Peter Martyr Vermigi, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
On Helm's Deep we last looked at Peter
Martyr Vermigli here. So this post is a
belated post-script. (The page references given in brackets are to the translation of Vermigli's Commentary illustrated above.)
Debating about the hardness of the human heart and
the need for grace, Calvin states ‘Pighius declares that the hardness [of the heart]
was incurred through bad habit. Just as if one of the philosophers' crew should
say that by evil living a person had become hardened or callous towards
evil’. Calvin's (and Augustine's)
view is at odds with the Aristotelian idea - the idea of the 'philosophers' crew' - that we become just by
doing just acts, prudent by doing prudent acts, brave by doing brave acts, and
so on. For if, for example, being just is not simply a matter of habitually or
spontaneously doing what is objectively just but also a matter of having the
right motives and dispositions in doing so - if, in other words we take a
motivational view of ethical goodness, as Calvin and Augustine do - then the
first question is how we come to do the just thing in the first place, how we
come to be motivated to love justice. Calvin's answer is that we can
only do a just act in the first place by having the habitus of our minds
redirected, a redirecting that, at least in its first stages, must be done for
and to us rather than our doing it.
However, there is reason to think that Calvin is
not being quite fair to Aristotle here, if indeed he had Aristotle clearly in
view. For Aristotle does not only say,
This then, is the case with the virtues also; by
doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or
unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and by
being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly.
He also says
Again, the case of the arts and that of the virtues are not similar; for the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character.
There is plenty of scope here for Calvin to adapt
Aristotle to his own view, by claiming that a firm and unchangeable desire to
be virtuous can only be brought about by the efficacious grace of God,
though he does not appear to want to take it. Probably because he takes issue with Aristotle's view that such a character is naturally acquired.
In dealing
with the same passage in which Aristotle argues that
moral virtue is acquired through habit, Vermigli makes the same point as
Calvin, though he also provides Aristotle with a get-out-of-prison card. Moral
virtues are (like intellectual virtues, though distinct from them) though
not co-natural or innate, yet not contrary to nature. Virtues derive from the
exercise of the will - 'or rather, the will, God, and action; we should
also add reason, with which right actions should agree'. (296) As
is his custom, Vermigli compares what Aristotle says to holy scripture.
Though expressed in a very mild and undemonstrative way, Vermigli makes
serious criticisms of Aristotle. Men have sometimes been made wise
in an instant; more generally, God is the primary and most powerful cause of
all the virtues (Citing I Cointhians, 4.7)
With respect to vitiated and corrupt nature, however, these statements [of Aristotle’s ] are true in the normal course of things and according to ordinary reason. Aristotle, however, was unable to see this corruption of nature, since he was left without faith and the light of holy scripture It is also true that our nature, in its present state, is suited to and capable of receiving the virtues, if we are speaking of the civil and moral kind, although not all people are disposed to them in the same way. (296-7)
The 'civil and moral' kind of virtue is presumably being
contrasted with the theological virtues, though as far as I am aware Vermigli
does not use this phrase in this work, but he goes on the refer to the 'true
virtues, such as faith, hope and charity and the like'. (297)
(See also 331-7)
Voluntariness and Ignorance
In his work On the Bondage and Liberation of the
Will against Pighius Calvin tirelessly insists on the fact, against Pighius but with
Augustine, that our present lack of free will is not part of our nature, but is
a corruption of our nature.
He includes a short Excursus, 'Coercion versus Necessity', that establishes the
difference. The importance of the distinction for Calvin is that while acting
out of necessity is consistent with being held responsible for the action, and
being praised or blamed for it, being coerced is inconsistent with such praise
or blame. In his criterion of praise and blame he explicitly follows
Aristotle
When Aristotle distinguished what is voluntary from
its opposite, he defines the latter as, to bia e di agnoian gignomenon,
that is, what happens by force or through ignorance. There he defines as forced
what has its beginning elsewhere, something to which he who acts or is acted
upon makes no contribution (Ethic. Ni.3.1).
So normal human activity is not forced or coerced. Insofar as it
proceeds from fallen human nature it is not free because a person with a
fallen nature does not have the power to choose what is good. Nonetheless,
where a person is not forced, but makes a contribution to his action, and is
not acting out of ignorance, he is acting voluntarily, and is responsible for
what he does.
Vermigli similarly follows Aristotle in
his comments on the passage, (Book 3.1) but much more closely and
in greater detail than Calvin. The distinction between the voluntary and the
involuntary is, for Aristotle, the basis of praise and blame. (373-4) (Ought
implies can applies to ‘secular laws’ (Vermigli concedes) but ‘not those of God’.) For the latter
require things that are impossible, especially in view of the ‘corrupt
and spoiled condition of nature’. (374) In civil actions the involuntary
and actions done through ignorance are pardoned, as also in Scripture. (Deut.
19.5).
The voluntary is understood in terms of the absence of force, an
impossible-to-resist or difficult-to-resist impulse, an external force which
receives no help from the recipient (Aristotle) but which may nevertheless be
cooperated with e.g. with the highwayman who shouts 'your money or your
life!', and of knowledge. (375) Vermigli follows Aristotle in showing
considerable analytic interest; for example, in distinguishing the spontaneous
from the voluntary, and the range of possible instances of the
voluntary, leading to a discussion of 'cases', (377), and also a
discussion of the blameworthiness of actions in this range of the 'voluntary'.
For example, if one endures evil for a worthy end, this is blameworthy, if for
a noble end - one’s country, one’s parents, one’s wife and children -
then praiseworthy. (379) Those who act from base motives are not acting
involuntarily, as they may claim.(384)
Vermigli
goes into all this with great expository skill - clear, orderly and detailed,
and making judicious points, and then towards the end of the chapter there is a
longer than usual discussion of how all these Aristotelian claims accord with
Holy Scripture. He cites a number of biblical examples which accord with
Aristotelianism. Of particular interest is the way in which Vermigli thinks
that Scriptural examples of moral action, together with praise and blame,
follows the same contours as Aristotle’s thinking.
Aristotle
famously distinguished between those actions which are fully voluntarily, and
those in which the will is involved, but are not fully voluntarily. ‘Something
of this sort occurs in jettisoning good during a storm. There is no one who,
strictly speaking, willingly and voluntarily throw away his own property, but
people do it to save themselves and others, if they have any sense'. So as regards responsibility there is a three-fold
classification: the fully voluntary, the partly voluntary (as in the
jettisoning case), and actions done out of ignorance. Vermigli thinks
that this is exactly what we find in Scripture.
First,
voluntariness . (396) The faithful are praised for being a willing people
(Ps.11.9), the woodcutter is excused if his action is accidental because it was
not voluntary (Nu.35.18) The Devil is compelled to tell the truth, and is
not praised, nor is Balaam who is forced at the point of a sword to curse the
people of God. (Numbers 22.1-35) Mixed actions, that is, those where we
are constrained, though we still act of our own accord, are commended in
Scripture – e.g. self-denial for a greater good, to suffer rather than to
sin, to endure persecution. (397) We are praised for such mixed actions,
for those who endure persecution are blessed. (Matthew 5.10) What
should be endured for what? We should endure anything rather than depart from
Christ. Base actions may be as voluntary as honourable actions, as Aristotle
taught.
But there are
issues over which Aristotle and Scripture deviate. For what if the evil we do
is due to the presence of original sin? 'Supposing someone said
that knowledge or awareness is lacking when this sin is contracted and that the
sin is cause by the first evil motions of our soul, in which there is no
deliberation or choice?' Answer: 'Aristotle’s teaching should be
understood of ethical and actual behavior, but that he had no knowledge
of original sin. It is enough for us that they cannot be called
compulsory because they have an internal principle.' Original sin
is such an internal principle. (400) So Aristotle is confirmed after all!
(396-7)
Finally,
(in this rather rapid survey) what of ignorance? Aristotle distinguished
between those actions done from ignorance about which we feel remorse etc. when
our ignorance is uncovered, and those over which we don’t feel remorse. The
fact that we don’t feel remorse when sin is uncovered does not mean that
we committed no sin. (398) if we ought to have known. (398) 'Forgive
them, for they know not what they do'. They had sinned, and needed
forgiveness, 'I know that you acted in ignorance.'But if
they could not have known what they were ignorant of, this ensures
non-culpability. (He cites the drunkenness of Noah.) Culpability depends partly
on how important and central a matter the ignorance is of. (398) Actions done
when drunk are voluntary, both for Aristotle and Scripture. (399) So the
approach here is that what Aristotle says is true because and insofar as
it accords with Scripture. So we might say that Vermigli sees Aristotle as an
astute observer of and commentator on human life, as a recipient of 'natural
light', 'common grace' and so forth.
Several
things are interesting about this treatment. There is no discussion of
the metaphysics of human action, nothing on what is nowadays called determinism
or compatibism, or agent causation. His reference to original sin
presented him with an invitation to discuss these issues, but he does not
accept it. There is no attempt to discuss Aristotle’s account of the voluntary
and the blameworthy in the light of Aristotle’s own indeterminism and
fear of fatalism to be found in his account of The Sea Battle Tomorrow in Book
V of the De Interpretatione. It is true that Aristotle’s account
of blameworthiness in terms of voluntariness and knowledge (or awareness) can
be bolted onto either an compatibilist or an incompatibilist account of
action, depending on what one takes the sources of voluntariness to be. In ignoring the questions of the
overall consistency or otherwise of Aristotle’s moral psychology and his
ethics, Vermigi is simply content to help himself to this aspect of Aristotle’s
thought without bothering about its significance for Aristotle’s overall views
themselves. (This may be partly at least because he takes Aristotle
to be discussing ethics from a civil or public angle rather than from the angle
of metaphysics, and he may be correct in this.) There is considerable merit in
the care with which he discusses voluntariness, and Calvin’s short statements
on the matter, could certainly have benefited from the discussions of his
friend.
