Prima Secundae
Lecture 182: Vice Against Nature and the Order of Reason

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

Now, even more directly is the second article about vice being against nature, right? The second one goes forward thus. It seems that vice is not against nature, right? For vice is contrary to virtue, as had been said in the first article. But the virtues are not in us by nature, right? But are caused in us either by being poured in by God, or by being accustomed to them, right? So there is doubt in the second book there, I mean, the ethics there, he takes up virtue in general, right? And he points out that you don't have these virtues in a perfect state by nature, right? But you acquire them by repeated, what? Acts, yeah. You think of what your parents did for you, right? With repeated acts. So the little kid is not as afraid of his, what, mother, as of his father, you know? As the mother is at home, you know, and the father is waiting. So, you can get a little out of hand. My brother would say, no, wait till father comes home, you know, huh? My father would say, you sit in that chair, you know, move, you know? And I would sit there, I would move. My mother is, you know, amazed at this, you know, this tranquility. My father is introduced, you know? But probably you don't know what to expect, right? And it's kind of, you know, like a stranger, you know, sometimes, too, can scare a kid more because you don't know what to expect, huh? I was driving my aunt Helen crazy, you know, she had a little shop there and ice cream, you know, stances, little, kind of, things. And I was sitting around, like that, I was driving her crazy in this small town in Minnesota, Watertown, and in comes the cop to get his coke, you know, and he sits down, you know. My aunt said all day, all day, and she says, what are you with a little boy who's been spinning these things all day? She says, oh, he said, we can put him in jail for a day. Boy, did I. Boy, did I sober up. There was a, I don't remember anything about it except that it came on in the, it must have been the 70s, or some TV show on, and it was called, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it's like, whoa. I must take my belt off, you know, I just quack it at the edge of the table, you know, that's why I didn't have to quack the kids, but quack the kids. It's time to behave. Moreover, those things which are against nature, one cannot be made, what? Custom to them, right? Just as you keep on throwing the stone up, right? You don't make it to stay up, you know, or go in the opposite direction. It's going to go down, huh? As Aristotle says in the Sanctuary of the Ethics. But some people are, what? Customs. Customs devices. What's against nature? How can that be, right? They keep making the stone so they go up, they don't want to stay up, you know. And therefore, the vices are not against nature. That's beautiful. That's a good thing. You see, Thomas thinks these owchies are bad. You've heard the story of Thomas at the King of France's table, right? Yeah. And it's the middle of, you know, dignified meal, right, and so on. All of a sudden, Thomas finishes the Manichaeans. And they're just looking at him. Of course, the King of France was a saint, right? So quickly, someone write down what Thomas has thought of, you know. For nothing that is against nature is found in those having that nature ut in pluribus, right? So, you know, most men are not born missing an arm or a leg or something, you know. But sometimes, yes, I'm born missing an arm or something, right? But it's always, you know. But vices are found in men ut in pluribus, for the most part, right? I don't teach you because he's always quoted another text to Thomas where he says, evil in human race, for the most part. And Greek philosophers said that same thing, right? Most men are bad, right? Scripture says not many men are wise. No, the number of fools is infinite. Yeah, yeah. That's what it says. Once it is said in Matthew 7, laka, wide, I guess, right? Wide is the road which leads to perdition. And multi-many, right? They go through it, huh? And therefore, vice is not against nature, huh? Moreover, sin is compared to vice as an act to a, what? Habitant, as sentence of what? But peccato, sin is defined, as Augustine says, as something said or done or desired against the law of God. As is clear to Augustine in the 22nd book against Faust. I guess we need to act like Faust, right? To invite Saul through him, huh? But the law of God is above nature, right? Whence more should it be said that vice is against the law than against what? Nature, right? There's just some connection between nature and law, right? But against this is what the great Augustine says, huh? In the third book on, what? Free judgment, huh? Free judgment. Every vice, in that it is a vice, is against nature. What a clear mind like this and that. He's an amazing guy. Okay, Christian, huh? John Paul II, there, he's got a nice encyclical in Augustine, right? I suppose he's been out encyclicals in Augustine, but you really get the impression of how important he is and central in our thinking. If you look at the catechism of the Catholic Church, right? There's a new one, a great one. Augustine is quoted either one of the Thomas, right? But he's really, you know, almost every one over again, huh? I'm glad he was. The answer should be said, this has been said, that vice is contrary to what? Virtue, huh? But the virtue of each thing consists in this, that it be well disposed according to the suitability of its, what? Nature, right? Whence is necessary that in each thing, vice is called that which, from which something is disposed, against that which is, what? Suitable to, what? Nature, yeah. Whence about each thing, right? A thing is, what? Elden contempt, I suppose, huh? From vice, the name of, what? Temperate. In Latin there. Vituperatione. Vituperatione. Has been drawn, it's believed, as Augustine says, in the third book, on the big one. What does Cajetan say about Thomas there? Around the beginning of his commentary on the Summa, you know? Thomas so reverenced the Church Fathers, you know, he seems to have inherited the mind of them all. It's a little bit like, you know, Aristotle seems to have inherited the mind of all the Greek philosophies before him, right? Because he so read them carefully and reverenced them, huh? It's amazing, you know, one of these articles I was reading on the deep potency there is the one where the connection between faith and miracles and how there's, you know, Christ will see that in the Gospels, right, huh? In the miracles, because he had no faith, right? And, but especially when you were able to perform your oracle on a sex-based city of Powell, right, huh? Well, when Thomas explains it, it goes back to, what, Anaxagoras, who played with Aristotle and married so much, right? And what did Anaxagoras say, huh? Well, this greater mind had to be, what, unmixed with other things in order to, what, command them, right, huh? See? So if you're mixed up with things, you can't, what, control them, right, huh? If the parent becomes one of the kids, you know? If the wife, if the mother becomes one of the daughters, right, if the father becomes one of the boys, you can't, what, command them anymore, right? Amen. Amen. Amen. Going back to the Great Annex Hagrid's, you know, quite a mind, huh? But it should be considered that the nature of each thing, most of all, is the form according to which the thing gets its, what? Specific nature, right? For man is constituted in his species through his rational soul, right? And therefore that which is against the order of reason is property against the nature of man insofar as it is he's a man. What, however, is in accordance with reason is in accordance with the nature of man insofar as he is, what? A man. For the good of man is to be in accordance with reason and the bad of man to be, what? Outside of reason, as Danisha says, right? Fourth chapter of the Divine Names. Whence human virtue, which makes man good, and his, what? Makes his work, his deed, good, right, huh? And that's from Aristotle from the Second Book of Ethics here, huh? Insofar as it is according to the nature of man, insofar as it is, what? Scribble to what? Reason. Feist over, insofar as it is against the nature of man, insofar as it is against the order of, what? Reason, right? So if you wanted to say, in one word, what is a bad human act, huh? Unreasonable. An unreasonable act, right, huh? And a good human act would be a reasonable act, right? It has to be, well, it did, of course, but that's kind of the starting point, right, huh? Because the nature of man could be an animal that has, what? Reason, right? So Shakespeare says, what is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed, he'd be no more, right, huh? But he's arguing, you know, from, what? A proportion, right? Which is a, what? Likeness of ratios, huh? And we use this first in math, and we say that, what? Four is to six is, what? Two is to three, right, huh? And then we carry it off, right? We say, to none of the mathematical things, we say, as seeing is to the eye, what is to the ear? Yeah. And then you can start to see this, right, huh? And Aristotle says, the mind is exercised in seeing these, what? Yeah, yeah. So, the chief good of man, this is what Shakespeare's argument, the chief good of man is to man, as the chief good of the beast is to the, what? Beast. But again, to avoid sounding too pedantic and sounding like a teacher rather than the Greek poet he is, right, huh? He takes instead of the chief good of the beast, what is the chief good of the beast? Sleep and feed. Sleep and feed, right? And I remember, you know, our cat there, she seemed to purr what she got for food, and when she, what, settled down together, they snooze, right? It's referred, you know, this is the chief good, right? So, if the chief good of the man is no more than, what, the chief good of the beast, then he's no more than a, what, a beast, right? I used to try to explain the, the way he's arguing, I used to say, what is a three if it be half a four? Two. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, you're going against the chief good of man, which is going to involve the use of, what, reason, right? You said virtues are, of course, in nature. Does that mean that we're born with the virtues? Was I born temperate with candy or something? Wouldn't that be nice? It must be lovely. My little grandchild, you know, when he thinks of, sugar is really the best thing in the world. That's what monks think after Easter. First, therefore, it should be said that virtues, although they are not caused by nature according to their perfect being, right, huh? Sometimes a person has an inclination to what? By nature to one virtue, or even to one vice, right, no? But not in their perfect state, no? Nevertheless, they incline to that which is in accordance with nature, that is according to the order of, what? Reason. Reason, right? I used to talk to students, they'd say, now, if you want to get in a fight with somebody, right, huh? Is he more apt to get in a fight if you call him wicked, or if you call him stupid? Probably stupid. Yeah. And some guys, you know, go around, you know, seducing girls or whatever you do, they kind of enjoy being called wicked, right, huh? You know? But they don't like to be called stupid. But what's that assignment, right? Stupid is opposed to what? Reason, right, huh? More directly than wicked. Wicked is in the consequence, but directly, you know, say you're stupid is saying that you're not quite fully human, you know? You have a defect as a rational animal, right? So in the sense that we kind of know that we should be, what, reasonable, right? I used to say to students, you know, you get into the dialogues later, and you say, which is more me, my emotions, or my reason, right? A lot of students would say emotions, especially the girls. Which has some proof about it all. But they kind of identify their emotions when they ask the question, right? Than with reason, huh? And then I say to them, you know, other things being equal, right, which would you judge more severely, right? A pre-planned murder, right? Or a murder of passion. Yeah, yeah. As if somehow you're more, what? For some reason. Yeah, yeah. I said, you know, if you're mad at somebody, right, you say, I don't want to see you anymore. That's not as permanent as if you sit down and write a letter telling them off, right? And that's really kind of final, if you sit down. It's not a letter, right? I don't want to have you around here, you know? Well, buy the letter more than what I say in this present moment. I don't see. Think it out more, right? Yeah, yeah. So reason is more involved, right? Okay. So that's kind of a sign, right? That we kind of recognize that reason is really. And, or I say, you know, do you live by your reason or by your emotions? I'm going to be honest, they say by their emotions, right? But then you ask the question, should you live by your reason or by your emotions, right? Well, how can they defend that they should live by their emotions unless they give, what? A reason why they should live by their emotions rather than by reason. But then they're already admitting that reason should decide whether you should live by reason or by the emotions. The emotions can't decide that. So if reason has the authority to decide whether you should live by emotions or reason, you already put reason in the first place, right? You should live in the courts of reason. So you're not being honest in the sense with yourself if you don't realize that, right? But nevertheless, when you're born, you have these emotions and they're kind of, what? Outside of... Where? Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're attracted to the sensible things, right? Independent kind of reason, right? And they can be, what? Yeah? A crazy case in the people today, I think it was, yeah. The guy wanted some more booze and he said, why'd you drive down rather than walk down because he's right next to the liquor store? I want no wines. He sounded absolutely crazy, you know. I just kind of heard the conversation or whatever's being built on the newspaper. So, to the first, it should be said that virtues, although they are not caused by nature, according to their perfect being, right, nevertheless, they incline to that which is in accordance with nature, right, once the virtue is established, right, that is according to the order of reason. For Tully says in his rhetoric, huh, that virtue is a habit, right, in the mode of nature, right, in agreement with what? Reason, right? So it becomes almost second nature to you, right? So a man has acquired the virtue of temperance. It's kind of second nature to him. He doesn't drink, you know, success, actually, in a certain amount. Thomas says he should drink, uh, Ustwe Adleri Tatum, right, huh? But not to the point of you're not knowing what you're doing, you know, I mean, okay? The Greek idea, you know, was that a man went off and did something like a rape or a murder or whatever it is, um, drunk, right, he should be punished twice, right? One's for the crime, rape, or murder, and the other for getting himself drunk, right? He's guilty of two different sins, huh? And in this way, virtue is said to be according to nature, right? Not that you're born to virtue, right? And therefore, by contrariety is understood, and the advice is against, what? Nature. Nature, right? To the second it should be said, right? An example there of the stone there, at least, according to Aristotle. To the second it should be said, the philosophy there speaks about those things which are against nature, according to what? To be against nature is opposed to that which is to be by nature, right? Nature, okay? So it's by nature that we have two hands, right, or two arms, right? So if somebody's born without an arm or something, right? That's, what? Against nature, right? Because it's against what is by nature to have two arms, right? You know, we need a third arm, you know? People sometimes, as they're carrying a grocery, and they want to unlock the door, you know? So you need a third arm, but you can really get along with it. There's about a third arm, but, you know, just one arm kind of, you know? Just kind of thought. Yeah, yeah. The same way, you don't need three eyes, one eye, two eye, and three eyes, you're in the children's story, right? But you really kind of need two eyes, you know, for depth and distance, yeah. Not, however, according as against nature as opposed to that which is to be in accordance with nature. In that way, which virtues are said to be according to nature, insofar as they incline to that which is, what? Suitable to nature, huh? When Shakespeare presents that in the plays, you know, he often takes, you know, brothers or even, you know, like in King Nair, he takes father and son, or father and daughters, right? And, of course, then it's very easy to see, you know, something against nature here, when the father is being betrayed by his son, right, to his enemies and so on. Or when one brother, and as you like it, you have two pairs of brothers, right? And in one case, the younger brothers are served the throne of the older brother, right? And the older brother is punished out there in the forest, divided in them. In another case, the older brother is not giving any inheritance to the younger brother. And so the younger brother ends up eventually in the forest too, right? But eventually the brothers are reconciled, but in the, what? Yeah. That's kind of metaphorical for what? Nature, right? So when you're first introduced to the duke who's banished, he says, and this is our public font, you know, finds, what, tongues and trees, you know, books and the running brooks, sermons and stone, and good and everything. But the idea of nature is, what? The kind of standing of the idea of nature is what's good. And it's got to be the harmony of nature, right? One's treating against your father, right? What about his third objection, right? And this is the one that says most men are bad, right? And Heraclitus says most men prefer a life suitable to beasts, right? And Stahl talks about that. The third should be said that in man there is a two-fold, what? Nature. His rational and his sensitive nature. And because, through the operations of our sins, men arrive at the act of what? Reason. Therefore, more follow the inclinations of the sensitive nature than the order of what? Reason. For there are more, right, who achieve or... Follow. Yeah. To the beginning of the thing, then those who arrive at its what? Perfection. Yeah. And from this, vices and sins in men arise that they follow the inclination of the sense nature against the order of what? Reason. Reason, huh? So concupiscence, right? Deserve for the woman. Deserve for the booze, right? Or anger, right? Hmm. To some extent, right? They say that most of the angels were not bad. Most were good, right? She fell, right? But man is this double nature, right? Easy. Easy prey. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's why you need the fine arts, huh? You know? Thomas says in the Prairie to Logic there, he talks about the poetics, he says, Poete est in duchere ad antiquat virtuosum, huh? Mm-hmm. Per ducentum representacionum. Belongs to the poet, to lead us into something virtuous, to a suitable, what? Right. Reputation, right? I remember a friend of mine, you know, was in some kind of conflict with his brother, and as you're likely showing, right? Mm-hmm. So I said, let's go see this. And change it all around, you know, huh? Because there's some representation, right, of, you know, brothers in conflict, you know, which you can see is something bad, right, in the play, and then they're eventually reconciled. Someone's asking me this question, you know, kind of hard answer. So, what's your favorite play of Shakespeare? And I said, well, I don't know. King there, probably. But it's really the one where nature is emphasized, huh? And you have one father with three daughters, and one is good, and one daughter should be, and the other two are pretty bad. Yeah. Then you have another man who's got two sons, and one is good, and one is bad. So, I mean, you can't wait in these things. It's a suitable representation of some kind of things. But you have to kind of be led by these, what, fine arts, right, huh? Because they have something appealing to the senses, too. To the fourth, it should be said, huh? The fourth objection was about law rather than nature, right, huh? To the fourth, it should be said that whatever is against the axio, or the definition of the artificial thing, is also against the nature of art, by which the artificial thing is produced. But the eternal law is compared to the order of what? Human reason. As art to the what? The main law. Art, artificial work, yeah. Whence it is of the same reason that vice and sin is against the order of human reason, and they'd be against the law of what? Eternal law. Actually, human law is kind of a partaking of the divine law, right? Right to us. Whence, Augustine, who is this Augustine's always quoted? One, one man. Somebody. I thought when I first started reading about Thomas, you know, that I saw somewhere that Thomas said, you know, the way to become wise, he said, is to be a man of one book. I can't, I can't find that cool, you know, here and right across it, you know, but. So it kind of struck me, you know, one book at a time, right? Thomas always wrote more than one book, right? But he really, you know, mastered these books, huh? The way to become wise is to be a man of one book, right? A book of nature? Yeah, yeah, like Bonaventure there, you know, Thomas says, what if he did? He cropped the goose, crocked the cross, you know? So that's where he is, that was his book, a man of one book. Once Augustine says in the third book on free judgment, that from what? All have from God. All natures have from God, that they are natures, right? Yeah. And insofar as they're vicious, insofar as they, what? Proceed from the art by which they were made, right? Yeah. Discedent, huh? From that art by which they were made, right? This marriage stuff, you know. It is so, so mad, you know. So mad. Obviously, it's nature, right? Same sex marriage, you know. Take a little break now? Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The third one goes forward thus. It seems that vice, that is a bad habit, is worse than sin. That is a bad act. For just as the good which is more long-lasting is better, right? So the evil that is longer-lasting is worse. But a vicious habit is longer-lasting than a vicious act, which at once passes, right? Therefore, a vicious habit is worse than a vicious act. Moreover, many evils should be more, what? Flood than one evil. But a bad habit is virtually, right? Power, you might say, a cause of many evil acts. Therefore, a vicious habit is worse than a vicious, what? Act. Moreover, a cause is more potent than its effect. But a habit perfects an act both in goodness and in evil, right? It competes it, you might say. Therefore, the habit is more potent than the act both in goodness and in evil. I go to bed tonight and think of the answer to these three evils, huh? But against this, that someone is justly punished for a vicious act, huh? Not, however, for a vicious, what? Habit. Unless it goes forward to an act. Therefore, a vicious act is worse than a vicious, what? Habit. Even without a vicious habit, you're punished in a bad act, right? Right. The answer should be said that a habit is in a middle between potency or ability and act. Now, it is manifest that an act in both goodness and in badness is preeminent to what? Potency or ability, as is said in the ninth book of metaphysics. That's the book on act and ability, right? And Aristotle shows that. For it is better, what? The chicken and the egg. Yeah. For it is better to act well than to be able to act well, right? And likewise, it is more worthy of blame to act badly than to be able to act badly, right? Whence also it follows that a habit in goodness and in badness is in the middle of grade between the potency and the what? Yeah. Yeah. So, which is worse than me, to kill you or to be able to kill you? Kill me. Yes. Yeah. And now the habit is what? In between, right? In between. The ability and the act. That a good habit or a bad one is before, right, in goodness and badness to the what? Potency, right? I mean, preeminent, isn't it? Yeah. So, also it is what? Given under the act, right? Subject to it. Which is also apparent from this, that a habit is not said to be good or bad, except from this, that it inclines one to a what? Or a bad act. Good act or a bad one, right? And in account of the goodness or badness of the act, the habit is called good or what? Bad. And therefore, it is more potent the act in goodness and badness than the habit because of the old thing. It kind of puts each thing at that point. Now, what's my expansion that unfold that Greek principle, right? The same thing belongs to two things, right? But to one of them, because of the other, belongs more to the one's cause, yeah? So, if bad is said of the bad act and of the bad habit, right? But of the bad habit because it's inclined to a bad act, then it belongs more to the bad act. That's in sight, sir. The reasonable man he was, huh? Jacob Sirk said that Thomas, you know, prayed all night till he had to start teaching. He didn't want to be distracted, I don't know. He wanted to learn more, but he had to go. I don't know what the basis was where he got the idea of it. It's a totally little thing. I don't know. So there's two ways that he shows us, right? Of course, in some respects, too, you know, the ability can be for both the good and the bad, right? So the doctor maybe is able to heal you, right? But no one is more able to kill you than the doctor, right? So it's the same ability there, right? And it's not until you get to the act that you may have, fully good or fully bad, huh? Now, how does he answer the first objection there, huh? To the first, therefore, it should be said that nothing prevents something being simply, what? More potent than another. That nevertheless, in some ways, it couldn't have quit, right? It falls short of it, huh? This is the whole distinction that we met, this kind of distinction between simply and what? Not simply, but in some way, right, huh? And this is also one of the kinds of what? Yeah, the second kind of fallacy outside of language, right, huh? And in the great dialogue there, the immuno, right, huh? Immuno, in a sense, makes this mistake, right? How can you investigate what you don't know? Why are we paying these guys to find the cause of cancer, right? If they don't know it, how can they go looking for it? They don't know what they're looking for, right? But they know, in some imperfect way, what they don't know, right? And so it's not the distinction between the simple and the simple and the simple in some respect, okay? Simplicitare, that is more potent, is more potent, that what? Excels as regards what is considered per se in both, right? But secundum quid, that is preeminent, that has itself, what? To both, right? Now, it's been shown, right, this is in the Bible article, that from the very, what, ratio, the thought of act and habit, the act is more potent in goodness and badness than the habit, right? Just to show that. But the habit is, what? Longer-lasting. What happens in the act happens from this, that both are found in such a nature that it's not able always to act, and whose action is in a, what, transient motion. When simply, act is more potent, both in goodness and in, what, malice, right? In the habit. But the habit is more potent in some way, right? Some quid, yeah. It's much worse, to be drunken by habit or to get drunk. Yeah, simply speaking, it is, right? But in some way, it's worse to be, what? Alcoholic. A bit chill, alcoholic, yeah? To be drunk, right? It's going to be longer-lasting, right, huh? And to rise to any acts of being drunk like this. That's the hard thing, that distinction between simply and not simply, right, huh? Going back to the example there, philosophy there, which is more familiar. If you look at philosophy, what part of philosophy is wisdom simply? What part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways? He couldn't have quit his acting way. Is it first philosophy? Yeah, first philosophy is wisdom simply. By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right? By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right? By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right? By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right? By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right? By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right? By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right? By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right? By the way, what part of philosophy is wisdom in some ways, right?