Prima Secundae
Lecture 58: Indifferent Acts and Circumstances in Moral Species

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We've got Article 8 here, now in Question 18. To the 8th one proceeds thus. It seems that there is not any act that's indifferent in its, what, species. For the bad is the privation or lack of the good, according to Augustine. But lack and habit are opposed immediately, huh? Down, down the middle, according to the philosopher. Therefore, there is not some act which in its species is indifferent, as were being a middle between good and bad, right? You think of privation, like, say, like, blindness, right? Do you have sight or you're blind, right? You seem to be, you know, you're here or you're deaf, right? Okay. Moreover, human acts have a species from the end or the object, as has been said, huh? But every object and every end has the notion of good or bad. Therefore, every human act and its species is either good or, what, bad, huh? None, therefore, is indifferent in its, what, species, huh? Moreover, it's either in accordance to the reason or it's not in accordance to the reason, right? Moreover, as has been said, an act is called good, which has the suitable or the ode perfection of goodness, huh? Bad, which, to which something of this is lacking or failing. But it is necessary that every act either has the whole fullness of its goodness or something is, what, lacking, huh? Therefore, necessarily, every act in its species is either good or bad, and none indifferent. But against this is what Augustine says in the book on the Sermon of Our Lord on the Mountain, huh? That there are some facta, or media, right, huh? Which are able, with a good or a bad soul, to come about, about which it is, what, dangerous to judge, huh? Why did the building fall upon a judge, unless I want to be mistaken, that's what he says. There are therefore some acts which in their species are indifferent, huh? Well, I answer, Thomas says, that as has been said, every act has its species from its object, huh? And a human act, which is called a moral act, has its species from the object related to the beginning of human acts, which is nothing other than reason. Whence, if the object of the act includes something that is suitable to the order of reason, the act will be good in its species, as to give, what, alms to the needy, huh? If, however, it includes something that is repugnant to the order of reason, it would be a bad act in its species, as to steal, huh? Which is taking another, huh? The alien, that belongs to another. Now, it happens that the object of an act does not include something pertaining to the order of reason, as to lift up a, what? A what? A straw. A straw. A straw from the earth. To go to the, uh, field, I guess, and things of this sort. And such acts in their species are, what? Yeah. And the fretta. For example, it's another place to scratch your beard, or something. Mm-hmm. Well, of course, that might not be a human act, that way. Right. Maybe it seems, he's just, he's considering acts universally, right? Not this particular act, right? Mm-hmm. If it's going to be a particular act, there's going to be a reason why you're doing it. You're going to add something that's going to make it good with that, but. Yeah. Maybe it's come out of the, applies here, but anyway. Mm-hmm. Now, to the first, therefore, it should be said, that twofold is privation, right? And one consists in, what? In being. In being. In lacking or what? Mm-hmm. Right. Right. And this leaves nothing, right, but takes away the whole. Mm-hmm. As blindness totally takes away sight, and darkness, light, and death. Right. Life, huh? Right. And between such a lack and the opposite having, there cannot be some middle about the, what? The thing that is the proper, one susceptible of these, huh? Mm-hmm. But there's another privation, which consists in privari, you know, whatever that means. As sickness is a, what? Depriving of. Health. You know, of health. Not that the whole of health is taken away, right, huh? But it's, as it were, a certain way to the total taking away of, what? Health, right? Mm-hmm. Which comes about through death. And therefore, such a lack, when it leaves something, right, or since it leaves something, is not always immediate with its, what? Opposite habit, right? And in this way, bad is the lack of good, as Implicia says in his commentary on the book of the Categories. Because it does not take away the whole good, right? But it leaves, what, something that is good, huh? Whence is able to be some middle between good and, what, bad, huh? When she says that, huh? Because even to be a little sick is kind of bad. What's that? Even to be a little sick is bad, isn't it? Mm-hmm. I'm thinking of my mother's hearing, you know? Mm-hmm. She can't hear very well. She hardly, she's almost deaf. Yeah. But not quite. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, sometimes it, sometimes I can't talk to her on the phone. I, I think she does not, because of her position, she gets confused, like, what, either her, she thinks her hearing aids are in or aren't, she thinks they're on, they're off, she thinks the batteries are good, but they're not. So, sometimes I talk to her on the phone, everything I say to her, I can't hear her saying. And then she says, there's no point in talking. I wouldn't consider that to be different. I don't like to see that according to reason or not, it's going to be one or the other. Or you can just not, or if you don't consider it as it's related to reason, then are you not the species of morals anymore? Aren't you talking about the act in the species of nature rather than the species of morals? Mm-hmm. We're going to watch and see if you can pick up these straws. Yeah. We didn't all gave her to pick up straws in there, you know. Let's put that on the shelf there. Yeah. See if we picked up. Puzzle that, yeah. Here's something between, you know, a full privation, right? Mm-hmm. And how it solves the problems and all being clear. Now to the second one. To the second it should be said that every object or end has some goodness or what? Badness, at least what? The one that has by nature, right? Mm-hmm. But not always does it imply some goodness or badness, moral goodness or badness, which is considered in comparison to reason, huh? And about this now one is treating, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's why you whistle something? Whistle to it. Whistle to it. Whistle to it. Whistle to it. Whistle to it. Whistle to it. Is that morally good or bad whistling? Whistling? Yeah. Depends on why you're doing it. And my grandchildren say, no whistling in the house now. They've been talking. No whistling in the house. Good. Third objection. To third it should be said that not whatever an act has pertains to its, what, species. Whence although in the notion of its species are not contained whatever pertains to the, what, fullness of its goodness, right? Not an account of this is it from its species, what, bad, nor also, what, good. Just as man in its species is neither, what, virtuous nor vicious, child, I suppose, huh? Nothing virtuous or vicious, huh? This is what comes in position now. So, I hope we understood it. So, is it different whether you have your main meal at noontime like you guys do or in the evening like I do? No, it's not. It's obviously better than you did. Yeah, no, it's good in comparison to having it in the evening is better. That would be considered by Thomas indifferent, I wonder. Maybe so, yeah, I'm just thinking, well, there's certain customs that you choose, right? Are they moral, are they, I mean, they're moral things, I think it's moral things, but I would think of them as more than good to have a new male, you may know? Well, if you speak French or English, or is that, yeah, I mean, is it, uh... Well, if I start speaking French to him so that he can't understand... Well, if you do it because you do it because you have national secrets, and I'm a terrorist. Well, when he went down to, we go down to, on the bus down to March for Life, right, we see the rosary, right? One rosary, and then coming back we see another rosary, right? So, uh, the, uh, the new priest in the parish tower is from Poland, right, huh? So he said, does anybody, you know, speak Spanish, right? And somebody, you know, somebody spoke Spanish, right? In Spanish. Anybody? French, or somebody in French, right? And so on. And so, they said one decade in English, and then they said one in Spanish, they said one in French, and then, uh, we've got a woman who was from Hungary originally, so they said one decade in Hungary, the first part, and then, and then, uh, Father Martian said, you know, in Polish, one decade, so, I don't know why he did this. I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I don't know why he did this, but I I say some prayers in Latin and some prayers in English, you know, most of the years, but I say some English. Now, this is what you're talking about, this next act here, right? Whether some act is indifferent in the individual, right? Let me clear up our confusion here, right? Up to Article 9 here. Because the first one was whether some act is indifferent secundum sum specia, right? According to his species, right? And now, whether some act is indifferent secundum individuum, right? In the individual act. Well, the first objection says there is no species which under itself does not contain or is not able to contain some individual. But some act is indifferent in its, what, species. Therefore, some individual act can be indifferent. A bit of time is going to take the other side. Is it all mixed up? Moreover, from individual acts are caused habits that are conformed to them, as is said in the Second Book of the Ethics. But some habit is indifferent, huh? For the philosopher says in the Fourth Book of the Ethics about some, as about what? The complacent or something? Yeah. Like, was that peaceful or tranquil or something? It's the translation is that those who are of an even temper and probable disposition are not evil. And in Nicholas, it stands that they are not good, since they receive from what? Virtue. Virtue. And thus they are indifferent in habit. Therefore, some individual acts are indifferent. Moreover, the moral good pertains to virtue, moral evil to vice. Yes, but it happens sometimes that a man, an act which is from its species indifferent, right, does not order to any end either of, what, vice or virtue. Therefore, it happens for some individual act to be, what, indifferent, huh? Maybe that's unconscious, as we'd say, right, huh? Okay. Well, there we go. But again, this is what Gregory says, huh? In a certain homily, huh? One of the evangelists, the good gospels. Utziosum verbum, an idle word, right, huh? I'm going to be punished for all these idle words. Is what is, what? Lacking, right? The usefulness of rectitude, either by reason of some, what, just necessity or some pious usefulness, huh? But about an idle word, but an idle word is bad, huh? Because about it, men must render a reason of the day of, what, judgment, huh? Chattering classes, as they call it. If, however, it does not lack the reason of, what, just necessity or some pious usefulness, it is good, right, huh? Therefore, every word is either good or, what? Bad, huh? For our life reason, therefore, any other act is either good or bad. Therefore, no individual act is, what? Indifferent. Indifferent, huh? Huh. I told you that time, when I think about John Paul II again, what he said to President of Asunction College, you know, I told you that joke, huh? Huh? They don't know. He said, uh, uh, Hagen, President Hagen, the former president, huh? Who is it? You know, a gentleman waiting to, oh, boy, you call it. And, uh, he came out after one of these big ceremonies, all this, I mean, and he says to Hagen, uh, John Paul II, do you tell all those jokes at your school? No. No. And he was, I said, I don't know, you're full because of Spidey and Joy, and he says, you don't tell him around here much anymore, either. I was just saying, you know, it's such a humor the guy had, you know? What a marvelous thing, yeah? See? The college president, right? Yeah, yeah. Ever since your lecture, your holiness, they've been forbidden. I answer, it should be said, that it happens sometimes, huh? That some act to be indifferent in its, what? Species. Species, huh? Which nevertheless is good or bad, considered in the, what? Individual. And this, because a moral act, as has been said, not only has goodness from the object, from which it has, what? Its species, huh? But also from circumstances, right? Those trusty, those, you know, those, uh, testy circumstances, yeah. It's my standards. Just sitting around and it would cause all this trouble, yeah. Uh, which are, as it were, what? Some accidents, right? Like accidents, that's what they're called in circumstances. Just as something belongs to an individual man, according to his individual accidents, right? That does not belong to man by reason of his, what? Species, right? Okay. So you descend to the individual man, then you get something that, what, belongs to him, but not to man in general, right? Mm-hmm. And there, and it is necessary that each individual act has some circumstance through which, or by which, it is drawn, either to the, what? Good or bad. Good or bad. At least from the side of the intention of the end, right? So what was John Paul II's end in mind? Yeah. Discomfit the educated disorder. Yeah. Maybe it's just to relax the present, huh? Yeah. Maybe just the opposite. Of course. That would have been my intention. Make the guy squeamish. Make him uncomfortable. Make him sweat. Sense over, it is rationes, yes, ordinari, right? That sounds like Shakespeare, right? Mm-hmm. The act, what? Proceeding by reason, deliberative, right? Proceeding. If it is not ordered to a suitable in, is from this very fact repugnant to, what? Reason. And has a notion of, what? Bad. Bad, huh? So it's this question of order to us. Debutum. Suboind, then. If, however, it is ordered to a suboind, it, what? Comes together with the order of, what? Reason. Once it has the notion of, what? Good. Good, huh? Now, it's necessary, however, that it'd be either ordered or not ordered to a suitable in, right? Whence every act of man, proceeding from, what? Deliberative reason, right, huh? Considered in the individual, is either good or, what? Bad. I guess Augustine said this before, Thomas, right? Okay. But if it does not proceed from reason deliberating, but from a certain imagination, as in some... Yeah. Yeah, see? This is a bear. I knew it was coming last. Or moves his hand or his foot, right? Okay? That's why people, you know how, you know, if you hum a melody or something like that, someone will pick it up automatically, you know? You know, without even thinking about it. I said to my wife, you're humming Mozart. Am? I play Mozart's voice around the house, you know, too. She's not going to pick it up. Without knowing it, she picks up, and I find her, you're humming a whistle or something like Mozart's thing, you know? I reckon it's going to be nice that it is. Yeah, 227. Such an act is not, properly speaking, right? Moral or human, right? It's not human when you... Yeah, yeah. Since it does not have... Act from... Yeah, I mean, for reason, yeah. And thus it will be indifferent as if we're outside the genus of moral acts. It's a distinction he's making, huh? It didn't make sense, huh? We'll take that as... It's interesting that he takes the end as a circumstance, because early on he says that the moral act is one act, and it derives the substance from both the object and the end, so the object in the end makes up the substance of the act, and now he's taking the end as a circumstance, which is accidental, You know what I'm saying? So why does he say that the end is a circumstance? Well, it's outside the substance of the act in some way, right? The end is the extrinsic cause, and the end is the mover and the camera extrinsic causes. But when he said, you know, when I give alms for the sake of vain glory, when he asked earlier, is that one act or two acts? He said, no, that's one more act. Considered. When he says, when I give alms for the sake of vain glory, he said that's one act, so you can give me alms, which derives the species of logic in the vain glory, which is the end, which seems to belong to the substance of the act. Yeah, but he said even before that the circumstance can be changed into it, what? Yeah. Yeah. Something essential. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If it changed that, it would be good to bad or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would be… It's like when you're speaking to an audience and so on, you see somebody kind of smiling, you know, you wonder, what are they smiling about? Remember, Brother Mark tells a story that he goes over at the other professor's house there, you know, and the kids are watching on TV Batman, right? And there is, not the big bat, but the kids batting kind of, you know, and the lines that they say are directed to make the adults laugh, right? Mm-hmm. But the kids, it passes them right away, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they're kind of watching it, you know, with the kids there in front of it, and they're kind of, you know, chuckling, you know, and so on. Stop the ditch around, you know, and you're making fun of our… I know. I began to appreciate that when I was in high school. I started to appreciate that Batman was much more intelligent than the program. The original TV show. Yeah. There was a lot of humor in it. Yeah, yeah. The kids didn't get it. Yeah, yeah. It's addressed to both, right, you know? Like Mozart said, you know, about someone's music, you know, only a true connoisseur can appreciate it. It was written in such a way that everybody will like it, right? Oh, nice. Here comes a double audience, right? Mm-hmm. It's the way Scripture is in some ways, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think Thomas is, you know, appeals to audiences the way Scripture does. That was a fellow I know, Sam Rosen. He's a physician. He's from Lebanon, but he knows, he speaks English all the time. He's been in the country many, many years. He speaks perfect English, understands. Yeah. And he said, you know, because I was talking about something St. Thomas said. He says, Father, you've got to understand. I bought St. Thomas' Summa theology in English. He said, I can read English. And I read those words, and I don't know what the heck he's talking about. I don't know what he's talking about. They're simple words. He says, I don't get it. He's trying. Yeah, I have to decide now to see what I'm going to have to read the super kind of gentile stuff I just did, or the Gospel of St. John. You know, it's all that. I should give him one of those autographed manuscripts of Thomas. It looks like Arabic. Yeah. It's all crazy. Yeah. It's like Ratzinger's handwriting. Oh, really? Oh, he's got crazy handwriting. He's just signed. They have some, some things that he wrote down. No, autographed. It means when he wrote his writing. He wrote it himself. He himself wrote it. He himself wrote it. But it's, it's a, he can sign in photos. And it's at the release of the second edition of the film. See, Thomas. At Barb and Mobile. Books time. Okay, so let's look at the reply to the objections now. To the first, therefore, it should be said that some act is what? To be indifferent according to its species. This can be in many ways, right? In one way, thus that from its species is owed to it that it be what? Indifferent, right? And thus proceeds what? Reason. But nevertheless, in this way, no act from its species is what? Indifferent. For there is not any object of what? A human act that cannot be ordered either to something good or to bad to the end. Indifferent. Indifferent. In other way, it can be what? From its species. Because it does not have from its species that it be good or what? Bad, right? When, through something else, it can come to be good or bad. Just as man does not have from his own species that it be white or black, but nevertheless he has from his species, nor does he have from his species that it be not white or black. For whiteness or blackness can come upon a man in another way than from the principles of species that make him to be a man. The second should be said that the philosophers call that bad properly, which is harmful to what? Other men. It's kind of like we do sometimes. And according to this, he says to be what? Prodigal means to be prodigal and to be very generous to your money, right? It's not bad because it harms nobody else except the man himself, right? He's too generous, right? And likewise, about all other things which are not harmful to one's neighbors, okay? But we here call bad, in common, everything that is what repugnant to right reason, right? And according to this, every individual act that's deliberative, right, is either good or bad, right? And the third it should be said, that every end intended by deliberating reason pertains to the good as some virtue or to the bad as some, what? Vice. Vice, huh? Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Vice. Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. God, our Enlightenment, Guardian Angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, border-illuminar images, and arouse us to consider more correctly the St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. And help us to understand what you have written. Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Okay, you're up to, I guess, Article 11 here, huh? Article 10. 10, okay. 10 and 11 here. 10 and 11, you should think about that together. To the 10th one proceeds thus. It seems that circumstances are not able to constitute some species, some particular kind of good or bad act. For the species of an act is from its object, huh? But the circumstances differ from the object, huh? Therefore, the circumstances do not give species to the act, huh? Moreover, the circumstances compared to the moral act are accidents of it. But an accident does not constitute the species, huh? They can go back to porphyry there, right, huh? Genus, difference, very essential to the species, right? Property follows upon it, but accident is outside the nature. Not going to do it. Therefore, circumstances do not constitute some species of good or what? Bad, huh? Moreover, of one thing, there are not many, what, species. Not many what it is. But of one act, there are many circumstances. Therefore, a circumstance does not constitute a moral act in some species of good or bad, huh? But against all this is that place is a certain circumstance, huh? But place constitutes a moral act in some species of what? Bad. For to steal something from a sacred place is a, what? A sacrilege. See, you had a little box. I come out of church there, you know. See, the box. If you could figure out how to open it, you could take it. Well, I remember in my parish back home, you know, I was breaking into a little thing they had, you know, where people give things and they had to make it more secure, you know, because. Yeah, this would be you could figure out the wall. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, one time I was downtown Minneapolis there, and I went into the Catholic church there, which kind of big thing, you know. There's a little sign to come in, you know, watch your purse. All do not come to pray. You know, they had people, you know, stolen, you know, and they always have bohms downtown, you know, and they come in, they see the woman praying, and they seem kind of distracted, you know, and they take the purse. It's when the ladies go to communion, you see. They come out front. Yeah. These guys, they have the band-aid, the person behind on the pews. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that's a circumstance, right? You're stealing your tricks. I didn't care about it. I never started. Yeah. But to steal something from a sacred place is a sacrilege, right? That's the case if I'm taking that thing when I come out. Okay? Therefore, circumstances, circumstance constitutes a moral act in some species of good or what? Bad, huh? I draw the line somewhere to say that. Okay. Answer should be said, huh? That the species of natural things, right, are constituted from their natural, what? Forms. So, also, the species of moral acts are differently. They are constituted from forms insofar as they are conceived by, what? Reason. As has been said before. It's a little different, the kind of species you have here. Because nature is determined to something one, nor can the, what, proceeding of nature go on forever, is necessary to arrive at some last form from which is taken the specific difference, after which another specific difference cannot be. And hence it is that in natural things, that which is an accident to something cannot be taken as a difference constituting a species. So, white man is not species of man, right? But the process of the going forward, proceeding of reason, is not determined to something one. But anything being given, it is able to, what? Proceed further. And therefore, in one act, that what in one act is taken as a, what? Circumstance added to the object, right? Which determines the species of the act. It is also able to be, what? Taken by reason, ordering, as a principal condition of the object determining the species of the act. But to take what belongs to another, as a species from, just as to take what does not belong to oneself, right? To belong to another. As its, what, species from the, what? Notion of the other. Notion of the other, right? And from this, it is constituted in the species of, what? Theft, huh? I often thought, you know, how you get to be a real good friend of somebody, and if they need something, they'll take it without, what? Yeah. Yeah. Warren was giving a talk one time, and he said, oh, I needed something, and I just took this thing that I had written, you know. He used to part of it, and said, I didn't even mind the way. I said, no, that's okay. But you see, that's not theft, though, right? Because he knew that I would not be annoyed here. Well, that's the case saying, well, you want knowing and willing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except everyone knows a crook. No, that's not. And if one considers, in addition to this, right, the ratio, the thought, the aspect of place, or what? Time. This has itself in the notion of circumstance, right? But because the ratio, also about place, or about time, and other things of this sort, is able to be ordered by, what? Reason, huh? It happens that the condition of place about the object can be taken as something contrary to the order of, what? Reason. For example, the reason orders that one ought not to do an injury in his sacred, what? Place, huh? I don't know if they observe it anymore. I don't think the government does. Taking, you know, fleeing, you know, when you're arrested. Fleeing to church. And, uh, yeah. They don't buy anywhere, no. Whence to take something alien from a sacred place adds a special, what? Repugnance to the order of reason. And therefore place, which before is considered as his circumstances, right? Now is considered as a principle or a chief condition of the object, making it repugnant to what? Reason, huh? So notice the distinction there between circumstance and the object there is not as something absolute, is it? Some circumstances can, what, crawl into the, the object, is it where, huh? Okay. Now the next article is going to say not every circumstance to do this, right? And you'll see a little more the whole truth about this, right? And in this way, whenever some circumstance regards a special order of reason, right? Either for or against, right? Is necessary I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.