15. At least bracketing certain considerations having to do with natural
Anselm on ethics
that of plants. Even here, however, degrees of being are best thought of quantitatively rather than qualitatively. Thus, a human has "more being" qua human than a plant qua plant because members of the kind human being possess quantitatively more capacities than members of the kind plant: they possess all the capacities associated with plants
(such as the capacity for nutrition, growth, and reproduction) as well as several others (such as the capacity for rational thought and volition).
The same is also said to be true of God relative to the members of all other kinds (including plant and human being) – though this leads to familiar puzzles about how God can be said to possess the capacities associated with material beings, puzzles which the medievals attempt to solve by appealing to the notion of eminent possession. See, e.g.,
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a, 4,2.
12.
See Nicomachean Ethics 1.
13.
Anselm does not explicitly speak of participation in the Monologion; nor does he explicitly refer to goodness and justice there as Platonic
Forms or standards. Nonetheless, it is natural to assume that he is following Augustine in this regard, who does explicitly talk in this way
(e.g. in De Libero Arbitrio 2), especially since Anselm does invoke such notions in other works (see, e.g., De Ver. 2 for an explicit appeal to participation and De Ver. 13 for his argument that God is the Form in which all true things participate). For discussion of the historical context in which Anselm develops his views about universals, see Yukio
Iwakuma, "The Realism of Anselm and His Contemporaries," in D. E.
Luscombe and G. R. Evans (eds.), Anselm: Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). For discussion of his understanding of universals themselves, see Marilyn McCord Adams, "Was
Anselm a Realist?: The Monologion," Franciscan Studies 32 (1972); Desmond P. Henry, "Was Saint Anselm Really a Realist?," Ratio 5
(1963); and Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson (eds.), Anselm of Canterbury, vol. iv: Hermeneutical and Textual Problems in the Complete Treatises of St. Anselm (New York: Mellen Press, 1976).
14.
Anselm's argument in Cur Deus Homo 2.17, that all necessity and possibility are subject to God's will, might be taken to support this conclusion, assuming that some moral truths are necessary (or possible). It is important to recognize, however, that Anselm's concern in this chapter is primarily with the question of whether anything external to God necessitates (in the sense of compels) Him to do the things
He does.
15.
At least bracketing certain considerations having to do with natural law. See, e.g., Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a2ae, 94.
16.
See, e.g., De Libero Arbitrio 2.
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jeffrey e. brower 17.
Anselm actually distinguishes at one point (De Ver. 11) between the rightness perceptible by the senses and the rightness perceptible only by the mind, and argues that, strictly speaking, truth should be identified only with rightness of the latter sort. For my purposes, however, we can ignore this complication and think of rightness perceptible only by the mind as rightness in general.
18.
In this regard, Anselm may be consciously following Augustine's example in De Libero Arbitrio. In Book 2 of this work, Augustine is concerned to show that God is identical with truth, but he attempts to do so only after first attempting to establish the identity of truth with another evaluative notion (though in his case, the evaluative notion is wisdom rather rightness).
19.
See Der Ver. 2 and chapter 9 of this volume for Anselm's view of statements.
20.
This is most clear, as we have seen, in the case of statements. Interestingly, in the context of statements, Anselm distinguishes two kinds of rightness (or truth), which correspond exactly to the two kinds of goodness he distinguishes in the Monologion – namely, essential goodness and the kind-relative accidental goodness by which a thing is completed as a member of its kind (i.e., advantage). Thus, statements have one kind of rightness (or truth), he says, just in virtue of having the capacity to correspond to reality, and they have another kind of rightness (or truth) in virtue of actualizing this capacity (De Ver. 2). But this just appears to be another way of saying that, in virtue of possessing the first kind of rightness, a statement has essential goodness (and hence qualifies as a good statement in some respect), whereas in virtue of possessing the second kind of rightness, it also has the accidental goodness of advantage (and hence qualifies as a good statement in every respect).
21.
Cf., e.g., Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a2ae, 6 divisio textus.
22.
Indeed, if we distinguish, as Anselm does, the first and second rightness (or truth) of things, we can say that their first rightness will be their essential goodness and their second rightness will be their advantage
(or kind-relative accidental goodness).
23.
Here again, however, we can distinguish two species of goodness – namely, essential goodness and kind-relative accidental goodness. If we follow Anselm in referring to these two species of goodness as "first rightness" and "second rightness," we might call justice, to which goodness in general is coordinate, "third rightness."
24.
Anselm does say at certain points that we can speak of the justice or praiseworthiness of agents or actions, but he is careful to add that such moral goodness or value is wholly derivative on the praiseworthiness
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Anselm on ethics
of the will from which they proceed: "There is no justice that is not rightness, and no rightness other than rightness of will is called justice in its own right. For rightness of action is called justice, but only when the action proceeds from a correct will. Rightness of will, on the other hand, is always entitled to be called justice, even if it is impossible for what we rightly will to come about" (De Ver. 12; S i: 194.30–33).
Analogous points apply, he says, to the relationship between rightness of will and agents (cf., e.g., De Casu Diab. 9).
25.
Anselm also refers to this at one point as the "natural will" for advantage: "No one is compelled by fear or the expectation of something disadvantageous, or incited by love of something advantageous, to will something, unless he first has a natural will to avoid what is disadvantageous or to have what is advantageous" (De Casu Diab. 12; S i:
254.23–26).
26.
In the next sentence Anselm goes so far as to say: "In fact, no one wills anything unless he thinks that it is in some way advantageous for himself." This is a puzzling claim, since it suggests that it is impossible to will anything for the sake of rightness alone. Perhaps Anselm's point is merely that no one considers any course of action unless it at least appears in some way advantageous (though after considering it, one may will it on the basis of rightness alone).
27.
In this respect, Anselm's views about the two dispositions seem to differ from those of Duns Scotus, who follows Anselm in many other respects. Cf. John Boler, "Reflections on John Duns Scotus on the Will," in Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrj¨onsuuri (eds.), Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher,
2002).
28.
Although Anselm focuses specifically on angels here, it is clear that he thinks his discussion generalizes to all rational creatures.
29.
As Visser and Williams ("Anselm's Account of Freedom," 238) point out, no such conflict is required in the case of divine freedom: "Divine aseity in fact guarantees that every action God performs is selfinitiated. Even if, per impossibile, God never had alternative possibilities available to Him, every action of His will would still be free."
30.
Until recently, it was customary to downplay the role of virtue in Kant's ethics, and even to contrast Kantian views with those of virtue theorists generally; see, e.g., Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) and Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). But more recent commentators have begun to challenge the conventional wisdom; see, e.g., Stephen Engstrom, "The Concept of the Highest Good in Kant's Moral Theory," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52
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