Aquinas' Ontology of Transeunt Causal Activity

vivarium 56 (2018) 47-82 viva rium brill.com/viv Aquinas’ Ontology of Transeunt Causal Activity Gloria Frost University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, USA [email protected] Abstract This paper reconstructs and analyzes Thomas Aquinas’ intriguing views on transeunt causal activity, which have been the subject of an interpretive debate spanning from the fifteenth century up until the present. In his Physics commentary, Aquinas defends the Aristotelian positions that (i) the actualization of an agent’s active potential is the motion that it causes in its patient and (ii) action and passion are the same motion. Yet, in other texts, Aquinas claims that (iii) action differs from passion and (iv) “action is in the agent” as subject. This paper proposes a solution for how to reconcile Aquinas’ varying claims about what transeunt causal activity is in reality. In addition to advanc- ing understanding of Aquinas’ views on causal activity, the paper also offers insights into more general topics in his thought, such as the relationship between actualities and accidents and the nature of extrinsic accidents. Keywords Thomas Aquinas – action – causality – activity – motion – categories – accidents – Aristotle – dynamics * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Society for Thomistic Natural Philosophy’s sponsored session at the 2017 meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. I am grateful to the organizers and audience at this session for their questions and comments. I am also grateful to Jeff Brower and Sydney Penner for helpful written comments on an earlier draft. I would especially like to thank the anonymous referees for Vivarium for very careful and constructive comments, which helped to improve the paper in several ways. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/15685349-12341351Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 07:31:29PM via free access 48 Frost This paper reconstructs Thomas Aquinas’ intriguing views on transeunt causal activity,1 the type of activity by which an agent changes a substance distinct from itself. This kind of causality is exercised when fire burns a log, a builder builds a house, and a person slices an orange. Transeunt activity is contrasted with the immanent causal activity exercised when a person thinks or wills. In immanent activity, only the agent itself is changed. What, according to Thomas Aquinas, is posited in reality when a transeunt cause exercises its causality? What differs in the world, for example, when a fire goes from potentially burning a log to actually burning it? Is the only difference the change of burning that happens in the log or does the fire itself somehow differ in virtue of caus- ing the log to burn? Does the fire’s activity posit anything in the fire itself? Aquinas’ views on the ontology of transeunt causal activity have been the subject of a long-standing interpretive debate spanning from the fifteenth century up until the present. Aquinas wrote no systematic treatise on the topic and, furthermore, there are several texts throughout his corpus in which he makes seemingly conflicting claims about what transeunt causal activity is in reality. As is well known, Aquinas and many of his medieval counterparts were heavily influenced by Aristotle’s Physics. In Book III of this work, Aristotle ar- gues that the motion or change that an agent causes in its patient is the joint actualization of both the agent’s and the patient’s respective active and passive potentialities.2 For instance, when fire burns a log, the realization or fulfill- ment of the fire’s active potential is nothing other than the change of burning that happens in the log. In both his Physics commentary and in other works, Aquinas explicitly adopts the Aristotelian position.3 He even follows Aristotle in arguing that agents are not themselves changed in virtue of exercising their 1 I quote Aquinas’ texts from Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Doctoris Angelici, opera omnia, iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P.M. edita, 50 vols. (Rome, 1882-). I use the following abbreviations: In Phys. = In VIII libros Physicorum; De veritate = Quaestiones disputatae de veritate. For texts not included in the Leonine edition, I quote from the following editions, using the following abbreviations: In Meta. = In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio (ed. M.R. Cathala and R.M. Spiazzi, 2nd ed., Torino-Rome, 1971); In Sent. = Scriptum super libros sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi (4 vols.: 1-2, ed. P. Mandonnet; 3-4, ed. M.F. Moos, Paris, 1929-1947); De potentia = Quaestiones disputatae de potentia (ed. P.M. Pession, 10th ed., Torino-Rome, 1965). All English translations are my own. 2 Aristotle, Physics III, ch. 3. For scholarship on this text in Aristotle, see, for instance, M.L. Gill, “Aristotle’s Theory of Causal Action in Physics III 3,” Phronesis 25.1 (1980), 129-147; A. Marmodoro, “The Union of Cause and Effect in Aristotle: Physics III 3,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 32 (2007), 205-232. 3 In III Phys. lec. 3 and 4. For a relevant text that is not within an Aristotelian commentary, see for instance Summa theologiae I, q. 28, a. 3. Downloadedvivarium from Brill.com09/26/202156 (2018) 47-82 07:31:29PM via free access Aquinas’ Ontology of Transeunt Causal Activity 49 causality.4 Yet, there are several texts spanning from throughout his career in which Aquinas suggests that an agent’s transeunt causal activity is something other than what it causes in its patient and that it involves some difference in the agent itself. In multiple texts Aquinas asserts that transeunt actions are accidents in the agent as subject, and that transeunt actions are different accidents from the accident that is the patient’s passion.5 According to these texts, when fire burns a log, the fire’s action of burning is an accident in the fire and it is a different accident from what the log undergoes. Aquinas’ interpreters have reached no consensus about how to fit together his varying claims about transeunt causal activity.6 Some have claimed that his views on transeunt causality changed over time.7 Identifying the source of the interpretive difficulty brings a new level of clarity to Aquinas’ understanding of transeunt causal activity. The paper is organized around Aquinas’ most important discussions of transeunt activity, as well as some of his broader views that are required to interpret these discussions properly. In section 1, I consider Aquinas’ commentary on Physics III, which includes his most extensive discussion of the position that a single motion in the patient is the joint actualization of both the agent’s active potential and the patient’s passive potential. In section 2, I present a sample of the texts that seem to conflict with the Physics commentary account of transeunt activity. In these texts, Aquinas states that “action is in the agent” as subject and that action and passion are different accidents from 4 In III Phys. lec. 3 and 4. 5 See, for instance, In I Sent., d. 32, q. 1; In II Sent., d. 40, q. 1, a. 4, ad 1; and Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 9. These texts are quoted and discussed in section 2. 6 For an overview of the different scholastic and neo-scholastic interpretations of Aquinas’ position on action, see M.T. Miller, “The Problem of Action in the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Physics of Aristotle,” Modern Schoolman 23.3 (1946), 135-167 (part two of this article appears in Modern Schoolman 23.4 [1946], 200-226). Miller’s article summarizes the interpretations of Thomas de Vio (1469-1534) and Francesco Sylvestri (1474-1528), as well as early 20th-century Thomists. For an exposition and defense of the interpretation of Johannes Poinsot (1589-1644), see W.D. Kane, “The Subject of Predicamental Action according to John of St. Thomas,” The Thomist 22.3 (1959), 366-388. For a critique of Kane’s interpretation, see T.S. McDermott, “The Subject of Predicamental Action,” The Thomist 23.2 (1960), 189-210. For more recent discussions of Aquinas’ views on action, passion, and motion, see J. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World (Oxford, 2014), 205-210, and R. Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes: 1274-1671 (Oxford, 2011), 230-232. Neither Pasnau nor Brower makes any mention of the seemingly conflicting passages in which Aquinas claims that the subject of action is the agent. 7 Bernard Lonergan is one especially prominent interpreter who has defended this view. See his Grace and Freedom. Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1 of The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. F. Crowe and R. Doran (Toronto, 2013), 254-267. vivarium 56 (2018) 47-82 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 07:31:29PM via free access 50 Frost each other. In section 3, I propose the general solution of how to reconcile Aquinas’ varying claims about what transeunt causal activity is in reality. In section 4, I show how Aquinas’ claim that action and passion are diverse accidents can be reconciled with his view that the agent and the patient’s active and passive potentialities have a single actuality. I claim that in Aquinas’ view accidents are numerically diversified in different ways than actualities are, so, although there is just one actuality that fulfils the agent’s and patient’s respective potentialities, the agent’s action and the patient’s passion are nevertheless two numerically and specifically distinct accidents. In section 5, I show how Aquinas’ claim that the actualization of the agent’s active potential happens in the patient can be harmonized with his claim that the agent is the subject of action considered as an accident.

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