Ordinatio

As to this question I will first make a distinction about ordered enjoyment and enjoyment taken generally, second I will speak of the first object of ordered enjoyment, third of the object of enjoyment in general, fourth, how one must understand enjoyment to be about the end – whether about the end truly ultimate, as in the second article, or about the end not truly ultimate, as in the third article.

[Article 1] – On the first point I say that enjoyment in general exceeds ordered enjoyment, because whenever some power is not of itself determined to an ordered act, its act in general is more universal than its special ordered act; now the will of itself is not determined to ordered enjoyment, as is plain, because supreme perversity can exist in it, as when things to be enjoyed are used and things to be used are enjoyed, according to Augustine On 83 Diverse Questions q.30. Now ordered enjoyment is the sort that is of a nature to be right, namely when it is ordered according to the due circumstances, but enjoyment in general is whether it have those due circumstances or not.

[Article 2] – As to the second [n.7] it seems to be the opinion of Avicenna that ordered enjoyment can be about something other than the ultimate end. The proof is from his statements in Metaphysics 9 ch.4 (104vb-105rb), where he wants the higher intelligence to cause through its act of understanding the lower intelligence; and it then seems that the thing produced is perfect when it attains its own productive principle, according to the proposition of Proclus Theological Education ch.34 that: “each thing is of a nature to be turned back to that from which it proceeds;” and in such a return there seems to be a complete circle and so perfection; therefore the produced intelligence is perfectly at rest in the producing intelligence.

There is argument against this as follows: a power does not rest except where its object is found to exist most perfectly and at its highest; now the object of the enjoying power is being in general, according to Avicenna in Metaphysics 1 ch.6 (72rb); therefore the enjoying power does not rest except where the most perfect being is. This is the supreme being.¹

There is a confirmation by a likeness from matter to form: matter only rests under a form that contains the others, yet something intrinsic does not satisfy as the object does [supra n.4].

Again, an inferior intelligence seeing a superior intelligence either sees it to be finite, or believes it to be infinite, or sees neither its finitude nor its infinity. If it believes it to be infinite then it is not beatified in it because “nothing more stupid can be asserted than that a soul might be blessed in false opinion,” according to Augustine City of God XI ch.4 n.2. But if it sees neither its finitude nor its infinity it does not see it perfectly and so is not blessed. But if it sees it finite, then it can understand that something else can exceed it; now we thus experience in ourselves that we can desire a greater good beyond any finite good at all that is shown to us, or that we can desire beyond any good another good which is shown to be a greater good, and consequently the will can desire to love that greater good, and so it does not rest in that intelligence.²

Others³ argue against this opinion as follows: the soul is the image of God, therefore it has a capacity for him and can participate him, because according to Augustine On the Trinity XIV ch.8 n.11: “the soul is the image of God by the fact it has a capacity for him and can participate him;” but whatever has a capacity for God can be satisfied by nothing less than God; therefore etc. But this reason does not proceed against the philosophers, because the assumed premise about the image is only something believed and is not known by natural reason; therefore the idea of image which we conceive is only something believed, and is not naturally known by reason, because the idea of image that we conceive is founded on the soul as to God as Triune, and therefore is not naturally known, because neither is the extreme it is related to naturally known to us.

Others argue against his opinion [n.9] thus: the soul is created immediately by God, therefore in him it immediately rests and is quietened. But the antecedent of this reason is only something believed, and it would be denied by them [sc. followers of Avicenna] because he himself [Avicenna] lays down that the soul is immediately created by the last and lowest intelligence. Likewise the consequence is not here valid, nor the like one either made [n.9] on behalf of the opinion of Avicenna: for it is accidental that the idea of first efficient and the idea of end are conjoined in the same thing, not does it give rest as far as it is the first efficient but as far as it is the most perfect object, otherwise our sensitive power, which according to one opinion is created by God, could not perfectly rest save in God; in the matter at hand, then, the same thing is efficient cause and end because in the efficient cause is the fullness of perfection of the object, and in the idea of efficient cause whereby it is efficient cause is not included the idea of end and of giving rest.

Therefore as to this article I hold this conclusion, namely that ordered enjoyment has only the ultimate end for object, because just as assent by the intellect should only be given to the first truth for its own sake, so assent by the will should only be given to the first good for its own sake.

[Article 3] – About the third article [n.7] I say that the object of enjoyment in general, as it abstracts from ordered and disordered end, is the ultimate end: either the true end, namely which is from the nature of the thing the ultimate end, or the apparent end, namely the ultimate end which is shown by an erring reason to be ultimate end, or the proposed end, namely which the will of its own freedom wills as ultimate end. The first two members are sufficiently plain. The proof of the third is that just as to will or not to will is in the power of the will, so the mode of willing is in its power, namely to refer or not to refer;⁴ therefore it is in its power to will some good for its own sake without referring it to some other good, and thus by proposing the end for itself in that.

[Article 4] – About the fourth article [n.7] I say that the idea of end is not the proper idea of the enjoyable object, neither in the case of ordered enjoyment nor in the case of enjoyment taken generally. That it is not so in the case of ordered enjoyment is plain: both because a respect [sc. to another] is not included in the beatific object per se as far as it is the beatific object; and because that respect is a respect of reason only, just as is any respect of God to creatures (but a respect of reason cannot be the per se object or the idea of the per se object of enjoyment); and because if per impossibile there were some supreme object to which this will were not ordered as to its end, that object would still quiten it, wherein however there is, by supposition, no idea of the end. In respect therefore of ordered enjoyment the idea of end is not, in truth, the proper idea of the enjoyable object, but it is a concomitant of the enjoyable object; in disordered enjoyment of an apparent end the idea of end is a concomitant of the enjoyable object (perhaps in apprehension it precedes the enjoyment to be elicited, as the enticing idea of the object, in some other way), but in the case of enjoyment of the prefixed end the idea of end follows the act, because ‘prefixed end’ states either the mode of the act or the mode of the object as such prefixed end actually terminates the act, because the will by willing it for its own sake attributes to it the idea of end.