“On the Causality of Signs: Reflections on the Philosophical Value of a Theological Theory” by François-Xavier Maquart
Brief Translator’s Introduction
The following commentary and translation have been in my files for a while. During the end of semester rush, I thought it best to post something like this from my records, rather than rush something online. The translation is only a draft (and, being from some years ago, the style is not as refined as my current translation style), but it makes some very useful points about one domain of extrinsic formal causality and, therefore, deserves public posting.
Planning1 in the future to undertake a study of practical signs, this article had been in my list of things to read for some time. Fr. Maquart’s Elementa philosophia2 presents an excellent overview of Thomistic speculative philosophy in the vein of the Thomist school of old. It comes with all the limitations of Thomism of that day—but, then again, Thomism today comes with all the limitations of Thomism today. We shouldn’t cast stones too quickly. We all live in houses made of already-broken glass shards. How I wish we could just all understand that and then work together toward a common goal. But, I digress…
There is much to learn by freely taking the path for a while down the old scholastic byways—just as much is learned by reflectively driving through the hard and clean roads of the western deserts of America. And if no less a man that Fr. Austin Woodbury (and also Maritain) thought highly of Maquart, we would do well to heed him. (We would also do well to heed Woodbury—his voice will sound forth some day in the future, and we will all thank Andrew Wood for decades of devotion to this forgotten pedagogue).3
But, back to the point here. I wanted to meditate for a while on the topic of the causality of signs, which I was well aware of as being extrinsic final causality. However, seeing that Fr. Maquart makes mention of practical signs, I was particularly desirous to follow his thought for some time. I find that translating gives one a chance to do such reflection—and we live in a barbarous era that has suppressed many voices of the past; hence, we should listen to teachers of old (not as oracles with all the answers, but as wise men who should not have been cast aside as quickly as they were in the general anti-past tumult of the 2nd half of the 20th century). However, there is no reason to sit like Smaug on top of this small coin in my hoard. Hence, even though I am not sure that this translation will ever see the light of day, I thought at least to put an informal version online. Note the word, “informal.” That means that the translation is not edited for final form, though I have subjected it to sufficient editing to guarantee no major issues.
Indeed, I would like sacramental theologians to reflect on this and then provide a study of late-Baroque discussions of this topic. It is greatly discussed in John of St. Thomas,4 and some day I hope to engage with his text—later, not now. From what I remember, it is less mentioned in a less lengthy manner by Juan De Lugo (1583-166). Also, I recall that the Conimbricenses are pretty brief on the point as well in their treatise on signs. (Who can blame them, the explicit texts in Aquinas are very brief. Much development is needed regarding the notion of the practical sign, precisely as practical.) And in manuals, alas, the practical sign as such takes a brief role—and this is even the case in someone great like Fr. Hugon.5 Likewise, there is some reflection upon the point in Fr. Doronzo’s magisterial work on the sacraments—but it is like the gold overlooked for great philosophical refinement (and, to be honest, to solve many foolish, foolish things said about culture and social construction of meaning).6 Also, I have run across mentions of practical signs in Kant and Grotius, though only briefly—it must have been floating around in the scholastic air in their day, even though their examples are simple things like contracts. Likely, the nominalistic minimization of relation has led to some blindness with regard to signs of all sorts—precisely because the very being of signs is relatio secundum esse.
There are practical signs everywhere throughout our experience—almost everything signifies practically, for cultural meaning is the water in which we intellectually bathe. A book is not only a speculative sign of thoughts but also is a practical sign of the action “open this”. All the little movements of human beings are practical signs of how we should act in public discourse. Nothing changes in a cloth when it is designated as a flag, and yet because we are intellectual beings, we “see” in the cloth the practical sign that above all indicates “comport yourself patriotically toward your nation.” Let us not forget the meaning of art—a unique sort of sign indeed, different from the moral sign and worthy of much study.7 I repeat: much would be gained by reflecting on the nature of practical signs.
On the issue of transcendental relation (mentioned below in Maquart’s text), one can consult the study of Krempel,8 which likely overstates the case (and according to Deely9) and misunderstands Poinsot. It is a learned study, but it suffers from some of the iconoclasm of the time when it was written. If I recall correctly, Deely claims that Krempel holds that transcendental relation (=secundum dici) is presented as though it were univocal with relation as such (=secundum esse).10 This is not the case. It is an analogy of proper proportionality.11
Sadly, there’s not a ton in Maquart’s text concerning practical signs as such. However, he does note a few points of interest, and certainly defends the Thomist position regarding the extrinsic formal causality of signs as such. Of interest too is the role of the will in the final practical judgment, something I have alluded to elsewhere, merely following the Thomist school in this regard.12 I suspect that a great deal can be gained by reflecting on the need for affective communion for understanding practical signs (whether of the moral or the “artistic” / “poetic” order).
Also, my interest in this point was inspired by the fact that it seems to me at least that Latin Catholics who do not know classical Latin theology13 have a hesitancy to talk about the sacraments precisely as signs. In any case, the desire to defend the thesis of the physical causality of the sacraments understandably is likely at the heart of this—and that is a noble desire, mind you. However, it is of use to remember that the sacraments are things (with physical causality) and also practical signs. A good articulation of this point would prevent non-Thomistic authors from claiming that Thomists miss the whole domain of sacraments as signs. (These kinds of accusations become a thinly-veiled, though false, claim that Aquinas was anti-patristic in this regard.) We needn’t fear reading Protestantism into the account of sacraments—so long as we recall the dual role of sacraments as signs and as things. An insightful study into some of this (though without a full deployment of the notion of practical sign as such, from what I recall) can be found in Anscar Vonier’s A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist.14 Also, see Maritain’s “Sign and Symbol,”15 as well as the text of John of St. Thomas in the Cursus theologicus cited above.16 And, also, the entry for signum in Doronzo’s volumes.
Apologies for the informal nature of these comments. I hope, however, they have given interested readers some leads for further reflection! Now, to Maquart’s text!
On the Causality of Signs: Reflections on the Philosophical Value of a Theological Theory by F.-X. Maquart
Divine17 in its principles, sacred theology remains human in its methods. It makes use of reasoning just as the exclusively natural sciences do. It even uses these latter sciences as instruments. In particular, metaphysics is its normal servant—it has its place marked out on each one of theology's pages. Indeed, theology is addressed to men, and it therefore must speak to them in a human manner. With the assistance of this instrument, made to its measure, our mind endeavors to penetrate (however little that it can, in a manner that is wholly deficient and analogical) into the inner mystery of dogmas, which will ever evade being fully understood while we live in this world.
Still, it is the case that these theological explanations, however imperfect one may suppose them to be, cannot be any indiscriminate thing whatsoever. It is necessary that they have a solid foundation, and only a true philosophy can give them such a solid foundation. Given that a theological explanation has its worth only by the rational principles upon which it is based, the examination of this worth must therefore look fully into the explanation's philosophical supports.
It is necessary that we count, among the explanations that enjoy a kind of favor today, the theory stating that the sacraments have intentional causality. Despite the notoriety of its author,18 its appearance has raised a number of criticisms from the beginning. In this same journal, an author has shone light on the fact that the theory in no way accords with the Angelic Doctor’s thought.19 Nonetheless, the theory has continued to have its partisans such that now in place of the two principal theories concerning the causality of the Sacraments, we have three theories that now compete for the honor of the schools of theology. At least the theory of moral causality does not claim to be that of St. Thomas. In contrast, the theory of intentional causality is placed under the patronage of the great theologian. Traditional Thomism rejects it—it has given its reasons. We do not need to return to them. However, up to this point we have remained upon terrain that, strictly speaking, is theological. In our opinion, it seems advisable to carry out a criticism concerning the philosophical principles that the new theory claims as its basis.
The theory says that intentional causality is the causality of a sign. It is here that we find its originality. It is also held—and it must be so—that this causality of the sign is an EFFICIENT instrumental causality. And, furthermore, it is said that this efficiency is not of the same nature as physical causality. It is special. It is of the intentional order.
This position could first lead to the following remark: Did saint Thomas know of efficient causes other than the physical cause? Is the moral cause itself truly an efficient cause? Is it not, rather, a final cause? Certainly, the resolution of this problem would be very interesting. However, we are posing a different question here: what is the causality of a sign? It is well said, “Every sign is a cause,” but then one should specify the cause of which he or she speaks. According to St. Thomas, does the sign exercise an efficient causality? Such is the object of this study. This main question will be preceded by several brief pages concerning the nature of signs. These pages are indispensable preliminaries to our main concern.
I. The Nature of Signs
Modern treatises of scholastic philosophy spend little time studying the nature of signs. Most of them simply provide a rapid definition of them, ordinarily that of St. Augustine: “A sign is… a thing of itself conveying something other than the species that it impresses upon the senses,”20 or this other definition, “that which represents something other than itself to a knowing power,” one that is excellent as well, although it is a bit elliptical and requires some explanation.
Every sign represents something other than itself, either by itself being manifested or by directly manifesting the object that it represents. Light manifests itself. The clock which is there under my eyes presents itself to my vision. In short, there are a host of things that manifest and are not signs because they manifest themselves without representing another thing. In order for it to be a sign, an object must by its manifestation, REPRESENT something other than itself, “aliud a se.”
We say, “TO REPRESENT something other,” for principles indeed manifest “something other than themselves,” i.e. conclusions. Light makes colors known the essence of God (for the Blessed) makes creatures known.21 However, neither principles, nor light, nor the Divine Essence are signs. What properly constitutes the sign and distinguishes it from every other principle of knowledge is its dependence vis-à-vis the object that it signifies. The sign, as such, is always inferior to the thing signified and depends upon it: it is measured by it. Therefore, an exact and explicit definition of signs must mention this dependence.
Among modern scholastics, we know few who have taken this remark into account. Nevertheless, consider the definition, perfect in our opinion, that they give to signs: “A sign is that which represents to a cognoscitive power that which is other than itself, as it were standing in its place.”22 He also follows this definition with the following two brief explications that flow from it naturally: “a) the sign is always distinct from the thing signified; b) the sign is measured by the thing signified and depends upon it as a less important thing depends upon a more important one.”23 The matter could not be better expressed in fewer words.
The same author draws a conclusion from this notion: “Whence a sign, formally in itself (in other words, signification) consists in a relatio secundum esse to the signified thing.”24
This leads us to fully specify the nature of the sign, for it is not sufficient that we say, “The sign formally comprises a relation to an object distinct from itself.” It is necessary to determine the nature of this relation. Our author determines the matter without hesitating; he says, “relatio secundum esse.” He does not say, “predicamental relation,” which would pertain only to the natural sign. No, he says, “secundum esse.” Indeed, relations “secundum esse” are of two kinds, as stated by St. Thomas:25 real or rationate, the first alone being a predicamental relation.
The term “relatio secundum esse” is used for the relation, whether it be real or not, whose entire essence is to be “ad aliquid,” that is, relative; therefore, it is added to an absolute essence. On the contrary, the transcendental relation—“secundum dici”—is not anything other than an absolute being intrinsically connoting an external term in relation to which this being must be defined. For example, matter is defined in relation to form; its being is absolute, but it designates an intrinsic ordering to form. Likewise, the soul, which is defined in relation to the body bears a transcendental (secundum dici) relation toward it.
Therefore, according to Fr. Gredt, the sign would not be a relation “secundum dici,” but a relation “secundum esse.”
Certain ancient scholastics make the sign consist in a “transcendental” relation to the thing signified because, they say, the sign leads one to know something other than itself. And they support themselves upon this testimony from St. Thomas: “A sign makes something come into knowledge through the form that it impresses upon the senses or the intellect.”26 Therefore, how is the sign to lead to knowledge of an object that is other than itself? Doubtlessly, it is because by its form it manifests this object, and because by thus being present before the faculty it makes known what it represents. Now, this in no way implies a relation “secundum esse,” but only a relation “secundum dici.” Therefore, they conclude, the sign does not formally consist in a relation secundum esse, but instead formally consists in its foundation.
This reasoning has a capital defect: that of making the sign consist formally in the manifestation of the object, without at all taking into account its dependence upon this object. This dependence, as we have seen, is essential to the sign, and it is precisely because he has exactly taken account of this fact that Fr. Gredt was able to conclude: “The sign formally consists in a relation ‘secundum esse.’”
We have emphasized the word “formally” on purpose, for fundamentally and as a presupposition,27 the sign is manifested to a faculty, and from this perspective is not a relation “secundum esse.” But this material and presupposed element, which is necessary to every sign, cannot suffice so as to constitute it. As is known, “formally,” is synonymous with “specifically.” Now, we have said that what distinguishes the sign from a host of beings that manifest something other than themselves is its dependence upon the signified object, that is, upon the fact that it designates an order of that which is measured to the measure of which it takes the place and plays the role [on its behalf]: “It looks toward what is signified, not as something that is purely self-manifested and self-illuminated, but as the principle knowable thing and as the sign’s measure, in whose place the sign is surrogated and of which the sign is the vicegerent in drawing [that knowable thing] to the [cognitive] power.”28 It is as such, from this formal aspect, that we say: the sign consists in a relation “secundum esse,” for every relation of that which is measured to its measure is “secundum esse.”
This is clearly St. Thomas’s thought on the matter. The sign, he says, belongs to this genus of relation, whose foundation is distinct from the relation. We have already cited the text of the Sentences upon which the adversaries to this position rely. There, it is expressly said that, in the [sacramental] character, the notion of sign is founded upon an absolute accident and not upon the essence of the soul. But, he is more explicit elsewhere: “The relation that is conveyed by the term ‘sign,’ must BE FOUNDED UPON SOMETHING. However, the relation of this sign which is a character cannot be founded immediately upon the essence of the soul, for it would thus belong to every soul naturally. And therefore, there must be something posited UPON WHICH such a relation IS FOUNDED.”29 This text clearly affirms: 1˚ a distinction between the relation of sign and its foundation (“it is founded upon something,” something that can be true only for a relation “secundum esse,” which, by nature, is super-added to an absolute being); 2˚ the necessity of an intermediary between the essence of the soul and the relation of sign. Now, only the relation “secundum esse” implies such a necessity. Since the relation “secundum dici” is an absolute being, it could, without difficulty, have its immediate foundation in the essence of the soul.—On this subject, St. Thomas’s thought is incontestable: for him, the sign consists formally in a relation “secundum esse.”
Consequently, to signify and to manifest are not synonymous terms. To manifest principally designates a relation to a faculty, to which an object is manifested, or which this object moves, if it is a question of a passive faculty. Moreover, so as to manifest something to a faculty, so as to render that thing present to it, it is necessary and suffices that the manifestation contain the similitude of the thing that must be manifested: and in this, there is nothing that implies a relation “secundum esse.”30
Three cases can be offered: a) The object is manifested by a being whose perfection implies the likeness of this object, without, however, this likeness depending upon it. This is what happens in God: His essence, which contains the exemplar ideas of creatures, manifests them; nonetheless, there is no relation of dependence between the ideas of God and creatures; therefore, there is no relation “secundum esse.”—b) Given that every relation “secundum esse” is essentially “ad aliquid,” this requires two termini. Now, sometimes one of the two termini is lacking, for example, when a prophet announces a future event. In his mind there is, infused by God, the likeness of this event, and it manifests a thing that does not exist. Here, the relation between the likeness and the event (the object) cannot be a relation “secundum esse” since one of the termini is lacking.31 Things would be the same in case of the manifestation of a past event.—Whenever an object moves32 a passive faculty, the representation of this object, assimilated by the faculty, includes no relation “secundum esse.”33 Indeed, the object does not depend upon the faculty; on the contrary, it is the faculty that depends upon the object and is specified by it.
These three cases clearly show that the manifestation of a thing to a faculty does not, of itself, imply any relation “secundum esse.”
By contrast, to signify is a very different matter. First of all, to signify primarily designates a relation, not to a faculty but to the signified object of which the sign takes the place. In a minister, one considers primarily that he acts in the name of another, then one envisions what he does in the name of him whom he replaces. Thus too for the sign. Inasmuch as it manifests and announces [notifie] an object to a faculty, it designates, before all, a relation to the faculty, and on this head—which is not the principal in the sign—it does not imply a relation “secundum esse.” By contrast, inasmuch as it substitutes for the signified object—and it is there, as we have seen, that we find its formal element—it is a relation “secundum esse.”
The importance of this distinction between to signify and to manifest (to announce [notifier]) will escape nobody. An example will render it quite evident. I have before me an image that represents St. Thomas Aquinas. It is a sign, one will say, and nonetheless the person whom it represents has been dead for many centuries. Thus, how could I say that this image is a sign, since, between this sign and the signified person, having been dead for many centuries, there is not a relation “secundum esse,” which necessarily includes two termini: the image (the sign) and St. Thomas (the signified thing)? Can I deny, however, the reality of this sign, since viewing it makes me think upon St. Thomas and therefore leads me to know something that is other than it: “facit in cognitionem venire.”
The response is as follows. This image is not formally a sign; it is only a sign virtually and fundamentally, the second terminus of the relation lacking. Moreover, it does not signify formally; what it actually does is manifest and announce to my mind, in virtue of the foundation of the sign (its resemblance with St. Thomas) the person of the Holy Doctor.34 If common language indifferently makes use of these two words, to signify and to manifest, it is incorrect, and a host of difficulties is born from this confusion.
It was necessary to distinguish well these diverse notions, which did not claim to exhaust the subject.35 We have deliberately limited ourselves to those that are imposed upon us by the resolution of the problem that occupies us and to which we will now proceed without delay.
II. What is the Causality of Signs?
Let us first specify the sense of the question. The sign can be considered formally, as a relation “secundum esse” to the object whose place it holds. It is obvious that from this perspective, the sign is not an efficient cause. No relation, whose entire being is to be “ad aliquid,” can be an efficient cause, and nobody will contest this fact. Moreover, it is not from this perspective that the problem presents itself. One envisions the sign fundamentally, inasmuch as it manifests the object to the faculty, and one asks if it is, taken in this way, an efficient cause. In other words, is the act by which the object is rendered manifest to the faculty by the sign a production, that is, the act of an efficient cause?
The reader will note in passing that the problem does not change if one admits that the sign consists formally in this manifestation of an object to a faculty.
So as to respond to the question thus posed with more precision, let us see separately the solution that it entails for speculative signs and for practical signs.
A.—Causality of speculative signs
Nobody is unaware of what a speculative sign is. It is the sign that represents to the speculative intellect an object whose place it holds and makes it known to it.
How is the manifestation of an object by the intermediary of a sign brought about for the intellect? By a series of acts that one must distinguish well. Is it a question of an instrumental, material sign? There must necessarily be a double manifestation: a manifestation to sense faculties, then a manifestation to the intellectual faculty, the senses needing to present the phantasm to the intellect, from which the intelligible species will be abstracted.
Let us take a classic example. I receive a letter. It is the sign of its sender’s thought. The reading of this letter will make me know the thought of the friend who sent it to me. By what means?
a) The sign—in the species, the letter—emits, produces in my senses impressed sensible species.
b) Moreover, the letter arouses my senses, awakens their attention. Otherwise, they would remain inactive and would not know.
c) The letter, by the intermediary of these sensible species, concurs with my sensible faculties so as to produce sense knowledge.
d) In virtue of this sense knowledge, a representation of the letter remains in the imagination, the phantasm.
e) The phantasm concurs with the agent intellect as an instrumental cause36 in the production of an intelligible species, which determines the possible intellect.
f) The intelligible species in turn arouses the intellect (the possible intellect).
g) Finally, the letter, by the intermediary of the intelligible species, concurs with the possible intellect so as to make itself known in an expressed species. The intellect first knows the object as an object,37 then, on account of its relation with the thought of the sender, as a sign of this thought.
From this analysis, it emerges that the manifestation of an object by an instrumental sign is brought about by the same series of acts as if the sign were simply an object and not a sign. It is by the relation that it has with the object whose place it holds that the intellect goes from the object-sign to its signification.
From this it also emerges that, in the series thus described there are many acts of efficient causality: production of impressed species, arousal of faculties, production of expressed intellectual and sensible species, the action of the agent intellect, etc.
However, what is in question is exactly this: is the manifestation of the letter (the object-sign of the thought that it expresses to my intellect) of itself an efficient cause? In other words, is the sign, considered in its foundation (by which it manifests an object to the faculty) an efficient cause?
If the response were negative, this would be to say that on no head, neither formally, nor fundamentally, is the sign an efficient cause. In any case, one could not argue from the fact that the sign cannot fulfil this role, namely, manifesting, without the intervention of efficient causes, so as to maintain the efficient causality of the sign. Indeed, this efficient causality would be outside of the order of signs, and consequently would not be of the specific nature proper to signs, but simply a causality of the physical order, like all other efficient causes.38 In short, it would be something utterly opposite from what the partisans of intentional causality claim.
St. Thomas seems to have summed up the entire response to the problem that occupies us in this laconic phrase: “The proximate efficient cause of science are not signs but reason discoursing from principles to conclusions.”39
What are the affirmations contained in these two lines? In them, St. Thomas determines the proximate efficient cause of science. Its proximate efficient cause is not, he says, the signs of which one makes use so as to produce science in minds, but instead is reason discoursing from principles to conclusions.
Therefore, as we have ourselves said in our preceding analysis, St. Thomas recognizes the existence of an efficient cause in the production of a knowledge (science) by signs. However, to his eyes, this efficient causality does not belong to the order of the causality of signs.
Let us attempt to establish this last affirmation, the only one that is of interest to us, the preceding (the necessity for an efficient cause for the manifestation of an object) being uncontestable.
It does not seem difficult to say in what direction one is to seek for this justification. This will obviously be by seeking the relations that exist between the action of the sign and the action of the object.
And such is, in short, the thought that we wish to establish:
The action of the sign is the same as the action of the object. Now, the action of the object is not efficient causality. Therefore, no more is it the case that action of signs efficient causality.
The analysis that we have undertaken shows us already that the role of the sign is accomplished by the same actions as the role of the object that it is and of the object that it represents. Nonetheless, let us establish more thoroughly this exact coincidence of the two roles. After this, if we show that the action of the object manifesting itself to the faculty is not efficient causality, we will have established in the same stroke that the action of the sign making the signified known itself is no more efficient causality.
1˚—ROLE OF THE SIGN AND ROLE OF THE OBJECT: THEIR COINCIDENCE.—That the sign does not play a different role from that of the object is a truth that requires little in the way of explanation. Indeed, we have said, that the proper notion of a sign, as such, is to be the substitute of the object, to draw the latter to the faculty, no more nor less than the object would do so itself inasmuch as it is an object.
To render this point more evident still, let us recall that there are two kinds of signs: the instrumental sign and the formal sign. The first, necessarily external to the faculty, notifies it the object that it signifies only by first manifesting itself as a more known object; it is only then that it makes its signified known. It represents it as a thing that (as the result of a relation, of a connection that is real or rationate, depending upon whether it is a natural or an arbitrary sign) is virtually contained in it. And consequently, the act by which it represents the object of which it is the sign is of the same nature as that by which it manifests itself to the faculty, as an object, adding to it only its relation to the signified since it is in making itself known that it also makes known the object whose substitute it is.
Consequently, the emission of species, the arousal of faculties, and in general all the acts that require an efficient causality belong to the sign in the same manner as to the object, when the latter manifests itself to the faculty. If these acts are essential to the nature of the object, they will also be essential to that of the sign. If, on the contrary, they are only accidental to it, they will equally be so for the sign.
The same holds for formal signs. No matter how great the difference between this sign and the formal sign may be, as regards the manner of signifying, it is, nonetheless, in the most exact sense of the word, a sign:40 the notion of sign that we have given is common to both. Like the instrumental sign, it represents an object other than itself, “aliud a se,” of which it is the substitute, “tanquam vices eius gerens.”
On this head, the manifesting action of the formal sign is, like that of the instrumental sign, of the same nature as the manifesting action of the object. Let us go even further: it is so in an even stronger manner. What precisely distinguishes the formal sign from the instrumental sign is the fact that it announces, makes known, the object that it signifies by making itself known.41 Therefore, in sum, in an even more perfect manner than the instrumental sign, it plays the role of the object, of which it is the substitute.
But it is useless to insist more on this, for this point is not the core of the debate.
2˚ THE FORMAL ROLE OF THE OBJECT—The fundamental point being debated is this: what is the genus of causality of the object inasmuch as it is an object, that is, inasmuch as it is manifested and is rendered present and knowable to a faculty?
The response that we wish to establish for this question is: the object, inasmuch as it is an object, is an extrinsic formal cause and not an efficient cause of its manifestation to the faculty.
We will prove this conclusion by determining the essence of the pure object, by isolating what is accidental to it, and finally by showing in what manner it is manifested to the faculty. In addressing this third point, we will determine the part of the object manifesting itself and the part of the other causes that this manifestation necessarily requires.
a) The formal constitutive of the object.—The object plays a very important role in St. Thomas’s doctrine. One knows the capital thesis according to which faculties and habitus are specified by their objects. St. Thomas exposits this in the Summa theologiae42 and in parallel texts.43 We do not have to develop the point here. Let us merely say that the object plays this role inasmuch as it is an extrinsic specifier. Indeed, certain beings depend upon an extrinsic cause not only in their existence but in their specification. The extrinsic cause in the order of existence is the efficient cause; the other extrinsic cause is called an extrinsic formal cause.44 These are familiar notions. It suffices to recall them.
No less known to those accustomed to Thomism is the division of extrinsic formal causes into exemplar causes (or, ideas) and objects. These two causes are not synonymous. The idea makes the being of which it is the exemplar in its image. On the contrary, the object does not make the faculty or its act in its likeness. Moreover, the idea is an exemplar cause after the manner of an origin, whereas the object does not play the role of being an origin for the act or the faculty. Finally, the idea is an efficacious exemplar cause. That is, it produces existence in the sense that it influences the production of the thing of which it is the exemplar. Indeed, it is the exemplar that determines the action of the efficient cause. For its part, the object does not move as an efficient cause, “quoad exercitium,” but only as a formal cause, “quoad specificationem.” It is this last point that we must insist upon.
This specifying role, as a formal cause, proper to the object, is clearly affirmed by St. Thomas. Let us merely cite several texts:
“An act is specified according to (the formal notion [rationem] of the object),… but the object moves by determining the act after the mode of a formal principle, by which an action is specified in natural things.”45
And moreover:
“The object is compared to the act of a passive power as the principle and moving cause,… whereas the object is compared to the act of an active power as a terminus and end; now, from these two things, namely from the principle or end (that is, the terminus) does an action receive its species.”46
Again:
“It is obvious… that every object is compared to the activity of the soul either as a causal agent [activum] or as end. However, the activity is specified from either.”47
The meaning of all these citations is clear: every object, whether it is the object of an active faculty or the object of a passive faculty, plays the role of being the specifier. When it is a question of the object of a passive faculty, in potency vis-à-vis this object, it makes it pass from potency to act;48 it is the principle of its act, and therefore its perfection, its form. On the other hand, when it is a question, of an active faculty, the object is its terminus, the end toward which the appetite of the power tends as toward its perfection and its good: in this case, the object gives the faculty the completion of its proper vitality, the fulfillment that it lacks and that it naturally seeks; therefore, it is not a terminus that is indifferent for the active power like the terminus of a pure relation, or like the terminus of creation, which in no way enriches the Creator. On the contrary, it is a terminus that is specifying and, if one can so speak, formative: “The object is not the matter from which but the matter about which [circa quam] and has in some manner the character of being a form inasmuch as it gives the species.”49—“The object terminates the operation and perfects it and is its end.”50
Nonetheless, the object of a passive faculty can raise more difficulties. It is what moves, and in the texts that we have cited, St. Thomas says this clearly. Now, this motion seems to belong to the order of efficient causality, and moreover it is absolutely essential to the object of such a faculty.
Certainly, this motion is essential to the object of a passive faculty, although there is an equivocation on the word, “to move.” It is very frequently employed so as to designate the action of an efficient cause, but in the present case, it designates a completely different action: this quite clearly follows from the texts that we have just cited.
In the text taken from ST I-II, he expressly says: “The object moves by determining the act after the manner of a FORMAL principle.” The second text says: “The object is compared to the act of a PASSIVE power as the PRINCIPLE… THE ACTION receives ITS SPECIES FROM ITS PRINCIPLE.”
In the third, we read: “Every object is compared to the activity of the soul either as AS A CAUSAL AGENT [activum] or as END. However, the activity IS SPECIFIED from either.”
In short, the motion of an efficient cause is a motion “quoad exercitium”: “A given power of the soul is found to be in potency to various things in a twofold manner. In one manner, it is in potency as regards acting and not acting. In another, it is in potency as regards doing this or that. For example, in a parallel manner, on the one hand, sight sometimes sees in act and sometimes does not see, and on the other hand sometimes sees white, sometimes black. Therefore, it is in need of a mover in two respects, namely with regard to exercise or the use of the act and with regard to the determination of the act. The first of these is from the perspective of the subject… THE OTHER, HOWEVER, IS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OBJECT, ACCORDING TO WHICH THE ACT IS SPECIFIED.”51
These last words are clear: specificative motion is proper to the object, the extrinsic formal cause. It even precedes the order of exercise, as St. Thomas himself says: “Objects are prior to the operations of the soul as regards its definition [in via definiendi].”52 Moreover, motion is also spoken of regarding the final cause or of the exemplar cause. The end moves the will; the exemplar moves to its imitation.
Besides, for a faculty the fact of being passive does not prevent it, as such, from being extrinsically specifiable. It is not its indetermination vis-à-vis its object that prevents it from being ordered by nature to this object, and consequently, it is not a being that is absolute in its species, completely independent from an external terminus.
b) What is accidental to the object. — “But,” it will be said, “The object of a passive power also moves ‘quoad exercitium,’ that is, as an efficient cause. Indeed, the object emits species into the faculty; it also arouses its attention. All this enters quite strongly into the line of efficiency. The species, which are substitutes for the object, determine the faculty formally. We understand this fact. However, it is still necessary for an efficient cause to produce these species, or to arouse the faculty. Therefore, would we not have, so far, indicated only one part of the nature of the object? Beyond its moving power as an extrinsic formal cause, outside of this metaphorical motion, would it not moreover imply an efficient causality, a motion properly so called?”
A simple preliminary remark will place us on the path for a response to this objection. St. Thomas NOWHERE attributes to the object an efficient motion touching upon exercise. Granted, this is a purely negative proof, but it already foresees that for the Angelic Doctor efficient causality is something foreign to the object as such.
In reality, when an object emits species into a faculty, this is not as an object. This emission is accidental to it. If this efficient action were essential to it, it would be inseparable from the notion of an object. Now, it is manifest that frequently the production of species does not arise from the object. This is the case, in particular, for the human intellect. They are produced by the agent intellect, and if one says that the phantasm concurs with it as its instrument, it will suffice to recall that the phantasm is not the object of the intellect, and that its instrumental action consists solely in furnishing the matter to the cause so as to modify its action: “It is the matter of the cause.” The same holds in every form of knowledge by infused species. Moreover, it is a constant doctrine in St. Thomas that the object cannot act upon an angelic intellect. In these different cases, touching upon passive faculties, the object is in no way the efficient cause and it nonetheless retains its nature as an object. This furnishes a proof that every motion of an efficient-causal nature is accidental here to the object.
For the object of an active faculty, the question of efficiency is not posed as imperiously. Indeed, the object cannot, be its efficient cause since it is not the principle of the action, but only its terminus, its end. Moreover, it is neither the “end of the effect,” nor the “end for the sake of which,” since neither of these ends specifies, which the object obviously does. Now, the question of efficiency could be posed only if the object were the “end for the sake of which.” As is well known, this end moves the agent to the action as the moral efficient cause. However, the object as such, an extrinsic formal cause, cannot be at the same time and from the same perspective the moral efficient cause. And therefore, in the order of active powers, the question of its efficiency is not posed.
The arousal of the faculty, whether it be a sensitive or intellectual faculty, is not, moreover, essential to the object, for, as regards the production of species, God can produce this arousal interiorly. Similarly, man can externally produce it by the presentation and explanation of an object to the senses [of his listener]. Moreover, in this arousal, the object is that which is applied to the faculty and not, necessarily, the very cause of this application.
Finally, the object united to the faculty by the intermediary of the species can concur as an efficient cause in the production of knowledge, but it does not do so as an object, that is, as the specifier: the faculty, determined and actuated by the object, produces the expressed species, but it is in no way the object determining and specifying the faculty that does this. In virtue of this determination, the faculty has become the sole principle in act, without the object having added to it anything in the way of efficient power. Moreover, this concurrence of the object in the production of knowledge is not the manifestation, but its terminus and its end: for the announcing [notification] of the object to the faculty is ordered to knowledge as to its terminus.
c) How the manifestation of the object is brought about.—What is the result of these various findings? It seems to us to be as follows. The object, whatever it may be, is essentially an extrinsic formal cause and nothing else. No efficient causality essentially belongs to it. It can belong to it only in an accidental manner, and therefore, not as an object as such, but as a thing, “ut res.” Therefore, it is necessary to conclude from this that if the manifestation of an object requires—and we have never attempted to contest this point—the action of efficient causes, it will never be from the object as such that this action will proceed. If it happens that the object emits impressed species and arouses the attention of the faculty, this will in any case never be inasmuch as it is an object, but only as a thing, for this role is wholly accidental to it. What belongs to the object as such is solely the specification of the faculty: in other words, it plays the role of an extrinsic formal cause—and this alone. To attribute another causality to it is to confuse what essentially belongs to it, as an object, with what belongs to it only in an accidental manner, as a thing, as a real being. This accidental efficient causality will therefore not be different from the efficient causality of other things. It can be only a physical causality.
Such is the causality of the object. And since, as we have shown, the causality of the sign, whether instrumental or formal, is of the same nature as that of the object, a conclusion imposes itself. To speak, with regard to the sign, of an instrumental, intentional, efficient causality is to wish to mate together notions that essentially repel each other. Either this causality is truly efficient and thus can be only physical, or it is intentional, that is, in the same sense of the authors of this new theory, of the order of the sign. Thus, whether one wishes it or not, it is no longer a question of an efficient causality but of an extrinsic formal causality.
Such is the conclusion to which the doctrine of St. Thomas rigorously leads us in what concerns the causality of speculative signs. Will matters be different if we are concerned with practical signs?
B.—Causality of practical signs
At first sight, the question seems to totally change its appearance, and this is important since the sacrament is essentially a practical sign. Whereas the speculative intellect is limited to manifesting an object, for which reason its sign is not (as we have said) an efficient cause, the role of the practical intellect seems to be utterly different. Consequently, its sign, which is only its external expression, would have a wholly different role from it as well.
Indeed, the practical intellect directs (ordinat) toward an end willed by the will, and the signs of this understanding have as their end the pursuing, by manifesting them externally, the intention and the direction of the practical intellect: “By manifesting, to perfect externally the intention and direction of the practical intellect.”53
Two cases can present themselves. Sometimes, the ordering of the practical intellect aims at a physical change in an external thing. In this case, the practical intellect moves the faculties of execution, which in their turn will serve as physical instruments for realizing the work. If the execution must be done by an intermediary person, the leader must externalize his order, making use of a sign. It is of little importance whether he does so verbally or through writing. In either case, this signified order, this practical sign, determines the will of the one executing the action as perfectly as the immanent mental order determines the proper will of him who is commanded by it.
On other occasions, the ordering of reason bears upon what one calls moral realities, such as obligations, courts, titles, dignities, and assignments to a such or such an office, without producing a physical change in the subject seen. In this case, the practical sign that translates the order conceived by commanding reason not only announces [notifie] but also imposes this order upon the subject that receives the order.
What is the genus of causality of these two signs?
First of all, is there an essential difference between them? No, for in the two cases the sign holds the place of the same act that it represents: the command, the “imperium”. Indeed, “To command,” says St. Thomas, “Is essentially an act of reason. He who commands another orders him, by way of intimation, to do something. Now, to order thus after the manner of an intimation belongs to reason. But reason can intimate an order in two manners. On the one hand, it can do so absolutely, and thus the intimation is expressed with the aid of a verb in the indicative mood, for example when someone says to someone else, ‘You ought to do this.’ Sometimes, on the contrary, reason intimates the order to someone by inclining him and moving him to action, and this intimation is expressed by the verb in the imperative mood, for example, when one says to someone: ‘Do this.’”54
It is easy to understand now that in all cases practical signs, translating externally the immanent order of reason, hold the place of the command conceived by the leader or the sovereign. When the command aims at a physical change, this is clear. If it bears upon moral realities, one remark suffices for us to indicate it. The command, in this case, is not limited to the enunciation of an order. It includes, moreover, its intimation, its imposition. The sign that will translate this command will therefore come to bear this intimation. Thus, always, the practical sign takes the place of the immanent command of the leader.55
Let us go one step further. In the article where he explains what the “imperium” is, St. Thomas tells us that this order with an intimation is an act of reason. Inasmuch as it moves, however, it presupposes an act of will. It is in virtue of this act that there is a motion in the command.
However, the will, which acts as an efficient cause, cannot directly move another will. Only God can efficaciously and directly act upon this power as an external principle.56 This motion of the will that is implied in the command can be brought about only by the intermediary of reason: “reason moves through the command to the exercise of the act.”57 The reason of the leader, on the one hand, presents the order and intimation to the subject’s reason by the intermediary of a sign, the substitute of the command transmitted. This sign specifies the intellect and will of the subject, and does so as an extrinsic formal cause, for it is a veritable object of apprehension for him who receives the order, and the object moves according to the manner of a formal principle: “According to this manner of movement, the intellect moves the will, as presenting an object to it”;58 “The object moves… according to the manner of a formal principle.”59
But reason does not only signify an order. In the command, there is a force that has emanated from the will that commands: “In as much as something remains in [the act of reason] taken from the act of will,”60 and this force passing into the intimation pushes the will of the subject to execution. In this way, the intellect moves no longer as an extrinsic formal cause, by signifying the object of the command, but as a final cause, because it preconceives the end and presents it to the subordinated will as an end to pursue: “The intellect moves the will according to the many by which an end is said to move, namely inasmuch as it preconceives the notion of the end and proposes it to the will.”61 In truth, this motion of exercise is only indirect. Such motion is said of exercise in the sense that the final cause moves the efficient cause to its exercise. In order to signify this indirect motion of exercise, it is also designated, though improperly, as being a moral efficient cause.
Thus does the practical sign’s genus of causality appear with clarity. Taking the place of the command, its causality is that of the command. If it tends toward the physical alteration of an external reality, as, in addition, of the imposition of an order, it entails a motion of exercise for the executive will, and its causality will be, from diverse points of view and all together, extrinsic formal causality and final causality, or, if one so prefers, moral efficient causality.
On the contrary, if the sign bears only upon realities of the moral order, without it tending to produce a physical change in the subject submitted to the ordering, as in this case it consists in a pure intimation of the conceived order, without the commanded subject having to enter into exercise, the practical sign thus having no motion of exercise is only an extrinsic formal cause. And this brings us back quite precisely to the conclusion that we formulated with regard to the speculative sign.
In sum, whatever may be its species, no sign as such is or can be an efficient cause. Therefore, it does not appear possible to establish a theory of sacramental causality upon the causality of signs. One cannot rely upon the moral efficient causality of practical signs moving to action, and it is easy to understand why. The order of the command contained in the practical sign is addressed to the soul and moves it morally to move itself and to move physically.62 Therefore, it would be necessary that the soul, in this case, were properly and directly the efficient cause of the physical change that would be brought about in it by the reception of the sacrament. Hence, one understands why the authors of the new theory have not ranked the practical sign that is the sacrament in this category and stop at dispositive causality. But, thus, this sign only has an extrinsic formal causality, and it is necessary to suppress every efficient causality from the sacrament.
III. Conclusion
We can now conclude. In wishing to attribute to the sacraments an intentional causality, the authors of this theory have succeeded, unwittingly, only to suppress every efficient causality from the sacraments of the New Law, reducing them purely and simply to being only signs. In other words, they reduce them to extrinsic formal causes. We believe that we have sufficiently shown this fact. It will be asked, “Whence can this error come?” Doubtlessly, it comes from multiple causes. In any case, it comes from a very inexact idea of the physical causality of the Thomists, as the refutation that these authors make concerning it attests. But also, and perhaps principally, it comes from an insufficient study of the causality of signs. In any case, one is surprised at the brevity with which the nature of the sign is exposited by them. Indeed, it seems that a more profound study of the philosophical presuppositions of the question would have modified their conclusions.
To bring this study to a close, let us say where we believe the capital vice of the theory resides.
In order to establish that the instrumental causality of the sacraments is of an intentional nature, one reasons as follows. The instrumental power of an efficient cause must be of the same order as its proper power. This major premise is incontestable. Then, one adds a minor premise: the proper power of the sign is intentional. From this reasoning, there follows this rigorous conclusion: its instrumental power is also intentional.
The entire sophism is found in the minor premise. The proper operation of the sign, as such, we are told, is of the intentional order: it consists, it is added, in the emission of a likeness of the sign into the senses: consistit in ingerendo sui speciem sensibus.
There is the error. The proper virtue (about which one speaks to us, and which would emit a species, a likeness of itself, into the senses) is the proper power not of a sign, but of a thing. This proper power is not of the intentional order but of the physical order, and it produces in the sense a physical (psychological) species, “the impressed species,” which physically (really) determines the sense. We showed in the preceding pages that this emission of species which requires an efficient (physical) cause is not due to the object as such, but to the object inasmuch as it is a thing. Consequently, the sign (which takes the place of the object, and is its instrument) does not have to be the instrument of this efficient causality. Such causality is outside of the notion of the object and therefore the notion of sign. At bottom, this theory rests upon a confusion of the intentional and of the entitative.63
As regards the spiritual power64 that St. Thomas tells us is in the sensible word, it is described to us [by Billot] as an instrumental intentional power superadded to the proper intentional power of the sign. This is another error, as one will see.
This is the text alluded to above.
After having said that a spiritual power cannot exist in a corporeal thing as something permanent, but only as an instrumental, transitive, and incomplete power (as movement is an imperfect act from the agent to the patient), St. Thomas adds, “Just as also in the sensible voice there is a kind of spiritual power for exciting man’s intellect, inasmuch as it proceeds from a concept of the mind, in this manner is the spiritual power in the sacraments, inasmuch as it is ordered by God to a spiritual effect.”65
Is not the exact meaning of these lines clearly this? The sensible expression can produce as an efficient cause an excitation in the man’s intellect so as to attract his attention, being moved physically by the intellect, which can indeed move the body to its spiritual effects and thus make use of the word as a physical instrument.66 On this head, the proper power of the sensible word receives, as something transitory, a physical instrumental power that is the “vis spiritualis” spoken of by St. Thomas. We say that it is a question of a physical and not an intentional instrument, not only on account of the context, but even on account of what was established in this study: the arousal of faculties has nothing in common with manifestation. A sign—and it is the case here, since the sensible expression is the sign of the mental word—can, after the manner of a physical, instrumental efficient cause, either emit species or arouse the mind’s attention, but it does not do this inasmuch as it is a sign. It is not even as an object that it does this, since sign and object coincide. It does this as a physical, real being. Therefore, its causality cannot differ from its being: “operatio sequitur esse.” To the physical thing there belongs a physical action.
Now, St. Thomas adds, this is what takes place in the sacraments. In them, there is a spiritual power that is from God. Destined by God (inquantum ordinantur a Deo) to produce, as an instrumental efficient cause, a spiritual effect which is grace, these sensible signs, considered not as signs (inasmuch as they manifest),67 but as real things inasmuch as they cause and receive from God a passing and imperfect power of the spiritual order, which enables them to produce the spiritual effect that God wills. Here again we must say without hesitation: this “spiritual power” is not intentional, for this causality is outside of the order of the sign. It belongs to the real order as they are the sensible things from which the signs are made. Therefore, it is a causality of the physical order. It would be necessary to reread attentively and in full the 4th article of the present question 62 of ST III so as to see how brilliant and luminous the thought of the Angelic Doctor is, as soon as one understands well the nature and causality of signs.
Ordinarily, true Thomists, partisans of the physical causality of the sacraments, note, in their works of theology, that intentional causality does not exceed the order of the sign and suppresses the true causality of the sacraments which it is nonetheless necessary to maintain. The remark is very just, but not being able to give this criticism all the philosophical development willed, having to oppose to their contradictors other criticisms of the strictly theological order, they in part miss their goal, for it is difficult to imagine that celebrated theologians could fall under the blow of such a reproach, and easily one is tempted to see in it an exaggeration of a school. Perhaps the pages that one has just read, however imperfect they may be, will persuade them more; in any case, we hope to have sufficiently manifested the shifting sand upon which this theological theory from sacramental theology is built.
Given the informal state of this paper, I only cite things that I have readily at hand for citation. The non-cited content can be easily (or, relatively easily) supported.↩︎
F.-X. Maquart, Elementa Philosophia, vols. 1-4 (Paris: Andreas Blot: 1937).↩︎
Fr. Woodbury, S.M. was a student of philosophy and theology at the Angelicum in the 1930s. A brief account of his life can be found in Austin M. Woodbury, Introduction to Philosophy, ed. Andrew Francis Wood (Sydney, Australia: Donum Dei Press, 2016), iii-xlv.↩︎
See John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, vol. 9 (Paris: Vives, 1886), disp. 22 (p. 3-102).↩︎
If I recall correctly, the point is relatively brief in Billuart as well – but that is pulling on some hazy memory.↩︎
Indeed, I suspect that the ever fair and true thinker, John Searle, hit upon the fringes of this insight—he knows and discusses, without the older term, many aspects of the practical signs that go into the formation of social reality. He is an honest interlocutor too—not too tied to the foolishness of intra-academic spats and journal-discussion obsession that often wastes one’s time in the futile playing of an arcane game by the high priests of knowledge. While his ontology is utterly different from mine, I do think that he has managed to manifest some of the key phenomena in this domain. We owe much to him for this.
See John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: The Free Pres, 1995); Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); “The Structure of the Social Universe: How the Mind Creates an Objective Social Reality,” in Mind, Language, and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 111-134.↩︎
Hints of this are found in Maritain’s Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, The Situation of Poetry, and (to a lesser degree) Art and Scholasticism. Also, some of the essays in the 2nd volume of Philippe’s L’activité artistique are of aid to this end.↩︎
See A. Krempel, La doctrine de la relation chez saint Thomas: Exposé historique et systématique (Paris: Vrin, 1952).↩︎
See his entire editorial afterward in John Poinsot, Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot, 2nd ed., ed. and trans. John Deely and Ralph Austin Powell (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013).↩︎
I have posted a good oerview of these matters, as explained by Fr. Woodbury at: https://www.philosophicalcatholic.com/blog/2016/12/1/transcendental-and-predicamental-relation-and-more-generally-relatio-secundum-esse
Also, see Gilles Emery, “Ad aliquid: Relation in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting Against Reason is Contrary to the Nature of God, ed. Matthew L. Lamb (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 175-201.↩︎
I have seen this point taken for granted in Yves Simon and Woodbury also.↩︎
See my introduction in Matthew K. Minerd, “Intelligence and Morality: Translation and Comments on an Article by Ambroise Gardeil, O.P,” Nova et Vetera 16, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 643-664. If I recall, too, there are interesting things related to this in Sokolowski’s Moral Action, a worthy study.↩︎
Although, it was not without reason that someone like Fr. de Lubac noted a certain weakening of the notion of sign in Eucharistic theology in the Middle Ages in response to the controversies with Berengar, etc. I say this without, however, endorsing some of Fr. de Lubac’s views in Corpus mysticum.↩︎
Anscar Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist (Bethesda, MD: Zaccheus Press, 2004).↩︎
Jacques Maritain, “Sign and Symbol,” in Redeeming the Time, trans. Harry Lorin Binsse (Geoffrey Bles: Centenary Press, 1953), 191–224, 268–76.↩︎
One should also mention Gallagher’s Significando causant; and Fr. Reginald Lynch’s licentiate thesis on sacramental causality, published by CUA Press.↩︎
See Maquart, F. X. "De la causalité du signe: Réflexions sur la valeur philosophique d'une explication théologique." Revue Thomiste 32 (1927): 40-60.↩︎
[Tr. note—The theory was proposed by Fr. Louis Billot (1846-1931), later a cardinal who then resigned from his Cardinalate in 1927 after significant disagreements with Pope Pius XI concerning L’Action Française, which Billot supported.]↩︎
See T.-M. Pègues, “De la causality des sacrements, d’après le R.P. Billot,” Revue Thomiste 6 (January-Feburary, 1904): 689-708.↩︎
Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, 2.1 n.1. For example, this is cited in T.-M. Zigliara, Summa Philosophica, vol. 1 Logica et Ontologia (Paris: Librarie Delhomme et Briguet, 1900), bk. 1, ch. 2, art.1 (p.41).↩︎
Cf. Aquinas, ST I, qq. 12 and 14.↩︎
Joseph Gredt, Elementa philosophae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, 13th edition, vol. 1, ed. Eucharius Zenzen (Barcelona: Herder, 1961), n.9. [Tr. note: Obviously this text is a later edition than what was available to Maquart. The definition stands. He does not cite which edition he is using of Gredt’s very popular manual of philosophy, based heavily upon John Poinsot.]↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
See St. Thomas, Quodlibet I, q.2, a. 1; IX, q.3, a. 3. Aquinas, In I Sent. d.26, q. 2, a. 1.↩︎
St. Thomas, In IV Sent., dist. 4, q. 1, a. 1.↩︎
Indeed, it is necessary that by nature it could manifest, that is, play the role of an object.↩︎
John of St. Thomas, Cursus philosophicus, Logica pt. 2, p. 561A (Vivès). [Tr. note: I have translated this with an eye to Deely’s translation of Reiser 647a36-39.]↩︎
See ST III, q. 63, a. 3.↩︎
This is what will be demonstrated in the second part of this study.↩︎
[Tr. note: This is slightly puzzling reasoning, given the way that a relation secundum esse can be a relation secundum esse even when it is a relation rationis.]↩︎
We will see later in what sense one must understand this motion of the object.↩︎
[Tr. note: I find this a bit off, as the object as an object does imply a rationate relation secundum esse inasmuch as the object measures the intellect. Such a relation of measure to measured thing is rationate. It is not, however, that of a sign, for the latter relation is the real relation of the measured thing to that which measures it. The same thing could be said for the relatio (secundum esse) rationis involved in God’s relation to creation.]↩︎
[Tr. note: And hence, only in the presence of a knower does it then become a sign in act. To this end, see Jacques Maritain, Jacques Maritain, “Language and Theory of Sign,” in Frontiers in Semiotics, ed. John Deely, Brooke Williams, and Felicia E. Kruse (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), 51–62.]↩︎
In particular, it would have been necessary to show that the sign, which designates formally a relation to an object, and fundamentally a relation to the faculty, includes the first relation “in recto” and the second only “in obliquo”. But this was less useful for our subject. One will find all the details desired concerning this point in John of St. Thomas, Cursus philosophicus, Logique, pt. 2 p.576 (Vivès).↩︎
[Tr. note: Following John of St. Thomas, we would want to qualify this slightly and say “only as an objective instrument. I explain this point in a lengthy footnote (following John of St. Thomas, Simon, and Peifer) in Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Sense of Mystery: Clarity and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2017), 17n20.]↩︎
It goes without saying that here we are simplifying matters: the first intellectual knowledge of the letter is not knowledge of this letter, but of that which is, in general, the thing so called. It is only by reflection, “convertendo se ad phantasmata,” that the intellect knows this letter in particular. It is hardly necessary to say that this simplification does not change anything for the problem under consideration.↩︎
If the sign is formally A SIGN, foundationally AN OBJECT, outside of these two points of view is “RES,” “THING,” REAL BEING.↩︎
St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 11, a. 1, ad 4.↩︎
See St. Thomas, Quod. IV, q.9, a.2. De veritate, q. 4, a. 1, ad 7; q. 9, a. 4, ad 4.↩︎
Cf. Bulletin thomiste, nov. 1925, A. Blanche, p. [3] on the difference between the two kinds of signs.↩︎
See ST I, q. 77, a. 3.↩︎
See Peter of Bergamo, Tabula aurea, “objectum,” 6 and 14.↩︎
See Cajetan, In ST I, q. 77, a. 3. Gredt, vol. 1, no. 382.↩︎
ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1.↩︎
ST I, q. 77, a. 3.↩︎
See In II De anima, lect. VI, ed. Pirotta, no. 305.↩︎
See ST I, q. 25.↩︎
See ST I-II, q. 18, a. 2, ad 2.↩︎
In I Sent., dist. 1, q. 11, a. 1, ad 2.↩︎
ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1.↩︎
In II De Anima, lect. 6, ed. Pirotta, no. 305.↩︎
John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus (Vivès), 31A.↩︎
ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1. [Tr. note: Taken from Fr. Maquart’s French.]↩︎
By “leader,” so as to simplify, we understand him who commands and emits the order, and by subject, him who receives it.↩︎
See ST I-II, q. 9, a. 4 and 6.↩︎
ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1.↩︎
ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1.↩︎
ST I-II, q. 9, a. 1. See Cajetan on this.↩︎
ST I-II, q. 17, a. 1.↩︎
De veritate, q. 22, a. 12.↩︎
Indeed, the moral efficient cause does not suppress the physical efficient cause, but the terminus of the first must be the agent of the second.↩︎
See ST III, q. 62, a. 4, ad 1.↩︎
New scholastics must excavate these fundamental notions, which were familiar to great metaphysicians of the golden ages. [Tr. note: Also, see the text cited in the previous note.]↩︎
ST III, q. 62, a. 4 ad 1.↩︎
“Inasmuch as a body can be moved by a given spiritual substance to a bring about a given spiritual effect.”↩︎
On this head, as we have shown, they are not an efficient cause, but only an extrinsic formal cause.↩︎
