De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 122: Conscience as Act: Etymology, Functions, and Distinction from Synderesis

Transcript
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For then, conscience would not be one thing, but many. Because through many habits, we are directed in things to be done, right? Therefore, conscience must be a power. But against this is that people sometimes, what, set aside their conscience? You find Shakespeare's character sometimes talking about that. Anybody who wants to prosper this world, right, he'll set aside his conscience. When he's urging somebody to do some action that's going to be financially rewarding, but is not a good thing or a just thing to do, right? But one doesn't set aside a power. Therefore, conscience is not a power. So Thomas wants me to kind of clear up how this word is used or should be used. I answer it should be said that conscience, properly speaking, is not a power but an act. And this is clear both from the, what, the ratio of the name, right, from the structure of the name itself, you might say, and also from those things which, according to the common way of speaking, are attributed to conscience. For conscience, according to the, what, appropriate tate vocabulae, see what he's saying there, right? If you examine the word itself and its structure, right, con, which means what? With, right? And scientia, with knowledge, right, huh? Okay. What implies the order of knowledge to something, right? For conscience, it's said, you should have a lack in there to see what he's saying here, cum allio sciencia, right, huh? Okay. But the application of science to something comes about to some, what, act, right? Whence in the very, let's say, structure of the name, it is clear that conscience is a, what, act, huh? He's not speaking of it as being, what, an ability, right? Or even as knowledge, as such, right, meaning habitual knowledge, but it's with knowledge, right, huh? It's like something where you're doing something with knowledge, right, and therefore you're applying the knowledge that you have to something, okay? And therefore it seems to name from the, what's, privateness of the speech itself, right, for the word itself to be naming an act, right, more than a habit or a power, huh? The same thing appears from those things which are attributed to conscience. For conscience is said to what? To testify, to bind, huh? To instigate, to want to do something. Or to what? Accus one, right? Or way more dairy, huh? What it means is what? To bite again, huh? Okay? Or to reprehend. And we often speak of, what, in English, my conscience bothers me about this, right? Yeah. Okay? But all of these, he says, follow upon the application of some knowledge or science to those things which we, what? Yeah. Do, yeah. Okay? So we might recall the Ten Commandments or something even more particular than that, right, huh? And then we wonder about something we've done, right, huh? Okay? And our conscience, huh? We're bothered, huh? Which application takes place in three ways, huh? In one way, according as you recognize that we have done something, or what? Not done it, right? According to that of Ecclesiastes 7, verse 23. But your conscience, right, knows that you've, what, spoken badly of others, has it? No. And according to this, conscience is said to, what, testify, right? You've done something, right? Not done something. I've killed a man, right? Okay? I haven't paid my taxes. I haven't studied for the exam. In another way, it is applied according as to our conscience. We judge something which ought to be done or should not be done, right? And according to this, conscience is said to, what, instigari, huh? How did you translate that? To initiate something, huh? Or, digari, which might be to bind, right, huh? Okay? Thou shalt not commit adultery, right? Thou shalt not steal, right? Right? Thou shalt not bear false witness, huh? But then honor your father and mother, right, huh? Okay. You might use the word bind in both senses, maybe actually in English. Oh, yeah. I'm bound to honor my father and mother, right? I'm bound, you know, by the, you know, commandment not to steal or commit adultery or to bear a false witness, right? Mm-hmm. The third way is applied according as to conscience we judge that something that has been done, right, has been done well or not done well, right, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay? Kind of funny the way the word factum in Latin sometimes takes on the sense of, what, not something made, like facturei, right? But, but a deed, right, huh? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, we kind of generalized the word, but that's the word fact means, really, originally, huh? It's something like English word, what? Deed, right, huh? Indeed, that is so. In fact, it is so. Mm-hmm. And we apply it to even things other than deeds, though, don't we? Indeed, who is half a four. Mm-hmm. Kind of shows the, the, uh, use of the word going back to the practical. Mm-hmm. And according to this, conscience is said to what? Excuse, right, huh? Mm-hmm. Or to accuse, right? Mm-hmm. Or to what? Actually, he needs to bite again, huh? Mortary. R.E. is again. To bite again, huh? Mm-hmm. What? How do they translate it? They translate it from it. Yeah, yeah. Well, since it is that, yeah. Because I never thought of this. Yeah, yeah. Let's see, Russian Irving has a story of the Italian man there. He's, he killed somebody in their other, uh, fit of passion, you know. Kind of a, kind of a horrible story, you know, these Italian revenge stories, right? But the guy was, he was all engaged, this girl, right? They loved each other very much. And they were about to get married, right? But before they could get married, he's called back to his hometown, because his father is in ill health, right? Mm-hmm. And so he goes home, and he's writing the girl, right? This other guy is inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, inter, first meets the man, the way he writes the story, of course, he knows the man has suffered from something, so he's looking over his shoulders, so to speak, like, and when the police go to tap me, you know, and so on, but finally he decides to tune himself in, you know, and he leaves a letter with our friend to tell him what to tap. You know, but they say he'll go back and confess to the crime and do what they want to do to him, but he's being bitten by his conscience, huh? I forget, there's one of those novels of Charles Dickens, you know, where a man has committed a murder, and it's a little different there, but the body has not been found yet, right? And he's constantly thinking, you know, about, is he going to see in the newspaper, you know, that they found a body, or someone says, hey, did you find out that body, you know? He's trying to give himself guard, you know, to be calm when the news is announced, right? But it really kind of makes you kind of see the situation of a man who's done something like that, and he would want to repeat such an act, you know, in such a similar situation. Now, Thomas admits here, though, in the last paragraph, that sometimes we apply the name to the habit, to a habit, right? Because, however, habit is the principle or the source of an action, right? Sometimes the name of conscience is attributed to the, what? First natural habit in the practical reason, huh? Namely, Cindy Reese's, that we haven't talked about here in the previous one. So you can see why these two articles are together, right, huh? Because conscience, properly speaking, names what? An act, right, huh? Where you're, by this natural understanding and the practical reason, you're seeing that something should be done or something should not be done, right, huh? I should honor my father and mother. I should not steal. But sometimes the word conscience, you know, is almost used as a, what, synonym for that cinderesis, right, huh? Okay. Okay. As Jerome says in the gloss in Ezekiel there, huh, he calls cinderesis, what, conscience there, right? I think we tend to use that, huh? What do we mean usually say conscience in English, huh? What do we mean? It means you think of the rule. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But see, a lot of times when we say that somebody has no conscience, you know, what do we mean by that, you don't mean he doesn't have that cinderesis, so everybody naturally has that. He's not using it or applying it. He's not applying it, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. See? And as he sets aside that act, right, huh? So when a man chooses something, you know, to steal some money, or he chooses to adultery or something like this, he doesn't choose it because it's unjust and wrong, right, huh? Right. You see, he's thinking of it as being pleasant or it's going to increase the money in his bank account or something of this sort, right? Mm-hmm. And so he doesn't apply the knowledge that he has, right? It's a bit like, you know, when you have a kid who's a bully or something, you know, and you try to make the kid realize, now, what would it be like if someone did this to you, right? Mm-hmm. And so, and you're trying to make him apply some knowledge he does have, right? He's not applying. Mm-hmm. And Bezo calls it the, what? Naturale Eudicatorium, huh? And of course, in my footnote here, it gives the Greek words of Bezo, huh? Criterion, right? Mm-hmm. Which is to be translated by Eudicatorium. Fusikon, right, huh? Oh, okay. Because Fusikon means natural in Greek, huh? Fusis in Greek means nature, huh? So, it's this natural judgment, right? I'm using it as nature, but I'm using it as perfected by Sinoises or Sinoises itself. And Damascene says it is the law of our understanding, right? For it's customary that cause and effect are named, what? To each other, huh? Right. Or by each other. Do they give Damascenes? Mm-hmm? Do they give Damascenes Greek words? Um, no, I guess it's the reference here to De Fide Orthodox. Oh, maybe he did he write in Latin? Well, it'd be in Greek, I would think, wouldn't it? That's what I thought. Yeah. But it's in the MG, huh? Yeah, that would be Greek. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It went from Bezos, MG, too, yeah. The first objection, I've taken the words of origin there, with the word spirit there. The first, therefore, it should be said, that conscience is called spirit according as, what, spirit is placed for the mind, huh? Because it is a certain, what, saying, right, dictamen, huh, of the mind, huh? Okay. Did you ever read Shakespeare's famous play, The Rich of the Third? That's the play that St. Thomas More is the, uh, uh, one of the sources, huh? Because St. Thomas More wrote a life of, Richard III, right, huh? And, uh, the, uh, Richard III there, on the night before the final battle there of Bosworth Field there, huh? He has a dream, and all the people he's killed and murdered, right, are coming back and saying, we're praying for your opponent, right? He was Henry Tudor, huh, the founder of the Tudor dynasty, and, uh, so it is, it's some famous words there. Conscience makes cowards of us all, right? You see, at nighttime, you're kind of, you know, got your guard down in the dream there, right? You realize what he's done, right? Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I, he says. Okay. Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I. Oh. But then he really loves himself, and he's done all these evil things, right? Hmm. So this is looking back now to what he said in the last paragraph, right, that, um, sometimes the, um, conscience is used not for the act itself, though that's what it's most properly names, right? But the habit of, uh, natural understanding, right, huh? Or reason itself, right, um, which, uh, has that act, right? Because sometimes causes and effects, he says, are named from each other. Now, to the second it should be said, that's the one about the, um, conscience being, what, stained, or how, you had kinds of other different things, stained, uh, defiled, yeah. Um, um, he says, standing is said to be in conscience, not as in a subject, but just as something, what, known as in the, in knowledge, right? In so far as someone knows himself to be, what, stained, or defiled, huh? But the use of the words there, huh? When you speak that way, in English, you might speak that way sometimes, huh? It's going to say you've got a bad conscience. You see that? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, conscience is good, isn't it? Right. Because I'm conscious of something bad in me, right? Right. Am I doing anything to correct myself, you know? Remember when I was explaining Shakespeare, large discourse, right? Mm-hmm. Well, sometimes the discourse itself is said to be large, right? That's what we're understanding it. Discourse is long. Another sense is that the object of discourse is large, huh? Yeah. Okay. Okay. The third one is saying, well, it's necessary that conscience be either an act or a habit or a power, but it's not an act because then would not always be made in man, nor is it a habit for their... Many habits, it does not be something one, because there are many habits that direct us in acting. Therefore, it must be a power. And the third, he says, that acts, although they always, what? Remain in its, not always remain in itself or by itself, it remains nevertheless always in its cause, right? Which is the power and the, what? Habit, right? For the habit from which conscience is informed, although there are many, the habits, nevertheless all of them have the efficacy from one first habit, which is the habit of first principles, which is called syndromesies. Once, as I said in the part of the article, in particular, this habit is sometimes called, what? Conscience, right? Okay? So the Ten Commandments, all of them, for most of them at least, would seem to belong to, what? Syndromesies, huh? It's interesting, huh? In the book called The Topics in English, but it's a book about places. First of all, the book about deletive reasoning, right? He has a place where he's talking about what the deletive problem is, and he excludes some things from the endological problem, and he gives a couple examples there. One is, if a man is in doubt where the snow is white, he says. He doesn't need an argument, he needs sensation, right? Okay? He says, if he's in doubt whether he should honor his father and mother, he says, right? He doesn't need an argument, he says. He needs punishment. He'll be whipped. Yeah. Who says this? Aristotle. Oh, see? That's kind of interesting, right? Yeah. Because he takes honor your father and mother as something that everybody actually knows, right? And so that if you don't, you know, if you're questioning that, right, then, you know, it's not to question your ignorance, but you're being a bad person, and therefore you're in need of being punished. It's kind of striking, right? Yeah. Yeah. And interesting, too, in terms of another commandment there, adultery, right? When Aristotle's talking about the moral virtues and the ethics, and he says, he shows that moral virtue is in the middle, right? Between two extremes, right? One of which is too much and one is too little. And so he defines moral virtue as a habit, right? Existing in the middle, right? Poor exhaust is determined by right reason and so on. But then he goes on to point out that there's no mean of the extreme, okay? Now, what does that mean, see? Well, some might come and say, well, if you do something you need it too much and too little, you know, then it's okay. So, if I'm drinking wine, let's say, right? If I drink too much, that's bad, right? If I drink too little on the occasion, right? Let's say, that could be bad, too, right? But now, what about getting drunk, let's say? Well, you're probably the same thing there. If I get drunk too much, that's bad. If I get not enough drunk, that's bad. If I get drunk just the right amount, well, no, no, see? Because to be drunk already involves in the meaning of the word, right? Extreme. That you've gotten to excess, right? Yeah. You see? Okay, okay. In the same way, you know, you take murder, yeah? Is a virtue to neither murder too much nor too little, but just the right amount? You see? No. So, we are still saying, when you say, you know, to murder, you're already involving an extreme, right? Okay? So, there's no mean, he says, of the extreme. That would be frituous, right? But the example he gives is that of adultery. You see? As if there's an obvious example, right? Yeah. That any adultery is wrong, right? It's not a question of not putting adultery too much or too little in the right amount, but any of it, right? See? So, it seems like, you know, Aristotle kind of knows the Ten Commandments, you know, especially the ones referring to your neighbor, right, huh? Starting with honor your father and mother, right? He's not going to argue about that, right? He's going to say, you just need punishment for that. And here he sees, you know, any adultery is bad, huh? So, was he in an environment where there's a lot of adultery? Do we know anything about that at the time? Well, I may not know if there's more or less than the hard time. There's, you know, he's going to be at a president's adultery or something. Now, you can use these words more correctly, maybe, than you've used them before. So, with... Notice what the great character is saying, though. He says, wisdom is to speak the truth, right? And to act in accord with nature, right? Giving ear there, too, right, huh? So, he's kind of seeing that there's something natural whereby we're supposed to not only judge the truth, right? But also judge what we should do or not do, huh? You have to admire those fragments that we have from Heraclitus, you know? There's a bunch of wisdom, isn't there? Heraclitus likes to sometimes, you know, speak in a paradoxical way, huh? Because his fragment begins with, he says, moderation is the greatest virtue, right? And you say, well, one time I gave a lecture, you see, on that, and I said, well... Now, this is paradoxical, because the Greeks would all regard, what, courage as a greater virtue than, what, moderation. And even justice is a greater virtue than moderation, huh? So, how can, you know, he's saying something that seems to be, what, false and contrary to what we'd say, right? But I say, it's said in a sentence, right? He says, moderation is the greatest virtue, and wisdom is to speak the truth and to act in accordance with nature, giving you their truth. Well, all three of these things, wisdom and nature and truth, they're all said to be, what, modest. Like, what's his name, he says, is Kent there in King Lear. All my reports go with the modest truth, nor mourn or clipped but so. Or in Hamlet, huh? Or snip not the modesty of nature. Like, was it Macduff says there in Macbeth? Modest wisdom plucks me from a credulous haste. It's emphasizing, huh, that these three key words are wisdom, nature, truth. They're all characterized by, what, modesty, by moderation. Of course, the virtues that dispose us for the life of the mind are virtues like humility, which are kind of modesty, right? And studiousness, which is kind of moderation of the desire to know, huh? Mildness, which is important, the life of the mind. Okay, now he's going to start going into the desiring powers, huh? So we're looking at question 80 here, articles 1 and, what, 2 next time, okay? And then you'll go into the sense powers in particular, I mean the sense-desire powers, and then you'll go into, what, the will after that, and then you'll talk about free will, the judgment, they call it, okay? And then, starting in 84, he'll be going into the acts of reason in great detail, right? But the acts of the will and the emotions in great detail, he leads that to the second part where he takes up moral matter, huh? Mm-hmm. So, I guess we've got a lot of interesting things here. What does studiousness all entail? Studiositas is the name of the virtue that moderates the desire to know. Most people don't think of that because they think of the fact that students are lazy, right? But man has a natural desire to know, right? And that desire to know has to be ordered and moderated. So you don't go and spend your time on important things. That's in a sense what people do for the most part. What's his name saying? Albert the Great there, you know? My sir used to have a little passage from Albert the Great there in one of his books where Albert says, you know, if you study these lower things for some other reason than to be able to study God, right? You have a perverse attitude towards knowing, right? Unless he says you'd be forced to do it by some kind of what? Necessity, right? Okay. So the doctor might study the body for the sake of what? Necessity of health, yeah. But in terms of simply a wonder, right? If you're pursuing knowledge out of wonder, simply to know, right? Well, there are some things that are very important to know before you can know God, right? They're very necessary to know before you can know God. And it takes a long time to understand those things, right? If you don't concentrate upon those things, you just let yourself study anything, you're not going to ever get to the knowledge of God, are you? I mean, I could go, you know, I was talking to a historian here from Worcester State three years ago, you know, and he's talking about how you go to a, you know, a convention of historians, right? Like, you know, what's your, what's your field, huh? Well, he says American history, that, you know, you know, which, which, which, which century? Right, right, right. You know, you don't think American history stays sub-century, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You say you're in the 19th century, well, which decade is it? Yeah, right. That you're, that you're, you know, and if you say, well, the 1880s, it's like, well, and what, what aspect of the 1880s has been your, your, your field of concentration, you know? Well, there's, there's a joke about this, you know, we're learning more and more about less and less, so that eventually we know everything about nothing. I mean, but no, so you could spend your, your life studying the 1880s, right? Sure. You see? And, again, I, I could, I could spend my life reading novels, right? Yeah. It's amazing how many novels coming out of a year, right? Yeah. And, uh, all these detectives, you know, whodunits, you know, they're, all these different detectives that they invented, you know? Well, maybe we should read a little bit of this, maybe, maybe Sherlock Holmes or something like that. But you can't read all these guys, you can spend the rest of your life reading whodunits, right? You see? Mm-hmm. And, uh, so I mean, there's certain, uh, uh, you have to moderate your desire to know those things, huh? Yeah. You might, maybe a little literature there to relax you, or, or, maybe Shakespeare is a little more than relaxing, but, but, uh... And we have to do things in the proper order, too, is that part of it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's the idea about just something, you know, like, synecdoche, right? You know, how important it is to understand what synecdoche is, right? How many people talk about the Bible without, you know, reflective on the fact that they're speaking antonomistically? And, and, and why this is called the, you know, the book, right? Mm-hmm. Most people don't even, haven't even heard the word antonomessia, have they? Nope, I never heard it until I came here. But the word Bible, the word gospel, the word Christ, they're all, what, examples of speaking by antonomessia. Mm-hmm. Does that start with an A or an O? Yeah, I'll get it on the board here if I can make myself clear here. See, if you remember what I'm finding in a small dictionary, like my collegiate dictionary, you wouldn't find it in there. Yeah. Maybe a big one. If you go to the library where they have the, the Oxford, you know, Dictionary of English Language, you know, several volumes, you know, that's the kind of filter word, I guess. Well, you're going to see the word antonomasia in there, right? Yeah. And you'll see also there, antonomastik, you see, which is the adjective form. Yeah. And you'll see the word antonomastik, which should be the adverbial form, I think, of the adverb, right? Uh-huh. Now, in Thomas Aquinas, I'll see, you know, antonomasia, at the beginning of the Summa kind of gentiles, he's talking about truth, antonomasia, I'll see you in the adverbial form in Latin, right? Um, antonomasia, there is, of course, the word you're going to use the most. What is antonomasia, right? Well, it's either giving the general name to one particular, right? Or, it's giving the particular, in place of the general, right? Okay. It's his defense now, let's see. Okay. So, if I say that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Christ means actually anointed, right? Right. Yeah. Okay. Now, as Thomas will explain, the word Christ is being said, or anointed, he used in the English word, is being said of Christ by the way of antonomasia. Um, can you explain how in the Old Testament, you know, quote, you know, certain passages, but kings and priests, especially, but also sometimes prophets, were anointed, right? Okay. So, um, Christ is a king and a priest and a prophet, but he, he, he's, he's a king of kings, right? And he is the teacher, right? Yep. He is the priest of priests, you might say, right? Sure. Okay. Okay. We probably, so you speak of a Catholic priest as a, what? Altair priestess, right? Okay. But Christ is, you know, you read the priests of the Hebrews, right? The priest of Christ, you see, he is the priest, right? So, um, this common name, then, anointed, right? Instead of Christ in particular, by antonomasia, right? He is the anointed one, huh? But now, if, if I say, you know, about somebody, um, he's a Romeo or a Casanova, right? Right. Or a Don Juan, or as soon as they call somebody a hammer, you know, if he's, what, kind of hesitant to slow back, or something like that, you know? Yeah. You see? You take someone who kind of stands out, right? As soon as you're hitting the ball at a ballpark, you know? Here's Babe Ruth. Right? Yeah. Okay. Um, but more commonly there in Scripture, let's say, you have the one where the, what, the name of the genitals apply to particular. Now, Plato talks about that, he doesn't use the word antonomasia, I don't think, but he talks about this way of speaking in the symposium, right? Where the Greek word, the Greek word example, poet, right? It comes from the Greek word poion, which is the common word to make. So, a poet means what? A maker. A maker. And Ben Johnson, the English dramatist, he's a little thing in poetry, he alludes to that, right? Okay? For some reason, among all makers, the Greeks admired the, what, the man who made epics, or, you know? Mm-hmm. Okay? As hard as, and of course, we kind of think of that, Shakespeare as being more outstanding than a cook, or a carpenter, or a house builder, or something like that, right? Yeah. You know? Um, so he's called the maker. That's what it means, the poet, right? And then because, and as opposed to talking about love, so, we tend to call the romantic lover, a lover. 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