Prima Secundae
Lecture 42: Fruition and the Appetitive Power

Transcript
================================================================================

For the last five minutes, was it impossible that I'd be standing? I mean, to kind of lecture, sitting down. I thought the audience was more relaxed. We sat down and we were standing up at the podium. But would you say in the last five minutes, it was impossible for me to be standing? Yeah, at the beginning of those five minutes, or during those five minutes. Yeah, but if I was sitting for the last five minutes, right? Then is it impossible for me to have been standing for the last five minutes? Insofar as you were sitting. They were originally convictaries, so... Yeah, yeah. Insofar as you were sitting. Won't you say that, sempliciter, without qualification, it was impossible for me to be standing for the last five minutes? Because you could have started. Yeah. But if you say that, what? I was sitting, right? I can't be standing when I'm sitting, right? Right. So that's impossible in what sense then, huh? Yeah, or a supposition, right? This is true about God's will in regard to creatures, huh? Can God's will change? No. Hmm? In fact, you dare it. We simply, no. It can't change God's will. There's no change in God, right? Okay. So, God always willed me to be, or God always willed you to be, right? Okay. So, do you necessarily will you and me to be? Yeah. I'd say, according to his nature, he wills contingent things contingently. So, why am I contingent thing? Yeah, but having willed me to be, or willing me to be, he cannot will me not to be. But would you say it's something he could, he couldn't will me not to be? No, no. But positing that he has willed me to be, then? It's been a meal. Yeah. Yeah. Just like me and my city, right? I could have been standing for the last five minutes, but if you lay down or posit that I sat for the last five minutes, then, you know, since I could not be standing there. That's kind of, you know, where we take that kind of necessary from supposition, right? Okay. Given that I was sitting the last five minutes, I necessarily could not be standing, because I can't be sitting and standing at the same time, right? You know? But still, you would say simply, I couldn't be standing the last five minutes, right? But that's, people get a lot confused, you know, seeing that distinction, right? But it comes up in God, and it comes up in us, you know? I was thinking of that time when you saw that argument there for the unmoved mover, the argument from the redeeming ethics of Aristotle, right, that Thomas gave us earlier. And it's kind of how we see it, even this part of theology, or this part of philosophy, right, prepares us for understanding God, right? If you take the fundamental thing that God loves, which is himself, right, you say now, then he asks this question, does God love himself, or would you say? Okay. Now, could God love himself if he wasn't good? Supposing that he couldn't and that he wasn't good. Okay. Because you can't love except the good, right? Okay. So God couldn't love himself if he wasn't good, right? Okay. So God's being good is before he's loving himself, right? But now, could God love himself if he was good but didn't know he was good? Yeah. And you can see these two causes of love, the good, right, and then knowledge, right, are more fundamental than the third cause, which is likeness, right? Because in God loving himself, it didn't seem to be a question of likeness there, right? Okay. Maybe in the Father loving the Son, there could be something like this there, right? But God loving himself, it can't be likeness, right? So you say, okay. Now, see, God couldn't love himself unless he was good and unless he knew he was good, right? Now, one more question, right? Could God know he was good if he wasn't good? Okay. So what's most fundamental here is that God is good, right? And God has to be good before he could know that he's good. He'd have to not only be good, but know that he is good before he could love himself, right? Okay. Now, you've got a before and after there, right, huh? Right? And good is before knowing that he's good. And knowing that he's good is before loving himself, right? But is that a before and after in our thoughts or a before and after in things? Which is it? Yeah. Yeah. Because is God's knowledge and his goodness, right, are they two different things? One which is before the other, right? The beauty of the girl and my knowledge of her beauty, right, are they two different things, right? And my love of her is another thing, right? Okay. But God's knowledge of his goodness is not another thing, a second thing in addition to his being good, right? They're the same thing. And God's love is what? Another thing besides his knowledge. And you and I, our knowledge and our love are not the same thing, right? And so, with knowledge of Mozart's music, right, it is before my love of Mozart's music, right? There's a real before and after, before and after in things, right? One thing in me, the knowledge of his music, is a cause. Another thing in me, the love of that music, right? But in God, there are what? Not, huh? So, but notice how in theology here, where do you learn that God is good? Yeah, but you learn it in the consideration of the substance of God, right? In the, what? In the prima paris, right? So, you learn that God is simple first there, if you remember, and then that he's perfect and consequently that he's good, right? In fact, he's goodness itself, right, and so on. And then, later on, you learn that God has knowledge, right? And then later on, you learn that God has will and love, right? But there's a before and after there, which is in our thoughts, right? But how would you see that without seeing this about in us, right? Okay. But now, is that before and after, which is in our thoughts, does that correspond to something in God, because you say there's no before and after in God? Not even in the, what? Trinity. Let alone in, you know, in the inspiration of the divine goodness and divine knowledge and divine love, right? Before it's early, there's no before and after there, right? So, is there falsehood in knowing God in a before and after way? Where you say he's got to be good before he can know he's good, and he's got to know he's good before he can love himself, right? Well, why isn't that? Well, why isn't that? Well, why isn't that? They're falsely, right? Truth is not required. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. They get to actually get some kind of correspondence there, right? Okay. And there's something in God to which our thought of goodness corresponds, right? And there's something in God, right, to which our thought of knowledge, the knowledge of God, right, corresponds. There's something in God to which the love of God, right, or God's love, God's will, corresponds, right? Except it's the same thing. But there's something that's corresponding to you, right? But you have to know him from creatures in this life, right? That's why, you know, it's kind of funny. I was having to read in the Summa Congentilla is one of my, what's the top reader there? Your, your healthy addiction. It was this program, right? So I said, my healthy addiction to the Summa Congentilla, right? If I happen to be reading the part on the divine will and so on, right, the time we're, you know, looking at this thing, you know, and your mind just, you know, tends to go back and say, well, gee whiz, does God love himself, right? Could he love himself if he wasn't good? And you start to, you know, think out the things that you know again. And you can see how this helps, you know, you to do that, right? You know, we often hear that, you know, St. John quoted, you know, God is love, right? But God is knowledge too, right? God is wisdom, right? He's truth itself, right? When Thomas is, looking at Thomas's, the arguments there, you know, does God know, what, evil, right? Well, it seems that this would be a bad thing to know. And therefore, I should be deducing, you know, badness into God, right? And Thomas has one argument that's kind of interesting there where he says that there's truth about the bad as well as about the good. And so, if God didn't know the bad, right, he wouldn't know all truth, which is absurd. As well as the argument, you know, that Aristotle gives both in the anima and in metaphysics, right? You know, the pedocles position makes God not know something we know. We said he know bad, right? And how bad the world off is now. It seems to be kind of an unhealthy addiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where Aristotle takes as being, you know, an absurdity, right? It's actually being absurd, a position that makes God not know something that we know, right? The truth about the bad is good. Unless you're going to be tempted by it to be bad, knowing the truth about the good. Well, it's good to know how to not wreck your car. No, I remember one time, you know, we were talking, and we say that all knowledge is good, right? But not all love is good, right? All knowledge is good. And then the good father there in the audience, you know, in the question, pretty accurate, would say, well, now, if that's true, then you'd be in favor of the sex education, or, I mean, this factual knowledge, right? And I'd say, no, no, I'm not in favor of that. But what's the answer to that, right? If all knowledge is good, right, then the facts about this is something you should be exposing the five-year-old or six-year-old, or it is, too, right? Maybe ordering all of us, too. Yeah, yeah. But even something that is good can be, what, for accidents, right? Bad, right? Okay. And so, you know, for other reasons, right? But it's not that the knowledge as such, in this case, is, what, bad, huh? That's such a fundamental distinction, the distinction between the as such and by accident, right? Even Aristotle, you know, takes up the words being and one, he first divides them that way, right? Being as such and being by happening, right? And the same with the one, though. It's a very, very fundamental thing. If some knowledge was as such bad, right, then could God be knowledge itself? Yeah, that's like St. Alphonsus applies that to, like, occasions of sin. Some things are occasions of sin, but only relative to a particular person, like being in a bar. It's sinful about going to a bar, but maybe if somebody's got an alcohol problem, for him, it might be an irritation of sin. They shouldn't do that. Yeah, yeah. That's why, when the beer industry there in Quebec, they had to kind of pray that thing on this, you know? You know, defensively defending them, you know? You can think we would say, you know, it was like per se bad to drink this stuff, right? It isn't per se, you know? Of course, these people get caught up, you know, about to turn the water into wine, you know? You know, like me must grape juice or something like that. They do something, right, you know? They're the promises. You know? I'm sure you can bring good out of evil, you know, or something like that, you know? The Eucharist or something, you know? You know, all kinds of problems. If you don't see that distinction between the as such and the accidental, right? But Aristotle, in the book, you know, that's the first kind of mistake outside of words, right? But Aristotle says, this deceives even the what? Wise. Even the bear was deceived by this, huh? Okay. Wise. Wise. Wise. Wise. Wise. Now we get to question 11, right? Then we're not to consider about fruition, enjoyment, right? Does that mean the word fruit? I suppose. Yeah. And Thomas, he talks about the fruits of the Holy Spirit, right? And the idea of fruit has got the idea of something that is, what, ultimate or last, right? And indelible, right? But here, it's a, what, another act of the will with respect to the, what, end, huh? Okay. And I guess that's in the senses, right, where kind of the fundamental thing from Augustine, you know, you should enjoy the things that should be enjoyed and use the things that should be used and don't make the, mix them up, yeah. I was looking at the Betena Oria there in John, right? And one of the Church Fathers, Thomas, is quoting there. He's talking about jactantia and any glory and all these terrible things there, right? And then he's a quote from another Church Father. He said, the only way to, probably to avoid this, right, which is so terrible, is to realize anything good in you comes from God, right? And so I was thinking, you know, the conversation between my grandfather and my mother, right? They told me this, very interesting. He said, now when I'm gone, he says, right, you're going to think, you know, gee, I didn't thank my father for all he did for me, you know? He said, but don't, don't, don't be too, you know, disturbed by that, he says, because I thought the same thing when my father died, right? That I had not thanked him, you know, okay? And so I said, it's kind of interesting conversations you had with your father there, right? That you never really thank your father or your mother for that matter. Enough, right? You know, what they've done for you, right? I remember Brother Richard, you know, when he was a young parent there and saying, you know, you don't realize how much your parents did for you until you're a parent yourself, right? You know what, you know. Lifelong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but then you realize this thing, right? Okay. It goes back to what Cicero says so well, right? The son is always in debt to his, what, father. And part of that debt is you always owe him thanks more than you can thank him, right? Okay. Isn't that a beautiful thing when you stop and think, though? If that's true, which it is, right? Well, then, don't you have to thank even more of God, right, for giving you this mother and father, right? Or, you know how Plato thanked the gods that he had met Socrates, right? You know? Well, we all teach you to say, you can't thank you. Teach you too much, right? Take some of my candy or whatever it was. I had my candy bar. Something else. You can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you know. Obviously, he had a sweet tooth. And I just looked good when I was eating whatever it was, you know. But, and it's true, you can't, you know. Or I can say, you know, I can't thank Thomas enough for what he's enlightened me on, right? You see? But, should I thank even more God for, what, giving us Thomas and Augusta and so on, right? And did you thank Mozart for his music? Well, because I haven't met a man, but I try to express my thanks to him sometimes, right, you know? I should thank God even more than Mozart for giving us Mozart, right? Yeah. Yeah, and you have to thank, you know, Shakespeare for his plays, right, huh? You know, he probably worked on his plays, right? Mozart worked on his music, right? Yeah, I think you should, you know? So far you can, but you can't really thank the man too much. But you should thank even more God for having given us Shakespeare and Mozart and Homer. Sophocles, right? I was speaking to my nephew about that. He was saying, oh, he wants to do well in school because he owes his parents so much. And I said, oh, the more you owe God. Yeah. He's given you, I used to say, what he's given you, what he's forgiven you, and what he's promised you. Yeah. Yeah. No end. So let's go on and begin. Legend here by Thomas, huh? And about this, four things are, what? First, ask. Ask, right. First, whether phui is an act of the desiring power, right? Secondly, whether it belongs only to the, what? Rational creature, to the rational creature alone. Or also to the brute, what? Animals. Animals, huh? That's important because when you're having steak, I'd say to Tabitha and the cat, you know. You're having steak tonight. I don't know if she got plenty to know what that meant, you know. You know, hang around. You know, I used to give them tidbits on my play all the time. And third, whether fruition is only of the last end, right? And fourth, whether it is, what? Only of the end, when it is had. It's fascinating stuff here. To the first end, one proceeds thus. It seems that phui, now how does your translation? To enjoy. To enjoy, yeah. I guess that's the way, that's all I can think of, you know. But the word fruit is derived from that too, right? I suppose fruits are used for. Dessert, right? It seems that frui is not only of the, what? Petit of power, right? What? Desert of power. Yeah. For to enjoy seems to be nothing other than, what? The fruit, yeah. But the fruit of human life, which is the attitude, right? The intellect, what? Grass. In whose act, the attitude consists, on seeing God as he is, face to face. As has been shown above when he took up what the attitude is, huh? Therefore, to enjoy is not only of the appetitive power, but also the understanding, huh? Do my ears enjoy Mozart's music? My eyes enjoy Titian's paintings and so on, huh? Da Vinci's paintings, huh? Do I enjoy Thomas? Mm-hmm. Do I? Feast of reason, as Socrates calls it, huh? I enjoy a feast of reason now. Moreover, each power has its own end, which is its, what? Perfection. Just as the end of sight is to know the visible, of the year to perceive the sounds of Mozart. And that's about the others, right? But the end of a thing is its, what? Fruit. Fruit. Therefore, to enjoy is of each power, right? And not only of the desiring power, huh? Moreover, fruition implies a certain, what? Delight, yeah? A certain pleasure. But sensible pleasure pertains to the sense, which delights in its own, what? Object, right? And for the same reason, intellectual delight to the, what? I agree. Yeah, to the understanding. Therefore, fruition pertains to the apprehensive power, and not to the, what? Exactly. Not to the desiring power, huh? Now, what is this? Is this our equivocation here, or what is that, right? We were reading the book of Places of Aristotle there last night, there in my Wednesday night class there, and some of them had the English text there, you know? Of course, the Greek word was synonoma, right? And they were translating in the English text synonym. What would we use? It would be, you know, we have used it. Latin were univocal, right? Because the genus has said, you know, it's not a synonym of the species. Because animals say, and dog doesn't mean the same thing, they're not synonyms. But animals said univocally of dog, cat, horse, and so on, right? But Aristotle uses the word in both senses, right? But like in the categories, he's talking about univocal predication, when you say it in Latin. He's the word, you know. But then synonym might be always talking about rhetoric, you know, they talk about using a synonym or poetry, right? But how does this look out of this? But against this is what Augustine says in the first book on Christian teaching, right? And in the tenth book about the Trinity. There's two central works of Augustine, right? Constitutions, as they'd say. Frui asked what? By love, right? To adhere, right? In something, popris ipsum, on account of itself, right? It's like the Bernard Claros says, the reason to love God is God. But love pertains to the, what? Desiring power, right? Therefore, to enjoy is an act of the, what? Desiring power, right? It's a beautiful quote there from Augustine, huh? Thomas says, huh? I answer, it should be said that fruition and fructus, right? Enjoyment and fruit? How do you translate this, huh? How do they translate these two words? Enjoyment and fruit. What? Enjoyment and fruit. Yeah, yeah. Seem to pertain to the same thing, right? And one to be derived from the other, right? Now, which from which, right? There's nothing to do with the thing proposed, right? Except that this seems probable, right? That that which is more manifest was first, what? I don't know, right? Did you go to search there and say, the word manifest means what? You got the hand right in the act, right? I got my hand, let's say, in your money box, right? And, you know, you know. I'm a manifest thief, right? That was, that was. Very kind. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure if that's true right now. But it seemed like, at the time, you know. You know, you catch the guy, you know. It's money in the till, right? In the hand of the cookie jar. Yeah, yeah. That's manifest. High crime. So it's probable that that which is, what? More manifest, was before, what? Named, huh? In order of naming, huh? It's a fruit. More manifest. Now, those are, to us, first manifest, which are more, what? Sensible, right? Whence from sensible, what? Fruits. Fruits. The name of fruition would seem to be derived, huh? I mean, those green apples used to get, when I was a boy, off the trees, you know. Or the blueberries off the bushes. Yeah, yeah. Blackberry. Yeah. I was right back to St. Paul, Minnesota there, you know. I was walking with my wife and my brother Richard and his wife. And I was talking about the green apples they had. And there was a little, and then we'd come across this green apples hanging down, right over the sidewalk, you know, where they belong to. Oh, is that, you know, just crisp and sour, you know. So that's manifest, right? You know, it's just this rain right in front of me. Doesn't Augustine talk about stealing dappos, too? Yeah, they taste sweeter than somebody else, of course. Manifest, right? Whence from sensible fruits the name of fruition would seem to be derived. But the sensible fruit, right, is that which is last expected from the, what? Tree. Which is perceived with a certain sweetness, huh? That's a picture. Your mouth water, right? My daughter planted a whole bunch of fruit trees just this last year, so I don't know how long it takes these trees to develop before they produce fruit, you know. Depends on how big they were. Yeah. Whence fruition would seem to pertain to the love, right, or the pleasure, right? They're not the same thing, love and pleasure. Which someone has about something last that is, what, expected, right, huh? Which would be, therefore, the, what? The end. The end, huh? But the end and the good is the object of the appetitive, what? Power, right? That's where Aristotle did in the second book of metaphysics, right? He says if you do away at the end, you don't realize you're doing away at the good. So the moderns who don't talk about the end anymore, they don't really have anything good to say. Whence it is manifest that fruition is an act of the appetitive power, right? I got this pester basically from Rome, and I got an email there the other day there, and another question now about, talking about how we name things in the sensible first, right? Well, now he's gotten into the fifth book of the metaphysics there, and he's into the being there, you know, and doesn't see that with, you know, active and, I mean, proxedens and per se and so on, you know? You know, with this text here, this is a beautiful text, huh? Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful text, though, huh? So I suppose the fruit is a, what, thing the senses know, right, huh? Why the interior act there is, what, not so sensible, right? Yeah. That's what nature loves to hide, because inward, yeah. Now, what's the first objection here, right? The fruit of human life is beatitude. That's what the intellect does, huh? To the first, therefore, it should be said that nothing prevents one and the same thing, for diverse reasons, right, to pertain to diverse, what, powers, right, huh? For the vision itself of God, huh? Seeing God as he is, right? Or seeing God, what, face to face, right? Insofar as it is a vision, right, is an act of the, what, understanding, right? That's what I was mentioning at the beginning of the metaphysics there, where it's usually translated, all men by nature desire to know, right, huh? But the word to know there in Greek is adenai, right? Which comes from the idea of what to see, to understand, right, huh? And we tend to use the word, you know, to see for, to understand, right? My mother used to say, I see, so the blind man. But he couldn't see at all, right, huh? Okay, so the vision itself of God, huh, the sight of God, insofar as it is a vision, is an act of the understanding. But insofar as it is something, what, good, right? And an end, it's the object of the, what? The will, right? And in this way, it's what? Enjoyment. Enjoyment, huh? And thus, this end, the understanding, achieves as were the power acting. Right in. But the will as the power, what? Moving. Moving towards the end. And enjoying the end now attained, huh? Mm-hmm. So when you see God as he is face to face, you will enjoy this. That enjoying it will be the act of the, what? The will, right? So if we only had any likes, but we didn't have wills, we'd see a guy where we wouldn't have any joints. It's kind of fun to think about it. But don't fail. Prohibited. It's the will of the property of an unlikely creature you couldn't have. It's the will of the property of an unlikely creature you couldn't have. It's the will of the property of an unlikely creature you couldn't have. It's the will of the property of an unlikely creature you couldn't have. Because the good is known by the reason is the object of the will, right? Because you've got the object of the will, then you're going to have the power to address that object, right? Or to that object. I mean, Chesterton's saying the chief demonstration of the immortality of the soul is you can't get enough of a good thing. To second it should be said, that the perfection and the end of any other power, right, is contained under the object of the desiring power, as the private, particular, under the common right, whence the perfection and the end of each power, insofar as it is a certain good, pertains to what? The desiring power. On account of which the desiring power moves the other powers to their ends, right? And it itself, what, follows the end, right? When each of the others arrives at its end, right? It obtains its end. So I guess my will is moving my ear to hear Mozart, right? Yeah, to listen is different from hearing, I guess. Mm-hmm. Now, in pleasure he says there are two things. One is the perception of the thing being, what, suitable. And this pertains to the grasping power, which I guess is the knowing power, right? They call the first act of the mind simple, what, grasping, right? And the, what? It's complacency, or it's being pleased, I guess. Yeah, which is offered as fitting or suitable, coming together. Yeah, convenience, huh? And this pertains to the desiring power in which the ratio of pleasure is, what? Completed, yeah, yeah. First I'll argue, you know, that pleasure accompanies the perfection of the operation of these other powers, right? And they almost, he seems to say, that it's attached to the, what, the other power, right? But time speaks here as it's being completed in the wheel, right? Pleasure, huh? Delight, huh? Take a little break now, huh? Yeah. Yeah.