Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics

Chapter 9: St. Thomas, James Keenan, and the Will

Chapter 9 ST. THOMAS, JAMES KEENAN, AND THE WILL Introduction James Keenan’s book Goodness and Rightness in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae1 offers us an occasion to reflect on the conception of the will and its relation to intellect. This book favors a distinction involving the use of the words ‘‘goodness’’ and ‘‘rightness.’’ Whereas classical Christian moral theology has spoken of both persons and their actions as ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad,’’ Keenan (following others) proposes that one reserve the vocabulary of ‘‘goodness’’ for persons (persons are good if they strive to do the right thing), while speaking of actions as ‘‘right’’ and ‘‘wrong.’’2 This is thought to be a more adequate description of the situation. We should note the following: Goodness, then, though distinct from rightness is not independent of it. When goodness is seen as independent of rightness, goodness becomes solipsistic. The claim that one is good at this particular moment is the claim that one is striving to realize right activity. The claim is not an empty one. Consider love. Loving parents seek to find right ways for their children to grow. Therefore, parents who simply dote on their children without seeking the right cannot claim to love their children. A claim may be made, but the claim remains empty. Similarly, parents who strive to raise their children well but err through extreme severity or leniency truly love; that is, such parents are good, but their parenting is wrong.3   Wisdom, Law, and Virtue It is to be noticed that these ‘‘good’’ parents need no exhortation or admonition to correct their behavior; all they lack is information. I cannot help wondering whether we do not have, in this distinction, a confusion between morals and mere technique.4 The task carried out in the book is to investigate to what extent if at all St. Thomas Aquinas, in his writings on ethics, adumbrates this presentday move. Keenan holds that Summa theologiae 1–2.9.1,5 on whether the intellect moves the will, constitutes a momentous ‘‘shift’’ in Thomas’s conception of the will and its relation to intellect, one that chimes in with the conception of goodness Keenan is proposing. It should be noted, moreover, that Keenan is not concerned merely with the first article of question 9; it is the whole of question 9, with its presentation of the will as a self-mover (article 3), and of God as the sole external agent that can move the will (article 6), that interests him. However, Thomas, Keenan tells us, after making this breakthrough, actually did not exploit it in his own subsequent analyses, but fell back into his old ways.6 In order to carry out this task, Keenan first, in chapter 2, undertakes to show that prior to the ‘‘shift,’’ Thomas had at best a doctrine at odds with itself, proposing a conception of the will as dominated by reason and thus not ‘‘autonomous’’ (a key Keenan word), while only saving the autonomy of the will by assertions of the appropriateness of moral exhortation , reward and punishment.7 Second, in chapter 3, he presents the ‘‘shift’’ itself, along with its suitability for the goodness-rightness schema. Then, in subsequent chapters, he considers the specification of acts by objects, the virtues, charity, and sin, to assess the moral part of the ST. Clearly, there are at least two issues involved here: the book as an interpretation of St. Thomas, and the proposed distinction between goodness and rightness. In the present essay I will concentrate on the first of these two issues. I will discuss chapters 2 and 3, which are the fundamentals for the reading of Thomas presented in the book. At the end, I will express an opinion on the proposed distinction between goodness and rightness. My principal questions thus are (1) Are there ‘‘contradictions’’ between the earlier Thomas on the will and the later? (2) Has Keenan the right conception of what Thomas is saying in ST 1–2.9? (3) Is what happens in ST 1–2.9 new in Thomas’s thought in the way that Keenan thinks? St. Thomas, James Keenan, and the Will  I might say at the outset that I believe studies of St. Thomas should watch him as he takes up many times over the years one single theme. The chronological study of his presentations brings to light the life of St. Thomas’s...