II. Replies to the preliminary arguments
IS A VIRTUE AN ACTIVE PRINCIPLE OF AN ACT'S MORAL GOODNESS?
II. Replies to the preliminary arguments 98 Replies to the authoritative passages cited for the affirmative answer to this question,7 which appear to imply that virtue qua virtue is an efficient cause of the moral goodness of an act:
First, to the argument from Ethics II that virtue "makes his act good" [n. 56], I say that it makes the act good either by inclining, which belongs to the habit qua this quality according to its natural species, or else (because merely inclining is not sufficient for it to make the act good, since the quality would incline in the same way without prudence) it is qua virtue—that is, qua coexisting with prudence—that it makes the act good. Indeed, it does make the act good according to its own genus of causality, as a secondary cause, and it does so in virtue of the higher cause, which is prudence. Therefore, if one accepts the third approach and affirms that a habit is active, virtue makes an act good as an active cause,8 but as a partial and secondary cause; if one accepts the fourth approach, then virtue makes an act good by way of inclination, and not merely because it inclines to the act but because it does so together with the virtue of prudence.
99 To the other argument, about moderating passions [n. 58], I say that a moral virtue does not actively moderate a passion in the sense that it lessens a passion that has already been brought about by the object—for a pleasant object that is present naturally moves to the utmost of its power. Rather, a habit can make an object less suitable to the habituated power than it would be to that power without the habit. For just as being up high is more unsuitable to a heavy body than to a neutral body, even though heaviness is not an active principle of descent, so too some excessive pleasure would be suitable in and of itself to a power, but when that power is habituated by a habit that inclines it to moderate acts, that excessive pleasure is unsuitable—or at least not as pleasant and suitable. Accordingly, it is in effect through a formal or virtual incompatibility with the habit that a habit moderates an unsuitable or excessive object so that the power does not take excessive pleasure in that pleasant object. And from this it does not follow that the habit is in some way active, just as wetness in wood is not active, even though it moderates fire so that it does not immoderately or vehemently heat as it would a dry body.
Alternatively, one can say that virtue does not moderate a passion that has already been brought about or already inheres in a thing, but rather a passion that is going to be brought about, insofar as it inclines the power (in connection with prudence, which coexists in the same agent) to flee immoderate pleasurable objects that are apt to cause immoderate pleasure, and to make room only for pleasurable objects that are apt to give moderate pleasure. Indeed, it moderates a passion, not by diminishing a 7 See note 5.
8 That is, by actively moving the power to a morally good act. The third approach attributes some active causal power to a habit; the fourth treats habits as no more than inclinations.
ORDINATIO I, D. , PART , QQ. –, NN. –, –
pleasure that is already present, but by forestalling an immoderate passion that would be present.
To the next argument, that without justice someone cannot act justly [n. 59], I reply that in the first act, when there is a correct dictate that is such as to generate prudence and there is a choice of some just act in conformity with that dictate, the one who chooses does not merely do something just: he acts justly. But it should be understood that someone without justice does not act justly in terms of every perfection that can characterize someone's acting justly. One such perfection is pleasure and ease in acting, which does not characterize an unhabituated power as it does a habituated power.