Professional Documents
Culture Documents
International Phenomenological Society Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
International Phenomenological Society Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
International Phenomenological Society Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 201.51.215.174 on Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:10:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
DISCUSSION
The Editor asks for the utmost possible brevity in these concluding
contributions to the present discussion; I shall therefore limit this reply to
Mr. Pegis's preceding paper to an attempt to focus his and the reader's
attention upon a few crucial questions, and to some comments on certain
erroneous statements which he has made both as to what St. Thomas has
said concerning these questions and as to what I have said.'
1. The argument of P II rests chiefly upon the assertion-enunciated
at the beginning and frequently reiterated-that, in L I, I have misinter-
preted the texts of St. Thomas which I quoted, by giving to "such expres-
sions as necessitas, de necessitate, etc." a meaning which for St. Thomas
they do not have: "neither necessity nor liberty means to St. Thomas what
they mean to Mr. Lovejoy." As evidence of this, Mr. Pegis quotes De
potentia, III, 2 ad 5um, where St. Thomas says that "God loves himself by
his will freely, though he loves himself necessarily," just as human agents
"desire happiness freely, though they desire it necessarily." Thus, Mr.
Pegis observes, St. Thomas here tells us that there is no contradiction be-
tween necessity (in his sense) and freedom: "God's will is both necessary
and free;" but "a necessity which can be free eliminates Mr. Lovejoy's
problem."
2. Now the odd thing about this is that this text from De potentia is the
one to which (in the penultimate paragraph of Pt. I of L I) I especially
called attention, as showing that there is for St. Thomas a sense of "neces-
sity" in which it "is not incompatible with freedom, but is, rather, an ex-
emplification of it;" and, so far from finding "two contradictions" in the
sentences quoted, I remarked that "St. Thomas here comes close to a
rational reconciliation of freedom and necessity." Mr. Pegis has taken
over a text which I had myself cited, but has represented my comment upon
it as the reverse of what it in fact was. He has at the same time neglected
to ask the really relevant question to which that text provides the answer.
3. That question is: What is the sense of "necessity" which is consistent
with "freedom"? St. Thomas answers: an act of will is both free and neces-
sary if the agent is moved only "by the order of his own nature." The
freedom consists in his not being subject to "coercion" from anything ex-
ternal to his nature; the necessity consists in his action being determined
I 1'or brevity of reference I shall here designate the three preceding papers by
P I, L I, and P II.
284
This content downloaded from 201.51.215.174 on Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:10:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMMENT ON MR. PEGIS'S REJOINDER 285
by, following necessarily from, his nature. The same distinction between
necessitas coactionis and necessitas naturalis is further elaborated in S.T.
I, 82.1. The latter is a necessitas absoluta. It is the equivalent with re-
spect to volition (in operatives) of logical necessity, which is exemplified by
the proposition that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right
angles. Just as it is impossible for a triangle to have any other sum of
interior angles, since that would be inconsistent with the essence "triangle,"
so it is impossible for an agent to will any end inconsistent with its essence:
necesse est quod sicut intellectus ex necessitate inhaeret primis principiis, ita
voluntas ex necessitate inhaeret ultimo fine. Now God, for St. Thomas, is in
no degree subject to "coercion or violence" from anything external to his
essence, and in this sense his will is free; but-as this very passage in De
potentia asserts (though other passages assert the contrary)-his will is
determined by naturalis necessitas. He cannot will anything which is in-
consistent with his essential nature; he necessarily wills whatever is in--
herent in or logically implied by his essential nature. For the actuality
of his essence is, for St. Thomas, as Mr. Pegis has correctly said, the prin-
cipale volitum-is the ultimus finis-of the divine will. And the primary
or most general attribute of the divine essence is perfectio or bonitas. St.
Thomas, no doubt, would have described the will of God as "autonomous,"
if he had been acquainted with the word-but precisely in the sense that
God's own essence, qua perfect, and nothing else, determines every action
of his will. And the divine perfection, as St. Thomas conceives of it,
includes many specific "perfections"; as Mr. Pegis quotes: Deus habet
omnimodam perfectionem secundum suam essentiam. Each specific per-
fection, therefore, also necessarily belongs to his essence, and must neces-
sarily be manifested in the action of his will.
4. Now it is exclusively in this sense-which is a, though not the only,
Thomistic sense-of naturalis necessitas that I have, throughout this dis-
cussion, used the terms "necessary" and "necessity." I have repeatedly
explained that the necessity of creating, which I have said that St. Thomas
in one set of passages attributes to God, is a necessity arising, not from the
compulsion of external causes, but ex natura sua. Upon the importance
of the distinction between the two senses of "necessity" I insisted at the
outset: "the only kind of determinism here in question is the second kind."2
In assuring the reader that I "mean by necessity" anything other than this
necessity which St. Thomas himself predicates of God Mr. Pegis has com-
pletely misinterpreted my argument. My thesis is not, as he appears
inexplicably to imagine, that St. Thomas fantastically affirms that crea-
tures, as existents external to God, somehow compel him unwillingly to
This content downloaded from 201.51.215.174 on Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:10:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
286 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
create them; it is that St. Thomas (sometimes) plainly affirms that God's
own essence would not be what we must necessarily conceive it to be, if
he were uncreative.
5. The evidence that St. Thomas affirms this last proposition-evidence
which Mr. Pegis persistently ignores-has already been copiously cited by
me. St. Thomas, I have shown, propounds an argument which, reduced
to quasi-syllogistic form, runs as follows:
a. In willing himself, God necessarily wills his own perfection.
b. He would not be perfect if he did not will and create things other than
himself.
Ergo, in willing himself, God necessarily also wills and creates things other
than himself.
The crucial issue in this whole discussion is whether St. Thomas does any-
where assert the premise b. This Mr. Pegis appears to realize; for he boldly
avers that "it is Mr. Lovejoy, not St. Thomas, who says that God would
be imperfect, or less perfect, if he did not create." On this extraordinary
statement let St. Thomas provide the commentary:
Videmus quod omne agens, inquantum est actu et perfectum, facit sibi
simile. Unde et hoc pertinet ad rationem bonitatis, ut bonum quod quis
habet ahiis communicet secundum quod possibile est. Et hoc praecipue
pertinet ad bonitatem divinam, a qua per quamdam simnilitudinem derivatur
omnis perfectio. Unde si res naturales, inquantum perfectae sunt, suum
bonum ahiis communicant, multo magis pertinet ad voluntatem divinam ut
bonum suum aliis per similitudinem communicet.
And again:
Finis virtus non est solum quod in se desideratur, sed etiam quod alia fiunt
appetibilia propter se. Qui igitur perfecte desiderat finem, utroque modo
ipsum desiderat. Sed non est ponere aliquem actum Dei volentis quo velit
se et non velit se perfecte; cum in eo nihil sit imperfectum. Quolibet igitur
actu quo Deus vult se, vult se absolute et alia propter se.3
Mr. Pegis's statement on the crucial issue is thus simply contrary to the fact.
St. Thomas, in these (and other) texts, is patently saying that God "wills
other things" because he would not be perfect if he did not do so; and by
"willing them," as the former passage shows, St. Thomas means creating
them.
6. In order to leave no doubt about his affirmation of the conclusion of
the above syllogism, St. Thomas adds that "simultaneously and by one
and the same act of will God wills himself and other things." This was
3 S.T. I, 19, 2, Responsio, and C.G. I, 76, 2. These and other texts in which St.
Thomas says what Mr. Pegis asserts that he does not say have been cited in English
in "Reply," this journal, March, 1947, pp. 417-420 and 422. I quote here in the
original to enable the learned reader to observe for himself the precise language of
St. Thomas.
This content downloaded from 201.51.215.174 on Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:10:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMMENT ON MR. PEGIS'S REJOINDER 287
This content downloaded from 201.51.215.174 on Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:10:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
288 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
4Among the examples given in L I of the expression of the second of these con-
ceptions, I cited a striking passage from St. Thomas's commentary on the De divinis
nominibus of the Pseudo-Areopagite. Mr. Pegis seeks to rule out the example on
the ground that "the words non permisit are not those of St. Thomas, but of the
This content downloaded from 201.51.215.174 on Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:10:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMMENT ON MR. PEGIS'S REJOINDER 289
This content downloaded from 201.51.215.174 on Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:10:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
290 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Lovejoy been right in thinking that for St. Thomas God wills other things
as a means to His goodness, the question whether He wills all things with
necessity would have to be answered affirmatively." St. Thomas, more-
over, frequently writes: Deus vult se ut finem, et alia propter se. B
the sake of" also expresses the means-end relation.
There are some other statements and reasonings of Mr. Pegis in his
rejoinder to which I should take exception; but as they do not affect the
argument on the crucial issues, I refrain from discussing them. In con-
cluding, I will again ask the reader to consider, and to answer for himself,
the questions (most of which Mr. Pegis has not chosen to answer directly)
propounded at the end of my previous paper. They remain, I think,
pertinent as aids to a discriminating review of the whole discussion.
ARTHUR 0. LOVEJOY.
This content downloaded from 201.51.215.174 on Mon, 02 Apr 2018 17:10:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms