SOURCE: "Action Theory in St. Thomas Aquinas" in Miscellanea Mediaevalia, Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1987, pp. 13-22.

[In the following essay, written in 1987, McInerny examines Aquinas's thoughts on the common good and ultimate end, particularly the distinction between conceiving and realizing perfection.]

In this paper I shall be discussing an issue in Thomistic moral theory that seems to have its parallel in Aristotle. Students of Aristotle have often considered the relation between the analysis of decision in Nicomachean Ethics III, where the model is an end/means one, and that in Nicomachean Ethics VI and VII, where the preferred model is the practical syllogism, to be problematical. A similar difficulty can be raised about the relation between the opening discussions of the Summa theologiae, Iallae, (and not only qq. 1-5, but also the whole sweep of discussions from q. 6 through q. 17), and the discussion of natural law later on in that same part of the ST. In both the Aristotelian and the Thomistic cases, we find one analysis that stresses the goal or purpose of a deed, and portrays decision as the search for appropriate means to that end, and another analysis where decision is portrayed as the application of principles and rules to particular situations.

Some students of Aristotle, impressed by the account of practical syllogism, downgrade the treatment of deliberation in NE III, and suggest that Aristotle's later treatment in VI and VII should be taken as definitive. This is the view of D. J. Allan in his valuable essay, "The Practical Syllogism"¹. The supposition of development in Aristotle's view was called into question by Gauthier and Jolif², who say these "later" books form part of the earliest Aristotelian course in ethics. Pierre Abenque considers the practical syllogism to the Platonic in origin and finds Aristotle's originality rather in the tension he saw between end and means that requires deliberation³.

One could go on, but the point is not to adjudicate between these positions so much as to note that there is an assumption of a more than superficial difference between the end/means model and the principle/application model as explanatory of human action. And this prompts the question: how does St. Thomas relate his treatment of final end and happiness, at the outset of the IaIIae, to the doctrine of first principles of practical reason developed later on? Are these alternative, even antithetical, approaches to human decision and action, or is the later discussion the natural development of the earlier?

This is a vast subject and can hardly be treated in anything but a sketchy fashion in a short paper. I shall concentrate on one of three crucial distinctions Thomas makes concerning ultimate end in IaIIae, qq. 1-5, and relate it to the discussion of natural law found later in the same part of the ST⁴.

1. Ultimate End

The dependence of the opening five questions of ST IaIIae on Aristotle is, of course, obvious, and the student of Thomas will quite naturally compare what the Angelic Doctor says in the later independent work with what he had said in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. One way of testing the value of the commentary is to see what light it casts on vexed issues in the text, and when we look at Thomas's analysis of the apparent argument for an overall, superordinate ultimate end of all we do, an argument found in NE 1.2, we can at first be disappointed.

"If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good."⁵ Thomas extracts the basic argument and treats the parenthetical remarks as reductiones which sustain the main moves of the proof.

1. Quicumque finis est talis, quod alia volumus propter ipsum, et ipsum volumus propter seipsum, et non propter aliquod aliud, ille finis non solum est bonus sed optimus.
2. Sed in rebus bumanis necesse est esse aliquam talem finem.
3. Ergo in rebus bumanis est aliquis finis bonus et optimus⁶.

   Clearly, (2) is the nerve of the argument, and in n. 20 Thomas offers a reductio ad impossibile on its behalf.

4. Si autem non est invenire aliquem talem finem sequitur quod omnis finis desideratur propter alium et sic proceditur in infinitum.
5. Sed hoc est impossible quod proceditur infinibus in infinitum.
6. Ergo necesse est esse finem, qui non sit propter alium finem desideratus.

   Now it is (5) that sustains the argument, and Thomas offers another reductio to sustain it.

7. Si procedatur in infinitum in desiderio finium … nunquam erit devenire ad hoc quod homo consequatur fines desideratos.
8. Sed frustra et vane quis desiderat id quod non potest assequi.
9. Sed hoc desiderium est naturale: bonum est quod omnia naturaliter desiderant.
10. Ergo sequitur quod naturale desiderium sit inane et vacuum.
11. Sed hoc est impossible. Naturale desiderium nihil est aliud quam inclinatio inhaerens rebus ex ordinatione primi moventis, quae non potest frustrari.
12. Ergo impossibile est quod infinibus procedatur in infinitum.

It is not unusual for readers of Aristotle to object that he does not prove his point, and what is found wanting in Aristotle would seem to be wanting in St. Thomas as well. That the ends of some activities can be subordinated to the end of another activity, as in Aristotle's examples of the military and architecture, is clear enough, but that there is a single comprehensive ultimate end of all human activities does not seem to follow from the argument. Why cannot there be a plurality of ultimate ends? Human action would not be frustrated if chains of actions terminated in superordinate ends andthere were several, even many, such superordinate ends.

The clue to Aristotle's response to this objection must doubtless be sought in the notion of a "single capacity" or dynamis ("kata mian dynamin "). Is there some way in which actions can be identified as human in the way in which a group of activities can be identified as military? Well, the introduction of the notion of ergon in NE 1.7 provides that criterion. As for Thomas, one knowledgeable in the Summa theologiae will have noticed the occurrence of the phrase ratio boni in lectio 1, no. 10. Furthermore, the opening consideration of the IaIIae provides a way of gathering together all human actions precisely as human.

Man differs from other cosmic creatures in having dominion over his actions, that is, in being free. But man has dominion over his deeds thanks to reason and will. Therefore, it is those actions which proceed from man's deliberate will which are human. St. Thomas adds to this argument another.

Manifestum est autem quod omnes actiones quae procedunt ab aliqua potentia, causantur ab ea secundum rationem sui obiecti. Obiectum autem voluntatis est finis et bonum. Unde oportet quod omnes actiones humanae propter finem sint⁷.

Aristotle's dynamis was translated as virtus—"sub una quadam virtute"—in the versio antiqua and the connection between a single capacity and one formality under which things are accounted objects of that capacity is obvious. In the sed contra, St. Thomas has made the same point thus:

… omnia quae sint in aliquo genere, derivatur a principio illius generis. Sed finis est principium in operabilibus ab homine … Ergo homini convenit omnia agere propter finem.

The basis for the claim that there is a single comprehensive end of human actions is there, but it may seem that all we really have here is a universal in praedicando, that is, it is universally true of each and every human act that it aims at some good or end, but the goods or ends aimed at can be as numerous as the actions performed.

It is in IaIIae, q. 1, a. 4, that Thomas asks if there is an ultimate end of human life, but articles 5 and 6 indicate that the question of uniqueness remains unsettled. If everyone—indeed, everything—desires the good, everyone thereby seeks his own perfection which functions as an ultimate end, being the perfect and complete good⁸. Any action aims at the perfection of the agent, at a good which is comprehensive, leaving nothing to be desired. The usual response to this is that many people simply pursue one thing after another, particular goods, and the desire for perfection never enters their lives. John Rawls apparently thinks of the desire for perfection as going beyond mere ordinary desires⁹. But "perfection" here is a commodious term, covering every completion of an action. The action reaches its perfection in attaining the goal at which it aims. Even so, the objector would say, there are many actions and many objectives and consequently many perfections, not a single comprehensive one.

In Article 6, St. Thomas makes a distinction which is crucial for his own teaching and, it could be argued, casts light on the Aristotelian difficulty as well. Asking whether there is one ultimate end for all men, Thomas makes a distinction between two ways of speaking of ultimate end: one way involvesthe notion of ultimate end, the other that in which the notion of ultimate end is realized. That is, there is a formal conception of ultimate end, the ratio boni or the ratio ultimi finis, and there is the concrete things or actions in which that notion is thought to be realized. Our question—Is the ultimate end one?—receives different answers depending upon which sense of ultimate end we have in mind.

Quantum igitur ad rationem ultimi finis, omnes conveniunt in appetitu finis ultimi: quia omnes appetunt suam perfectionem adimpleri, quae est ratio ultimi finis'¹⁰

As to where they seek this, men differ and differ widely, some taking money, others pleasure, others fame, etc., etc., as that which will fulfill their heart's desire.

This distinction between ratio boni vel finis and id in quo ratio invenitur follows on the fact that the object of will is the end or good universally taken¹¹. Will, being the intellectual appetite, cannot simply pursue this thing as this; whatever is desired is desired under a common formality, a ratio, such as goodness, the notion of goodness. So commodious a notion is this, that is covers even evil actions'¹².

About this, two things, the first having to do with Aristotle. That Aristotle proves the existence of the ultimate end by invoking, in effect, the ratio boni vel ultimi finis is clear from the fact that, after giving the argument, he goes on to recount the different ultimate ends men pursue. Only after that, by bringing in the notion of man's function or ergon, does he develop a substantive notion of ultimate end.

Second, understanding good and ultimate end in this formal sense, St. Thomas may seem to be in agreement with such analytic philosophers as G. E. Moore and R. M. Hare, for whom "good" functions in a purely formal fashion, and is not defined by appeal to any properties of the things called good, with the result that anything whatsoever can be called good. Any attempt to define good by appeal to properties of things called good, with the result that anything whatsoever can be called good. Any attempt to define good by appeal to properties of things called good is an instance of the Naturalistic Fallacy. For Hare particularly¹³, moral goodness becomes almost a logical or second intentional feature of moral discourse. The clue to whether I am using "good" or "ought" and other "moral terms" morally, is tested by, among other devices, univer-salizability. If—and this is the crucial point—if such formal criteria are satisfied, the moral philosopher has nothing further to say, qua moral philosopher, about the difference between "You should share your goods with the poor" and "You should ruthlessly exploit the poor." Hare himself does not flinch from admitting that one advocating genocide could do so in a way that would be as moral as St. Francis. Or St. Genet. No wonder that Analytic Moral Philosophy has sometimes been said to fuse with Sartrean Existentialism.

The fact that St. Thomas holds that even bad actions are performed under the aegis of the notion of goodness would seem to link him to such anti-Naturalists as Hare. Yet, St. Thomas is presumably as much of a "naturalist" as Aristotle in morals, holding that in the nature of the case certain things must enter into, and others be excluded from, the "good for man." How do we move from the formality to the substantive account of the good?

This is the point of talking of man's function or ergon. In doing whatever he does, in performing anyhuman action, a person is seeking that which is perfective or fulfilling of himself as human. That is the formality under which he does whatever he does. But the particular actions performed, the ends, sought, may or may not satisfy, really, the reason for our seeking them. How can we know this? Because the substantive thing sought is not perfective of me, even though I mistakenly pursue it as if it were. Substantive actions and ends can satisfy the formality of goodness, or the good for man, only if they are indeed perfective of the human person.

The criterion, or criteria, are to be sought in the nature of the human agent.

It is here that we can see one fundamental link between the early and later discussions in the IaIIae. We will see that, just as the ratio boni is complemented by id in quo ratio boni vere invenitur, so bonum est faciendum is complemented by appeal to man's natural inclinations.

2. Natural Law

After St. Thomas has discussed the intrinsic principles of human actions, powers and habits, he takes up the external principles, the devil, who would turn us to evil, and God who by law and grace moves us to the good and to Himself. The Treatise on Law first expounds a definition of law which is based on human positive law and then extends and applies it to various other kinds of law. Among these is the so-called natural law, an account of the most common principles of practical reason.

At the very outset of his discussion of law, St. Thomas introduces the practical syllogism.

Et quia ratio etiam practica utitur quodam syllogismo in operabilibus quod Philosophus docet in VII Ethic., ideo est invenire aliquid in ratione practica quod ita se habeat ad operationes, sicut se habet propositio in ratione speculativa ad conclusiones. Et huiusmodi propositiones universales rationis practicae ordinatae ad actiones, habent rationem legis¹⁴.

The analogy between the theoretical and practical uses of reason is a familiar feature of the discussion of law. Nor do we have to wait long before St. Thomas links the notion of law and of ultimate end. "Primum autem principium in operativis, quorum est ratio practica, est flnis ultimus."¹⁵ A rational directive has the force of law only because of its link with the common good, which is the common beatitude and ultimate and. "… cum lex maxime dicatur secundum ordinem ad bonum commune, quodcumque aliud praeceptum de particulari opere non habeat rationem legis nisi secundum ordinem ad bonum commune. "¹⁶

The extension of the term law to the principles of practical reason has become so familiar that we have lost the sense of how strange it must originally have seemed. When it is first introduced, natural law is given a quite explicitly theological definition: it is the specifically human participation in eternal law. All creatures are guided by divine providence, but man shares in it by guiding himself according to the natural light of reason¹⁷. Man has both the knowledge of eternal law, which is peculiar to him, as well as the common natural inclination to that which is consonant with eternal law (notio legis aeternae and naturalis inclinatio ad id quod est consonum legi aeternae.)¹⁸

But it is in the celebrated text of q. 94, a. 2 that we find a discussion like that prompted by thedistinction between the ratio ultimi finis and id in quo invenitur illa ratio. That distinction prompted us to wonder if St. Thomas's concept of the good were formal in the way R. M. Hare's is, since this would raise questions as to the possibility of any non-formal, natural criteria of inclusion and exclusion of possible substantive candidates for fulfilling this notion. In recent years, the Thomistic doctrine of natural law has sometimes been presented as if it were essentially identical to G. E. Moore's position¹⁹. Thomas, like Moore, is seen as one for whom there is no essential link between the notion of goodness and the things and actions that can rightly be called good for man. For Moore, goodness is a non-natural property of the things called good and can only be intuited. Similarly, Thomas has been characterized as one who avoids committing the naturalistic fallacy by according practical reason autonomy and independence from speculative reason. Let us examine q. 94, a. 2 in the light of this claim.

The article addresses the question whether natural law contains one precept or many and begins by noting the following parallel: as the first principles of demonstration are to speculative reason, so are the precepts of natural law to practical reason. The similarity lies in the fact that in both cases the principles are per se nota. Principles are per se nota, self-evident, when the predicate is part of the understanding of the subject, as in "Man is rational". When the terms are such that no one can fail to understand them, the principles are called dignitates or axioms, but there are also principles self-evident only to the wise who know the meanings of their terms. The first principles of the practical and theoretical orders are axioms.

A term whose meaning no one can fail to know is "being," since it is implicit in and presupposed by every other meaning. (Thomas does not here give a ratio entis as he will shortly give a ratio boni.) A first judgment is based on the understanding of being and nonbeing. "It is impossible to affirm and deny the same predicate of the same subject simultaneously." What is the parallel in the practical order to the concept of being and the principle of contradiction in the theoretical order?

Sicut autem ens est primum quod cadit in apprehensione simpliciter, ita bonum est primum quod cadit in apprehensione practicae rationis, quae ordinatur ad opus: omne enim agens agit propter finem, qui habet rationem boni. Et ideo primum principium in ratione practica est quod fundatur supra rationem boni, quae est, bonum est quod omnia appetunt. Hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.

This precept is implicit in every precept of natural law. There is a plurality of precepts of natural law since what practical reason naturally apprehends to be human goods ought to be done and their opposites avoided. What are these human goods? What things does reason naturally apprehend as goods to be done or evils to be avoided? St. Thomas finds the answer in the natural inclinations, and grounds the order of precepts on the order of these inclinations.

The discussion of these inclinations is an obvious parallel to the senses of life and vital operations Aristotle sets down in Nicomachean Ethics I. 7. Thus it is in man's nature, in the aspects he shares with other creatures as well as in that which is peculiar to him, that the basis of the human good is found. Needless to say, it is not these goods, the objects of natural inclinations taken just as such, which constitute the precepts of natural law. Rather, reason, having naturally grasped these goods, prescribes actions aimed at attaining them or avoiding their opposites. A precept is always a directiveof reason bearing on a good that reason naturally recognizes as the object of a natural inclination.

The complementarity of the end/means analysis and the principle/application analysis of human action can be seen in a number of ways. Actions are concrete and particular but, as human, proceed from deliberate will, and thus under the aegis of the good generally understood. It is because I judge this action to exhibit the formality of good, that is, to be perfective of me, that I perform it. Universality, generality are inescapable features of human actions. The theory of natural law involves making explicit the principles that should guide human action given the nature of the human agent and the elements of the human good. Doubtless, these principles are first recognized as embedded in particular judgments, much as the principle of contradiction is. Just as the end or good is the beginning of the process of deliberation, so the principles of practical reasoning prescribe that the human good and its components are to be sought and their opposites avoided.

But what now of the end/means schema and practical syllogism, which provides the discursive setting for principles and their application? If we advert again to the Aristotelian problematic, we find D. J. Allan calling attention to a fusion of these two approaches in the De motu animalium (701 a 25). There, observing that action is the conclusion of a reasoning process, Aristotle adds, "but the premisses which lead to the doing of something are of two kinds, through the good and through the possible." Are these different kinds of premiss in the same thought process? Allan thinks the distinction points to different kinds of major premiss and thus to two kinds of operative syllogism: "… a premiss 'of the possible' starts from the desirability of some End, and leads to the performance of an action as a means, whereas a premiss 'of the good' starts from the notion of a good rule to be realized in a series of actions, which are severally good, not as means, but as constituents."²⁰ Minor premisses would be, respectively, "this is a means to the end," and "this is in example of the rule." But might we not say that every rule of action is the statement of an end? Allan replies that one could hardly reverse this and argue that whenever several steps conduce to an end, the end is a universal of which they are particular instances.

Pierre Aubenque sees in the theory of deliberation the way toward establishing the minor premiss of the practical syllogism. "The difficult thing is not to know that one ought to be brave nor to decide that what has been recognized as the brave thing to do ought to be done, but rather what bravery is hic et nunc."²¹

This suggestion that deliberation or consilium aims at the formation of the minor premiss of the practical syllogism accords well with St. Thomas's teaching and provides us, I think, with the essential clue in connecting the end/means and the principle/application approaches and seeing that they are complementary to one another rather than radical alternatives. In discussing counsel or deliberation, which is of course clearly placed in the context of an end/means analysis, St. Thomas invokes the practical syllogism and with it the principles of natural law, thereby suggesting what what Aubenque sees in Aristotle is equally the case with Aquinas²².

The distinction between the ration boni and id in quo invenitur ratio boni, introduced by St. Thomas in discussing ultimate end, has its parallel in the discussion of natural law which appeals to the ends of natural inclinations in order to given substance to bonum est faciendum et malum vitandum. Beyond that, far from being an antithetical alternative to the end/means analysis, the practicalsyllogism, and its most common principles, incorporate the end/means analysis. The compatibility and complementarity of the two approaches to moral decision is pertinent because of the effort of some moral theologians to pry them apart in order to deny moral absolutes.²³

Notes

¹ Cf. Autour d'Aristote, Louvain, 1955, 325-340.

² L'Ethique a Nicomaque, Introduction, Traduction et Commentaire, R. A. Gauthier OP and J. Y. Jolif OP Paris, 1958, Tome I, pp. 43^*-47^*.

³ La prudence chez Aristote, Paris, 1963.

⁴ The three distinctions. are (a) that between the ratio ultimi finis and id in quo illa ratio invenitur; (b) between finis cuius and finis quo and (c) between beatitudo perfecta and beatitudo imperfecta.

⁵ 1094 a 18-23.

⁶ Lectio 2, n. 19.

⁷ IaIIae, q. 1, a. 1.c.

⁸ Ibid., a. 5, c.

⁹ A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971), 424 ff.

¹⁰ IaIIae, q. 1, a. 6, c.

¹¹ Ibid. q. 1, a. 2, ad 3 m.

¹² Cf. In I Ethic., lectio 1, n. 10.

¹³ See The Language of Morals, Oxford, 1952, 79-110, and Freedom and Reason, Oxford, 1963, 186, 202.

¹⁴ IaIIae, q. 90, a. 1, ad 2 m.

¹⁵ Ibid., a. 2.

¹⁶ Ibid., c. and ad 3 m.

¹⁷ "… quasi lumen rationis naturalis, quo discernimus quid sit bonum et malum, quod pertinet ad naturalem legem, nibil aliud sit quam impressio divini luminis in nobis. Unde patet quod lex naturalis nihil aliud est quam participation legis aeternae in rationali creatura."—ibid., q. 91, a. 2.

¹⁸ Ibid., q. 93, a. 6, c.

¹⁹ See Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903).

²⁰Op. cit., p. 331.

²¹Op. cit., p. 141.

²² Thus, in discussing the presuppositions of deliberation, St. Thomas writes, "Huiusmodi autem principia quae in inquisitione consilii supponuntur, sunt quaecumque sunt per sensum accepta, utpote quod hoc sit panis vel ferrum; et quaecumque sunt per aliquam scientiam speculativam vel practicum in universali cognita, sicut quod moechari est a Deo prohibitum, et quod bomo non potest vivere nisi nutriatur nutrimento convenienti. Et de istis non inquirit consiliator. "-IaIIae, q. 14, a. 6, c. It will be noticed that Thomas here quite explicitly remarks on the way moral discourse presupposes speculative truths.

²³ Cf. Theo G. Belmans, Der Objektive Sinn Menschlichen Handelns (Schoenstatt, 1984) and Brian Thomas Mullady, OP, The Meaning of the Term 'Moral' in St. Thomas Aquinas, Stiidi Thomistici 27 (Citta del Vaticano, 1986).