Chapter 13. The End of All Things and of People in Particular (SCG 3,16–63)
CHAPTER 13. THE END OF ALL THINGS AND OF PEOPLE IN PARTICULAR (SCG 3,16–63)
1. In SCG 3,2 Aquinas argues that every agent acts for an end. In SCG 3,3 he argues that every agent acts for a good. So, one might think that Aquinas takes acting for an end to be distinguishable from acting for a good. Yet he certainly does think that to aim for an end is always to aim at a good.
2. I might want to make a clock that is constructed so as to kill someone. Ordinarily, though, if people want to make a clock, they want to make a good clock, something that tells us the time and is not a weapon of destruction.
3. Herbert McCabe, Faith within Reason (London: Continuum, 2007), 118.
4. ND, 3/1, 77 [2].
5. ND, 3/1, 82 [5].
6. ND, 3/1, 97 [2] and 102 [13].
7. ND, 3/1, 102 [14] (emphasis added).
8. ND, 3/1, 125 [9].
9. ND, 3/1, 191 [1].
10. In SCG 3,26 Aquinas sets things up so as first to note arguments for supposing that ultimate human happiness consists in willing or desiring or loving and then to say why these arguments do not work. In my account of SCG 3,26 I focus on the main reasons that Aquinas gives for supposing that willing or desiring or loving cannot be the ultimate end for human beings.
11. ND, 3/1, 104–105 [8].
12. ND, 3/1, 105 [9].
13. At the end of SCG 3,27 Aquinas notes that the arguments of this chapter refute Epicurean philosophers, the teaching of the Cerinthians, and the teaching of those who insist that right human action is rewarded by physical pleasures. Epicurean philosophy derives from Epicurus (341–270 B.C.). The Cerinthians were a first-century sect who looked forward to a thousand years of physical pleasure following their resurrection from the dead.
14. ND, 3/1, 114 [3].
15. ND, 3/1, 115 [1]. Aquinas derives this definition of “glory” from Cicero (106–43 B.C.) and St. Ambrose of Milan (339–397).
16. ND, 3/1, 115 [2].
17. ND, 3/1, 116 [7].
18. ND, 3/1, 116 [2].
19. ND, 3/1, 117 [5].
20. ND, 3/1, 118 [2].
21. ND, 3/1, 120, chapter 33 [2].
22. ND, 3/1, 120–121, chapter 34 [2].
23. ND, 3/1, 122 [2].
24. ND, 3/1, 123, chapter 36 [2].
25. ND, 3/1, 123 [3].
26. ND, 3/1, 123, chapter 37 [1].
27. ND, 3/1, 124 [3].
28. ND, 3/1, 125 [8 and 9].
29. ND, 3/1, 125 [1].
30. ND, 3/1, 128 [1].
31. ND, 3/1, 128 [3].
32. ND, 3/1, 130 [7].
33. ND, 3/1, 131 [2].
34. ND, 3/1, 132 [5].
35. ND, 3/1, 133 [1].
36. So, at this stage in the SCG we do find Aquinas directly combating Islamic thinking, albeit highly technical Islamic thinking. See what I say in chapter 1 concerning the purpose of the SCG.
37. ND, 3/1, 148 [2].
38. ND, 3/1, 148–149 [2].
39. ND, 3/1, 154.
40. ND, 3/1, 158.
41. ND, 3/1, 161 [9].
42. ND, 3/1, 163 [3].
43. ND, 3/1, 164 [7].
44. ND, 3/1, 166 [12].
45. In SCG 3,49–63 Aquinas makes it clear that he believes that creatures other than human beings are able to know God as, or maybe even better than, people can be thought to do while enjoying their ultimate end. That is because he thinks that people finally enjoy God as intellectual beings and because, as I have shown (see chapter 11, section 4 here), he holds that there are intellectual beings other than human ones. That said, however, it is final human happiness or beatitude with which Aquinas is chiefly concerned in SCG 3,49–63.
46. Note that in SCG 3,49–63 it is the happiness of human souls after death with which Aquinas is concerned. As I have shown (see chapter 11), he thinks (1) that the souls of human beings can survive the deaths of the human bodies they inform, and (2) that a human soul is not a human being. Since Aquinas is not concerned in SCG 3,49–63 with what is to be said of human happiness following the resurrection of people’s bodies, the focus in these chapters is happiness of the human soul considered as following straight after death. I should add that in these chapters Aquinas is not concerned with people who die whose souls have no hope of enjoying beatitude.
47. In SCG 3,51 Aquinas observes: “It is impossible for a natural desire to be incapable of fulfilment, and since it would be so, if it were not possible to reach an understanding of divine substance such as all minds naturally desire, we must say that it is possible for the substance of God to be seen intellectually, both by separate substances and by our souls” (ND, 3/1, 175 [1]).
48. ND, 3/1, 169 [7].
49. ND, 3/1, 174 [8].
50. ND, 3/1, 177 [5]. With his talk about seeing God face-to-face, Aquinas is picking up on 1 Corinthians 13:12, in which St. Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.” Aquinas interprets St. Paul metaphorically. He writes: “It is wrong to understand this in a corporeal way, picturing in our imagination a bodily face of the Divinity. … Nor is it even possible for us to see God with our bodily face” (ND, 3/1, 177 [5]).
51. ND, 3/1, 177.
52. ND, 3/1, 178 [2].
53. ND, 3/1, 182 [6]. For Aquinas on agent intellect, see chapter 11, section 3.1 here.
54. ND, 3/1, 186–187 [2 and 3].
55. ND, 3/1, 191 [1].
56. ND, 3/1, 191 [2].
57. ND, 3/1, 193 [1].
58. See ND, 3/1, 195–197.
59. ND, 3/1, 200 [2].
60. ND, 3/1, 201 [4].
61. ND, 3/1, 202 [2].
62. ND, 3/1, 207 [3].
63. See ND, 3/1, 207 [4].
64. ND, 3/1, 208 [6].
65. ND, 3/1, 208 [7].
66. So much is clear from books 1, 6, and 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics.
67. For a detailed account of Aquinas on the human desire for seeing God, one that documents the teachings on this topic coming from authors later than Aquinas, see Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters, 2nd ed. (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010). Also see Thomas Joseph White, “Imperfect Happiness and the Final End of Man: Thomas Aquinas and the Paradigm of Nature-Grace Orthodoxy,” Thomist 78 (2014). I think that White’s article skillfully captures the sense of Aquinas’s account of beatitude in the SCG while noting how it might be taken to be defensible against certain criticisms of it. Both Feingold and White provide copious reference to secondary sources on Aquinas on ultimate human happiness.
68. ND, 4, 319 [7].
69. ND, 4, 321 [3].
70. ND, 4, 326 [4].