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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY of AMERICA Thomas Aquinas on How THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Thomas Aquinas on How Habits Affect Human Powers and Acts A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Philosophy Of The Catholic University of America in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By Blaise Edward Blain Washington, D.C. 2017 Thomas Aquinas on How Habits Affect Human Powers and Acts Blaise Edward Blain, Ph.D. Director: Tobias Hoffmann, Ph.D. The aim of this dissertation is to provide the groundwork for a deeper understanding of habits by considering in a systematic fashion some fundamental questions about the effects of habits on human powers and acts in light of Thomas Aquinas’s philosophical writings. The opening chapters offer a general consideration of human powers and acts in the context of which I also explain Aquinas’s account of why habits are necessary for the perfection of the human being. In the subsequent chapters, I explain how, on Aquinas’s account, habits with rational objects can be present in powers of the soul with corporeal organs and why the will is in need of habits. I also offer an account of Aquinas’s striking position that a habit in one power can affect the acts of a different power, even without the mediation of another act, giving special attention to Aquinas’s account of knowledge by connaturality. This dissertation by Blaise Edward Blain fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in philosophy approved by Tobias Hoffmann, Ph.D., as Director, and by Kevin White, Ph.D., and Angela Knobel, Ph.D. as Readers. Tobias Hoffmann, Ph.D., Director Kevin White, Ph.D., Reader Angela Knobel, Ph.D., Reader ii For the glory of God, In honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, And for the love of my wife and children iii Acknowledgments I am especially grateful to my director Tobias Hoffmann, my committee members Kevin White and Angela Knobel, and John McCarthy, the Dean of the School of Philosophy for their encouragement and guidance during the writing of this dissertation. I would also like to thank in a special way Dominic Bolin, Herbert Hartmann and Michael Staron, whose conversations with me about philosophy have helped me to gain a more profound understanding of many truths. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my wife and children, who have supported and encouraged me throughout my graduate studies. iv Contents Introduction 1 1 Objects, Powers, and the Necessity of Habits 13 1.1 Objects, Powers, and the Complex World of Human Experience . 13 Powers .......................................... 13 Objects . 25 Rational Powers and Objects . 33 1.2 The Necessity of Habits . 49 Early Texts . 51 Later Texts . 56 Summary . 63 2 Human Acts 65 2.1 Aquinas and the Aristotelian Account of Natural Motion . 66 The Definition of Motion . 66 Motion As Imperfect Act . 69 Motion As Act of Mover and Mobile . 69 Inclination, Movement, and Rest . 70 2.2 Motion from Things to the Soul: Sensitive and Intellectual Cognition . 75 Sensation . 75 Abstraction . 84 Acts of Reason . 86 2.3 Motion of the Soul to Things: Appetite and Practical Reasoning . 91 Acts of the Sensitive Appetite . 91 Acts of Will and Practical Reason . 98 2.4 The Twofold Order of the Sensitive and the Rational . 127 The Continuation of the Sensitive and the Rational . 127 The Obedience or Subjection of the Sense Powers to Reason . 129 The Participation of the Sensitive in Reason . 131 Summary . 136 3 The Subject of Habit 138 3.1 Habits with Rational Objects and the Sensitive Part of the Soul . 138 Inadequate Responses to the Difficulty . 142 Aquinas’s Account of Habits . 144 v The Order of Habits in the Sensitive Part of the Soul to the Rational . 156 3.2 The Will’s Need for Habits . 166 Earlier Texts: A Reason to Doubt the Existence of Habits in the Will . 167 Later Texts: Why the Will Needs Naturally Acquired Habits . 169 Summary . 175 4 Habit As Principle of Acts 176 4.1 The Influence of Habit upon the Acts of Its Own Subject . 177 Habit: Infallible Inclination to Good or Evil . 178 Habit: Perfecter of Natural Inclination . 181 4.2 How Habits Affect the Acts of Powers to Which They Do Not Belong . 187 General Account . 189 Specific Cases . 190 4.3 Summary . 208 Conclusion 212 Bibliography 216 vi Table of Abbreviations De car. Quaestio disputata de caritate De card. Quaestio disputata de virtutibus cardinalibus De ebd. Expositio libri Boetii De ebdomadibus De ente De ente et essentia De malo Quaestiones disputatae de malo De pot. Quaestiones disputatae de potentia De spe Quaestio disputata de spe De spir. Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis De Trin. Super Boetium De Trinitate De ver. Quaestiones disputatae de veritate DGC In librum primum Aristotelis De generatione et corruptione expositio DVC Quaestio disputata de virtutibus in communi ELP Expositio libri Peryermeneias ELPA Expositio libri Posteriorum In de an. Sentencia libri De anima In Metaph. In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio In Phys. Commentaria in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis In Sent. Scriptum super libros Sententiarum In Sent. (Earlier Redaction) Scriptum super tertio Sententiarum: Earlier Redaction QDA Quaestiones disputatae de anima Quod. II Quodlibet II Quod. V Quodlibet V Quod. VIII Quodlibet VIII Quod. X Quodlibet X Quod. XII Quodlibet XII SCG Summa contra gentiles SLE Sententia libri Ethicorum ST Summa theologiae vii Introduction Habit: Principle of Human Perfection According to Thomas Aquinas, human beings, unlike angels, do not acquire perfection all at once, but must instead be led by the hand from imperfection to perfection.1 Whereas the angels merited eternal happiness by a single act, human beings must struggle to achieve beatitude by means of many actions. For humans beings to persevere in this struggle with greater ease and assurance, however, these acts are not sufficient by themselves. We also need to acquire stable dispositions to these acts, dispositions that Aquinas calls habits (in Latin: habitus). Without such habits, consistently excellent behavior is impossible from a practical point of view. The necessity of habits in human life is clearly appreciated by Aquinas, for twice in his writings, he devotes an entire article to arguing for the necessity of habits.2 According to Aquinas, the need for habits is not restricted to moral activity alone; habits are also necessary for the life of the mind. For example, human beings need habits not only of justice and courage in order to act morally, but also of science and wisdom in order to know reality in a more complete and profound fashion. For this reason, habits are of great interest not only to students of ethics and moral theologians, but also to philosophers of knowledge and more generally to anyone wishing to perfect his or her human capacities, whether moral or intellectual. While the importance of habits is evident, a deep understanding of them is more difficult to obtain, 1 See for example SCG, IV, cap. 55. 2 One article appears in his early commentary on Peter the Lombard’s Sentences; the other appears in his Summa theologiae near the end of his career. See In Sent., III, d. 23, a. 1 and ST, I-II, q. 49, a. 4. There are also several other discussions of the necessity of habits developed by Aquinas in other contexts. A more complete account will be given below in chapter one. 1 2 because they are not known directly but only by means of the actions to which they give rise.3 One does not know what justice and courage are, for example, until one sees just and courageous acts. Yet in spite of their elusiveness, habits remain involved in a host of pressing ethical and psychological questions. Among these are questions such as whether there exist moral habits that always incline their possessor in the right way, how habits affect one’s perception of and judgment about moral situations, and what influence habits can have or ought to have on our emotions. The difficulty of providing satisfactory answers to such questions is evident, not only because we lack an immediate experience of habits, but also because adequately answering such questions presupposes a highly developed philosophical account of human nature and action. The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas provides a promising starting point from which to study habits, not only on account of his sharp mind and sound methodological principles, but also because he develops a philosophical account of habits against the backdrop of a detailed philosophy of human nature and action. However, even in the masterful work of Aquinas, certain of his teachings on habits are not immediately clear. In particular, important questions arise in connection with Aquinas’s account of how habits perfect powers and acts of the soul.4 In Aquinas’s account, the perfection brought about by a habit generally involves multiple powers and acts of the soul. For example someone with the habit of courage feels fear in accordance with reason. This means that the habit is somehow related both to that person’s capacity for fear and to his or her rational capacity. At the same time, Aquinas holds that the courageous person both correctly judges the amount of fear and daring that a situation demands and also feels fear in the right way and to the correct degree. Thus the habit of courage appears to have an influence on both affective and cognitive acts. Positions such as these illustrate the need for 3 Cf. ST, I, q. 87, a. 2. 4 It is worth mentioning that Aquinas speaks not only of habits in powers of the soul, but also of certain “habitual dispositions” of the body, such as health.
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