Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Some habits are in us from nature, e.g., “the natural bent of the will ministers to charity” (ST, I, 1, 8, ad 2) or as “nurseries of virtue” (II-I, 63, 1). In addition, the moral and intellectual virtues are essential to man. If one’s fear of the law is at 0 intensity, then you will swiftly die, because you will fail to avoid the real dangers to your life that are to be feared. If you have no fortitude, then you will not be able to handle the unpredictability and uncertainty of the future and, so, again, you will lay down, cower in fear, and again die shortly thereafter. Without justice the government will probably execute you; moreover, perfect injustice entails being unjust to yourself, too; hence you will not do good and avoid doing evil even to yourself, and, once again, will not survive for long. Synthetic a priori propositions, such as “what is green all over is not red all over” are understood naturally. And so on.

These natural seeds of habits cause acts, and acts solidify habits.

But habits are caused not only by acts but by divine infusion, particularly when these are “habits by which man is disposed to an end which exceeds the proportion of human nature.” (51, 4) In addition, God can do what nature can, and so He can infuse a habit into a person that could also be produced naturally.

Similarly, the beginnings of virtues are initially natural to humans in their specific nature (humanity) and more or less such in their individual nature (Socrates): “owing to the natural disposition which the body has from birth, one has an aptitude for pity, another for living temperately, another for some other virtue.” (63, 1)

Infused virtues differ from acquired virtues from their end: natural happiness as vs. supernatural happiness with God. Aquinas’s example is “consumption of food, the mean fixed by human reason, is that food should not harm the health of the body, nor hinder the use of reason: whereas, according to the Divine rule, it behooves man to ‘chastise his body, and bring it into subjection’… by abstinence in food, drink and the like.” (63, 4) Furthermore, acquired virtues deal with human affairs; infused virtues deal with the behavior of human beings as though they were already in heaven. The saints, in a way, differ in species from natural men.

In (52, 1) St. Thomas launches into a long disquisition on how habits increase. Perfections of a form, he argues, are due either to the form itself or to how well a subject of that form participates in it. For example, humanity is a better or more prefect form than the form of a dumb animal. But someone may be a better or worse human; he may participate in his humanity to a greater or lesser extent. In both cases the habits can at times increase by addition or by intensity. Or not. Suppose that our form is “humanity” or “bust of Mises” or “3″ or “whiteness” or “substance.” Apparently, a thing is either human or not, a bust of Mises or not (though obviously a bust may resemble Mises more or less), 3 or some other number, white or not, etc. On the other hand, qualities (also forms) like “health” or “swiftness” or “intelligence” can increase or decrease while maintaining their essential being. For example, a cheetah can grow older and become less swift, yet it will still have “swiftness.” Or a person’s IQ can increase slightly with age, and he will still be intelligent.

On the other hand, there is the participation of the subject in the form: how well the thing formed attains the maximum perfection that the form is capable of giving. There are several reasons why the subject may not change. Things like “substance” and “shape” cannot be participated in different degrees, because there is not more or less substance-ness or shape. “3″ is what it is, because it describes a set of a certain cardinality; if 3 were more or less, it would cease to describe such a set, cease to be 3. Neither can a “triangle” be more or less triangular; if a thing is a triangle, it is always 100% so.

So, a habit itself can be greater or less, such as “health” or “knowledge.” And one can partake of health and knowledge more or less. Perhaps this is a matter of semantics. We might say a person has greater knowledge either in the sense that the quality “knowledge” is greater in him, or in the sense that he participates in “knowledge” (which covers all truths) more. Or we can say that more knowledge is indeed an addition to the form of a habit, and “in so far as one man is quicker and readier than another in considering the same conclusions” (52, 2) is an increase of the intensity of participation in knowledge.

Then there are the gifts, 7 all, corresponding to the 7 virtues, by which “man is disposed to become amenable to the Divine inspiration.” (68, 1); they are “habits whereby man is perfected to obey readily the Holy Ghost” (3). These upgrade normal virtues into “heroic” or “divine” ones.

Thus, the making of a self is done in a variety of ways, by oneself, others, the environment, and God. Hartshorne’s non-account of self-making, on the contrary, is too thin even to analyze. Prehension? Feeling of feelings? Is that all we get from him and Whitehead?