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Towards the Foundations of Political Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
In the preceding sections of this essay, I have outlined a dialectical procedure whereby a doubting mind might be led to the recognition of moral truth. What has been given is the bare plot of a conversation between teacher and student. The student was, at the beginning, a skeptic about moral matters, denying the objectivity of moral knowledge, supposing that all moral judgments were a matter of opinion, entirely relative to the individual or to his cultural location at a given time and place. The teacher, by asking him to explain the undeniable fact that men exercise preference, gradually made him realize that his own criteria for preference — pleasure and quantity of pleasure — had a certain universal validity; and then, as a result of seeing the inadequacy of these criteria, the student began to understand that happiness, rather than pleasure, was the ultimate principle of moral judgments. The crucial steps in the argument were: (1) the distinction between pleasure as one among many objects of desire and pleasure as the satisfaction of any desire; (2) the enumeration of the variety of goods which are objects of human desire; (3) the point that only the totality of goods could completely satisfy desire; (4) the realization that this totality of goods, leaving nothing to be desired, is the end of all our seeking, and that everything else is sought for the sake of its attainment; (5) the conception of happiness as “all good things,” a whole constituted by every type of good, the complete good being the end, the incomplete good its parts or constitutive means; (6) the conclusion that the end, as the first principle in the practical order, is the ultimate criterion of preference, for preferor choice is exercised only with respect to means, and hence we should, in every case, prefer whatever is more conducive to the attainment of happiness.
12. Two meanings of “induction” as well as two meanings of “dialectic” must be distinguished. The word “induction” is sometimes used to name the non-discursive step by which the mind generalizes from experience: just as it abstracts universal concepts from sensible particulars, so it sometimes forms, in the light of these concepts themselves and without the mediation of prior knowledge, universally true judgments. Because they are not obtained by reasoning, these judgments are called propositions per se nota or self-evident truths; and the intellectual act by which they are achieved can be called an “intuitive induction.” (Vd. Aristotle, Post. Anal., II, 19). In contrast to intuitive induction, there is that process of the mind which might be called “rational induction,” because it involves reasoning, and is a discursive or mediated way of knowing, a process and not a single step. Such reasoning or proof is inductive rather than deductive in that it is a posteriori rather than a priori, from effects to causes rather than from causes to effects. In contrast to deductive reasoning, which explicitly elaborates what is contained in universal truths already known, inductive reasoning establishes those primary truths which are affirmations of existence, truths which are neither self-evident nor capable of being deduced from prior universals. The ultimate grounds of inductive proof are the facts of sense-experience. The a posteriori proof of the existence of God is inductive reasoning in this precise sense. Whereas deductive reasoning is the motion of the mind from what is more knowable in itself to what is less knowable in itself, inductive reasoning is that motion in which the mind goes from what is more knowable to us to the existence of something whose nature is more knowable in itself, though less knowable to us.
The word “dialectic” is frequently used, in the Aristotelian tradition, to name probable reasoning from premises taken for granted for the safe of argument. But that is not the only traditional meaning of the word. There is, of course, the Platonic meaning of dialectic as the motion of the mind toward first principles, but there is also the Aristotelian point that “dialectic is a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principles of all enquiries” (Topics, I, 1). When dialectic is employed demonstratively and not polemically, it is identical with inductive reasoning directed, not to all first principles or the principles of all enquiries (for some of these are self-evident and are known by intuitive induction), but only to those primary affirmations of existence which are neither self-evident nor capable of deductive demonstration. As reasoning may be either deductive or inductive, so demonstration may be either “scientific” (i.e., deductive) “dialectical” (i.e., inductive).
13. The argument which must be undertaken can be called “a dialectic of substance, essence, and man.” I have at last been able to work out the several phases of this argument, and, having outlined the whole of it as an orderly sequence of parts, I am satisfied that it demonstrates, with certitude, a number of primary propositions which have heretofore always been assumed—not because anyone could have mistaken them as self-evident, but because the way of inductive reasoning and dialectical demonstration has been inadequately understood and too infrequently used in philosophy. I hope to be able to publish this material shortly, and with it I shall try to present a more analytically refined account of inductive and deductive reasoning than can be given in a brief footnote. Vd. fn. 12, supra. The “dialectic of substance, essence, and man” is not only important in itself as an argument for certain conclusions which have not previously been demonstrated; but it is also significant as an illustration of hitherto unnoted aspects of philosophical method.
In one sense, the argument is miscalled a dialectic, for all of its phases are not strictly inductive, though the denomination is justified by the fact that all of the primary conclusions are inductively reached. Thus, for example, the proof that, if there are a number of distinct essences, they must be ordered in a perfect hierarchy, is deductive. (This proof, by the way, was given only in the indirect form of a reductio ad absurdum argument in The Solution of the Problem of Species, The Thomist, III, 2, pp. 329–332.Google Scholar In that form, the proposition that man is a rational animal and superior to all other corporeal creatures, had to be assumed. But the definition of man, not being self-evident, must itself be proved, and that cannot be accomplished, unless the perfect hierarchy of essences can itself be independently proved. Hence, the importance of a direct proof.) But that there are a number of distinct essences embodied in the world of corporeal substances, how many there are, and what they are, must be proved inductively from the observable motions and operations of sensible things, and this can be done only if we first know that perceived objects, which seem to be subjects of change, are truly substances composed of matter and forms, and that among these forms one must be substantial and all the rest accidental. From these facts, inductively proved, the truth about the hierarchy of essences can be deduced; and from the truth about hierarchy can be developed the criteria for interpreting the sensible evidences from which we must induce the existence of whatever essential distinctions there are among substances.
14. It should be recognized that brevity is the real reason for this change in style. Although the full development of argument with respect to each of the three points mentioned, would depend upon psychological propositions already questioned by the student, there is no reason why the student should not proceed hypothetically—to discover whether other moral truths (other than the one about happiness) can be established, once it is granted that man is a rational animal, that man has a nature and powers essentially distinct from the nature and powers of brute animals, that man has free will, etc. If the student had been told, at the very beginning of the discussion, that these psychological propositions were indispensable to the argument, he would either have refused to begin until these propositions had been proved, or have rightly insisted that any conclusions reached by an argument thus undertaken must be regarded as hypothetical. That is the way he now views the conclusion about happiness (as constituted in the same way for all men). There is no reason, therefore, why he would be unwilling similarly to entertain further conclusions about the order of goods or about virtue, if they could be reached. But to deal argumentatively with each of the three points, now to be considered, would require much more time and patience than can be expected of the reader. That is why I shall present an analytical summary of the argument instead of letting it expand in response to the demands of an inquiring mind.
On the dependence of ethics and politics upon psychology, see Aristotle's Ethics, I, 13.
15. Vd. Section III, supra, in The Review of Politics, III, 2, p. 196.
16. This issue was briefly considered at one point in the dialectic. Vd. Section III, supra, pp. 200–201: If “the objects we have called goods are good only because they are desired”; if “there is always a relativity of the good to actual desire,” then “we shall never be able to say what men should desire, which is central to moral knowledge as normative or prescriptive. In order to get beyond a mere description of what men do desire, we must somehow show the student that the objects men desire, they desire because they judge them to be good.” But in the discussion itself, this problem was inadequately solved by proposing an ultimate end, which in fact all men do desire, namely, to live well; and in terms of this end, arguing that men should desire whatever is necessary for the attainment of this end. This is a partial solution, since it is true that the goodness of means may be derived from the goodness of the end they serve; but it leaves two major questions unanswered: (1) is the end good simply because all men do desire it, or because it is the ultimate good which all men should desire? and (2) are any of the means good in their own right, and apart from being means to the end, so that they, too, should be desired because they are intrinsically good (i.e., desirable)? The student permitted the discussion to go on at this point, although he could have stopped it by insisting upon a deeper examination into the meaning of the good as an object of desire.
17. Vd. Aquinas, St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, qq. 5, 6.Google Scholar wherein these traditional maxims are not merely repeated but interpreted in such a way as to indicate the solution of the problem. It should be noted that in Q. 5, A. 1, St. Thomas says: “the essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable” (Italics mine). Just as intelligibility is an aspect of being prior to its being actually understood, so desirability is an aspect of being prior to its being actually desired (i.e., by an elicit appetite).
18. St. Thomas makes a fourfold distinction: between being simply and being relatively, good relatively and good simply. A thing is a being simply according to its first actuality or essence; a thing has being relatively according to its second acts, or those accidental determinations which accrue to it from its own operations or its being acted upon. But a thing is said to be good relatively with respect to the actuality of its nature (i.e., its essence and powers), whereas it has goodness or perfection simply according as its nature is completed in being by second acts. Vd. Summa Theologica, I, 5, 1, ad 1. In the light of these distinctions, the goods which are the objects of natural desire are the actualities which constitute the relative being of a thing; the good relatively is never an object of desire, unless it be on the part of prime matter, which is the potency for being simply.
The interpretation of natural desire and of being as good in relation thereto must be differently made for non-living and living substances, since the former, in all their accidental motions, pass from contrary to contrary, and hence never increase in perfection of being; whereas the latter, having impassible powers and being capable of immanent activity, can acquire perfections without privation of contrary forms, and can, therefore, grow in perfection of being. This is especially true of man whose specifically human powers are capable of habituation.
19. This account would be untrue only if there were no world of creatures at all— no imperfect beings, subject to natural desire because of their imperfect natures. Furthermore, the actual separation between desire and the good which quiets it, can occur only in a world of temporal beings, beings in motion, for where change is not possible, there either desire must be forever unrequited or desire does not exist at all because the good is possessed. This indicates that our metaphysical understanding of the good as being in relation to desire is primarily in terms of being in motion—the realm of corporeal and temporal creatures. Goodness in the domain of spiritual and aeviternal creatures, and the goodness of God, are dimly intelligible to us only by remotion and analogy. The Divine goodness is as infinitely unlike the goodness of changing things as the pure actuality of Divine being differs from beings composite of potency and act.
20. It is important to mention, but not necessary to develop here, the distinction between the two conscious appetites which man possesses: the sensitive appetite, the power of tending toward sensible objects which the sensitive powers estimate to be good or pleasant; and the intellectual appetite, already denned. Only the latter is specifically human (i.e., possessed by man alone), whereas the former the brutes also possess. Animal desires (acts of the sensitive appetite) are distinguished from natural desires by the same two criteria which distinguish human desire. It should be noted that the sensitive appetite is not moved by a mere apprehension of the sensible object, but, as in the case of intellectual appetite, only by an estimation of the object apprehended as good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant—whether this estimation be the work of instinct (conditioned or unmodified) as in the case of brutes, or the work of the cogitative power in the case of man, i.e., that power of interior sensitivity which is usually called “the particular reason,” because it operates with the help of reason in judging sensible things as fitting or harmful. The distinction between intellectual and sensitive appetite is important, not only because of its bearing on the imperfect voluntariness of brute behavior in contrast to the perfect voluntariness and freedom of specifically human acts; but also because the conflict of these two appetites in man explains how man can act contrary to true rational judgments concerning what should be done or sought. In the latter connection, the distinction bears on the problem of the real vs. the apparent good.
21. Natural human desires are, of course, natural in precisely the same sense as the natural desires of the stone or of the plant. They are unconscious: the objects of natural human desire are not, as such, apprehended, judged or estimated. And natural human desires are determinate as potencies or powers, not as acts. This may help to explain what we mean when, in the case of man, we speak of his “unconscious desires.” Such desires are not the acts of his consciously determinable appetitive powers. They are rather identical with the striving or tendency of his powers themselves—all the powers, vegetative, as well as sensitive and rational, and in the latter case, apprehensive as well as appetitive. It might be clarifying to use the word “wants” to name the natural appetites of man, in contrast to the word “desires” to name his conscious appetitive acts. This would enable us to deal with obvious phenomena of human behaviour—cases in which men are impelled by wants without knowing what they seek because the want has not yet been elevated to the level of desire by knowledge of the appetible object.
22. It does not follow that a man who, judging aright, desires what is really good, will necessarily act accordingly; for in the conflict between his sensitive and his rational appetites, an apparent good may dominate his conduct at the moment of action. Vd. Aristotle's account of incontinence in the Ethics, Bk. VII, 3. All that is here being said is that the basic truths which constitute ethical theory—truths about the variety and order of objects which are really good for man—rest on metaphysical and psychological knowledge, the former concerning the foundation of goodness in being, the latter concerning the foundation of the real human good in the nature of man. The real human good is the natural human good as apprehended and thus become an object of conscious desire; the human good, taken without qualification, is not identical with the natural human good, for it includes all the apparent goods which are the objects of mistaken judgments. If the word “good” be restricted in its signification to mean “real good,” then the metaphysical statement that the good is what all desire is true only for the objects of natural desire, human or otherwise; it certainly is not true for the objects of conscious human desire, since what all men desire, consciously, may be either really or apparently good.
23. This distinction between the object of desire and the object of knowledge accounts for the radical difference between theoretic and practical truth: only when the object is an already determinate nature can truth be in the intellect by conformity to what is; since the object of desire is also the object of our practical judgments, and since this object is always a future contingent event, i.e., a change to be accomplished, the truth of practical judgments cannot be by conformity to what is, but must be by conformity of the judgment to right desire, i.e., desire for a real good, an object of natural desire.
Furthermore, it should be noted that the true is not an object; rather, being an act of knowledge, it, like the act of desire, has an object. The good, on the other hand, is an object both of (practical) knowledge and of desire. The good is not only an object, but an act of being. The radical difference between the true and the good is that the true is an act in the order of intentional existence, whereas the good is an act in the order of real existence.
24. I shall return to this distinction between goods of man and goods for man in a later discussion of means and ends. This distinction, made in terms of the axiom that everything seeks its own perfection, raises profound ethical problems which cannot be discussed here: for example, the whole problem of altruism and selfishness. Is man ever obligated to work for the good of any other thing, inanimate or animate, animal or human; and if so, how is this a real good, i.e., an object of natural desire, if it is not a good for man as well as a good of the other thing? This problem becomes particularly acute with respect to the relation of men in economic and political associations. In theology, this distinction is exemplified by the consideration of the Divine being and goodness as the ultimate good for man, whereas the vision of God is the ultimate good of man's soul. The theological case indicates, furthermore, that what is good for man may be superior to him in being, and its efficient causality in bringing about human perfection may be without human aid, except in the order of dispositive causality; whereas the material things which are good for man are not only inferior in being, but usually, if not always, require efficient causality on the part of man (the work of art) to render them useful.
25. This metaphysical meaning of “possession” must be sharply distinguished from the economic or legal meaning, in terms of which we have “property rights” with respect to other things.
26. This point profoundly illuminates the distinction between temporal and eternal happiness, for the latter is the good which is bonum honestum eminenier. By comparison with eternal happiness, all partial goods can be called bonum honeslum only analogically; and temporal happiness itself can only be called “happiness” by analogy with that happiness which can be fully possessed and enjoyed.
27. Ethics, I, 8, 1098b 12–15.
28. Summa Theologica, I, Q. 5, A. 6.
29. Strictly speaking, they are not goods of the “body” in the sense in which this might be opposed to goods of a living thing, goods it can possess because it has a soul and is alive. The distinction between “goods of the body” and “goods of the soul” must be understood, rather, in terms of the distinction between man's specifically human powers and those powers which man has because the rational soul virtually includes the sensitive soul.
30. Loc. cit., fn. 28 supra.
31. This is not inconsistent with the truth that sensual pleasure, like every other partial good, is a constitutive means of happiness.
32. The foregoing analysis requires us to make one further discrimination of aspects of the good in relation to appetite. Appetite may be in a state of motion toward an unattained object, in which case we speak of the good as an object of desire, and this is the good in its primary aspect. Appetite may be in a state of rest through possession of the object desired, in which case we speak of the good as the satisfactory, as the object of enjoyment, or the fruition of desire. But appetite may also be in a state of simple ordination toward an apprehended good, in which case we speak of the good as an object of love. Unlike the object of desire, the object of love is an existent perfection—the good which is convertible with the being a thing already has. Speaking theologically, God in Himself is an object of love, not of desire; the Beatific Vision is an object of desire and of enjoyment. Moreover, God, whose perfect being is perfect goodness, is the primary object of love: whatever else is loved is loved secondarily and by relation—ourselves and our neighbors as ourselves. Since what is enjoyed is a perfection possessed, the objects of love and of enjoyment may be the same (though different in aspect) in the case of loving ourselves, or others as ourselves; or they may may be the objective and subjective aspects of the same, as in the case of God and the vision of God. And as uti is divided against frui, so are those objects which can only be used, distinguished from those which can be loved.
Greater clarity of analysis would be achieved if we defined the object of love, not as the good, but as the beautiful. Love is that mode of appetitive determination which abstracts from both the presence and absence of its object, and is thus distinguished from desire (for the absent object) and enjoyment (of the present object). If the good is the object of desire and enjoyment, then the good cannot be, in a strictly univocal sense, the object of love: for, since motion and rest are exhaustive, desire and enjoyment exhaust the modes of appetite with respect to the good, when appetite is simply regarded; love must, therefore, be a mode of appetite relative to apprehension, or a mode of cooperation of apprehension and appetite (of intellect and will in amor intellectualis). Now the beautiful is not the object of either intellect or will separately, but of both in ordered conjunction, for it is that which pleases (is enjoyed) upon being seen (known), as, in contrast, the good is that which is enjoyed on being possessed. Hence, the object of love is the good relatively, not simply, which means it is the substantial perfection of anything as apprehended, or, in other words, it is the beautiful. As its object is not the good simply, neither is love a mode of appetite simply, but rather of appetite (enjoyment) relative to apprehension of a purely theoretic sort. This explains the theological truth that it is better to love God than to know him, and better to know things than to love them, because the goodness of love is from its object, whereas the goodness of knowledge is in our mode of knowing. As the object of love, God is not the transcendant good, but the transcendant beautiful (the splendor and effulgence of perfect being); so in loving ourselves and our friends we enjoy what we apprehend as beauty of character (a work of prudence), just as enjoy the beauty of a work of art beheld. Love of the beautiful in human beings and human life explains much that desire for the good (primarily our own perfection) cannot account for: it is needed to solve the problem of altruism vs. selfishness (vd. fn. 24 supra), as charity is needed to supplement justice in social action.
33. Vd. Section III, supra, pp. 198–99.
34. Vd. Section VII, infra. One indication that social goods should be classified primarily as intrinsic and enjoyable goods is that friends are objects of love—having a goodness to be loved as we love the goodness of ourselves. Cf. fn. 32 supra. Another indication is that the goodness of a community, domestic or political, is a common good in the sense that it is shared by the members: it is not only a common object of desire, but also a fruition commonly enjoyed.
35. Vd. Section IV, p. 205, supra. The second sort were not then called “functional means.”
36. These last two points are of great importance, for they apply to the analysis of functional means the deeper principles whereby goods are distinguished as utile and honestum, and as human and animal. In one sense, of course, every functional means is useful, but a good may be useful functionally (in relation to some other good it serves) without being essentially useful in its own type(i.e., not being a good for man, but a good of man). Furthermore, since happiness is specifically human, only those goods are essentially constitutive of it, which, as partial goods, are bonum honeslum hominis; extrinsic goods, or intrinsically animal goods, are only accidentally constitutive of happiness.
These two points convey Aristotle's insights about means and ends. He distinguished between goods which are mere means, goods which are both means and ends, and the good which is absolutely and simply the end. A mere means is any bonum utile, whether or not it also functions as an end; a means which is essentially an end is any bonum honestum; with the exception of pleasure in the sensible order, and contemplative activity in the order of intelligible goods, happiness is the only good which never functions as a means, and it is the only end simply and absolutely, because even pleasure and contemplation are constitutive means of human happiness. Aristotle also distinguished between antecedent and constitutive means, and this is the distinction we have made among partial goods (all of them constitutive in a broad sense) according as they are accidentally or essentially constitutive of happiness. In other words, a mere means is, as constitutive, accidental to human happiness, whereas a means which is also genuinely an end is essential to the constitution of human happiness. These two basic points go much deeper than the distinction among partial goods as functional means and ends. Vd. Aristotle, , Ethics, I, 7.Google Scholar Cf. John Dewey's attempt to regard every good equally as an end. in Reconstruction in Philosophy, New York, 1919: Ch. VIIGoogle Scholar.
37. All the objects of choice are means of this type. We always choose and act in particular situations, and the good which is the object of choice is always, therefore, a singular instance of a type of good—hence always a constitutive means-in-particular. (This classification of all objects of choice as constitutive means-in-particular does not prevent the cross-classification of them as functional means or ends.) This fact about the objects of choice is indispensable to an understanding of freedom of choice. Only means-in-particular are contingently constitutive of happiness; means-in-general, being necessarily constitutive, cannot be objects of free choice. In willing happiness necessarily, we must will whatever is necessary to its constitution, as we conceive it; but we need not will this or that particular instance of a type of good, for such means are only contingently constitutive of happiness. Failure explicitly to observe this distinction between constitutive means-in-general and -in-particular accounts for some ambiguity in passages in which St. Thomas discusses the necessitation of the will with respect to means. Vd. Summa Theologica, I-II, 10, 1; 10, 2, ad 3; 13, 6, ad 1; cf. Ibid., I, 82, 2. It should be added that, although all means-in-particular are contingent goods, so far as the constitution of happiness is concerned, not all are mere means, for some are ends, being instances of types of good which are essentially constitutive of happiness, because intrinsic human goods (i.e., bonum honeslum hominxs, such as this good act, or this degree of a virtuous habit).
38. Four things should be noted about this classification of means: first, that the same good may be both a constitutive means and a functional means, for the cardinal virtues are both constitutive of and generative of happiness; second, that as a constitutive means a good may be enjoyable, though as a functional means the same good is useful—thus, virtues and good acts are both useful and enjoyable; third, that the same good may be a functional means, both generally considered and specially considered, for the cardinal virtues are both productive of good acts, and of happiness itself; fourth, whatever good is a functional means, whether productive of another partial good or of happiness, must be a means-in-particular, for functional relationships occur only in the existential order.
It should also be noted that the means-end relationship is causal, and that constitutive means belong to the order of material causality, their ends being formal causes—wholes or universals, which can be concretized or embodied; whereas functional means belong to the order of efficient causality, their ends being final causes. Hence functional means partake more of what is essential to the notion of means, than do constitutive means; and cardinal virtue more so than any other partial good.
Finally, and above all, it should be noted that anything which is a means to virtue is indirectly productive of happiness (the state or political common good being, as we shall later see, chief among such indirect productive means); and the basic distinction in the aspects under which the same partial good is regarded as both constitutive and productive, whether of happiness itself or of some other partial good, is a distinction between that good as enjoyable and as useful (thus, virtue is both constitutive and productive, both an enjoyable and a useful good, both an end and a means).
39. A definite “order and variety of goods” is materially what happiness as “all good things” is formally. Cf. Section IV, pp. 211–13, supra.
40. The two theoretical problems of ethics concern, first, the end; and second, its generative means. The first problem is solved when happiness is adequately and truly defined; the solution is here equivalent to knowledge about the order and variety of partial goods, and their functional relationships to one another. The second problem is solved when we are able to deduce from the nature of happiness what must be the nature of its generative means. Knowledge of the constitutive means is explicitly equivalent to knowledge of the end; but knowledge of the generative means is only implicitly contained in knowledge of happiness, and must be deductively explicated. When we know what the generative means are, we can proceed to the practical problem of how to possess them and, through them, how to become happy.
41. By the “integrity” of the cardinal virtues is meant their functional interconnection, their co-existence in the same degree of effectiveness as generators of the end. The proof that such integrity is necessary can be made either from the unity of the end which these virtues serve as productive means, or from the fact that each of the moral virtues depends upon prudence, and it depends upon all of them. Cf. Aristotle, Ethics, VI, 13. Proceeding from happiness as the end and first principle, we arrive at the conception of virtue as the productive means and second principle. In this deduction, only the virtue of prudence is specified; the notion of moral virtue as a good habituation of the appetites, as their rectification by a right ordering of all desires, precedes the specification of moral virtue by the definition of the distinct virtues of temperance, fortitude, and justice. If this deductive procedure is followed, the integrity of virtue will be understood before the specific moral virtues are distinguished. Aristotle's failure to proceed in this way permits readers of his Ethics to misunderstand the essence of virtue; for only after the integrity or unity of virtue is understood, can anyone distinguish between apparent virtue (i.e., one “virtue” existing apart from others) and real virtue.
42. Cf. Section IV, p. 224, supra.
43. This reasoned truth of moral philosophy must be submitted to the criticism of the theologian who considers all moral problems in the light of the dogmatic truth about man's fallen nature. Cf. fn. la supra, in which moral philosophy, as a work of reason, was discussed in relation to moral theology, as based on revelation. Moral philosophy proceeds on the hypothesis of the natural man. If this hypothesis be false, as revealed religion declares, then all the conclusions of moral philosophy must either be regarded as hypothetical, or they must be qualified and transformed by subalternation to theological truth. The fundamental problem here is whether purely natural virtues are adequate for the achievement of the natural end, the good which is proportionate to the nature; and this turns on whether, in the case of fallen human nature, the cardinal virtues can be really possessed at all (i.e., in their integrity) without the help of grace and infused moral virtues. If not, then temporal happiness is unattainable except for natures elevated by grace; but, on the other hand, if grace makes possible the integral possession of the natural virtues, then it not only enables a man to direct his life toward a supernatural end, but also enables him to possess natural virtue in such a way that the temporal happiness, due his nature, can be achieved. With God's help a man can live well on earth if, but for the grace of God, he cannot.
44. If, however, the essential goodness of a virtue be the actualization it confers upon a power, then the intellectual are superior to the moral virtues because they perfect the highest power of man.Cf. St. Thomas, , Summa Theologica, I-II, 66, 3; 66, 5 ad 1; 66, 1Google Scholar.
45. It should be remembered here that happiness must never be called “the highest good” if that phrase be taken as signifying the highest type of partial good. Being the whole of goods, happiness cannot be highest in the order of goods which constitute it, though in this order of goods itself, one good can be higher than another, or highest of all. Vd. Section IV, p. 211, supra.
46. Vd. St. Thomas, , Summa Contra Genliles, III, 37Google Scholar; cf. Summa Theologica, I-II, 66, 5 ad I.
47. Thus the apparent conflict between Book I and Book X of Aristotle's Ethics is resolved. If it was due to any fault on Aristotle's part, it can be attributed to his failure to distinguish between two senses of “the highest good”—(a) the sum of goods, which is happiness as the end, constituted by every type of partial good, and generated only by cardinal virtue; and (b) the supreme type of partial good, which is contemplation, as the end served by all the other partial goods, though generated directly only by intellectual virtue. There can be no question that it is the goodness of a whole life, not speculative activity, which is the ultimate object of natural desire, and hence is happiness or the last end. Speculative activity is merely the best aspect of a good life, its most enjoyable phase. This is confirmed by Boethius' definition of happiness as the state of those who possess in aggregate all good things. Thus conceived, happiness cannot be identified with any single type of good, not even with speculative activity in this life. I say “in this life” because Boethius's definition reveals the analogy of temporal and eternal happiness (the one constituted by a simultaneous, the other by a successive, possession of ”all good things”), and thereby helps us to understand how the contemplation of God in the Beatific Vision may be identified with eternal happiness, whereas no sort of speculative activity can be rightly identified with temporal happiness. In this life, the contemplation of God, whether it be the activity of wisdom as a purely natural virtue or the activity of faith and supernatural intellectual gifts, is not happiness, but only the highest part thereof. Hence two things must be said about St. Thomas' definition of imperfect, or temporal, happiness as consisting in contemplative activity: first, that this is not an accurate definition of temporal happiness, any more than Aristotle's definition in Book X is; second, that it is a better definition of the highest part of temporal happiness, than could have been given by Aristotle, because St. Thomas conceives contemplation in terms of God as the object, and as supernaturally generated by faith and the gift of wisdom, whereas Aristotle's meaning for “contemplation” lacks any objective specification, and even if the Divine be implied as object, merely natural wisdom is obviously insufficient. Cf. Summa Theologica, I–11 qq. 3–5.
48. Aristotle's remarks about the inexactitude and relativity of practical knowledge must be regarded as applying only to the rules of conduct, and not to our knowledge of the principles, which knowledge is theoretic in mode, though practical in end and object. It is only knowledge which is practical in mode, as well as in end and object, that is intrinsically inexact and relative to the individual practitioner. Vd. Ethics, I, 3; II, 2. Cf. our prior discussion of the relativity of practical judgments (Section II, pp. 28, ff. supra), their status as opinion, and the significance of this in correcting the error of Socratism and Hedonism, which supposes that theoretic knowledge of the good commands good acts unfailingly.
49. Herein lies the significance of Aristotle's statement that it is difficult, if not impossible, to teach ethics (even the theory) to the young, in whom virtue is not formed, and who have insufficient practical experience of “the facts of life.” Vd. Ethics, I, 3. Cf. ibid., II, 1, 1103b 1–5; X, 9.
50. I say “political common good” because in one meaning of the phrase “common good” happiness is a common good—a good common to all men because they are specifically the same in nature. The political common good is also a good which is common in that sense, but, in addition, when the phrase “common good” is used in the restricted political sense, it means the goodness of the political community as such. In what follows, I shall use the phrase “common good” only in this restricted sense to mean “the welfare or well-bing of the community itself.”
51. I undertook the dialectic of morals as an effort to overcome moral skepticism and hedonism on the part of contemporary students. Vd. Section I, pp. 8–12, supra. As I pointed out, skepticism about the objectivity of moral truths necessarily leads to the adoption of realpolitik, which is skepticism about the objectivity or universality of political principles. Vd. fn. 9 supra. Furthermore, just as the student who is a skeptic about moral matters is also usually a hedonist in his explanation of moral phenomena (i.e., the facts of preference), so those who adopt the position of realpolitik are usually advocates of totalitarianism—even if they would be shocked to discover this. Even those who think they oppose totalitarianism, because they magnify the “rights of the individual,” affirm its basic tenets when they claim that all “moral values” are relative to the mores of the community, for then there are no independent moral criteria by which the community itself can be criticized as good or bad. Furthermore, just as hedonism is the error of converting a partial good into the whole good (treating pleasure as if it were happiness), so totalitarianism is the error of similarly converting a partial good—treating the State as if it were the absolute end. In the dialectic of morals, I did not attempt to criticize every variety of error in ethical theory, but only to answer the moral skeptic and the hedonist; so here, in considering the foundations of moral philosophy, I shall try to refute only realpolitik and totalitarianism. Other fallacies in political doctrine can be readily corrected by anyone who knows the right principles.
52. Vd. Politics, I, 2.
53. Vd. Politics, I, 2, 1252b 27–30. One point should be stressed, namely, that the acquirement of the moral virtues depends, as we have seen, upon good government. Cf. Section VI, p. 385, supra. Wise regulations, in the domestic community, and just laws, in the political community, are indispensable as extrinsic, efficient causes for the production of the virtues in an inchoate form; and inchoate virtues is, in turn, a necessary stage through which the individual must pass in becoming genuinely a man of virtue. Furthermore, because man is not simply rational, because he is an animal, a creature of passions, reason needs external help in enforcing its own rule upon the appetites. The good which reason may truly apprehend exercises authority over his actions, but this authority is unsupported by enforceable sanctions. This is the essential defect of ethical eudamonism, for, considering the individual in isolation, the pursuit of happiness cannot be enforced: a man cannot impose sanctions upon himself; he is not obligated to become happy; he is not duty-bound by risk of punishment. This defect is, of course, remedied by considering the individual in relation to his fellow men, with whom he is associated in the political community. Since other men, as well as himself, depend upon the common good for the pursuit of happiness, he is obligated to act for the common good; and his social duties, enforced by political sanctions, operate reflexively to support the rule of reason in his own private life. Purely moral authority being authority divorced from power, the good as apprehended exercises only moral authority over a man's actions; authority combined with power being effective sovereignty, the state exercises sovereignty over human life. Sovereignty—and the obligations, duties, and sanctions which it institutes—is indispensable in the moral order because man is not purely a creature of reason.
Even political sovereignty, the theologian tells us, is not sufficient, when we consider man's fallen nature. Though virtue is the intrinsic principle of good acts, two extrinsic principles are required for the formation of virtue: direction (i.e., law) and help (i.e., grace). In making this point, St. Thomas means by law, not merely human law, but Divine law, proceeding from the sovereignty which God exercises over human life. Cf. fn. 47 supra.
54. As an unjust law is a law in name only, being really an expression of force, so a state not founded in the justice of its members is a state in name only, being really an organization of violence, in which some men dominate others by force and the others submit through fear. Though an association of men through force and fear may endure for some time, it lacks the unity of peace which prevails only when all the members work for a common good. When men are organized by violence, those who wield force exercise it for their private interests, and the rest are enslaved. (Of course, even the just society requires government with enforceable sanctions: those who do not act justly out of conscience must be compelled by fear of the law. Cf. fn. 53, supra.)
The definition of justice throws light on this point. As temperance is the habit of foregoing immediate pleasures for the sake of a greater good, as fortitude is the habit of suffering immediate pains for the sake of a greater good, so justice, as a special virtue, is the habit of not willing an excess of good for one's self at the expense of a diminished good for others. And justice, generally, consists of all the virtues directed simultaneously to the good of others and to one's own good through being directed to the common good in the fruits of which all equally share. “Justice,” said Aristotle, “is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice is the principle of order in political society” (Politics, I, 2, 1253a 37).
55. Though the state appears to be a whole, of which its human members are parts, the goodness of this whole is not greater than the goodness of the parts, i.e., the perfection of their being by happiness. On the contrary, the goodness of this whole (i.e., the common good) is, along with other social goods, a constitutive part of happiness, even though happiness appear to be the good of a part (i.e., the perfection of a single human life). There is nothing paradoxical about this when one remembers that the individual man is a substance, whereas the state is nothing but an accidental being. Just as the perfection of a man (happiness) is greater than the perfection of any of his powers (virtues), because the goodness of a substance in being and operation is greater than the goodness of an accidental being and a principle of operation; so happiness is greater than the common good—including it as a partial good, and subordinating it, along with virtue, as an end subordinates its productive means.
Traditional statements to the contrary, suggesting that the good of the state is greater than the good of its members, as the good of the body is greater than the good of its parts, can be accounted for by the error of neglecting the fact that the state is not a substance, nor are its human members substantial parts of a substantial whole. Though the error is made by Aristotle (vd. Politics, I, 2, 1253a 19–24 and Ethics, I, 2, 1094b 7–10), though it is repeated by St. Thomas in places too numerous to cite, the source of the fallacy is in Plato's conception of the state by analogy with the soul, in the Republic. It is a profound historical misfortune that Aristotle, whose greatest achievement in metaphysics was the notion of substance, did not employ this notion to purify his own political thinking of Platonic reminiscences. This error, combined with a failure to understand the nature of temporal happiness, has led some scholastics to suppose that the State, or the common good, is the supreme temporal good, from complete subordination to which man can be saved only through his ordination to God and the supernatural good of eternal happiness. Vd. Father John McCormick, The Individual and the State, in Proc. Am. Cath. Phil. Assoc, XV, pp. 10–21. Cf. Maritain, J., Freedom in the Modern World: pp. 49–53.Google Scholar Only religion can save man from totalitarianism. This may be true practically, but it is certainly not true theoretically, for by principles known through reason alone, we know that temporal happiness is the end which the state must serve, and that the natural perfection of man's life, as the end in the temporal order, subordinates the political common good, both as a constitutive and a generative means.
56. Vd. my paper, The Demonstration of Democracy, in Proc. Am. Cath. Phil. Assoc, XV, pp. 122–165; my answer to Dr. O'Neil, The Demonslrability of Democracy, in The New Scholasticism, XV, 2, pp. 162–168; and a series of articles, by Father Walter Farrell, O.P., and myself, under the title, The Theory of Democracy, beginning in The Thomist, III, 3. Many of the points here barely indicated, concerning the nature of the common good and the character of temporal happiness, will be therein expounded with greater analytical detail than was possible in this brief statement.