the object continues to be more
on a present act of sensing and
distinctly present than is the case when I reflect upon my imagining or dreaming. In the latter
cases, I can almost consider the activities just in themselves with the attention to objects
significantly dumbed down. The reflective grasp of my act of sensing shows the sensing to be
much more "transparent" than the acts of imagining and dreaming. Perhaps as activities,
imagining and dreaming are more "opaque" because there is more going on within them than
just their objects. In any case, this difference of opacity versus transparency makes any
extrapolations from imagining and dreaming to sensing illegitimate. Even on Wells's thesis
a discernible difference exists.

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v
Other experiences could constrain one to reintroduce a formal
reality into our objects of sensation. In the reprise of methodic
doubt in Meditation VI, Descartes mentions observing square
towers that at a distance look round and colossal figures perched
on these towers that from below appear smalL He also reports of
amputees who experience feelings removed arms or legs. 38 The
point of these cases is to confirm that the obvious reality of the
object of sensation is not obvious. If the tower is square but we
are seeing something round, then we are not seeing the tower; if
the statue is colossal but we are seeing something small, we are
not seeing the statue; if the amputee is feeling something "in his
then he is not doing so.
The cases of the tower and the statue and others Hke them,
(e.g., the blackboard looking rectangular to those in front and
trapezoidal to those on the sides), were the stock in trade for the
empiricist philosophers in the eighteenth century and for sensedata theorists 39 and phenomenologists in the twentieth. Among
the latter, Edmund Husserl, in his Ideas: General Introduction to
Pure Phenomenology, employs the perspectival character of our
perception of physical objects to conclude that the physical object
is not immanent to the act of perception; it is not a real
"constituent part of consciousness" but necessarily "transcendent
to perception. "40 This necessary transcendence of the thing over
against the perception of it is Husserl's basis for bracketing our
38 Haldane

and Ross, trans., 1:189.
For a summation of arguments for sense data, see R. J. Hirst, The Problems of
Perception (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1978), ch. 2.
4tl "The studies we have completed lefr us with the transcem:lence of the thing over against
the perception of it, and ru; a further consequence, over against every consciousness generally
which refers to the thing; not merely in the sense that the thing as a real constituent part of
consciousness is as a matter of fact not to be found-the whole situation rather concerns
eidetic insight: in absolutely unconditioned generality or necessity, a thing cannot be given
as really immanent in any possible perception or, generally, in any possible consciousness.
Thus a basic ruid essential difference arises between Being as Experience and Being as
(Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology [New York: Collier
Books, 1972], 120).
39

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judgments of real existence that we make m the "natural
attitude."
Is the direct realist understanding of sensation confounded by
these cases? Their common assumption is that immediacy means
exactitude. Hence, where the perceptual object is inexact in
relation to the real thing, the real thing cannot be understood as
immediately present. I maintain that the assumption holds only
for physical immediacy or presence. Physical presence demands
exactitude. For example, to be physically present a one-armed
man cannot be two-armed. Physical presence brooks no exception
to exactitude. For Aquinas, cognitional presence is different. As
long as the thing's causality is formally received, then the thing
presents itself in cognition. Yet, real things are formally received
and so are cognitionally present only at the ends of long chains
of physical causality. Before landing in the formal amplitude of
the sense power, the thing's physical causality can be understood
as running a gauntlet of other physical causes. These other causes
can impact the thing's causality so that the thing becomes present
in cognition inexactly. In fairness, one should acknowledge that
physical causality could also achieve exactitude. Our experience
with TV cameras shows that sometimes physical causality gets it
right. The pink shade of the dress of the woman in the studio is
captured by the image on the screen. However, I will concede
that perception does present reality inexactly. Hence, we may
never know the exact configuration of the real shape that we see
or the exact shade or hue of the real color that we see. But this
concession is a small price to pay for the realistic component in
the basis of Thomistic metaphysics. The fundamental point
remains that perception presents something real-a real color, a
real shape, etc., even granting inexactitude in the perception.
What of the amputee? That he must confirm or disconfirm his
feeling by looking down at his absent leg indicates that his feeling
alone and his reflection upon it cannot detect the illusion. Does
this phenomenon indicate that sensation itself could present us
with something not real? No. No more difficulty exists here than
in the case of seeing a long-ago-extinguished star. Provided that
the star's causality continues and eventually impinges upon the

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

formal amplitude of the power of sight, the causality makes the
real star present. There is no need to assume that if sense presents
reality, then sense presents reality as it is right now. That
judgment or its opposite can be left to those who study the
physical causality involved in vision and the presence of any time
lag.
What the amputee may be feeling is analogous to what the
astronomer may be seeing. Just as the astronomer may be seeing
the real star in its lingering causality on the sense power, so too
the amputee is feeling his leg as formally presented through the
lingering neural activity excited by the leg before amputation.
Both sense something real but falsely assume that it is right now.
Evidently the right-nowness of reality is not an original factor in
sensation. Again this acknowledgment is a small concession in the
wake of the admission that sense directly presents reality. In sum,
the Thomist realist, at least, shows a sophisticated knowledge of
the mechanics of sensation and so is not naive.
At the end of Meditation I, Descartes mentions a final scenario.
He says,
I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of
truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his
whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth,
colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the
illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay
traps for my credulity. 41

The same assumed context of two-sided ideas that gave cogency
to the dream possibility does the same here. As reflection traces
the idea's objective reality back into its formal reality, we become
aware of an object for which a spiritus malignus could quite
possibly be a source. But where the same reflection succeeds in
outstripping two-sided ideas and lands on a level of consciousness
in which the object is through and through something real, this
hallucination scenario appears impossible. In other words, just as
I know that I am not dreaming now because now I am aware of
something real, so too I know that I am not hallucinating now
41 Haldane

and Ross, trans., 1: 148.

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because I now am aware of something real. Awareness of
something real occurs neither in a dream nor in a hallucination.
The object of my present awareness resists reflective reduction
into the objective reality of an idea. Rather, my object steadfastly
remains the direct and immediate presence of something real.
I would be remiss to fail to note that within the context of his
own already formulated epistemology Aquinas largely concedes
the spiritus malignus possibility. He discusses how demons can act
on the exterior senses. 42 One way is from without by forming
things that will in turn impact the senses. This activity obviously
poses no problem to the realism of the senses. But another way of
demonic activity is from within. Demons can stir up an
indisposition in the organ so that a false perception results,
somewhat in the same manner as a choleric tongue will cause
everything to taste bitter. This demonic activity somewhat affects
the realism of the senses-but not fundamentally. Just as those to
my side still see the penny's real shape though inexactly, so too
those with a choleric tongue still taste the orange's real flavor
though very inexactly.
Aquinas describes a second manner in which demons can affect
the exterior senses from within. In the Commentary on the
Sentences he says:
species that are conserved in the imagination flow into the organs of sense by
the operation of demons, just as happens in sleep. And so when these species
reach the organs of the exterior sense, they are united as if they were things
present outside and sensed in act. 43

Aquinas admits as a possibility a demonic backloading of the
exterior senses from species conserved in the imagination. Does
this possibility eliminate the direct realism of our presently
exercised act of sensation? I do not think so. This backloading
cannot occur without coincident stimulation of the imagination,
I, q. 111, a. 4.
Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 5, ad 4: "Species quae sunt in imaginarione servatae operatione
daemonum ad organa sensuum fluant, sicut contingit in somno; et ideo, quando illae species
contingunt organa sensus exterioris, uniuntur ac si essent res presentes extra et actu
sentirentur" (Mandonnet ed. [Paris: Lethielleux, 1929], 215-16).
42 STh

43 II

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JOHN F. X. KNASAS

for it proceeds
the demon bringing about motions in the organ
of the imagination that impact on the organ of the exterior serrne.
But by reflection I know that what I am imagining now is not
what I am perceiving now. Likewise, I can know that now I am
not imagining at all but nevertheless am perceiving. So reflection
that I can exercise right now confirms the current absence of
baddoading from the imagination. 44
In condusion, the type of reflection that Descartes employs to
uncover two-sided ideas ,as direct and immediate objects of
consciousness need not stop with that accomplishment. Given
that same reflection can validate real things themselves as the
direct and immediate objects of our current act of perceptual
awareness. The content of consciousness is far richer than
Descartes imagined. Our consciousness indudes not only ideas
but the direct presence of the real. At a fundamental level, human
consciousness is "the existence of the known in the knower"; it is
"the existing perfection of one thing brought to be in another."
As mentioned earlier, these facts of sense perception lead the
inteHect straight into Aquinas's metaphysics. For a real thing also
to exist cognitionally, the real thing cannot be real of itsdt The
thing's reality must be owing to another act.
If in its Hmited Cartesian use reflection produces certitude at
least of the cogito, why cannot this same reflection produce the
certitude of perceptual realism?
.In The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 21-27, noted neurophysiologist Wilder
Penfield describes cases of electrical stimulation of the cortex that are very similar to Aquinas
on the possible backloading of the exterior senses by imagination. In these experiments
patients describe "hearing" and "seeing" and "watching" sounds and sights. The patients
knew, however, that the experiences were of past events, or "flashbacks." H the Wilder
experiments are cases of backloading of the senses from imagination, it is noteworthy that the
patient can tell that the voices rure of the past only by checking them with his memory. The
patient cannot see what is going on in his imagination. Hence, one should concede that in the
middle of the hallucination, one cannot reflect to imagination. Nevertheless, the realist should
go on to insist that right now I can reflect to imagination and that shows that I am not in a
hallucination. In Cognition, Owens admits that the claim of some neurophysiologists that
electrical stimulation of the cochlea, retina, or cortex suffices for impressed sensible species
contradicts immediate realism (251-52). But in the present state of research this claim is far
from verified.
44

BOOK REVIEWS
Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. By
ALAsDAIR MACINTYRE. The Paul Cams Lectures. Chicago and La Salle:
Open Court, 1999. Pp. 186. $26.95 (doth). ISBN 0-8126-9397-3.
I read this book under very appropriate conditions, during a sojourn in the
hospital that provided me with a hands-on experience of its main themes:
human vulnerability in sickness and old age-the result of our sharing in
animality through our bodies-and our consequent dependence on others
within family, social, and political contexts.
Comprising a series of conferences, this book is the fruit of profound
reflection on a topic too much neglected by philosophers: human weakness as
related to our bodily condition. The author critiques the rationalist concept,
Cartesian in inspiration, which posits a break between human beings and
animals particularly for this reason, that the latter, not having language,
therefore possess neither thought nor reasoning power. In the tradition of
Aristotle and St. Thomas, Alasdair Macintyre mailltains that there is a
similitude, a continuity, and a gradation from the animal to the human being.
This is apparent in the behavior of animals such as dolphins with their hunting
strategies. We have to attribute a certain form of reasoning activity to them
because of the way in which they proceed in view of an end and communicate
among themselves with a kind of prelinguistic understanding. Thus, as St.
Thomas says, animals possess something similar to reason and free will. In the
same way Macintyre believes, contrary to Heidegger, that the bodily behavior
of human beings vis-a-vis the world was originally animal behavior, that this
heritage subsists, and that it is only partially transformed by culture.
Macintyre characterizes the human being as "an independent practical
reasoner," possessing the ability to reflect on reasons for and means to ends,
based on desires and pleasures evaluated according to criteria of what is good
in itself for human beings and their full development. The independence
envisioned here, however, in no way signifies personal isolation, as is the case
with individualism, but includes a recognition of the need to depend on others.
This starts in childhood, to which philosophers have paid scant attention.
Education given by parents plays a capital formative role and should ultimately
teach the child to act freely and to do what he thinks is right, even though
eventually this may not please his teachers. Nevertheless, to attain this
473

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maturity, the progressive acquisition of the moral virtues is indispensable: selfcontrol and, when necessary, detachment from desires through tempernnce;
courage in the face of conflicts and difficuhies; justice, which ensures respect
for others and collaboration with them; and prudence, which guarantees the
quality of practical judgment and caHs for the interplay of the other virtues.
External rules are helpful for this kind of formation, but do not suffice by
themselves. Rules and the virtues work together to produce growth and the
formation of self-awareness in cooperation with others
The author's research seems to me to culminate in the complementarity that
he establishes between giving and receiving in human action. This creates
relationships of generous and true friendship, associating the virtues of
dependency with those of independence and transcending the opposition
between egoism and altruism. Here we come to the virtues as analyzed by St.
Thomas. With justice go liberality, decency, mercy, and works of charity. In
this connection, the author does not hesitate to criticize a treatise of Aristotle
in which the "megalopsychos" or magnanimous man, in his grandeur, prefers
not to recognize benefits received because they reveal his dependence on
others. In this context, self-awareness and self-confidence develop in relation
to the identity others attribute to us. Seeking excellence as an end that has
value in itself combines with the sharing of others' points of view in friendly
dialogue.
The author is finally led to discuss political and social structures ordered to
the common good, precisely in their reciprocal integration of the common and
individual good. He enumerates three conditions required in every society: the
right to affect political decision-making, norms of justice conformed to
generosity (granting to each according to his capacity and needs), and
representation of the weakest by proxy in common deliberations. He insists on
the recognition of every person in society, and particularly on the ofrenforgotten contribution of defenseless persons, such as children and the sick,
who teach us responsible charity. He frankly believes that such principles can
never be realized in the modern State determined by considerations of money
and power; they are more applicable to families, which although not selfsufficient exercise a key role for aH institutions, and to local communities,
where activities and evaluations can be better shared in the sense of responsible
good will.
The author doses with an interesting contrast: the radicalism of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche, in order to promote the will to power, repudiates all virtue that
implies dependence, and declares that it is in our friend that we find our most
perfect enemy, never being so dose to him as when we oppose him.
The thirteen conferences presented in this book are remarkable for their
content and rigor. The volume is like a prolongation of After Virtue, which it
completes. On several important points it sparks a kind of revolution in regard
to the prevailing rationalism regarding human thought and action. In touching
on the separation between humanity and animality, it affirms a continuity

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475

between body and reason in human action, in conformity, among other things,
with the role that St. Thomas assigns to the passions in moral action, when he
makes the study of them (love, desire, hope, etc.) a preparation for the analysis
of the corresponding virtues (charity, hope, etc.). Thus morality receives the
mission of contributing to the union and active harmony between body and
soul, between animality and spirituality, between passions and virtues.
Obviously, this can only be done in the context of a morality of virtues that
will insure interior formation and growth, rather than in a morality of
imperatives or prohibitions imposed from without.
An important contribution of the author is his demonstration that virtue,
which perfects our self-awareness, far from being purely individual, includes
at the same time the recognition of other people in their otherness and the
acceptance of our dependence on each other, as well as on our bodies. This
twofold dimension, paradoxical at first sight but necessary and vital, is actively
at work in the relationships of giving and receiving inspired by generosity and
characteristic of friendship, which Aristotle links directly to the virtues,
devoting two books of the Nichomachean Ethics to the subject, and which
Thomas makes bold use of in defining charity. I should also like to stress the
author's insistence on the moral contribution of weakness, at the bodily as well
as social level, in relation to generosity, justice, and love. It thus confers on
morality a new dynamism which harmonizes well with the primacy of charity
established by John and Paul and the best of Christian tradition. It shows us
how to overcome individualism and abstract morality with the action of reason
joined to virtue, and leads to the positive acceptance of bodiliness, in the
person of the other, in society and in the world at large.
In closing I should like to offer a suggestion. The affirmation that "our
whole initial bodily comportment towards the world is originally an animal
comportment" and that "we never make ourselves independent of our animal
nature and inheritance" (49), could lead one to believe that animality is the
primary source of human action, according to an evolution from the imperfect
to the perfect, as Darwin understood it. This view, which rightly gives an
essential place to the body, needs to be completed with the aid of Aquinas's
teaching on natural inclinations (STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2), which sees as the source
of our action the inclinations to the good, to being, truth, and social life, which
are in the spiritual order. We need, however, to avoid separating these
inclinations from each other and should consider rather that they act together
and are interwoven. Thus, while being wholly spiritual, they do, as universal
experience demonstrates, form connections with and are intimately implicated
in our bodily condition. Moreover, it would be interesting to show how the
inclination toward sexual union, of which St. Thomas remarks precisely that
it associates us with animals, is, in the human person, related to other
inclinations which engage the man and woman as persons and thus acquire a
spiritual dimension.

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All this recalls the Pauline definition of spiritual worship, literally
"rational" worship (logikos), in the Letter to the Romans: "Present your bodies
[vos corps] as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is a spiritual
worship" (Rom 12:1). It is significant that the two most widely used French
translations should avoid using the word corps to translate siima. The Jerusalem
Bible translates it as "vos personnes" and the Ecumenical Bible as "vousmemes." The studies of Alasdair Madntyre can help us to avoid modern
categories and prejudices that create an obstacle to an exact and enriching
reading of the Bible. (Translated by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, 0.P.)
SERVAIS PINCKAERS, 0.P.

Albertinum

Fribourg, Switzerland

The Catholic University as Promise and Project: Reflections in a Jesuit Idiom. By
MICHAEL J. BUCKLEY, S.J. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University
Press, 1998. Pp. 224. $55.00 (doth), $22.95 (paper). ISBN 0-87840711-1(doth),0-87840-710-3
(paper).

As Buckley (a chaired professor of theology and director of the Jesuit
Institute at Boston College) explains in the preface, "this book is more a
collection of essays, each bearing upon a cognate question, than a steady and
single argument. Its unity is thematic rather than systematic" (xx). The central
theme is captured in the first essay with an evocative image: hundreds of
faculty and administrators at Boston College gathered on the steps of the
library to celebrate a Mass to mark the start of the 1992-93 academic year
while students make their way indifferently through the congregation and into
the library. Buckley notes that the majority of thirteen thousand people of the
university community apparently had something else to do that day, which
during the liturgy spurred him to wonder, "What is this upon which we invoke
the unspeakable mystery of God? What is this 'we' who are at prayer?" (4).
These questions go to the issue of identity, and in Buckley's opinion, many
Catholic colleges and universities, induding the Jesuit ones with which he is
most familiar, are not facing this issue squarely. He offers several
explanations-for example, a refusal to return to precondliar parochial
narrowness, pluralism among faculty, and concern over the conditions attached
to receiving state and federal money-but the one he focuses on is the
assumption that religious and academic life pertain to two spheres of reality
that relate to each other only extrinsically rather than intrinsically. Thus the

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477

first essay advances the argument that "the academic and the religious are
intrinsically related, that they form an inherent unity, that one is incomplete
without the other"; "each term of this dyad and the realities to which they
refer . . . do not simply exist juxtaposed to each other in influential
contiguity"; rather, "one dynamically involves the other" (15).
The intrinsic relation of religion and academia is a leading emphasis in the
other essays as well. In chapter 2, Buckley maintains that the Church must
foster scientific inquiry for two reasons: because scientific inquiry raises
questions of ultimate meaning and mystery which bear on the selfunderstanding and mission of the Church, and because it instills an unswerving
commitment to the truth which can only benefit the Christian faith. In chapter
3, he defends the position advanced in chapter 1 against the criticisms of David
J. O'Brien, by pointing out, among other things, that the distinctively religious
character of Catholic universities does not remove them from the wider
pluralistic culture, as O'Brien implies, but actually enables them to contribute
to it. Chapters 4 and 5 provide expositions on the Jesuit vision of the Catholic
university: chapter 4, on Ignatius of Loyola's understanding of higher
education, which integrated humanistic, philosophical, and theological studies;
and chapter 5, on the early Jesuit humanistic vision, which ascribes to created
things the capacity to serve as instruments of divine purpose. In chapter 6,
Buckley explains how the new Jesuit humanism entails a concern for justice and
thus obliges Jesuit schools to produce students who are not only humanistic but
humane. In chapter 7, he affirms the move of Catholic colleges and universities
from a custodial understanding of forming students to an understanding that
challenges students to deal with the problems facing the Christian faith in a
pluralistic society and world. The last two chapters, 8 and 9, attend to "the two
architectonic wisdoms whose pursuit has been emphasized in the history of
Jesuit higher education," respectively, "philosophical and theological studies"
(xxi). In spite of the variety of themes, taken together these chapters form a
complex elaboration of the central point of the initial essay: that the promise
and project of the Catholic university is to create a setting in which Christian
faith and intellectual inquiry work together for the mutual advantage of each.
It is worth noting that these nine essays were written over a considerable
period of time: two were written in 1971, one in 1978, one in 1982, four
between 1991 and 1993, and one (the only one previously unpublished) some
time after 1995. As a result, the book as a whole addresses issues surrounding
the controversy over Ex corde&clesiae and its application in the United States,
but without becoming totally absorbed by it, and without the author "weighing
in" on the issue of a mandatum for theology faculty at Catholic colleges and
universities. Never strident or alarmist, these essays are the measured
reflections of an accomplished Jesuit priest and scholar, marked by an expertise
and freshness that comes only with years of research, writing, and teaching
about the nature of Catholic higher education.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Not surprisingly, then, this book has several strengths. For one thing,
Buckley identifies and reveals the shortcomings in the flawed but all-toofamiliar thinking that we encounter today in the discussions about Catholic
higher education. For example, he insightfully observes that Timothy Healy's
(former president of Georgetown) notion that the Church and the university
constitute separate and distinct institutions, religious and secular, could just as
equally be said of the Church and the City of San Francisco (12). Or to take
another example, he shows that David J. O'Brien's rejection of any talk of
distinctiveness is generated by a framework that allows only for two
alternatives for Catholic higher education, "either secularization or
sectarianism" (49); in so doing, it fails to appreciate how a Catholic university
can be motivated to address a pluralistic society, not in spite of, but because of
its distinctively Catholic view of human life and culture (48-51). Or again, he
makes it clear that the definition of a Jesuit university as simply a place where
Jesuits teach, or where students receive "value-centered education (the same
could be said of those in mainland China)," or where there is a strong campus
ministry office, or where teachers take an interest in students-he makes it
dear that these watered-down definitions of a Catholic university do not come
from Ignatius of Loyola and are inadequate to a genuinely lgnatian vision of
Catholic higher education. Buckley's attempt to dispel at least some such
familiar misconceptions should be regarded as a welcome service.
Another strength of this book is that it provides an illuminating account of
the origins and significance of the Jesuit vision of higher education. Drawing
on the writings of Ignatius and on the early history of the society, Buckley
explains how the standard, three-tiered curriculum of the Jesuit universities
(the ratio studiorum) was designed to integrate humanistic studies with both
philosophy and theology, and thus to form students in a Christian humanism
that would enable them to serve both Church and society. The central claim of
the theology informing this Christian humanism is that of "instrumental
causality," which sees "God as workman and God's work in and through all
things" and sees "the human as the instrument of the divine, as the means
through which the divine enters human history" (85). Buckley uses this Ignatian
notion of instrumental causality to rebut the charge of anthropocentrism that
was leveled by Maritain against Molina and, by association, against the Jesuit
educational enterprise as a whole. He contends that Maritain's attack on the
"Ignatian" conception of human freedom and divine causality is an unfair
distortion, for it ignores the fact that Ignatius, in the Constitutions and in the
Spiritual Exercises, never allowed the importance of natural virtues and gifts
to obscure the decisive role of the divine initiative in and through all events
and actions. On this score, Buckley cogently shows that the Ignatian
commitment to higher education flows out of a theologically charged vision of
"human beings united with God; humane intellectual disciplines and

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479

achievements united within the reflection of God: everything was to be united
without being identified" (102).
This brings up the most important strength of this book, namely, its
emphasis on theology as the shaping intellectual force, as the architectonic
knowledge and wisdom, in Catholic higher education. The chief obstacle in
such a restoration, as Buckley explains in the first essay, is "extrinsicism," a
habit of mind that traces back to "the neoscholastic misunderstanding and
miscasting of the relationship between nature and grace," whereby "'nature'
was treated as a unit, entire unto itself, with 'grace' taken as an addition to
nature for which nature had no intrinsic orientation. Grace was, in that sense,
'extrinsic' to nature"' (12). From this misconception, it follows that intellectual
inquiry can progress without reference to religion. Thus in preconciliar
Catholic universities, religion was catechetical and apologetic in character, not
a genuine mode of intellectual inquiry; and this same pattern is reproduced
today whenever theology is pushed to the margin of a curriculum and functions
as "one more course among others" (15). The alternative that Buckley proposes
is a relation between religion and academics that is "intrinsicist" in that it holds
that "any academic movement towards meaning or coherence or truth, whether
in the humanities, the sciences, or the professions, is inchoatively religious";
that is to say, it moves "towards an ultimacy, i.e., towards a completion or a
whole, in which it can obtain comprehensive sense" (ibid.). But in this
intrinsicist view, there is a movement in the other direction as well. As Buckley
puts it, "the commitments and the instincts of faith are inescapably towards the
academic .... the dynamism inherent in the experience of faith ... is towards
the understanding both of itself and of its relationship to every other dimension
of human life" (15-16). Thus there is a symbiosis between faith and academic
inquiry: "if allowed their full development . . . the religious intrinsically
engages the academic, and the academic intrinsically engages the religious ...
. One leads to the other." This insight lies at the heart of "the character and
promise of a Catholic university," which is uniquely "dedicated to the organic
fulfillment of these two desires for knowledge. The inherent integrity ... of
the full faith-experience moving towards its satisfaction in transcendent
completion ... is what a Catholic university must affirm and embody, however
halting and imperfect its attempts" (16). The theological grounding for this
vision is found, according to Buckley, in the doctrine of the two natures of
Christ. "Jesus is the union of God and humanity. So also ... the Catholic
university is a union of faith and all human culture. God becomes incarnate in
humanity; faith becomes incarnate in human culture .... The reality of Christ
lies in the union of divinity and humanity; the reality of the Catholic university
lies in the union of faith and human culture" (17). Drawing a parallel with the
doctrine of the hypostatic union, in which Christ's divinity and humanity are
united yet still distinct, Buckley maintains that in a Catholic university religion
and all other disciplines-the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences,

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and professions-are likewise united yet distinct. Thus united, "human culture
and faith are brought to a new depth and a reflective enhancement" (20).
Indeed, "the Catholic university exists to deepen the unity between Christian
faith and all the forms of knowledge" (ibid.).
Buckley's argument here is to be commended for proffering a clear,
coherent, theological account of the place of theology within the overall
curriculum. Still, it is presented only in general terms and thus does not explain
how, specifically, theology relates to other disciplines. Working within a
Rahnerian paradigm, Buckley tends to cast "religion" largely in terms of an
unthematized, transcendental mode of knowing that serves as a background to
knowledge pertaining to the categorical realm of time and space; hence the
frequent appearance in these essays of such notions as "religious dimension,"
"religious consciousness," "ultimacy," "absolute," and "meaning," in
expounding on the relation of the Christian faith and academic inquiry. When
employed in this way, "the religious" does not interact directly with and
impinge upon other areas of intellectual inquiry; rather, it is located on an
ever-receding horizon that provides proportion and perspective to other forms
of knowledge but does not actually transform them. The advantage here is that
the potential harmony between theology and the other disciplines is brought
to light, particularly as regards theology and the natural sciences, an area in
which both Rabner and Buckley have shown keen interest and commitment.
But the disadvantage is that it does not register the important tensions and
conflict that can often arise. For example, if, as Buckley argues in chapter 6,
justice is a central concern in Jesuit higher education, then the theology that
grounds the Catholic notion of the common good should shape the way the
institution of private property is presented in economics classes. Moreover, if,
as Buckley rightly insists, the Catholic curriculum must be integrated fully, then
such concerns cannot be met simply by courses in business ethics; rather, they
must inform the very way in which the market is described and analyzed, and
here a host of issues emerges as to how production, consumption, and
distribution should be viewed in light of the gospel and the Church's social
teachings.
But these issues can be broached only when we move from "religion" cast
in terms of implicit, transcendental knowing to a theology cast in categorical
terms and grounded explicitly in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Buckley would not disagree with this, it seems to me, but his book does
not delve into these specific issues, and thus does not take up several crucial
questions, for example: What criteria should be used in determining whether
or not a proper understanding of economics is being imparted to students?
What specific curricular structures are needed to facilitate such interaction
between theology and economics? And, what specific institutional
arrangements are needed to foster interaction between theology and the other
disciplines as a whole?

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Most Catholic educators, like their non-Catholic counterparts, would
respond to these questions by immediately insisting that the autonomy of
academic disciplines must be preserved, and they would back this up by
appealing to Aquinas; on this score, they would find support from Buckley. But
here it must be noted that Aquinas's affirmation of the integrity of the liberal
arts cannot automatically be translated into an affirmation of all modern
academic disciplines, for the liberal arts of the medieval period can be
integrated into a theological framework in a way that some modern fields of
inquiry cannot. This is especially true of history and the social sciences, which
are designed to provide explanations of actions and events that exclude formal
and final causes and thus by design tend to subvert, rather than support, a
comprehensive theological framework. This is not to say that history or the
social sciences can in no way be integrated into an Ignatian framework of
divine instrumental causality; but it is to say that genuine integration will
involve more tension and conflict than Buckley implies. The same can be said
of the humanities as well, as would be clear from a close reading of the work
of Derrida or Foucault.
The importance of attending to the tension between theology and other
disciplines can be stated in Christological terms. While it is true that Christ
embodies divine and human natures in one person, it is also true that this
hypostatic union leads to conflict between the human Jesus and the world
around him. After all, the Word became flesh, dwelt among us, and was
crucified, and it is only through the power unleashed in the cross and
resurrection that our fallen human nature can now be transformed. If, then, a
parallel can be drawn between the hypostatic union and the relation of religion
and academics, we can say that a similarly disruptive transformation must occur
in the realm of the intellectual life: knowledge gained in the secular disciplines
must be purified by a kind of crucifixion of the intellect in order to achieve
genuine unity with theology. There are indications that this view would be too
Bonaventurian for Buckley's Thomistic sensibilities, but it remains exactly how
inquiry in history and the social sciences can be ordered to theological ends.
Of course it is not possible to do everything in one book. And to his credit
what Buckley has done in this book is demonstrate the urgency of generating
a theological conversation that can address these issues. In this sense, these
essays represent the kind of scholarship needed to forge a genuinely theological
vision of Catholic higher education.
MICHAEL]. BAXTER, C.S.C.

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

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El don de sabiduria sequin santo Tomas: Divinizacion, filiacion y connaturalidad. By CRUZ GONZALEZ AYJESTA. Pamplona, Eunsa, 1999. Pp. 216.
$26.50. ISBN A8431316020.

A doctoral thesis in theology done at the University of Navarre, this is an
interesting work on the gift of wisdom according to St. Thomas. The author
develops his subject in five chapters of unequal length. The first two, historical,
are followed by a three-part essay that is analytical and speculative in thrust.
The author first outlines in detail some controversies among twentiethcentury theologians on the subject of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which were
touched off by the challenge to the universal call to mysticism. Even though the
universality of the Christian vocation to holiness was generally accepted, there
were important differences of opinion as to the meaning of the word mystical,
depending on whether one referred simply to baptismal grace or to
extraordinary ways of union with God.
The necessity of the gifts for salvation, affirmed by St. Thomas, was the
occasion of a debate at the beginning of the twentieth century between the
Dominican Froget and Perriot, a collaborator on the review "l'Ami du Clerge,"
who wrote the work, "The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Souls of the
Just." Froget held that the gifts are necessary in order to go beyond the
organism of the virtues, but that they are not necessary for the production of
each supernatural action. Perriot, on the contrary, thought that such action
proceeds simultaneously from two different moving principles, in such wise
that the gifts extend their influence to the entire Christian life.
After describing this original controversy, the author distinguishes two
theories that formed as it were two schools. The first, promoted by GarrigouLagrange and in great part by Gardeil, following Froget's line of thought, saw
the essential difference between the virtues and the gifts to be their mode of
action-human and superhuman respectively, the gifrs being superior to the
virtues. This theory was based on St. Thornas's Commentary on the Sentences
of Peter Lombard and supposedly found a confirmation of its intuitions in the
writings of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. J. de Guibert, for his
that St. Thomas's thought had evolved, and that in his
part, was of the
maturity he saw the gifts as habitus, receptive rather than operative, disposing
a person to docility to the Holy Spirit. In this perspective Guibert thought, in
contrast to Garrigou-Lagrange, that not too much importance should be
attached to the division into seven gifts. Later, Congar would adopt this position. As can be seen, the debate turned on the exegesis of St. Thomas's texts.
Regarding question 68 of the Prima secundae, some saw in artide 2 a
statement by St. Thomas that the gifts surpass the virtues, while others found
in artide 8 the superiority of the theological virtues over the gifts. The author
devotes twenty pages (37-58) to the question of an evolution in the thought of
St. Thomas regarding the gifts: Garrigou-Lagrange saw only a verbal evolution,
while Guibert attempted to show that St. Thomas broke with the immediately

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preceding tradition in order to return to William of Auvergne's concept of the
gifts as passive and receptive. Philipon held a middle position of moderate
evolution.
The historical tour ends on a note of astonishment at the fact that since the
Second Vatican Council a certain disaffection has emerged in regard to this
teaching on the gifts, while at the same time the Holy Spirit Himself has
become the object of renewed interest. The paradox may be due to a
misinterpretation of the theory. An emphasis on St. Thomas's teaching on the
subject of the new law by authors such as Pinckaers, Garcia of Haro, and
Mongillo, that throws light on the debated specificity of Christian ethics, may
prove fruitful in getting us beyond the impasse.
What is the source of the theory denounced above? The second chapter
throws the blame squarely on John of St. Thomas. He is the one who
maintained a real distinction between virtues and gifts on the basis of the
superhuman mode of the latter. It was he who extended knowledge by
connaturality to all the intellectual gifts, while St. Thomas, according to the
author, reserved this to the gift of wisdom. Again, John of St. Thomas qualified
this knowledge as "experiential" or "mystical"; he had it depend upon a spiritual savor or touch that produced in the soul an affective knowledge of God
through His effects. John of St. Thomas made two changes in the teaching of
St. Thomas: first, for him connatural came to mean affective as opposed to
speculative, and second, he slipped from the realm of the ontological into that
of the psychological. It would be an error to say that his marked distinction
between affective and speculative knowledge coincided with St. Thomas's
expressions in STh I-II, q. 45, a. 2: by way of cognition/by way of con-naturality. The author attributes this misunderstanding to a theory of knowledge
marked by conceptual rationalism. This influence would have made the views
of St. Thomas's eminent disciple seem to flow from the authentic teaching of
St. Thomas himself, not only for an author such as Garrigou-Lagrange but also
for a Jacques Maritain, both of whom had a habit of projecting the spiritual
doctrine of the Carmelite authors onto their reading of Aquinas.
We have to praise the author for his direct study of John of St. Thomas and
for his clear recognition of the global influence he exerted over later Thomistic
authors. We can also concede to him, in regard to the exegesis of the thought
of the Angelic Doctor, his claim that the teachings of the disciple and the
Master do not exactly coincide, and that this is an important fact. We would
only add that the teaching of John of St. Thomas on the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, taken in itself, is doubtless not without value, and would perhaps
deserve better treatment than to be relegated to the rank of a faulty
interpretation.
The third chapter, which opens the speculative part of the work, points to
the doctrine of the divine missions as the key to the understanding of the gift
of wisdom. It is related to the themes of the divine indwelling and divinization.
The author shows in pertinent texts of St. Thomas this doctrinal link between

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the gifts and the indwelling, even where the latter term is missing. The
evolution of thought between the Commentary on the Sentences and the
Summa Theologiae shows clearly that in the latter the gifts of the Holy Spirit
have their root in the theological virtues and are like derivations; this manifests
a deepening of the understanding of the theological virtues, to which the divine
indwelling is referred. Most importantly, this doctrine of the divine missions
is based on several formulas of St. Augustine that are rich in meaning. Thus, for
example, the relationship between the mission of a divine Person and His
eternal procession and, on the other hand, its link with the experiential
knowledge mentioned above, are contained in the affirmation, "mitti est
cognosci quod ab alio sit." In the same way, as to union with God, one notes
the passage, between the Commentary on the Sentences and the Summa
Theologiae, from the concept of an assimilation in the literal sense of a person
to the qualification of the presence of God in the just as that "of the known in
the knower and of the loved in the lover."
The author presents several interesting observations, for example on the
vocabulary of the indwelling as referring to the new creation which is
divinization (another terminology being used to designate the presence of God
in the first creation), or again on the complementarity of the Augustinian
formulas used in the different works of St. Thomas. A good statement of the
question relative to the understanding of the expression "quasi-experiential
knowledge" confronts different positions, such as those of G. Philips and A.
Patfoort. The author, in line with his ontological interpretation, sees in
experiential knowledge the happy joining of wisdom assimilating to the Son
and of charity assimilating to the Holy Spirit, the knowledge obtained by
wisdom leading to the experience pertaining to love, in view of the truth that
the Word breathes Love.
Clearly, the author draws the best possible material from Augustinian
sources and thus confirms the closeness of the Thomistic doctrine of grace and
the gifts to the great scriptural and patristic theme of divinization. One can
only regret that an overall view of St. Augustine's teaching on this subject was
not included.
The fourth chapter studies the connaturality proper to the gift of wisdom.
The author overtly challenges the classic division of the gift of wisdom into
speculative and practical parts. This division inherited from Aristotle needs to
be revised when it is no longer a question of human wisdom but of the gift of
the Holy Spirit. In this matter we have to prefer the indications drawn from St.
Augustine. In fact, knowledge gained through the gift of wisdom is speculative
in its object but practical in its mode. One can wonder whether the recurring
affirmation of the inopportuneness of Aristotelianism in this regard is
sufficiently established by the author. We know, in fact, that St. Thomas's use
of the Stagyrite was far from servile and was never allowed to "paganize" his
theology.

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Still, the analysis of the connaturality of the gift of wisdom is totally
convincing here. The author explains well, and notably, how a right judgment
as to the ultimate end is presupposed for the act of the gift of understanding,
but does not constitute it-which would deprive of its legitimacy the
attribution of connaturality to the gift of understanding, as do John of St.
Thomas and Jacques Maritain after him. This chapter shows excellently the
twofold relationship between the gift of wisdom and the virtues of faith and
charity. The author emphasizes that this is a question of "living faith," that is,
faith informed by charity, which alone gives rise to the act of "believing in
God." The relationship between the gift of wisdom and the beatitude promised
to the peacemakers is also beautifully developed.
The last chapter, more succinct and less coherent than we might wish,
touches on other aspects of the gift of wisdom, especially the question of the
assimilation to the Son and the relation between the gift of wisdom and divine
filiation. This includes two stages: the first, ontological, involves charity, while
the second, operative, unfolds through the gift of wisdom. These well-thoughtout pages seem too brief in view of the importance of the subject. Some
complementary remarks on the different meanings of the word wisdom, on the
influence of St. Augustine on St. Thomas, and on the links between the gift of
wisdom and the theological virtues, lead up to a conclusion that recapitulates
admirably the plan and development of the work.
This book is remarkable for its clarity and is written in a style that makes
it accessible to beginners in university studies. The content of each section is
explained at the outset and summarized at the dose, and the flow from chapter
to chapter makes for delightful reading. The information is precise, but not
always complete. The treatment of the question of the indwelling could have
profited by a consideration of the contrasting theses of those other great
representatives of the schools, Suarez and Vasquez. More authors of the
twentieth century, too, might have been opportunely considered (one thinks
of Terrien, Chambat, and Dockx, who are only mentioned in footnotes). A few
errors in Latin quotations are regrettable, and a good number in French.
Finally, we deplore the absence of an index of names and places.
We acclaim, on the other hand, this direct study not only of Aquinas but
also of John of St. Thomas. The analyses are made with rigorous authenticity.
They demonstrate that the teaching of St. Thomas can be contemplated in its
own right,
the jewel case of commentaries which may alter the sense
of what they wish to expose. I recommend this beautiful book without
hesitation, in this Jubilee Year, to all who are interested in St. Thomas and in
questions about the spiritual life. (Translated by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P.)
LUC-THOMASSOMME, 0.P.
Interdiocesan Dominican Studium and Seminary
Bordeaux, France

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What Sort of Human Nature? Medieval Philosophy and the Systematics of
Christology. By MARILYNMcCORDADAMS. The Aquinas Lecture, 1999.
Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1999. Pp. 113. $15.00 (cloth).
ISBN 0-87462-166-6.
Metaphysical inquiry flourishes in contemporary philosophy, and attention
to metaphysical issues in theology is at the heart of a theological tradition that
extends back to the very beginnings of Christian reflection. A priori, then, one
would expect to find contemporary Christologists interested in the
metaphysical aspects of Christology, and one would also expect to find them
applying themselves vigorously to a study of the works of medieval Scholastic
authors, whose contribution to metaphysical theology was of the highest
quality. For the most part, however, this is not what is happening. Much
(though not all) of contemporary Christology tends to steer clear of inquiry
into the metaphysical aspects of Christological doctrines; likewise much
(though not all) of contemporary Christology tends not to see itself as part of
a tradition of reflection that goes back to medieval Scholastic Christology.
These facts are probably related to one another, although the history that has
led up to our present situation is complex (it would, for example, bt impossible
to tell one story that applied to both Roman Catholic and Protestant theology).
This situation is to be lamented, even though the decisions that led to it
were not always lamentable themselves-the desire to break away from
manualism in Catholic theology, for example, was hardly a bad one. In any
case, it seems safe to say that one worthy goal for present-day Christologists is
to recapture a metaphysically informed way of reflecting on Christ, which will,
in practice, require coming to grips with the medieval contributions to this
field. Marilyn McCord Adams's What Kind of Human Nature? Medieval
Philosophy and the Systematics of Christology will be a valuable aid to those
engaged in this task. The text of her 1999 Aquinas Lecture at Marquette
University, it examines what several medieval thinkers, and also Martin Luther,
had to say about the metaphysical character of Christ's humanity. Adams, the
Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology in the Yale Divinity
School, is eminently qualified to comment on such matters, as all students of
high Scholastic thought know well.
In her introduction, Adams lays out the patristic-conciliar understanding of
Christ as one person subsisting in two natures, each of which is maintained in
its full integrity. She then points out that this understanding leaves unanswered
many questions about Christ's humanity. Is it a fallen humanity like ours? An
unfallen one, like Adam's? A glorified one? "If each of these states is
compatible with as well as accidental to human nature, Christ could be fully
human in any of them. Patristic authors had already begun to debate the
question, what was Christ's human nature like during his ante-mortem career?"
(9). Her aim in the book is to show how views on the character of Christ's
humanity are governed by varying theological and philosophical commitments

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487

in six authors: Anselm, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, John
Duns Scotus, and Martin Luther. (Particularly noteworthy is her attention to
Bonaventure's Sentences commentary, a text that has been unreasonably
neglected.) Her hypothesis is that "conclusions about Christ's human nature are
systematically driven, and vary principally with a theologian's estimates of the
purposes and proprieties of the Incarnation on the one hand and of the
multiple and contrasting job-descriptions for Christ's saving work on the other"
(ibid.). To be sure. philosophy plavs a role: "Secondarilv. focus of detail and
choice of stvle in the oortrait are markedly affected by .•. philosophical tastes
and commitments" (9-10). The study of these authors is not only of historical
interest but also "constructively suggestive" (10).
In the sections that follow, Adams treats her six authors in the order given
above, highlighting certain themes. Due to differences among the thinkers,
there are differences in which issues are discussed, but three of the most
important are Christ's knowledge, his sinlessness, and his physical and spiritual
weaknesses. Christ's human knowledge is exalted by the five medieval authors,
although they strive to explain in just what way it was limited, for limited it
had to be, if it was to be human knowledge (see esp. 15, 21, 32-36, 53-57, 7885). The same authors treat Christ's sinlessness not merely as actual sinlessness
but as impeccability, the inability to sin at all; they work hard to show how this
is compatible with human freedom (see esp. 13, 19-20, 39-40, 62-63, 75-78).
Christ's weaknesses, finally, were both physical and spiritual, according to the
medievals, although they never led to sin (see esp. 14-15, 22-24, 40-42, 59-67,
85-90).
General principles drive these reflections, according to Adams. There is a
philosophical and theological "presumption against incarnation" (95); "taking
a finite and temporary 'almost-nothing' human nature into the unity of person
is ... something Divine wisdom and good taste would avoid, other things being
equal" (11). This presumption is overridden by the need to save humanity and
by God's self-giving goodness, but it then "reasserts itself" in the demand that
Christ's humanity be as exalted as possible (95). Next, the Savior's jobdescription requires him to be more than just another carpenter from Nazareth:
he has to have superior knowledge and virtue in order to bring us to salvation.
At the same time, however, soteriological requirements lead the medievals to
hold back from attributing full human perfection to Christ during his earthly
career: in order to be a model for us, and in order to suffer and earn merit, he
has to have weaknesses of body and soul. Finally, especially in later medieval
authors, Christ's human glorification is qualified simply to ensure that he has
a normally functioning humanity compatible with the status of a wayfarer. So
the general picture seems to be as follows: in order to be joined to God,
Christ's humanity has to be as perfect as possible, all other things being equal;
furthermore, insofar as Christ is Savior, his humanity has to be pretty
impressive. Other things aren't equal, however, for a number of reasons,
among them soteriological ones. Where Christ's humanity ends up, in the view

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BOOK REVIEWS

of any particular theologian, depends on the balancing of upward and
downward pressures exerted by theological and philosophical forces.
The reader will have noticed that the preceding paragraphs are restricted
to the medieval authors that Adams discusses. What about Luther? Although
his style and purposes don't allow us to determine his precise views on, say,
whether Christ had infinite human knowledge, he "exposes the assumptions
behind [the medieval scholastic] family of Christologies as less than selfevident" (97). Steering farther from metaphysical presuppositions and closer
to the text of the Bible, Luther was freer from concerns about the metaphysical
propriety of the incarnation and therefore able to bring Christ's humanity
closer to ours; in his humanity, Christ had our guilt and liability imputed to
him and suffered greater penalties, including the feeling of divine abandonment
(91-94).
There are, to be sure, issues that Adams does not discuss. For example, she
does not ask whether Christ as human receives habitual grace from the very
fact of his being divine or, as the rest of us do, from the Holy Spirit. Or, to
pick a more technical example, she does not ask whether Christ's human nature
is a property-bearer, which is relevant to issues such as Christ's human free
will. If Christ's humanity can be a property-bearer, then it might be tempting
to say that it is Christ's human nature that has human free will; that would
seem to make it an agent in its own right, which at least sounds like a kind of
Nestorianism. It is disappointing to find such issues undiscussed, but it was
probably wise of Adams not to include them, as they would have made the
lecture too unfocussed.
In her concluding remarks, Adams speculates about how else one might
approach the question of Christ's humanity. Worries about metaphysical
propriety could be taken, not as reasons for demanding that Christ's humanity
be deiform, but as reasons for holding that it doesn't much matter what kind
of humanity Christ has-after all, all finite creatures fall short of divine
perfection, whether they are angels or maggots, sinless or sinful. Further, if the
main goal of the incarnation needn't have been the rendering of satisfaction,
then the particular issue of sinlessness seems irrelevant, at least in principle.
"Which would furnish more hope: the appearance of a God-man Whose human
nature represents our lost past and promised future? or Divine identification
with our present misery, God's taking human being in all of its uncleanness
into hypostatic union with Godself?" (98). It's not clear how much these
suggestions represent Adams's own views and how much they are thoughtexperiments meant to bring out the issues at stake. One could c:'!rtainly raise
some concerns. Although it is true enough that God's perfection means that
there is a perspective from which all creatures are on the same footing, it is
questionable to bring in sinfulness as just another kind of falling-short.
Creatures necessarily fall short of God, but if they subordinate themselves to
him, then at least they aren't opposed to him, whereas sin would seem to be
not only falling short but also insubordination and opposition. But these are

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489

complicated matters that cannot be fully treated either in the conclusion of a
lecture or in a short review.
Adams summarizes and assesses an enormous amount of material in ninetytwo short pages and documents it with 346 footnotes, nearly all of them
citations of primary sources. She balances attention to historical context with
depth of analysis, thus avoiding both anachronistic interpretation and mere
unphilosophical paraphrase, using an accurate but vigorous and nontechnical
style. Finally, she does a good job of showing how theological and
philosophical issues interact. As already noted, medieval Scholastic Christology
does not receive as much attention as it should. Anyone wanting to study it
could hardly find a better way of starting than reading the texts Adams cites
and learning from her analysis.
MICHAEL GORMAN

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Nicolaus Minorita: Chronica. Edited by GEDEON GAL, 0.F.M., AND DAVID
FLOOD,0.F.M. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Publications,
1996. Pp. 30* + 1238 + v. $68.00 (doth). ISBN 1-57659-118-2.
In this volume, two distinguished Franciscan scholars make available in
modern, working editions all the important documents pertaining to the
Poverty Controversy of the fourteenth century. The chronicle of Nicholas, put
together around 1350, documents the sad history of the Poverty Controversy,
from its seemingly insignificant origins at Narbonne in 1321 to the appeals of
the Michaelists at Munich and their argument against papal plenitudo potestatis
directed to Benedict XII around 1340. The chronicle itself provides brief
sketches of the order of events linking the legal and other documents
reproduced and the editors have supplemented these explanations with
substantial introductions of their own, providing both a narrative of the
relevant context and a summary of the documents' contents. Through such
extraordinary efforts, the editors have, as their subtitle indicates, produced a
source book for students of Franciscan studies and Church history that should
be eagerly received by those working in the fourteenth century.
In the first chapter, we find the papal documents to which reference is
continually made in subsequent arguments and appeals. In his bull Quia
nonnunquam (March 1322), Pope John XXII relieved the prohibition upon
discussing apostolic poverty and asked for an open discussion of the issue of
whether or not Christ and the apostles owned anything, either in common or

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BOOK REVIEWS

privately. Although such an issue may seem innocent enough to the
contemporary reader, apostoHc poverty was considered the haHmark of
Franciscan life and practice in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; John
XXII's decision to reopen the discussion of poverty after nearly a half century
of silence brought about by Nicholas HI's faciit qui seminat was revolutionary
in its impact and foreboding. The Franciscans themselves rightly perceived that
steps might be taken to undermine the system whereby they used but did not
own the things they needed to live mid discharge their duties. Hence they
immediately prepared a response during their general chapter at Perugia Oune
1322). The response was not deemed convincing by the Pope, who replied in
the bull Ad conditorem canonum (December 1322) by deciding to make the
Franciscans the owners of the things they used. Furthermore, the papal bull
Cum inter nonnullos (November 1323) declared that it was heretical to assert
that Christ and his apostles did not own the things they used, an opinion that
was commonplace among the Franciscans. Even the appeal of the Franciscan
lawyer Bonagratia of Pergamo was unavailing, producing little more than a
revised version of Ad conditorem canonum. After the appeal of Bergamo,
reproduced here in full, and that of Louis IV, the newly elected Holy Roman
Emperor, the Pope responded in the papal bull Quia quonmdam (November
1324), justifying his actions by claiming to have the right to revoke the
decisions of his predecessors whenever doing so would benefit the advancement
of the faith.
The second chapter of the chronicle narrates and gives the documents
describing the break between the Michael of Cesena, the Minister General of
the Franciscan Order, and the papacy. After a delay owing to illness, Michael
of Cesena arrived (December 1327) at Avignon, the seat of the papacy, in
response to the summons of John XXII, who caHed upon Michael to conform
to the declarations of Quia quorundam. After a difficult interview with the
Pope in April, 1328, during which Michael contested the papal charges of
heresy and appealed for reconsideration, the situation grew steadily worse for
the minister general. The papacy became concerned that its decisions regarding
the Franciscan Order would become the source of further diminution of its
political power after Louis IV took up the cause of the rights of the order and
deposed the Pope. As a result, Michael began to fear for his life and took steps
to leave Avignon despite the city arrest under which he had been placed until
he submitted to the papal declarations. Finally, on May 26, 1328, Michael fled
Avignon along with William of Ockham and some other friars to continue the
dispute with
xxn in a wider forum.
The remaining chapters of the chronicle function within the framework
established by an alienated minister general and an intransigent papacy. The
third chapter reproduces Michael of Cesena's longer appeal in its entirety, first
published in Pisa in September, 1328, presenting the Michaelists' sophisticated
argumentation regarding ownership and simple use, while the fourth chapter
makes available the companion pieces of Michael's shorter appeal and Louis

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491

IV's condemnation of Pope John XXII. The fifth chapter describes the further
deterioration of ecclesiastical unity in thought and action: in the letters
reproduced here, Bernard of Turre, the cardinal functioning as effective head
of the order at the instigation of John XXII, convoked a general chapter at
Paris and there had Michael deposed from the minister generalship in
Pentecost, 1329; in the fall of 1329, John XXII responded to Michael's appeal
in the form of the papal letter Quia vir reprobus. At this point, we find already
the situation that would last for almost a century. There were two Popes, one
in Rome and the other Avignon, each basing his claims on the Petrine principle
and each enjoying considerable recognition by secular, political authorities.
Parallel with the papal conflict, there were two Franciscan ministers general,
one hiding in Munich at the court of Louis IV of Bavaria and the other
officially supported by the Avignon papacy.
The sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters narrate the continual exchanges
between Avignon and Munich. John XXII's unusual theological views on the
resurrection and the final judgment, including the remarkable claim that no
person would enjoy the beatific vision until the general resurrection at the end
of time, began to color the discussion and to figure in the controversy. After
Michael and his followers were excommunicated at the close of the Parisian
general chapter, Gerald Odonis, the papally endorsed minister general, entered
into the fray as a new interlocutor, determined to defend the papal position.
The exchanges between the two ministers general are bitter and cover a wide
range of theological and ecclesiological issues.
Although John XXII renounced many of his theological novelties on his
deathbed, his errors remained one of the grounds of disagreement long after
his death since they were linked, in the minds of the Michaelists, to the radical
innovations proposed by the Pope in the area of Franciscan ecclesiology and
rationale. When John XXII's successor, Benedict XII, proceeded to affirm
John's decrees and his policies, the group of Michaelists in Munich renewed
the controversy by stating their opposition to the new Pope. The ninth chapter
of the chronicle presents the appeals of the Michaelists against Benedict XII
and the treatise of Louis IV who focused his writing on the manners in which
both Popes abused their temporal authority under the rubric of plenitudo
potestatis. Unsurprisingly, the tenth and final chapter shows the direction in
which the thought of the Michaelists was headed: it reproduces a treatise, at
least partially authored by William of Ockham, wherein the entire notion of
plentitudo potestatis was subject to severe scrutiny and the view was advanced
that the Pope has no such fullness of power either in temporal or secular
matters.
The chronicle has been masterfully edited in this volume. Numerous
references are given to historical studies for those interested in pursuing
research into various aspects of the Poverty Controversy and its aftermath.
Indices referencing the manuscripts used for the chronicle and the materials
cited in the notes render access to the wealth of sources found in the volume

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easy. Those doing research in the area of fourteenth-century ecclesiastical
history and the history of ideas should acquaint themselves with the chronicle
and the volume should be purchased by every library attempting to acquire
primary-source documentation for medieval history.
TIMOTHY B. NOONE

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Peter of John Olivi On the Bible: Principia quinque in Sacram Scripturam:
Postilla in lsaiam et In lad Corinthios. Edited by GEDEONGAL, O.F.M.,
and DAVID FLOOD, O.F.M. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute
Publications, 1997. Pp. vi+ 431 $68.00 (paper). ISBN 1-57659-128-X.
Far too often, historians of medieval philosophy and theology confine their
investigations to commentaries on Peter the Lombard's Sentences, systematic
treatises on theological topics, commentaries on the Aristotelian corpus, and
disputed or quodlibetal questions arising from the teaching of theology within
the medieval universities. Rarely do such historians step outside these genres
to examine the ideas that the authors they study had on the Bible, despite the
fact that teaching the biblical text was what occupied at least half of the time
of medieval theologians. Although the failure on the part of modem scholars
to study the broader content of medieval theology is regrettable, it does find
some excuse in the paucity of medieval commentaries available in modem,
critical editions. The present volume admirably seeks to fill part of that lacuna
by providing a fine edition of some of Peter John Olivi's comments on the
Bible.
The editors review the details of Olivi's life as well as some elementary
features of medieval biblical exegesis in the general introduction to the volume.
They note that his approach to the Bible is characterized by his concern for the
role of the Franciscan movement within the unfolding of salvation history.
Indeed, this concern becomes apparent in the texts of Olivi, whose fascination
with the seven seals of the Apocalypse is remarkable; nearly every one of
commentaries edited in the volume makes some use of apocalyptic figures as
a hermeneutic device for understanding the structure of the Bible and the flow
of history that the Bible helps uncover.
The first part of the volume consists of five principia on the Bible, while the
second part contains Olivi's commentary on Isaiah and his unfinished
commentary on Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. In addition, there are

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493

two appendices: one comprising a question on obedience from Olivi's treatise
on evangelical perfection and the other two sermons on the life of St. Francis.
Noteworthy among the five inaugural lectures on the Bible or principia are
the first and second. In the first principium, Olivi defends the legitimacy of
study against some standard objections advanced against it within the
Franciscan order. To the charge that study gives rise to pride and the discussion
of pointless questions, Olivi replies that a proper attitude toward study will
always bear in mind the relationship between learning and the acquisition of
the virtues (25-29). Connected to the right attitude towards study is a
sensitivity towards the hierarchy of auctoritates; Olivi contends that the proper
order should be, in a descending order of priority: the Bible itself, the Fathers,
the theologians, and the philosophers. To study the last should be the duty only
of the most acute minds, whose function is to purify philosophical texts of their
errors and to bring out their underlying truths. The second principium
illustrates Olivi's ability to adapt his considerable philosophical learning to the
task of commenting on the Bible. Taking one of his favorite biblical passages,
the seven seals of Apocalypse 5: 1, Olivi aligns the seven seals with the seven
transcendental properties of being: unity/plurality; conformity/disconformity;
actuality/potentiality;
generality/specificity;
substance/ accident;
absolute/relative; and, most importantly, esse secundum rem and esse secundum
apprehensionem. The last is the mode of being most consonant with the
Scriptures themselves since the meaning of Scripture is revealed in the different
levels of apprehension and appearance (50-61).
In the second part of the volume, we find Olivi's fascinating commentary
on Isaiah. Though much of the text focuses on a thorough explication of the
and spiritual-of the various passages, the
different senses-literal
philosophical side of Olivi again becomes manifest in his extensive discussion
of prophetic visions. After reviewing the thesis of divine illumination,
commonplace among contemporary Franciscan theologians, Olivi expresses
doubts, as he does likewise in his other writings, about its tenability either
regarding intellectual knowledge in general or prophetic vision in particular.
Olivi proposes that the origin of prophetic vision is not divine illumination,
understood as a person seeing the uncreated truth of God, but is rather found
in some change within the mind of the prophet, while the summit of the vision
consists in the graced contemplation of divine truth. The change effectuated in
the mind of the prophet usually provides an inherent certitude whereby his
mind is aware that the alteration of consciousness is from God; the
contemplation of the truth gives the prophet a certain taste of the divine
sweetness accompanied by the realization that the truth so experienced is
incapable of being shown to be such through human reasoning (195-96). Yet
Olivi finds that both of these features, while found in prophetic visions in their
highest manifestations, are not always present in all prophetic visions. Some
prophetic visions are not accompanied by the certitude on the part of the
prophet that the vision is from God and some are not confirmed by the sweet

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contemplation of divine truth. Furthermore, understanding prophetic visions
is not something always found in the prophets themselves, as is clear from the
case of the prophet Daniel; even in the mind of the prophet, some elements of
his vision may be only probable and subject to correction while other elements
remain certain-such was the case, according to Olivi, with Joachim of Fiore's
vision of world history (197-98). Whatever may be the manner of explaining
prophetic visions, however, Olivi thinks that the problem of reconciling the
certitude of prophetic visions with the contingency of future events is no
greater than the more general problem of reconciling divine foreknowledge and
future contingency. Though the contrary of what the prophet sees could come
to pass in the sense that the causes involved in a future event are capable of
producing the contrary, the contrary of what the prophet foresees cannot come
to pass, given the certainty of the divine vision in which the prophet shares
through his adherence to divine revelation (199).
Among the texts published in the appendices of the volume, a text that
should be studied by both philosophers and historians is the question on the
vow of obedience. The question really treats of three issues: whether one
should commit to a vow of obedience; whether oppression through the vow of
obedience by a lower ecclesiastical authority should be reported to a higher
one; and what is the proper rank of obedience among the three traditional
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Here Olivi shows his devotion to the
Franciscan rule and the writings of St. Bernard. Obedience is the highest of the
three vows in the sense that it involves the surrender of one's own will to the
superior as invested with the authority of the Lord. But there are nonetheless
limits to obedience. No one is obligated to obey commands to sin, or
commands that involve danger of mortal sin, or commands that would
undermine the pursuit of the religious rule to which one is bound. In treating
the ranking of the three vows, Olivi's dedication to the Franciscan way of life
is once again obvious. Opposing the bold position taken by St. Thomas (ausus
est quidam scribere), Olivi argues that poverty is not to be ranked the lowest
of the three vows on the grounds that it requires the surrender of the least
things, namely, our exterior earthly goods, as opposed to the surrender of
sensual pleasure required by chastity and the surrender of one's own will
required by obedience. First, chastity also requires the surrender of exterior
goods to the extent that it demands the forsaking of one's wife and her
affections. Second, poverty demands the foregoing of sensual pleasures, even
sexual ones, to the extent that one must, in following poverty, give up a wife
if she may be deemed a possession. Finally, the continual demands of poverty
upon oneself make it a harder vow to practice than obedience since the
demands of obedience are usually less frequent and less severe. Even obedience,
Olivi suggests, cannot be put into practice perfectly without the concomitance
of poverty since the readiness to go and live anywhere to preach the Gospel
presumes the forsaking of temporal goods which poverty involves (403-4).

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495

The present volume dearly deserves the attention of scholars pursuing the
study of medieval philosophy and theology. But it also should draw the notice
of Church historians and historians of canon law for whom it may give some
insight into the tradition of thought and feeling behind those involved in the
later Poverty Controversy of the fourteenth century. The editors are to be
commended for the remarkable job they have done of assembling such
important texts and offering them in such well-documented and readable
editions, while the Franciscan Institute is to be applauded for its efforts to
make texts of such significance available at prices affordable to impecunious
scholars.
TIMOTHYB. NOONE
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Religious Experience in "Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New
Testament Studies. By LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON. Minneapolis, Minn.:
Fortress Press, 1998. Pp. vii+ 199. $20.00 (paper). ISBN 0-8006-3129-3.

This book can be considered an intermediate step between two other works
by Johnson: The Real Jesus (1996), a theological apologetics that responds to
the "misguided quest for the historical Jesus" by asserting the "the truth of the
traditional Gospels," and Living Jesus (1999) which "reflects on the person of
Jesus as good news." The purpose of this book is to call attention to and
legitimate the fact that faith experience forms the matrix and subject of the
discourse we find in the literature of earliest Christianity. Johnson rightly
points to this "missing dimension in New Testament studies," the result of a
mentality that systematically overlooks what is central in the New Testament
witness. He sets about legitimating the reality of earliest Christian experience
by recourse to a particular application of the phenomenology of religion which
is neither history nor theology (vii).
There are five chapters in the book. Chapter 1, "What's Missing from
Christian Origins," dearly establishes the fact of a methodological bias which
eliminates experience as a category when investigating the beginnings of
Christianity. Chapter 2 is an attempt to set up an objective approach that is
modeled on work done in the field of the general phenomenology of religion
and at the same time respects the reality of early Christian religious experience.
This is accomplished by a judicious use of the work of M. Eliade, G. Van der
Leeuw, G. Marcel, and especially J. Wach. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 apply the four

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components of J. Wach's definition of religious experience to three public areas
of early Christian experience, namely, baptism, glossolalia, and sacred meals.
This is a pioneering work which the author hopes will stimulate further
research and reflection. The basic challenge that it offers to New Testament
scholarship is on the level of epistemology, though this is never discussed as
such. It comes at a time when many in the guild are asking philosophical
questions about their methods and subject matter, often without the benefit of
any serious philosophical training. Johnson's work is a good example of how
probity in the use of history and creativity in the search for philosophical
insights can render more intelligible the realities mediated by the ancient texts,
especially those of the New Testament itself. By setting experience at the
center of his study he forces himself and his readers to ask serious questions
about the nature of experience and the nature of the communicative acts by
which experience is mediated. This is the undoubted strength of the book
whose weaknesses are those of an effort to include hitherto untried approaches
in New Testament study. It is with respect for what Johnson has accomplished
that I would like to enter into dialogue with him about some aspects of his
work. I will discuss each chapter in turn.
After establishing the unavoidable fact that the New Testament authors are
speaking about realities that have impinged upon their lives and are speaking
to others who share this experience, Johnson goes on to analyze the failure of
historians to take this dimension into account in their attempts to understand
the presence of early Christianity in history. There is, first of all, the
intellectualist approach which seeks to find the "essence of Christianity"
underneath the ecclesiastical, mythic, and syncretizing overgrowth now present
in the text. Pure (read Protestant) Christianity is thus recovered. Then there is,
or was, the History of Religions School which, while it respected the "popular"
nature of Christianity, could only understand this in terms of individual piety,
thus misunderstanding the very phenomenon it sought to explain. In addition,
this approach sought to render Christianity intelligible by treating it as an
interesting mutant strain in the popular Hellenism of the day and by tracing its
development according to the "laws" of the development of religious sects. The
ultimate failure of this attempt cleared the way for the historical-critical
method to seek intelligibility through the analysis of sources which in turn are
used as evidence for various sub-groupings, now vanished, whose various and
sometimes eccentric views, it is alleged, have been homogenized by
ecclesiastical authorities to serve as part of their agenda. The last part of the
chapter is an analysis of the massively erudite work of Jonathac Z. Smith for
whom religion is simply a subjective pattern of cognition, one of many equally
interesting ways in which human beings strive to "have 'space' in which to
meaningfully dwell" (quoted on p. 28).
Johnson rightly points to the post-Kantian epistemology of Smith's whole
effort while reserving for the last chapter a more detailed critique of his actual
methodology. The first chapter would have profited from a more philosophical

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critique of the other approaches discussed, particularly a consideration of the
epistemological status of historical knowledge. It is dear that Johnson's
strength lies more in the area of the assessment of first-order heuristic
structures, the mental framework that constructs a hermeneutical spiral. But
the basic problem in most historical work is to be found on the level of secondorder heuristic structures, that is, on the basic philosophical stance, often
unconscious, of the investigator.
In chapter 2 Johnson elaborates a methodology apt for the study of the
Christian phenomenon. This is a daunting task, and one for which he has
prepared himself by gaining an acquaintance with various approaches,
particularly that of the phenomenology of religion. The problem is that of
using general categories that can apply to "religion" as a whole in order to
study Christianity, which is not a species within a genus called "religion." No
one else has solved the problem which is eminently worth the effort: how does
one reconcile the claim to uniqueness while at the same time appreciating the
human context and condition of the Christian faith? Johnson, following the
scholars mentioned above, opts for the category of "power" as the one most apt
to characterize Christian experience. I would suggest that the category that
specifies Christian experience is that of "person." Christians were and are in
living contact with someone, namely, Jesus Christ and God in and through him.
Johnson continually asserts this, and rightly so. Is it not possible to see that the
experience of this person is a unique experience of power? It is the prime
analogate of all religious experience and founds a category in which other
religious experiences participate analogically.
With the third chapter we enter into a discussion of the first Christian
religious moment generative of experience, namely, baptism. Johnson is
respectful of the complexities of an historical reconstruction of this rite in the
early Church. His comparison of the Letters to the Galatians and Colossians as
examples of a "Phrygian" need for successive initiations is quite valuable. I
would not agree, however, that baptism results in a state of "liminality" or
"statuslessness." The New Testament texts are dear that baptism marks a
transition to a new state, a new identity. This is true not only of the Pauline
texts but also of such passages as Mark 16: 16. The influence of Jewish thinking
on baptism, particularly that in regard to the miqveh, is important here: the
liminality is in the transition through water, not in the state that results from
the transition. This is particularly true if, as some maintain, circumcision did
not always follow in the case of the conversion of a Gentile.
Glossolalia forms the topic of chapter 4. Again, Johnson has researched the
matter carefully and the result is a classic example of what I have called above
the difficulty of trying to find uniqueness in a matter that is widespread in the
context of religious experience. It may be that in regard to such phenomena we
are sometimes dealing with the psychosomatic manifestations of a certain kind
of pressure on the psyche. The pressure can be pathological, divine, or anything
in between, thus pointing to the need for the gift of discernment of spirits.

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Such discernment is necessary in the context of enthusiastic corporate worship
of the type Paul has in mind in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. However, it is not
correct to equate tongues with "ecstatic speech" as Johnson consistently does.
Paul himself recommends that, if there is no one to interpret, the person should
"keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God" (1 Cor 14:28).
This does not imply "ecstatic speech" but a simple form of God-given prayer
that can be "quiet." However, the main object of Johnson's treatment, if I
understand it correctly, is not only glossolalia but the more general experience
of Christ in the midst of corporate worship. This is again an example of the
powerful experience of a person.
The last chapter is explicidy dedicated to the question of communal
worship in the context of meals "where the magic is." In some ways this is the
strongest of the three chapters in which Johnson's method is applied. Meals are
obviously a more accessible common context in which to study what is unique
within what is common. Johnson's critique of Jonathan Z. Smith evinces the
same capacity for pointing to weaknesses in first-order heuristic structures as
we have seen in The Real Jesus" The earliest matrices of what is now called "the
summit and fount" of all the Church's activity (Sacrosanctum Concilium 10)
are to be found in the meals Christians took together in memory of Christ, a
memory that induded a grateful turning to the past, experience of Christ in the
present, and a confident expectation of the future. The six steps Johnson
outlines for a reading of ancient meals could well form the topic of a separate
study and they could advance the discussion of method considerably. I would
hope that such a study would help clarify how to speak of what is unique and
what is common, of analogous but not equal manifestations of religion, of
Spirit-inspired praise and not only of enthusiasm and ecstasy, of sacrament in
the world of ceremony, and finally of mystery rather than magic. Luke
Timothy Johnson could bring a particular set of gifts and insights to this task.
FRANCIS MARTIN

Pope John Paul 11 lnstitute
Washington, D.C.