International Phenomenological Society

Comment on Mr. Pegis's Rejoinder

Author(s): Arthur O. Lovejoy
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Dec., 1948), pp. 284-290
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103394
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 DISCUSSION

COMMENT ON MR. PEGIS'S REJOINDER

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

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 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

2 See "Reply to Mr. Veatch," p. 415.

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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.

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 COMMENT ON MR. PEGIS'S REJOINDER 287

recognized by Mr. Pegis in P I: "The divine self-willing" (which is ad-

mittedly "necessary") "includes the willing of beings other than God...
by the unitary act by which God wills himself." It is to be regretted that
Mr. Pegis in his rejoinder has not seen fit to answer the first of the questions
at the end of L I: "Can one and the same act of will be both necessary and
not necessary"-i.e., in the same sense, St. Thomas's sense, of "necessary"?
7. In P I Mr. Pegis admitted that "the act of the divine will, being the
act of a being who is pure actuality, is a necessary act." This obviously
can mean only that any such act is necessary in the sense defined, i.e., is
an expression of God's essential nature. It was because of this admission,
as I pointed out, that Mr. Pegis-wishing to find a way out of the apparent
corollary that the existence of created things is derivatively necessary-
was compelled to introduce his curious thesis that, though God's willing
other things is necessary, his willing'them does not require that its "ex-
ternal effects"-i.e., created things-should "exist actually" or "in them-
selves." In his rejoinder Mr. Pegis seems to abandon this thesis; for he
surprisingly writes that the question whether, "for God to will things to
exist is to will them to exist in themselves, is scarcely the issue between
us." In P I this was precisely the issue which Mr. Pegis himself raised and
elaborated upon at length: God's "willing other things," he insisted, does
not, in St. Thomas, mean velle creare. He now, at all events, grants that
"if God wills things, he wills them to exist in themselves." But-this seems
to be the gist of a long argument of Mr. Pegis's-it does not follow from this
true hypothetical proposition that God does necessarily will to create
other things. I agree that it does not follow. But it is admitted (by
St. Thomas, and presumably by Mr. Pegis) that God does, in fact, create
"other things," and that their being created and "existing in themselves"
is the effect of his act of will, which would be frustrate if they did not exist;
as I have previously noted, St. Thomas himself says that "his conditional
proposition, If God wills something, it will exist, is true and necessary,"
i.e., the divine act of will cannot be impotent or barren. Given the act of
will, therefore, the existence of its intended objects is, for St. Thomas,
necessary. The question whether the creative act of the divine will is itself,
for St. Thomas, necessary is a separate question. The proof that it must be
answered in the affirmative has already been indicated in 3, 5 and 6, above-
and it has, as we have seen, been so answered by Mr. Pegis, since for him
any act of God's wvil is necessary. Thus both the act of will and the exist-
ence "in themselves" of the effects willed are for St. Thomas necessary,
and have been admitted to be so by Mr. Pegis-the former in P I and now the
latter implicitly in P II. This being the case, the total result of Mr. Pegis's
argumentation on this question of "necessity" must, I suggest, be regarded
as proving what lie nevertheless appears to have set out to disprove.
8. Tt is true that St. Thomas in certain passages plainly denies the argu-

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288 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ment of the syllogism stated in paragraph 5, e.g., in C.G. I, 81, quoted by

Mr. Pegis: "There is no necessity imposed on God to will other things
from the fact that he wills his own bonitas." But this especially clearly
supports my contention that St. Thomas contradicts himself on this ques-
tion; for it shows that he asserts-in equally unequivocal terms-that God's
willing other-things is necessary to his perfection (as he does in such texts
as are indicated in 5 and 6, above) and is not necessary to his perfection,
in precisely the same sense of "necessary." We are assured in one set of
passages that God's bonitas would not be realized-that he would not be
"perfect," as he necessarily is, if he did not "will other things"-and in the
present passage we are told just the opposite. It is embarrassing to be
obliged to repeat so often that citations of indeterminist passages (with
respect to the creative act) in St. Thomas prove nothing against my con-
tention, since I also maintain that there are numerous such passages.
What those who seek to eliminate the contradiction must show is that St.
Thomas never asserts the premise b in the above-mentioned argument
(par. 5); but this they have not done and cannot do, Vecause this universal
negative proposition is inconsistent with the clear language of certain
pertinent texts-which, however, certain other texts contradict.
9. I pass to the contradiction concerning the divine self-sufficiency. The
issue here too turns upon the equivocal concept of "perfection," which is
crucial in medieval theology. A premise common to virtually all of it is
that the divine essence is "perfect"-is, indeed, perfection itself. But the
meanings attached to the term were determined by two contrary traditions.
According to one of them-chiefly Aristotelian in its source-only that can
in the strict sense be called "perfect" of which the being and the "good"
are completely realized within itself, of which the very conception involves
no reference or relation to any essence or any existence other than itself.
According to the other tradition-Jewish, Platonistic, Christian, and
partly Neoplatonic in its sources-a "perfect" being is by its very essence
self-transcending, self-communicative (diffusivum sui), and therefore
generative; if any entity does not "produce," and does not love, anything
other than itself, it eo ipso falls short of perfection. Therefore, since God is
perfect, and necessarily wills his own perfection, he necessarily creates and
loves "beings other than himself." The evidence showing that both ideas
of "perfection," and consequently two incongruous conceptions of God, are
to be found in St. Thomas, I have already sufficiently indicated; I will not
waste space by repeating it here.4

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

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 COMMENT ON MR. PEGIS'S REJOINDER 289

10. In P I, however, Mr. Pegis maintained that the second conception is

not in St. Thomas, and justified this negation by asserting that St. Thomas
never speaks of the relation of creatures to God as that of "means to an
end." In L I, I ventured to remind him that St. Thomas frequently uses
the expression ad finem in defining this relation, and that, in his terminology,
esse ad finem signifies "to be the means to the end." In P II Mr. Pegis does
not deny that ea quae sunt ad finem has this signification in its ordinary use,
but declares that it does not do so when it is applied to the relation of other
things to God: the expression can be so translated '"only when there is an
end to be reached. In other words, the notion of means becomes meaning-
less when the notion of an end-to-be-reached does not exist," and "'St.
Thomas has eliminated from God that very notion of end which makes the
means to the end possible." I must once more invite Mr. Pegis to give
some attention to the actual language of St. Thomas, e.g.: Cum igitur
Deus seipsum tanquam finem velit, alia vero tanquam ea quae sunt ad finem.5
Here the "notion of end" is manifestly not "eliminated from God;" the
"end" in the first clause is God, and the "end" in the second clause is the
same; and it is to God as end that other things are said to be related; and
to be willed as related to something else as to an end willed is obviously to
be willed as "means" to that end; and the relation is explicitly said to be
that of ea quae sunt ad finem. No 13th-century reader could have under-
stood this phrase in any sense but that which it constantly has elsewhere
in St. Thomas's writings; for the notion that it has two different senses is
not suggested in this or similar passages, nor has it, I believe, ever occurred
to any translator. If St. Thomas had wished to distinguish two meanings
of the expression he was quite capable of doing so; but he does not do so.
On the contrary he, e.g., expressly lays down (in a text already cited in L
I), first, the general proposition that "the end is the reason for willing ea
quae sunt ad finem"-which here obviously can mean only "the means to
the end"-and at once goes on: "Now God wills his goodness as end, but
all other things as ea quae sunt ad finem [which must obviously have the
same meaning as in the immediately preceding sentence]. His goodness,
therefore, is the reason why he wills things which are different from him."6
St. Thomas could not say more plainly than he does here-and in other similar
passages-that other things are willed by God as "means to his goodness."
And it must again be recalled that in P I Mr. Pegis has said: "Had Mr.

Pseudo-Dionysius." It is obvious that the whole phrase between inverted commas

in my citation is quoted by St. Thomas. But it is equally obvious that he quotes
it as true and proceeds to amplify and emphasize it in his own words.
5 C.G. I, 88; substantially the same phrasing is repeated scores of times; it may be
said to be a favorite refrain of St. Thomas.
6 C.G. I, 86.

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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.

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