Ordinatio

[First opinion] – About the third article [n.227] there are opinions of which one is of this sort, that the intellect is called practical from one thing, and the act or habit from another. It is as follows: truth that is doable and that is not doable are specific objects, formally diverse, so they distinguish per se the things that per se have a respect to them, namely act and habit, which are called practical because they concern something doable. But the intellect is only called practical if it be operative, of which sort is only the intellect that apprehends order to a work – which it does not do unless moved by appetite for the end, such that the practical intellect includes in its act, not formally by the essence of the act but by connotation, an order that is necessarily toward desire explicitly of the end and implicitly of the things for the end; wherefore, since the ordering of what is speculable to a work is accidental to what is speculable (though its being orderable is not accidental to it), the difference between the speculative and the practical intellect proceeding from this will be accidental and in respect of something outside the intellect, although the difference of habits and acts is formal according to the formal difference of doable and non-doable object. Hence in On the Soul 3.10.433a14-15 it is said that the speculative and practical intellect differ in their end, and in Ethics 6.3.1139a29-31 that: “The good of the practical intellect is truth disposed conformably to right appetite.”

An example: the speculative intellect apprehends health as a fitting good, the appetite desires it, and there follows in some way the consideration of the practical intellect that health is to be acquired. With the desire for the end in place, then, the practical intellect proceeds discursively from the principle ‘that by which health can be better acquired is to be procured’, and its discursive process ends at the final conclusion of deliberation; and this whole discursive process, just as it takes its principle from apprehension of the desired end, which is the first object of the practical intellect, so it is that it does what has been discovered for the end, and therefore it presupposes will of the end and is ordered to the choice that follows deliberation.

Against this opinion – which, to speak briefly, consists in this, that it puts the distinction of the practical and speculative intellect in an end that is accidental to the object, but the speculative and practical habit differ and are distinguished by the formal difference of their special objects – the argument is that it is said of habits in Metaphysics 2.1.993b20-21: “The end of the speculative is truth, but of the practical a work.”

Likewise, the practical habit will in that case be in the speculative intellect, nor will the intellect be called practical by that habit, which seems unacceptable, because by every habit is that denominated which has it according to the nature of the habit.

They reply to the first argument [n.241] that the end of practical science is a work in potency and aptitude, insofar as its object is doable per se; but a doable object is considered according to this habit in general, which consideration is not enough for it to be subject to operation in act and in particular; because act is better than potency in good things, therefore is such a particular and actual consideration required; but the consideration is by a habit other than practical science, and that other habit is only in the practical intellect. To the second argument [n.242] the response is that it can be denominatively called practical, not simply but by understanding the denomination to be done by the habit

On the contrary: therefore, the practical habit and act can be in the speculative intellect, because a habit or act practical of its nature can be in the intellect without such relation to an act of will of the sort it [this opinion] posits. It would concede the consequent, but it would posit that another habit can be had in the practical intellect, generated from acts not only practical but from acts of the practical intellect.

On the contrary: a practical habit generated from practical acts would be enough for the same things for which the other habit would be enough that is generated by acts of the practical intellect, because the will that commands consideration for the sake of such an end does not give any other reason for consideration in directing, nor consequently for a habit generated by considerations.

Again, then many accidents of the same species will be in the same thing. For not on account of order or non-order of the will can a specific distinction be posited between this act and that, and similarly not between habits either.

Again, third, against the opinion in itself [nn.239-240] I argue thus: a subject is more denominated by a per se and essential condition of its accident than from an accidental condition of it; therefore, if the intellect can be called practical from an accidental condition of its habit, to wit from an order of the will ordering its act to something else, much more can it be called practical from the essential order of the act by which the act is said to be essentially practical. Therefore, the intellect seems to be called practical from the same thing from which the habit and act seem to be, although it not be said as accidentally of the habit and act as it is said of the intellect, with respect to which it is an accident per accidens.

[Second opinion] – In another way it is said that that from which habit and act are said to be practical is the end and the extension of practical knowledge to action, which is an extension to an end. On behalf of this opinion are the authorities set down earlier [nn.223-225].

There is also argument by reason. First as follows, because a habit is said to be practical either from the object or from the end. Not from the proper object because the intellect ‘is made practical by extension’,¹ which is not true save of the same intellect that is speculative and afterwards practical when extended to a work; therefore there can be a speculative and a practical consideration about the same object.

Second thus, because medicine is divided into speculative and practical, and yet it is about some same object, as about health or the body capable of health.

Again, an act is said to be practical because it is morally good or bad; goodness and badness of morals belong to an act from its circumstances; but among circumstances first and chief is the circumstance of the end; therefore etc.

Against this position I argue as follows: I ask, are habit and act said to be practical because of actual extension to a work or only because of an aptitudinal or habitual extension to a work? Not because of actual extension (as is had in the second article [nn.236-238] and as they concede), because then a workman when not intending to work would not have practical knowledge; therefore because of aptitudinal extension. But an aptitude does not belong to one nature which is repugnant to another save because of something absolute in such nature; for because this nature is such, for that reason does such aptitude belong to it; therefore it presupposes in the very consideration some intrinsic condition by which such aptitude belongs to it. This condition of consideration in itself is from another cause prior to it; but the prior causes of it are intellect and the object; therefore, the condition belongs to it from the intellect or some object.

If it be said that the end is the prior cause, rather the first among all causes, according to Avicenna Metaphysics 6 ch.5 (94va), and so from it can there be consideration of such a nature that such an aptitude belong to it, on the contrary: the end is not a cause save insofar as moving, when loved and desired, the efficient cause to causing the effect. But the said aptitude belongs to consideration whether the end is loved or not. For the said knowledge can be in the intellect however the will be disposed, nay if the will were not conjoined with the intellect. And so by the end as by the final cause the aptitude does not belong to knowledge; for nothing is present from some cause that is present when the cause is not causing. If you say that the end is apt to be loved before the aptitude is present in knowledge, on the contrary: this does not save what is proposed, because an effect has nothing from something causally because that something were of a nature to cause, unless it do actually cause; therefore knowledge does not get an aptitude, or the nature that such aptitude follows, from an end that is apt to cause, unless it do actually cause; nor does it actually cause as a final cause unless, as actually loved and desired, it move the efficient cause to acting; therefore etc.

Besides, the end either as elicited or had extrinsically makes the habit to be practical, or as considered and intended. Not as extrinsically elicited because thus it is posterior to the habit and in some way an effect; but an effect does not distinguish a cause. If as known, it thus has the idea of an object; therefore the object does the distinguishing. If as intended, this has already been refuted [n.253], because there is such knowledge before the end be naturally intended.²

Besides, not every end of practical knowledge is action. For some practical intellection is in respect of the action of a lower power, as for example of sense appetite or the motive power; but no act of a lower power is the end of an act of intellect, because nothing less noble is per se the end of the more noble; the act of understanding is nobler and more perfect than any act of any lower sense power.

It is said that, although intellection is nobler in being of nature than the operation of a lower power, yet not in the genus of morals, because it is morally better to act bravely than to think of acting bravely.

Against this in two ways. First, because it supposes something false, for the act of a lower power is not morally good save because it is conformed to right reason as to its rule; therefore rectitude of reason is the cause of such goodness in that act and not conversely; but the act of reason being thus right is its being good morally, just as intellection can be good morally. – The reason is confirmed because prudence is simply better than moral virtue as moral virtue is in sense appetite; therefore too the act of the former as it is the former’s is better than the act of the latter as it is the latter’s; therefore the former as practical, in the way that intellection can be practical is better than the latter is as practical or as good morally. From this it is plain that the proof about thinking is not valid; for when the excellence of one thing over another is being asked about, the best should not be compared to the lowest, but the best should be compared to the best or the simply so to the simply so. Therefore, just as it takes the best there, namely ‘to act bravely externally’, so should it take it in the intellect, ‘to command acting bravely in accordance with prudence’. This second is better also morally, because as being the rule it has formal goodness, which is rectitude proper; the other is only good materially, because it is not of itself morally good when one circumscribes its order to this rule and to the will commanding.

Second, the first response [n.256] does not seem to be to the purpose: for it is asking whence intellection is practical when not supposing it to be practical, especially since neither is supposition made about the first circumstance, which is the end, but it is being inquired into [n.248]; therefore, although the question is being asked about practical intellection and about the first circumstance by which it would be practical, it is only being taken as it is what it is in being of nature, so thus to distinguish it according to goodness of morals and of nature is nothing else than to suppose what is being asked for, and to distinguish something as it is considered precisely under one member of the distinction.

Therefore this opinion [n.248] is corrected by others and it is said that a habit is called practical from the end, which is practical consideration; for the proper end of any habit at all is its act. – But against this: If this consideration, which is the end of the habit, is practical, then it has a cause from which it is called practical; either then the cause is the end of that consideration, and this has already been refuted [nn.252-255]; or it is the object, and then it follows that the object is the cause, prior to the consideration, whereby the habit is said to be practical, and the proposed conclusion is got that by the object are both the habit, though mediately, and the act said to be practical.

[Scotus’ own opinion] – I concede, then, that the habit is not called practical by its proper act, because it too is practical by a prior cause. Nor is any habitual or actual knowledge practical per se because it is ordered to action as to an end; yet it can sometimes get its first extension, namely conformity to action [n.236], from the end of the action, not however insofar as it is end but insofar as it is object.

The first point here [about first extension] is plain. For sometimes the first practical principles are taken from the end of action, and so the end, as first cause of action, includes virtually all the knowledge in the genus, and so the knowledge itself gets from it its quiddity and aptitude.

The second point [about the end as object] is plain. For practice gives the aptitude, or the sort of nature possessing the aptitude, for this reason, because as first object it includes the principles and, by means of them, the conclusions, so it includes the whole of practical knowledge; but not insofar as it is end: first because from the end as end is no nature or natural aptitude got unless the end is loved and desired and so is moving the efficient cause [n.253]; but before it is naturally loved it includes the said principles and conclusions; for the truth of a necessary practical principle does not depend more on the will than does the truth of a speculative principle, nor do the conclusions necessarily inferred from such a principle; – second because anything else that would virtually include such knowledge would in the same way give such conformity to the knowledge, to wit if the action itself were first in the genus to include such knowledge, or that which the operation is about, as sometimes happens and as was touched on in the response to the third argument in the first question about the subject of theology [n.185]; for man is perhaps the subject of both moral and medical science – but happiness or health is not – because the idea of the end of each is included in the idea of what the action is about.

If it be said that the first practical principles are always taken from the end, therefore the end always first includes the knowledge of them virtually, – if the conclusion were conceded, yet it would hold not insofar as it was end but insofar as it was object, and then it could be said that man is the end both of health and of natural happiness, as was touched on in the preceding response [n.262]; but man is not at any rate the proximate end of action, because, if the conclusion were denied, the antecedent taken universally would have to be denied, for taken particularly it is true, namely when the idea of the end is not deduced from anything pertaining to practical knowledge [n.314].

Or the antecedent could be expounded in another way thus: ‘the first principles [are always taken from the end]’ is true among principles that are taken from the moral circumstances on the presupposition of an act good in its kind, because thus is the object not a circumstance. In another way, when taking the act bare, the object too is a circumstance; and by this the antecedent seems to be refuted: for that from which is taken the altogether first circumstance of the act considered bare seems to be prior to anything else, and thus the object by which the act is first specified so as to be called good in kind of act (being qualifiable further by the other circumstances so as to be fully moral), seems to be altogether first in practical knowledge. But it is not necessary now to pursue the question whether this conclusion holds or not, because its place is in the third book (Ord. III Suppl. d.26 q. un. n.10; d.38 q. un. nn.4-5; also II d.7 q. un. nn.11-13, 24-28; d.40 q. un. n.3) [cf. n.362]). Briefly then as to this article [nn.239, 227], I say that practical knowledge does not first get the extension belonging to it from the end insofar as it is end, for the reasons adduced above [n.262].