Habitude VIII

Next we must consider the cause of habitudes. And first, as to their generation; second, as to their growth; third, as to their diminution and corruption. About the first, four questions are asked. First, whether any habitude is from nature. Second, whether any habitude is caused by acts. Third, whether habitude can be generated through one act. Fourth, whether any habitudes are infused into human beings by God.

To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that no habitude is from nature. For of those things that are from nature, the use is not subject to will. But habitude is that which one uses when one wishes, as the Commentator says on De Anima III. Therefore habitude is not from nature.

Further, nature does not do by two what it can do by one. But the powers of the soul are from nature. Therefore if the habitudes of the powers were from nature, habitude and power would be one.

Further, nature is not defective in matters of necessity. But habitudes are necessary for working well, as was said above. Therefore if any habitudes were from nature, it seems nature would not be defective in causing all necessary habitudes. But this is obviously false. Therefore habitudes are not from nature.

But contrariwise is that in Ethic. IV, among other habitudes is put understanding of principles, which is from nature, whence also first principles are said to be naturally cognized.

I reply that it must be said that something is able to be natural to someone in two ways. (1) In one way, according to the nature of the species, as it is natural for a human being to be risible, or fire to rise. (2) In another way, according to the nature of the individual, as it is natural for Socrates or Plato to be illness-prone or health-prone, according to his temperament [complexionem]. Again, according to both natures, something is able to be said to be natural in two ways, (i) in one way, because it is wholly from nature, (ii) in another way, because according to something it is from nature and according to something it is from an external principle; just as when someone is healed through himself, health is wholly from nature, but when someone is healed through the help of medicine, health is partly from nature and partly from external principle.

So, therefore, if we speak of habitude according as it is a disposition of a subject ordered to form or nature, in any of the aforesaid ways habitude can happen to be natural.  For there is some natural disposition that is due to human species, outside of which no human being is found. And this is natural according to the nature of the species. But because such a disposition has a certain latitude, it happens that diverse gradations of this sort of disposition can be appropriate to diverse human beings according to the nature of the individual. And this sort of disposition is able to be either wholly from nature or partly from nature and partly from exterior principle, as was said of those who were healed through art.

But habitude that is a disposition to working, whose subject is a power of the soul, as was said, is able to be natural both according to the nature of the species and according to the nature of the individual: According to the nature of the species, according as it is held on the part of the soul itself, which, as it is the form of the body, is a specific principle; but according to the nature of the individual, on the part of the body, which is the material principle. But in neither way does it happen in human beings that there are natural habitudes so that they are entirely from nature. (In angels this does happen, in that they have naturally innate [inditus] intelligible species, which do not belong to the human soul, as was said in the first place.) 

There are therefore in human beings some natural habitudes as it were existing partly from nature and partly from external principle, in one way in the apprehensive powers and in another in the appetitive powers. For in apprehensive powers there is able to be natural habitude according to incipience [inchoationem], both according to the nature of the species and according to the nature of the individual: according to the nature of the species, on the part of the soul itself, as the understanding of principles is said to be natural habitude. For from the nature of the intellectual soul itself, it is appropriate that a human being, cognizing what is whole and what is part, cognizes that every whole is greater than its part, and likewise in other things. But what is whole and what is part, he is not able to cognize save through intelligible species received from phantasms. And because of this is the Philosopher, at the end of the Posterior [Analytics], shows that cognition of principles comes to us from the senses.  But according to the nature of the individual, there is some cognitive habitude according to natural incipience, inasmuch as one human being from the disposition of organs is more apt to understand well than another, inasmuch as we need sensitive virtues for the working of the intellect.

But in the appetitive powers, there is no natural habitude according to incipience on the part of the soul itself according to the substance of the habitude itself, but only as to certain principles of it, as principles of common right are said to be seminal virtues. And this is because inclination to proper objects, which seems to be incipience of habitude, does not pertain to habitude, but pertains more to the very notion of powers. But on the part of the body, according to the nature of the individual, there are some appetitive habitudes according to natural incipience. For some are disposed from their own bodily temperament to chastity or gentleness or to some such.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that this objection proceeds from nature as divided over against reason and will, whereas reason and will themselves pertain to human nature.

To the second it must be said that something is able to be naturally superadded to power that nevertheless is not able to pertain to the power itself, as in angels it is not able to pertain to some intellectual power that it be through itself cognizant of everything, because that would need to be the act of everything, which is God's alone. For that by which something is cognized needs to be the actual similitude of what is cognized, whence it would follow, if the power of the angel through itself cognized everything, that it would be the similitude and act of everything. Hence it needs to be the case that some intelligible species, which are the similitudes of intellectual things, be superadded to the intellectual power itself, because through its participation of divine wisdom, and not through its own essence, their intellects can be actual for those things which they understand. And so it is obvious that not everything that pertains to natural aptitude is able to pertain to power.

To the third it must be said that nature does not equally have itself to causing all the diversity of habitudes, because some are able to be caused by nature, some not, as was said above. And thus it does not follow that if some habitudes are natural, all are natural.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.51.1. The Dominican Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here.]

So this mazy article is a partial taxonomy of habitudes. We are considering only those habitudes in some way caused by nature, and we have to consider a prior distinction in habitudes, namely, habitudes insofar as they are ordered to nature or form, and habitudes insofar as they are ordered to operation. The classification looks something along these lines:

NATURAL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO NATURE

(1) According to the nature of the species
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (e.g., natural disposition pertaining to human species, presumably those natural balances that are necessary for vital human functions)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (e.g., one's vital functions as restored or corrected by medicine)

(2) According to the nature of the individual
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (e.g., variant forms arising from the latitude of the natural disposition pertaining to human species, such as sickly or healthy physical temperament)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (perhaps as examples we could include healthiness in part from dietary regimen, or physical fitness, which refine the natural health of the body)

NATUR AL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO OPERATION

(1) According to the nature of the species (in human beings, on the part of the soul)
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (do not exist in human beings, although angels have them, e.g., innate intelligible species through which the angel understands by nature)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (in natural incipience or inchoation)
--- --- --- --- (a) in apprehensive powers (e.g., understanding of first principles)
--- --- --- --- (b) in appetitive powers (do not properly exist, although in a loose sense seminal virtues in the apprehensive powers, insofar as they prepare for appetitive operation, can be considered as standing proxy for them)

(2) According to the nature of the individual (on the part of the body)
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (do not properly exist)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (in natural incipience or inchoation)
--- --- --- --- (a) in apprehensive powers (e.g., sensitive virtues, i.e., better disposition of the physical organs so as to facilitate understanding, like quickness of imagination or clarity of memory)
--- --- --- --- (b) in appetitive powers (e.g., bodily temperaments facilitating character)

So since 1.i, 1.ii.b, and 2.i  of those ordered to operation are empty classes for human beings, there are seven kinds of natural human habitudes. This is, of course, not a complete taxonomy of habitude, but only covers natural habitudes; there are other habitudes that are acquired in ways that make them not natural in any of these senses, which the next articles will go on to discuss. From what we see here, the natural habitudes insofar as they are ordered to nature are the principal foundation for health and medicine; the natural habitudes insofar as they are ordered to operation are the principal foundations for human social and cognitive life; but we should not consider this as a sharp separation (e.g., since we are naturally social, there could be socially-oriented natural habitudes ordered to nature, and 2.ii.a and 2.ii.b clearly intersect with medical concerns).

An interesting question for understanding how natural habitudes work in principle is how many kinds of natural habitude angels have. As far as I know, St. Thomas never addresses this, but I am inclined to say four: they can have all of the natural habitudes insofar as they are ordered to nature, but there is no distinction between individual and species at the angelic level, at least in St. Thomas's account -- every individual angel just is its own species of angel, carrying everything that is possible to that species. Thus these collapse to two. The same occurs for natural habitudes according to operation, but the reason for denying the existence of 1.ii.b to human beings seems quite general and thus would apply to angels. So of those natural habitudes, angels would have at least innate innate intelligible species (1.i) and innate apprehensive habitudes for understanding (1.ii.a). One could perhaps argue that these latter also collapse in angelic intellects; but I think both angelic self-knowledge and angelic communication, as St. Thomas characterizes them, allow for 1.ii.a that is not 1.i.

Fortnightly Book, November 23

 Owen Wister was born into a wealthy family and spent part of his early education in Swiss and British boarding schools. He went to Harvard and spent time in a Paris conservatory, hoping to write operas. He eventually concluded this was not going to work, began working for a bank and going to Harvard Law School, after which he became a lawyer. That's a very upper class lifestyle. But Owen Wister is not famous for any of this, and he himself was rather bored with it. What he really liked was research the American West and writing stories about it. And today he is famous for a novel he published in 1902, drawing on and adapting some of those stories, that changed the shape of fiction for decades afterward. That novel is The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. It was a runaway bestseller, has never been out of print, and is one of the bestselling books of all time. Because of it, Owen Wister is the father of the Cowboy Western. A large market for imitators suddenly sprang up; this spilled over into other media, theater, and radio, and movies, and later television, so that many of the standard tropes of cowboy fiction in any medium trace back to Wister's novel. At least five movie adaptations have been made, starting with a 1914 silent adaptation by Cecil B. DeMille, itself based on an already extremely successful stageplay adaptation.

Two of the movie adaptations are extremely famous -- the 1929 one with Gary Cooper and the 1946 one with Joel McRae. If I have the time, I might watch one of them to see how they adapt it. There are also several radio adaptations (including one by Lux Radio Theatre, which is usually good at movie adaptations) that I might listen to -- again, if I have time.

J.-K. Huysmans, En Route

 Introduction

Opening Passage:

It was during the first week in November, the week inwhich the Octave of All Souls was celebrated. Durtal entered Saint Sulpice at eight o'clock in the evening. He would deliberately come to his church because there was a trained choir, and he could, away from the crowd, take stock of himself in peace. The ugliness of the nave, with its heavy barrel vaulting, would disappear at nightfall, the aisles were often deserted, and its few lamps shed little light; you could de-louse your soul here without being seen; you were at home. (p. 27)

Summary:  At the end of Là-bas, Durtal was finishing up his book on Gilles de Ries and Satanism, beginning to feel a bit tired and sick of the lying of the modern age. At the beginning of En Route, he is working on a book about a Blessed Lydwine, having recently become Catholic and not entirely sure why. He enjoys some of art and music -- much of the book is structured by reflection on plainchant -- but he, of course, is an author who runs in artistic circles and finds the modern Catholic taste in these to be atrocious. His research has led him to read widely in mystical theology; he likes some of the more impassioned mystical saints, although he finds much of it unappealing. The reading has led him to a spiritual director he likes, Abbé Gévresin, who also has an interest in mystical theology. Gévresin finds that Durtal is having difficulty bringing himself to take communion, and arranges for him to visit the monastery of La Trappe and spend a week or so among the Trappist monks. He explores the monastery, the grounds, the history, the spirituality, and then takes communion and returns to Paris.

This is very much a character-focused novel; in terms of external action, very little occurs. But it would be an error to say that there is no plot. The plot is instead all internal, and Durtal's mind throughout all this is very active indeed. He is in a state of perplexity, of wavering, of repeated temptations, which he must struggle to overcome. The novel has a clear plot-climax, in Part II, Chapter V, which is brilliantly handled; this climax is an entirely internal struggle, the last great temptation that Durtal must overcome. On the outside, very little happens; on the inside, a life is changed forever.

As a sidenote, it was somewhat amusing as a historical matter to see a Catholic work written in the very early days (the 1890s) of what later would become sarcastically known as the Liturgy Wars, with Durtal fuming about people trying to replace traditional plainchant with contemporary dance tunes and the parish priests who allow such atrocious bad taste and kitsch in their churches. One of the things he likes about La Trappe, in fact, is that they still do ordinary plainchant, completely unpretentiously, which ironically is far more appealing to his sophisticated and modern artistic tastes than the would-be modern material, which he finds grating and distracting. 

This was much more enjoyable to read than Là-bas. Part of this is that the material is a bit less off-putting, but part of it is that Huysmans really excels himself in some of the psychological and artistic description here. Parts of the book are just extraordinarily beautiful. The book caused a scandal when it came out, because of Durtal's sexual temptations, but I have to say (and it is a sign of our times) that, while frank, they were relatively tame compared to what would be even common fare today.

Favorite Passage:

The trees were rustling, trembling, in a whisper of prayer, as if bowing before Christ, who was no longer writing his painful arms in the mirror of the pool, but embracing these waters, laying them out before him, blessing them.

And the pool itself was different; its inky waters were filling with monastic visions, of white habits left there by the passing reflections of clouds, and the swan was splashing them amid the lapping sunlight, making great circles of oil ripple before it as it swam.

One might have said these waves were gilded by the oil of catechumens and the holy chrism the Church consecrates on the Saturday of Holy Week; and above them the heavenly sky opened its tabernacle of clouds, out of which came a bright sun like a monstrance of molten gold, like a Blessed Sacrament of flames.

It was a Benediction of nature, a genuflection of trees and flowers, singing in the wind, perfuming with their incense the sacred bread, which was gleaming on high in the blazing pyx of the star. (p. 303)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

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J.-K. Huysmans, En Route, Brendan King, tr., Dedalus (Sawtry, UK: 2024).

Dashed Off XXIX

This ends the notebook that was completed toward the end of July 2024.

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 The Creed is not a menu; the parts inter-relate.

According to legend, St Endelienta (daughter of King Brychan & sister of St. Nectan & St. Dilas) was King Arthur's goddaughter; while a hermit in Trentinney, she lived on the milk of a cow, which was killed by the Lord of Trentinney when the cow stryed onto his land. King Arthur, learning of this, sent his men to kill Lord Trentinney, but Endelienta restored him back to life.

Catholic doctrine gives new light even to self-evident truths.

"Equality, liberty, and fraternity are principles which mutually suppose each other, and are resolved one in the other, as the human, the political, and the domestic solidarities are dogmas which are resolved in and mutually suppose each other." Donoso Cortes

resemblance, contiguity, and causation as elements in precedent

Philosophical skepticisms are rarely as necessary as skeptics like to pretend.

the sense of soical order as a moral endowment

We only tie sets of actions to traffic lights because they are already conceptualized as traffic lights. Nobody stops on a red light that is not already recognized as the red of a traffic light.

No punishment can be ascribed to an action without a classification that makes the action discernible in a way relevant to the punishment.

The actions associated with institutional facts are not stable and predefined. We are sometimes incentivized to stop at borders and sometimes not, sometimes incentivized to use currency as legal tender and sometimes not, etc., through all the possible actions in myriad complicated ways.

What is defined as 'naturalistic' is often due more to cultural conventions in interpretations of natural things than to what is natural.

No human being is intelligent enough always to outsmart stupidity; stupidity is more constant than human intelligence can ever be.

The sacrament of reconciliation can vary in the ways that confession and satisfaction can.

"We cannot so abstract from Christianity its specific character, as to leave the general idea of religion behind." Nevin

Love is more perfect than duty.

We are none of us writers of our own story, which depends in great measure on an entire universe other than ourselves.

identity of indiscernibles as a principle of classification

Every human being is a germinal philosopher and every Christian a germinal theologian.

Revelation reverberates.

the categories as ways things can contribute to composition and mutability

The possibility of the Incarnation is implicit in the divine idea of humanity.

Sullivan (The Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia)
The Arian Syllogism:
(1) The Word is the subject of the human operations and passions of Christ.
(2) What is predicated of the Word must be predicated of him in his divine nature (kata physin).
Therefore (C) The human operations and passions of Christ are predicated of the divine nature (kata physin).
-- According to Sullivan, Athanasius and the Alexandrines rejected the minor (2); the Antiochenes rejected the major (1).

Phil 2:13: For God is the agent (energon) in you, both the willing and the acting (energein) according to purpose.

Acting for a reason is definitely distinguishable from doing what would make sense.

Every deontic logic can be given a design interpretation.

the intellect as agent intelligibility

Rational good is not unitary but a hierarchy.

Reason itself requires that we choose reason not only for reason's sake but for truth, goodness, beauty, etc.

General principles of classification
(1) contrastive identity: Everything is what it is and is not some other thing.
(2) indiscernibility of identicals: What is the same in what it is, is to that extent classifiable as the same.
(3) identity of indiscernibles: What is classifiable as the same is to that extent the same in what it is.
(4) sufficient reason: What is classifiable as the same or different is classifiable as such for a reason.

Citizenship implies powers of voluntary association.

Factional politics is a dangerous drug.

Conflict is part of how human beings organize.

The reality of the world cannot be bracketed off from the world itself without changing the phenomenon of the world. (Conrad-Martius)

Phenomenology can only get results relative to a reduction.

Wormelow Tump -- burial place according to legend of Arthur's son Amr.

Laws of nature explain as final causes.

Whether or not you can patch together different parts of possible worlds depends on teh possible worlds and the patches.
--> Lewis's argument form recombination is entirely in terms of objects; but possible worlds are not bare collections of objects but propositionally constructed. It is consistency of propositions, not objects of terms, that fundamentally matters.

Every civil society incorporates residues of previous societies.

Commentarial traditions are always a slow process of abstraction. Positions are analogized and then generalized, arguments put into a more general structure of objection and reply, ideas detached and used in new ways, distinctions made so that terms may be defined more precisely and in ways going beyond that which receives comment.

being as contrasted with
(a) not being
(b) being other
(c) appearing to be
(d) failing to be
(e) being like

Every fine art draws out aspects of every other fine art.

energy as mass & momentum with respect to field of effect

Memorialism tends to attribute to the Eucharist the effects of Gospel-reading and preaching.

We do not start with a distinction between natural and supernatural and find revelation appropriate to each; we start with revelation and find a distinction we crudely characterize by 'natural' vs 'supernatural'.

Imitating Christ is not being nice but giving one's body and pouring out one's blood.

Lawmaking is natural to human beings in much teh same way group-forming is.

Doubting does have some of the structure of Cartesianism; but other cognitive acts have other structures.

Creation is a foundational act in ontic, moral, jural, and sacral orders.

Civil society regulates the modalities of rights by customary law, by civil etiquette, by delegation, by negotiation, and by cooperative sanction.

incorporation of rights under due process vs under privileges or immunities (nnote that due process applies to persons and privilieges & immunities to citizens)

The Ninth Amendment direclty implies that there are rights of the people not dependent on the Constitution.

Gabriel as icon of the Incarnation

Christ's human intellect always had the light of glory, and in certain events -- Baptism, Transfiguration, Ascension -- the disciples were granted a foretaste, a slight glimpse, of what Christ always knew and what we shall always know in the order to come.

"But in a being that is absolutely without any plurality, there cannot be excellence, for there can be no such thing as consent or agreement." Jonathan Edwards

Reason inevitably asks how the doctrine of the Trinity can be true, but only fools think reason asks questions in order to avoid seeking answers.

Creation is a discursive space for glory.

Human practice by its very nature produces sufficient kinds or enough-kinds, e.g., straight enough, sufficiently like an animal, etc. What is more, this applies to scientific practice, as well -- frictionless enough, etc.

problems may be ill-posed
(a) as lacking what is required for any solution to be identified (indeterminacy)
(b) as having a surfeit of solutions
(c) as having a surplus of solutions

In popular sovereignty, the juridical person of the People is by legal fiction both lord and subject.

'Business is business', 'Rules are rules', etc., are classificatory statements, not bare identities, and their pragmatic implicatures arise from this classificatory aspect.

Bullying does not create dominance hierarchies; the former is a disruption of social order, the latter a structure of social order.

"The road to norms begins with pride (or with discontent, if something has gone wrong) in craftsmanship; caring about your work, perhaps partly for instrumental reasons, but importantly for intrinsic reasons as well." Sterelny

Hume's account of personal identity is in effect a juridical account of personal identity, and he explicitly puts aspects of it in juridical terms.

No autonomy rights can be inalienable because no one can guarantee taht they will never be in a situation in which they will need others to make decissinos for them -- as children, as elderly, as ill, in an emergency, etc.

Inference to the best explanation has the structure of defeasible disjunctive syllogism; the 'best' indicates that it has to be comparative, eliminating other explanations as (relatively) defective compared to what is concluded to be the best.

People do not lose their value just because they are dead.

Moral law requires a view of persons such that they can be of boundless worth (dignity) --> postulates of freedom, immortality, and God

Virtues determine by reason appropriate choices so as to avoid extremes arisign from the unpleasant and the pleasant.

qualia as residue of classification

rites as artificial habitudes

explanations of occurrences, existences, and endurances

What Goodman's Paradox shows is that every enumerative induction presupposes a classification, not merely incidentally, but in a load-bearing way.

Israel as corporate prophet of God (cp Torrance on mediation)

technobabble as magic (wizard-stuff for science fiction)

In salvation, participation is the ground of imputation.

"Christianity as the absolute religion, *must* in the nature of the case, take up into itself, and exhibit in a perfect form, the fragments and rudiments of truth contained in all relative religions. It is not a doctrine but a divine *fact*, into which all previous religious tendencies and developments are ultimately gathered as their proper end." Nevin

The fullness of justice requires a society adequate to it.

Shannon entropy & spread of probability distribution

Discreteness in QM is behavior like a harmonic oscillator.

A term is an organization of a field of meaning.

In moral matters, human beings have a temptation to dewll on fantasies rather than realities; prudence is necessary to prevent this from corrupting everything else.

Much of human creativity is founded on our ability to see ourselves and others as persons, or in light of persons.

The feeling of obligation is often an offshoot of the feeling of caring.

The amount of boredom in seems sometimes to expand to match the amount of entertainment.

"Social scientists follow their creator, because social science was created by capitalist society." George Grant
"When leisure is open to all, then education must be opened to all."

the five administrative offices of a lord: seneschal, chamberlain, butler, marshal, cupbearer

Consequences are not unified and simple things, but have many facets; the consequences of an action look different from the perspective of our sympathy and sense of compassion than they do from the perspective of our sense of responsibility to others, or our sense of honor and shame, or our sense of humor.

We can talk about finding our meaning in life because life as we know it is essentially probationary.

Four things drive toward civil governance: defect of lordship; religion; trade; discord among powerful families. (These all seem to do so by introducing or strengthening balanced division of powers.)

Arguments from evil are generally arguments from obscurity.

Because positive law is an artifact, it is essentially a part of a broader deontic framework just like every other artifact.

What Hart treats as 'contingent connnection' between law and morality is often merely the contingency of the particular laws themselves, not of their relation to morality as such.

Law is intrinsically a means and therefore ordered to fundamental ends; however, law cannot by its nature be ordered to just any arbitrary end.

Positive law is an externalization of rational principles into contingent circumstances.

All positive legislation has an active and a passive component, the active being contributed by lawmakers and the passive being those to whom it applies (officials, subjects, citizens); all positive legislation is thus a sort of co-legislation. The people are, so to speak, a silent partner.

All laws are put forward as reasons.

"Thus, then, we have three senses in which the expression 'This *is*' might be employed. First, it may imply identity secondly, it may imply that kind of representation which derives its force merely from the effect produced upon the spectator or receiver; thirdly, it may imply that kind of representation which is dependent only upon the intention of the author or giver." R. Wilberforce

All laws of nature have an implicit reference to totality of consistently interacting things.

Deontic seriality is the principle that no possible world is a deontic 'dead end' (Melissa Fusco) -- for any possible world, there is a deontically ideal world for it (which may be itself); no matter how non-ideal the world, a deontic world can be seen from it. (Shift reflexivity is that every deontically ideal world is deontically ideal for itself.)

People deny that there is a human nature in order to avoid responsibility for it.

The key issue in any simulation is relevant simplification, how to ignore things yet still have something relevant.

Presence is a kind of loose unity of being.

update as shifting reference state to another possible world

modus ponens as a product of classification relations (genus, species)

possibilities internal to a history (e.g., even in a deterministic history, if a light switch is sometimes on or sometimes off, both are possibilities for that switch in the history) & possibilities external to a history (if it takes more than one possible history to describe the light switch)
-- note that this is a generalization of diachronic vs synchronic

We often tame the unruliness of figurative language communally, by commonly using figurative expressions in particular ways that then serve as common reference points.

Faced with contradictions, we resolve the matter by rejection of one and acceptance of teh other so that the resolution is:
(a) wholly resolved, wholly secure: by proof
(b) wholly resolved, partly secure: by probable inference
(c) partly resolved, partly secure: by rhetorical persuasion
(d) partly resolved, insecure: by plausible representation.

history of philosophy -> strongly recurrent things -> 'perennial questions'

"There are two general ways of beginning the study of philosophy. One is by chance and the other is by following someone's advice." Ralph McInerny

Philosophical reasoning regularly draws on the testimony of the skilled.

Contradictions cannot be done, simpliciter -- they are not agibile. But God can do things we might think are contradictory because we did not see beforehand a subtle distinction.

Habitude VII

The next questions all depend crucially on two things that have been established about habitudes:

(1) They specify possible actions out of multiple possible actions.

(2) They belong to something only insofar as it is potential in some way.

 Can the intellect have habitudes?

It is clear that there are habitudes associated with the intellect, and this is assumed by St. Thomas's argument, but the question is whether the intellect itself has habitudes. A significant position that St. Thomas wants consistently to argue against is the position that held that we all have one intellect; if you hold this position, it's obvious that intellect-associated habitudes like knowledge vary from person to person, so they would have to be in the sensitive powers. To this Aquinas responds:

But this position, first of all, is against the intention of Aristotle, for it is manifest that sensitive powers are not rational by essence but only by participation, as is said in Ethic. I. And the Philosopher puts intellectual virtues, which are wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, in that which is rational by essence. Thus they are not in sensible powers but in the intellect itself. He also explicitly says, in De Anima III, that the possible intellect when it it made singular, that is, when it is reduced into the act of singulars by intelligible species, then comes to be according to act in the same way that a knower is said to be actual, which indeed happens when someone is able to work through himself, to wit, by considering; and even then it is in some way potential, but not as it was before learning and discovering. Therefore the possible intellect itself is that in which there is a habitude of knowledge by which it can consider even when it does not consider.

And second, this position is against the truth of the thing. For just as the power belongs to that which the working does, so too the habitude belongs to that which the working does. But to understand and to consider is an act proper to the intellect. Therefore the habitude by which one considers is properly in the intellect itself. (ST 2-1.50.4)

A few points are worth noting here.

(1) The first argument, from the mind of Aristotle, especially occurring immediately after the discussion on sensitive powers, indicates that Aquinas does not intend his position on habitudes in the sensitive powers to be a substantive change from Aristotle.

(2) Both arguments here also establish that the intellect is a free power; that is, in and of itself, it is capable of multiple possibilities, since this is a requirement for having a habitude non-derivatively and in the most proper sense.

(3) They both, of course, also imply that the human intellect, contrary to Aquinas's opponents, is not shared but individual.

(4) It follows from this position that habitudes belong to the potential intellect (because it can in some way be potential) and not the agent intellect.

Can the will have habitudes?

I reply that it must be said that every power that can be in diverse ways ordered to acting needs a habitude by which it can be well disposed to its act. But the will, since it is a rational power, can be in diverse ways ordered to acting. And thus it is fitting to put in the will some habitude by which it is well disposed to its act. It is also apparent from the very notion of habitude that it is principally ordered to the will, in that habitude is something one uses when one wills, as said above. (ST 2-1.50.5)

As St. Thomas notes in a reply to an objection (ad 2), this is because the will is more like the potential intellect than the agent intellect, in being both mover and moved. That is to say, the will, while not active, is not a purely active power, but involves a sort of potentiality by its nature.

Can angels have habitudes?

Angels, of course, differ from us in not being physical, so asking whether angels can have habitudes is not mere curiosity about angels, but a way of asking the question of whether having habitudes, even in the intellect and will, depends on the body, or on being physical or material in some way. Do we have habitudes only because we have bodies, so that habitudes are primarily concerned with bodily life? Aquinas holds that what matters for habitudes is not materiality but potentiality, and since angels are not pure act like God, they can have habitudes. From this, of course, it follows that not all habitudes are concerned with corporeal life.

However, with respect to this habitude, angelic intellect has itself differently from human intellect. For human intellect, because it is lowest in the intellectual order, is potential with respect to all intelligibles, just as prime matter with respect to all sensible forms, and therefore it needs some habitude to all understanding. But angelic intellect does not have itself as pure potential in the genus of intelligibles, but as a sort of act, although not as pure act (which is God's alone) but with mixture of some potential, and having less of potentiality the higher it is. (ST 2-1.50.6)

Of the kinds of habitude, the angels do not need habitudes with respect to nature, because they are not material, although it seems that they can have them, but they can have habitudes with respect to operation, and indeed need such habitudes to be united with God (a way of acting well), "by which they are conformed to God." (It follows from this, of course, that it is in principle possible for us also to have such godly habitudes, which will play a significant role in Aquinas's theology of grace.)

The parts that are mutually disposed by angelic habitudes are not physical parts, of course, but intelligible objects and volitional ends.

More Mighty than the Hosts of Mortal Kings

 Beethoven
by Maurice Baring

More mighty than the hosts of mortal kings,
I hear the legions gathering to their goal;
The tramping millions drifting from one pole,
The march, the counter-march, the flank that swings.
I hear the beating of tremendous wings,
The shock of battle and the drums that roll;
And far away the solemn belfries toll,
And in the field the careless shepherd sings. 

There is an end unto the longest day.
The echoes of the fighting die away.
The evening breathes a benediction mild.
The sunset fades. There is no need to weep,
For night has come, and with the night is sleep,
And now the fiercest foes are reconciled.

Habitude VI

 Habitude is qualitative ordering of the nature of some subject either well or badly to some act out of several possibles, through mutually disposing several things. As a quality, it requires a subject, and therefore Aquinas considers a number of questions concerned with the kind of subject for which habitude is an appropriate quality; since accidents are defined in relation to the substances that can have them, doing this clarifies several aspects of the definition. Rather than translate the whole question, as I did for the defining questions, I will make some comments with a few translations of select passages.

Can bodies have habitudes?

Aquinas argues that it depends. Habitudes dispose either to form or to operation. Habitudes always need to distinguish out some act out of several possibilities; bodies on their own are only determined to one operation, so bodies on their own develop no habitudes toward operations. However, habitudes to operation in the soul can be in a body secondarily, "inasmuch as the body is disposed and enabled to devote itself readily to the workings of the soul" (ST 2-1.50.1).

If, however, we speak of the disposition of the subject to form, then habitual disposition can be in body. And in this way health and beauty, and suchlike, are called habitual dispositions. But they do not completely have the notion of habitudes, because their causes are by their nature easily transformable.

In the reply to the second objection he further clarifies this by suggesting that health and beauty are habitudes comparatively -- they are 'difficult to change' relative to most things we consider dispositions -- but habitudes in the soul, like knowledge and virtue, are 'difficult to change' simply. I take it that the point is that bodily habitudes have a greater measure of dependency on things other than themselves than habitudes of the soul; that is, the difficult-to-change and the easy-to-change is a measure of relative independence.

In what way do souls have habitudes?

The soul does not naturally have a habitude to nature, because that would require something to which it is further disposed; this contrasts with the body, which has a habitude-to-nature with respect to the soul.  However, importantly, this also means that under the right conditions, the soul can have a habitude to a higher nature than itself; this can occur by divine grace, for instance, which gives us a habitude to the divine nature. In this way, the habitude takes as its subject the essence of the soul.

The usual way the soul has habitudes is by having habitudes to operations, which are themselves based on powers or capabilities. In this way, the habitude takes as its subject the powers of the soul.

Whether nutritive or sensitive powers of the soul can have habitudes?

Nutritive and sensitive powers are not in and of themselves capable of multiple possibilities because they "work from natural stimulation" (ST 2-1.50.3), ex instinctu naturae. Therefore, simply considered in themselves they do not have habitudes. However, rational powers are capable of multiple possibilities, so we can have habitudes in other powers of the soul insofar as they "work from command of reason".

On the basis of this, Aquinas concludes (ST 2-1.50.3 ad 1) that nutritive powers, which do not obey the command of reason, have no habitudes, but sensitive powers can obey the command of reason, and therefore can have habitudes. This is certainly true of human senstive powers, which are ordered naturally to rational powers; but what about the sensitive powers of animals other than human beings?

To the second it must be said that sensitive powers in brute animals do not work from the command of reason, but if brute animals are left to themselves, they work from natural stimulation, and thus in brute animals there are not any habitudes ordered to workings. There are nevertheless some dispositions in them ordered to nature, such as health and beauty. But because brute animals are through a sort of custom disposed by human reason to some working or another, in this way in brute animals habitude can in a certain way be put; thus Augustine says in the book of eighty-three questions, that we see the most savage beasts being restrained from that in which they have the greatest pleasures by fear of pain, and when this turns into custom for them, we call them tamed and gentled. However, the notion of habitude is incomplete as to voluntary use, because they do not have lordship of using or non-using, which it seems pertains to the notion of habitude. And therefore, properly speaking, in them there cannot be habitudes. (ST 2-1.50.3 ad 2)

'Use' is a technical term for St. Thomas; it is a particular act of will, the application of a thing to an operation; we are doing it when we apply a horse to riding or a stick to hitting by deliberately selecting this end for it. In doing this, our will is acting as a prime mover. In ST 2-1.16.2, he had concluded (also in agreement with Augustine in the Eighty-Three Questions) that it is an act exclusive to rational animals. At no point so far has he actually connected habitude and volitional acts of use; it comes out of left field here, but I think his idea is that properly speaking the brute animal gets the quasi-habitude, or habitude in a loose sense, that we call 'tameness', through use by a human will, and therefore the selection out of multiple possibilities is actually extrinsic to the disposition here.

This is a point on which St. Thomas seems very much to be deviating from Aristotle; but, Aristotle's remarks being somewhat scattered, it's difficult to say how far. I think one can argue that he is not so much differing as to substance as making a terminological adjustment, so that habitude in a strict sense is more closely connected to intellect and will; trained animals have habitudes in an extended sense by their connection to intellect and will, which in their case is outside the actual disposition. This raises a few questions that are not an issue in Aristotle's somewhat looser terminology, such as those with tool-use in other animals. I suspect St. Thomas would give the same answer to such questions that he gave in 2-1.16.2 about beasts using their members, that they do this from natural stimulation (or instinct; the Latin instinctus is not as narrow as the English 'instinct'), and thus not from use in the proper sense. It is very clear that we need to distinguish rational habitudes from other kinds; rational habitudes on every point of the definition of habitude fit the definition more 'tightly' than other habitudes do. But it's at least arguable that we should see Aristotle's looser sense of habitude as a sort of genus, in which they can differ in precisely how the multiple possibilities are involved, and Aquinas as concerned with the primary species of that genus, those that have volitional use as part of how we understand the multiple possibilities. 

While Aquinas flatly denies habitude in nutritive powers, the allowance of a habitude-in-a-broad-sense in the case of tame animals also raises the question of whether there might not be possible something similar in nutritive powers in plants (through horticulture) or in animals (through veterinary medicine).

These sorts of questions arise, I think, from the fact that St. Thomas does not give extensive explanations for some of his reasons, so there are unstated gaps. My guess is also that St. Thomas that, since in context he is building up to a discussion of virtues, the most proper habitudes, that he is really just thinking about virtue in these discussions, and thus not fully following through on the lesser questions of how this relates to the various roles dispositional qualities take in explaining animal behavior.

Intellect and will are in any case the primary and most proper subjects for habitudes, and thus should be kept for their own discussions.