Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

In discussing whether virtues direct acts, Aquinas considers what seems to be a decisive objection. Virtue is a state of affairs, a condition of the soul, a personality, as it were. In particular, if the virtues are divine in nature, then they make a soul Godlike. But what place, then, is there for human operations or acts? Virtues don’t “do” anything; they just “are,” conforming one to God. (ST, II-I, 55, 2, obj 3) His reply is extremely clever. “As God’s substance is His act, the highest likeness of man to God is in respect of some operation.” In other words, the human soul is made like God in its happiness, and that is an act, just as God is pure act of self-understanding and self-loving.

Aquinas writes that “virtue implies a perfection of power: wherefore the virtue of a thing is fixed by the limit of its power… Now the limit of any power must needs be good: for all evil implies defect; wherefore… every evil is a weakness.” (ST, II-I, 55, 3) I think St. Thomas is guilty of an equivocation. Power is metaphysically good, and virtue is how that power is ordered morally, that is, towards good or evil. The goodness of power and virtue can vary independently of each other: e.g., there can be great power that is used for evil, little power that is used for good, etc. But it’s not true that virtue makes power powerful, such that vicious power is by definition weak, as Aquinas seems to suggest.

The relationship between power and virtue for our author is almost like that between genus and species. Thus, and I have used this example before, human beings have the power to operate complex machinery. But the actual ability to fly a plane, say, is a virtue (or art). Similarly, it is the nature of humans to be able to lift heavy weights. But that one person can lift 50 pounds, and another 100 pounds, are virtues specifying precisely to what and how far a power extends.

In the parish bulletin today at mass there was a question asked by a non-Catholic: “Why doesn’t the Vatican sell off all of its treasures to feed the world’s poor?” The argument looks like this:

1. Suppose the opposite: the Catholic Church is a most important force for good.
2. The best way to do good is to help the poor.
3. But the Church fails to help the poor to the best of its ability.
4. Therefore, it is not as good as it could be.

This argument rests on a false premise, namely (2). For helping the poor is not the chief mission of the Church. That mission is rather saving souls and making saints. If the Church could do those things by selling its assets, it would be morally required to do so. But, clearly, that won’t work. On the contrary, the beauty of art, buildings, etc. that belong to the Church help to draw people into faith more efficiently. Helping the poor in their temporal needs, therefore, is a means to salvation both for the givers (insofar as their works of mercy are meritorious) and the receivers (insofar as temporary relief helps them to get back on their feet and worry about something other than their next meal). Thus, the Catholic Church is not primarily a charity in the narrow sense of that term. It serves the spiritual needs of its parishioners, and that takes priority over everything else. Even the traditional works of mercy include deeds like instructing the ignorant and forgiving offences which need not necessarily deal with the poor. Furthermore, the resources of the Church are not unlimited, and for continuous operation it must manage its income prudently. It lives in the world, and in order to get anything done in that world it needs money. The Church has endured for two thousand years precisely because it has not been profligate. Finally, if the Church commits financial suicide by selling off everything it has, what will happen to the poor after they have consumed the proceeds? “The poor you will always have with you,” Jesus said, “but you will not always have me.” (Mt 26:11) In other words, the Church tries to facilitate the attainment of perfect happiness; and this task would be jeopardized if it spent all of its energies on bringing about the imperfect happiness that can be had in this world, e.g., buying soups for the poor.

Suppose you feel hungry and go and make yourself a sandwich. Is that a meritorious action with God? Clearly, no, but why not? Because you have received your reward in full (cf. Mt 6:2). You have sated your hunger and increased in happiness. But do you want a medal for that? Come on! Now heavenly reward is a metaphor for placing your happiness in God (cf. Mt 6:19-21); for aiming to do right by Him. But pious and godly acts do not always rebound to your own happiness (cf. Mt 5:11-12). This is so, because of the conflict between imperfect happiness in the flesh, the world, and the devil and perfect happiness in God; the former can be strong enough to blot out temporarily the appeal of the latter. But as you grow in love and wisdom, the pleasures of the world fade and only God’s bounty remains (or they are supposed to).

Kreeft and Tacelli write: “For instance the church fathers often interpreted the exodus symbolically. The children of Israel symbolized the church, Moses symbolized Christ, the Red Sea symbolized death, the Promised Land symbolized heaven, the wilderness symbolized purgatory, Egypt symbolized the world, Pharaoh symbolized the Devil (Jesus calls hum ‘the ruler of this world,’ in Jn 12:31; 14:20; and 16:11). But they also believed it really happened.” (Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 211ff) They quote Aquinas: “The author of Holy Writ is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but also by things themselves.”

But it is the nature of the mind to seek patterns. We tend to see them even when they are nowhere to be found. Is it fair to interpret salvation history in the above manner? Does the Incarnation mimic the history of Israel?

One of the most thoughtful columns by the great Fred Reed.

Our author distinguishes between them as follows: an intention covers every foreseen consequence of your actions, whether you will that consequence or not. A motive is that part of the intention which is specifically willed as something desired or as a goal to be achieved. So, intentions are broader than motives, and as a result, if your intention is good, then so is your motive, but not vice versa: one may have a good motive but a bad intention, in that a thing explicitly desired may be noble but its accompanying events turn out to be predictably bad.

Aquinas identifies two appetites in human beings, that is, the faculty that seeks and, when found, enjoys pleasure: the sensual appetite and the intellectual appetite, the latter one of which he calls the “will.” Does this distinction correspond to the one between sensation and reflection as two ways of getting knowledge?

For example,

cause → cause’s interest in producing the effect → effect;

knower → knowledge/truth → known;

lover → love → beloved.

Consider especially the last one of these. First, love can be either internal as an emotion and external as a good deed. In its capacity as the former, love can be interested or disinterested. Thus, the Father loves the Son disinterestedly; cf. Mt 5:45. The Son loves the Father interestedly, in that He penetrates into the essence of the Father in order to be as the Father is; cf. Mt 5:48. Insofar as the Father wills happiness, God’s love is NT love; insofar as the Son is capable of receiving the happiness so willed, God’s love is NF love.

In love’s capacity as the latter, a gift can be a good generously given or a good with gratitude received. Thus, the Father is the Giver or Bequestor, the Son is the Heir, and the Holy Spirit is the Son’s Inheritance. Alternatively, we can say that the Father is the Law unto Himself, the Son is the Judge, and the Holy Spirit is the Executioner, lifting God up into infinite greatness and rank and status. That is, the Son judges the Father to be perfect and exalts Him to high heavens.

Aquinas makes the striking point that ultimate happiness for human beings does not consist in anything within humans themselves but with something outside of them. Now on the one hand this is obvious: men need an external environment to use and transform for their own purposes. But on the other hand it puts to shame the idea that a virtuous man needs nothing beyond himself. “Thus he is better disposed to health,” St. Thomas argues, “who can attain perfect health, albeit by means of medicine, than he who can attain but imperfect health, without the help of medicine.” (ST, II-I, 5, 5, ad 2) The medicine in this case is God. For God is necessary and sufficient for human happiness. Consider two persons, A and B, such that A enjoys greater natural happiness though without being raised into faith, etc. than B. But B has grace and is happier than A supernaturally. B is better off than A. It may, of course, be objected that happiness is ranked on a single scale, so “natural happiness” and “supernatural happiness” are commensurable. And it is true that if faced with a choice to be A or B one would be well-advised to elect to incarnate as the latter. The distinction is merely to underscore the external source (which is God) of human happiness (which is contemplation of God).

Irrational animals, though still dependent on the outside world, cannot attain beatitude at all, so human happiness attained with divine help exceeds the animals’ happiness attained by means of their own powers, or so Aquinas maintains. We can say even more. Animals depend on the world to a much greater extent than humans do. For the latter subdue the world, while the world subdues the former.

On the other hand, God’s being suffices Him, so God needs nothing beyond Himself to enjoy.

I have not understood Aquinas’s idea that creatures are related to God but not God to creatures until now. For we have to recall two things. First, that the true nature of God is goodness, manifested as communication of being. Second, the division of goodness into objective, intersubjective, and subjective. With these tools we can see that God’s goodness is a subject, and we creatures are objects which the subject manipulates. We are the result of the diffusion of goodness; as the song goes, without our aid He did us make. Our goodness has been created or infused into our exemplar forms.

Just as the [2nd-level] spirit is the subject, for whom [1st-level] things in the world are objects to be used for its survival and prosperity, so the [3rd-level] goodness is the subject designing and implementing [2nd-level] angels and humans which are for it mere objects. And objects have no say or sway over the subject’s plans for those objects.

Now consider this: “A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things. He would have neither wishes nor desires; he would be perfectly happy. He would not act; he would simply live free from care.” (Human Action, 14) The question is, can humans rise up into 3rd-level goodness? Or are they strictly 2nd-level beings, whose final end is precisely the perfection of God’s 2nd level, namely their own happiness? If the latter, then this last end must consist in intersubjective friendship of man and God.

In a footnote on p. 171 of The Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick gives us the following gem: certain Christian writers, he points out, treated “the moral unbeliever as a fool who sacrifices his happiness both here and hereafter.” Presumably, the sacrifice of self-interest without holy will here is for the sake of duties; the sacrifice in the hereafter is either because of the failure to obtain the heavenly reward due to lack of faith or charity, or from the unbeliever’s own point of view.

Obviously, this view entails that the only purpose of self-sacrifice is to merit a reward in the life of the world to come, not for any benefits in this life. But that seems like a narrow view of duty. For duties are not arbitrary challenges invented by God as if life were a game — challenges which, if overcome, will garner you the crown of laurel. Doing your duty has positive natural consequences, e.g., it is essential to righteousness or conformity to one’s true self, and righteousness, to peace. And everybody wants peace, even here.

David Friedman has authored a penetrating article on how game theory can help escape the Hobbesian jungle. In it he uses the notion of Schelling points to make his case.

A Schelling point is (in a game) a unique choice among many which is chosen by all people playing the game who cannot talk with one another precisely because of its uniqueness. It makes possible coordination without communication. Thus, if two people are given a series of numbers 2, 5, 9, 25, 69, 73, 82, 96, 100, 126, 150 (David’s example) and can win a prize if both select the same number, they can succeed if they know which number the other person interprets as uniquely special, even though the concurrence in picking any number will suffice. Thus, 2 might be picked by both, because it is the only smallest prime number. 100 might be picked, because it is a nice round number. Since there are three perfect squares in the series, it is less reasonable to try to pick one of them, because even if both for some reason like squares, they will still have only 1/3 chance of selecting the same one. Thus, a Schelling point is “each person’s expectation of what the other expects him to expect to be expected to do.”

Now having read David’s article, ask: Is the Constitution a Schelling point as an agreement between the federal government and the people / states? The federal government can be either limited or unlimited; but if it is unlimited, then no one knows exactly which form it will take or how big it will be. This uncertainty will please no one. But if it limited, then we can specify or enumerate all of its legitimate functions. This can be a small list or this can be a big list, but it will limit the government. Such a government is a Schelling point; it is a unique solution to politics. It so happened that the point settled initially on a very small government. As the ideology has changed from the days of the founding of the US into something far more statist, it would still have been better to obtain the vastly bigger government that we have now by amending the Constitution than by retiring it altogether, which is the de facto situation today. For that would have still kept the government limited, with precisely named if perhaps numerous functions rather than unlimited and unaccountable.

The recommendation to the people then is not to wait until “a long train of abuses and usurpations” has left its mark on the country but rather to revolt at the smallest sign of corruption of which they should be eternally vigilant. This is because any exceeding of government authority, if not checked right away, will embolden the government to try to do the same again and again, thus moving the agreement further away from the Schelling point and encouraging the government to make unlimited demands. For if the first abuse is tolerated, then what argument remains for not tolerating all the future abuses? Give the government an inch, and it’ll take a mile. So, punishing unconstitutional acts immediately and ruthlessly (e.g., by tarring and feathering the President) is a good policy even if it seems initially out of proportion to the crime committed by a public figure. This strategy will install essentially a revolution in permanence, because the government will always try to evade its restrictions.

So, it seems that enforcing Schelling points is deterrence with a vengeance.

Jefferson thought there ought to be rebellions at least every 20 years or so, so that the rulers are “warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance.” He underestimated the folly of the American people. From a shining city on the hill America has turned into an ant hill. And this has been partly due to disregarding game theory.

The contemplation can be of something external or of something internal to a person. If it is of something external, such as of God, then the sight of it causes enjoyment. If it is of the internal state, then it brings about a realization that one is content, at least in some aspect, and no action is required further to improve one’s lot. Enjoyment is rational in five ways: (1) because it was brought about by action that called for an inquiry into how to attain it; (2) because pleasure necessitates knowing the good in your possession; (3) because the highest pleasures are often the result of discovering the truth; (4) insofar as the mind is attending to the pleasure and is not occupied by weightier things still in pursuit; and (5) because it generates the rest not only of appetite, such as the will, in the good attained but also of the intellect and the bodily powers. The rest of the intellect is two-fold, corresponding to (1) and (3) just mentioned. First, there is no longer a cranking out of the means to the ends chosen, as the end or ends have been attained. Second, there is no longer studying which is the paramount means to happiness, as the truth has been learned; e.g., all truth is present in God upon seeing Whom all wonder ceases, having come to be replaced by knowledge of the first cause and all of its effects.

In order to prove that being and (2nd-level metaphysical) goodness are the same “really,” we have to show both that whatever has being is good and that whatever is good has being. Aquinas’ argument in (ST, I, 5, 1) proves the second part of the conjunction. To sum it up: that is good which is desired; everything is desired to the extent of its perfection, i.e., suitability for him who desires it; perfections are such only when they are actual; and existence “makes all things actual.”

Here is how Aquinas interprets the saying of Boethius in his reply to Objection 1. “I perceive that in nature the fact that things are good [simply and are relatively in their complete actuality] is one thing; that they are [simply and good relatively in their primal actuality] is another.” By this I take Aquinas to mean that when we consider a thing as a substance as such, its “relative” (that is, possibly imperfect) goodness is derivative from its “simple” being; while when we consider it as something perfect, it becomes “simply” good with no admixture of evil in it, and its actuality goes beyond its essential being (e.g., to wisdom or virtue or happiness in a man), which means that it exists “relatively” (that is, with some “superadded actuality”).

The first part is proved in (3). Consider, say, a rock located a thousand feet beneath the Earth’s surface. Obviously, it has being. It has actuality and can act, for example, by supporting the rocks around it. It has perfection in a manner of speaking. Granted. But is it good? Certainly, no human desires it either as a useful, virtuous, or pleasant good (see (6)). No human even knows about its existence. Or how about a virus that causes disease? From the human standpoint it is positively evil. To whom then are the rock and the virus desirable? Surely, to God. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Gen 1:31) So God loves all things for two reasons: one, as Being itself subsisting, for everything that exists is like God insofar as it has being, and like naturally loves its like (one near-death experiencer said that he would have been satisfied being a single atom in God’s created universe); and two, insofar as everything that exists contributes to the perfection of the universe. Perhaps we can best imitate God by loving all things, even viruses, for the same reasons why God loves them, as it is written, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love” (Eph 5:1-2), even though it is reasonable to hate their actions, such as causing illness, for which we would be justified to inflict death on them.

Hence we can conclude that being and goodness are the same.

Psychological egoism states that people do actually seek their own happiness and their own happiness alone. I think that this view is unimpeachable and true. Therefore, ethical egoism, the view that man ought to maximize his pleasure, is superfluous, in that it is pointless to ascribe a duty to do what is performed out of self-interest. On the other hand, psychological utilitarianism, in which one loves his neighbor as himself, is certainly a rare occurrence in the world, and therefore ethical utilitarianism is useful as a teaching tool, for it enjoins upon a man a duty to take into account the happiness of others. But once one has been trained to consider that happiness in his deliberations and has become a good utilitarian, the duty to maximize general welfare fades away as no longer necessary. For its task, in demanding certain sacrifices, is not to destroy self-love but to enhance and civilize it by instructing a man to love everyone in the whole world and make other people’s happiness his own. Once this sublime state of affairs, called holy will, is reached, the utilitarian duty no longer serves a purpose.

Reposting with an update. There are several ways to think about the four causes:

(1) Form and matter are concerned with an object’s essence, while the efficient and final causes, with its existence. The former two ask, What is X? (E.g., such and such form-in-matter.) The latter, What makes X exist? (E.g., such and such forces hold X together; X exists for such and such purpose, because Y wanted it to exist or it was useful to Y.)

(2) The final-formal causes belong to the maker/creator, whereas the material-efficient causes belong to the thing made/creature. The former inhere in the maker’s will and intellect, with the formal cause being in the mind before it is in the thing; the latter, in the the thing made’s matter and energy, with energy keeping matter together.

(3) There are 3 causes on the level of the creator: the final cause, the designing cause, and the efficient cause. For example, it is possible that the designer of an object is different from its creator. Thus, the form and matter are subordinate to the mind expressed as the final/designing/efficient cause. The mind is privileged in my scheme. Now, of course, the thing made can, too, have a mind. But that only means that the effect can imitate the cause faithfully.

According to Locke, primary qualities are qualities like extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. These “inhere” in bodies; that is, the simple ideas produced in human minds by them somehow resemble them. The idea here is that the collection of corpuscles that we perceive as a cup really is shaped like a cup; we perceive certain heaviness when holding it, and it really does weigh so many ounces; we see it moving at such and such speed, and it really is moving. This is the sense in which our ideas resemble the object. Secondary qualities are those constitutions of a thing’s “minute and insensible parts” which produce certain sensations in us, such as colors, tastes, and the rest; yet with them, there is no resemblance between the cause of our sensations and the sensations or ideas themselves. For example, we perceive blueness, but the object we are looking at is not really blue; what it really has is a certain surface structure with the power to absorb all but the blue range of light. Thus, we perceive extension and the body is really extended, while with respect to a fire, for example, we perceive yellowness or warmth, but the fire is not really yellow or warm (though it may have “high” temperature or temperature which is usually correlated with the experience of warmth); rather, the fire, thanks to its internal constitution (plasma, as we now know), has a power to appear to an observer as yellow and warm. (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, viii, 15)

Just as it is obvious that pain one feels from being too close to the fire is not actually in the fire, neither is warmth, which is merely a sensation generated by a certain power of the fire. A warm hand put in lukewarm water feels cold, while a cool hand put into the same water, warm. This implies that if heat as it is experienced were really in the water, the water would have to be both cold and warm at the same time, which is impossible. Heat then is relative to the perceiving mind; the same thing can seem warm to one person and cold to another. So, the secondary quality of temperature has to do with the quickness of movement of the molecules in a substance, and it is capable of producing different sensations in different observers.

The operation of the physical causes of secondary qualities is mysterious, at least to the science of Locke’s day; these operations “are hid from us, in some things by being too remote, and in others by being too minute.” (IV, iii, 24) Locke thinks that we can never know the underlying arrangement of corpuscles that cause our ideas of secondary qualities. This is because all of our ideas come from either experience and reflection, and the insensible parts are simply too tiny to see. (Reflection does not apply here at all.) We cannot predict what effects the minute parts of an object will have on us; nor can we, having seen the effect, know how it was produced. (IV, iii, 25) Finally, we cannot know how the structure of our immaterial minds permits us to experience ideas caused in us by material corpuscles. (IV, iii, 28)

It follows that only the ideas of primary qualities really exist. (II, viii, 17) They are “real” in the sense that they persist in the object even if there is no one around to observe it. But the ideas of secondary qualities vanish as soon as the observer, so to speak, leaves the room. These qualities are reduced back to their causes: an array of corpuscles making up the object with the power somehow to produce ideas in us yet which do not in any way resemble these ideas.

Sidgwick writes that “many pleasures, — especially those of sight, hearing and smell, together with many emotional pleasures, — occur to me without any perceptible relation to previous desires.” (The Methods of Ethics, 45) Suppose that you go outside and breathe some fresh air and are delighted at the good weather. It seems that you have received pleasure without having achieved any goal that you consciously had in your mind and took steps to achieve. So, it appears that you can be relocated from a less satisfied state to a more satisfied state without acting to bring about the change; it can happen “by itself,” and the move can even take you by surprise.

A person is said to have a holy will when he enjoys doing his duties. At first this seems like a strange notion. For duties are categorical: you must not kill, you must fulfill your part of the bargain, etc. They constrain your free will. So, enjoying performing your duties is like enjoying being in prison: good for you, I suppose, but what is it to the duties? You still have to do them. Also, the idea is not that you enjoy doing whatever the duty happens to specify, whether it is or it is not obligatory. It must be then that what is enjoyed is being a just person.

Now duties are intimately connected to justice. If you say: “I must do my duty or what?” the answer is, “Or you’ll be a sinner, not true to social reality.” You will fail to conform to what ought to be, and in that is the essence of injustice. Thus, duties are not arbitrary, nor is performing them a mindless ritual, but rather they specify which actions match what’s been committed to. Insofar as duties make the future more determined, their performance is aligned with what everyone involved expects the future to be. Failing to perform a duty means failing to respect that settledness of the future. People must know that you can be counted on. Thus, doing a duty is the practical equivalent of knowing the truth: the latter consists in the thought corresponding to reality; the former, in the action corresponding to the same thing.