Prima Secundae
Lecture 193: Prayer, Virtue, and Emotional Life in Thomistic Philosophy

Transcript
================================================================================

using prayer kind in the broad sense there's really three things to talk about right prayer the sense of the our father right asking god for suitable things right avoiding something right and then prayer in the sense of what thanking god right and then prayer finding the sense of what praising god right now you go to the chapel let's say right um sometimes you're asking god for things that you need or people that you know need right um other times you should be what thanking god right and then finally you should be what praising god right huh but to me thanksgiving is in the middle right because you're thanking god for good things he's done and evils he's kept you from right why in praising god you're kind of forgetting about yourself entirely and what you've gotten from god and just considering the excellence of god and he's worthy of praise you know and you kind of forget yourself right so thanksgiving is kind of the yeah yeah it'd be beautiful you know i mean a lot of times i noticed thomas when he's doing the commentary on the psalms right he'll put thanksgiving with praise you know as if they're almost the same thing you know it seems there's a little distinction there between thanksgiving and praise right and thanksgiving is closer to what you asked for but now it's not as selfish so to speak or uh as asking and uh it's kind of a stepping stone to praise so i think when you go to church sometimes you know sometimes i think i should make this a thanksgiving mass right you know and uh what's the first thing you should thank god for that's close to the first thing but now you've got to look before and after right i want to thank him for things he's done for me right in some sense right but is the first i'm going to thank god for is for creating my immortal soul that's very close to the first right but there's something that i would thank god for before the first thing i would thank god for is for his freely choosing me to be when you study god's will right you realize that he necessarily wills his own goodness right necessarily rejoices in his own excellence right but his will respect to us is free right okay so that he freely chose me to be right yeah yeah that's the first thing i should thank him for right i was thinking today and i was saying um when did he freely choose me to be of course he's not in time right it's like in the past you know he chose me to be it's like when you see god face to face you realize that his his life is not in time as poethius says the now that stands still makes eternity the now that flows along makes time he says the now that stands still so god is freely choosing you to be when you see him face to face right as well see okay then the second thing i would thank him for is for creating my immortal what so the third thing i would thank him for is my body right which came to me through my parents right and then i thank him that my mother and father what met right because otherwise my body would not have been what made and he would not have created a soul except to fit a body that has been made right okay and then they're thanking for your your brothers your sisters if you have them right and uh and eventually thank for your teachers and so on right and things of this sort i think for my grandchildren you know especially lady sophia but all about all you've teeth of them you know and uh like it's kind of interesting to think of all the things you you know kind of a little order to thank god for right huh but in a sense thanking god is what enters at least the way the transition i got of the song i don't know i don't know hebrew but enter his gates with thanksgiving his courts with praise right his courts it's like you're more inside than you were when you entered into the yeah into his gates of thanksgiving his courts with praise that to me seemed like that was this kind of a way of getting to praise right huh and uh you're kind of uh stopped asking for things and you're just you know thanking him for what he's giving you and now finally they make this transition to say let's forget about me and i receive you just think about god and and you're completely absorbed in him right now you know how what was it was it Teresa of Avila says you know heaven you know spare us you know sad saints you know this is beautiful about the song you know it says sing joyfully right now you know and then it says you know come before him the joyful song know that the lord and coming before him is being closer to him even than what singing joyfully to him right so you're not as close to him you sing joyfully to him as when you come before him contemplating his substance his operations the trinity and so on you know beautiful song you know beautiful song it's kind of attractive i said i said mostly we're going to teach him a song i don't know if they still know it or not but i mean this was seemed like it was kind of you know you know uplifting song you know but the more i think about that some the more it isn't it right but then when i come back to aristotle's um nicomachean ethics right um that the moral virtues are taken up before the virtues of reason right where you find the ultimate happiness of man and in you know natural happiness the kind of wisdom we call first philosophy right huh so aristotle will determine the tenth book you know that it consists most of all in contemplating god right and uh so far as you can right and he doesn't he doesn't know about the division right but he he realizes that this first philosophy is the first instance of what the last sense of before right better than all the rest right um but you have to see more than you have in the psalm there right right leading up there because what does he do in seven eight and nine nicomachean ethics huh he does all the virtues in two through six right and as shakespeare says on that part of philosophy the treats of happiness by virtue especially to achieve in the beginning he he's more what uh general about what happiness is but you see that it depends upon virtue you know and then you have to look at the virtue to see more distinctly what it is and that's what he determines in the tenth book what's he doing in seven eight and nine then right well in seven he deals with things that are um more or less than a virtue more or less than a vice right he deals with heroic virtue right and uh with bestial place right now you know these isis people almost special you know the way they do these things um and thomas will come back to that text when he talks about the gifts of the holy spirit right there's now some idea that there might be uh you know something higher you know than the human virtues right huh but though he doesn't know too much about them at all and uh but then you have the eighth and the ninth book which are about what friendship right and it seems to me they have a connection with virtues because he says the highest friendship is based upon virtue but they also what contribute to happiness right you know but for us of course happiness i mean our friendship is what when thomas takes up charity he has an article there where the charity is a form of what friendship yeah so it's like you know earth tower realizes the importance of friendship right and what is the most noble kind of friendship you know that you know about you know and we go further than that right even more noble kind of friendship but it's really something you know of the greek polis at least aristotle if i remember correctly was uh looking at friendship as the bond that would enable civil discourse to conversation seeking the truth and would unify uh political body yeah yeah but uh our country is so big you know that you tend to get separated from your friends right because of employment and so on and somebody go to this state and so on you know and uh well if you were in you know grew up and lived all your life in you would see your friends that you knew as a child, right? And you tend to make friends at an earlier age, you know. My best friends I made in high school or in college, you know. And you put, you know, employment and other things separates us, you know, from a distance, you know. My brother Mark ended up teaching on the West Coast and I was teaching on the East Coast and my brother Richard was teaching in the Midwest. So we say we divide out the country among us, you know. But you would have that problem if we were all teaching in Athens or something, you know. But in that sense, the big country might be better for commerce or something, you know, and military strength and so on, right? But in terms of friendship, you know, which is really more fundamental, you'd say there's a little problem here, you know. People have kind of interchangeable friends, right? But they don't really have friends in the deepest sense. And you realize how important friendship is, huh? So, as he replied to the first objection. To the first, therefore, it should be said that one does not sin except by the will as by a first, what? Mover. So, Thomas again is looking before and after, right? The other powers one sins by as by what ones that are moved by it, huh? Alis autum potensis peccator. As moved by it, meaning by the what? The will, right, huh? To the second it should be said, huh? That good and bad pertain to the will as the per se objects of it, huh? This is good and bad in what? General, right, huh? But the other powers have some determined, huh? Particular good and evil, by reason of which there can be in them virtue and vice and sin according as they, what? Of the will and of what? Reason, right? So, in Nicomachean Ethics, in Aristotle, at the end of the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, he's talking about the need to consider virtue and so on. And then he gives the distinction of virtue, right? And the virtues have to involve reason, otherwise it wouldn't be human, right? But it's not only the virtues of reason itself, but the virtues of that which partakes of reason, right? So, according as they partake of will and reason. Now, what about this last objection saying that sin doesn't seem to be so much in the hand, right? Okay. He says the members of the body, right, like the hand, are not the beginnings of acts, but only the, what? Tools. Tools, organa, tools. Whence they're compared to the, what? Moving soul as a slave, huh? Which is, what? Acted upon, huh? Or activated, and doesn't act, right, huh? But the desiring powers, the interior desiring powers, are compared to reason as it were, what? As it were free, yeah. Yeah. Because they are, what? In some sense acted upon, and act, right? As it's clear through that which is said in the first book of politics. What does Aristotle say there, right? You know? He's talking about the rule of reason over the emotions, huh? Should reason rule the emotions like a master rules his slave, or like a father rules his, what? Son. And what is the Stoic's answer to that? At least the caricature of the Stoic, huh? As a slave, right, huh? You know? And some psychologists say that's the way you get into psychological problems, right? When your reason, huh, rules your emotions like a, what? Slave, right, huh? Okay. It kind of crushes the emotions, huh? Aristotle concludes that the reason should move, should rule the emotions like a father rules his son. Now the son has to obey the father, right, huh? But the son has some, what? Choice as to what he does in life, right? And he follows in some extent what the son wants to do, right, huh? I always remember my father, he's a very wise man in many ways, you know, but he was telling us the story of one of his, you know, business friends, right? And he had all these hopes for his son, what he was going to do, right? And so he sent him out to Amherst, it was kind of a prestigious school out here, right, huh? That's going to be the first step on his glory path, right? And first year, of course, he flunked out, right? He was not, you know, suitable to Amherst. In fact, he wasn't suitable to college at all. So finally he comes home and, so to speak, he flunked out. And the father says, what do you really want? And he says he wanted a filling station, right? He wanted to work on cars. So his father was, you know, good, you know, had a good, you know, money. He buys the filling station, sets them up in the car things, you know, and the guy's happy, right? I think my father's told me that because he could see that, right? And I could see that his sons, you know, didn't want to maybe go into what, into business, you know, and be professors or, you know, be philosophers and all like that, you know. And he said, you could have a better life, he says, than I had, he says. My father had a chance to go to college, right, you know, and so on. I mean, the father listens to what the sons want, but within reason, right, huh? Not even the son wants, but he says, so then what? I think that's kind of the success, you know, I mean, if you say, why do we need the fine arts, right? And especially music, right? Aristotle in the eighth book of the politics, and he's talking about education there, right? He's a beautiful consideration of what the music and the, what kind of music you should listen to, and what kind of music, you know, is only for entertainment, so music should be listened to at all, and so on, you know. But music is what? If you have the music of the Baroque or the music of Mozart, right, it's very appealing to the ear, right, and to the emotions, but it moves the emotions in a, what, reasonable way, and therefore is disposing you, what, for moral virtue, right, huh? It doesn't make you morally virtuous just to listen to Mozart, but it's disposing in a sense for that, huh? And you're not, what, ruling the, when you use Mozart to rule your emotions, you're not, what, you're not treating the emotions like a slave, right? You're giving them something that they naturally rejoice, huh? I know when I first started to sing to Mozart, you'd say, now, you find that helps you control your emotions better? I think he came in with the good music that I did, you know, huh? But that's very important, right, huh? And it's part of the way that the will should be what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you have an opera like the Mozart, you can see what he's doing. He's doing exactly that, right? And so, you know, you're, you know, Figaro and Susanna are going to get married, right? And, of course, you know, you have the, like, the guad de senor, you know, and stuff. They're trying not with him, you know, and you get emotionally attached to Figaro and Susanna, right, against the Duke and the curse. And the end, of course, is, he is a, he's asked Susanna, you know, to meet him in the wooded area. And, of course, his wife shows up. I mean, she's disguised as Susanna. So, at the end, he's down on his knees, you know, asking forgiveness from his wife, you know. And so, but this is a beautiful aria, you know, where she's, you know, you know, realizes she's getting older and, you know, he's running after a younger woman and so on, you know. And it's a beautiful aria, you know, Dove Sona, you know, where he sings. And, but you see what Mozart's doing, right? You know, he's leading along, right? To what is something, uh, suitably, right? And Thomas says about good fiction, right? It should, what? Um, he went into something virtuous through a suitable representation, right? And that's what Shakespeare does. And what Mozart does is what the great artists do, you know. But then there are other kinds of fiction and other kinds of music that just lead people astray, you know. I remember my cousin, you know, he got out of college, he went into the Navy for four years and he was down there in the naval base and it was in Newport or something. And there was rock and roll, and people were going wild, they were throwing these foldable chairs, you know, talk about it, I mean, they're making me hurt you, you know, in the description of the ride at the rock and roll concert, it's, this music is not disposing people, you know. That's the reason, no. Yeah, yeah, you know, and music is especially important because it has such an emotional effect upon us, right? Mozart's instrumental music, you know, it's the symphonies that are really the, most of all, the more education, you know, and then of course the great Apples are too, you know, but instrumental music, it's the symphonies, right, it has a bit of an effect upon the emotions. But this is true in general about the Baroque and Mozart, you know, the essay that Austerl has, you know, it's a very good essay, why you should listen to that music, you know. Even people like Tchaikovsky, you know, they went back, you know, to listen to Mozart and one of his friends said, well, why do you do that? I said, well, escape from the Romantic period, you know, and all this disorder, right? So you're saying the hand can't be a subject extent because… Well, in the Sunni and much less of a way, yeah, it would be in a very, very diminished sense, right, compared to the emotions, right? Because emotions can partake of reason, right? Yeah. And so it's something, you know, this emotion of hate I might have when I'm going to hit you or something, you know, or this envy I have when I'm feeling, you know, that is more able to be, you know, a subject of sin than my hand itself, right? Yeah. Because the hand is just kind of like a slave, it just obeys kind of automatically, right? What is it, our Lord speaks to St. Gertrude about the father when he strikes a child, he says the hand has no choice. He speaks that way to St. Gertrude, so he talks about the ones that God makes use of to punish us for our sin, they're not responsible. Yeah. So it's kind of Nellie's use of the illustration. Yeah. This will come out when he gets talking about sexuality, you know, in the next couple of articles here, you know. So just look at the theory of objection again there. To the theory it should be said that the members of the body are not beginnings of acts, but only, what, tools, huh? Whence they are compared to the moving soul, right? As a slave, you might say, right, huh? Which is, what, acted upon and doesn't act, right? But the desiring powers, the interior desiring powers, are compared to reason as it were being, what, free. And, of course, the will of primarily being free, right? But in a certain way the emotions are, they have a certain say of their own, right, huh? Which, in a certain way, right, acts as well as are acted upon, right? As is clear through that we just said in the first book of politics. And moreover, the acts of, what, exterior members are actions, what, passing over into the exterior, what, matter, right? Right, huh? So they're not, as it were, in. By kicking you is more in you than in me, if you'll find out. You see? So my hand, my foot cannot be so much the subject, right, huh? Of that activity, huh? There's more in you, huh? Okay? Or the water, the fire heating the water, right, huh? It's more in the water, right? It's being heated. And it gives examples just as of the, what? Parish, striking out in the sin of homicide, right? On account of this, there's not a, what? A similar, what? Reason as is with the two parts. Okay, to the third one goes forward thus. Oh, take time for a break, okay. To the third one goes forward thus. It seems that in sensuality, that's kind of a name for what, the sense appetite, right? It falls irascible and it gives away. It seems that in sensuality there cannot be what? Sin, right? For sin is something what? Private or proper to man, right? Because from his acts he is praised or blamed. But sensuality is common to us and the brutes. Therefore in sensuality there cannot be sin, right? It seems like there's not sin in the peace, right? Moreover, no one sins in that which he is not able to what? Avoid. As Augustine says in the book on free judgment. Free will. But man cannot avoid but that the act of sensuality will be what? Disordered, right? Where sensuality is of perpetual corruption, right? As long as we live in this mortal life. Whence it is signified through the what? Serpent, huh? As Augustine says in the 12th book of the Trinity. Therefore the disorder of the motion sensuality is not a sin. You have no control of that. Moreover, that which a man himself does not, what? Yeah. Is not imputed to him for sin. But that only do we seem to, what? Do. That we do with the deliberation of reason. As the philosopher says in the 9th book of the, what? Ethics. So I used to talk to students and say, you know, which is, other things being equal, which is more serious? A murder of passion or a premeditated murder? Yeah. You had time to think about it. And it's like you're, as I say, if you want to break off a relationship, if you do it in words, it's not as permanent as if you sit down writing a letter, right? Because you had a chance to think about what you're saying, you know, you write your insult. You insult somebody, you know, under passion, right? You're getting angry or frustrated with somebody. You can maybe apologize for it more easily. But if you break the insults, you know, let it go. It's pretty hard to take them back, you know. I see somebody doing what's an incredible politics, right? And after he ranted off the paper, he says, oh, I like my fingers got carried away at the keyboard. I don't think so. I don't think so. Therefore, the emotion of sensuality that is without the liberation of reason, right, is not imputed to a man as, what, to a sin, huh? But against this is what is said by St. Paul, I guess, huh? In Romans chapter, what, 7, huh? Not the good that I will, this do I do, but the evil that I hate, that I do, huh? Which Augustine expounds, huh? About the evil of concupiscence, which it stands to reason is a certain motion of what? Sensuality of the emotions. Therefore, in sensuality there is some sin, huh? Well, what does the master say? I answer, it should be said, this has been said above, sin can be found in any, what, power whose act it can be, what? It's able to be voluntary and disordered in what consists of the ratio of sin, right? Most of the word in ordinatis, right, goes back to before and after, doesn't it? Shows you how that, you know, it's opposed to reason, right? It's disordered, right? Because reason is defined by order, right? Looking before and after, as Shakespeare says, huh? Now it is manifest that the act of sensuality can be voluntary insofar as sensuality, that is the sensitive appetite, is apt to be moved by the, what? Will. Will. Whence it remains that in sensuality there can be, what? Sin. Now, what's the difference between us and the beasts, right? Is the dog sin there and biting you or barking at you? Tom says that's what he's supposed to do. To the first effort should be said that some powers of the sensitive part, right, although they are common to us and to the brutes, nevertheless in us they have a certain, what? Excellence. From this that they are joined to, what? Reason. Just as we, apart from the other animals, have in sensitive part cogitativa, right? That's the one that, what, like particular reasons, Aristotle calls it, that brings together individual images and so on. And reminiscence, right, huh? Okay, Aristotle's a book on memory and reminiscence, right? Another expression, brute memory, see? That's not so human, is it? Brute memory, right? Like what the beast says, you know? But what is reminiscence, right? See? It's a kind of a, like a discourse of reason, but in the memory, right, huh? You know, as someone says to you, what were you doing last Sunday at four o'clock, you know? You say, well, I don't remember what I was doing Sunday at four o'clock. And then you say, well, now it's the same. You say, oh, yeah, Joe so-and-so came over on Sunday afternoon, yeah, it was around three o'clock, yeah. And then we talked for a while, you know? We went out for a walk, oh, yeah, I was taking a walk at four o'clock, you know? Well, it's kind of a discourse, you know, from one thing to another, right, huh? I was laying in bed there, and I was, you know, I sleep about four or five hours, and then I wake up, and then I start thinking, or this is the thing. And this time I was thinking about Shakespeare's plays, right? And I was saying, now, I knew I had three good-natured comedies. Now, what were they? Well, right away they came back, two of them, but not the third one. Comedy of Errors, right, and The Merry Ways of Windsor, right? And I say, why did those two come back to me and not the third one, right? I said, well, in Comedy of Errors you've got the word comedy in it, so obviously I would remember that in terms of that. And The Merry Ways of Windsor, well, that's the effect of comedy to make us merry, right? So I said, that's why those two came back to me. What was the third one? I couldn't think of it. I'm getting the time of life where our names and things, I couldn't remember it. And so I woke up this morning and looked up. Oh, the taming of the shoe. Why the heck can I think of that, see? But it didn't have the word comedy or merry in it, right? I said, now, how can I remember that better? Well, you see, in The Merry Ways of Windsor, they're playing jokes in Falstaff, right? And he's making these proposals to the wives of Windsor, and they pretend to accept and they play some trick on him, right? And they find it is a great disgrace of him there in the forest. But why the taming of the shoe is the reverse, that's the female getting out of order, right? Making a shoe, and she has to be tamed, right? So she's made fun of it in a sense, right? And so in Falstaff, you have the man being, you know, made fun of it, and taming of the shoe is the woman, right? So, oh, yeah, yeah, that's completeness there, right? And I'll remember it, you know? But it's a reminiscence, right? You know, you can remember things like that, huh? I remember one time I came into the office there with DeConnick, you know, and I was talking about some question about the text there, you know? And, oh, and I said, you know, I was turning around, he was about to look at it, he said, oh, I don't even look at your book, he says. He saw his book, right? Because his memory is going by the, you know? You see? And I really look at your book, you know? He's pretty good looking at it as I turn around like that, just to show him the text I was, you know, raising a question about, you know? But you read that book sometime, and Memory and Reminiscence is called, you know? But reminiscence is like, you know, I think you even used the word syllogism, right? It's not syllogism in the strict sense there, but there's a kind of a discourse of reason, you know, where one thing leads to what? Another, right? And now you think about somebody else, and you recall some time and some event in their life, and some little thing, and it can, you know, go from one thing to another. So, that's what Thomas is touching upon here, right? Reminiscence, right? There's a famous little work of Aristotle that comes after the Danima, the book on sensation, the book on memory and reminiscence. And in this way also, the sense appetite in us, as a suit and excellence, apart from that of other animals, huh? To wit, that it is apt to what? Actually apt to obey what? Reason. reason, right? And to that extent, it is able to be a what? Beginning of the voluntary act and consequently a subject of what? Sin. It's that part of the soul that what? Can partake of reason, right? Without being essentially reasonable, right? And so the music of Mozart and the Baroque disposes the emotions, right? To partake of what? Reason, huh? And good fiction does that too. Now what about this corruption, huh? It comes down from original sin, huh? To second, it should be said that the perpetual corruption of sensuality is to be understood as regards what? Huh? The foamy, foamy. Yeah. Which is never wholly what? Taken away in this life, huh? For the original sin goes away as far as guilt, right? Baptism, I guess. And but effect, huh? Remains an act, huh? But such corruption of the foams is not impeded but that man, what? By reasonable will is able to repress individual disordered emotion sensuality, huh? If it is present, right? By diverting thought to the other things, right? So I always tell this story. I was driving up to Quebec, right? I said, well, I think I'll take a different route. So I went through Maine there and took the route to President Kennedy, right? Well, the route to President Kennedy is no honor to President Kennedy because this pop was always slowing down, right? This Frenchman behind me, you know, he was getting impatient with me, right? So he finally, you know, had it past me, you know, and he roared by me, you know? And his tires picked up a stone, right? And I could hear it hit the side of the car. Well, I knew there was a, you know, a new car. I knew there was a mark in the car, right? So when I got someplace there, I stopped by me and said, look at that thing. A little upset about it. I said, oh, I'm a philosopher. I don't get upset at those things. Like if I had the car go, ah! Why repress that? That feeling, right? Why get upset about marking your car in this car? Father Hardin said important use of your will is to drive. But when a man, right, diverts his thought, right, huh? It can also, what, be that about that some, what, disordered motion arises, right, huh? Just as when one transfers his thought from, what, the delectables of the flesh, wishing to avoid the motion of, what, sins, huh? To the speculation of, what, knowledge, right, huh? There breaks forth some motion of an empty glory, inane glory, right? That's one of the, what, capital sins, right? Inane glory, huh? Unpremeditated, right, huh? Okay? And therefore man is not able to avoid all motions of the sort, right, huh? An account of the foresaid, what, corruption, right, huh? But this only suffices to the, what, ratio of a voluntary sin, that one is able to avoid, what, singular ones, right? You can't avoid sin, as St. John says, didn't he say that, didn't he, yeah? This one has a footnote for the Council of Trent, you know, sins, and then they accept by a special privilege of God, just like the Blessed Virgin Mary had. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now to the third, it should be said, that that which man does, without the deliberation of reason, he does not, what, perfectly, right? Do, huh? Because nothing does, because nothing is done there by that which is principle in man, huh? Okay? When should it not perfectly a, what? Human act. Human act, huh? And consequently, it cannot be, what, perfectly an act of virtue or of, what, sin, but something imperfect in the genus, huh, of these, huh? When such emotional sensuality, going before, right, coming before reason, is a picatin veniality, right? Venial sin, which is something imperfect in the genus of, what, sin, huh? So there's some truth in those objections, right? But not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.