On the Meaning of “Immanent Activity” According to Aquinas

537 The Thomist 78 (2014): 537-55 ON THE MEANING OF “IMMANENT ACTIVITY” ACCORDING TO AQUINAS MARIE I. GEORGE St. John’s University Queens, New York HIS CONSIDERATION of the definition of “immanent activity” was spurred by an exchange with the late Jack Carlson1 in which he maintained that vegetative activities are immanent activities. Our discussion followed my encountering a similar position in an article that I reviewed. I also discovered the same view articulated by David Oderberg and Edward Feser.2 Fueling the controversy is the fact that Aquinas never mentions nutrition or growth when he provides examples of immanent and transient activities. Feser and Oderberg articulate their position while addressing a crucial question in natural philosophy, namely, whether living things are essentially different from nonliving ones. While I agree with their overall conclusion, as well as with many of the specific points they 1 My exchange with John W. Carlson began when I questioned the definitions he gave for “immanence” and “transience” in his book Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012): “Immanence: property of an act whereby the effect remains in the agent” (133). “Transience: Property of an act whereby the effect takes place in a being other than the agent” (276). 2 See David Oderberg, Real Essentialism (New York: Routledge, 2007), 180: “When a person eats food (immanent), she uses transient instrumental causes . . . and there are also transient causal results or effects of the immanent nutritive and eliminative process.” See also Edward Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (London: Oneworld Publications, 2009), 135: “An animal’s digestion of a meal would be an example of immanent causation.” T 538 MARIE I. GEORGE make, their claim that nutrition is an immanent activity deviates from the thought of Aquinas and results in both a flawed understanding of the difference between the living and the nonliving and of the difference between vegetative activities and sensorial ones. My intention is to defend the following four theses. First, “immanent activity” in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition has a very precise meaning: it is an activity that has no product and of itself is perfective of the agent that carries it on. Second, using “immanent activity” in both a broader and a narrower sense is more apt to confuse than to enlighten. Third, Aquinas himself never uses this expression in the broad sense (though there are a couple of passages which at first sight could be construed this way). Fourth, while vegetative activities could be termed immanent in a broad sense, in the strict sense they are not. I. REASONS TO SUPPOSE THAT ALL LIFE ACTIVITIES ARE IMMANENT Aquinas never uses the expressions “actio immanens” or “operatio immanens,” though other medieval authors sometimes do.3 He speaks of an “operatio manens in ipso operante,” and when doing so he virtually always contrasts it with an “operatio transiens in exteriorem materiam.”4 Our expressions 3 See unknown author, Summa totius Logicae Aristotelis, tract. 5 cap. 7: “Similarly, to understand and to sense are immanent actions because signify the act of understanding or sensing to be in act in the one understanding or sensing. This immanent action, however, is not directly in the category of action. . . . The second action which is called transient fits the category of action” (“Similiter intelligere et sentire sunt actiones immanentes, quia dicunt actum intelligendi vel sentiendi esse actu in intelligente vel sentiente. Haec autem actio immanens non est directe in praedicamento actionis, ideo de ipsa satis dictum sit. Secunda vero actio quae dicitur transiens, facit praedicamentum actionis”). All texts from Aquinas, unless otherwise noted, are drawn from the Opera Omnia online maintained by Navarre University (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html). 4 Aquinas uses the expressions “operatio transiens” and “actio transiens” approximately fifteen times. “IMMANENT ACTIVITY” IN AQUINAS 539 “immanent activity” and “transient activity”5 seem adequate substitutes for the Latin. But do we understand them correctly? It is plain that Aquinas draws this distinction from Aristotle, for in the Commentary on the Ethics he says: Operation is twofold, as is said in Bk. 9 of the Metaphysics: one remains in the one operating itself, such as to...