I. In virtue of what does an act have moral goodness or badness?
THE GOODNESS OF INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ACTS
5 Third, the question should not be understood as asking about adding goodness or badness intensively. For it frequently happens, both in good acts and in bad acts, that an act of desire for something absent is less intense than an act of desire for something present, which Augustine in On the Trinity IX.12.18 calls "love":
"The desire of one who longs for something is the love of someone who enjoys it."
And whether the acts of desire and love are the same act or distinct acts, an act of love is at any rate more perfect in terms of intensity, for it satisfies the appetite in a way that an act of desire cannot. So when the exterior act is performed, the interior act is sometimes or typically intensified. But that is not what the question is about.
The question is about whether the exterior act in its own right adds some goodness to the goodness that is in the interior act.
6 So the sense in which the question poses the greatest difficulty is this: When the exterior act is conjoined with the interior act in one and the same person, does it have its own moral goodness distinct from the goodness of the interior act?
7 To answer this question we need to investigate three things. First, in virtue of what does an act have moral goodness or badness? Second, is an act praiseworthy or worthy of reproach or blameworthy on that same basis? And third, is there a distinct goodness or praiseworthiness in the exterior and interior acts?
I. In virtue of what does an act have moral goodness or badness?
8 As for the first topic, the moral goodness of an act is the completeness (integritas) of all the features that the agent's right reason judges ought to characterize1 the act or the agent in so acting.
9 To clarify this description: The primary goodness of a being, which is called essential goodness, is the completeness or perfection of a being in itself; it implies positively the negation of imperfection and excludes imperfection and diminishment. Similarly, the secondary goodness of a being, which is accidental to or supervenient upon being, is (a) the completeness of a thing's suitability, or a thing's complete suitability, to some other thing to which it ought to be suitable, or (b) the [complete] suitability of some other thing to it.
An example of both can be taken from Augustine in On the Trinity VIII.3.4.
He writes, "Health without pain and weariness is good"—that gives an example of (a),
1 "ought to characterize": debet convenire. Convenire is often "be suitable to," as convenientia is regularly
"suitability." But I have resisted translating debet convenire as "ought to be suitable to," because it sounds like some sort of meta-ought that I don't think Scotus has in mind. That is, I take it that x debet convenire y and x convenit y are in effect synonymous, rather than that the former adds a level of normative assessment over and above the latter (i.e., as meaning not just that x is suitable to y but that the state of affairs of x's being suitable to y is one that ought to obtain).
QUODLIBETAL QUESTIONS Q.
since health is good for human beings because it is suitable for them. And Augustine goes on to say, "Good, also, is a human face, well-proportioned, cheerful, and of comely hue"—that gives an example of (b), because such a face is called good in virtue of having these features that are suitable to it.
And there is a difference between these two, in that what is suitable to something is said to be good for that thing, that is, a perfection or goodness of that thing, but it is not called good denominatively or accidentally in itself. By contrast, that to which something is suitable is called good denominatively in virtue of having that which is suitable to it. In the first case, the form is in effect denominated from the subject: thus, something is called good for a human being because it is a human good, in the same way that a soul is called human. In the second case, by contrast, the subject is denominated from the form, as when we say that a human being is good because of some good that he has.
Now an act is apt to be suited to its agent and is also apt to have some feature suited to it, and so an act characterized by either sort of suitability can be called good in terms of accidental goodness. And this is true even of a natural act, and consequently the goodness that consists in something's having what is suitable to it is not only accidental goodness but also natural goodness. This suitability either obtains in virtue of the nature of the extremes or, if it must in general be traced back to the judgment of some intellect, because the intellect is the measure of suitability, the relevant judgment will be that of the intellect that is the rule of the whole of nature, which is the divine intellect. For just as the divine intellect perfectly knows every being, so also it perfectly knows the suitability or unsuitability of one being to another.
Further: Some agents—those acting without intellect and will—do not make a judgment concerning what is suitable to their act and are not in control of their acts. In the case of such an agent, either what is suitable to its act is determined entirely by purely natural causes and those causes incline the agent to act, or else, if in addition to these causes there is a judgment on the part of some intellect and a motion on the part of some will, that belongs to God alone as the universal governor and mover of the whole of nature. And thus the goodness in an act of an agent without intellect is merely natural.
There is another sort of agent—one acting through intellect and will—that makes a judgment about the suitability of its act and is in control of that act. In the act of any other agent there is no goodness besides purely natural goodness, because they act either according to purely natural causes or, if they do act according to intellect and will, it will be God's intellect and will as moving them naturally.
Beyond2 this general judgment of the suitability of the act, which is common to the act of something that acts through cognition and something that acts without cognition,
2 Frank reads, "But in the act of an agent that acts through intellect and will, beyond."
THE GOODNESS OF INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ACTS
there are certain agents that act in virtue of cognition intrinsic to themselves. Some do so through sensory cognition alone: they in some way apprehend the suitability of an object, but—whether they make a judgment about the suitability of the act or not—they do not transcend natural goodness. Others act on the basis of intellectual cognition.
Properly speaking, only intellectual cognition is such as to judge such suitability. Agents with intellectual cognition are apt to have an intrinsic rule of rectitude in their own acts, and only in such agents can there be a good act that has moral goodness.
12 But it is not sufficient for moral goodness that there is in the agent a power that is capable of judging the suitability of his act: the agent must actually judge rightly concerning his act and act on the basis of that judgment. If his own cognition is erroneous, then even if he acts in conformity with someone else's correct cognition, he does not act correctly: for such an agent is apt to be regulated in his act by his own cognition, whereas in such a case he does not act according to his own cognition, but contrary to it. Similarly, he elicits the sort of act that he has in his own power. Now he has in his own power the sort of act that he cognizes and elicits, because the power of free choice exists either formally or concomitantly in cognition and choice. In this way, then, it is evident in what way the moral goodness of an act is its suitability as judged by the agent's right reason.
13 The further words, "of all the features that ought to characterize the act," are explained as follows:
Every judgment begins from something certain. The first judgment of suitability cannot presuppose any suitability dictated by another intellect, because if it did, it would not be first. Therefore, it presupposes something certain and not judged by another intellect. The nature of the agent, the power by which he acts, and the essential notion (ratio quidditativa) of the act are such things. For the essential notion of these [three] things is all one needs to conclude that this act is suitable for or incompatible with this agent, acting by this power. For example, from the notions of human being, intellectual power, and act of understanding, it is evident that it is suitable for a human being to understand through his intellect; it is also evident, once the notion of an act of touching is understood, that it is not suitable for a human being to touch through his intellect. Similarly, it is evident from the notions of the nature, the power, and the act, that it is not suitable for a non-rational animal to understand—or, more properly, that understanding is impossible (repugnat) for a non-rational animal. Indeed, this first judgment, which is taken strictly from the nature of the agent and of the active power and of the act, expresses not merely a lack of suitability (inconvenientia), that is, an inappropriate or inordinate connection, but an outright incompatibility (disconvenientia), that is, the absolute impossibility of their being suitable to each other.
14 Further: one can conclude from the notions of these three terms what is a suitable object for such an act of such an agent. For example, one can conclude that the act of
QUODLIBETAL QUESTIONS Q.
eating has as a suitable object food that restores what has been lost, and not something that is not apt to provide nourishment, such as a stone or something like that, which might be nourishment for some other animal but not for a human being.
This determination of the object is the first determination that belongs to the genus of morals, not as a difference that determines a species within that genus, but as something with the potential to receive [further] moral determination. For when an act has an object that is suitable to the agent and the action, it is capable of moral determination by ordinate circumstances. This is why we say that an act has generic goodness from its object: just as a genus is in potentiality with respect to differences, goodness from the object is the first goodness in the genus of morals, presupposing only the goodness of nature, and it is capable of taking on every specific goodness within the genus of morals.
Now there is an order in this specific goodness, which is called "goodness from circumstances," as follows:
The first goodness is evidently from the circumstance of the end, since from the nature of the agent, the action, and the object one concludes straightaway that such an act should not belong to such an agent except as ordered to such an end, and that it ought to be chosen and desired for the sake of such an end. This circumstance does not characterize the act strictly as actually carried out or not, but as willed and as referred by an act of will to such an end. Indeed, a choice that is for the sake of an appropriate end is no less good if the elicited act fails to achieve that end than if it succeeds.
The circumstance of the mode of acting evidently comes next after the circumstance of the end. On the basis of some or all of the considerations stated above, one infers that the mode of acting ought to be such-and-such.
Next one can draw a conclusion about the time: such-and-such an action, for such-and-such an end, and with such-and-such a mode of acting, is not suited to such-and-such an agent at just any time, but only at a time at which it can be ordered to that end or have that mode.
Now the last circumstance is evidently the circumstance of place. There are, to be sure, many acts whose moral goodness (even complete moral goodness) requires nothing determinate with respect to place.
Thus it is evident that there are several things right reason dictates should characterize an act, for in keeping with the way I characterized moral goodness earlier [n. 8], an act must have all these features together in a complete whole if it is to be perfectly good. This is why Dionysius says in On the Divine Names 4 that "goodness is from a unified and total cause, whereas badness is from particular defects"—a total cause, he says, meaning a cause that is a complete whole comprising all the relevant circumstances.
THE GOODNESS OF INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ACTS
17 One might argue on the contrary that circumstances are relations, whereas goodness is a quality, according to Ethics X [1173a13–22]. Also, according to the Categories
[8, 8b30] virtue is a quality.
I reply: According to Physics VII [246b2–8], "All virtue and badness are with respect to something." So an act's being good or virtuous implies a relation, or many relations. Despite this, however, 'good' and 'virtuous,' like 'healthy' and 'beautiful,' are named and predicated in the way that qualities are, as is true in general of the fourth species of quality.
18 In keeping with the second part of the authoritative passage from Dionysius [n. 16], we need to investigate how an act has moral badness.
There are two ways in which badness can be opposed to goodness in an act: privatively and contrarily. In the same way, a human being, too, can be called bad contrarily because he has a vicious habit, which is a positive habit (though accompanied by a privation of some requisite perfection), or merely privatively bad because he lacks some goodness that he ought to have but does not have a contrary positive vicious habit.
19 One can draw this distinction from Boethius's commentary on the Categories,3 in the passage where he is explaining the first distinguishing feature of quality: "Some people say that injustice is not contrary to justice. They think that injustice is a privation of justice, not its contrary." He goes on to reject this view: "There are many habits that we speak of by using a privation-word: for example, illiberality and imprudence. These would never be opposed to virtues, which are habits, unless they themselves were also habits."
20 This distinction is also evident by argument. For someone can perform an act that lacks an appropriate circumstance and yet has no inappropriate circumstance, say, when he does not order his act to an appropriate end and yet does not order it to an inappropriate end. In such a case the act is privatively bad, not contrarily bad, like an act ordered to an inappropriate end; and from many such acts a habit that is bad in the same way—privatively bad, not contrarily bad—is generated. An example of this is giving alms, not for the sake of a good end such as love of God or the relief of one's neighbor, and yet not for the sake of a bad end such as an empty reputation or harming someone. That is a privatively bad act, not a contrarily bad act.
It is of privative badness that Dionysius is speaking when he says that any particular deficiency in any necessarily required circumstance renders an act bad.
By contrast, an act is contrarily bad only if it has a positive circumstance that has some deformity.
21 So, briefly: just as moral goodness is complete suitability, moral badness is unsuitability. Privative badness is privative unsuitability, that is, a lack of due suitability,
3 In categorias Aristot. III.