Single Question. Whether any Act of Ours can be Indifferent

1. Concerning the forty first distinction I ask whether any act of ours can be indifferent.

2. Argument that none can be:

Because between habit and privation there is no middle; good and bad are opposed by way of privation [sc. bad is privation of good];     therefore etc     . The major is plain because, from Metaphysics 10.4.1055b1-6, things opposed by way of privation are opposites that, in a naturally fitting subject, are contradictory; between contradictories there is no middle, Metaphysics 4.7.1011b23-24;     therefore etc     .

3. Further, habits are generated from acts [Ethics 2.1.1103b21-22]; therefore if there were some middle between a good and a bad act, there would be some habit that was neither good nor bad.

4. On the contrary:

Ambrose On Offices 1.30 n.147, in the Master’s text, “Your condition puts its name on what you do;” but if no act were of itself indifferent, no act could be per se good from one act and per se bad from another.

I. To the Question

A. Opinion of Others

5. It is said here [Bonaventure, Aquinas] that no individual act is indifferent, but an act in general can be indifferent; see Bonaventure [rather Aquinas].Aquinas On Evil q.2 a.5, “So if we speak of moral acts according to their species, then in this way not every moral act is good or bad but some are indifferent... Now some objects there are that do not involve either anything agreeing with reason or anything disagreeing with reason, as picking up a sod of earth from the ground., and acts of this sort are indifferent. But if we speak of moral acts as they are individual, then in this way any particular moral act whatever must, because of some circumstance, be either good or bad . So, therefore, acts good and bad in their kind are mediate opposites and there is some act that - considered in its species - is indifferent. Now this [individual] goodness and badness are proper to individual acts, and so no individual human act is indifferent; and I mean by ‘human act’ one that comes from deliberate will. For if some act is done without deliberation, coming from imagination alone, as stroking one’s beard.this sort of act is outside the genus of morals; hence it does not participate in moral goodness or badness.” ⁵⁴

II. Scotus’ own Opinion

6. There can be a different view about moral goodness and badness and about meritorious goodness and demeritorious badness:

7. In the case of the first goodness and badness [sc. moral], it seems that, by comparison to a natural act, indifferent acts can be found, namely those that, by comparison to all their causes, have a determinate species in kind of nature, and yet could have moral goodness and badness indifferently.

8. The proof is:

First because - according to the Philosopher Ethics 2.1.1103a31-b8 [“We first act and then get the virtues...; thus indeed do we become just by doing just things”] - the habit of justice is generated by just acts but not by acts justly done; these acts are not morally good because not done from virtue.

8. Similarly as to acts elicited after acquisition of virtue, for there seems to be no necessity that the will, when possessed of virtue, should necessarily always use it, but only when a passion so vehement occurs as to overthrow reason if the will were not to use virtue.

9. Also when speaking of good and evil in the second way [sc. meritorious, n.6], there seems to be a middle between good act and bad act. For if we understand moral goodness in the way stated in the preceding question [d.40 nn.8-9], merit seems to come from relation to the due end, and this relation comes about through charity existing within us.

10. Now an act can be referred by charity to the due end in three ways: in one way actually, as when someone actually thinking of the end loves it and wants something for its sake; in another way virtually, as when from knowledge and love of the end one descends to willing this thing for the end - for example, from knowledge and love of God, which pertains to the superior part [of the intellect], the inferior part considers that such an act (to wit, penance) is to be adopted, and then carries it out willing to do so but yet not then referring it to the end, because not then actually knowing and loving the end; in a third way habitually, for example when any act referable to the end and abiding in charity (which is the principle of referring) is said to be habitually referred.

11. In three ways too can an act be said not to be referred; in one way simply negatively, because the act is not referred actually or virtually [alt. habitually]; in another way by privation, because it is not of a nature to be referred - as venial sin, because although venial sin may stand along with charity, yet it is not of a nature to be referred by charity to the end; in the third way by contrariety, namely because the act destroys the principle of referring (namely charity), as mortal sin.

12. As to the last two members [sc. by privation and contrariety, n.11], it is certain that these acts are bad, namely venial and mortal sin. As to the first two [sc. actually and virtually, n.10], it is certain that the first act is meritorious and it is sufficiently probable that the second one is too.

13. As to the two in the middle, namely acts that are referred only habitually [n.10] and negatively [n.11], which are referred neither actually nor virtually, there is doubt whether such acts are meritorious or - if not - venial sins (because they cannot be posited as mortal sins), or whether such acts are indifferent.

If either of the first two members is posited [sc. the act is meritorious or a venial sin], it seems that a man who exists continually in grace either continually merits or mortally sins (or at least venially sins), because he elicits continually many acts that are neither actually nor virtually referred.

14. Positing that such acts, according to the aforesaid division [n.13], are indifferent seems probable, because they do not have that sufficient idea of badness which belongs to venial sin, for it is possible that there is in them no disorder sufficient for the idea of sin; for a man is not bound, either by the bond of necessity (against which sin is mortal) or by a lesser bond (against which sin is venial), always to refer every one of his acts to God actually or virtually, because God has not bound us to this. Nor does there seem to be in these acts a sufficient idea of goodness for them to be meritorious, because no referring less than virtual referring seems sufficient for merit, and there is no such referring here.

15. There are, then, many indifferent acts, not only according to the being they have in species of nature, but also according to the being they have in moral being; and they are indifferent as to meritorious good and to demeritorious bad, because one individual act can be of this sort and of that sort.

16. Many individual elicited acts also are indifferent, which are of neither one sort nor the other; and not only non-human acts, which the discussion is not now about (as stroking the beard, picking up a sod, and the like, that proceed only from imagination and not from impulse of free choice), but also freely elicited acts [nn.6-16, cf. d.7 nn.27-39].

II. To the Principal Arguments

17. To the arguments.

To the first [n.2] I say that good and bad in acts are not opposed by way of privation, either when speaking of moral goodness and badness or when speaking of meritorious or demeritorious goodness and badness; for an act is not bad merely from the fact it lacks this or that sort of goodness, but because it lacks the goodness it ought to have; but not every act ought to have such goodness.

18. To the other argument [n.3] I concede that like habits are generated from like acts, and thus that from many indifferent acts a like habit can be generated that stably inclines to acts similar in kind; yet it does not incline to them as good or as bad acts, just as the habit too is in itself neither good nor bad - as it is also not generated from acts good or bad; and so the unacceptable result that the reason adduces is not unacceptable but should be conceded as true.