59. Act, Ability, and the Nature of Badness

Subscribe in Podcast App | Download Transcript

Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

Act and Ability: The Foundation of Perfection #

• Act is more perfect than ability in being, time, and causality
• Ability exists for the sake of act; the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end
• Ability for contraries: The same ability can be directed toward opposite acts (health and sickness, rest and motion) but cannot actualize both simultaneously
• Because ability encompasses both contraries, it has an affinity with badness and is therefore not as good as the actualization of the good act

The Nature of Badness as Privation, Not Act #

• Fundamental principle: Badness is not an act but a privatio (lack/privation)—the non-being of an act in a subject apt by nature to have it and that should have it
• Strictly speaking, to be sick is not an actualization but a loss; blindness is not something one has but rather a not-having
• Three kinds of non-being:
  • Simple negation (negatio): The stone does not see (not bad; stone not apt for sight)
  • Privation/Lack (privatio): The man is blind (bad; man apt for sight but lacks it)
  • Contradiction: Being and non-being are contradictories; everything must be one or the other
• Not all negations are privations; privation requires a subject capable of the act and that should have it
• A piece of chalk does not know, but it is not ignorant (lacks the subject requirement)
• A student who does not know is ignorant (has the subject requirement)

Badness Cannot Exist Apart from Things #

• Badness requires a subject capable of the act it lacks
• A thing not apt by nature to have an act cannot lack that act
• Therefore, this cup cannot be blind (not apt for sight), but a man or dog can be
• Simple negation versus privation: The distinction matters for understanding what truly is bad
• Examples of moral badness: A disordered act (saving books before a baby in a fire) lacks the measure and order of reason it should have

Matter, Form, and the Good #

• Matter is good, not evil, because it is ordered to form and capable of receiving form
• Form is an act; matter is ability (potentiality)
• Platonist error: Confusing matter with the lack of form, leading them to view matter as evil
• Aristotle’s correction: Matter and the lack of form are distinct; matter is intrinsically ordered to form
• Manichaean parallel: Augustine used the same argument as Aristotle to refute the Manichaeans, who thought matter was evil

God as Pure Act and the Absence of Badness #

• Since badness always presupposes ability to be deprived of an act, and God is pure act with no passive potentiality
• God can have no ability to be deprived of any act it should have
• Therefore, it is impossible for there to be anything bad in God
• This syllogism demonstrates why God cannot be bad

The Harmony of Truth: First Cause and Best Thing #

• Aristotle shows in the Proem to the Metaphysics that the end of knowledge is the first cause
• Aristotle shows in the On the Soul that knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge
• Therefore, the end of knowledge must be knowledge of the best thing
• Since act is simply before ability and better than ability, the first cause (pure act) must be the best thing
• Result: All truths harmonize; there is no contradiction between the end of knowledge and the best object of knowledge
• Modern error: Materialists and evolutionary humanists confuse what is before in some way with what is before simply; they wrongly take matter as the first principle

Key Arguments #

The Argument for Badness as Privation, Not Act #

1. Badness is fundamentally the non-being of an act in a subject
2. For this privation to exist, a subject must be apt by nature to have the act and should have it
3. If something lacks this subject capacity, the non-being is merely negation, not badness
4. Strictly speaking, to be sick is not an actualization but a deprivation of health
5. Therefore, badness is fundamentally privatio, not actus
6. Corollary: Blindness is bad not because it is something, but because it is a nothing—a lack of sight in one apt for sight

The Argument That God Cannot Be Bad #

1. Badness requires passive ability (potentiality) to be deprived of an act
2. God is pure act (actus purus) with no passive potentiality
3. Therefore, there is no ability in God that could be deprived of an act
4. Therefore, badness cannot exist in God

The Argument for the Harmony of First Cause and Best Thing #

1. The end of our knowledge is the first cause (from the Proem to Metaphysics)
2. Knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge (from the On the Soul)
3. Therefore, the end of knowledge is knowledge of the best thing
4. If the first cause is not the best thing, these two truths clash—schizophrenia
5. But act is simply before ability and better than ability
6. Therefore, the first cause (pure act) must be the best thing
7. All things harmonize

Important Definitions #

Privatio (Privation/Lack) #

• Non-being of an act in a subject apt by nature to have it and that should have it
• Distinguished from simple negatio (negation), which applies to anything
• The fundamental nature of badness
• Examples: Blindness, ignorance, moral disorder

Negatio (Simple Negation) #

• Non-being that applies to any subject, whether apt for the act or not
• Not bad; neither good nor bad in itself
• Examples: A stone not seeing, a piece of chalk not knowing

Actus (Act/Actuality) #

• The realization or actualization of ability
• What comes later in generation and is more perfect
• The end or purpose of ability
• In the case of badness, strictly speaking, badness is not an act but a negation

Potentia (Ability/Potentiality) #

• The capacity to be actualized or to receive form
• Can be directed toward contraries (same ability for health and sickness)
• Always for the sake of act
• Because it encompasses both contraries, it has an affinity with badness

Examples & Illustrations #

The House on Fire #

• If a house is on fire, should one save the books first or the baby first?
• Saving the baby first is ordered and good; saving the books first is a disordered act—a lack of the proper measure and order of reason
• Illustrates how moral badness consists in an act lacking what it is able to have: the order and order of reason

Eating or Drinking Too Much #

• Eating or drinking too much is an act lacking the measure of reason
• The badness consists in the act lacking what it should have (proper measure)
• Shows how privation applies to moral disorders, not just physical defects

The Slave Boy in Plato’s Meno #

• Socrates asks the slave boy to double a square; the boy mistakes doubling the side for doubling the area
• The boy is mistaken, then through questioning recognizes his mistake and comes to know the truth
• The same ability (reason) is able to be mistaken and able to know truth
• The ability to be mistaken is the same as the ability to know; ability has an affinity with badness (error)
• Shows how the ability to know encompasses the ability to be wrong; it is not purely good like the act of knowing truly

Health and Sickness #

• To be healthy is good; to be sick is bad
• But it is the same ability to be healthy and to be sick
• One cannot be healthy and sick at the same time, yet one has the ability for both at different times
• The ability for both contraries is not as good as actually being healthy
• This is why ability is closer to badness than the actualization of good acts

The Car That Is “Totaled” #

• When a car is completely wrecked in an accident, we say it has been “totaled”
• “Total” comes from the word for whole; we use it metaphorically when the car has none of its parts intact
• Shows how we metaphorically use language of completeness to describe ruin and badness
• Illustrates how badness is expressed through negation and loss, not through positive being

Blindness vs. Simple Non-Seeing #

• A stone does not see (simple negation, not bad)
• A man is blind (privation, bad—lacks sight he should have by nature)
• A piece of chalk does not know (simple negation, not bad)
• A student does not know (if apt for knowledge and should have it, this is ignorance—privation, bad)
• Illustrates the distinction between negation and privation

Ability for Contraries: Clay and Shapes #

• A piece of clay can be shaped into a sphere, then a cube, then a pyramid
• Does the clay have three separate abilities, or one ability for all shapes?
• If three separate abilities, why can’t it be a sphere and cube simultaneously?
• It is one ability that can produce different shapes at different times
• Similarly, the ability to be healthy and to be sick is one ability, not two

Questions Addressed #

Why is badness fundamentally privation and not act? #

• Answer: Because strictly speaking, to be sick is not to gain something but to lose something (health). Blindness is not something one possesses but rather a not-having of sight. Badness consists in what something lacks, not in what it possesses. If badness were a positive act, God (pure act) could be bad, which is impossible.

How do we distinguish privation from simple negation? #

• Answer: Simple negation applies to anything that does not have an act (the stone does not see). Privation applies only to subjects apt by nature to have an act and that should have it (the man is blind). A thing not apt for an act cannot be deprived of that act.

Why can’t God be bad? #

• Answer: Badness requires passive ability (potentiality) in a subject that is deprived of an act it should have. God is pure act with no passive potentiality. Therefore, God cannot be deprived of anything and cannot be bad.

How does understanding badness as privation affect our understanding of ability? #

• Answer: Because ability encompasses both contraries (health and sickness), it has an affinity with badness. It is not as purely good as the actual exercise of a good act. This is why act is more perfect than ability—ability is closer to non-being (badness) than to being (good actuality).

What does it mean to confuse what is “before in some way” with what is “before simply”? #

• Answer: Matter comes before form in generation (in some way), but form is before matter in perfection and being (simply). Materialists mistakenly think matter is the first principle because it is chronologically prior, not recognizing that the first cause must be act, not ability. This is why they reach contradictory conclusions about the first cause.

Notable Quotes #

“The badness there consists in the act lacking what it’s able to have, right? The order and measure of reason.” — Berquist, on moral disorder as privation

“The fundamental meaning of bad is a kind of, what? None being.” — Berquist, on badness as non-being/privation

“Strictly speaking, the bad, as I’ve mentioned already, is going to be seen to be a what? Negation.” — Berquist, emphasizing that badness is fundamentally non-being, not being

“The bad does not exist apart from things. For the bad is after ability by nature.” — Aristotle (cited by Berquist), showing that badness requires a subject capable of the act

“All things harmonize.” — Aristotle (cited by Berquist), on how act being better than ability resolves apparent contradictions

“If the first cause is not the best thing, right now you’ve got what schizophrenia right? You can’t put it together.” — Berquist, on why the first cause and the best thing must be the same

“Strictly speaking, is that an actualization of something? No. I’m really losing something, right?” — Berquist, on how becoming blind is not an act but a privation