Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act by Can Laurens Löwe

This book is about the way in which Thomas Aquinas understands the human act to be composed of form and matter. It provides a fresh reading of many central texts from Thomas and addresses philosophical concerns that are relevant to the contemporary literature. Although Löwe is not clear about this point, Thomas does not use in this context the terms 'formal' and 'material' in the strictest sense, as when he describes the soul as the form of the body, but in different extended senses, as when he says that charity is the form of the other virtues because it gives them a new character (Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 23, art. 8).

Löwe focuses on choice, which he considers to be antecedent to the human act, and the commanded or exterior act, which he considers to be the entire human act. This focus simplifies his account, since in one and only one text—the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae—does Thomas appear to give as many as twelve acts that are stages or phases of a complete human act. Thomas devotes special attention to three acts of the will concerning the end, namely simple willing, intention, and enjoyment; and three acts of the will concerning the means, namely consent, choice, and use; and two intellectual acts, namely deliberation and command. Four other possible phases or stages are mentioned in passing, such as the judgment of choice. According to the standard interpretation, a human act such as almsgiving might consist of intending to help an indigent person, deliberating about whether to give food or money, making a judgment of choice about the best means of helping (such as giving money), choosing to give the money, and then commanding the will's use of certain other powers, such as the movement of the hands and feet. In his other writings, Thomas mentions only some of these stages, and he often mentions only simple willing, deliberation, and choice. Scholars disagree over the number and importance of the acts or parts of acts discussed in the Prima Secundae and how to integrate them with what Thomas says in other texts. Löwe argues that the human act is what Thomas describes as the act's execution; he claims that this act has the intellect's command for its extrinsic form, the will's use for its intrinsic form, and the commanded act for its matter.

This book has three parts. Part 1 provides a general account of the author's view that choice explains the act's freedom even if it is not part of the resulting act. In part 2, Löwe gives a novel account of Thomas's claim that the judgment of the intellect gives form to the act of choice. He draws on the distinction that Thomists make (although Thomas is less clear) between the composition of terms, or the enunciative proposition, and the judgement, or judicative proposition. For instance, the statement 'carrots are orange' as an enunciative proposition might be entertained as doubtful or likely, or placed in a conditional statement. However, someone might assent to this same composition by judging that it is true. Löwe's account is confusing on this point, as he describes as "judgment" what his Thomists describe as the enunciative proposition, which is the composition of terms (38–41). Terminological difficulties aside, Löwe draws on what he sees as the related distinction between the content of a judgment and the attitude toward the judgment, using this distinction to describe the freedom of the judgment that precedes choice. The intellect composes different precepts and then assents to one of them. According to Löwe, Thomas thinks that the agent's ability to choose between different goods is reduced to the intellect's ability to assent to the content of one precept and not the content of another according to a kind of second-order cognition. Löwe's explanation of this second-order cognition is original and not clearly supported by the texts he cites. Moreover, Löwe does not explain why the intellect assents to one proposition rather than another, nor does he describe how such assent plays a part in Thomas's account of the practical syllogism. For example, Thomas often discusses how someone can assent both to the proposition that "fornication is a sin" and that "fornication is pleasurable," and yet use only one when arriving at a choice. Löwe does not indicate how he would account for these texts.

After discussing the judgment of choice, Löwe presents Thomas's widely recognized view that the formal cause of the will's act, which is the known object, is also the final cause, and he applies it to choice. Löwe interprets Thomas's Prima Secundae, q. 46, art. 2, as about other-directed and self-directed desires, and he then makes the unusual claim that self-directed desires lack propositional content and are like the simple apprehension of single terms, whereas other-directed desires are like judgments. It is unclear how Löwe derives this account from the relevant texts or how it fits in with his own wide description of choice. According to Löwe, the choice is free because of the way it is informed by the intellect's free assent to the precept that is the judgment of choice, which is itself the form of the will's choice (100–110). Consequently, Löwe articulates an "intellectualist" account of Thomas on human freedom (92–97, 111–13).

Part 3 is the heart of the book, addressing what Löwe considers to be the whole human act, namely use, which is the form of the act, and the commanded act, which is its matter. He acknowledges that Thomas more often describes command rather than choice as the form of the intrinsic act. In chapter 6, he argues that Thomas holds both views, since command is the extrinsic form of the act, and use is the intrinsic form. Relying on the unity of form and matter in natural substances, Löwe argues that command is an extrinsic form because it can be temporally prior to and separate from the act's execution. In his discussion of the act's execution, he passes over much of the scholarly literature on the interior and exterior act. Löwe seems to misunderstand Stephen Brock's book (Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998]), for example, when he writes that Thomas's view that the commanded act is material "strongly suggests, counter to what Brock maintains, that the commanded act is not a human act in a secondary sense, but rather an essential part of the human act just as the form is" (132). Significantly, Löwe does not cite the article in which Brock shows that "use makes it possible for acts of powers besides the will also to be voluntary, moral human acts" ("What Is the Use of Usus in Aquinas' Philosophy of Action?," in Moral and Political Philosophies of the Middle Ages, ed. B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andujár, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi [Ottawa: Legas, 1995], 2:661). In general, Löwe does not consider Brock's explanation of how a complete human act consists of other acts, and the way in which parts of the act are formal or material. Löwe's presentation could have benefited from engagement with more of the scholarship on the interior and exterior acts, and from a careful consideration of such central texts on the issue as the Prima Secundae, qq. 19–20, and the De Malo, q. 2, art. 2–4. Moreover, he mentions that choice is in some way virtually present in the act of command, but he does not address the plentiful scholarship and texts on the virtual ordering of human acts, which include acts that are themselves commanded by other acts, as when an act of charity commands almsgiving, or an act of adultery commands theft.

In chapter 7, Löwe argues that use, since it is an immanent act that is complete in an instant, is not in time in the way that the commanded act is, but nevertheless can be in time per accidens. Here he seems to be applying to the problem of use and the commanded act Thomas's well-known thesis that human thinking, willing, and sensing are in time per accidens. In chapter 8, Löwe gives a less controversial reading of the way that the will uses the intellect in mental acts. He considers memory but avoids the more difficult issues of whether and how intellectual acts such as command might also be subject to use, or how the will can use itself. Chapter 9 provides a brief sketch of how, if this interpretation of Thomas is correct, it might help to clarify issues addressed by philosophers such as Donald Davidson and Jennifer Hornsby.

This book provides highly idiosyncratic and to this reviewer's mind unconvincing readings of many of the relevant texts and scholarly works on Thomas's account of human action. Moreover, it neglects some of the more significant primary texts and scholarly works. However, it provokes thought, and the account of mental acts such as memory furthers scholarly discussion.