A. Opinion of Thomas Aquinas

1. Exposition of the Opinion

183. One opinion [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.1] posits that beatitude consists in an act of intellect principally and essentially, and in act of will as in a certain perfection extrinsic to and supervening on vision - in which vision is the substance of beatitude.

184. The reason for this is of the following sort: beatitude either is the ultimate extrinsic end, which a thing attains by its operation, or is the ultimate intrinsic end, and is that operation alone which conjoins first with the exterior end; an act of will is the ultimate end in neither way; therefore beatitude too does not consist, in this way or that, in the will as an act of it - though it is in the will as object, because the idea of good is the object of the will, and beatitude, as it is the ultimate end, has most of all the idea of good.

185. Proof of the minor [n.184]:

As to its first part [‘an act of will is not the ultimate extrinsic end’]: first because the object of the will is the end, so every willing is a certain being ordered to the end; second because willing cannot be the first thing willed (for it presupposes that something other than willing is willed first, because a reflected act presupposes a direct act that has its term in something other than an act of the power, otherwise there would be an infinite regress). Something like this appears in the intellect, because [an act of] understanding cannot be the first thing understood, but something other than the very [act of] understanding is the object first of a direct act of understanding.

186. Proof of the second part of the minor [n.184, ‘an act of will is not the ultimate intrinsic end’], because the operation that first conjoins with the exterior end is the operation by which the attainment of the exterior end first comes about; an act of will is not of such sort, because there is one act of will before attainment of the end, namely desire, which is a sort of motion toward something not possessed, and another act of will is a sort of resting in the end. It is plain that the will does not first attain the end through the first act, because it lacks the end when it has that act. Nor does it do so through the second act; the proof is that the second act follows attainment; for the will is only now at rest in the thing it was tending to before because it is disposed differently now to the thing than before, or conversely. Therefore, what makes the will to be thus disposed to the end, so as to be (in it or through it) at rest in that which before it was tending toward, is the ultimate attainment of the end; such is the act of vision, because through this a certain contact of God with the intellect comes about (for the thing known is in the knower). Through this contact the object is so disposed to the will that the will can now be at rest in what before it could not.

187. This is confirmed by an example in the sense appetite, that if the sensible object is the extrinsic end, sensation is the intrinsic end, because the sensible object is first possessed through the sensation in such a way that the sense appetite can be at rest in it.

188. This is plain too in another example, that if money is the extrinsic end, possession of money is the intrinsic end, which intrinsic end is followed by the resting of the will in the loved money.

2. Rejection of the Opinion

189. Against this:

The extrinsic end is simply best and supremely to be willed, therefore, among the things that are for it, what is more immediate to it is more to be willed; but willing is more immediate to it, because it immediately tends to it as to ultimate end, since the ultimate end, as such, is the proper object of the willing.

190. Proof of the major:

That is more to be willed by a free will which is naturally more to be desired by natural appetite; of this sort is what is closer to the ultimate, because it is simply more desired naturally.

191. Again, the will can will its own act just as the intellect can understand its own act; either then it wills its willing on account of understanding, or conversely, or it wills neither on account of the other (and I am speaking of ordered willing). Not the first because, according to Anselm Why God Man 2.1, it would be a perverse order to will to love in order to understand;Anselm, “For this purpose has man received the power of discriminating, so that he might hate and avoid the bad and love and choose the good... For otherwise in vain would God have given this power of discriminating, because man would discriminate in vain if.he did not love the good and hate the bad.” ⁴⁶ nor the third, because, in the case of things ordered per se to the same end, there is some order among them as if to an end under the end; therefore the second - and this is what Anselm maintains in the above cited place.

192. Again, if extrinsic beatitude were simply supremely to be willed, then that most of all is intrinsic beatitude, which, among things intrinsic, is supremely to be willed; of this sort is some willing; for the will more desires its own perfection in the ultimate end than the perfection of the intellect (and this, when speaking of correct free appetite, it does rightly), just as it naturally more desires it by natural appetite.

193. To the reasoning [n.184-85], then, I concede the first part of the minor and the first part of the conclusion, namely that the act of will is not the ultimate end altogether.

194. But neither so is the act of the intellect (according to them [n.185]); however, the act of will does approach more to the simply ultimate end - just as the first reason [n.184] proves about attaining, through this act, the end as proper object, and the third [n.184] about the greater wantability of this act, and the second about the idea of end in this act in respect of the act of intellect [n.184].

195. Nor do the proofs for the first part [n.185] prove more than is given:

For the act of will is ordered or orderable thus to the end simply because it is more immediate to it in the order of the things that are for the end; but the act of intellect, if it is not ordered, is yet orderable and mediately so, and for this reason it participates less of the idea of end.

196. The second proof [n.185] shows that something is willed prior to the willing itself; and I concede this, because the object is extrinsic; but the object is not intellection, at least when speaking of what is willed first in perfection, whatever may be true of firstness in generation; for that firstness does not prove anything for the proposed conclusion, namely that what is first willed is more an end.

The second part of the minor [n.184] I deny.

As to the proof [n.186] I concede that through an act of desire, which is for something absent, there is no attainment of the end; but through another act, which namely is the love of the thing present, there is attainment of the end first, speaking of the firstness of perfection, though through an act of intellect there is some sort of prior attaining of the end by priority of generation. But now, according to the Philosopher, Metaphysics 9.8.1050a4-5, “things posterior in generation are prior in perfection,” which is true of the posterior that is simply more immediate to the ultimate, which ultimate is what is simply perfect. So it is here.

197. When the proposed conclusion is proved about second act, that it is a resting in the end and consequently posterior to the attaining of the end [n.186], I say that resting can be understood either for delight properly speaking (which is a perfection supervenient to operation, as beauty to youth), and thus do some [Richard of Middleton] understand this reasoning, as if this opinion [of Thomas, nn.183-188] posit that with respect to the present object the will have only a delight consequent to the vision of the intellect; and if resting be thus taken for delight, I concede that it follows the attainment of the end, and the attainment first not only in generation but in perfection, because it follows the act of loving or enjoying the end seen, which is truly an elicited act of the will. But it is false that the will not elicit any act but have only passive delight about the lovable object present. Therefore does Augustine say On the Trinity 9.12 n.18, “The appetite of the seeker becomes the love of the enjoyer.”

198. Now this appetite or desire is not passion only: first because “we are not praised or blamed for our passions,” Ethics 2.4.1105b31-32 (but the greatest part of the merit and laudability of the just wayfarer consists in holy desires), second because for an object presented in the same way the will elicits desire sometimes more intensely, sometimes more laxly, according as it elicits it with greater or lesser effort.

199. It is also reasonable that if the will in desiring elicit an act, as is said in Lectura II d.25 n.36 (for which there is the authority of Augustine, City of God 14.6, about two similarly affected people,“For if two people, equally affected in mind and body, see the beauty of a single body and, when it is seen, one of them is moved to illicit enjoyment, the other perseveres settled in chaste will, what do we think is the cause that a bad will come to be in the former and not in the latter?” ⁴⁷ and of Anselm Virginal Conception 1“God has subjected us and what is in us to the will, so that on its command we not be able not to move and do what it wills. Indeed, it moves us as its instruments and does the deeds that we are seen to do. Nor are we able to resist it by ourselves, nor can the works that it does not come to be. The mistress, which God has given us, we neither should, nor can we, not obey.” ⁴⁸), that it also elicit an act about the end present, because if by acting it move itself toward a thing not possessed, it is reasonable that by acting it give itself rest in the thing present.

200. If then ‘resting’ is taken in another way for the quietening act elicited by the will, which act namely conjoins immediately with the ultimate end, in the way ultimate rest is in it, I concede that the resting is a second act of the will [n.197]. But I deny that it follows the first attainment of the end, I mean first in firstness of perfection; rather, in this way is it the first attainment, though it does follow some attainment, that is, the presence of this enjoyable object, which presence is by act of intellect.

201. But when speaking of first attainment in this way, namely the first presence of the object so that the will might be able, through its own act, to rest itself in it, I deny that this operation is the ultimate intrinsic end, through which is the first attainment of the extrinsic end; because the operation that is in this way first in attaining does not conjoin with the extrinsic end immediately, to the exclusion of all mediation of anything else nearer to the end.

202. If against this be adduced the proof that the will can now, not before, be at rest, therefore ‘it is disposed differently now to the end than before, or conversely’ [n.186], I reply that the consequence does not hold, but it is enough that some power, prior to the will in operating, be differently disposed to the object, by the positing, namely, of whose different disposition the will has power for the act for which it did not have power before, not by alteration of itself but of what was previous to it in acting.

203. Briefly then: the first part of the deduction [n.185] is not against any opinion, because no one posits that the act of the created will is God; nor is the second part [n.186] about the first act of will, namely desire, doubtful to anyone. The force then [of the deduction] rests in this: whether any act of will, other than desire, could be first in reaching the ultimate end.

204. And the proof adduced there about resting [nn.197, 186] is a failure of equivocation. For if resting is taken for the delight consequent to perfect operation, I concede that perfect reaching of the end precedes that resting; but if resting is taken for the act of resting in the end, I say that the act of loving, which naturally precedes delight, gives rest in this way, because an operative power only rests in an object through the perfect operation through which it attains the object. And then the proposition ‘the first, that is, the perfect, attainment of the object precedes resting in the object’ is false, though having an appearance of truth from comparison with the motion by which a movable thing attains the term and attains rest in that term, since movement to the term precedes rest in the term.

205. But this comparison with the proposed conclusion is not valid, because the same operation is here perfectly attaining, and perfectly giving, rest, because the resting is in the perfect attainment of the object. And universally, when applying such likenesses taken from motions to operations, one must give up what, because it is a mark of imperfection, is therefore proper to motion. But so is here its distinction from rest; and, by opposition to it, the following are in operation in a unitive way: attainment of the object (as if by motion, or rather by tendency toward it), and resting in the object (since indeed such tendency toward it gives rest in it).

206. But if every operation of the will about a present object be denied other than delight - this is irrational, because if the will is operative about an absent object, but an object known imperfectly because obscurely, much more perfectly will it be able to operate about an object present perfectly, because seen.

207. If it is argued that the will can be at rest in the object now, not before, therefore it is differently disposed to the object (or conversely) than before [n.186] - I reply: the consequence is not valid, but it is enough that some power, a different one prior in operating, be disposed differently to the object than before [cf. n.202, repetition]; nor is it a wonder that a power, which in operating requires another operating power, is not altogether in proximate potency to operating save when the other is operating.

208. If it is argued that at any rate through that new thing, through which as new the will can be at rest now, the will was not able to be so then, therefore the attaining of the end is through that and is prior to the resting of the will (as is plain), therefore the first attainment of the end will be in that other act - I reply: first by firstness of generation, not by firstness of perfection; but beatitude is first attainment by firstness of perfection.

209. But if you argue that altogether, before any resting of the power, the possession or attainment of the end precedes, namely because the power can operate now and was not able to before, because it is not without some change, which change is only to possessing of the object - it follows that in no operation, even of the intellect, could there be a first attainment of the object, and so not beatitude either. And then the reasoning goes to the other opinion, that beatitude is not in operation but in some possessing of the object preceding all operation, which was spoken about in the first question [n.121].