Prima Secundae
Lecture 132: Habit, Order to Act, and Bodily Dispositions

Transcript
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To the third, then, one goes forward thus. It seems that habit does not imply an order to act. For each thing acts according as it is an act. But the philosopher says in the third book about the soul, that when someone becomes knowing, according to habit, he is also then in potency, but other than when before he learned, right? So Aristotle distinguishes the man who has what? But not yet learned geometry, right? He's in potency, right? He's able to be geometer, but he's in potency to this, right? After he acquires the science of geometry, right? He's not always thinking about geometrical things, right? And he's, in that sense, an ability towards actually thinking about them, but in a different way than he was before he learned the science, right? That distinction he makes, right? And he compares it, you know, to what you have in nature, you know, where, you know, when the baby's developing in the womb, you know, and eventually the baby gets eyes or something, you know? But when everyone has eyes, everyone's not always actually seeing, like when you're asleep, right? That's like the first act, they have the eye, right? The ability to see, and then further act than actually seeing, right? Therefore, habit does not imply a habitude of a beginning to an act. Moreover, that which is placed in the definition of something belongs to it per se. But to be a beginning of action is placed in the definition of potency or power, right? That's the second species, right? As is clear in the fifth book, after the books of natural philosophy, right? Therefore, to be a principle per se, of act, per se, belongs to what? Power, right? Or in English, the English word is ability, right? So Shakespeare, when he defines reason, he defines it as a what? Capability, right? Which I take the liberty and short it into ability, but capability or ability would be the second, what? Species. And this is a beginning of some kind of act, discourse and looking before and after and so on, huh? Okay? So it's not habit, it says, but potency or ability, right? Capability. That is the principle of an act. Moreover, health sometimes is a habit, and likewise, what? Yuti and what's masiyas? Leanness is what I'm trying to do. Yeah, lean, me, or poverty. Meciated, right? But these are not said with reference to act, right? Therefore, it's not a notion of habit that it would be a beginning of what? Act, huh? But against this is what Augustine says in the book on the good of the conjugation of marriage, huh? That habitus est, quo aliquid adjitur cum opus est, right? Habit is that by which something is done when there is need to do it, right? And the commentator, that's who? Who's called the commentator in the Middle Ages? Yeah, yeah. We always say Thomas shouldn't really have the title of the commentator, but Thomas, in his humility, right, still follows the custom. Because if there was a comment, I guess, on what? Almost all of our styles works, right, in some way. So he's the most neat commentator, right? Because he had commented on all of them, why the people had commented just on some, right? But habit is that by which someone acts when he wants to, right? Okay, it's very common. So we've got these opposites here, right, huh? Now what does Thomas say? I answer it should be said that to have an order to act is able to belong to habit, both according to the definition of habit, right, and according to the, what, definition of the subject in which is the habitant. According to the ratio of habitant, it belongs to every habit in some way to have some order to act. For it is of the notion of habit that it implies a certain, what, relation in order to the, what, nature of the thing, according as it is suitable or not suitable to that nature, right? Okay, but the nature of the thing, which is the end of, what, generation, is further ordered to a, what, another end, which is either operation or something done or made to which one arises through the operation, huh? Okay, so if you're listening to the music of Mozart, the end is to hear the music of Mozart, right? If you're making a table, the end is not making a table, but the table itself. If you're making dinner, right, it's the dinner itself. It's not the making of the dinner, right? But the habit not only implies order to the nature of the thing, but also consequently to, what, operation, insofar as this is the end of the nature, or is leading to the end. Whence in the fifth book of wisdom it is said in the definition of habit that it is a disposition by which one is disposed well or badly, either secundum say that is according to one's nature or to another that is in order to the, what, end. So by faith, hope, and charity, you are well disposed towards, what, towards God. Those are the theological virtues, and he's, the, what, are in, right? But there are some habits which are also on the side of the subject in which they are, first and chiefly imply in order to act. Because, as has been said, habit first and through itself implies relation to the nature of the thing. If, therefore, the nature of the thing in which is the habit consists in that order to act, it follows that habit chiefly implies in order to act. is manifest over the nature and the, what, power is that it be a beginning of some act, right? Whence every habit which is of some ability or power as a subject chiefly implies order to some, what, act. Okay. So when Shakespeare is defining reason, he's not defining a, what, habit, he's defining, what, power, yeah. But when Thomas distinguishes, like I was saying, you know, one and three, he's distinguishing the, what, knowledge of reason, which is the habit, the habit in reason, right? He's doing so with respect to, what, order, right, huh? Order is in comparison to reason, huh? And so, then that knowledge has an order to that, what, act, right, huh? Okay? So by natural philosophy, I know well the order of natural things, right? By logic, I know well the order of premises to conclusions, right? The genus and differences to species and so on, right, huh? Etc. And by ethics, I know well the order of, what, human acts to each other and to their end, right? By art, right, then? Mechanical arts is talism, I know well, right? Charity, right, and so on, huh? Okay? So he says at the end, then, what's every habit which is of some power as a subject principally implies an order to some, what, act, yeah? Now in regard to the first one there, this goes back to the distinction that Aristotle was saying there, right? To the first therefore it should be said that habit is an act insofar as it is a quality, right? And by this it is able to be a, what? A beginning of some doing. But it is in potency with respect to the operation. Whence the habit is called first act and the operation second act. It is clear in the second book of the sword. So you should have studied the three books of the sword, right? Before we did a little bit of that, didn't we? Or I should go back to it sometime, right? The second it should be said that it is not of the notion of... of habit, that it regards potency, but that it regards what? Nature. And because nature precedes action, which potency respects, right? Therefore, before is a species of quality placed, habit, habit is a species of quality is placed, then what? Potency, right? Now, he's explaining there something of the order of why is habit or disposition placed before ability or power, right? Why? Power has reference to what? An act as such, right? The ability to see, the ability to hear, the ability to digest, right? The ability to grow, the ability to reproduce, right? The ability to understand, right? Habit always has a reference to nature, which is what? First, right? Okay. So, my ability to understand is well disposed with respect to my nature when I have the virtues, right? The reason. When I have the vices, it's well disposed, right? Badly disposed. So, he says, it is not as a notion of habit as such, that it regards the power, right? But that it regards nature, right? So, habit is that for which you are well or badly disposed towards your nature. And because nature precedes action, which potency regards, right? Therefore, habit is laid down as a species of quality before what? Potency, yeah. Does Thomas look before and after? Quite a bit. To the third, therefore, it should be said, huh? That health is said to be a habit or a habitual disposition in order to what? Nature. Nature. Insofar, nevertheless, as nature is a beginning of some act, right? Ex consequente, right? Consequente. It implies in order to act. Whence the philosopher says in the 10th book on the history of animals that a man then is said to be healthy or some, what, part of him, right, some member, when he's able to do the operation of a healthy man. And this is simile knowledge, right? So, if your tongue is diseased, right, you can't taste things properly. If your ear is off, right, you can't hear things. Well, he says it's not sometimes defining except ex consequente, right, huh? But a beautiful beauty in a woman makes you suitable for marriage, right? Plato, in the famous dialogue there on love, right, huh? He says that we're attracted to the beautiful because we want to, what, perpetuate the beautiful, right? So Shakespeare begins, you know, the songs there where he's arguing somebody, trying to persuade someone to get married, right? From fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty's rose might never die. So from fairest, the most beautiful creatures, we desire increase also, right? That thereby beauty's rose might never die, right? So beauty in a woman makes her, what, suitable for marriage, right? Suitable can be for marriage, right? And that's in order to reproduction, right? The word matrimony has the word mother in it. Yeah, yeah. Fourth article here, right? To the fourth one goes forward thus. It seems that it is not necessary for there to be, what? Habitus, right? And we're going to find out that man is a creature of habit, right, in a much more profound way than they realize, those who say this, right? For habit is that by which something is disposed well or badly to something, as has been said. But through its form, something is well or badly disposed, right? For according to form, something is good, just as it is a being according to its form. Therefore, there's no necessity of habits, right? Moreover, habit implies an order to act, but potency or ability implies a beginning of acts sufficiently. For also, what? Natural powers, right? Are sources of acts without any habits, right? So why does my reason have to have all these habits, or my will have to have all these habits, huh? Therefore, it is not necessary for habit to be, huh? Moreover, just as ability has itself to good and bad, so also habit. And just as ability does not always act, so neither does habit always, huh? Therefore, the powers existing is superfluous to have habit, huh? But against this is that habits are certain perfections, as is said in the seventh book of the physics, huh? But perfection is most necessary for the thing, since it has the ratio of a, what? End, huh? And therefore, it is necessary that there be habit, huh? I answer, it should be said that, as has been said above, habit implies a disposition, a certain disposition, in order to the nature of a thing, right, huh? And to the operation or the end of that thing, right, huh? According as something is disposed for this, either well or badly, right? But for this, that something needs to be disposed to another, three things are required, huh? First, that that which is disposed is something other from that to which it is, what? Disposed. And thus it has itself to it, has potency to, what? Act, huh? Whence is something, whence if there is something whose nature is not composed from a built in act? Whose nature is not composed from a built in act? And whose substance, huh? And whose substance, huh? Is what? Its operation. And it is on account of itself, right? On account of the other. This is a big, this is a big thing. This is important. Their habit or decision has no place, as is clear in God, huh? God is correct. He's left in his perfection. He doesn't need it. Okay. Second is required, that that which is in the ability or points in another, is able to be determined in, what? Many ways, huh? So Heidegger's mind is determined in a different way than Aristotle's mind, right? Many different ways. Many different ways. Yes. And to diverse things, right? Sometimes even the diverse ways of the same. Yeah. Remember, I started making kind of a joke. He said, How when your soul is separated from your body, you recognize this is your friend Joe, or your enemy so-and-so, or this guy or that guy, right, huh? Yeah. He says, some people, they just approach the same thing mentally, quite different, right? And that's how you recognize. Once a something is in potency to another, right, but not, however, that it's in potency, what? Except to it, right? Then this should inhabit have no, what? Right. Place, huh? Because such a subject by, or from its own nature, huh, has a suitable, what? Relation to such an act, right? Once if the heavenly body, this is the old physics now. Once if the heavenly body is composed from matter and form, whose matter is not in, what? Potency to another form, right? As has been said in the first. One does not dare need a, what? Yeah. There's no place there. A disposition or habit to the, what? Form. Form, right? Or even to operation. Because the nature of the celestial body is not in potency except to one determined, what? Motion. To the third, third is required that the many run together, right, to dispose the subject to one of those things to which is impotency, which in diverse ways can be, what? Measured. Measured. So that one is disposed well or badly to the form or to the, what? Operation, huh? Once the simple qualities of the elements, earth, hot, cold, wet and rise of thought, right? Which, according to one determined mode, belong to the nature of the elements, we do not say to be dispositions or habits, huh? But simple, what? Qualities, huh? But we call dispositions or habits, health, beauty, and those of the sort, huh? Which implies certain, what? Measured. Yeah. Measured together with, of many things, right? Which in diverse ways can be, what? Measured. Yeah. Like tuning your, what? You tune your instrument there? Yeah. There's many chords, though, right? They've got to be commensurate, huh? Whence, the kind of which the philosopher says in the fifth book of wisdom, that a habit is a disposition, and disposition is the order of something having parts, either according to place, right? Or according to what? Or according to what? Or according to species, right? So according to place is going back to this idea of my sitting or my standing, right? So my, at many parts it can be, what? Brought together in different ways, right? Okay? Not a simple thing, right? Because, therefore, there are many, huh? Things among the things that are, to whose, what? Nature is an operation, is necessary for many things to, what? Come together. Or to run together, right? Which in diverse ways can be, what? Measured together, right? Is necessary for there to be, what? Habits, huh? Okay? Now to the first, therefore, it should be said, that through the form is perfected the nature of the, what? Thing. It is necessary that in order to the form itself, the subject be disposed by some, what? Disposition, right, huh? But the form itself is ordered further to a, what? Operation. Which is either the end itself or the road to the end, huh? And if the form has, terminally, only one determined operation, right? No other disposition is required for the operation, apart from the form itself, right? If, however, it be such a form that is able, in diverse ways, to operate as a soul, it's necessary that it be disposed to its operation through some, what? Habits. The same way they apply it in second objection. That power sometimes has itself to many, right? And therefore, it's necessary that it is by something other. They'd be, what? Determined, huh? So people don't think the same thing, do they, right? So you have to be, what? You need to have it to be disposed well for thinking about these things, huh? Let me get an example there. The ancient crooks there, who, real estate there, you know? They buy and sell, what? Property by perimeter, right? Well, the dummies, who don't know geometry, think that if the land has more perimeter, it has more, what? You're getting more land, right? Is that so? Now, one of my favorite theorems in Euclid is Theorem 5, their second book, right? Where he shows that a square, right, for the same perimeter will have more area than an oblong, right? And it's even possible to have a square that has more area than an oblong that has more, what? Perimeter. Yeah. It's kind of an amazing thing to see, right? So, you know, you and I get out there and we both got a kid who's kind of restless and want to put up a fence, you know, and give him how much land to come to run around. And so he'd go down and buy some fencing material. And I used less fence than you did, right? But I took in more land than you did, huh? You're a dummy, right? You didn't realize, right? That you're using the wrong... Yeah. Yeah. So, someone would think, right, that if you have more perimeter, you'd have more area, right? Or something similar to numbers, you know, where you can say that if the sum of two numbers is greater than the sum of two other numbers, then their product will be greater, right? You'd think so, right? You would think so. If A plus B are more than C plus D, then A times B would be more than C times D. And they'd just say, yeah, yeah. But you'd see from Proposition 5, it's changing into numbers, right? That 5 times 5, let's say, is 25, and what, 2 times 10 is, what, 20. So, 2 plus 10 is more than 5 plus 5, but 5 times 5 is more than... Can that be so? I tell it sometimes to be uneducated, and they say, oh! These are tricks you learn. Yeah, yeah. And then there's this artist theorem in Book 3 there, where we're talking about when a straight line touches a circle, right? At one point, right? It's impossible to draw a line in between the circle and this from that point, right? Now, done like me, just using my imagination, right, which is the source of error, and that's... I'd say, well, above that point where the line touches the circle at one point only is open space, right? All the way up from that line for that point. Therefore, I imagine it's possible to put, you know, it must be so, now you start at that point where they meet and draw a line, because there's open space out there. Yeah? See? So, a diamond like me, I'm, you know, disposed towards circles and tangents, right? So, I don't think well about this, do I? Because you're trying to think with your imagination. Yeah, yeah. So, there's some theorems where they're contrary to what you'd expect, right? Most theorems in geometry, you know. But even the Pythagorean theorem, you know, if you'd never heard about this, you'd say, oh, is it always going to be that way, you know? Is the square going to be always exactly equal? It doesn't seem that way. You could give me something of a habit or at least a disposition for a habit, right? And so, I'm eternally grateful to Euclid, right? Taking care of their next work. Euclid of Athens and Alexandria. Study of completeness, right? Oh, yeah. So, he ends up there with the five regular solids, right? Euclid ends up with the five regular solids, right? Teutonic, to the culmination, right? I'm afraid he doesn't know how to define the one, he's confused like Plato was about the one. The one that's convertible as being and the one that is the beginning of number, right? It ain't the same one. Difficult thing. Even the great minds, huh? Plato and Avicenna, right? Two of the greatest minds I've ever had. They're both. A little mixed up on that. So, he says in the private second objection, Potencia, quando que se hava da mutta, right? Sometimes it has itself to many. And therefore, it's necessary that by something other it be determined. If ever there be some power which does not have itself to many, it does not need a habit determining it, right? And on account of this, the natural powers do not, what, do operations, do operations, because according to themselves they determine to one, right? So my reproductive power didn't, you know, wasn't open to producing dogs or cats or horses, right? Do you know how to be disposed? You do see what it be. But it was naturally determined to that, right? Down to the third, he says, it should be said that it is not the same habit that has itself to good and to bad, as will be clear below. It was not already clear to you. But the same power has itself to the good and the bad, right? And therefore, habits are necessary that potencies might be determined to the good, right? You can use your mind to what? Iago uses his mind to deceive a fellow, right? And his will, right? He wills to them, right? So his will is not disposed to the good, huh? These guys who blew up people there in Boston, right? They were disposed towards the good, it seems to me, right? You see, they went that way a number of years ago, apparently, you know, they all suddenly got disposed this other way, right? So you can be disposed towards the good or the what? Bad, huh? He asked, you heard the judge asking the famous bank robbery, you know, when he finally appeared to for the umpteenth of time in front of him, why did he do this? Why did he rob the banks? Well, that's where the money is. So that's the first question here about habits, right? Right? So is grace a habit? Well, grace is very ambiguous there. Sanctifying grace is a habit. Is sanctifying grace a habit? I don't know if you would have a serious thing, but it can't be used for evil. Dispose us, well, and dispose us of the good. Is that not a hammer? The same thing is about justice, right? Or fortitude, right? Dispose us just towards the good. Like in charity, there's no greater happiness. There's no grace, yeah. They come from virtue. Sometimes, Thomas would speak as if grace is in the soul, right? And then just as the powers naturally flow from the nature of the thing, so the theological virtues flow from the grace that's in the soul, right? But let's think about that with the grace that has a habit, right? It's a sound for us right now. Then we're not to consider about the subject of what? Habits, right? What a thorough mind this guy had, huh? You say so? I don't know anybody who thinks things through as much as Thomas, huh? Well, maybe you're a stall, but Thomas had the help of him, right? The help of Augustine, right? What Thomas says about the Latin of Erasmus, they speak as if wisdom began with them. Thomas never speaks that way, huh? Then we're not to consider about the subject of habits. And about this, six things are asked. First, whether in the body is some what? Yeah. Second, whether the soul itself is the subject of habit according to its what? Essence, huh? Or according to its what? Power. That's interesting. It's a question of grace that we're saying, right? Third, whether in the powers of the sensitive part there can be some habit, huh? Habit in my eye or my ear? 2020? Vision that I'll have? Let's see what the Master says, right? Whether in the understanding there is some habit, huh? I'm pretty much convinced that there is. Now, of course, in the powers of the sensitive part could include the emotions as well as the what? The sensing powers, right, huh? And it's more apt in the emotion, maybe, than in the sensing powers, right, huh? Let's see what the Master says. Whether in the will there is some habit, huh? Six, whether there is habits in the separated substances, right? Oh, that's more interesting. In the angels, right, huh? You know there's no habits in God, right? But what about the angels, right? Just stick that in, right, huh? To the first one goes forward thus. It seems that in the body there is not any habit. For as the commentator says in the third book about the soul, a habit is that by which someone acts when he wants to, when he wills to do so, right? But the bodily actions are not subject to the will, since they are, what, natural, right, huh? Yes. Therefore, in the body there cannot be, what, any habit, huh? Hmm. Do I'm able to digest my food or just goes on without me? Yes. Moreover, all disposition, all body dispositions are easily immovable, right? But habit is a quality difficult to be made, huh? Therefore, no disposition, no body disposition can be a habit, huh? Moreover, all body dispositions are subject to alteration. But alteration is not except in the third species of, what, quality, as J.R. Stoller shows in the seventh book of physics, which is divided against habit, right, huh? Therefore, no habit is in the, what, body. Against this is what the philosopher, the philosopher in the predicamentis, right, in the book called Decaturation, says that the, what, health of the body, right, or its incurable infirmity, right, huh, are named a, what, habit, huh? Interesting means the body, right, and then it goes to the soul, right, for most of the articles, huh? They do say one in the body, right, huh? It doesn't completely neglect the miserable part of us, right? Though sometimes our soul is more miserable than our body, right? The answer should be said, and as has been said above, that habit is a certain disposition of some subject, right, existing in potency, either to, what, form or to operation, right? Now, according as habit implies a disposition to operation, to doing, no habit is chiefly in the body as in a, what, subject, huh? For every operation of the body is either from a natural quality of the body or it is from the soul moving the, what, body, right? As regards to those operations which are by nature, the body is not disposed to some habit because the natural virtues are determined to one, huh? That's what you're referring to there in the ninth book of wisdom, right? The ninth book of wisdom, Aristotle, distinguishes between the natural abilities and the, what, rational abilities, right? And the natural abilities are determined to one, right? Where the rational abilities are open to, what, opposites, right, huh? Nature not being able to be more than one thing, as Shakespeare says, right? The idea that nature is determined to one. Because, okay, because natural powers are determined to one. It's been said, however, that an habitual disposition is required where a subject is in potency to, what, multa, to many, right? The operations which are from the soul through the body, right, are chiefly of the soul itself, right, huh? Secondarily of the body itself, right? So the bombers there, right, is chiefly from their soul, right, that this came, right? But habits are proportioned to, what, operations. Whence from similar acts, similar habits are, what, caused, as it's said in the second book of the Ethics. And therefore the dispositions for such operations are chiefly in the soul. But they are able to be in a secondary way in the body, right? Insofar as the body is disposed and debilitated, conditioned to promptly serving to the operations of the, what, soul, right? If, however, we speak of the disposition of the subject to the form, thus an habitual disposition can be in the body, which is compared to the soul as it's subject to, what, form. And in this way, health and beauty and things of this sort are called, what? Natural. Yeah. Or excuse me, habitual disposition. Okay. And of course, sometimes we compare them, you know. If you compare the three ones in the body...