III. From what source cognition has its extension to praxis
ORDINATIO PROLOGUE, PART , QQ. AND (OMITTING NN. –)
book, where Aristotle says that "the truth of practical consideration is agreement with correct desire" [1139a29–31].
I have said "aptitudinal" because neither relation needs to be actual. That praxis in conformity with consideration actually follows that consideration is entirely accidental to the consideration and wholly contingent; for if actual extension to praxis were required for cognition to be called practical,13 no cognition would be necessarily practical, but one and the same cognition would be sometimes practical, sometimes speculative, which is nonsense. So this twofold aptitudinal extension, or aptitude for extension, is all that is required.
To develop the point further: it is generally conceded that practical cognition is extended to praxis as what directs to what is directed, or as what regulates to what is regulated. Now the fact that cognition is naturally prior to praxis, and in conformity with it, is not a matter of its being conformed to the praxis as something prior; rather, it is a matter of its conforming praxis as something posterior; in other words, it is a matter of being that to which praxis is to be conformed, that is, of directing and regulating praxis. Now whether its directing praxis or conforming praxis to itself is a matter of some sort of efficient causality with respect to praxis will be discussed in Book II, distinction 25.
From this second point it is evident that practical and speculative are not essential differences of habit, science, or knowledge in general, because 'practical' indicates a twofold aptitudinal relation of knowledge (which is something quasi-absolute) to praxis as its terminus, and 'speculative' indicates a privation of that same twofold relation; and neither a relation nor its privation belongs to the essence of something absolute. Rather, it is like a division of a genus by the proper passions of its species, as number is divided by even and odd, and line by straight and curved. For 'practical' belongs to a given instance of knowledge, and 'speculative' to another, per se in the second mode in virtue of an intrinsic cause of the predicate in the subject.
III. From what source cognition has its extension to praxis A. The first view
On the third topic there are various views. One of them14 is that the intellect is called practical from one source and an act or habit from another. The idea is that truth
13 Reading si enim ab actuali extensione diceretur cognitio practica for the edition's si enim ab actuali extensione diceretur praxis. Though the edition's reading has much greater MS support, it can't be correct: praxis is not what is "extended"; practical consideration or cognition is extended to praxis. And it is clearly consideratio or cognitio, not praxis, that must be understood as the subject of the next two verbs.
14 Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl. X q. 11 in corp.; Thomas Aquinas, De veritate q. 3 a. 3 in corp., ST I q.
79 a. 11 in corp.
THEOLOGY, PRAXIS, AND PRACTICAL SCIENCE
within the scope of action and truth outside the scope of action are special objects, formally diverse, and therefore they ground a per se distinction between the things they concern per se—namely, acts and habits—which are called "practical" because they concern what is within the scope of action. By contrast, the intellect is called practical only if it is active, which is the case only for an intellect that apprehends an order to action; and an intellect does that only if it is moved by a desire for an end.
Thus, practical intellect necessarily includes in its act—not formally, because of the essence of the act, but by way of connotation—an order, explicitly, to desire for an end and, implicitly, to desire for those things that are for the end. Hence, because a speculative matter's being ordered to action is accidental to that speculative matter
(though its being capable of being ordered to action is not accidental to it), a difference between the speculative and the practical intellect deriving from an ordering to action is accidental15 and depends on a relation to something outside the intellect, even though in the case of habits and acts it is a formal difference, deriving from the formal difference between an object within the scope of action and an object outside the scope of action. That is why it is said in De anima III [433a14–15] that the speculative and practical intellect differ in virtue of their end, and in Ethics VI [1139a29–31] that "the good of the practical intellect is truth in agreement with correct desire."
240 Example: the speculative intellect apprehends health as a suitable good; appetite desires it; and in some way there follows a consideration on the part of the practical intellect that health is to be achieved. So long as that desire for the end remains, the practical intellect proceeds discursively from the principle "something through which a better state can be acquired is to be procured," and that discursive reasoning comes to a terminus in the final conclusion of deliberation. This whole train of reasoning has as its principle the apprehension of the desired end, which is the first object of practical intellect; and once means to the end have been discovered, there is action. So this discursive reasoning presupposes a willing of the end and is ordered to the choice that follows deliberation.
241 So to put it briefly, this view consists in the claim that the distinction between practical and speculative intellect derives from the end, which is accidental to the object, whereas the difference and distinction between a practical and a speculative habit derive from the formal difference between their special objects. An argument against this view is that Metaphysics II [993b20–1] says of habits that "the end of the speculative is truth, whereas the end of the practical is action."
242 Likewise, if this view were correct, then a practical habit would be in the speculative intellect, and the intellect would not be called practical in virtue of that habit, which 15 Cf. Henry of Ghent, Summa a. 36 q. 4 in corp. and ad 1.
ORDINATIO PROLOGUE, PART , QQ. AND (OMITTING NN. –)
seems incongruous, since in the case of every habit what has the habit is denominated in accordance with the nature of the habit.
To the first objection [n. 241] they16 reply that the end of a practical science is action potentially and aptitudinally, insofar as the object of that science is per se within the scope of action; but an object that is within the scope of action is considered by this habit in a universal way, and that consideration is not sufficient for the object's being made subject to action in actuality and in particular. In the case of good things, actuality is better than potentiality, and for that reason a particular and actual consideration of the object is required; but that consideration is by a habit other than practical science, and it is that habit alone that is in the practical intellect.
To the second argument [n. 242] he says that the intellect can be called practical denominatively, not in an unqualified sense, but understanding that the denomination is made on the basis of the habit.
Against this response: then a practical habit and practical act can be in the speculative intellect, because a habit or act that is by its nature practical can be in the intellect without any such relation to an act of will as this view requires.
They would concede the consequent but claim that there could be another habit, generated not merely from practical acts but from acts of the practical intellect, in the practical intellect.
Against this: a practical habit generated from practical acts would suffice for the very same things as that other habit generated from acts of the practical intellect, since a will that commands consideration on account of such-and-such an end does not change the nature of that consideration in directing it, and consequently neither does it change the nature of the habit generated from these considerations.
Also, if that were the case, many accidents of the same species would be in a single subject. For an ordering or lack of ordering to a will is not a specific difference between one act and another, and similarly it is not a specific difference between one habit and another.
Also, third, I argue as follows against the view in itself: a subject is denominated more from a per se and essential condition of its accident than from an accidental condition of its accident; so if the intellect can be called practical on the basis of an accidental condition of its habit—namely, on the basis of its ordering on the part of the will, which orders the act of that habit to something else—all the more so can it be called practical on the basis of the essential order of the act by which the act is called essentially practical. So evidently the intellect is called practical on the same basis as a habit and an act, although 'practical' is not said accidentally of a habit or an act in the way that it is of the intellect, with respect to which being-practical is a per accidens accident.
16 Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl. X q. 11 in corp.
THEOLOGY, PRAXIS, AND PRACTICAL SCIENCE
B. The second view 248 Another view17 is that a habit and an act are called practical on the basis of the end and of the extension of practical cognition to praxis, which is extension to the end.
The authorities for this view were cited above [nn. 223–5].
249 There are also arguments from reason.18 First, a habit is called practical on the basis of either its object or its end. Not on the basis of its proper object, because the intellect
"becomes practical by extension," which is true only of one and the same intellect that is first speculative and afterward practical when it is extended to action; therefore, there can be both speculative and practical consideration of one and the same object.
250 Second, medicine is divided into speculative and practical, and yet it concerns a single subject: health, or the body as capable of being made healthy.
251 Also, an act is called practical because it is morally good or bad. Moral goodness and badness characterize an act in virtue of its circumstances. And the first and most important of those circumstances is the circumstance of the end.19 Therefore, etc.20
252 Against this position I argue as follows: Are a habit and an act called practical because of actual extension to action or merely because of aptitudinal or habitual extension to action? Not because of actual extension, as I held in the second article [nn.
236–8] and as they concede themselves, since if that were the case a carpenter who doesn't intend to make anything would not have practical cognition.21 So it's because of aptitudinal extension. But if an aptitude that can characterize one nature is incompatible with some other nature, that can only be because of something absolute in such a nature. For it is because a nature is so-and-so that such-and-such an aptitude can characterize it. Therefore, this aptitude presupposes some intrinsic condition in that consideration in virtue of which such an aptitude can characterize it. This condition of the consideration in itself is from some cause prior to the consideration; but its prior causes are the intellect and the object; therefore, it is from either the intellect or from some object that such an aptitude can characterize this consideration.
253 Suppose someone were to say that the end is a prior cause—indeed, the first among all the causes, as Avicenna says in Metaphysics VI [c. 5]—and thus it is from the end
17 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. VIII q. 1 in corp., XII q. 22 in corp., Summa a. 36 q. 4 ad 2, a. 59 q. 6 in corp., a. 60 q. 1 ad 1 contra aliud; Richard Middleton, Quodl. II q. 1 in corp., Sent. prol. q. 4 in corp.; Giles of Rome, Sent. I d. 19 pars 2 q. 2 princ. q. 1 in corp., Quodl. II q. 19 in corp. and ad 2; Bonaventure, Sent.
I prooem. q. 3 in corp.
18 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. VIII q. 1 in corp.
19 See Ordinatio II d. 40 q. un., IV d. 14 q. 1 n. 75, d. 26 q. un. n. 19. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II q. 7 a. 4 in corp.
20 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. XIII q. 10 in corp. and ad 1, VIII q. 1 in corp.
21 Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl. X q. 11 in corp.; Thomas Aquinas, De veritate q. 3 a. 3 in corp.
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that the consideration is of such a nature that such an aptitude can characterize it.22
I argue on the contrary that an end is a cause only as something loved and desired that moves the efficient cause to the exercise of its efficient causality.23 But the aptitude we're talking about can characterize the consideration whether the end is loved or not. For such cognition can be in the intellect no matter how the will relates to it—indeed, even if no will were conjoined to the intellect. And thus it is not in virtue of the end as final cause that this aptitude can characterize that cognition; for nothing is present from some cause that is present when that cause is not causing.
Suppose you say that the end is apt to be loved before that aptitude is present in cognition. I argue on the contrary that that does not salvage your claim, because an effect has something from its cause only if the cause actually causes, not merely because the cause is apt to cause it. Therefore, cognition does not have that aptitude, or the nature from which such an aptitude follows, because the end is apt to cause it, but only if the end actually causes it. And it does not actually cause as a final cause unless it, as actually loved and desired, moves the efficient cause to acting; therefore, etc.
Furthermore, it is either the end as elicited and possessed externally or the end as considered and intended that makes a habit practical. It is not the end as elicited externally, because as such it is posterior to the habit and in a way an effect of the habit—and an effect does not distinguish its cause. If it is the end as cognized, then it has the character of an object, and so it is the object that distinguishes. And if it is the end as intended, that has already been disproved [n. 253], because such cognition is naturally prior to the end's being intended.
Moreover, praxis is not the end of every practical cognition. For some practical intellection concerns the praxis of a lower power, such as the sensory appetite or the motive power. And no act of a lower power is the end of an act of intellect, because nothing less noble is the per se end of something nobler, and any act of understanding is nobler and more perfect than any act of any inferior sensory power.
It is said24 that although intellection is nobler in natural being than an act of a lower power, it is not nobler in the realm of morality, because it is morally better to act courageously than to think about acting courageously.
There are two arguments against this. First, it proceeds from a false premise, for the act of a lower power is morally good only because it is in conformity with correct reason as its rule.25 Therefore, the correctness of reason is the cause of such goodness in that act, and not vice versa; but for an act of reason to be correct in this way just is
22 Cf. Henry of Ghent, Quodl. XIII q. 11 ad 3.
23 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics V, 1013b9–11; XII, 1072a26–7, 1072b; On Generation and Corruption I,
324b13–18.
24 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. I q. 14 in corp., XII q. 29 ad 4, q. 14 in corp. Cf. Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl.
X q. 6 in corp.
25 See Ordinatio II d. 40 q. un. n. 8; I d. 17 pars 1 qq. 1–2 n. 62.
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for it to be morally good in the way that intellection can be morally good.— Confirmation of the argument: prudence is unqualifiedly better than moral virtue as it exists in the sensory appetite; therefore, the act of prudence as prudence is better than the act of moral virtue as moral virtue; therefore, the former as practical in the way that intellection can be practical is better than the latter as practical or morally good. From this it is clear that the argument about thinking is not valid: for when one is seeking to establish whether one thing is more excellent than another, one should not compare the best of one thing to the worst of another, but rather what is best to what is best, or what is unqualifiedly such to what is unqualifiedly such. The argument takes what is best in the case of the sensory appetite—acting courageously—so it ought to take what is best in the case of the intellect: dictating courageous action in accordance with prudence. The latter is better, even morally, because as rule it has the formal goodness that is its own correctness; the former is merely materially good, because it is not morally good in its own right, prescinding from its order to that rule and to the will that commands it.
258 Second, the first response [n. 256] seems to be beside the point: for the question is "In virtue of what is intellection practical?" The question does not presuppose that intellection is practical, and in particular it does not presuppose that the first circumstance [that makes intellection practical] is the end; that is precisely what is being asked about [cf. n. 248]. So in order to ask about practical intellection and the first circumstance in virtue of which it is practical, we have to understand intellection just as it is in natural being. So when this argument distinguishes between moral and natural goodness in intellection, it is presupposing the very thing that is being asked about and making a distinction in something as considered exclusively under one disjunct of a distinction.
259 For this reason others26 correct this view and say that a habit is called practical from the end that is practical consideration; for the proper end of every habit is its act. But against this: if this consideration that is the end of the habit is practical, it has some cause in virtue of which it is called practical. That cause is either the end of that consideration, which has already been disproved [nn. 252–5] or the object, and then it follows that the object itself is the prior cause—prior to the consideration—in virtue of which a habit is called practical, and then my point is made: it is in virtue of the object that both a habit (mediately) and an act are called practical.
C. Scotus's view 260 So I concede that a habit is not called practical in virtue of its own act, because its act is in turn practical in virtue of a prior cause. Nor is any habitual or actual cognition per se practical because it is ordered to praxis as its end; nonetheless, it can
26 Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl. X q. 11 in corp.
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sometimes have its first extension, namely conformity to praxis, in virtue of the end of praxis itself, not qua end, but qua object.
The first point [that it can sometimes have conformity to praxis in virtue of the end of praxis] is evident. For sometimes first practical principles are taken from the end of praxis, and thus that end, as the first cause of praxis, virtually includes all knowledge in that genus, and thus that knowledge has its quiddity and aptitude from the end.
The second point [that such conformity is in virtue of the end of praxis not qua end but qua object] is evident. For the reason that praxis gives such an aptitude or (in other words) such a nature having that aptitude is that as first object it includes the principles and, by means of those principles, the conclusions, and thus the whole of practical knowledge—but not qua end, for two reasons. First, no nature or natural aptitude is had from the end qua end except as loved and desired and thus moving the efficient cause [cf. n. 253]. But the end's including the aforementioned principles and conclusions is naturally prior to its being loved: for the truth of a necessary practical principle doesn't depend on the will any more than that of a speculative principle does, and neither do the conclusions that are inferred with necessity from such a principle. Second, anything else that virtually included such knowledge would in the same way give this sort of conformity to that knowledge—say, if the praxis itself included such knowledge, or that concerning which there is action, in the first instance in that genus. That sometimes happens, as I discussed in the response to the third argument in the first question on the subject of theology [n. 185]; for the subject of both moral science and medicine is perhaps the human being, rather than happiness or health, because the definition of both ends is included in the definition of that concerning which there is praxis.
Someone might say that first practical principles are always taken from the end, and so the end always in the first instance virtually includes knowledge of those principles. Even if one conceded that conclusion, however, that would still be consistent with the claim that it is not qua end but qua object; and then it could be said that the human being is the end of both health and natural happiness, as is discussed in the previous response [n. 262]. But at any rate the human being is not the proximate end of praxis, since if the conclusion were denied, the antecedent taken universally would have to be denied, because it is true taken particularly, that is, where the character of the end is not concluded from anything pertaining to practical cognition.27
Alternatively, the antecedent—"first practical principles are always taken from the end"—could be expounded like this: it is true of principles that are taken from moral circumstances once you presuppose a generically good act, because in this way the object is not a circumstance. But in another way, taking the act just by itself,28 the 27 Cf. below, n. 314. See also Scotus, Ordinatio III d. 15 q. un. nn. 98–100, 111; I d. 3 pars 1 q. 4 n. 277.
28 That is, not presupposing that it is a generically good act.