I answer that, Since goodness is that which all things desire, and since this has the aspect of an end, it is clear that goodness implies the aspect of an end.... Beauty and goodness in a thing are identical fundamentally; for they are based upon the same thing, namely, the form; and consequently goodness is praised as beauty. But they differ logically, for goodness properly relates to the appetite (goodness being what all things desire); and therefore it has the aspect of an end (the appetite being a kind of movement towards a thing).
So this is a real problem, because now evil is the object of desire -- and therefore a good to be pursued. But that can't be, Aquinas has already told us.
No being can be spoken of as evil, formally as being, but only so far as it lacks being. Thus a man is said to be evil, because he lacks some virtue; and an eye is said to be evil, because it lacks the power to see well.
This is Augustine's point, which we were just discussing recently, and a place where Aquinas and Aristotle differ. Evil properly speaking can't exist for Aquinas; it is only a privation or a lack of something desirable, something beautiful, i.e. something good. To say that anger desires the lack of something desirable does not make sense.
It especially does not make sense given that anger is associated here with justice, and has been said to be partially governed by reason and mercy. Justice is a good, not an evil. Injustice is an evil, because it is the lack of something desirable, i.e. justice.
Human will, unlike God's, can be disordered and therefore sinful. If what anger desires is evil, though, it is very basically and radically disordered -- which is the opposite of what Aquinas has been arguing heretofore.
Anger desires, I think, DAMAGE. I wish the offending person (or *thing*, frex: the nail that bent under my hammer instead of driving into the wood; or the shoelace that broke on the morning I am already running late...) would crumble into dust and fall out of my life. With regard to a family member, I would wish -- and justify to myself -- that a spanking or a pinch would be a small damage and pain, that should more or less inoculates the offender against larger risks and damages -- terror and anguish and crippling lingering disability. Spank for sticking a fork into the electrical outlet or walking too close to the cliff's guard rail after quite explicit instructions to the contrary, in the anger and fear FOR a disobedient beloved son.
ReplyDeleteThere’s a parallel argument in the Physics about perspective. When the rain comes, from the perspective of the grass it is for the grass; but from the perspective of the rain, it’s not for the grass. It’s just a matter of the water seeking is natural place as heat changes and it is greed to do so.
ReplyDeleteSo you could say that I might desire what you would find evil, ie your being damaged; but it’s a good for me, because it would restore Justice from my perspective. And if he’d said it that way it would make sense within the system he’s built out of these parts.
There is actually an account of being angry at inanimate things. Aristotle gives the example of a pen. You can’t really be angry at them because they can’t be unjust to you; they have no ability to decide or act justly nor unjustly. But he’s familiar with the experience and offers an account of how it works that Aquinas cites in Art 7.