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Thinking About Good—Thomas Aquinas on Nicomachean Ethics I, Divine Names IV‐V and de Ebdomadibus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
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Herbert McCabe taught in many ways, not least per viam provocationis. One day in the mid 1970s he provoked something far beyond his intentions with a throwaway remark about Summa theologiae I, q. 15, the question on ‘ideas’. ‘It must have been written by Saint Thomas on a platonic off day’, he declared, a comment that remained with the present writer to stimulate research in directions that might not have overly pleased Herbert. ‘Platonic’ and ‘platonist’ were not usually good words in his vocabulary, profoundly impressed as he was by Thomas’s achievement in developing Christian theology in radically new ways using the works of Aristotle, Plato’s brightest student and critic.
Thomas Aquinas himself, though, at the midpoint of his career, was convinced that the Platonists, in what they had to say about the first principle of things, were exactly right (verissima) and completely in harmony with Christian faith ‘. In fact, in a brief but potent contribution to the 1974 Thomistic Congress for the seventh centenary of Saint Thomas’s death, Andre von Ivanka asserted that as regards ‘good’, and because of the ontology supporting his understanding of it, Thomas not only ‘platonises’ but formally contradicts Aristotle. Where Aristotle argues that ‘good is not a general term corresponding to a single idea’ (.Nicomachean Ethics 1.6, 1096b25) Thomas says that ‘all things, in seeking their proper perfections, seek God himself, insofar as the perfections of all things are reflections (similitudines) of the divine being’ (Summa Theologiae I 6, 1 ad 2). Elsewhere Thomas says that ‘all things seek, as their ultimate end, to be united with God’ (Summa Contra Gentiles III. 19).
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- Copyright © 2002 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
Footnotes
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An earlier version of this paper was read at the Thomistic Symposium held at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, part of the Graduate Theological Union of the University of California, Berkeley in March 2002
References
1 Prologue to his commentary on the Divine Names of Pseudo‐Dionysius: see note (14) below.
2 ‘S.Thomas Platonisant’, in Tommaso D'Aquino nella Storia del Pensiero I: Le Fonti del Pensiero di S. Tommaso, Atti del Congresso Internazionale (Roma‐Napoli ‐ 17/24 Aprile 1974), Edizioni Domenicane Italiane, Napoli, 1974, pages 256–257.
3 For ease of reference to Thomas’ commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics‐Sententia Libri Ethicorum ‐ I use the paragraph numbers in the Marietti edition (Turin and Rome, 1949). The critical text is found in Tome 47 of the Leonine edition, Rome, 1969. On this commentary see Jean‐Pierre Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d'Aquin: sa personne et son oeuvre, Éditions Universitaires, Fribourg‐Suisse/Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1993, pp.331–334 and James C.Doig, Aquinas’ Philosophical Commentary on the Ethics: A Historical Perspective, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht‐Boston‐London, 2001.
4 Sententia Libri Ethicorum 1.1, par. 11 (Leonine 47.1, p.5, lines 165–183).
5 Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura, prologus S. Thomae (Marietti, Turin and Rome, 1951) par. 5.
6 Sententia Libri Ethicorum I.2, par. 30–31 (Leonine 47.1, p.9, lines 168–202).
7 Sententia Libri Ethicorum I.4, par. 49 (Leonine 47.1, pp. 14–15, lines 74–82).
8 Loc.cit.
9 Sententia Libri Ethicorum 1.6, par. 79 (Leonine 47.1, pp.22–23, lines 76–97). See Thomas, In XII Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio (Marietti, Turin and Rome, 1950), par. 2627–2663.
10 Sententia Libri Ethicorum I.7, par. 84 (Leonine 47.1, p.25, lines 18–42) and par. 94 (Leonine 47.1, p.26, lines 152–167).
11 Sententia Libri Ethicorum I.7, par. 95–96 (Leonine 47.1, pp.26–27, lines 168–213).
12 Torrell, op.cit., p.333.
13 James C. Doig, op.cit., pp.102–103.
14 I refer to Ps. Dionysius, On the Divine Names as ‘DN’ and to Thomas, In Librum Beati Dionysii De Divinis Nominibus Expositio as In de Div Nom with the paragraph number from the Marietti edition (Turin and Rome 1950). We still await a critical edition of this work of Thomas.
15 See my Ideas in God According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, Leiden, Brill, 1996, page 298.
16 The strongly anti‐Platonist statement of DN V.2 seems to be subverted somewhat by what Ps.Dionysius says in DN V.5. The fact that he feels it necessary to return to the issue in DN V.8 and again in DN XI.6 highlights the tension, oscillation, paradox, ambivalence, fluctuation or even contradiction in his theology. These various terms are used by interpreters of Ps.Dionysius depending on how successful they regard his theological synthesis of Proclus and Christianity.
17 See DN IV.1–4, for example, referring to Genesis 1.3–5, 16, 19; Wisdom 8.2; Romans 1.20; 11.36; 1 Corinthians 8.6; 2 Corinthians 5.13; Galatians 2.20; Colossians 1.17 and 1 Timothy 6.16.
18 See Edward Booth OP, Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamic and Christian Thinkers, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
19 See In de Div Nom 606, 610, 628, 641, 655 and Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate 2, 11 ad 5 where non‐being may be said to be ‘being analogically’, ipsum non ens, ens dicitur analogice. Thomas refers to Metaphysics IV.1, 1003b10 where Aristotle writes ‘we say of non‐being that it is non‐being’.
20 Sententia Libri Ethicorum 1.1, par.9 (Leonine 47.1, p.5, lines 148–153).
21 See W. Norris Clarke SJ, ‘The Limitation of Act by Potency; Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism?’, New Scholasticism 26 (1952) 167–194. According to DN V.4 the good is the being of all being and the creator of being (see In de Div Nom 613), the substantificator to all beings and to all levels of beings, which according to DN V.8 it pre‐contains in a singular way.
22 I refer to Boethius’ text of De Ebdomadibus as ‘B’ with the relevant section number. I refer to Thomas’ commentary as In de Ebd adding the section and line numbers of the critical text to be found in Tome 50 of the Leonine edition, 1992, pp.231–289. There is now an English translation of Thomas's commentary: St Thomas Aquinas: An Exposition of the ‘On the Hebdomads’ of Boethius, Introduction and translation by Janice L. Schultz and Edward A. Synan, Catholic University of America Press, Washington DC, 2001.
23 See James C. Doig, Aquinas on Metaphysics, M. Nijhoff, The Hague, 1972 and G. Schrimpf, Die Axiomenschrift des Boethius (De Hebdomadibus) als philosophisch Lehrbuch des Mittelalters, Studien zur Problemgeschichte der antiken und mittelalterlichen Philosophic 2, Leiden, Brill, 1966. It should be remembered that Boethius, like Ps.Dionysius, was acquainted with the philosophy of Proclus.
24 See Douglas C. Hall, The Trinity. An Analysis of St Thomas Aquinas’ Expositio of the De Trinitate of Boethius, Leiden, Brill, 1992, p.26.
25 See Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981, p.209, commenting on Boethius’ axiom fit enim participatio cum aliquid iam est: B II. Chadwick identifies the central concern of De Hebdomadibus as ‘absolute and relative goodness': pp.203–211.
26 Ethics 1.1, 1094a2 with Sententia Libri Ethicorum 1.1, par. 9–11 (Leonine, p.5, lines 148–183).
27 Note that Thomas replaces Boethius’substancia with essentia: In de Ebd III, lines 45ff.
28 In Ebd III, lines 55–63 with Metaphysics 1.15, 991a28–29 in the background.
29 B IV, lines 26–32. For Aristotle's definition of virtue see Nicomachean Ethics II.6, 1106a15–17. Thomas comes back to the point at In Ebd IV, lines 145–160.
30 The Leonine editors refer to Metaphysics IV.1, 1003a33‐b10 (already referred to at note (19) above) but one might consider also the text from Nicomachean Ethics 1.6, 1096b26–30 with Sententia Libri Ethicorum 1.7, par. 95–96, considered at note (11) above.
31 The link between the goodness of things and the will of God who is good is considered again in In XII Metaphysicorum, par. 2535 and 2631.
32 Leonine 50, p. 259. Douglas C. Hall argues that the work is unfinished: op.cit., p. 19.
33 ‘L'axiome ‘Bonum est diffusivum sui’ dans le néo‐platonisme et le thomisme’, Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa 1 (1932) Section Speciale, pp.5*–32*. Etienne Gilson argued that Thomas gave the phrase bonum est diffusivum sui an entirely new sense: Le Thomisme, Paris 19485, pp.182–86; p. 190 note 1.
34 Dewan, Lawrence, ‘St Thomas and the Causality of God's Goodness’, Laval Théologique et Philosophique 34 (1978) 291–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See especially p.298 and p.304.
35 Victor White OP, ‘The Platonic Tradition in St Thomas’, in God the Unknown London, 1956, pp.62–71.
36 See Patrick Madigan SJ, Christian Revelation and the Completion of the Aristotelian Revolution, University Press of America, 1988.
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