For the month of November, the illustrious Prof. Reudi Imbach is in Rome teaching a course on the philosophy of St. Thomas as shown in his prologues to his Aristotelian commentaries. So, you can guess how I'm spending the month.
Towards the end of his life, St. Thomas commented on twelve Aristotelian works, of which most had been only recently discovered in the Latin west. He did not know Greek, but relied on translations of his fellow Dominican, William Moerbeke, and wrote his commentaries almost as soon as Moerbeke finished his translations. So, Thomas Aquinas found himself on the cutting edge of Aristotelian philosophy. The big question is why. Why would St. Thomas, as magister of theology at the University of Paris, occupy himself with careful, literal commentaries of Aristotle which sought not only the intention of the author (intentio auctoris) but also the truth of the matter explained in the text (veritas rei)? Surely at least some of the work assisted him in the elaboration of his masterwork, the Summa theologiae. However, that cannot explain all of it, and the question is still open.
However, this is all merely background to the purpose of this post. I wanted to write something about one lecture in particular here, which Prof. Imbach presented on St. Thomas Aquinas' first lecture in his commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Here St. Thomas opens by referring to another Aristotelian work, the Metaphysics, citing "Sapientis est ordinare," that is, "It belongs to the wise to order." From this single, simple phrase (only three words in Latin), St. Thomas comes up with quite a concise treatise on man, on God, and on the division of all knowledge. Here I wanted to write on just a few things which particularly struck me from this lesson.
Sapientis est ordinare. As in the English, the Latin "ordinare" has two separate meanings. Thus, "It belongs to the wise to order" means both that one who is wise can give orders and and can put things in order, but also can see or recognize order in what appears chaotic to others. Thus there is a relationship between intellect and ordo, right order or ordering. You see, if it belongs to the wise to put order in things, to organize, then it follows that all order must be the product of some intellect (to some being to whom wisdom may be attributed). For example, no ordering may be attributed a parrot, even if a parrot instinctively knows how to build a well-organized nest. It also follows that order, or ordering, may only be perceived or contemplated by an intellect, by someone who could be called wise. No dog can appreciate the order and the form of a Gothic cathedral.
Who is it that can be called wise? Intellectual beings: God, angels, and man. God, in His perfect wisdom has put all order into the cosmos, in its creation and governance. We, as intellectual beings can observe, contemplate, and admire this order which is what we do in what are called the speculative sciences (in which we, as spectators study the world as it is, making no attempt to change it). Classically, the speculative sciences are divided into physics or natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics (but more on this division in a later post that I hope will appear in the not-too-distant future). Also, our intellect can reflect on its own activity, as happens in the rational sciences, which also happen to be classically divided into three, corresponding to the three acts of the mind of simple understanding, of dividing and composing in propositions, and of reasoning from premises to conclusions (but, again, perhaps more on this to follow in a separate post). So far we see our intellect as able to recognize order in the world, and as able to order its own thought. However, we can also order our actions in the world, and this we do in the threefold moral sciences of monastics (simple ethics, governing oneself), oeconomics (governing one's family or household), and politics (governing one's community or society). Lastly, we are able to govern our production of things in the technical arts, in which we put order into any thing outside ourselves, such as in wood to become a house or in marble to become a statue, etc.
Order, then, is central to Thomistic philosophy. Through order we come to know the world and its causes, and we come to discourse rationally, to govern ourselves and others, and to produce artifacts which make life generally easier.
Yet, only in God is wisdom perfect. I find it difficult to organize my day, so I know clearly that I am not very wise. Yet I can admire order. I can strive for order. I know that others are more wise and better than I am, and as one less wise I can take that order and apply it to my own life.
Going from this into other matters, one realizes that sin is disorder--it is a falling away from the proper order of human action, which is always directed to the good. Sometimes, we mistake what is good, and fail to order our actions to what is actually good, and instead aim for something which appears good at the time--such as another drink after having already impaired the use of reason through imbibing much of what seemed pleasant in the drinking.
Here, however, I will conclude by saying that St. Thomas certainly meant a lot by the brief expression he cited of "Sapientis est ordinare.
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