Aquinas at 800, Part 14: Obstacles to Moral Action

Episode Topic: Obstacles to Moral Action

Explore how Thomas Aquinas transforms 13th-century ethics into a blueprint for modern life. Join elite scholars as they bridge the gap between ancient habits and contemporary character development, revealing how our first moral choices and the “architecture of consent” continue to shape our journey toward virtue and human flourishing.

Featured Speakers:

• José M. Torralba, University of Navarra
• Robert J. Barry, Providence College
• Isabel Lemaître Palma, University of the Andes (Santiago, Chile) 

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/ad58ab. 

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Aquinas at 800.

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Transcript

Welcome

Speaker 10 0:03

All right, everyone. Welcome to our concurrent session on Ethics: Principles of and Obstacles to Moral Action. Each speaker will have 20 minutes to talk, followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. Our first speaker is Jose Torralba, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Navarra in Spain. He has mainly worked on German philosophy, especially Kant, Elizabeth Anscombe, and the tradition of liberal education. He recently co-edited two volumes, Ways of Being Bound: Perspectives from Post-Kantian Philosophy and Relational Sociology, and Literature and Character Education in Universities. He is currently the director of the Civic Humanism Center for Character and Professional Ethics at the University of Navarra, and the title of his presentation is Aquinas and the Aristotelian Circle: Implications for Character Development.

Speaker 2 1:04

So, great. Thank you very much. first of all, I have to say that this is the-- Even though I've been working on ethics, yeah, now for a number of years, this is the first time I, I give a presentation on Aquinas. So I ask for your understanding. I probably have more questions than answers, but so the Q&A will be particularly productive.

Virtue Ethics Shift

Speaker 2 1:28

Over the last few decades, in ethical studies, we have moved from a model focused on rightness of the part-- on the rightness of the particular action, often considered primarily by its results, to another model in which the crucial factor is the intentional character of human action. That is, how the agent's perspective contributes to the determination of the object of the act. This shift is mainly due to re-revival of virtue ethics, as is well known. The re-recent development of Thomistic moral philosophy in the past twenty years can also be framed within this current. A relevant place in this movement is occupied by the new Thomistic studies with underlying precisely its nature as it's called ethics from the first-person perspective, which correct or try to correct past legalistic interpretations of Aquinas. In this sense, one could speak of the passage from an act ethics to an agent ethics without these, two positions, act ethics and agent ethics, being, uh, opposing perspectives, but rather complementary. In this regard, it is relevant to remember that Aristotle considered moral education an essential part of practical philosophy. If the aim of ethics or, or studying ethics is to become good and not just merely to know what is the right thing to do, then understanding the process of ethical learning, that is how the person is morally formed through the acquisition and cultivation of habits, is fundamental, a fundamental part of ethics. The recovery of virtue ethics has also contributed to recalling the importance of ethical education for moral philosophy or to moral philosophy Not surprisingly, in also in recent years, in the past ten years, in the field of moral and character education, there has been a renaissance of Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian theories. To a large extent, this is a reaction to the former, uh, dominant neo-Kaldorian, which is a loosely Kantian model of character and ethical education, which focuses on the subject's ability to formulate the right judgment about particular actions. Simply put, it seems that we are moving from an ethical model in which the decisive question is what it is right to do to one in which the critical question is what is good to be. This is probably, pretty well known and but nonetheless interesting. So m- now to the paper, to the topic of the paper. My underlying interest in this paper is to study... You have a small animal. I'm not gonna kill it.

Speaker 3 4:23

However small it is. So

Speaker 2 4:30

will be unethical. So my underlying interest in this paper is to study how Thomas Aquinas conceives the configuration of the moral subject. That is how a person shapes a certain way of being or a character through his actions, his or her actions. Thomistic ethics follows in general the Aristotelian line. However, there are two points where St. Thomas m- has made contributions that it will be argued offer better answers to the issue of the configuration of the moral subject. The first question is the relationship be-- uh, is the relationship the subject has with his habits, with or bad habits. That is, uh, to what extent he is free to follow them once they have been acquired or consolidated. The second question is the solution to the so-called Aristotelian circle. That is, to the problem of whether the moral subject is capable of attaining some kind of universal moral knowledge, or instead, his moral conception is determined by the social and cultural horizon in which he or she lives. And both questions are connected, as I will try to show. Ordinary life experience indicates that it is possible to improve or deteriorate morally, even as an adult, and that although the type of education received in childhood and youth is critical, it is not determinant. Moral change and or co- even conversion is always possible. However, it seems that in Aristotle's theory or ethical writings, there will be or there is no room for such a change to explain how such change can take place. The character acquired during childhood and youth would determine the ends of one's actions in adult life, which the agent will be unable to change It seems that a better explanation for this question can be found in Aquinas. Assuming the basic principles of the Aristotelian approach, Aquinas, Aquinas's theory allows us to explain the possibility of moral change in people who have already acquired their character. This depends at least on the following two points. Firstly, I've already mentioned that. Firstly, the understanding of a disposition, by disposition I translate habitus, as something that the will chooses... Sorry, as the will chooses or not to exercise. Secondly, the notion of synderesis and its relation to prudence that leads to a central question for ethics, that of the possibility of knowing universal moral principles independently of one's background and education, a point in which the position of Aristotle and Aquinas diverge. So in, in, in the field of character education, it is frequently asked whether, according to Aristotle, it is possible to undo the effects of a bad, bad bringing. The answer, according to Aristotle, is in principle negative because, and I'm quoting Aristotle, "It is not possible to modify by argument what has long been absorbed by habit." End quote. In the Aristotelian approach, the vicious person who has lacked the proper habituation for the good cannot become a good person. The most he can aspire to is the state of continents, but not that of virtue, because he has not brought-- as he has not been brought up in good habits. The critical issue here is that phronesis is incapable of leading to the moral transformation of the vici-vicious person since, as is well known, its exercise, the exercise of prudence, depends on the possession of the moral virtues. aside. So it's true that there's a pass-- this passage in the Categories where Aristotle claims that complete transformation of the vicious person is indeed possible. However, according to the scholars, uh, and following him, a number of them, and following him here, a number of them, either this, there is a contradiction between this, uh, uh, central thesis of the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics and th-this passage on the Categories, or that passage of the Categories, should not be considered relevant to this argument because it's made in passing, so it's not, central to the, to the discussion, in the Categories. So in addition to whether the vicious person can change, it should be asked the other way around, whether virtue can be lost. That's another question. Unlike Aristotle, which thinks that, you cannot lose virtue. Aquinas, literally speaking. Aquinas considers that the virtuous can lose virtue. He says that virtue can be destroyed through ignorance, through passion, or through choice. The main difference with Aristotle lies in his conception of the will and its relation to the dispositions, to the habitus. Aquinas follows Averroes, who, quote, "Defines habit as what a person uses at will," in Latin, habitus est quo quis agit cum voluerit, unquote. The will is a capacity for free choice. Thus, Aquinas would interpret the passage on the role of our dispositions, not in Aristotle's deterministic way, but as meaning that, I'm quoting again Aquinas, "After men have become unjust or incontinent, it is no longer within their power to cease being unjust or incontinent immediately, but great effort and practice are required." So he, he... unquote. So he acknowledges that it's very difficult, but still possible. The critical point here, as I will ex-try to explain further, is that moral dispositions or character are not the only source of ends for human action. And this is, like, yeah, the key point of the paper. So now to the second and final part, uh, which is avoiding the Aristotelian circle. In this regard, the proposal of Aquinas is relevant concerning what some interpreters have called the Aristotelian circle. That is, moral virtues require prudence, but there is no prudence without moral virtues. The problem would be that the subject remains limited to the horizon of his polis and of the moral education he has received. For, for his part, Aquinas' theory of natural law would offer a way out of the circle, but it's recourse to the possibility of knowing universal principles about what is good, and therefore to the existence, so if his reference to the existence of an external criterion to determine why what is considered virtuous contributes to the com-- to the human good The existence of an agent independent or an external criterion for the evaluation of actions is a question of normative ethics. I think, following here some interpreters too, that Aristotle was not directly interested in these kind of questions, or that they are not part of the, one can, one can call it the topic of Aristotelian ethics. The topic of Aristotelian ethics of, or, or Aristotelian ethics is focused, you could say if you want, limited but focused on accounting for the effective conditions of the catalog on protein, so according to right reason. This is not to say that the question regarding why some actions are virtuous and others not does not appear in Aristotle's course. But it does so only, or mainly, in a dialectical way when discussing the different ways of living and not as a, a, a problem of normative ethics, so why this is virtuous, why this is not. For Aristotle, virtue's role in moral life is to make what is really good, so according to the orthos logos, to make that what is really good to appear as such to the agent. That, that's the role of, of, of virt-- the main role of virtue. And here he's following the, the Platonic tradition, and considering, that the logos always prescribes what is best. However, the following question arises: so what happens when virtue is absent in the agent? How can the logos then act and lead, you know, the agent to, to do the right thing, to, to, or to lead them to the good life? Aristotle's answer to this question is not a theory about practical reason or practical principles, but about correct education and legislation. That is a political theory, as we all know. I think it's part of politics in this very strong sense. Thus, it can be said that the subject of Aristotelian ethics is a doctrine about making virtue possible through education and law. This leads us to a well-known passage in Nicomachean Ethics three, usually, usually called "the goal passage," where Aristotle claims that, quote, "Virtue makes the goal correct, and prudence makes what promotes the goal correct." Unquote. Thus, it could seem that the ends we consider good depend on the possession of the moral virtues and prudence is concern, is concerned, sorry, with determining the means conducive to them. However, one can also distinguish here two senses, two senses in which goal is used. It can be claimed that moral virtue would determine the right proximate end or particular principle, but it would not be able to determine by itself the rightness of that end, and that's a key distinction I want to make. In Aquinas's approach, the rightness of that end would depend on syn-synderesis. Prudence would guide action toward the virtuous end, while syn-synderesis would act on prudence so that it would know the ends that lead to the good or happy life. And therefore, it would know what the good of the virtues consists in. In Aristotle's approach, the standard for goodness is the spoudaios. But the problem he leaves unsolved is how the virtuous person can be recognized as virtuous if there is-- if there are no external agent-independent standards. That's the, the problem, the part of the circle, the beginning of the circle. And now I'm just getting to the final, point. Aquinas offers a solution to this problem, as I already said, in his theory of practical-- with his theory of practical rationality, where the ends of virtuous actions are not only determined by moral virtues and prudence, they are determined by intellect and natural reason. In, question forty-seven of the, Secunda Secundae, article six, he asks whether prudence sets the end for moral virtues. That will be the key question. So, and he replies, and let me quote an extense, but it's not that extense, but as a final quotation. this is Aquinas: "Just as in the case of speculative reason, there are certain things that are naturally known and with respect to which there is understanding, intellectus, and certain things that are known through them, that is conclusions and concerning which there is scientific knowledge, scientia. So too, in the case of practical reason, there preexists certain things which are naturally known principles and among which are the ends of the moral virtues. For among doable things, the end behaves in the way that a principle does among speculative things. And there are also cert-certain things that exist in practical reason as conclusions, and among them are the means to the end, which we arrive at from the ends, the end themselves." And pruder, sorry, and prudence has to do with the latter, applying universal principles to particular conclusions about things to be done. And so, and this is the conclusion of the, the answer, the question of the article of this question. And so it belongs to prudence not to set the end for the moral virtues, but only to determine the means to the end. So he's in agreement with Aristotle, but at the same time, adding something new to, to, to the, to this, theory of how moral virtues and prudence interact, uh, to set the, the, the end of human action. So Aquinas, sorry, Aquinas agreed with Aristotle that prudence depends on moral virtue to achieve the right end, but disagreed with him because he thought that the ends of moral virtues can also be known independently of virtue's possession by means of natural reason. Now, let's see. In conclusion, I have tried to show briefly how Aquinas' understanding of the relationship between moral virtue, prudence, and synderesis or natural reason solves or may help solve some puzzles in Aristotle's approach to moral development. Aquinas, and this is my final, sentence. So Aqu- I don't think Aquinas contradicts Aristotle, but you could say complements and certainly expands the range of questions one finds in Aristotelian ethics. Thank you very much

Speaker 10 19:32

Okay, we have time for 10 minutes of questions. And if you all wouldn't mind using the microphone when you speak.

Speaker 4 19:41

Thanks, José. and one thing that kind of surprisingly didn't figure in your account was any role for supernatural-

Speaker 2 19:50

Yeah

Speaker 4 19:50

grace.

Speaker 2 19:51

Yeah.

Speaker 4 19:52

And one place you might think it necessary is something like the following. I mean, so suppose there is this connatural knowledge of the natural law. If it's habitually obscured-

Speaker 2 20:06

Right

Speaker 4 20:07

then the question is: how does it come to light?

Speaker 2 20:11

Right.

Speaker 4 20:11

And, and that would be one place where Aquinas' supernatural framework could give an answer that wasn't available to Aristotle. So I just-- But I wonder if there's a reason why you didn't move in that direction, or if you, if you, if you think that that strictly isn't necessary, even in c- even in the case where this kind of knowledge is habitually obscured.

Speaker 2 20:34

Right. Yeah. Thank you. the reason... Yeah, two, two points. One is, so the reason I didn't mention that or anything, took that into account is, because I was trying to argue, at the level or, or in the sphere of natural reason.

Speaker 4 20:48

Theology marks our progress.

Speaker 2 20:49

Exactly, yeah. That, that's the main reason. that's one thing. But then, of course, uh, and I haven't really worked on, still, uh, onto that, on that. so understanding how supernatural virtues, uh, are acquired or, uh, act in a person will help illuminate how this moral change and conversion, I mean conversion in a religious sense, So you're right. Uh, that's something that, it's a next step to, to this.

Speaker 5 21:22

Thank you.

Debating Aristotle Practical Truth

Speaker 5 21:23

I, I complete-- completely agree with your interpretation of St. Thomas, but not with your Aristotelian interpretation. Sure,

Speaker 2 21:29

sure.

Speaker 5 21:30

And I mean, I mean, look, probably depending on the ma- on the mainstream interpretation of Aristotle with which I disagree. But the point is, continence and incontinence would be impossible if, if, uh, the virtues are the ones that set the ends and you cannot see the ends and you don't have the virtues. That's, that's-- it would be impossible. And then, so the, the concept that is absent of the mainstream Aristotelian interpretation is practical truth. It does say, in my, in my opinion, that's the pra- the central subject of Aristotle's ethics, not virtue.

Speaker 6 22:00

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 22:00

Virtue is the way in which the character, is informed by practical truth. Sure. And then, and then you say, "Well, according to Aristotle, you cannot change a character." But you, you, you yourself mentioned that. So he-- you cannot change it by argument, you say. That's, that's Nicomachean Ethics 10:9 or 2:1, I am not sure. But then he said, "Well, that's why you have lost."

Speaker 2 22:21

Right,

Speaker 5 22:21

right. You know what I mean? Well, et cetera. I don't want-- we can talk after that, after

Speaker 2 22:24

that. No, no, no. They are, I mean, I, I didn't mention that, but I did read and work on that. So, I'll say two, or again, two points. the first, yeah, you, you were referring to the, um, enkrates and akrates, that, that, that, So how is that possible? I mean, that, that you, that you-- there is moral change in Aristotle, and there's a theory of moral change. You have this, you know, the virtues, the vices, enkrates and the akrates. the-- I just for- I just missed the point, sorry. so the Yeah, the, the, the, yeah. Sorry. No, you were beginning-

Speaker 5 22:57

So, so, and what, what I say is that there is practical truth-

Speaker 2 23:00

Yeah

Speaker 5 23:00

and you can know it even if you are not virtuous.

Speaker 2 23:03

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I know. I just remember what I wanted to say. So I, I, mm, I a- I agree that you can s- you can argue that the key notion of Nicomachean ethics is practical truth, even though it's, appears only once and so on and so forth. But, I think there is a difference in the, um, understanding of practical truth in Aristotle and how, for instance, Aquinas reads it in his commentary to Nicomachean ethics. And the difference has to precisely with this, idea of universal moral knowledge. It seems to me that if you, if you, if you are reading the notion of practical truth within Aristotelian context, it's more about the particular action. And n- and even you can say, "Yeah, but there must be a reference, you know, to the, to the notion of the good life as such or universal knowledge or something like that." There must be, and, and I think Aristotle would agree, but he doesn't go that way, whereas Aquinas does. Uh, that's, that would be my point regarding practical truth. So that is true, but you don't find that in Aristotle. Uh, but Aquinas is, I would say, is a faithful Aristotelian, but, uh, moving forward. That's my, my, my point on that, on that.

Speaker 7 24:28

Thank you, Rosemaria. I'd like to go to the relationship between, how, um, Aquinas solves the Aristotelian circle. And if I understand correctly, he resolves this by a new comprehension of the practical reasoning.

Speaker 2 24:47

Right.

Speaker 7 24:48

Right?

Speaker 2 24:48

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 24:49

So how do we connect the development of practical reasoning to character development? And the question is, doesn't that drive us back to argument? Or how would you explain that, if possible?

Speaker 2 25:05

Doesn't that, get us back to argument? You mean the-

Speaker 7 25:07

Yeah. I mean, to go back to the, what Aristotle, mm, says is not possible. But how would you define this practical reasoning-

Speaker 2 25:17

Oh, yeah

Speaker 7 25:17

to be able to overcome v-vicious people? I mean, you know?

Speaker 2 25:21

Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. In

Speaker 7 25:22

adult life.

Speaker 2 25:23

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So Aristotle's point is that you cannot change by argument- Yeah what, what's already established by character. So if there is this argument, which is the theory of natural law or the universal knowledge of principle, that's an argument. So, uh, great. I, I mean, I'm onto that. I've been working on that. It's part of the paper, but I didn't mention it. So great that you asked this. Thank you. so two points here. again, one, one is, you could m-make the case in Aristo- in Aristotle without reference to Aquinas, that there is some kind of, intellectual knowledge of the good. I, I was going to mention that when you, you referred to the acrotest and the incrotest because they are not virtues, but they, they, they, they, they know that, that what they are doing is wrong, and they know, they, they regret that. So how can you regret something that is against your character, your character? I mean, I think that's clear, the point I'm making, I'm, I'm trying to make. So in Aristotle, you do have a basis for that, a basis for the idea that there is some level of intellectual, uh, ethical knowledge, like in the, like in the acrotest, which is independent of, his or her character and disposition and passions. You have that there. I mean, if, if not, the, the phenomenon of, acrosia is not possible to, to be explained. Okay, that's one point. And then, the, the, to your question, so why, uh, uh, Aquinas is not committing, you know, to, to the, himself to the circle again, The way I see it is that we, we need some kind of agent independent external, uh, way of, acknowledging what, uh, w- why something is a v- virtuous action or virtuous way of living. So, because if not, everything is, dependent on, on, on the context. and finally, so my, my, my answer will be it's not that, that only that knowledge or that argument is enough to change your way of acting or your character, but that universal practical knowledge can be part of the process of, um, configuring your desires or changing. So it's like, I mean, when you see some-- I mean, even Aristotle you have that, no? Uh, if you see the Spudaios and you, you compare it to him, you say there's something here going on. And this begins a, a process of reflection that may end up changing your, your way of

Speaker 7 28:02

life. But does he say how? I mean, because I, I-- it makes a lot of sense what you're saying. I mean, the process starts there. But my question, and very simple, just a few words if it's possible. Does he say somewhere how that process prompts, let's say, how it starts, how it's, how it develops? Or just-

Speaker 2 28:22

No. No. Not that I know. So it's not-- I mean, moral education is kind of neglected in most moral philosophers. Uh, Aquinas and Aristotle apart from it. It's not that they have a theory of that. No. Um, so that will be the, the quick answer. So you have to reconstruct it.

Speaker 7 28:40

Enough for me. Thank you.

Speaker 2 28:44

Welcome

Speaker 10 28:52

very quickly, our next presenter is Robert Barry, Associate Professor of Theology at Providence College, and his title

Speaker 3 29:06

Thank you very much. I have a, an actual set of slides to show you here. Hopefully they show. I also have a bunch of quotes. I don't have a handout for it, but I have a QR code. If you wanna scan that, you can look it up. And it actually has the whole of this paper that I'm not delivering the whole of, as well as the PowerPoint, as well as the primary texts to which I'll be quickly referring if you wanna look at them in greater depth. Anyway, thank you very much. I'll be-- I've, I've got a-- This paper ended up being much larger than I thought it was going to be, so I'll be reading, just summarizing portions of it for you and reading a small section that I'm particularly happy with. it's not that I'm unhappy with the rest of it, but I am very happy

Original Sin First Choice

Speaker 3 29:49

with it. So upon attaining the age of reason, uh, or the age when, she first has the capacity to use her reason and make a moral choice, a child born in the condition of original sin, and that's the condition I'm looking at, will be limited in her freedom to make the morally good choice. and absolutely incapable, we'll note, of making a meritorious moral choice. The freedom or lack of freedom present in the child in the first moral choice is not a topic that Thomas directly explores. Yet Thomas does consider the first moral act more generally, uh, so we can collect his mature thought from his wider analysis of moral choice and action and apply them fruitfully to this particular case. And just for, convenience sake, when I say free choice, free will, I mean the capacity for acting to attain a genuine good without obstructions. So that's what I'm working with. This paper will make an application of, an application of Thomas' thought of this more mature thought to this particular question and explain how he'll propo- he'll envision limits to this capacity of the person at that moment of, uh, first choice to act, uh, act rightly. Uh, there's a couple of recent works that are very helpful. Steve Jensen's Sin: A Thomistic Psychology, Bill Madison's, uh, recent work, um, let me get the title right here. it's, uh, Growing in Virtue: Aquinas on Habit from Georgetown University Press. Also, Father Lawrence DeWan, God rest his soul, wrote a very nice article on this that is reprinted in a collection of his works. I'll refer it, be referring to those. Okay, what is meant by age of discretion, age of reason, uh, however you want to put it? Thomas uses a number of cognates. Everyone thinks it's age seven. I-- If you know when Thomas, where he says that, I'd be glad to see that. But every time I looked, the use of those terms all correspond to the use of the term, age of puberty, and Thomas is concerned about the question of when religious vows might be validly taken on by someone. That's age 12 for women, 14 for boys. The actual age that someone arrives at the full use of reason, uh, Thomas thinks is highly variable. Uh, he'll say we can't pin it down, but we can pin it down to the point where if we're gonna make a law about it, 12 for girls, 14 for boys, and that's interesting. So, uh, he-- this is probably informed by his own experience in the Abbey of Monte Cassino, being a boy, being shaped by a life with Benedictine monks, and those around him who more, were more or less capable of exercising reason at a earlier or a later point. All right. Let me move on to another point, What kind of action is a child capable of before the full use of reason? Well, we perhaps, I'll get to this, uh, little slide in a second. Uh, much like an animal, that is to say, humans have the s- powers that they share with animal-- with irrational animals, the lower passions of the soul, uh, the cogitative power, they have possibility of reminiscence and such, and this develops in children. And, Thomas doesn't really give a, a great account of why or at what point it changes or the nature of the change. He seems to be echoing a, um, just the commonplace that until a certain age, there's too much humidity in the brain which inhibits the operation of the sensitive powers of the soul as they pertain to the rational powers of the soul. So even though everyone has a rational nature and has these rational powers, they just are inhibited by this humidity. But at a certain point, it does be- it does become clear that someone is capable of using reason, properly speaking. He doesn't think it's-- He doesn't... Now, the question, is it gradual? Put that to the side for now. For Thomas, it seems to be a, a all-at-once thing. And he raises this question particularly in the question-- in relation to the question of whether someone with original sin alone can commit merely venial sin or whether their first moral act will be either meritorious or it will be, mor-mortal sin. So he says it's impossible for venial sin to be in anyone with original sin alone. That is, uh, that is without any actual personal sin. the reason for this is because before a man comes to the age of discretion, age of reason, or use of-- full use of reason, the lack of years hinders the use of reason, excuses him from mortal sin, and excuse him from venial sin. But when he begins to have the use of reason, he is not entirely excused from the guilt of venial or mortal sin. Now, the first thing that occurs to a man is to think about then, is to deliberate about himself. And if he then directs himself to the due end, God, he will by means of grace receive the remission of original sin. Whereas if he does not then direct himself to the due end, as far as he is capable of discretion at that particular age, he will sin mortally through not doing that which is in his power to do. Now, that sounds pretty Pelagian, and this is how it's understood in some, but actually Thomas, when he says, what it is, what is in someone's power to do, he means something, uh, he doesn't mean apart from any help by God. He never means that even in his sentence commentary, which a lot of people overlook. So The objection, it seems that it's in our power to prepare ourselves for grace a little bit further in the Prima Secundae. Thomas says, man can do nothing unless moved by God. Hence, when a man is said to do what is in him to do, this is said to be in his power according as he is moved by God. I just want to get that out of the way so that any movement toward knowing God above all things will be on account of the help of divine providence. Okay, let's move on to the next point. So what is the condition of the child? What is in the child at that moment of coming to that full use of reason? Well, there's plenty of dispositions of the soul. And I'm going to take a cue from Bill Madison's text that these dispositions, we will not count them as habits because they're not formed by reason, or at least not by the reason of that individual child. There are habits or there's inclinations, there's dispositions. If anyone has ever dealt with children, you know they have definite preferences. Those preferences are not wiped away upon arriving at that full use of reason. They're still there. So what impact do they have on choices? Now, I go into a great deal of examination and depth on this question. And I just want to look at the limits that are going to be imposed on the child, particularly through these prior dispositions. Now, there's a whole set of limits that occur on account of reason, right? And this is, in fact, something that we need to say, um, I'm not gonna do this slide, I'm gonna do another one Upon attaining that age, there's two things that the child has to do, turn toward God and turn away from those, those particular things that are contrary to loving God above all things. And in both cases, the child can't do that or most likely can't do it and can't do it well.

Knowing God Is Hard

Speaker 3 37:51

Why can't the child upon attaining the age of reason know God? Well, as Thomas points out in question one of article one of the Summa Theologiae Prima Pars, it's really hard to know God. And once you do, using reason alone, you're going to probably get it wrong. You'll probably make mistakes. and especially if, this is the case, if you're, you're surprised about this and I can't ima-- I can't imagine what's more surprising than arriving first and fully at the full use of reason. So knowing God, knowing God truly and knowing God accurately all on your own apart from any instruction is going to be virtually impossible. and in fact, other people are instructed badly. Think of Pharaoh who is told that he is a god. How is he going to come to a right knowledge of what God would be? You'd have to undo all that prior thoughts, right? Because of course a child doesn't have reason, but a child has thoughts, a child has memory, a child has ideas that are not fully rational, but now all those ideas are capable of rational consideration. So on th-that side, there will be an entire set of things inhi-- false understanding but culpable ignorance about what God really is, right? That's a whole nother part of the argument. What about on the side of turning from those goods? So turning to a God that is unknown is very difficult. But what about on the part of turning from those particular goods that one has become accustomed to enjoying throughout the course of those past 12 years? Why would there be any obstacle to turning from them? Well, there's a couple of obs-- uh, reasons. first You may not know you have to turn from them. Your knowledge of God may not generate the clear conclusion that the loving of this God above all things requires the abandonment of these things you've become accustomed to. Now, it is possible that you have become accustomed to enjoying things that are not in themselves contrary to loving God. And that in fact might be the case of the virtuous pagan. If there's any case to be made for a virtuous pagan in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, it would perhaps be the child who is shaped with acqui-- with, uh, according to the norms of acquired virtues, even though they don't have virtues themselves. They develop habitual inclinations to do things that are morally good, if not perfectly good. Thomas doesn't preclude that. And they may know that there is a God to order these, the enjoyment of these goods toward. Thomas doesn't preclude that either. It's unlikely, but even then, one would not mar-- But in that case, Thomas envisions that perhaps would be the case of one who does what is in herself and then is rewarded with the remission of original sin, because for Thomas, grace is really trying to transform the souls of everybody. But that requires a knowledge of God that, as I said, is unlikely, and it also requires a formation of the habits of one's soul that is in accordance with true virtue, such that upon reasoning about herself, this person newly come to the age of full use of reason, reasons rightly, and God grants that remission of original sin. Okay. That's not gonna happen very often The main obstacles are going to be if one does-- is badly educated and is not going to be inclined to avoid those particular evils that he or she has become accustomed to enjoying. I'm going to explain the particular case though of the choice of that child upon attaining the age of reason. I'm gonna do it with a set of diagrams in relation to an element of Thomas's thought that is frequently overlooked. unfortunately, and I actually have, Let me go through this, all these things that if I had an infinite amount of time, I could walk through, and the article will do that. So it's an infinitely long article, I guess. the account of choice is frequently oversimplified in the case of Thomas. And so you deliberate and then choose and then command and then act, and so forth. Uh, what people frequently overlook is this little element of consent, and consent is a critical component, especially when dealing with the choice of a higher good like loving God above all things in rela-- in comparison or in, in preference to things that you're already inclined to do. So I, I just wanna note that this is a little diagram I use for my class, and even I was admitting, uh, how I overlook it. I omit it, and I don't omit it anymore. So let me unravel deliberation and include a little account of what's happening with, uh, consent. So here's the ordinary story, right? The activity of reason takes counsel about various courses of action. Various courses of action are known as leading perhaps to the end already intended, and then you choose one course of action over the others for whatever reason. All right.

Elevator Stairs Example

Speaker 3 43:46

And, um, I'll just illustrate this with an example of, like, taking the elevator or taking the stairs. I could choose to take the elevator, if it's the only thing and, like, this, you know, the Empire State Building. You're not gonna take the stairs to go up. But sometimes there's other options like climbing. So, so you can take the elevator, climb the stairs right here today. Coming up here, I have the choice. I'm gonna take the elevator. I-- Why am I gonna take the elevator? Because my knees are bad and are getting bad, and I want to preserve my knees. So I'll take the elevator. I'll choose that course of action. Well, at times, uh, c-- it's not just that I choose the elevator. let's take this again and look at this option. without consenting to that considered thought of climbing the stairs, if I don't consent to it, I never even consider it. If I am of a set purpose to never cl-- I just never think of climbing the stairs It doesn't rise to the level of free choice. It's not even something I could choose. I just don't want to do it prior to choosing it. And this is what I want to ascribe as the situation of the child who, upon coming to the age of full use of reason in the condition of original sin Their choice will be like this in the following way. They have a set of goods that they will pursue, even if, they have an option. Now they know this might offend that God that they've just come to discover exists through their own use of reason. Remember, they're a pagan. They're, they're not there without the use of any grace. they also know that they could-- Let's grant that they could know they could love God above all things and refrain from enjoying those things that are prohibited by God. Let's assume they could know all that Perhaps in the case of that child raised without any strong inclination to those particular goods that are contrary to loving God above all things, that person could choose to love God. But, and here's the one, when someone has strong inclination toward particular goods, the prospect of abandoning the pursuit of those goods all of a sudden upon attaining the age of reason is something to which he or she will not likely grant consent. And therefore, that choice is off the table at the level of choice. It will be not within their capacity to choose to love God. And so they will do what seems proper, that is, pursue what they've always pursued, just as they've been doing for the last, developed the habit of the inclination to do, and now it will become the habit of doing at that age, 12 for girls, 14 for boys. And I think this is actually quite true to, this description, according to Thomas's thought, is actually quite true to what we recognize in the formation of children. It's different. It should be different for Thomas if someone is not in the condition of original sin, but rather transformed by the grace of baptism. They have now the power of faith and hope and love. They've been instructed to know that there is a God and this God loves them and they should love this God. So when such knowledge becomes possible for them to attain through their own use of reason, they can more easily grasp it, not necessarily, but more easily. Now, the importance of this, the conclusion here would bear strongly on the need for right education of Christians, but also it bears on the question of the formation of people in general in a society. And therefore the formation of children in any society is not just a theoretical philosophical question, it has theological bearing as well. That's my argument. It's a lot more detailed. You can click on the link and view it all. Yeah, that's what it takes for me to finish on time.

Q&A First Mortal Act

Speaker 3 48:12

All right. So I guess I'll take questions for 10 minutes. Yes. Oh, sorry. There's a microphone at play

Speaker 6 48:30

Uh,

Speaker 4 48:30

thank you.

Speaker 6 48:30

This is really interesting. I'm Stuart Klim. I'm from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. I'll just say I have to confess that even as a, as a committed Thomist, this is one aspect of Thomas's view that I, I've struggled with. Uh, and, and you've, you've helped to un-unravel a few things or un-um, kind of unpack a few things. But, what I keep coming back to is this question. It's, it's not so much about understanding the, the moral psychology of the, initial choice that, that we want to consider, a deliberate action and, and a mortal sin. Uh, but really it's a question of why then using Thomas's logic, we wouldn't say the same thing about the second or third instance of that sin. because he says elsewhere, you know, in the De Malo and, and, uh, in several places that he, he actually does entertain this question of whether every sin of an unbeliever is a mortal sin. Mm-hmm. He says, "No, that's absurd." but he has a reason for wanting to say the first, the first deliberate moral action is either meritorious or a mortal sin. And so e-even if we can make sense of his reason for wanting to say that that first act is a mortal sin, it's not, it's not entirely clear to me why he wouldn't wanna say that also for the second, third-

Speaker 3 49:48

The subsequent ones are not going to be, by species, uh, mortal sin. And so someone might happen upon a course of action whereby they choose something that could be directed, directable to God. So it would be, pote- it would be potentially good, even though it's not going to be meritorious. And that's really the big question is whether an act is meritorious, and that's where they'll be in a condition of mortal sin and therefore need grace to r- because nothing they do is actually directed by themselves to the end that they ought to direct all their actions to loving God above all things as a friend, right? Now, that's something which even by natural reason you can't rise to, and that I take up in other parts of the paper. But that's, um, they're going to be separated from God by whatever they... Nothing, let me put it this way, nothing that they do will overcome that separation from God that has followed from them rejecting God at that first moment.

Speaker 6 50:48

I, I might, I might have misunderstood or not explained something very well. So I, I, it's not so much a question about, why an act is not meritorious, but rather if we're imagining an instance of the first moral action being generically venial but mortal-

Speaker 3 51:04

Oh, he denies it's possibly venial by g- by genus.

Speaker 6 51:08

Okay.

Speaker 3 51:08

He thinks that it's a rejection of God. that's why, yeah, perhaps I didn't make that clear.

Speaker 6 51:12

Okay.

Speaker 3 51:12

There's a multitude of quotes in which it is absolutely clear this is not just a, a, a mistake. It is culpable rejection of God, to-- culpable failure to turn to God And to turn away from those things that keep you from loving him.

Speaker 6 51:29

Okay. Well, and that case I was reading a little bit differently, but we can follow up later on with somebody else. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 3 51:38

If anyone has a passage where To- use- St. Thomas says the age of arriving at the use of reason is age seven, please let me know, as I, I looked and... Yes?

Speaker 8 51:47

In Thomas' moral theology, now I'm not a theologian, but he seems to make a lot or call a lot of things mortal sins that don't seem to be that bad to me. Is it, am-

Speaker 3 51:57

what kind of things do you think?

Speaker 8 51:59

Oh, uh, well, I tell you what, I, I go back before pre-Vatican II, you know, and start thinking about, I can just come up with one thing after another that was a mortal sin pre-Vatican II that was not a mortal sin after pre-Vatican. In other words, eating meat on Friday. Mm-hmm. There, there's, there's one. Touching the host was considered a mortal sin before Vatican II. Now we can take it in the hand, it's legal.

Speaker 3 52:19

Yeah, those are precepts of the church, so it's a willingness to abide by or reject the precepts of the church. Uh, until they have that specification, they are not mortal sin in genus, but they become mortal sin to the extent that they're prohibited and such. And that's in the case of divine, when he takes up, the precepts concerning, um, worship, right? The, uh, uh, f- the, the practical application, the first tablet of the old, of the natural law, of the o- of the Ten Commandments, I should say.

Speaker 8 52:48

But even reading the, the summary of the Summa, he, he calls just simple thoughts mortal sins.

Speaker 3 52:57

No, thought, it, I mean, hatred of God, yes. But that a thought occurred to you that you might not act on, no, that's a venial sin. Yeah. And it is, no, it doesn't become a mortal sin just because it's, you're thinking of doing a horrible thing. Because he's, he recognizes that kind of thing could arise all the time. It's a matter of what you do with that that constitutes the moral quality of the a- of your action.

Speaker 6 53:20

Yeah.

Speaker 4 53:25

Now just wondering if you can help me with just a naive puzzlement here. Mm-hmm. The idea that there's this first moment-

Speaker 10 53:36

Yeah

Speaker 4 53:37

and I've raised a lot of children, some of them past the age of reason, I guess. And, and, and, you know, the idea that, you know, it was on Tuesday that he performed his first- Yeah act of this kind- Yep just seems, preposterous. I mean, so I'm wondering if you can, you can either, make it seem less preposterous- Sure or maybe give me a way to understand what's being said that doesn't require construing it in that way.

Speaker 3 54:06

Jensen does a nice job of this in his chapter on this question in his Sin: A Thomistic Psychology, and he notes that it's not just any kind of goal-directed action by which you think of means toward the end. Obviously, children pick that up pretty quickly. you can-- What my little year-and-a-half-old granddaughter is learning to do so that her, uh, her, my, you know, her grandmother smiles, you know, that she's ma- she's connecting the dots. He-- And so Madison-- I'm sorry, not Madison. Uh, Jensen points out that perhaps this means the kind of thing that must occur at some point. You don't necessarily recognize it, but when you recognize that your choice has some kind of self-defining quality about it, right? So that it's not just a choice about things that are good or bad, or that people have said are good or bad, but what are you going to say about what's good or bad? Now, at what point that is, Thomas says, "I don't know, it, it ranges widely."

Speaker 4 55:11

Yeah, I mean, I think my-- the, the puzzlement is just over the very idea that even in a particular case, there's gonna be a point. so it's-- I mean, I have the same w-worry about kind of counting acts of will on a certain construal of Thomistic psychology. But here it's-- I mean, so yeah, if the idea where, like, I do such and such while thinking to myself that doing such and such is the kind of thing that I determine in this way, I mean, okay.

Speaker 6 55:39

Yeah.

Speaker 4 55:39

But, but that kind of very sophisticated second-order thought might never occur to, to a, to a, to a teenager. Um, and in any case, it, it seems like it's the kind of thing that might itself come gradually and in degrees, as opposed to there being a definitive before and after

Speaker 3 56:00

moment. The moral development of a child, like I said, Thomas doesn't explore this in depth.

Speaker 4 56:04

Right.

Speaker 3 56:04

He just basically takes what's given. somewhere between age one and age 100, people likely come to the capacity to make moral judgments that are their own rather than merely replicating those judgments of people around them. That's what he's talking about. Whether it's gradual, and I mean, that's where child developmental psychologists can get in fist fights with Tomas about it. And To- uh, you don't have much resource from Tomas himself for clarifying that. That's something I did... No, I, uh, this is all on the supposition that there is such a moment, and I get that out of the way in the first page of the thing so I can do the rest of it. Uh, there's a hand back there

Speaker 9 56:48

Thank you so much for the talk. I guess this is maybe a same, a rehashing of the same question, but, when I think of the k- the kinds of sins that children first start committing, they seem to be kind of small things like, "Oh, this was my brother's toy, and I'm definitely taking it." and if a child were to think "Oh, this offends God," I don't think they'd have a sort of full-blown like, "I am preferring this particular good over the goodness of Go- I'm turning away from my final end." and I thought that that was the difference between a mortal sin and a venial sin. the venial sin... The mortal sin, you're sort of turning away from the end, whereas the venial sin, you're just-

Speaker 3 57:29

It is possibly a sin of omission that you could think of it this way, but-- And you're at the age where you should think of it this way, but you're, for whatever reason, not. And because it's coming from your dispositions, right, it is an exercise of... And it's an act following from principles that genuinely are within you. And as a result, that's why it's a free act, that the obstacles to it are no longer exterior to but something in you, and therefore that's why it would count as culpable.

Speaker 9 58:04

As culpable. But it's not... Sorry, I might basically be misunderstanding, but it's not mortally culpable.

Speaker 3 58:10

Oh, yes.

Speaker 9 58:10

It is morally

Speaker 3 58:11

culpable. Because the question is whether you love God above all things or you don't.

Speaker 9 58:15

And you're saying you just omitted to, to think the problem

Speaker 3 58:18

is- Love God above all things.

Speaker 9 58:20

But what if you weren't thinking about it in those terms at all as a little

Speaker 3 58:24

kid? Well, that's where Dewan and, and others will, will try to spell out... And there's a long tradition of this, of, of- Mm what exactly is meant by, what's the object known when you know that there's the, the something that is bigger than yourself and so forth. If I had spelled all that, spelled out all the things I spell out in the paper there, we'd be here all afternoon. But, uh, the next speaker is, has due time, so I don't wanna take that away from her.

Speaker 10 58:49

Great. Thank you so much. All right. Our third speaker is Isabel Lemaître Palma, a doctoral student in philosophy from Universidad de los Andes, and the title of her presentation is 'The Ontological Structure That Makes Possible the Origin of Evil in the Spiritual Creature in Anselm and Thomas Aquinas.' So in this paper, I will-- I want to present a comparative analysis of the doctrine of Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas on the natural sinfulness of angelical-- angelic creature. Specifically, I propose to identify the intuitive foundation that each of them assumes as a condition of possibility of sin in the spiritual creator. The hypothesis that gives, gives rise to this analysis is that beyond the difference in their understanding of the entitive composition of creatures, it is possible to find in both certain common principles that illuminate the understanding of the origin of the free act and of the metaphysical foundation of the possibility of moral evil Both authors assume as a starting point that evil as such has no cause of its own, but sin as a free act of the will does. In the proper sense, therefore, the analysis will focus rather on the enabled entative structure of moral evil in the spiritual creature. The analysis will be centered on the consideration of the, of three keys aspect, key aspect of the problem in each author, first in Anselm and then in Thomas Aquinas. Namely, first, whether sinfulness is inherent to the nature of the angelic creature. Second, the entative foundation of such sin, sinfulness. And finally, a, a description of how the angelic creature sin based on the ontological structure assumed by each author. Anselm answer to this quest- to this question contained fundamentally in the Casu Diaboli and in the Concordia, has the merit of bringing the problem back to the fundamental metaphysical principles appertaining to the minimum entative structure necessary for the first evil will to have been possible in a rational creature. The key of his, th- doctrine is the affirmation of the necessity of a double inclination in the will, defectio commodi and defectio iustitiae. And that foundation of the free act on the pos-- And the foundation of the free act and the possibility of s- of, of evil. In Thomas Aquinas, there is no reference to this double affection of the will, and the core of his response to the possibility of evil is based on the finitude of the creator that makes possible the non-consideration of the rule of reason that direct, directs the act.

Anselm Double Affection

Speaker 10 1:02:19

The differ-- This difference, however, arise from the common purpose of trying to account for the sin of the angel on the basis of a nature without defect, in a state of original happiness and rightly incline- inclined toward its good We first consider the natural simpleness of the angelic creature according to Anselm of Canterbury Well, in various passages of his work, Anselm affirms that being rational is not something different from being capable of justice or injustice. Reason has been given to the creature not only to discern the true from the false, but principally to discern the just from the unjust, and ultimately to love g- the good and reject evil. If this were not the function of reason, he concludes, this faculty would be useless. This means, on the one hand, that reason exists in creature in order to reach hi- its ultimate end. But it also means that its justice is not guaranteed, but must be preserved and can be lost. Free will, Anselm affirms, is not constituted as such by the possibility of sinning. For then neither, neither the good angels nor, nor the blessed, nor God could be free. But sinfulness always accompanies the rational creature as long as it has not attained definitive beatitude If there-- if this were not so, Anselm affirms, it would have to be said that the perseverance of the good angels was not free but necessary, and then they could not be called just. They deserve definit-defini-definitive beatitude precisely because they pres-pres-pres-preserve justice while being able to abandon it. The natural sinfulness of the rational creature, however, but must be analyzed in relation to the original state of the angel, and similarly also of man. For it is not evi-evident how a creature that was created in a, in a state of beatitude could have sinned. If it did not lack any good, what could it desire, desire that it did not have? Or on the contrary, if it lacked something, can it be said that God created it in a state of true beatitude? It is necessary to look first at the way in which Anselm described original happiness. "Rational nature," he says, "was created in a state of proportionate suffici-sufficiency of useful things without any deficiency, whether it be the happiness of the angel or, or that of the man in paradise." There is a translation difficulty here because Anselm used a terminology of commoda goods. Mm-hmm. the good commodum or commoda. These goods are not those... These good are those, convenience, convenience for one-- for one's own happiness. Sometimes it is translated as profitable, sometimes as useful goods. They are the goods convenient to our own nature. It follows in this, in, in this... It follow in this, those who have conclude, no Ah, there, there-- I think that the, the best translation or the best way of understanding this is that commoda good include everything, all the goods that is possible to wish, all except justice. Mm, we will see why. because the creature can, will all of this good, but it, it must will them, with the measure, of justice. Beatitude, therefore, must, must be understood, first, as the possession of a complete good in proportion to the nature of each creator. Since Anselm affirms that although the happiness of angel was superior to that of man in paradise, it cannot be denying that Adam, Adam was truly happy. He lacked nothing, though the angel's beatitude was greater. And second, it must be understood as, understood as a sufficiency of goods incompatible with a state of privation or absence of due good, but not as a state of the greatest possible beatitude. It does not-- it does, does not exclude, therefore, that such a nature is open to receive a higher happiness, but only the lack of convenient goods. Rather, as we shall see, Anselm affirms that it is impossible for the rational creator to be fully happy without a just will. And the justice of the will, in turn, is not possible without a free act in which creator sh- somehow gives itself justice. A second aspect to consider is the following. In this state of original sufficiency, what could the devil, devil, have wanted when he sinned? The answer to this quest-- the ans- to answer this question, Anselm imagines an angel creator in stages and wonders what he must have received from God to make his free act possible. In addition to the will as a faculty or instrument of the soul, he must have received an inclination without which the will would not be moved to desire anything. Anselm calls this inclination voluntas beatitudinis or affectio commodi. By this inclination of the will, not only the rational creator but any creator is inclined to its own beatitude and to the goods convenient to attain it. The possibility of sin appears in the rational creator because in it, unlike other creators, this inclination remains open to infinite possibilities. The angel, Anselm affirms, can always represent a superior happiness and desire it to the greatest degree possible. This desire projected to the infinity is not something different from wanting to be like God. If this were the only inclination given to the rational creator, Anselm affirms, it could not be said that this desire is just or unjust because the creator would have no choice. It is acting... Its acting would be determinate by this inclination. I leave this point open because I can't go into this now, but it per- it is perfa- perhaps the most complex aspect of, Anselm theory. Because of its freedom, it is necessary to affirm that the will of original creator has been endowed with a second inclination, the voluntas rectitudinis or affectio iustitiae, which function is to order and govern the affectio commodi under the direction of reason in conformity with what is due. In this way, what could be exceed by the desire to be happy cannot be exceed by the desire to be just, and thus having a just will for happiness can and should be blessed The double, this double affection of the will is the entative structure on which Anselm founds the natural sinfulness of the original creator, both angels and men. The divine intention, Anselm affirms, was to create a just and happy rational nature des-destinate to enjoy him. But this couldn't-- could be-- but this could be neither happy nor just without the will to justice and happiness. His definitive beatitude is not possible without justice. He cannot be perfectly and worthily habit-happy, said Anselm, if he wants what he neither can or should or not should want. Between the natia- the initial and the definitive beatitude, therefore, there must be-- there must mediate an act of creator, of the creator, in which it either preserves the uprightness of the will or departs from it. Angelic sin, therefore, has-- is described by Anselm not as the desire, desire of any evil, but as this desire of, for a good out of due order, by which the creator abandons the rectitude of the will in which it has been constituted. Since loving rightness, rightness he could not sin, sin can only be consummated from an immoderation in the voluntas commodi. The devil, said Anselm, sinned then by loving some good, hmm, aliquod commodum, hmm, which he neither had to, uh, which he neither had nor ordained to have loved. A good which never-nevertheless could serve him, s-serve himself for an increase of happiness. Wanting inordinately something more that he had received, his will overstepped the bounds of justice. He sinned by wanting, wanting what he should not have wanted and by non-not wanting what she-- he should have wanted. But in wanted what God did not want him to want, he wanted disorderly to be like God, said Anselm. Anselm managed to reconcile in this way, uh, that the creator truly was created, created in a state of natural happiness, and that by nature he could sin, it, it could sin. This double affection of the will is in Anselm doctrines the entity foundation that makes possible-- that makes sin possible. In the double affection, there is no antecedent defect. It is part of the perfection of the rational nature.

Aquinas Finitude and Rule

Speaker 10 1:13:36

And at the same time, is-- it manifest its finiteness since, since the harmony of both wills is not guaranteed Now the, the sin of angels in Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of the-- on the cause of angelic sin is framed by an understanding of the spiritual creator whose general principles exceed the proposed of this per-- of this paper. We propose here to identify only a few key points in which it is possible to establish a dialogue between Anselmian doctrine and just presented So first, the state of the original beatitude in, in Aquinas and the natural sinfulness of the creature. Thomas Aquinas simultaneously affirms that the angels has been created in a state of natural beatitude and that nevertheless, the possibility of sin- sinning belongs to its nature, to his nature The difficulty in harmonizing these two thesis might seem more radical in the doctrine of St- St. Thomas precisely because he develops with greater precision the notion of the ultimate end and the distinction between a natural and supernatural beatitude. From these notions, it would seems that if the ultimate end of the creator were only the natural end, the state of original beatitude would render it unable to sin since no one who is at the end moves to attain it since he already has it. The sinfulness of the creator would only be possible then by reason of its ordering to an ulterior end of a supernatural kind, of a supernatural kind. This thesis seems to be reinforced if we consider that St. Thomas affirms, in fact, that the ultimate perfection of the intellectual nature is twofold. Natural beatitude, which can be attained by its own strength alone, and supernatural beatitude, which surpass- surpasses the capacity of any created intellect. And that the angelical cre-- the angelic creature seemed, in fact, been destined to the supernatural end, and that the disorder of the angelical, angelic sin was therefore a deviation from that end. Beyond the effective orientation of the angelic creature to a supernatural end, however, Thomas Aquinas affirms in an universal way that any cre-- any rational creature, whether angel of or man, if only his nature is considered, can sin because sin happens when the act deviates from the rectitude it should have, and this is possible in any free creator. There is no sin in the rational creature because it's act out of necessity. And neither can be, there be sin in God because He is not ordered to a higher end. But says Thomas Aquinas, "In any other subject endowed with will, there can be sin of will if we take into account its natural constit- constitution because the attainment of the end is not realized in it in such a way as n- as to exclude the possibility of the system from it." The fact that the angelic nature was created in perfect position of the natural end is a relevant fact in view of explaining what it could have wanted when it sinned, but not with respect to the question of whether it could sin by nature. Since the angel was in full possession of the natural end, the deviation is indeed with respect to the supernatural end. But such a deviation is possible because by nature it is not an end unto itself. And it is in the attainment of the end that the creator can fail. This is precisely what sin consists in. For the intellectual creator's sins, it fails with respect to its end. No creature is exempt from this, no matter how sublime it might be, said Thomas Aquinas, since the intellectual creator was instituted by God in such a way that it was left to its own free will to work toward its end. It's in the analysis of the regulation of action according to a rational measure that the elements of continuity and the difference between the two authors are mo-most clearly seen. Thomas Aquinas describes sin as an act which the creature deviates from due rectitude in continuity with the terminology used by Anselm. To sin is nothing other than a deviation of the act from the rectitude that it should have. The notion of rectitude in Thomas Aquinas depends on the notion of the ultimate ends. The act of free creator must be regulated by reason in order to achieve this end. This means that the creator must adjust its, its will to what is necessary to achieve that ends. It is not its own measure, mm, but is sh-sub-- it is subject to a measure that precede-precedes it. "All created reality," says St. Thomas, "by the very fact of being created, is subject to something else as to its rule of or measure. If the creator were itself its rule and measure, it could not be-- it could not proce-proceed in its operation by departing from it. For th- for this reason, God, who is its own rule, its rule, cannot sin." Sin in Thomas Aquinas consists in acting outside this norm or rational measure. In this way, Thomas Aquinas explained the creature's first bad-- In this way, Thomas Aquinas explained the creature's first bad will. There is no antecedent defect in the-- in it, in his nature, because the non-consideration of the norm is not in itself a defect, but only a possibility of the creator, of the creature by reason of, of its finitude. The no-non-consideration of the rational rule of action is-- in itself is not a privation of a due good, but only when the creature, proceeds to act without considering it For, for this defect of considerations, and Thomas finally conclude it is not necessary to look for any other cause beside the will itself, since for this, the very freedom of the will to act or not to act is sufficient So finally, how Aquinas explained the sin of the devil. The first evil of the devil's will, therefore, did not derive from the fact that he willed evil itself, because he willed what is good and convenient for himself. But by willing it without following the direction of a higher rule, the devil could not desire to be equal to God, said St. Thomas, because by natural knowledge he knew that this is impossible. Well, so how-- Here I have a test. I didn't know if to... How does Aquinas finally explain this, this he could not, uh, desire to be exactly equal as God, but he could have desired in a disordered way? So there are two possibilities. First, because, uh It was possible, because he desired as the ultimate ends of beatitude, those, those things which he could attain by the capacity of his nature, thereby di-diverting his appetite from supernatural beatitude, which comes from the grace of God. Or because he desired as the ultimate ends the likeness of God, which is caused by grace, desired, desired, desiring to attain it by the capacity of his nature and not with divine help, according to the disposition of God. And this agrees, said Thomas Aquinas, with the opinion of, of Anselm when he says, he says that the desire that to which he would attain if he had persevered, that he desired that to which he would attain if he had persevered. In any case, these two explanations con-concede because one and the other affirms that the desire to obtain the final beatitude by his ab-his ability, which proper-which is properly only to God.

Conclusions and Closing

Speaker 10 1:23:43

So finally, we can conclude that both Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, for both, there is no incompatibility in affirming that, the state of beatitude, of original beatitude in the angelical, angelic creature and natural sinfulness. The ways by, the, the ways by which each one, ba-bases this fact are different. An essential key aspect of the specific doctrine of each one. By different paths, both found the possibility and necessity of a gap between the init-in initial and definitive beatitude, the necessity of a free act in which the angelic creature decide its destiny, and the place that makes possible a fissure, a, a fissure in, in the will. In Anselm, the entity foundation of sinfulness is translate-translated into the double affection of the will, which will, while, while manifesting the perfection proper to a creature capable of free acts, makes possible an act in which the desire for good surpasses justice. This allows Anselm to give an account of sin for a nature that has been created without defect, but whose finitude is manifested in the need to agree both wills. In Thomas Aquinas's influence is explained on the basis of the impossibility of the creature being for itself its own end. The finitude of the creature opens a gap between its, its nature and its ultimate end, so that the possession of the natural end in the origin does not exempt the creature from the need to an operation for its own achieve its beatitude In both Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, the just, just action is defined by its rectitude and its being, subject to a norm of, or measure that is rooted in its creaturally condition. Both conclude finally that of the de-defect of the will that constitutes sin on the voluntary abandonment of rectitude in Anselm and of the vo-voluntary non-consideration of the norm in Thomas Aquinas, nor-- no other cause must be sought outside, outside the will itself. That's it. I'm sorry the English is not perfect. Sorry for the patience. Any questions?

Speaker 5 1:26:32

Well, no, the devil was a Pelagian then.

Speaker 10 1:26:35

That's it. I'm sorry. Pelagian, Pelagian also? No.

Speaker 5 1:26:41

According to Aquinas, the devil-- because he wanted a natural end and not a supernatural or a supernatural without grace.

Speaker 10 1:26:50

Because the, the question is... All right, again. Tell me again the question.

Speaker 5 1:26:53

The devil was a, era un Pelagiano, el Diablo.

Speaker 10 1:26:58

No, the thing is just, I think this is like a theoretical question because in fact, the devil was ordered to a, um, a supernatural end. But the problem is, if by his own nature he, he can sin. And Thomas Aquinas suggests... And, and the problem is, um, the problem is that how to give a foundation of that act, of, of, of that possibility. Not-- The problem is not that Aquinas thought that the, the devil does not acting under the grace, under the effect of the grace. But the, the question is if, if by, if even when he sin under the, the, um, under the... He was or-ordered to a, a supernatural end, even with that, that was the fact, how is possible that he sin? And the possibility is be-because it's found-founded in his own nature. That's a problem. I don't know if you can explain it in, in English very good, but in Spanish then I can understand. All right. Thank you all. We're about out of time. Thank you. I'm sure if you have additional questions, you can address them to the speakers. Otherwise, thank you all again.