Question Eighteen: Does The Exterior Act Add
Question Eighteen
DOES THE EXTERIOR ACT ADD
SOME GOODNESS OR BADNESS
TO THE INTERIOR ACT?
[1] 18.1 The next question concerns the interrelation of the extrinsic and intrinsic acts and asks whether the extrinsic adds some goodness or badness to the intrinsic.
Arguments Pro and Con Argument for the negative:?
That which is not voluntary is neither good nor bad. Now the external act insofar as it is distinct from the internal is not voluntary.
It derives what "voluntary" character it has from the internal act.
Therefore, the external act has no goodness or badness of its own and, having none, it cannot add any to the internal act.
18.2 Against this it is argued that what is forbidden by a distinct negative precept includes its own distinct illicitness. But the external act is forbidden by one precept and the internal act by another. This is clearly the case with the precepts "You shall not commit adultery' and 'You shall not covet your neighbor's wife''® as well as with the precepts "You shall not steal" and "You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.''* Body of the Question 18.3 It is moral, not natural, goodness that poses the major difficulty, for the answer is clear enough as regards natural goodness, no matter how you understand this term, since internal and external acts are by nature different. Indeed, they are elicited immediately by different powers, the internal by the will and the external by some external power subject to the will's command.
18.4 Neither does the question pose a problem where the external and internal are distinct acts either because they are elicited by dif1 Cf. Duns Scotus, Ord. 1, d.42, q.5 (ed. Vives xi, 448-77).
2 Aristotle, Ethica ad Nic. ul, c.7 (1113b5-19).
3 Exodus 20:17.
4 Ibid.
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ferent persons (where one has the internal act, for instance, and the other the external) or because they are performed by the same person at different times (for instance, the same subject has only an internal act at one time and an external act at another). Only when the two acts are conjoined does the question become difficult (when, for example, in the same person the internal act is followed by an external act).
18.5 Third, the question must be understood extensionally and not as the addition of intensive goodness or badness. For as regards both good and bad actions, it frequently happens that desire for the absent is a weaker act than an act concerned with something present, which Augustine calls "love." "Wanting what is present," he says, 'is love in the one who enjoys it."® But whether they be one or distinct, love is more perfect intensively than desire, since it satisfies the will in a way desire cannot do. When there is an exterior act, then, it can happen that the interior act is intensified. But this is not what the question is about. The issue is whether the external act of itself adds additional goodness to that which is proper to the internal act.
18.6 The sense in which the question creates the most difficulty, then, is this: Does the external act, when united with the internal act in one and the same person, have a moral goodness of its own distinct from that of the internal act?
18.7 To solve this question, three points require investigation: (1) Whence comes the moral goodness or badness of an act? (2) Does its laudability or its culpability spring from the same source? (3) Is the goodness or laudability of the external action distinct from that of the interior act?
ARTICLE I
The Source of Moral Goodness or Badness 18.8 [Description of moral goodness] The moral goodness of an act consists in its having all that the agent's right reason declares must pertain to the act or the agent in acting.
18.9 [Clarification] This description is explained as follows: Just as the primary goodness of a being, called "essential" and consisting in the integrity or perfection of the being itself, implies positively that there is no imperfection so that all lack or diminution of perfection is excluded, so the being's secondary goodness, which is something over and above, or "accidental," consists in its being per- > Augustine, De Trin. 1x, c.12, n.18: PL 42, 971-72; CCSL 50, 309-10.
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fectly suited to or in complete harmony with something else—something which ought to have it or which it ought to have. And this two-way suitability is commonly connected. As an example of the first, health is said to be good for man because it suits him. [As an example of the second,] food is called good because it has an appropriate taste. Augustine gives examples of both.® "Health without pain or fatigue is good," he says. This refers to the first type of suitability, since health is good for man because it suits him. Then Augustine adds: "Good is the face of a man with regular features, a cheerful expression, and glowing color." This is an instance of the second, because here the face is called good for having what is appropriate to it.
There is this difference between the two. What suits someone is said to be good for him, that is, for him it is a good or a perfection, but we do not speak of it as being accidentally or denominatively good in itself. That to which something is appropriate, on the other hand, is called good denominatively because it has what is suited to it. In the first case, the form takes its name from the subject in which it is. As the soul is called '"'human," so something is called "'good for man" because it is a human good. In the second case, the subject gets its designation from the form. Thus we say a man is good because of some good he has.
Now an act is by nature apt to be in agreement with its agent as well as to have something suited to itself. On both counts then it can be called "good" with a goodness that is accidental. This is true in general of a natural act as well, so that this goodness, which consists in having what is appropriate to it, is not only an accidental, but also a natural, goodness.'
18.10 Furthermore, some agents without intellect and will neither judge nor can judge what is appropriate to their acts. In such a case, what is suitable is determined by natural causes alone 8 Tbid., vil, c.g, n.4: PL 42, 949; CCSL 50, 272.
7 There is an addition found in M; at the end of 18.9. In Mz and W it follows 18.10:
And this suitability stems either from the nature of the terms or if it must generally be traced back to the judgment of some intellect
(since the intellect is the measure of suitability), this judgment will be that of the intellect which is the rule of the whole of nature, viz., the divine intellect. Indeed this intellect, just as it knows perfectly every being, so it knows perfectly the harmony or disagreement of one thing with another.
GOD AND CREATURES
and they incline the agent to act. Or if in addition there be the judgment of some mind and the movement of some will, it would be that of God alone as universal director and mover of the whole of nature. Now the goodness in the act of an agent without intellect and will is merely natural.
18.11 Over and above this general judgment [of God] about the suitability of the action (which concerns agents alike that act with or without knowledge), a general judgment is involved in the case of agents endowed with an intrinsic knowledge of their actions.
Those with sense knowledge alone somehow apprehend the suitability of the object of their action. But whether or not they judge the action appropriate, the goodness of the action does not transcend the natural. Others act by virtue of intellectual knowledge, which alone is able to pass judgment, properly speaking, upon the appropriateness of the action. Such agents are suited by nature to have an intrinsic rule of rectitude for their actions. Only they can have an act whose goodness is moral.
18.12 But for this it is not enough that the agent have the ability to adjudicate the appropriateness of his acts. He must actually pass judgment upon the act and carry it out in accord with that judgment. If one is in error and still acts in accord with the correct judgment of another, he is not acting rightly, for by his own knowledge he was meant to regulate his actions and in this case he is not acting in accord with it but against it, and hence he does not act rightly.
Similarly, such an agent elicits the sort of act as lies in his power.
Now he has in his power the sort of act he deliberately elicits, for the power of free choice consists either formally or concomitantly
Po in knowledge and election. And so it appears clear how the moral goodness of the act lies in its suitability judged according to the agent's right reason.
18.13 [Explanation of all that right reason demands of the act] We explain the added qualification [in 18.8], "all that must pertain to the act," in this way: Every judgment begins with something certain. Now the first judgment about the appropriateness cannot presuppose some knowledge determined by another intellect; otherwise it would not be first. Hence it presupposes something certain but judged by this intellect, namely: the nature of the agent and the power by which he acts together with the essential notion of the act.
If these three notions are given, no other knowledge is needed to judge whether or not this particular act is suited to this agent and
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this faculty. For instance, if one knows what man is, what his intellectual powers are, and what an act of understanding is, then it is clear to him that it befits man to understand with his intellect.
Knowing what it means to attain knowledge, it would also be clear to him what it is not appropriate for his mind to reach. Similarly, it is evident from the notions of the nature, the potency, and the act why understanding does not befit the brute, or rather why it is not compatible with his nature. For this first judgment, based precisely on the nature of the agent, the operative power and the act, reveals not something just ill-matched, i.e., some unbecoming or disorderly connection, but a simple inconsistency, i.e., the absolute impossibility of any such union.
18.14 What is more, from these three notions one can conclude what object is appropriate to a given act of a certain agent. Take the act of eating, for example. Food capable of restoring what man has lost would be its appropriate object, whereas a stone or something nourishing for animals but not for man would not be.
This delimitation introduced by the object first brings the act under the generic heading of moral. Not that the nature of its object determines its moral species; rather it opens it to further moral determination, for when an act has an appropriate object, it is capable of further moral specification in view of the circumstances in which it is performed. That is why an act is said to receive its generic goodness from its object, for just as genus is potential with respect to differences, so the goodness derived from its object first puts it into the generic class of moral acts. Only goodness of nature is presupposed. And once it has generic goodness, the way is open to all the additional moral specifications.
18.15 The procedure for determining specific goodness, called "goodness from circumstances," is as follows: The first goodness comes, it seems, from the circumstances of the end, for given the nature of the agent, of the action, of the object, one immediately concludes that such an action ought to be performed by this agent for such an end, and that it ought to be chosen and wanted for the sake of such an end. This circumstance is not precisely characteristic of the act as actually performed or not, but rather of the act as willed and related to this end by an act of the will. Indeed, the decision to do something for a worthy purpose is no less good when the external act that ensues fails to achieve that end than when it succeeds.
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The next circumstance seems to be the manner in which the action is performed. How it ought to be performed we infer from all or from some of the aforementioned considerations.
Next come our conclusions regarding the appropriate ume. For a given action done for such a purpose and in such a manner is not always befitting such an agent; it is appropriate only when the act can be directed to or can attain such an end.
Last of all is the circumstance of place. Indeed there are many acts with complete moral goodness in which place plays no part.*
18.16 It is clear then how many conditions right reason sets down, for according to the description given above [in 18.8], to be perfectly good, an act must be faultless on all counts. Hence Dionysius® declares: "Good requires that everything about the act be right, whereas evil stems from any single defect." "Everything," he explains, includes all the circumstances.
18.17 Objection: Circumstances are relations whereas good is a quality, according to the Ethics?°; virtue is also a quality, according to the Categories."
I answer: According to the Physics!?: "All virtue and malice are relative.' That acts be good or virtuous, therefore, implies one or several relations. But like "healthy" or "beautiful," "good" or "virtuous'' are spoken of, and predicated, as qualities, and this commonly happens with the fourth type of quality.*
18.18 [The source of moral badness] In view of the second part of the citation [in 18.16] from Dionysius we ought to look into the source of moral badness in an act.
Badness can be opposed to goodness in an act either privatively or as its contrary. Man is said to be bad in this second sense if he has some vice, for though this implies a privation of a perfection that should be there, a vice is certainly a positive habit. In the other sense, man is said to be bad privatively if he lacks the goodness he ought to have, even if he does not have the contrary vice or vicious habit.18
18.19 We find this distinction in Boethius't where he explains the * Cf. Duns Scotus, Ord. u1, d.4o, q.un. (ed. Vivés x1, 424-27).
* Ps. Dionysius, De div. nomin., c.4, 30: PG 3, 806; Dionysiaca 1, 298-99.
10 Aristotle, Ethica ad Nic. x, c.2 (1173a13-22).
11 Aristotle, Praedicam, c.8 (8b30).
12 Aristotle, Physic. vil, c.3 (246b2-8).
13 Cf. Duns Scotus, Ord. u1, d.7, q.un., n.12 (ed. Vives x11, 387).
14 Boethius, In categorias Aristot. 11: PL 64, 255.
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first characteristic of quality: "They say justice is not contrary to injustice, for they think injustice is a privation and not a contrary state.' And he adds in refutation: "Many habits are expressed in privative terms such as 'illiberality' and 'imprudence.' These would never be contrasted with virtues, which are habits, if they themselves were not habits."
18.20 Reason also justifies this distinction. For it can happen that an act is performed under circumstances that are not all they should be [to make the act morally good], yet neither are they so improper that they ought not to be there, for instance, when an action is neither directed to an appropriate end nor to an inappropriate one.
In such a case the act is bad only privatively, not contrarily as it would be if it were performed for some unlawful purpose. And from many similar acts, a corresponding habit would arise, namely, one whose "badness'' is privative rather than a positive contrary.
For example, to give alms, not for a good end such as the love of God or to help one's neighbor, but not for a bad end either such as out of vainglory or to hurt someone, is an act of this sort that is privatively, not contrarily, bad.
It is to such privative "badness" that Dionysius refers when he [8] states that the absence of any one of the required circumstanccs suffices to render the act bad. But for it to be bad contrarily there must be some positive circumstance present that involves some deformity.
18.21 Briefly, then, just as moral goodness is integral suitability, so moral badness is unsuitability. Privative badness is a lack of suitability, i.e., the absence of what ought to be there, whereas badness as the contrary of goodness is unsuitability as a contrary state, Le., as some condition that is incompatible with suitability.
18.22 [Corollary] From what has been said this corollary follows: The same fundamental act can have a manifold moral goodness. It is not just that it is correct in all its circumstances (something which invests the act not with many goodnesses but with one integral goodness), but it can also have at the same time all that is needed for two distinct virtues, and thus be directed to several ends according to different dictates of perfect prudence. For example,
I go to church to fulfill an obligation in justice, because of obedience or some vow. And I also go out of charity or love of God, to pray or to worship him. And I also go out of fraternal charity to edify my neighbor. In short the more morally good motives there are, the bet-
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ter the act is. This is true whether the goodness in question be moral goodness alone or that additional goodness we call meritorious.
18.23 In like fashion, badness multiplies if one and the same act violates several dictates of reason.'°
INRIPCCIOTE,
LOL The Source of Laudability and Culpability 18.24 [Meaning of the terms, especially "imputable''] In regard to the second main problem [in 18.7] let me say that "praiseworthy" and "blameworthy," and more generally "remunerable" or "punishable," come under the general designation "imputable."" What all these have in common is that the acts to which they refer are in the free power of the agent. Now although this power involves both intellect and will, it is only the will, I say, that can completely account for the indifference or indeterminacy as regards the alternative—the indifference, namely, that consists in the fact that the action which occurred might not have occurred, or vice versa
(''indifference to the alternative" must be understood here disjunctively, not conjunctively, that is to say, im sensu diviso, not in sensu composito*).
Every other active potency acts naturally,* and of itself is thus determined to one effect, i.e., to one of two contradictories. Even if its activity ranges over disparate effects as is the case of the manifold terrestrial effects produced by the sun, if we consider one particular effect or its contradictory, we see the cause is determined to produce this. Thus the sun* is determined to cause this herb to grow or this worm to be produced, and the same with other effects.
The will alone is indeterminate as regards contradictory effects, and it determines itself to one of the two, as is clear from the Metaphysics'*; otherwise it would cause contrary effects at the same time.
It is because the will has its act in its power indeterminately, presupposing only knowledge, that the act is essentially imputable to the agent. Hence St. Augustine says?7: "It is clear that if this movement is called culpable, it is not natural but voluntary." And then the disciple's comment follows: "If the movement by which the will
15 See Appendix, Addition 18.23.
16 Aristotle, Metaph. 1x, c.5 (1048a5-15).
17 es Gr De libero arbitr. 1m, c.1, nn.2-3: PL 32, 1271-72; CCSL 29, 75°79:
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turns in different directions were not voluntary and under our control, man would not deserve praise or blame," as we said in the question [in 16.47ff.] on the natural necessity in the will.
18.25 '"Imputable," then, implies a dual relationship, one to the dominion or power of the agent, the other to something which in justice corresponds to the act or to the agent because of the act. The first relation remains unchanged whether the act be good or bad; whereas the second varies. Not, indeed, that it changes formally from good to bad, but given the difference between good and bad judged in terms of suitability or lack thereof, as explained in the first article [in 16.8ff.], the second relation varies accordingly. For good is imputable for praise or reward, whereas evil is imputable for blame or punishment. A neutral or indifferent act is imputed to the agent in whose power it lies as somehow blameworthy because he could have acted according to the dictates of right reason, or at least it is credited to him as unpraiseworthy and this because of a defect on his part, for he could have acted in a praiseworthy fashion.
18.26 From all this it is clear that an act is not imputable and formally good in a moral sense for the same reason. It has moral goodness because it conforms to a rule or norm as it should. It is imputable because it lies in the free power of the agent. Praiseworthy and blameworthy presuppose both. For while they formally assert the act is imputable (specifying that for which it is imputable), they connote materially the reason why the act is imputable in one way or the other, namely, the goodness or badness, which are the grounds for its being imputed for praise or punishment.
18.27 [Two types of imputable acts] We can distinguish two senses of "imputable.'"' What is most properly imputable lies immediately in the power of the will, and in this sense only volition itself is imputable since it alone is immediately in the will's power.
In another sense, anything is imputable that falls simply, though not immediately, under the control of the will. If the will by its command can make another power elicit an action or can prevent it from doing so, then that action is also imputable to the will, for the whole causal chain leading up to and including that act lies in the power of the will.
18.28 There is a difference between what is imputable in the first and second ways. For the first, only the potency of the will and the intellection which the act of the will presupposes are needed, be- [11]
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cause volition is an immediate effect of the will. In this sense Augustine's statement should be understood'*: "Nothing is so in the power of the will as the will itself." By "will" we should understand not its entity but its proper act. For the execution of an act imputable in the second way, however, another potency besides the will is required.
18.29 From this it follows that the contingency or indeterminacy of the act imputable in the first sense is somehow greater, since only the will plus sufficient intellectual light is needed for it. Consequently nothing posterior can impede its execution. An act imputable in the second way requires another faculty whose impotence can impede the will's power over the act. Its contingency does not depend only on the indifference of the will as does the contingency of the first act. And since the contingency of any other cause or power is more removed from the single contingency characteristic of the will's causation, it follows that the contingency of an act imputable in the first way is simply greater than that of an act imputable in the second way. Nevertheless, since an act imputable in the second sense depends on different factors and any one of them or their absence can impede the effect, we could say that such an effect is more contingent or, better, is contingent on more than one count.
ARTICLE III
Is the Goodness or Laudability of the External Action Distinct from That of the Interior Act?
(12] 18.30 [Two points must be studied] As for the third main problem [in 18.7] we can say first of all that the external or commanded act has some moral goodness of its own distinct from that of the interior elicited act. Second, we shall see whether it has its own imputability or not.
1. The Exterior Act has Its Own Moral Goodness 18.31 [Two proofs] The first conclusion is established in two ways.
First by a text from Augustine': "For though everyone is made wretched by the bad will alone, he becomes more wretched by the power whereby the desire of the bad will is satisfied. And though he would be wretched by the bad will alone, yet he would be less
18 Augustine, Retract. 1, c.g (8), n.3, and c.22
(21), n.4: PL 32, 596, 620;
CSEL 36, 39.
18 Augustine, De Trin. xin, c.5, n.8: PL 42, 1020; CCSL goa, 392.
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wretched if he could have had nothing of those things which he has wrongfully willed." ""Wretchedness" obviously does not refer to pain or suffering, for he who wants something and cannot get what he desires has more pain than he who satisfies his desires. Hence it must be understood of the wretchedness of guilt. Therefore, the evil of the external act adds to the misery of guilt present in the internal act.
18.32 Reason proves the same point. From the first article [18.8ff.], we know that moral goodness consists in an act having all that the agent's right reason declares must pertain to the act. But the demands of right reason are different for the internal and external acts. Therefore, their moral goodness or badness is also different. This holds true whether the badness be privative (because something is missing that should be there) or contrary
(because something is present that is incompatible with what should be there).
18.33 Proof of the minor: Right reason does not demand the impossible. Now what suits or can suit the internal act cannot possibly also suit the external act if we consider both acts in their real being and what is appropriate to this. For while the external act as an object willed, but not as an elicited act, does in some sense pertain denominatively (by a kind of extrinsic denomination) to what is appropriate in reality to the internal act, still the same thing does not suit each in the same way. Since the potencies responsible for the internal and external acts are incapable of having the same act, indeed their natures differ, it follows that what suits their respective acts must also differ in nature, or at least—and this suffices for our purpose—what is appropriate to each is different.
With this in mind, the answers to certain objections to our position become clear.
18.34 [Objections] Against the foregoing it is argued:
First, the truth of the act of understanding and of the object understood is one and the same. For like reasons the goodness of the act of willing and of the object willed should be the same.
The antecedent seems clear from these examples: As the truth of a principle is immediate, so the knowledge of it can be called immediate in contrast to the mediate knowledge of the conclusion.
Similarly, the knowledge of a principle is derived from its terms, and the knowledge of a conclusion is derived from principles. In this same way truth pertains to principles and truth pertains to conclusions.
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18.3% Confirmation of the same point: Where one thing exists because of another, we have but one thing. Now the external act has goodness only because of the goodness present in the internal act.
Therefore, the goodness of one is not distinct from that of the other.
18.36 Besides, according to Anselm,?° sin is lack of due justice.
But there is but one such lack in the internal and external acts, for justice and injustice—according to him—are by their nature able to exist only in the will.
18.37 Besides, where there is but one act of aversion and inordinate desire, there seems to be but one formal reason for sin. In the internal and external act, however, there is but a single act of aversion, for the will is the only faculty capable both of turning towards or turning away from the end. The same should be said of inordinate desire which Augustine?! sometimes calls cupidity and defines it properly as 'the venom of charity." Hence it is properly in that faculty in which charity is apt to be, which is the will alone.
[14] 18.38 [Answer to the objections] Reply to the first [in 18.34]: The same truth which pertains formally to the act of understanding does belong in some other way (viz., objectively) to the object known insofar as this exists in the intellect. Similarly, that goodness which pertains formally to volition does belong in some derivative fashion to the willed object qua willed. Yet for all that, the [external] act, insofar as it has real being apart from the will, can have a goodness of its own just as it can have a real suitability or inappropriateness of its own.
18.39 And the argument [of 18.35] cited in confirmation can lead to the opposite conclusion. If the interior act is really the means whereby the exterior act acquires an appropriateness by being in agreement with a rule of its own, then this appropriateness must be other than that characteristic of the interior act, for nothing functions as a Cause or means with respect to itself.
We have an example of this in the acts of the intellect. Even though a conclusion derives its truth from the principle used to prove it, it still has a truth of its own, for the agreement between what exists and what it affirms to be the case in virtue of its own terms is something proper to itself. It is not the truth of the principle that formally constitutes its own truth, for the conclusion is a mediate and demonstrated truth, and the truth it possesses is formally demonstrable truth.
20 Anselm, De conceptu virg. c.5: PL 158, 438-39.
*1 Augustine, De diversis quaest. 83, q.36, n.1: PL 40, 25.
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Similarly, where many different conclusions follow in a certain sequence from the same principle, each has its own distinct truth.
It may even be that the prior conclusion is truer and more necessary since it does not depend for its necessity upon the subsequent conclusions but vice versa.
In like manner, every false conclusion which conflicts with the same truth has its own distinct falsity, for what each asserts disagrees in a different way with what is actually the case.
It is the same with the acts of the will. Volition is not the only act that is able by nature to be in conformity or in disagreement with what right reason dictates. This is also true of the commanded act by reason of its being willed. And though the norm to which each act must conform is the same, the acts themselves are different and so too are their respective agreements, even though these be to the same norm.
18.40 You may object: Truth pertains to nothing outside the mind. It belongs solely to the act of the intellect or to the object insofar as it is in the mind. Analogously, then, goodness pertains to the external act only as the object of volition and not as elicited externally.
I reply: The analogy could be denied according to those words of the Metaphysics??: ''Falsity and truth are not in things—it is not as if the good were true and the bad were in itself false—but in thought."
Another way of answering would be to deny the antecedent. For if some intellect were to function as the norm for what is understood in the way the divine intellect is the rule and exemplar for the creature, then one could maintain that the object is true not only as actually known but also in itself, since in its very being it is modeled on and conformed to its exemplar.
18.41 [To the second objection] As for the other [in 18.36], I say:
Justice may mean habitual rectitude or refer to a habit of the will, in virtue of which the will would be said to be habitually righteous even when it is not actually willing something. Thus we would call a sleeper ''just" if he had the habit, and we would call him "unjust" if he lacked it or had a contrary habit of injustice. In another sense, however, rectitude could be understood to mean that which is actualized or in act and it would consist in the conformity of the elicited act with a norm. The first type of justice is quite generally admitted. For the second we give some proof. An action is not said
22 Aristotle, Metaph. v, c.4 (1027b25-30).
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to be formally right or just simply because the will is in the habitual state of justice, for this state is compatible with an act that is indifferent or even venially sinful, neither of which is just or right. What is needed is that the rectitude, by reason of which the act is formally called just, be present in the act while the action is going on. Perhaps it is not immediately in the will but in the act itself and by means of the act it is mediately in the will. For what the nature of the will is able to receive immediately is the habit and the act of volition. But actual justice is neither of these. It is rather a certain condition of the act itself, such as its conformity to a rule.
[16] 18.42 This would be more obvious if the action were not over in an instant but remained for a while. For just as one and the same movement numerically and specifically can be rapid at first and slow later (from which it follows that neither its rapidity nor its slowness is absolutely identical with the movement), so an action that continued for some time might at first be elicited in conformity to right reason and afterwards not, and so would be righteous at first and afterwards not. But the action is over in a moment or, if it continues awhile, its rectitude commonly remains, so that there is no switch from right to wrong. Consequently, the distinction between the act and its rectitude is not so evident.
Nevertheless, we can infer its existence in the ways mentioned above. It can be proved also in this way. If a relation is not a necessary consequence of the nature of its foundation, then it is not completely identical with the foundation. But rectitude is not a necessary consequence of the nature of the act. Also, actual justice of a secondary kind can be present in the commanded act (even though its primary form exists only in the act of volition), for the commanded act has a rightness of its own even though this is dependent upon the volition being right.
The statement, then, that justice is only in the will refers to habitual justice, which, as Anselm puts it, is rightness preserved for its own sake. For what is preserved pertains to the habit, or if we extend the meaning of ''preserved," then the definition would be true of primary actual justice for this also is "'preserved for its own sake," i.e., the will keeps it in its act, which it elicits rightly by means of [habitual] justice. If we are speaking about actual justice in the secondary sense, however, it must be admitted that this is only causally, not subjectively, in the will. So that even here the definition that justice is rectitude of will can somehow be saved, not indeed in the sense that rightness formally inheres in the will, but that it pertains
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to the will as causing or commanding, and this rightness is wanted or "preserved for its own sake,' namely, as an effect caused voluntarily.
[17] 18.43 [Corollaries}] From this some corollaries follow that clarify our thesis.
First corollary: Given the same habitual justice, there are as many actual justices as there are elicited acts. And if one is elicited with greater effort than another, one can be more intense than the other, even though the habit remains equal. The first act can be elicited with more effort (in which case its actual justice will be correspondingly more intense), whereas the second act can be done with less effort, even though it is certain the habitual justice is not less.
18.44 Second corollary: Each evil act has an actual badness of its own. For just as each act is able to have its own goodness because it conforms to the same or different dictates of reason, so too each may be lacking such conformity.
18.45 Third corollary: Instances of badness differ in the same way as do the corresponding instances of goodness that ought to have been there. If the difference is specific or numerical in the one case, it is the same in the other. For privations are distinguished in terms of the corresponding habits that might have been there. For instance, deafness and blindness are specifically different privations even as hearing and vision are specifically different positively. This and that case of blindness are numerically distinct privations, even as this and that case of seeing are numerically distinct in a positive way.??
18.46 [Additional corollaries] From this it is clear how not only vices, speaking physically, but also sins, speaking theologically, can be distinguished numerically, specifically, and even generically. It is not just in terms of the distinction of things to which one turns in sinning, for this neither constitutes the sin nor distinguishes one sin from another; rather it is the proper nature of the privation which provides the formal grounds for distinguishing privatively, just as it is the proper nature of the corresponding virtue that is the basis for positive distinctions.
18.47 It is also clear why one sin is more grievous than another, whether their differences in gravity be specific or within the same species. For the greater, specifically or intensively, the goodness that should be there, the worse the act that lacks it. If it is a simple
23 Cf. Duns Scotus, Ord. 1, d.37, q.1, n.g (ed. Vives x11, 359).
GOD AND CREATURES
lack, the act is privatively worse; if something positively incompatible be present, the act is contrarily worse.**
18.48 Third, we see why the damned can continue to sin ad infinitum and still their nature is not consumed, nor is any natural aptitude or anything else in their nature. For nothing created can cause an intellectual nature or anything in it to perish, and if it could diminish such a nature, it could eventually destroy it completely.** 18.49 Similarly, the contingent effect does not accompany its cause necessarily. Hence the opposite of that effect or of something in the effect does not destroy or diminish the cause. Now the badness of the act is a privation in a contingent effect of the will. Therefore, it does not diminish anything pertaining to the will itself.
18.50 What then does sin added to sin take away? For according to Augustine?®: "Evil is there to the extent that it takes away a measure of goodness."
I answer: Obviously the actual badness of an elicited act does not take away some good that is there at the same time; neither does it destroy some good that was there, for as we said above [in 18.42], the act takes place too quickly to change from good to evil.
But if a "good that was there" refers to the gratuitous habit [of grace or charity] that sin destroys, Augustine's dictum cannot mean every sin removes this; the second sin does not, for the first already destroyed it. Yet there is nothing essential to the first sin that makes it more destructive than the second. If there were, then the first would be simply more heinous than the second, since it takes away a greater good. But the second sin is sometimes more serious than the first and is by nature apt to take away even more. What it does take away essentially [per se] is actual goodness, and it would also remove the habitual or gratuitous goodness if it were present.
What sin in general destroys, then, is something which should have been there, just as blindness in one born blind does not take away sight that was there but which should have been there. Thus Augustine?' says of the angel who sinned that "he fell not from a state he had received, but from what he would have received had he chosen
24 Cf. ibid., Iv, d.50, q.6, nn.12-13 (ed. Vivés xxi, 569-70); 1, d.21, q.2, n.3 (ed. Vivés xm, 141); d.37, q.1, nn.8-10 (ibid., 358-60).
25 Cf. ibid., 11, d.37, q.1, n.4 (ed. Vivés x11, 354).
*6 Augustine, Enchirid., c.4, n.12: PL 40, 237; CCSL 96, 54.
27 Augustine, Super Gen. x1, c.23, n.g0: PL 34, 441.
QUESTION EIGHTEEN
to submit to God." And if sin were heaped upon sin ad infinitum, each would take away some goodness of its own which should have been there. Neither is it incongruous that a finite good which contains virtually, so to say, an infinity of effects to be elicited successively, also have an unlimited amount of righteousness corresponding to them.
18.51 [To the third objection] As for the objection [in 18.37] that there is but one act of aversion, we can take aversion to the end in several senses. For one thing, it can mean an actual nolition of the end. In this sense, it is clear that not every sinner has aversion for the end. Perhaps the sinner often does not actually think of it, or if he does, he does not view it with any malice.
Another way would be to understand this turning from the end, B19) not as formal, but as a kind of virtual aversion, which would consist in the will's accepting something incompatible with any effective volition or attainment of the end. Such would be the case if the will wanted something absolutely inordinate that would prevent any attainment of the end, for instance, something in violation of a divine command which must be observed if the end is to be reached. In this sense also, aversion pertains solely to the will.
In a third and larger sense, however, aversion can refer to any sort of malice which keeps one effectively from willing or attaining the end. Now an act commanded by the will can be bad in this sense, for if it is evil to command such an act, the will no longer efficaciously wills the ultimate end nor its attainment.?*
18.52 Now just as the ability to be related or directed to the end can be called "conversion," so the ability to be directed away from it can be called "aversion."" When it is claimed there is but one aversion in the external and internal act, this would be true of aversion taken in the first two senses, since this is present only in the internal act. But the further claim that aversion, so understood, is the formal ground for sin must be denied. The way a commanded act can be "turned away'—which can be called aversion in the third sense
—suffices.
18.53 As for what is said [in 18.37] about "inordinate desire," if this means ''bad will," i.e., immoderate volition, then inordinate desire is not formally present in all sin; it is only present with sin
28 Cf. Duns Scotus, Ord. 1, d.qi1, q.un., nn.2-3 (ed. Vives XII, 434-35); d.43, q.1, n.2 (ibid., 483); 4.37, q.1, n.8 (ibid., 358-59).
GOD AND CREATURES
either formally or causally. To make inordinate desire or cupidity coextensive with sin, therefore, one must extend its meaning to cover not only the interior acts but also the commanded acts of the will that are immoderate.
2. The External Act is Imputable [20] 18.54 As for the second point of this article [in 18.30], viz., concerning imputability, it is clear from the distinction made [in 18.27] of article two, that only what is immediately in the will's power is strictly speaking imputable, and that is volition and nolition.
But if "imputable" be taken in general as anything that is simply in the will's power, then a commanded act is properly imputable.
For even though it is not immediately in the power of the will, it is put into execution by volition which falls under the will's control not only qua volition but also qua principle of the external act, for the will can place the external act by means of the internal. For example, if a servant kills on the command of his master, the death is imputed mediately to the master, for the servant's action was in his power.
18.55 If one objects, as before, that the external act is imputable only by means of the internal, I reply: From this our thesis follows, viz., that the imputability of one is not that of the other, for nothing functions as cause or means with respect to itself. We can also explain this the way we explained the proper goodness of the external act [in 18.31f.]. Though the term be the same, different foundations bear different relationships to it. Now the external and internal acts represent different foundations. And even though imputability pertains to each with reference to the same will, it will be different in each even as the way they are caused and the way in which they fall under the control of the same will is different.?9
Reply to the Initial Argument [21] 18.56 Answer to the argument at the beginning [in 18.1]: ""Voluntary" can mean: (a) what is the will as in a subject, (b) what is willed by the will, or (c) what is commanded by the will. The first is not 29 There is an addition found in M; and M: only:
On the contrary: Those who do not differ in the power of their will do not differ in sinning, but he who sins and he would equally want to sin but is powerless to do so are equal as regards that which is in the power of their will and differ only in that which is not in their power.
Therefore, etc.
QUESTION EIGHTEEN
enough to make something completely voluntary, for a habit can exist in the will and be there involuntarily, as when the will is sad.
The second is called ''voluntary" in a participated sense because its acceptation as an object is voluntary. It should be called ''willed,"' however, rather than 'voluntary.' Properly speaking, then, voluntary is what lies in the power of the will, which is the third sense.
And thus the external act would be as simply voluntary as the internal act, even though it is not equally first since it presupposes the internal act.?° Proof of the minor: I say that while the external act apart from the internal (i.e., when it is performed without the latter) is not voluntary, for a more remote effect is not called "voluntary" if it is not actualized by the more proximate effect (i.e., the internal act), nevertheless when the external act is joined to the internal and proceeds from the latter, it not only becomes a voluntary act, but has a distinctive ground for being so, for it is "mediately voluntary," whereas the interior act is "immediately voluntary."
30 M. and W have the following addition:
Therefore, voluntary must mean that which is caused by the will and this either directly or by command, although that which is elicited by the will is called voluntary in the primary sense rather than that which is commanded. Therefore, let the major be conceded, but understand voluntary generally, and in this sense the minor is false.