Prima Secundae
Lecture 149: Prudence as a Necessary Virtue for Living Well

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of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Dios, gracias. God, our enlightenment, Guardian Angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Praise God. Help us to understand what you've written. Amen. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Now we're going to find out whether foresight is a virtue necessary for man. To the fifth, one goes forward thus. It seems that foresight, or prudence, is not a virtue necessary for living well. For just as art has itself to makeable things, of which it is the right reason about them, so also foresight is to things doable, according to which the, or by which, or in which, the life of man is considered. For it is, foresight is a, what, right reason about things to be done. But art is not necessary in things to be made, except, nor that they might come to be, not over after they have been, what, made. Therefore, neither is foresight necessary to man for living well after he has become, what, virtuous. But only as regards this that he become, what, virtuous. Oh, that's very interesting. That's a subtle, subtle thing. I never noticed that. Moreover, foresight is that to which we rightly take counsel, as is said in the Sixth Book of the Ethics. But a man is able to act by good counsel, not only his own, but also of someone else. Therefore, it's not necessary for living well that man himself have foresight. But suffices that he follows, what, the counsels of those who are, in fact, good. I know what this says about the Obama administration, but... We've heard the blind, lead the blind, apparently. Well, it depends. It depends on where his goals lie. They lie in some place you don't know. You're interviewing some of the people, you know, who worked on the thing, you know. And this guy worked on this section, and this guy worked on this section, but no one was seeing if they worked together, you know, the two things. Why not? There's no explanation for it. It's just... It's like when you catch a child and make something wrong. Why did you do this? They don't know why they did it. Moreover, a virtue of reason is that by which it happens that one always says what is what? True. And never the false. But this does not seem to happen by prudence, huh? For what? It is not human that in counsel about things to be done, one never errs. To err is human, huh? To forgive the mind. Since human things to be done are things that are, what, contingent, as a distinguished term, necessary, right? Able to have themselves in different ways, huh? Whence it is said in the Book of Wisdom, chapter 9, in the 14th verse, the thoughts of mortals are, what, fearful, and uncertain are, are, what, providences or foresight. Therefore, it seems that foresight ought not to be laid down as a, what, virtue of, what, reason, right? But against this is what is said in the 8th chapter of the Book of Wisdom, huh? It's a very wise book, apparently. It is numbered with the other virtues necessary for, what, human life. Since it is said about divine wisdom, that it teaches foresight and sobriety, right, huh? Justice and, maybe virtutum there means courage, right, huh? It's kind of virtus is named from vira, right? Viral. So the virtue of the man is, what, courage, right? And that's the first virtue that Aristotle takes up in the, what, ethics, yes, is courage, huh? And, of course, the Greek word is arete, right, huh, for virtue, which is tied up with ares, the god of war, right, huh? So, as if that's more known, huh? And so, as I always said to students, I say, you know, you can get the Medal of Honor for one glorious afternoon on the battlefield, but you can be sober all your life and it won't give you a Medal of Honor. Or you can be just all your life and it won't give you a Medal of Honor. But, you know, I guess it's more clear that courage is a virtue and so necessary for protection of the, what? The kind of good? Yeah, the city, yeah, yeah. As Douglas MacArthur used to say in his speech, so. Then which nothing is more useful in the life for, what, men in these things, right, huh? Now, what does the master say, huh? The magisteria. The answer should be said that prudence, or foresight in English, is a virtue maximae, right? Most of all, huh, most of all, necessary for human life, huh? Why? Because to live well consists in doing well, right? That's nicely said, huh? You need foresight to, what, live well. Well, I should tell the students, you know, of course, I'm doing philosophy, I'm living it up. They kind of, you know, that's probably that bad. You're getting drunk, you're living it down. You're going downhill. You know, but for this, that someone do well, right, that only is required what he does, right, but also in what way he does it, right, huh? That to it, he works or does it according to right choice, right, huh? And not only from impetus or from passion, right, huh? Now, since choice is of those things which are toward the end or for the sake of the end, the rightness of choice requires two things. To it, a suitable, what, end, debitum finum, and that which is suitably ordered to a, what? A right end, I think, proper end. Properly ordered to him. Now, to the right end, a man is suitably disposed through the virtue which perfects the, what, desiring part of the, what? Soul, right, whose object is the good and the end, huh? So we saw before, he's talking about how you need the, what, moral virtues to be well disposed towards the end, right? And so, unless I want to eat and drink moderately, right, huh, in a reasonable way, huh, I'm not going to find what the right amount is, right? Okay? And I'll be saying, you should have a couple of lousy beers or something, you know, somebody says. Yes, it's probably more than that. Now, to that which is suitably ordered to, what, or appropriately ordered to a right end, is necessary that man be directly disposed through a habit of, what, reason, right? For to take counsel and to choose those things which are, what? Yeah, as an act of reason, huh, well, it's reason to look before an act, right, to see the order of things. And therefore is necessary reason for there to be some virtue of reason, some intellectual virtue, by which reason is perfected to this that it suitably has itself to those things which are towards the end. And this virtue is, what, foresight. When foresight is a virtue necessary for living well, right, huh? On the first objection, kind of a strange objection there, right, huh? To the first, therefore, it should be said that the good of art is considered as not in the artist himself, right? To the first, therefore, it should be said that the good of art is considered as not in the artist himself, right? But more in the thing made by the art, the artifact. Since art is right reason of things to be what? Made. For making, going out a transit, you know, passing over to an exterior matter, is not a perfection of the one making, but of the thing what? Made. Made, huh? So cooking is not a perfection of the cook, but of the dinner. Thank God. Yeah. Thank God. Just as motion is the act of the mobile and not of the mover, right? For art, however, is about things to be what? Made, huh? That's one of the criticisms we used to give of Karl Marx, right? Because he sees man reaching his fulfillment by making, huh? Well, making is perfectly something other than man, right? So how can you say that this is the fulfillment, the perfection of man, that consists in the activity of making? You've got the wrong genus of activity there, right, huh? You need an activity that is a perfection of the doer and not of the, what? Something else. Something done, yeah. But the good of foresight is to be noted in the agent himself, right, in the one acting, of whose perfection, whose perfection is the doing, huh? For foresight is right reason about things to be done, huh? So Aristotle distinguishes between these two activities, right, huh? Now, in English sometimes we like to point out the word doing and the word making, right? And sometimes, you know, we say making is doing something. Other times we divide doing against what? Making. Making, right? And therefore we can divide doing into making and doing, right, huh? But why does making there get the what? Yeah, not because it's better, but because it has something in addition to the doing, right? Namely some kind of a, what, project, right, huh? Okay? So Aristotle distinguishes between those two, but the making is a perfection of the thing, what? Made, but the doing is a perfection of the doer himself, right? It's interesting at the beginning of the second book of the Subakandriate, Tileza, where Thomas is going to consider God now not in himself, but God is the beginning of other things. God is the maker, right? The creator, right? Then he begins by recalling this distinction between these two kinds of operations. And he's saying, to understand, you know, thing fully, you have to know what it does, right? But then there's these two kinds of doing, right? The doing remains of the doer. We talked about that in the first book when we talked about God understanding himself and loving himself and rejoicing in himself and so on. And now we're going to talk about, what, his making of things, his creating things and so on, right? And you need to see both of these things to fully appreciate, you know, what we can know about God through what he does, right? But God's making my immortal soul is a perfection of me, right? But not a perfection of God, right? He gets nothing out of this, right? And Thomas always quotes Avicenna, right? Saying God alone is what? Liberal in the full sense, right? I was just reading his critique there of one thing that Avicenna says there in the second book here, you know, where he disagrees with Avicenna and he spends some time there showing that he's mistaken, you know, but he acknowledges other places, right? He does quote in many places, like in the beginning of the De Veritata, right? He's going to deal with all the so-called transcendentals, right? Then he quotes the text of him, of Avicenna, and follows him, right? Of course, he spends a lot of time, too, criticizing and very much of his ideas about the possible intellect and so on. But other times he'll quote him with some kind of a rule, right? So he distinguishes, huh? But the interesting thing there, huh? Avicenna didn't think that the understandable forms remain in understanding or not understanding. But then we turn towards this separate substance and these forms flow into us again when we think about these things. Well, then, what's the rule of the phantasms and the images, right? Well, they're to, what, dispose us to turn properly to the separate substance, right? And Thomas is saying, you know, well, this doesn't differ too much from what Plato says, where you had the forms, you know, where you get these things. But then he says, Plato does better than Avicenna, because Plato, what is the rule of these senses, right, in the imagination and so on, huh? Well, it's to kind of wake up the reason to recall what it already knows, see? But he says, you know, by using images in phantasms, you're not disposed to turn towards this immaterial substance, right? You know how when St. Paul was pulled up to the third heaven, you know, whether in the body or not, you know? It's like he's withdrawn from his senses, right, huh? So you have to always be withdrawn from your senses to go up to God, right, huh, fully, huh? And so Plato is better, right, huh? Because he doesn't see the senses as disposing you to go to those exterior things. You already got them in you, right? You know, what you're doing is recalling these things, and something sensible makes you, what, start to recall something, right, that you already know. So he faces Plato as being, you know, better in that respect than that you're being disposed to turn towards that altogether immaterial substance, right, by your images, huh? And so things, huh? He's a great mind, you know, but you know, but you know, they both get mixed up. They can't quite distinguish the one that is the beginning of number and the one that is convertible of being. And sometimes they attribute what belongs to one of them to the other and vice versa, you know. So even those two great minds, huh, can fail, right, about those difficult things, huh? Okay. So, but the good of foresight, prudence, is noted in the agent itself whose perfection it is to act, right? For foresight is right reason about things to be done. And therefore, for art, it is not required that the artist operates well, but that he makes a good, what, work, huh? Okay. So the, what, cook can be sipping, you know, and drinking, get a little drunk without the cooking, you know? And that doesn't make any difference as long as he makes the right things, right, huh? As long as it tastes good. Yeah, yeah. For it required more that the artifact, right, be well done, right? Just as if the, what, the hammer, I guess, on? Strike well. Yeah. Or is that nice? Or the saw cut well. Yeah. And what's more property to these things is not so much, what, if property of these things, it is to act, but it's not more to, what, to be acted, right? To be moved, right? Because they don't have any lordship over their own acts. And therefore, art is not necessary for living well for the, what, artist, right, huh? But temperance is necessary for eating well, right, huh? And foresight, huh? How much do I need, right, huh? But foresight is necessary for man for living well, and not only for this, that he become, what, good, right, huh? Because even after you acquire virtue, you still need, what, foresight to say, how much should I eat now, right? Okay. Did I have a big lunch, or did I have a, you know? Is it Thanksgiving, or what is it? You can consider these things. You've got to consider the circumstances, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, now, you see some truth in the second objection, right? But if you can only act on the counsel of others, you have some imperfection there in yourself, right? Mm-hmm. You really don't want to say something wrong. Or maybe many people. Should I have another bite? Should I have another drink? Have I had enough yet? I'm a little kid, you've got to tell them you've had enough candy, you know. You get a box of candy from your aunt or something, you know, and stuff yourself. We'll put it away now. It's embarrassing when you have to tell that to the monks. We've had enough. So when man does the good, not by his own what? Reason, right? But moved from the consul another, huh? He is not yet, right, altogether perfect in his operation, right? So the kid eats a moderate amount of candy, but under the counsel of his mother or father, not quite yet perfect, right? As far as the reason, what? Directing, right? And as regards to his moving appetite, huh? Or the appetite moving. Whence, if he does the good, not nevertheless, what? Simplicitarily to do it well, right? But secundum quid, right? Which is to live well, right, huh? Now the third objection's got some very subtle things here, huh? He's going to distinguish between the truth and the practical intellect and the speculative intellect, right? Of course, when you first heard this when I was in philosophy, you know, we were all around telling everybody, you know, what does truth consist of for practical reason, right, compared to truth and geometry, right? Because truth is the good of the, what, intellect, right? To the third, therefore, it should be said that the truth of the, what, or the truth of the practical understanding, right, is taken in a different way than the true of the, what, looking understanding, right? Spectative intellect. That sounds like relative isn't to me. As is said in the sixth book of the ethics, huh? For the truth of the looking understanding, right, the speculative understanding, is taken by conformity of the understanding to the thing. So if I say that man is a two-legged animal and a dog is a four-legged animal, then this is what? True, yeah. It's conformity to the thing, huh? And because the understanding is not able to be infallibly, right, conformed to things in contingent things, because they can be otherwise, right, but only in necessary, right, things, therefore, no speculative habit, no virtue in that sense of the speculative understanding, which are what? Actual understanding, reasoned out understanding, or sciencia and wisdom itself, right, and therefore no habit, no speculative habit, things, is a intellectual virtue, but only that which is about, what? Necessary. Yeah. And I'll talk about this in the posture analytics, right? But, now this is the thing that we're repeating, you know, the truth over the practical understanding is taken by conformity to rectified, what? Appetite, huh? To right desire, right? So it's not to the thing, right? Which conformity in necessary things has no place, right, huh? Because they do not come to be by the human, what? Will, right? So I don't make the triangle to have its interior angles because of the two right angles, right? That's necessary and I can't do nothing about it. Okay? But only in contingent things, which are able to come to be by us, right? Okay? Whether they are, what, inward things doable, or outside things makeable, right? And therefore, only about, what, contingent things is laid down to be a virtue of the practical understanding, which virtue about things to be made is called art, right? And about things to be done is called, what, foresight, eh? Goodness, it's a Latin word. Foresight is in this word. I'm Latin, it's at heart. Could you illustrate how, in art, the truth of the practical effect is conforming to it? How is it right appetite? Well, you have to desire the good of that art, right? No, Snare Stahl talks about, for example, those who want to, what? They want a happy ending in tragedy, right? Okay? And if you read, you know, if you read these little history of the players of Shakespeare, you know, the performance of them in England in the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries, they would take, you know, certain liberties, right, huh? So, with King Leary, you know, Cordelia does not die, and she ends up marrying somebody, and so on, right? And Aristotle says, you know, one should not aim for just any, what, pleasure, you know, in tragedy, but that which is, what, proper to what tragedy, right, huh? And they're seeking the pleasure of, what? Come. Yeah. So, that would be a false plan. Yeah, you designed the wrong end, right, huh? Okay. Now, you notice these things, you know, the horrible things, you know, they sell me inside the liquor stores, right, you know, where they have kind of a candified wine, you know, kind of a soda pop wine, you know, for people who haven't quite made a transition from a soda pop to wine. From childhood, you know. Now, I know from experience, you know, when people first start to drink wine, you know, they want a sweet wine first, right? There's this horrible thing called, it's kind of pink cinfandel, you know, kind of a sweet, you know, sickeningly sweet, you know, just disgusting, you know. But the person is seeking, you know, the pleasure of soda. Yeah, soda pop in a wine, right? And even after a person gets to, like, maybe a dry wine, they drink a dry white wine maybe first, you know. And then only, you know, a red wine. I remember my cousin Michael there saying to me, do you like that? Like, you know, these dry red wines, you know. And I remember when I worked in the package store, you know, of course, I just talked about wine a little bit, and how carbonated sodium is the greatest, you know, one of the greatest secret grapes. So one of the guys, and I didn't know anything about wine, some woman comes in, she wants a bottle of wine, it's really good, you know. So he said, well, Perkins said carbonated sodium. He said to himself, Perkins said carbonated sodium. Well, when a person would come in the store and ask, you know, for advice on a wine, I'd say, well, now, who are you buying for? Does this person drink wine regularly with their meals or, you know? And I would say something quite different, you know, from what they would tell me, right? But, because, and of course, after she got the car, she'd say, oh, that's an awful wine! Well, the first time, you know, huh? I remember, you know, when I got first time, thinking like deep frowning or something, you know, kind of thinking we'd sleep now, you know? And so, it's kind of universal principle, right? You know, if someone, you know, puts vanilla ice cream on his fide mignon. Whipped cream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see. If you're seeking the pleasure of dessert in fide mignon, that's, that's, that's a mistake, right? Wrong answer. Yeah. So, you've got to know what pleasure is appropriate, right? To this, right? And, so I know that because Shakespeare's plays, you know, you've got the tragedies and then the other extreme, the comedies. And then you have these two kinds of romances in between, right? And the pleasure of each one of these is, what? Different. And you've got to know what the pleasure is and you've got to desire that, right? I used to take this example, I think I've told it to you before, but kind of, I used to have an advice column in the St. Paul newspaper for teenage kids, you know, kind of like what you have for adults, you know, or so-called adults. And the, this one was the, you know, high school girl writing in that her boyfriend wants you to wear candy-flavored lipstick, right? Apparently it's a candy-flavored lipstick for little girls, right? And she wants to, to, to wear, you know, real, real stuff. Real, real adult lipstick, you know. That was her problem. She's talking. Well, the advice is very short, you know. Buy my hollipop. He's thinking you'd kiss the pleasure of candy right now, you know. It's a very obvious example, though, of a person not knowing what, you know. That's the purpose, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so in that sense, you've got your right desire to do, right? So I'm thinking about, you know, building a house or how you're trying to see all the truths of the present intellect and, you know, building a house isn't in right appetite. It seems it's more in conformity to the planning he has in mind or something. Yeah, but it says you've got to kind of know. I'm trying to get more of an example of these things, of tragedy and comedy and so on, right? You know, I remember talking to a high school girl and they said, are you doing any Shakespeare? Yeah, yeah. I said, you like Shakespeare? Well, she likes the ones that they have in. But the pleasure of tragedy is something you have to get used to, you know, and accustomed to, right? And desire that, right, huh? There can be horrendous things in architecture, too, right, huh? I remember my friend Roy Monroe there, you know. It's beautiful. The Minnesota State Capitol, it was a beautiful building, right? Yeah, yeah, the main building. And then the first buildings they built, you know, for bureaucrats and so on, were beautiful buildings, too, you know? And then during Governor Freeman, huh? He put in one of these, what? Space Aids or something. Yeah, one of these awful things, you know? And my politician friend was calling it Freeman's bordello or something. You know? Out of place, you know, huh? And, you know, how they have sometimes in these very nice places, they have a building code, too. You can't just put up just any kind of a house, you know? And so even there, there's something to be said, right? About that. Yeah. And, you know, when they meet the chapels out of Thomas Aquinas College, you know, that was very well planned, you know, and very well, very suitable for prayer, right, huh? Yeah. I know, like, say, in my parish church there, you know, the windows are all, what, just kind of abstract, you know, from Tulare's studio in Florence. There's nothing representational there, right, huh? And that's not good for children, right, or even for adults, right? And I always tell that story of, you know, one time, my wife was seeing a doctor there across from just a sacrament church there. I don't know if you know that in Worcester there. She had a very nice little church. And outside, there's kind of, and so I walked over there to the church with the kids, you know, while she was in the doctor's office, you know. And outside, there's kind of a representation of Fatima, Fatima, with the little... This is Bangalore Main Street? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. And around Pleasant Street, I guess. Right. But, you know, the little thing. I had to think about when it was, you know, we used to walking around kind of to kill time there when it was over there. And I also had my children write this, you know, because they're irritating. The pictures, yeah. You see? And what is it? What's this church in Clinton there? There's a parish that has more candidates to preach to the union of the parish, I guess. Oh, really? Wow. It's a beautiful church. I've been there for, you know, masses sometimes and for funerals and so on. Beautiful windows. St. St. John's, maybe? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, St. John's, yeah. And, you know, it's by chance that you have more, you know, you want to be a priest, you know, in this beautiful church. Yeah, very much. And so... So maybe part of what you're talking about related to, like, church, it would be wrong desire for building a church to make it look like a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Yeah. That would be a wrong desire. Or sometimes the church is made, you know, the idea, you know, the meeting place, you know. You know, they describe these ones in, where is it, in Holland or someplace, you know. Or another world. Or alongside the wall, you know, inside the church, and they've got these automatic machines that are going to make coffee. And, you know, this isn't true. And it starts up, you know. You know, like, maybe at, you know, at the communion time, it starts up. So then, as soon as the mass is over, you can walk over and have a coffee. You can get donuts, fresh donuts, smile, or something. I mean, it's just, it's just, I mean, it's just, you know, these churches, you know. Like, my daughter Maria is going to get married, right? And she wanted to get married in a cathedral downtown, right, rather than our church. We actually put it if she wanted to get married in a real church. Yeah. No blame it. And so, I mean, there are churches, you go into them, and they dispose you to prayer, right? And what does Christ say this? My Father's house is a house of prayer, right? Well, if you're not disposed to pray when you go into these churches, right, you want to linger there and say prayers, right? Well, then, you don't really know what kind of a building you should have been making. You should have been making a building that would make us, what? Wanted to praise God and pray and so on, right? Rather than want the next coffee and do this. Yeah, you wouldn't, for example, if you take house architectures, you wouldn't want a house that was, which some people do nowadays, it's all glass. You want some privacy, you know. You don't want the whole world to be looking like it when you're taking a shower. Yeah, yeah. I'd say that the TAC, you know, is very impressive. Yeah, yeah. Who's that famous actor, I guess, that was coming up along the aisle? Oh, I heard about that. Yeah, yeah. And he saw that beautiful building. He saw the tower. Yeah, so it came in. So who's that? Yeah, yeah. What was his name? Yeah. I know, it was an Irishman. He ended up giving a talk there, you know. Oh, yeah, on Shakespeare, he did some Shakespeare ones. Yeah, yeah. He was struck by that. He was a big pious man. He was struck by the beautiful building there. I didn't like the church there, the new one down there with Padre Pius. I don't like it at all. I mean, it's kind of a public one there, you know, for the craft. Sub Giovanni, yeah. It's typical modern Italian. Yeah, kind of a Barney thing, you know. Oh, yeah. Okay. The one in Los Angeles. Because when you're thinking of art in general, you don't normally think about judging it in terms of conforming to the right appetite. You know, this is not the appetite for the whole life, right? Like you have in prudence, you know. We spoke with that before in the previous one. You know, there's a kind of Han Solo, you know, in a heart, he says how to make the thing, you know. But it's about a particular end, right? Mm-hmm. So. Yeah. Yeah. Even, you know, but you see what I'm saying? It seems to me that it's not the criteria that comes to mind with most people that, you know, you're judging, you know, the good meal or the good house or the good chair by the right appetite, right? You know, is that a real question? Yeah, we had the words of Mozart that are talking about the golden mean, you know, and how it's not being observed, you know. It should be, you know. So unless you have that desire for that golden mean, right, you're not going to succeed, right? Even in art. Yeah. Not necessarily in, I guess. It's like people put ketchup on everything, you know. Everything tastes like ketchup, you know. Well, certainly they like ketchup. I agree. And, you know, there's a way of preparing a meat that kind of complements the meat, you know, and it brings out the flavor of the meat. You can enjoy the flavor of the other two is kind of, you know. It needs help. Yeah. Yeah. Slot the stuff on. That's what some kids, they eat one of those. I've always ketchup or mustard or one or the other. And they let some kids make suggestions of what to put on the label. And they started printing and selling them. And I forget whether it's ketchup or mustard, but one of them said, for hamburgers or hot dogs, that need a little help. Well, that's for somebody who isn't too good at cooking. Hamburgers with problems. So that's a very interesting distinction there between the looking reason and doing reason, as I call them sometimes, right? It's speculative and practical, let me see, and I think, you know. And Aristotle saw that, right? And Aristotle says that Homer taught the other Greeks how to make a good plot, you know. A good plot is not about what happened to one man, but a course of action is really a beginning, middle, and end, right? If a man's not aiming at that, he's not going to succeed. It's going to be kind of an episodic sort of thing. Okay, now we've got these funny words here, huh? I guess they...