The threefold whole

















Breakdown of the three kinds of whole
Breakdown of the three kinds of whole

Integral wholes



Universal wholes





Potential wholes










  2. See Svoboda’s Thomas Aquinas on Whole and Part.

The metaphysics of gender

I recently listened to this talk by John Finley titled The Metaphysics of Gender: A Thomistic Approach. Below are my notes of this. I skip the introductory remarks and follow the four-section division of the talk. Note that by “gender” here we do not mean the psychological or social construct introduced by modern feminists. Rather, by “gender” we mean the biological distinction between male and female. Some have come to refer to this as “sex” but in the introduction John notes that both terms have ambiguity and so he just picked one. By-and-large parentheses represent my own thoughts, but this is not always the case. And finally, the times for each of the sections are written next to each of their headings.

Aquinas’s position (8:56-20:30)

A man is a male human being and a woman is a female human being. Male and female are distinguished by their mode of generation: the male is that which can generate in another, while the female is that which can generate in itself. Whatever meanings man and woman could have, they need be connected to these meanings.

So, then, what is the connection between male or female on the one hand, and being human on the other? It does not affect that one has a human nature: one’s gender does not elevate or detract from one’s being a human being. Perhaps, it’s better to say that gender affects how one participates in human nature. “It might be better to say that men and women share human nature equally but differently, according to their respective generative abilities. In an analogous way, being blue-eyed and being brown-eyed pertain equally but differently to the human power of vision.” Nevertheless, gender must be a more significant personal attribute than eye-color, since it involves distinct organs, activities, and purposes. It is also more uniform than other less significant attributes, which appear more sporadically throughout the human population.

Thomas has two classifications of accidents: (1) a logical classification (in terms of genus, species, etc.) in The Disputed Questions on the Soul and (2) a metaphysical classification (as arising from form and matter) in On Being and Essence:

On the logical classification there are three sorts of accidents: proper accidents (eg. risibility in humans) result from the principles of the species and so characterise all members, inseparable accidents (eg. masculine and feminine) result from the principles of the individual through permanent causation and so characterise that member in a lasting fashion, and separable accidents (eg. sitting and walking) flow from the principles of the individual through temporary causation and so only characterise that member at particular times. The main focus here is the inseparable accidents, however it’s not clear what other examples of such accidents there are. Aquinas gives examples like eye color, bone structure, and natural temperament, but as noted above these seem less significant than gender. A question arises as to which principles of the individual (soul, or body, or both) bring these accidents about. This is addressed by his metaphysical classification in On Being and Essence.

Regarding the metaphysical classification, we note that the whole substance is the true subject of all accidents, but since humans are composed of two principles (form and matter) certain accidents flow more from form and others more from matter. Thomas describes four kinds of accident (two following from form primarily, and two following from matter primarily). First, of those following from form, rational activities — understanding and willing — occur entirely in the soul and have no share in matter (though there is a measure of dependence on the physical sense organs). “Other accidents following from form, like sensation, do have a share in matter since they properly reside in the composite substance. The soul, that is, originates powers of sensation but it can’t sense on its own.” “Moving downward, accidents following from matter will always have some relation to form since matter on its own is pure potency, uncharacterized by any feature.” So, in the third case, some accidents following from matter relate to a particular kind of form. For Aquinas, masculine and feminine are accidents that follow from matter but precisely in relation to an animal form. So when the animal dies, and the animal form is separated from the body, it is no longer gendered in a univocal way. Finally, “other accidents following from matter relate to a more general form, as one’s skin color occurs through matter’s relation to the form of some elemental mixture. The color thus remains even after the person has died.”


“Now, if being male or female relates necessarily to the form of an animal why does Thomas assigns gender’s origin to matter?” He gives two reasons:

First, for both Aristotle and Thomas, the male and female roles in generation are active and passive respectively. The male semen contains the formal principle of generation whereas the female seminal fluid contains the material principle, such that when the two come together a human is generated. Insofar as every act of generation is directed toward producing one’s likeness and since the male is more active is the generative act, the act naturally tends toward a male offspring, and a female results from an accidental alteration in the male semen. Since gender is determined by the manner in which the seminal matter has been affected, it is seen to follow from matter as opposed to form. Aquinas agrees that one’s reproductive power — as all powers — arise because of the soul, but the difference in gender is owed to a defect in the matter of the female (since the male, insofar as he is more active, has the more reproductive power more perfectly).



Brief evaluation of Thomas’s account (20:31-23:15)

Thomas’s logical classification of gender as an inseparable accident makes sense insofar as gender doesn’t apply to the species as a whole, but individual members. “Moreover, current biology’s understanding of genetic systems, chromosomal patterns, gonadal structures, and sexual organs affirms that the principles of the individual exercise permanent causation in their originating one gender or another.” In spite of this, the fact that gender seems to be in a class of its own — separate from other accidents — calls for further inquiry. And this inquiry would have to focus on Aquinas’s metaphysical account of gender arising from matter in relation to a specific form.

It’s not totally clear what it means for an accident to follow from the matter in relation to a specific form. If this is taken to mean simply that the accident flows from the principles of the individual as such, then it is well-taken since evidently, one gender is not a characteristic of the species. This would still leave open, however, which of the individual’s principles is at work here (soul, matter, or both). But Aquinas, in saying that the female gender arises from an accidental alteration of the semen, answers this second question. “That is, he holds not just that gender stems from the principles of the individual, but also that being male or female stems concretely from the side of one’s matter, rather than one’s substantial form or soul.”

Now, current biology, of course, has shown that the female reproductive abilities are not imperfect versions of the male ones. Man and woman, respectively, do not supply the active formal principle of generation and the passive material principle of generation. That a man’s production of semen and a woman’s ovulation each supply distinct elements of the offspring’s genetic material reveals that, in this capacity, the two are co-contributors to the offspring. Since man and woman do not relate generatively as perfect to imperfect it is not the case that any given act of generation seeks the male. As contemporary science shows, the male and female are equally intended at the biological level. So Thomas’s empirical reason for attributing gender to matter — the first reason I mentioned earlier — is no longer tenable.

This leaves us with the question of whether the second reason given still works. Is it true that gender must arise from the matter and not the form because the form cannot account for something that arises from the individual?

A revised account (23:16-36:42)

The aim here is to argue that the Thomistic principles suggest that gender flows more from substantial form than from matter, that is more from the soul than the body.

As both Aristotle and Aquinas saw, male and female are of a different category to black and white. The former are tied up with the essential teleos of the human being and contain the substance’s essence within their definitions, whereas the latter are not and do not. “The presence of an organ indicates a particular configuration of matter for the sake of one of the soul’s powers, which in turn flows from the essence of the soul. The soul itself arranges material structures as organs so that they might fittingly serve as means through which the soul’s various powers can operate effectively.” As Thomas says in The Disputed Questions on the Soul, “the soul constitutes diverse parts in the body even as it fits them for diverse operations.”

To unpack this we might say that like the vegetative powers the reproductive powers slowly manifest as the being matures, and as the soul actualizes and shapes the individual it constitutes these powers in particular organs within the body. Just like the sensory powers, if the soul were to leave the body so too would the generative powers. Unlike the sensory powers, however, not all humans share the same set of generative powers (instead we have something like a 50/50 split across the population).

The generative powers of man and woman should be considered, strictly speaking, co-generative, since they possess a two-fold formal object distinguished hierarchically. As “generative” they possess the same ultimate object, namely procreation of another human being. While as “co-” their proximate objects differ by way of offering distinct sexual organs and activities yet in relation with each other. The ultimate object of the co-generative powers points to the unity of nature shared by man and woman since another of the same species, whether male or female, is generated. The proximate object of the co-generative powers points to the distinction within human nature as found in either man or woman, albeit only at the level of the reproductive capacities.

Since the reproductive powers are two distinct co-generative — as opposed to one at varying levels of perfection — it seems clear that they must be accounted for by the substantial form of the individual. Of course, since the generative powers intrinsically depend on organs they would this should not be thought of as an attempt to separate the soul from the body, but rather to highlight the soul’s role in constituting the powers in the body. Thus we provisionally include gender in those accidents that stem from the soul and have a share in matter, as with the senses. In order to develop this account further, we address three objections.

The first objection is that modern biology seems to support Aquinas’s position that gender is better attributed to matter than soul. This is because modern biology teaches us that gender is intimately connected with various genetic networks, especially the chromosomal patterns XY or XX found in the zygote. But this does not so much entail that gender differentiation arises from matter primarily as show us more clearly how intimately related substantial form and matter relate to one another in the constitution of a human being. Any becoming of a substance requires appropriately disposed matter; after all, the being is generated by the actualization of potencies in the matter. But it is the resultant form (the actuality) that primarily characterizes the being the is generated.

The second objection comes from the second argument given by Aquinas above, that difference in form constitutes difference in species. Since men and women clearly share the same species, their difference must, therefore, arise from matter. Moreover, the notion of an individual brings forth — for Thomists at least — thoughts of matter insofar as it is the principle of individuation. But we must make a distinction between a universal form and a particular form. Aquinas grants that when a soul is commensurated to a particular body (that is, when they mutually limit one another so as to constitute an individual) in a sense it takes on additional characteristics, an obvious example being individuation even after separation from the body at death. It is inevitable that gender is of the form, since matter does not configure itself into particular organs (being indeterminate between any such configurations) it must be the soul that does so in and through matter “for the sake of the particular powers that work through those organs.”

The position I have argued affirms the notion that particular souls are essentially commensurated to particular bodies, but claims that within this commensuration gender begins at the level of the soul and is received into the corresponding matter accordingly designated by the genetic pattern.

As to the concern about this introducing a distinction between two species of human, we can say two things. Rather than being an additional power that future determines the essence of the individual, gender concerns the maintenance of the essence that the other powers constitute. “As oriented towards the species itself, [the generative powers] cannot in themselves constitute new species.” Second, as noted above gender is a co-generative power which differentiates it from the other powers given by the soul insofar as they are independent in some sense. They exclude each other in definition (“four-legged” excludes “winged”) or in fact (“scaled” excludes “feathered”). Gender’s nature, however, presupposes “one like itself” and so depends on and includes its contrary both in fact and in definition. Male is defined in terms of female and vice versa through the co-generative relation. The reproductive powers are not merely distinct as one sense is distinct from another, but as mutually dependent powers contributing to a single action (ie. generation). They are not to be understood as characterizing distinct species, then, but rather as integral parts of the same species considered at the reproductive level. (This is a consequence of us being social animals: humans are not wholly intelligible in terms of an individual, but require that that individual be understood in the context of some community. This reoccurs again at the higher level with powers that enable us to rationally cooperate, which are a consequence of us being political animals.)

The third objection takes issue with the description of co-generative powers. Why could we not accept that there is one generative power manifested in different ways, depending on the body to which the soul is united? This would entail that gender differentiation stems from matter as opposed to form. Note that this is much like Aquinas’s view insofar as he sees one power actualized to differing levels of perfection. Now in some sense, the objector is right, namely insofar as both generative powers have the same ultimate object. Because of this, they can be naturally grouped together, just as the various sensory powers can be naturally grouped together. But insofar as the generative powers have distinct proximate objects (their organs and activities), they can be distinguished. Interestingly, even in the woman, we see multiple generative powers in a single being: powers for generation, support, and nourishment of the offspring all of which are required for procreation (since the ultimate object of generative powers is a human and not merely a clump of flesh). Since there are really distinct generative powers, their distinction must arise from the substantial form and not the matter.

In order to affirm that a numerically single (that is, really identical) power to be differentiated only by matter, we would need to accept Aquinas’s account which, as we’ve seen, is falsified by modern biology. Otherwise, we’d need a “generic power” had by both male and female, which would need to be an abstract power or a power that includes both. But the first alternative is incoherent in Thomistic metaphysics (and even in much of modern metaphysics), and the second would involve an entire set of the person’s powers being denied and frustrated merely in virtue of them being an individual human. This “opposes Thomas’s thought and the majority of human experience.”

Being male or female, therefore, follows principally from one’s soul in relation to that soul’s correspondingly disposed matter.

Three ramifications (36:43-43:41)

The first concerns “gender’s status in relation to the person.” Gender is closely related to the person but is different from other such attributes. Other attributes (like free will, reason, soul, body, growth, and sensation) are understood when the human essence is abstracted from individuals and reproduction is like this. But it differs that when considered in itself the essence includes both male and female, but when it comes to exist there is a split into the co-generative powers. “The human essence in itself includes male and female; only a consideration of that essence as actually existent entails male or female.”

Turn, then, back to the metaphysical classification given above. We’ve seen that reproduction, like sensation, falls into the second category of those accidents which follow from form that have a share in matter. But given the differences between reproduction and sensation, there must be a real distinction within this category. The difference is between those accidents which flow from the nature itself, and those accidents which flow from the nature as it exists in this or that individual.

And in this sense, one’s gender is not as close to one’s fundamental humanity as are the other powers of the soul. Being man or woman — you might say — is more proper to the human individual than to the human individual. As Thomas would put it being gendered at all is proper to human nature, but being a man or a woman is proper to this instance of human nature, this soul and this matter.

All of the other accidents that flow primarily from the soul characterize the whole species, and so we call them the proper accidents (or properties), like sensation and risibility. But gender differs from the other individual accidents insofar as it characterizes one’s structure, abilities, and purpose. Insofar as the gender so characterises an individual we might say that it is “the primary attribute of the existing person”, not as something that constitutes the person (since this is given by the soul and matter), but as that which is most truly proper to individual person (so, in this sense, it’s like a property at the individual level).

The second concerns “gender’s status to the human essence or nature.” Man and woman are not distinct species of human nature, but nor are they merely individuals of human nature. It is good, therefore, to introduce some notions that can describe the genders with regards to their human nature. Man and woman are principles of the nature, they’re parts of it, they are ways of it existing or ways of a soul incarnating in a body, and they are relational as mutually fulfilling complements. “Thomas compares male and female to odd and even in the numerical realm.” But even this misses out the relational nature of humanity.

The third concerns “gender in its specifically human meaning as the intersection of eros and generation.” A slight modification of the Aristotelian definition of male and female is, “the male is what co-generates in another, the female is what co-generates in itself.” There’s nothing peculiar to humans here; we are gendered because we are animal. But human gender has richer meaning than non-human gender insofar as the procreative activity is integrally marked by rational choice.

By nature the generative act is a human act, and not just the act of a human. Thus, what is distinctively human in gender comes to light most manifestly in the “co-” dimension of the co-generative relationship to the extent that deliberation, choice, and love are integral moments within human sexual activity, which thus transcends merely instinctual limitations.

The distinctive human dimension of all this is one of the reasons that it is considered problematic if the human generative act occurs without proper mutual consent, since it “presents a co-generative act with the co- aspect as distinctively human. Since the entire act is co-generative, if one aspect lacks distinctively human structure, so does the whole.” That the co- aspect is human and therefore higher than mere biological generation, it elevates the generative aspect which is primarily animal. The biological tendency becomes subsumed into a conscious intention in love.

Further, as Thomas points out, generating another like oneself in the case of a human involves continued rational and affective dimensions beyond those of the sexual sphere, since the mature human only comes to be after an extensive period of support, nourishment, training, education, and love.

Beyond metaphysics (43:42-46:55)

Here we comment on some things beyond the metaphysical question but which depends on the metaphysical answer, namely issues in the psychological, social, and ethical realms. There are two putative objections that might be raised from modern concerns against the claim that gender stems from the soul. First is the issue of sex-reassignment surgery, second is the reality of intersex persons.

With regards to the first, if in fact sex-reassignment surgery actually changed one’s sex/gender then it would constitute a concern. However, even if such surgery can change the outward appearance of an organ it nonetheless leaves the patient sterile. So rather than say that one’s gender has changed it is more accurate to say that it has to some degree been lost (or blocked).

With regards to the second, just as with sensation defects and abnormalities are possible so too with gender. This arises from the fact that gender (like the senses) arises from the soul working in and through matter. “Aside from the assistance of medical technologies in such cases, it’s crucial to recall that one’s gender, though integral to the person, is neither the defining nor the most important aspect of the person.” To quote Thomas on the place of gender in human life:

Among animals there is a vital activity nobler than generation to which their life is principally directed. Therefore the masculine sex is not in continual union with the feminine in perfect animals, but only at the time of coition, so that we may consider that through coition male and female are made one. But [humans are] further ordered to a nobler vital activity, which is to understand. Therefore there had to be a greater reason for the distinction of these two forces in [them], so that the female should be produced separately from the male and yet they might be fleshly joined as one for the work of generation.

In commenting on this, John closes with:

The ultimate telos of a human being involving the flourishing of a life suffused with knowledge and love reminds us that relationality and fruitfulness occur in realms higher than the physical. If, with Aristophanes in the Symposium, one were tempted to picture the human being simply as a longing half, the passage just quoted offers a larger view. In his own way, Thomas calls to mind Socrates’ and Diotima’s assent to the beautiful.

Common goods

I had originally intended to tie up the thoughts begun in previous posts on natural and moral goodnesssubstantial activitiesbasic goods, and virtual existence, but it has since occurred to me that this would be too ambitious for a single blog post. So, I’ll attempt to approach the topic in installments as I find the time. Those previous discussions are important for the direction I want to go, since we will be using much of the terminology and conclusions there. As such I strongly recommend reading them if you haven’t done so, and perhaps even rereading them if you haven’t done so for a while. In this post we will be introducing the notion of common goods, which will be much of our focus hereon out.

In general something is good to the extent that it realises its end. This is what Aquinas meant when he said that the “good has the nature of an end” (ST Q94 A2 corp). We’re most familiar with ends as intended by rational beings, but these are just a small number of the ends we’re considering. Non-rational animals act for particular ends too, of course. Beyond this the development process of living things is directed toward the end of healthy adulthood. And we’ve seen every substance is in some sense directed toward its characteristic behaviours given by its nature. (Besides the posts linked above, I also discussed this in section 2.2 here.)

Since goods and ends are so linked, a common good is therefore the realisation of a common end. And since common ends belong to communities or societies, it follows that common goods are the goods of these communities. But what is a community? It turns out the answer isn’t a simple matter: there are alternatives and each putative answer gives a slightly different notion of what the commonness of common goods involves. For the remainder of this post we will be unpacking all of this, with the help of our foregoing discussions.

In our discussion on virtual existence we outlined the three ways parts relate to their wholes: (1) parts which are actually present in their aggregate, (2) parts considered in themselves which are virtually present in their substance, and (3) parts considered as parts which are actually present in their substance (in the sense that they derive their being from the substance itself, and this substance is actually present). In (1) the parts each maintain their individual ends, and the end of the aggregate is merely the sum of the ends of its parts. Substances, on the other hand, have ends intrinsic to themselves. In (2) the end of the substance “overrides” the ends the parts would otherwise have in isolation, and in (3) the parts have the same end as the substance because they share in its being and nature.

In our discussion on substantial and aggregate activities, we noted that there is an analogous sense in which activities can be understood as substances or aggregates. And everything we’ve said about wholes equally applies to activities. For instance, we can also speak of virtual existence in the context of substantial activities. We introduce the idea by applying our hylomorphic analysis of virtual existence to a concrete example. Imagine we’re considering an orchestra playing a piece of music, and imagine we zoom in on one of the violinist’s playing. Recall that an action can be analysed hylomorphically, with the matter being the movement and the form being the intention. And recall that the virtual existence of parts in themselves involves retaining the matter while “filling in” (through intellectual activity) a form the part would have in isolation from the whole. What do we get in the case of our imagined example? Well, the intention of the violinist considered as a part of the orchestra is to play with piece together with the rest of the orchestra members. An intention that we might fill in would be the violinist practicing the piece by themselves. In this way actions can exist virtually in the substantial activities they belong to.

Now, are communities to be understood as wholes, or activities, or some combination of the two? It doesn’t seem correct to identify the community with the activity because the parts of the activity are the individual actions whereas the parts of the community are the individuals themselves. At the same time it seems mistaken to completely divorce a community from its activity. The same group of humans could be an orchestra and a soccer team, for instance, but surely the orchestra is distinct from the soccer team? Put another when we consider the members of the orchestra we consider them as musicians, but when we consider the members of the soccer team we consider them as soccer players.

As such, it seems to me that we should consider communities in terms of both wholes and activities. Again, hylomorphism gives us a natural way of doing so: when considering a group of individuals it is their activity that determines what community they are. That is, the group is an otherwise indeterminate substratum and the activity is what determines them to being this or that community. That is, the group is the matter and the activity is the form of the community.

So communities represent a third category which is a hylomorphic combination of the first two. And just as there are three ways for parts to relate to their wholes, and three analogous ways for actions to relate to their activities, so there are three analogous ways for individuals to relate to their communities. How should we understand these in terms of the wholes and activities that make up the communities? With regards to matter (the whole), it seems intuitive that the underlying whole of a community will always be some kind of aggregate of individuals, each of which will be substances in their own right. With regards to form (the activity) we have three options: (1) an aggregate activity in which the individual actions actually exist, (2) a substantial activity in which the individual actions virtually exist, and (3) a substantial activity in which the individual actions actually exist. Each of these would translate to a different kind of community. In (1) the community is merely the aggregate of the individuals, and its end is the sum of the disparate ends of these individuals. In this case, the only things that can truly be called a substance are the individual substances. In (2) we see the reverse of this: the individuals are the parts of the community considered in themselves, and as such their individual ends will be “overridden” by the ends of the substantial community. (3) represents somewhat of a middle ground, and will be of much interest to us. Here the individuals are parts of the substantial community, but not in such a way that they have their ends overridden. This is because their actions are all directed toward the common end of the community.

At least two of these views already have names: (1) is called atomic individualism and (2) is called organic collectivism. Matthew O’Brien and Robert Koons introduce them as follows:

In attending to social nature, the ethically minded metaphysician must avoid both the Scylla of atomistic individualism and the Charybdis of organic collectivism. The attempt to navigate successfully the narrow strait between them has been a recurring theme in Western metaphysics, from the time of Plato to the present. The organic collectivist holds that the most fundamentally real things (the “substances”) are complete and sovereign human societies; on this view, typified by Jean Jacques Rousseau, for example, individual human beings are merely cells of the social organism, with a nature, an identity, and an existence wholly dependent on that of the whole. In contrast, the atomistic individualist, such as Ayn Rand, holds that individual human beings are the substances, with societies as mere aggregations or “heaps” (to use Aristotle’s expression)….

For organic, collectivist pictures of human life, the good of individual human beings carries no weight, since, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an individual: the good of the society as a whole is everything. For atomic individualists, the ‘common good’ consists of nothing but the sum of measures of the individual welfare of participants.

Their article doesn’t work from the exactly same distinctions we’ve made, but it’s clear from the quoted passage that for the organic collectivist the community’s being a substance in some way “overrides” the individuals that are part of it. That is, the community is a substance at the expense of the individuals, which corresponds with what we’ve said of (2). I don’t know of a name for (3), so for the sake our discussion here we will refer to it as unitivism.

So we have outlined the three views of (1) atomic individualism, (2) organic collectivism, and (3) untivism. Each gives us a different picture of what makes a community, as well as a different understanding of the commonness of common goods. It is this that we must unpack to adequately answer the question at hand.

Let’s start with atomic individualism. On this view the community is merely the sum of its individuals, and therefore so is its end, and thus the common good is also understood as an aggregate of individual goods. A good is common, in this sense, by virtue of being predicated of the many individuals of in the community. So, for instance, health or wealth would be common goods since it is good for each individual to be healthy and sufficiently wealthy. And the health of the community, for instance, would be the aggregate of the health of the individuals. Common goods, in this sense, are contrasted with singular goods in that to be common to be predicated of many whereas to be singular is to be predicated of one. So, we speak of the health of the community as opposed to the health of this or that individual.

Next consider organic collectivism. On this view the community is a substance at the expense of the individuals. Since it is a substance it has its own end, and this is what the common good would be. Since the individuals exist only virtually in the community, this common good overrides their individual goods. An example comes from some socialist economic theories, where individuals are to give up their individual right to private property in order to be part of the political community. So we find that common goods, in this sense, are contrasted with individual goods. The common good, in our example, being the common property which is contrary to the private property of individuals, or what we might call “individual property”.

Finally there’s unitivism. The unitivist agrees with organic collectivist that the community is a kind of substance, but disagrees that this comes in such a way as to override the individuals. We achieve this by noting that the realisation of the common end toward which all the members work together is a good for each member, and it is on account of their shared intention toward this end that they are considered a substantial community in the first place. Moreover the unitivist agrees with the atomic individualist that the goods of the community are the goods of the individuals, but disagrees that these goods are merely shared by virtue of predication and aggregation. We achieve this by noting that the common end is numerically the same for all the individuals, and its realisation is a single good shared by the individuals of the community without thereby being diminished. Consider, for instance, that the piece played by the orchestra is one and the same piece played by each of the musicians, a victory in war is one and the same victory for the entire nation, and so on. To use some Thomistic jargon the common good is a universal cause not a universal predicate. The common good, in this sense, is contrasted with private goods in that to be common is to be shareable with thereby being diminished and to be private is either to be unshareable or always diminished when shared.

Perhaps we should spend some more time unpacking this distinction between common and private goods. First some examples. We mentioned the playing of the piece for the orchestra and the victory in war for the winning nation are both common goods. Other examples are manifold, so long as we can identify the aggregate wholes engaging in substantial activities for common ends: victory in a sports game is a common good for the winning team, financial success is a common good for many companies, the picking up of a car by two friends is a common good for them. A previously mentioned example of a private good was food, for “if there is a loaf of bread between me and someone else, the more the I eat the less there is for the other person to eat.” Two other examples of private goods would be the two goods listed as common by the atomic individualist: health and wealth. While many individuals have health (on account of which it is a common predicate), they do not all share in one and the same health. Wealth is more or less a generalisation of food, in that the more money I give you the less I have for myself. Of course, private property would also be a private good.

Second, we note that in most (if not all) communities there will be certain private goods the members need in order to participate in and enjoy the common goods of that community. This often involves some form of equipment and training, but can also include other things. We will have cause to speak about this in more in later posts. We note this here because it reminds us that while common goods and private goods are contraries conceptually, they needn’t be (and often aren’t) contraries in practice.

Third, what we mean by activity should be construed quite broadly so as to apply to every kind of community we might consider. Indeed, once we do this we begin to see hierarchies of communities form. For instance, a soccer team participates in a soccer game, which itself is part of a larger tournament, which is run by the local soccer league, which is part of the national soccer league. The soccer team’s activity is also more than this or that game, but rather includes all their games as well as their practicing, recruiting, purchasing of equipment, and so on. The hierarchy of communities entails that when communities are parts of bigger ones, they can have private goods themselves. For example, playing a soccer game is a common good for both teams, but victory is private to one of the teams. That same victory, however, is common to the members of the winning team. So whether a good should be characterised as common or private depends on the community and individuals in focus.

Fourth, an important qualification: while common goods can be shared without thereby being diminished it doesn’t follow that sharing always leaves them undiminished. For instance, orchestras are limited in their size because once they get too big they become unmanageable. The same goes for political communities and friendships and presumably any community. Furthermore, including bad musicians in an orchestra might also diminish the end insofar as those musicians get in the way of the orchestra performing well. But in these cases it is not the sharing per se that is diminishing the good, but rather the sharing with too many people or sharing with bad musicians. With private goods, no matter how you share you will always diminish your ends.

Now, all three accounts of common goods can and do occur in reality. Of the three, however, it seems that the unitivist’s notion is most relevant to the study of the good of humans in social or political contexts. That we seek to study human goods means we are not primarily interested in goods that by their very nature occur at the expense of the human individuals. And that we seek to study human goods in social and political contexts means we are not primarily interested in goods that are mere aggregations of individual goods.

Uninstantiatables in Aristotelian Mathematics


Uninstantiated natural numbers





Negative numbers












When writing this definition out verbosely, we’ll get the following:

  • 0 = ∅
  • 1 = {0} = {∅}




So, verbosely, this looks as follows:

  • 0 = ∅
  • 1 = {∅}
  • 2 = {{∅}}
  • 3 = {{{∅}}}





Cardinal infinities






Ordinal infinities








How Aristotle starts the Nicomachean Ethics


The good has the nature of an end














Ends are better than means










At this point we must make two clarifications.





The chief good has the nature of a last end














Related resources






From morality to nature and back again







1. Essentialist Divine Command Theory



2. Thomistic Natural Law Theory


2.1. Morality is about practical reason




2.2. Good has the nature of an end






2.3. Natural goodness




2.4. Accountability, duty, and authority







  2. I do will the good.



2.5. The four laws




3. Modern Protestant objections









3.1. The role scripture



4. Apologetics


4.1. The moral argument


  2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.








4.2. Cultural apologetics





Other resources







  3. ST I-II Q9 A1 corp.
  4. Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics.
  10. John Goyette, On the Transcendence of the Common Good
  13. Romans 2:15, New International Version.
  16. John 15:15, English Standard Version.
  18. See Edward Feser’s Teleology: A Shopper’s Guide.
  19. ST I Q2 A3 corp.
  20. Phillipa Foot, Virtues and Vices.

Lonergan on Aquinas on Causation

Below is an excerpt from Bernard Lonergan’s incredible book Grace and Freedom, discussing Thomas Aquinas’s views on causation and how they relate to Aristotle’s views on the topic. Except for the term “actio” I’ve replaced Latin phrases with their English translations in square brackets.

Causation is the common feature of both operation and cooperation; its nature is of fundamental importance in this inquiry. But if St Thomas certainly disagreed with Hume, who held causation to be purely subjective, it is less clear what object he considered to constitute the objective reference of the proposition “A causes B.” Was causation for him something in between A and B? Or was it simply the relation of dependence of B on A? Or was it some entity added to A as actually causing? Let us take each of these three views in turn.

As to the first view, that causation is in between cause and effect, St Thomas constantly and explicitly denied it in the case of divine activity. Avicennist biology had distinguished between a [a moving power commanding (something)] and a [a motive power effecting (something)], and St Albert had drawn a parallel distinction between the [divine created power] and a [divine uncreated power]. But St Thomas, while he used the biological opinion at least in his commentary on the Sentences, always asserted that God was his own virtue, operated without any mediating virtue, indeed operated [by the immediacy of power]. The matter is less clear with regard to causation by creatures. Even in later works there is a variety of expressions which appear to imply something in between agent and recipient. Still, it should seem that these are but modes of expression or of conception; for what is in between, if it is something, must be either substance or accident; but causation as such can hardly be another substance; and if it were an accident, it would have to be either the miracle of an accident without a subject, or else, what St Thomas denied, an accident in transit from one subject to another.

On the second view, causation is simply the relation of dependence in the effect with respect to the cause. This is the Aristotelian position presented in the Physics and explained by St Thomas as follows. First of all, this analysis prescinded from the case of the mover being moved accidentally; for instance, a terrestrial body acts through contact and cannot touch without being touched; but this does not prove that the cause as cause undergoes change but only that the terrestrial body as cause does so. In the second place, it was argued that the emergence of a motion or change involved the actuation of both the active potency of the cause and the passive potency of the effect. In the third, place the thesis was stated: one and the same act actuates both potencies, and this act is the motion produced in the object moved. Fourthly, there came the ground of this position: if causation, actio, were an entity inherent in the cause, then, since it is a motion, it would follow either that “[every moving thing is moved],” or else that motion inheres in a subject without the subject being moved; but the latter is contradictory, and the former would preclude the idea of an immovable mover; therefore, causation is not inherent in the cause but in the effect. Finally, the objective difference between action and passion was explained: both are really identical with the motion of the recipient; they differ notionally, for action is this motion as from the cause, [movement of this as from this], while passion is the same motion as inhering in the effect, [movement of this as in this].

It would seem that St Thomas accepted this Aristotelian analysis as true and did not merely study it as a detached and indifferent commentator. Not only did he repeat the same exposition in commenting the parallel passage in the Metaphysics, while in the De anima he argued that sound and hearing, instances of action and passion, must be one and the same reality, else every mover would be moved; but in works that are entirely his own the same view at least occasionally turns up. In the Summa theologiae the definition of actual grace appeals to the third book of the Physics for the doctrine that “[an act of a mover is a movement in the thing moved]”; the analysis of the idea of creation was based upon the Aristotelian identification of action and passion with motion; and the fact that this identification involved no confusion of action with passion was adduced to solve the object against the Blessed Trinity, namely, that since the divine Persons were identical with the divine substance they must be identical with one another. Still, this is not the whole story. In his commentary on the Sentences St Thomas brushed aside the notion that action and passion were on and the same reality, while in the parallel passage in the Summa theologiae a solution is found that does not compromise the authority of Aristotle. This difference involves a change attitude, prior to the Pars prima and perhaps posterior to the De potentia, raising the question of the initial Thomist view.

In earlier works, then, the theory of causation seems to have been worked out on the analogy of the familiar distinction between the [being towards] and the [being in] of the relation. In action one has to distinguish between a formal content described as [from an agent] or [as proceeding from an agent to another], and on the other hand, a reality, substantial or accidental, termed the [principle of action] or the [cause of action] or even loosely actio. This terminology is to be found no less in the commentary on the Sentences than in the De potentia, but at least in the latter work it also is quite clear that the formal content is no more than a notional entity. In the two passages quoted below, the reader will be able to verify the following six propositions: (A) change from rest to activity is change in an improper and metaphorical sense; (B) the reverse change from activity to rest takes place without any real change in the agent; (C) when the agent is acting there is no composition of agent and action; (D) what remains unchanged is the [principle] or [cause of action]; (E) what comes and goes without changing the agent is the formal content, [from an agent]; (F) the analysis holds even in the case of a created agent such as fire.

And so a relation is something inhering (in a subject), though that does not result from the mere fact that it is a relation; as action, too, from the fact that it is action, is considered as from an agent, but as an accident it is considered as in the acting subject. And therefore, there is nothing to prevent an accident of this kind (B) from ceasing to be without (involving) a change of that (subject) in which it is, because its being is not realized insofar as it is in that subject, but insofar as it passes on to another; with the removal of that (passing on), the being of this accident is removed (E) in what regards the act but remains (D) in what regards the cause; as is the case also when, with the removal of the material (to be heated), the heating (F) is removed, though the cause of heating remains (De potentia, q. 7, a. 9, ad 7m)

But that which is attributed to something as proceeding from it to something else does not enter into composition with it, as (C) neither does action (enter into composition) with the agent… without any change in that which is related to another, a relation can cease to be through the change alone of the other; as also is clear about action (B), that there is no movement as regards action except metaphorically and improperly; as we say that (A) one passing from leisure to act is changed; which would not be the case if relation or action signified something remaining in the subject (Ibid. a. 8 c.)

If our interpretation of these passages is correct, then at least in the De potentia St Thomas had arrived at a theory of action that was in essential agreement with Aristotle’s. Evidently the two terminologies differ completely: on the Aristotelian view action is a relation of dependence in the effect; on the Thomist view action is a formal content attributed to the cause as causing. But these differences only serve to emphasize the fundamental identity of the two positions: both philosophers keenly realized that causation must not be thought to involve any real change in the cause as cause; Aristotle, because he conceived action as a motion, placed it in the effect; St Thomas, who conceived it simply as a formal content, was able to place it in the cause; but though they proceed by different routes, both arrive at the same goal, namely, that the objective difference between [to be able to act] and [to actually act] is attained without any change emerging in the cause as such.

This real agreement in terminological difference solves the problem of St Thomas’s thought on causation. John of St Thomas listed the passages in which action is placed, now in the agent and now in the recipient; from this he drew the conclusion that action, according to St Thomas, was inchoatively in the agent and perfectively in the recipient. But in point of fact St Thomas simply had two ways of saying that action involved no new entity in the agent; and so far was he from differing really from Aristotle that he seems to have been quite unaware of even his terminological departure from the Aristotelian position. This latter fact not only solves Cajetan’s perplexity over the apparent divergence between the commentary on the Physics and regular Thomist usage but also provides the most conclusive evidence against such as position of Billuart’s that a real distinction in the agent between [power to act] and [the act itself] is one of the pillars of Thomist thought.

Virtual existence


Substances and aggregates again











The actual existence of parts in aggregates




The virtual existence of parts in substances






A hylomorphic account of virtual existence












Actualisation of potentiality as such

While we’re on the topic of confusing things Aquinas said, we can talk about his analysis of change, which he in turn gets from Aristotle.

We’ve noted before that the first step in analysing change is the realisation that it involves the actualisation of a potential:

When a hot cup of coffee gets cold, for example, what is happening is that the cup’s potential for the being cold is actualised by the coldness in the surrounding air… When I pick the cup off the ground and place it on the desk, I am actualising the cup’s potential to be a meter above the ground

But, as we noted, not all such actualisation of a potential involves change. The thing that sets change apart from other actualisations of potentials is that it involves the movement from potential to actual. It is on account of this that the ancients and Scholastic happily used the words “motion” and “change” somewhat interchangeably.

Now, while calling change the movement from potential to actual serves as a helpful start it is by no means the end of a satisfactory analysis. At the end of the day we want to know what this movement consists in, and we want it terms as basic as possible. This is where the confusing phrase from Aquinas comes in, for he says that “motion is the act of that which is in potentiality, as such.”[1] In this phrase Aquinas is abbreviating a slightly-less-confusing phrase from Aristotle who says that “change is the actuality of that which exists potentially, in so far as it is potentially this actuality.”[2]

To see what these two are getting at, return to the example of the cup’s resting on the table a meter above the ground. At any given moment, there are two senses in which this potential of the cup’s might be being actualised: first, by the cup actually resting on the table a meter above the ground and second, by me currently being in the process of picking the cup off the ground and placing it on the table. We might put it like this, given that I’ve started this process I’m eitherfinished it (the first case) or I’m still doing it (the second case). In both cases the cup’s potential for resting on the table a meter above the ground is being actualised, but only in the second case is this actualisation an instance of movement. In the first case the cup is sitting on the table a meter above the ground; in the second case it’s not there yet, but it’s on it’s way there. Put (rather verbosely) in terms of act and potency, in the first case the cup’s potential for resting on the table is being actualised and the cup is actually resting on the table, whereas in the second case the cup’s potential for resting on the table is being actualised and the cup is merely potentially resting on the table.

More generally (and symbolically), if we’re considering some object X that has some potential for P currently being actualised, then either X is actually P or X is potentially P. In the former case there is no movement toward P, since X is already P. In the latter case there is movement towards P, since the only way X can have this potential currently being actualised and not be there yet is if X is on its way to P. In the above example X is the cup, and P is “resting on the table a meter above the ground”.

Perhaps this diagram will help you, but if it doesn’t just ignore it. The arrow represents the motion of X to P. Notice how X’s potential for P is being actualised both when X is actually P and when X is potentially P. As we’ve been saying this is that the latter case is when X is moving toward P.

This, then, is what Aquinas and Aristotle are getting at: an actualisation of a potential is movement when, and only when, the thing being actualised is still potentially at its end. Or, more succinctly, movement is the actualisation of a potential while it is still potential.


  1. Summa Contra Gentiles Ch 13
  2. Physics 3.1 201a10-12

Analogy at the foundations of mathematics







