Prima Secundae
Lecture 214: Capital Vices: Their Nature, Division, and Correspondence to Goods

Transcript
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It might be something different for you. You wouldn't get upset at all if you were served salmon, right? But it might be something else that affects you, right? Right? Yeah. Okay. You can't teach that. You've got to teach something that is true either always or for the most part. So Aristotle says you can't teach what happens by luck or by chance. Because it doesn't happen always. It doesn't happen most of the time, right? So there was a story there of the guy who ran into, somebody's car. And there's a nice young lady in the car that he ran into. And she's going to sue him back in the day before he had to a fault. And it took so long going through the court, you know, because you go down there and arrange and change the dates. They got to know each other and fell in love. By the time the thing finally came up, they were going to get married, right? I say, now, I wouldn't recommend that as a way. If you see a nice girl in a car, just run into her, you know? So I get to know you better. But if you take it, how do you, what? How do you meet your future wife? Well, there could be some chance in it, right? You know, and you tell somebody, you ask them, you know, how'd you meet them? And it's kind of funny, right? And one guy ran into his wife and knocked her down. So, right. So, there can't be any art or science. You don't even do something that's true for the most part, right? Or if not always, right? But either always or... In geometry, you know things that are always so, right? Triangle, Thomas says, always has its interior angles. You can do right angles. In natural science, you see men are born with, what? Five fingers, right, huh? But some men, basically, are born with six fingers, huh? They say the animal doesn't have six fingers. I don't know what the hell they saw in her, but... I heard that, huh? But some people are born without an arm or something, I know. Okay. But you can still say that man is a two-armed or two-legged animal, right? Because it's true for the most part, right? But you can't teach something that happens rarely, right? Okay. He eats salmon or something like that. But this mode of origin is not able to come under art, right? In that infinite are the particular dispositions of men. Nothing's about the infinite, right? Another way, according to the natural, what? Relation of these ends to each other, right? And according to this, ut in pluribus. Not always, right? But ut in pluribus, huh? For the most part, huh? I will teach you a concerto, I say, For the most part, men are bad, huh? Most men are bad. As Aristotle said, most men prefer a life suitable to beasts. That's not good. Whence this mode of origin is able to come under art, right? Even though it's not true always, right? It's true for the most part, right? According to this, therefore, those vices are said to be capital, whose end, right, have primary reasons of moving the, what? Appetite, right? And according to the distinction of these reasons, the capital vices are, what? Distinguished. But something moves the appetite in two ways, huh? In one way, directly, and per se. And in this way, the good moves, what? The appetite to pursuing it. The bad, according to the same reason, to fleeing it, right? In another way, indirectly, and as a word to another. Just as someone pursues something bad on account of some good joined to it. Or something, what? He flees something good on account of something bad joined to it, huh? Okay. Now he says the good of man is threefold, huh? Going back to the old division of what? Yeah, the Greek side, right? Aristotle and Socrates talk about, huh? Goods of the soul, goods of the body, right? Exterior goods, huh? The good of man is threefold. The first is a certain good of the, what? Soul, right, huh? Which from the, what? Only from the grasping of reason, which only from apprehension, I should say, right? Has the notion of desirability. To it, the excellence of praise, or what? Honor, right, huh? And this good, inane glory, or empty glory, right? Pursues in a disordered, what? Way. Another is the good of the body, and this either pertains to the conservation of the individual, as food and drink, huh? Potable water, as they say, in some of these things in Europe there, you see potable water, and you can drink it, and this good, Gula, pursues in disordered, right? I suppose that increases falconness, too, right? But Gula's taking the process. Or to the conservation of the species, right, huh? I suppose intercourse, right? And to this, luxury is what? Or lust is ordered, right, huh? No, it's our word luxury there, it's the idea of something kind of superfluous, right? You're needing a luxurious life. Well, you don't need all that. Cut back on that. The third good is the, what? Exterior good, to wit, what? Wealth, right, huh? And to this is ordered, what? Avorice. And the same, and the same four vices disorderly flee the contrary, what? Evils, yeah. So I suppose disgrace, and you're fleeing, what? Poverty, and these things, right, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know St. Thomas divides it into three, but the middle one there, he divides it into, what? Subdivides it into two, but he still observes the rule of, you know, three and two and getting four. Yeah, he definitely did, definitely did, yeah. Now, here's another way of approaching this, huh? The auditory. Good especially moves desire from this, that it partakes something of the property of, what? Happiness, okay? Because it in some ways is like true happiness, right? Which naturaliter, which all naturally, what? Desire, right, huh? Okay. I think I was mentioning how you divide philosophy into, what? Two main kinds, right? Looking philosophy, which some call theoretical philosophy from the Greek word for looking, or speculative philosophy from that Latin word for looking, but, which I like to call looking philosophy because that's the word in English. And the other is what they call practical philosophy, right? Or the philosophy of doing, you could say, right? And the philosophy, looking philosophy, begins in the desire called, what? Wonder, right? And Albert the Great says, you know, that great poetry, right? Rouses in wonder, right? And so Aristotle, he's commenting in Aristotle's word that the philomuthos, the lover of myths or stories or fairy tales, right? Is in some way a philosopher, right? Because he's motivated by what? Wonder, right, huh? Aristotle argues that, you know, that geometry and all these parts of looking philosophy are, that they are looking philosophy. philosophy because they are pursued out of wonder, right? Not of any practical desire, right? It's not arising the desire for wealth or something like that, right? Desire for power or something else, but just out of what? Wonder. But what desire does arise to this philosophy of doing? Yeah, the desire for happiness, right? And so Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, he has two considerations of happiness, right? The more general one in the first book, right? And at the end of the first book, he sees a connection between this happiness and human virtue, right? As Thomas says, you know, virtue is the road to happiness. Vice is the road to misery. And you see it all the time in the paper, every day. But after he goes through all the virtues, right, the corresponding vices, and then takes up friendship, right, too. Then he comes back in the tenth book and finishes his consideration of what happiness is. But in domestic philosophy, you're aiming at not just your own happiness as a man, but the happiness of your, what, family, right, huh? So my wife and I, we decided there were going to have any TV in the house, and the kids are, you know. I mean, they'd see TV, you know, at the grandmas and grandpas, but there's no TV in the house, right? And so they get a certain love of, what, reading, you know. My daughter has no TV in the house, right? But the children, you know, do much more reading, you know. So it's good for them, right? It's good for them, huh? But you think of the happiness of this child, right, that he's going to have something more substantial, you know, what he's going to get from watching TV and not knowing how to read or write. I guess kids don't know how to read or write anymore, you know, he's going to, you know, press the button, that's about it, yeah. It's very superficial, right? Very superficial, right? Anyway. But then in political philosophy, you're looking for the happiness of your country, right, huh? Which is what George Washington, these great men were doing, right? Seeking the happiness of the country. So this is the chief thing, this is the end of life, right, is saying. So this is interesting, he says here, huh? Good especially moves desire from this that it partakes of something of the property of happiness, which naturally all desire as a kind of their purpose in life, right? De course ratione, whose notion is first a certain, what, perfection, right? For happiness is the perfect good, right? To which pertains excellence and, what, clarity, which pride or iname glory, right, which is, like it, is aiming at, right, huh? Secondly, of the idea of happiness, it's got to be sufficient good, right? It's completely satisfying, right? Okay? Which averaged, the desire is promising, right, it in wealth, right, huh? So I always quote the, the, one of my fellow students there in high school there, you know, when a professor in the home class, home school, home class, he had that at the beginning of the day before you begin your classes with, he'd give you a little fatherly advice, you know, monies and everything. And he says, you know, yeah, but what if it isn't it'll buy? So the idea is efficiency, right, huh? You know? And they're always advertising this thing, you know, the magazine thing there, where, you know, you get, I don't know, 7,000 a week or something for the rest of your life, something like that. They'll say, oh, if I had that I'd be all set, you know, you know, have all I need. I remember they were talking years ago about, they did interviews with these people who had won big money prizes in Canada, and most of them were more miserable than they were before they won the money. They ended up getting divorced and all kinds of crazy things that happened, you know, and their lives just went to pieces. Yeah, but people think, you know, gee, gee whiz, you know, if I could win the big prize, you know, it was a Super Bowl, whatever they called it, all kinds of money, you know, and they keep it going up every week, you know. And some of you, some of you kind of feel good for the person they want it, because they're in a very lowly state, you know, and they've got needs of money, but maybe most of them who win these things will end up, they don't know what to do, you know, they don't know what to do with it. It's kind of funny, huh, because people, you know, they know how sometimes, you know, even people who don't get the money that way, they know how to make money, right? But they don't know what to do with it once they, what? Yeah, yeah. I remember one time being on a board of trustees, you know, and this one guy was trying to pull a deal off there, you know, to get more money, he had lots of money, and somebody else stopped him, you know, and he always had the guys in tears. I was sitting there and saying to myself, he's got all kinds of money, who's he, you know? Why does he have to be almost in tears because he can't pull off one more money-making deal, you know? But, you know, Soros, you know, it gives money to all the wrong things, right? Some of these guys, and people contribute to their own campaign and so on, and people, they know how to make money, but they don't know what to do with the money once they get it, right? But money seems to make, you know, take care of everything, right? What it is, it'll buy, right? Everything is for sale in Rome, they said, right? That's, but happiness is something, it's got to be a sufficient good, right? Enough, right? If it's not sufficient, then it's not perfect, it's not a, it's not, it's not going to be dissatisfying, right? Okay. And the third condition of it is, happiness, without which happiness cannot be, and this is what? Delectatio, right? Okay. Joy or pleasure, right? And interestingly, Aristotle, in the tenth book there, before he gives his final consideration of happiness there, right, he takes up pleasure in how, you know, that is, right? As is said in the first and the tenth book of the Ethics, right? Okay. And Gula and Luxuria, right? Clotony and Lust. Sik, yeah, it seems to be the pleasures that are most known according to the senses anyway, right? Well, there are times for a beer, you know, the happiness that it brings, you know, you can see all this happiness. I miss the way that people are reacting in the advertisements. So, he has the same, what? Four, but in a different way, right? Two ways of showing it, right, huh? One takes off from the, what? The division of the goods of man, right? And the other from these things that are required, like properties, you might say, of happiness, right, huh? It'd be something perfect and excellent, right, huh? Yeah? And Gula said, if I could be President of the United States, I'd be above everybody else in the country. Everybody in the country would listen to me, right? For an hour and 15 minutes last night. I couldn't get the whole kind of listening to me, I don't think, because it's very poor attendance, so I mean, people watching it, you know, yeah, they went down. They respected the advice or so. After six years, they kind of know what you sang. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they kind of know what it's worth. Yeah, but I mean, the noise. Yeah, they had a bully puppet, you know, pulpit, you know, they call it, the president has a bully puppet. Pulp, pulpit, and when they sang puppet. I sang it. I sang it. I sang it. I sang it. I sang it. I sang it. Yeah. He has wealth, you know. Okay. Now, I'm going to go to the other side of the distinction he made before he went into those two, where he says something moves the appetite in two ways, in one way directly and per se, and he's kind of gone through that with those two explanations of the same four, right? And another way, indirectly, in quasi-perali, what he says. But that someone flees the good in account of some evil, what, joined to it, this happens in two ways. Because this is either with respect to one's own, what, good, and thus it is achidia. Now, I don't know. I used to translate it in the old Baltimore, laziness, you know, but yeah, sloth is probably a bit of a cleansing idea. Which is said about a spiritual good on account of the bodily labor, what, joint, huh? I was working down on the doctor in the summer there when I was in high school. And the guy says to me, kind of a guy who rips the dock all the time, he says, what would you do if you won the prize, right? I said, well, I'd find a quiet place there and do some reading. I said, what would you do? He says, I get to hear him. He says, I think he met her, right? And he got his office on the dock there, he had these, you know, girl pictures there, right? So one time my brother Mark, you know, got the job of being in charge of the dock, right? So he took my pictures down and took him away. Guy comes back and says, what happened to all my pictures? We just said, we just called him. We laughed about the thing. Somebody got to hear him, maybe he would have, I don't know. But we don't know what to do with it. The idea, you know, that you had to go and study that once you had this, you know. You study these things, you're forced to do so, right? So some people don't have to go to church on Sunday morning, right? You know, it's more comfortable to have another couple hours of sleep, right? Sure, right. Or about a, what, alien good, right? And this is, if it be without insurrection, pertains to what? Envy, right? Which is sad about an alien good, the good of another, insofar as it impedes one's own, what? Excellence, right? We're seeing a book by a sociologist there, you know, talking about how envy is very much found in our society, right? And it's kind of a, yeah, it's kind of a disease of democracy, right? Because we're all equal, right? And so why is this guy, you know, up there high above me, you know, doesn't deserve to be there, you know? And I see his elevation, you know, as kind of a front to me, and what Warren Murray described to me when Deconic died, you know, and all these people crawling out of the woodwork, you know? They were kind of, you know, taken up with his fame, you know, and so on, and kind of envious of it, huh? That's a common thing, that envy, you know, in our society. He told me one day, he said, you know, there's something funny about me. And he was right. Because he said, every time I see somebody benefit, even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with me, I feel in some ways that I've lost something. And this guy ended up going on and becoming an immensely successful lawyer and partner at a major firm in Boston. And, but it was staggering. First of all, the honesty was impressive, but that whole perspective is all from the devil. That's the hope that ended the world in the end of the devil. He envied God first, and everybody else. Yeah. Well, it's kind of competition between parents, you know, their children to be, you know, the best school, or being the best job or what it is, you know, and so on, they envy the other parents because their kid is more successful in some way or other, you know. Yeah. Or parents, sometimes they get angry as they do because my kids' friends seem to like their parents more than their friends like me. Yeah. Everybody else's parents are cool, but not me. The kids all like this parent, that parent, that's right now. They're like, it was a cartoon of a lot of things. So these guys, a baseball game, I had three of them friends, and one is boasting about his son, saying, well, my son got into Amherst College. The second one says, oh yeah, well, my son got into Harvard. So the first one's like, hmm. And the third one goes, oh yeah, well, my son, that's 375. And the other two go, hmm. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER You read, what was it, David Hume, you know, and he's talking about, oh, and now the famous Aristotle completely, you know, washed away, you know, and so on, you know. They kind of, you know, disliked the idea, you know, these people are held up, you know, and they're supposed to follow them in some way or learn from them in some way, right? They kind of envy their position there. It's kind of funny, one of my professors there in modern philosophy, there at Laval, used to have a joke there about Descartes, you know. Descartes is called the History of Philosophy books, the father of modern philosophy, right? He says he has no sons because nobody files them. Everybody does their own thing, you know, in modern philosophy because if they file somebody else, then you're doing honour to them right now. And so you would envy them their position, right? So you've got to be original and start your own mess and... Elements in modern book philosophy, unquote, like deconstructionism and also Rawls. Rawls, isn't it? His concept of the ideal society, which is really counterintuitive in certain ways. Essentially, it's kind of the lowest common denominator... Very democratic, that way, yeah. Yeah. But they all seem to be fueled in certain ways by envy at their foundation. I think I saw it in memory here, and we went to unrest in the forest, trouble with the trees, but the maples want more sunlight, and the folks ignore their fleas. And so the maples formed a union and demanded equal rights, and so on. And the last verse of the song goes, now there's no more over-depression, for they pass the noble law, and all the trees are equal by hatchet, axe, and salt. That's how you get solved. Except that what? Right. Yeah, that's what John Gennaro and Jim Garner, and I used to play that tune back then. It's an interesting tune, it has some musical merit to it, but the best part was the word. They just claim it has any meaning other than just being a silly verse, and it sounds like it has a lot of meaning, it says in commentary on society in general, socialism, the Canadian group, so it's not like a commentary on socialism. I was talking to a nun there who thought women should be ordained, and that sort of stuff, and I was quoting something from John Paul II. Well, not when he's Pope, but he'll get some mixed poppers and they'll open things up. I think the press is trying to think that Francis would do something like this, something. But I mean, there's some element there of envying somebody's own, right? That they can't have positions of authority like a bishop or even a pastor, or they can't be a priest, right? And you could envy that, I suppose, or they can't be a priest or on power trips. Which is interesting, it's just a secular job that one aspires to, a sort of promotion, which is certainly not at all, you know, the servant of all, that's, that's what, that's what, my counterbalance, that might say, try a way to see more deeply into it is to say, yeah, sure, women who want to be priests are on power trips. Where do you get the idea, though, that priests are on power trips? No priests are on power trips. Or he says it's an insurrection to what? Revenge, I suppose, huh? And thus it is, what, anger, right, huh? And to the same vices pertains the, what, pursuit of the evil. Okay, now he's got to reply to all those horrible objections, right? Okay. Makes life difficult, doesn't he, huh, Tom? So, I think he just enjoyed doing that, huh? Chuckling to himself, right? Don't, keep people down there. Okay. To the first, therefore, it should be said, this is the one that now said they should be one-to-one correspondence, right, in the number of the vices, right? Of course, evil is in many ways, that's the first thing that I think of, but Thomas is a little more precise here. To the first, therefore, it should be said that there's not the same reason of origin in virtues and in vices. For the virtues are caused by the order of desire to reason, or also to the, what, unchangeable good, which is God, the bonum incommutabile. Got to talking about time with my students there, but I'm going to talk about eternity next time, you know, incommutabile good, God. But vices arise from the desire of some commutable good. Okay, well, there are more of them around, right, huh? Okay. So guys have a hard time competing there with all these goods we have. You know, I was thinking, you know, of how the dignity or worth of man comes from reason, right, huh? And in the Nicomachean Ethics, when Aristotle gets through considering in the third book there, the senses, and then he takes up reason, right, huh? And then he has a little place where he talks about the soul and the basis of what he's taught or learned about the senses and reason, right? And he says that the soul is in some way all things, right? Because the senses are open to all things sensible and the reason to all things understandable, right? And then put that together with what Thomas does when he quotes God saying to Moses, I will show you every good. And Thomas says that is myself. So in a sense, God is every good, right, huh? But the soul is in some way all things too, but in a very imperfect way, right? And when you say a large discourse, you know, well, if discourse about the universal, the universal covers what? If it's being in one, like in metaphysics, it covers everything, right, huh? But even number, you know, covers the infinity of things, right? So the soul knowing these universals in some way, at least a confused way, is all things, right? So in a very distant way, he's, what, like God, huh? So Aristotle, I mean, Shakespeare calls reason God-like, right? He just said I like this there, huh? But the commutable woods are multiplied, right? Whence is not necessary that the principal vices are opposed to the principal, what, virtues? And what's the second objection about why do you take things that pertain to joy and sadness but not to the other ones? Of course, he takes the two principal ones in the concubisable appetite and the two principal ones in the irascible, but you've got to remember that the irascible ones arise in some way from the concubisable one. To the second, it should be said that fear and hope are the passions of the irascible one. Now, all the passions of the irascible arise from the passions of the, what, concubisable, which are, which all of these are ordered, ultimately, right, in some way, to pleasure and sadness, huh? Because we have to have something that pleases us or want to avoid something that makes us sad, right, huh? And therefore, pleasure and sadness are chiefly numerated among, right, or conumerated in the capital vices. As it were, not only the principal, but princio i palissime, right, the most principal, right, passions, right, has been had above when we discussed the passions, right? I think I told you my little thing there when I first started getting interested in fiction there in a logical way there from reading Aristotle's book on the Poetic Art, right? Well, he lost the part on comedy, right? And in the part on tragedy, though, he speaks of pity and fear, right, huh? So I said, well, comedy is the opposite of tragedy. Therefore, it should move the opposite passions of, what, pity and, what, fear, which would be, what, some kind of joy and confidence or boldness, right, which is the opposite of, what, fear, yeah. And then, as I started to study the emotions more in Thomas, you know, in the day he's very taught to you and so on, and then you look at what the principal passions are, right? And it's not confidence, it's not one of them, but it's hope, right? And then I began to realize that comedy is more concerned with mirth, which is a form of joy, and hope, right, huh? And when I was studying it, I was studying the Roman comic dramatists a bit, right? And the guy was, you know, quoting St. Paul there, you know, about faith, hope, and charity for the greatest of these charities. But the comic poet, the greatest of all is hope, he says, right? And, you know, and I was saying, yeah, because that's, you know, kind of, you know, he was talking about, you know, these comic dramatists on the Romans and the aspect of hope, you know. But that's because of the principal passion, though, right? You can see it, right? So I was mistaken, right, huh? It wasn't a bad idea, you know, see that, you know, contrary things have contrary effects, right? So like the great, what, Pedocles says, you know, that what brings the atoms together, what separates them, are love and hate, right? Love brings together, hate separates them, right? So this argument is saying, but even though hope and fear are principal passions are not the principalissime, right? The most principal, right? Which are in the concubiscible. So when they talk about the passions, they say the concubiscible ones are first, and then the irascible, what, arise from that, and then you go back again to the concubiscible at the end, right? So if I beat up the guy, you know, anger, you know, I'm going to have some joy, you know, right? You know? Or if I hope to get the girl, I get the girl into joy, you know, see? So the hope goes back to joy, right? You know, it gives more, right? But it begins with love and hate, and then you want something that you love, and you try to avoid something you hate, right? And there's a difficulty arising, then you need the irascibles, right, you know, to help you overcome the difficulties of getting the good or the difficulties of avoiding the bad, right? So if you're stepping on my toe, and I say, you're on my toe, and you say, so what? Well, that requires maybe a little bit of anger on my part to get you off my toe, right? You know? Or you're out there, you know, using my kids' or target practice, right? Well, that's going to get some anger on my part. Or like the folks said there, right? Insult my mother. When you talk about my mother, you get a plan. Yeah. So that's the reply to the second objection then, right? Now, the one about anger, though, is a little more of a problem, isn't it, right? Because that's not even one of the four, right? Okay? Let alone being principalissime, right? To the third, it should be said that anger, although it is not a principal passion, because, nevertheless, it has a special reason of a predative motion insofar as someone, what? The good of another under the notion of something, what? Honorable, right, huh? Of something just that is, yeah. Yeah. Therefore, it's distinguished from the other capital vices, right, huh? Okay? But, you know, you can go on and you can say, you know, what Shakespeare says there, you know, they're in the very wrath of love, right? Kind of a pun on there, right? But why do you compare love with wrath, right, huh? Because they're strong, what? Emotions, right, huh? And that's how easily we can kind of see when somebody's angry, right, huh? They come in, you know, and you see they're angry about something, you know, they're, you charge them too much, you've done something that made them angry, right, huh? And angry is a very manifest passion, right, huh? But it's strong, right, huh? And so when Aristotle, I know Aristotle, when Thomas takes up the virtues in more detail in the secunde secunde, right, and he divides them according to the theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues, but then he takes up the other virtues and attaches them to one of the cardinal virtues, well, to what cardinal virtue does he attach?