1. To the First Argument

117. As to the first argument [n.3] I say that it is not a definition of the blessed but a description, and truer than the rejected others, because it is given through what is necessarily concomitant to the blessed, unlike the other descriptions that are rejected by Augustine. An abstract [formulation] then, cannot be inferred about an abstract, because such a consequence holds only when in the antecedent there is predication of a concrete about a concrete in the first mode per se [n.68].In the first mode per se the predicate falls into the definition of the subject (as in ‘man is a rational animal’), and here the abstract formulation (‘humanity is rational animality’) does follow the concrete one. But not so in the case, say, of the description ‘man is capable of laughter’, which does not entail the abstract formulation ‘humanity is capability of laughter’. So, just because the blessed has everything he wants and wants nothing badly [n.3], it does not follow that blessedness is the having everything that is willed or wanted well. Some things wanted well (e.g. a blessed body) are not part of the definition or essence of beatitude but do accompany the blessed in fact. ⁴³

118. It can be said in another way that ‘everything that he wants’ is not taken divisively there for the things formally wanted, but for some one thing in which exist unitively all things that are rightly wanted, so that the sense is: the blessed is he who has perfectly, in the way possible for him, some object willed because of itself, in which object he has unitively and eminently whatever he can rightly will. And from this understanding the proposed conclusion follows, because in this way he has through operation whatever he wants.

119. As to the authority from Boethius [n.3], one must give as exposition either (1) that the name of ‘beatitude’ is equivocal, either (1a) for final or completive perfection taken extensively or (1b) taken intensively; and the former description (1a) is of beatitude taken according to its extensive totality, or one must say, if it is taken for its intensive totality (1b), that it is a state perfect by aggregation of all goods within one good eminently and unitively containing them. Or (2) if there is no aggregation in it because of its simplicity, then (in a third way) ‘by aggregation’ must be understood as what precedes or is concomitant to the perfect state but is not part of the essence of it.