Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinas's Aristotelian Moral Psychology and Anscombe's Fallacy

Philosophical Review

Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinas's Aristotelian Moral Psychology and Anscombe'sFallacyAuthor(s): Scott MacDonaldSource: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 100, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 31-66Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2185514 .

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The Philosophical Review, Vol. C, No. 1 (January 1991)

Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinas's Aristotelian Moral Psychology and

Anscombe's Fallacy

Scott MacDonald

Aristotelian moral philosophy, as presented and developed by Aristotle himself and his medieval followers, is founded on

what many commentators have taken to be a dubious argument. Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics with the famous claim that every human activity, action, and choice aims at some good (1094al-2), and then seems to conclude within the next 26 lines that there is some single good for human life and that inquiry into its nature is the first priority of moral philosophy (1094a22-26). Anscombe has neatly stated the critics' view:

Ancient and medieval philosophers-or some of them at any rate- regarded it as evident, demonstrable, that human beings must always act with some end in view, and even with some one end in view. The arguments for this strike us as rather strange. Can't a man just do what he does, a great deal of the time? He may or may not have a reason or a purpose; and if he has a reason or purpose, it in turn may just be what he happens to want.... The old arguments were de- signed to show that the chain [of ends] could not go on forever; they pass us by, because we are not inclined to think it must even begin; and it can surely stop where it stops, no need for it to stop at a purpose that looks intrinsically final, one and the same for all actions. In fact there appears to be an illicit transition in Aristotle, from 'all chains must stop somewhere' to 'there is somewhere where all chains must stop'. I

If Anscombe is right, Aristotle's opening argument is as bad as an argument can be: its premise is false (not all human actions are done for a reason or purpose), and the inference is fallacious (it involves an illicit quantifier shift, which I'll refer to as Anscombe's

'G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957), Section 21.

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fallacy).2 Moreover, Anscombe and other critics have thought that the conclusion itself is manifestly false: certainly human beings enjoy and desire many different objects as ends in themselves.3 If the critics are right, the otherwise impressive and historically influ- ential project of the Ethics has been shown to rest on a mistake.4

In this paper I will defend a version of this Aristotelian argument developed by Aquinas at the beginning of his treatment of moral philosophy in Summa theologiae.5 I will argue that Aquinas's Aristotelian argument for the claim that there is a single ultimate end of human life has none of the flaws that commentators have claimed to find in Aristotle. In this respect at least, therefore, I think Aristotelian moral theory does not rest on a mistake. I should say at the outset, however, that I will make no historical claims about the relation between Aquinas's views and Aristotle's, other than that Aquinas's are broadly "Aristotelian." In particular, I do not claim that the argument I attribute to Aquinas is the same in all its details as the argument Aristotle himself had in mind at

2The fallacy involves an illicit quantifier shift from (x)(Hx D (31y)(Fy & xSy)) to (31y)(Fy & (x)(Hx D xSy)) {H = "human action," F = "end," and S = "for the sake of"}. For a discussion of the fallacy in the history of philosophy and the ascription of it to Aristotle, see P. T. Geach, "History of a Fallacy," reprinted in Logic Matters (Berkeley, Calif.: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1980), pp. 1-13. Bernard Williams ("Aristotle on the Good: A Formal Sketch," The Philosophical Quarterly 12 (1962), pp. 289-296) and Christopher Kirwan ("Logic and the Good in Aristotle," The Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1967), pp. 97-114) provide illuminating formalizations of Aristotle's argument.

3See, for example, W. F. R. Hardie, Aristotle's Ethical Theory (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 17; G. H. von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness (London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 89; and Anthony Kenny, "Aristotle on Happiness," reprinted in Articles on Aristotle, Vol. 2: Ethics and Politics, ed. J. Barnes, M. Schofield, and R. Sorabji (London, England: Duckworth, 1977), pp. 25-32.

4For discussion of Aristotle's argument that is more sympathetic than Anscombe's and Hardie's, see J. L. Ackrill, "Aristotle on Eudaimonia," reprinted in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. A. 0. Rorty (Berkeley, Calif.: Uni- versity of California Press, 1980), pp. 15-34; and T. H. Irwin, "The Meta- physical and Psychological Basis of Aristotle's Ethics," in Rorty, op. cit., pp. 35-54.

5Aquinas introduces his moral philosophy at the beginning of Summa theologian (hereafter referred to as "ST") IaIIae; the argument I will be discussing occurs in Articles 1 and 4-7 of Question 1 of IaIIae. Hence- forth I will refer to texts in IaIIae, Q. 1 by the article number alone.

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the beginning of the Ethics. I think a case could be made for the view that Aquinas is simply expanding and explicating an argument that Aristotle left terse and implicit, but I will leave as an open question the precise relation between Aquinas's Aristotelian argument and Aristotle's own argument.6

My purpose in this paper, however, is not only to rehabilitate a much denigrated argument in the history of philosophy but also to defend the interesting account of practical rationality embedded in it. Part of the argument's importance as the cornerstone of Aristotelian moral philosophy consists in its elucidating a particular conception of the structure of practical rationality. In the course of defending Aquinas's argument I will lay out that conception. 7

Aquinas introduces his moral philosophy with the remark that the first question one should consider in this connection has to do with the ultimate ehd of human life in general (in communi).8 He then embarks on a discussion of the relation of human actions to ends in general and ultimate ends in particular. I will focus on four claims from that discussion, which I take to be the results of the four main stages of an extended argument.

6For Aquinas's commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics see In X libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum expositio, ed. Raymond M. Spiazzi (Turin, Italy: Marietti, 1964) -hereafter referred to as "In X Ethic." Some of the points I will make about Aquinas's views can be found in the work of recent commentators on Aristotle, especially T. H. Irwin, "Aristotle on Reason, Desire, and Virtue,"Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), pp. 567-578, and "The Metaphysical and Psychological Basis of Aristotle's Ethics"; John M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard University Press, 1975); J. L. Ackrill, op. cit.; Richard Sorabji, "Aris- totle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue," reprinted in Rorty, op. cit., pp. 201-220; and David Wiggins, "Deliberation and Practical Reason," in Rorty, op. cit., pp. 221-240.

7Just as Aristotle explicitly develops the account of practical reasoning presupposed in the opening argument only later in the Ethics, particularly in Books III, VI, and VII, Aquinas's argument makes use of a view of practical reasoning spelled out in detail in his subsequent discussions of voluntariness (Q. 6), intention (Q. 12), choice (Q. 13), and deliberation (Q. 14).

8For the passage, see note 23 below. I will have more to say about the importance and precise sense of "in general" at the end of Section II and in Sections IV-VI.

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[A] Each human action is for the sake of some end (propter finem) (Article 1).9

[B] Each human action is for the sake of some ultimate end (ad ultimum fine) (Article 4).

[C] There is some single ultimate end for the sake of which all the human actions of an individual human being are done (Articles 5 and 6).

[D] There is some single ultimate end for the sake of which all human actions of all human beings are done (Article 7).

I will devote a section of this paper to each of these claims, but I want to begin by drawing attention to some general features of the overall argument that yields them and to which they contribute. [A] is Aquinas's version of the opening claim of Aristotle's Ethics, and both [C] and [D] are candidates for disambiguating the mul- tiply ambiguous conclusion of Aristotle's own argument. 10 Aquinas argues for [C] and [D] separately. It seems that he would be guilty of a version of Anscombe's fallacy if he derived either [C] or [D] directly from either [A] or [B], or [D] directly from [C]. Thus, in evaluating Aquinas's justification for each of these claims I will need to pay special attention to its relation to the preceding stage(s) of the overall argument.

[B] and [C] are the heart of the argument and the claims critics are most likely to find worrisome; hence, I will devote most of my attention to them. Aquinas's arguments for [B] and [C] provide the basis for a distinction between two different sorts of ultimate ends, and keeping the distinction clearly in mind will help us understand precisely the claims Aquinas takes himself to be arguing for and the sort of justification necessary for each. That basic distinction between what I will call weak and strong ultimate ends will allow me to distinguish four different ways in which an action or end might be "for the sake of" some other action or end; these distinctions are crucial to my defense of [B] and [C] and constitute the foundation of the account of practical rationality I will turn to in the final section of the paper. I should say that Aquinas does not

9For Aquinas the term "human action" (actus humanus) has a technical sense that I will discuss in Section II below; I will use "human action" here despite the appearance of pleonasm.

'0See Kirwan, op. cit., pp. 97-100.

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explicitly mark all the distinctions that I attribute to him and on which my argument in this paper relies. Nevertheless his explicit claims either warrant or suggest them; and if the assumption that he admits them allows us to defend his arguments against otherwise damaging objections, then we can suppose that he would en- dorse the explications of his arguments that appeal to them explicitly.

II.

Anscombe thinks that Aristotle's argument is not only fallacious but that its premise, the one corresponding to Aquinas's [A], is false. Some actions, she claims, are done with no purpose at all. Aquinas rejects Anscombe's claim, at least if she means that some human actions properly so-called are done with no purpose at all.

In Article 1 he distinguishes human actions properly so-called (actus human) from actions merely associated with a human being (actus hominis) such as reflex movements, inadvertent beard scratching, nervous twitches, and the like." Human actions properly so-called are all and only those actions done by a human being insofar as he is a human being. A human being is a human being in virtue of possessing a rational soul, and so any action done by a human being that arises from his soul insofar as it is rational is an action done by him insofar as he is a human being. Aquinas thinks that possession of a rational soul endows one with certain cognitive powers-specifically intellectual powers-and with appetitive powers consequent on these intellectual powers.'2 He sometimes lumps the intellectual powers together under the heading "reason," and the appetitive powers specific to a rational creature, the rational appetite, he calls "will."''3 So human actions properly so-called are all and only those actions done by a human being that result from intellect (or reason) and will. Acting from intellect and will is the activity characteristic of human beings qua human beings. 4

"See also In X Ethic. 1. 1 (n. 3). 12ST Ia.79, 80, 82. 13ST Ia.59.1; IaIIae.1.2; 6.Prologue; 6.2.adl; 8.1; 9.1. 14One might suppose that human actions properly so-called, those a

human being does insofar as he is a human being, are to be distinguished

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What is it for an action to result from intellect and will? Aquinas devotes a great deal of attention to answering this question and the argument I am examining is part of that answer, so the barest sketch of the relevant features of his account will have to suffice for now.15 Aquinas thinks that the will is a natural inclination toward the good as it is conceived by intellect.'6 Thus, for a human being to will to act it is necessary that the will be presented with an object conceived by the intellect as good.'7 The process whereby intellect judges that some object or course of action is good is deliberation, and Aquinas calls the willing that follows on a deliberated judgment "deliberated willing."'8 To act from intellect and will, then, is to act from a volition arising from deliberation; and hence, human actions properly so-called are actions resulting from de-

from the actions a human being does insofar as he is an animal. Aquinas, in fact, holds that human beings have cognitive and appetitive powers distinct from intellect and will-viz., sense perception and sense appetite that they share with other animal species; and he holds that human beings can act on the basis of sense perception and sense appetite (as when one sees food, desires it as satisfying one's hunger, and acts to procure it on that basis). But he denies that human beings can act directly on this basis. A sense desire arising from sense perception is not sufficient to move a human being to act without the consent of the will. Hence, according to Aquinas, even cases in which a human being seems to act only insofar as he is an animal are cases of human action properly so-called. See ST Ia.81.3 and IaIIae.77.1 and 2.

'5In addition to the argument I am examining, which develops the concept of an ultimate end and its role in practical reasoning, the whole of the Treatise on Human Acts (ST IaIIae.6-21) and much of the Treatise on Habits and the Virtues (ST IaIIae.49ff.) constitute Aquinas's detailed account of what it is to act from reason and will. For more detailed discussion of Aquinas's understanding of human action as action arising from reason and will see my "Egoistic Rationalism: Aquinas's Basis for Christian Morality," in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), Section 2. For discussion of Aristotle's view of the relation between reason and will, see T. H. Irwin, "Reason and Responsibility in Aristotle," in Rorty, op. cit., pp. 117-156.

'6ST Ia.80.1; IaIIae.8.1-2; 19.3. This claim, too, will be clarified in the course of this paper.

'7Intellect's conceiving an object as good is not, however, a sufficient condition for the human being's willing it. Will is necessitated with respect to some object only when reason conceives that object as the complete and perfect good.

'8ST IaIIae. 1. 1, 14. I will have more to say about the nature of deliberation in Sections IV-VII.

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liberated willing. (Since deliberation is properly an activity of the intellectual power and willing is properly an activity of the appetitive power, a deliberated willing is a rational desire.)

[A], then, can be restated as:

[A'] Each human action properly so-called, that is, each action resulting from deliberated willing, is for the sake of some end.

Once clarified in this way the claim is less objectionable than it might have seemed. In fact, [A'] appears to be a conceptual truth. An action's arising from deliberated willing entails that the action is willed on the basis of intellect's presentation of a good, and its being done on this basis is nothing more than its being done for some reason, for the sake of some end.'9

If a human action's being done for the sake of an end is built into Aquinas's concept of a human action, then Anscombe cannot be right about [A]'s being false. But of course once Aquinas has pointed out that he intends [A] to be a conceptual truth, Anscombe can restate her objection as an objection about the account of human action that lies behind the claim. Aquinas can de- fine "human action" in any way he wants, and in such a way as to make [A] necessarily true if he chooses, but one can object that when defined in that way "human action" fails to apply to all the cases an adequate account of human action ought to include. It ought to include, for example, all the actions we count as intentional; and we might take Anscombe as claiming that although end-directed actions are certainly intentional, not all intentional actions are end-directed.20

'91f (contrary to what Aquinas says-see note 14 above) human beings are capable of acting solely on the basis of sense perception and sense appetite, these actions, too, will necessarily be for the sake of some end since, according to Aquinas, sense perception must provide an object or end for sense appetite in just the way intellect must provide an object for the will.

200n her view actions are shown to be intentional if a certain sense of the question "Why?" has application. She thinks that an agent who responds to "Why are you doing X?" with "I just am, that's all" has thereby shown that the relevant sense of the question "Why?" has application; the agent's denial that there is a reason for the action is not a denial that the question "Why are you doing X?" applies (Anscombe, Intention, Sections 5, 17-20).

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Fortunately, a definitive settlement of this dispute between Aquinas and Anscombe over the nature of human action is unnec- essary for present purposes. I propose simply to take Aquinas's [A'] as specifying the range of human action to which the argument and the underlying account of practical rationality I am evaluating will apply, even if that is not the whole range of human action. For my purposes, then, we need not read [A'] as a substantive part of that argument. Taking [A'] in this way will not undermine [B]-[D]; it will just be important to keep in mind that they may be claims about a specific range of action. The argument is about human end-directed actions, even if those are not all the actions that ought to be classified as human actions.

Adopting this strategy of restricting the claims of the argument to those actions identified by [A'] allows me to forestall an important objection, but the strategy would undermine the argument if the range of actions identified by [A'] were in fact too narrow to be interesting. Hence, I need to guard against an overly narrow con- strual of Aquinas's definition of human action properly so-called. End-directed action, as Aquinas understands it, is not restricted to actions done for some reason that the agent actually considered at the time of or immediately prior to acting. He allows, for example, that each step of a journey results from deliberated willing despite the fact that one does not actually deliberate, either contemporan- eously or at any preceding time, about each step (Article 6.ad3). If I am asked why I am taking these steps, I will have the correct explanation ready to hand (for example, "I'm going to Rome"), which, if spelled out, would be similar in form to an antecedently undertaken deliberation about how to achieve some end (for example, "I want to get to Rome, I can get there by foot, so I'll un- dertake the journey by foot"). This example also shows that for an action to be end-directed it need not be the case that deliberation ever "descend" to the level of actions one is capable of performing without reflection or conscious effort. Most people know perfectly well how to walk, and once they decide to begin a journey on foot, they need not bring either their action of walking or each individual step of the journey into their deliberation; nevertheless their walking, and each individual step of the journey, is done for a reason.

Moreover, Aquinas allows that skillful or habitual actions can be done for a reason even when they are done spontaneously. Con-

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scious deliberation and action arising from it at one time can pro- duce settled dispositions to act in certain ways at other times, and so actions that are actualizations of dispositions of this sort can be spontaneous and nevertheless done for a reason. The routine actions of a master artisan and the virtuous actions of a virtuous person are actions of this sort; they are done without thought but nevertheless for a reason. Artisans and virtuous people can readily and correctly identify the reason for which they performed the action in question.

Anscombe, however, insists that there are some intentional actions that do not admit of explanations in terms of a reason. When asked why one performed such anaction, the appropriate answer will be "I just did it, that's all" or "I did it for no reason." I think that replies of this sort are nearly always elliptical for either "I did it for no very important reason" or "I did it for no further reason." If I got up to get a cup of coffee just to stretch my legs, then I did have a reason, even though in most circumstances I would consider a reason of this sort too trivial to mention. In some cases I may view the action as an end in itself and think it appropriate to say that I did it for no (further) reason; Aquinas supposes that this is the correct thing to say about the theoretical thinker's activity, for instance (6.ad2).

It is at least plausible, then, to suppose that Aquinas's notion of a human action properly so-called covers all cases of human action. But even if it does not and some of the cases Anscombe has in mind cannot plausibly be shown to be end-directed in some way, it is at least clear that Aquinas's notion marks out a broad and interesting range of actions. Insofar as his argument applies to this range of action we can expect its results to be significant. (Hence- forth I will use "human action" to refer to actions of the sort Aquinas calls "human actions properly so-called.")

By identifying the scope of Aquinas's argument I have been able to meet one of Anscombe's objections. She claims that some actions are done for no reason or purpose. But even if she is right and there are genuine actions of this sort, they do not fall within the scope of Aquinas's claims, and so they have no bearing on the truth of these claims. I am also in a position now to indicate in a preliminary way the strategy I will follow in defending Aquinas's argument against two other common sorts of objection.

One common line of objection appeals to alleged empirical facts

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about what human beings actually desire and what ends they actually have when they act. The objector asserts that these alleged facts are counterexamples to claims such as [B]-[D]. If Aquinas's claims were intended as empirical generalizations about human behavior or psychology, objections of this sort would be relevant to them. But I will assume that they are not intended as empirical claims. [B]-[D] state criteria of fully rational action, and the arguments for them draw attention to what is required by the concept of rational action. If Aquinas's claims are about fully rational human actions or the human actions of fully rational agents, then empirical facts about human behavior will not count against them. For example, the alleged empirical fact that some (or most) human agents fail to direct each of their actions toward some ultimate end would show only that, on Aquinas's account, some (or most) human agents and these particular human actions are not fully rational. This clearly does not show that Aquinas's criteria for fully rational action are false. So, in general, putative counterexamples to the conclusions of Aquinas's argument that appeal to the empirical fact that human actions sometimes fail to conform to the claims of those conclusions can be ruled out. My strategy, then, involves taking Aquinas's argument as (partially) explicating the concept of rational action and providing a corresponding (partial) account of practical rationality.2' The relevant parts of that account will emerge in my defense of [B] and [C] in Sections III and IV; in Sections V and VII, I will assemble the parts and consider the account independently.

A second line of objection interprets claims such as [B]-[D] in light of some substantive view of the ultimate end of human life and then argues that the claims interpreted in this way are false. It

2'Aristotle's commentators (for example, Kenny, op. cit., pp. 25, 29, and Ackrill, op. cit., p. 17) have wondered whether Aristotle took himself to be describing human activity ("Every human activity, as a matter of fact, aims at some good and at some single, ultimate good") or to be recommending a certain sort of activity ("One ought always to direct one's activity towards an end and towards some single, ultimate end"). I take Aquinas to be doing neither. He is explicating the concept of rational action; but the results of this sort of conceptual analysis can be expressed in ways that look very much like either description or recommendation. On the one hand, they will be descriptions of the actions of fully rational agents or of agents insofar as they are fully rational; on the other, they will be recom- mendations for agents who want to be fully rational.

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is well known, for instance, that Aquinas holds that the ultimate end of human life is the beatific vision of God, and the objector might point out the implausibility of claims such as [B]-[D] when they are read as claims about the beatific vision. But I will assume that Aquinas's claims are about only the structure and not also the content of the sort of practical reasoning required for fully rational human action. Aquinas himself appeals to the distinction between a formal and a material or substantive conception of an ultimate end in his argument for [D] (see Section VI below), and I think his arguments for [B] and [C] are best understood as presupposing a similar distinction. The arguments for [B] and [C] show that fully rational human actions must be ultimate-end- directed in certain ways and that any candidate for an ultimate end must satisfy certain criteria, but they do not show what particular ultimate ends meet these criteria; that is, they do not specify what particular ultimate ends it is fully rational for a human agent to have. Hence, I find in Aquinas's argument the purely formal part of an account of practical rationality and not the substantive part. He in fact argues for the substantive part of his theory of rationality only after he has established the claims that I am interested in here. In subsequent articles (in Question 2) he argues that certain particular ends-for example, wealth, power, and pleasure (Articles 1, 4, and 6)-fail to satisfy the criteria for being an ultimate end laid out in the argument from Question 1, and he does not defend his own view that only the vision of the divine essence satisfies these criteria until the end of Question 3.22 But one need not know of those views in order to understand and evaluate the claims I will be discussing.23 If I am right, the formal part of

221n another, future paper I plan to examine Aquinas's argument that only vision of the divine essence satisfies the formal criteria developed in the argument from Question 1.

23Aquinas indicates at the outset that this will be his strategy: "The first thing to be considered has to do with the ultimate end of human life.... And because the ultimate end of human life is thought to be happiness (beatitude), we mustfirst consider the ultimate end in general [in Q. 1], and then happiness [in Qq. 2-5]" (ST IaIIae.1, the division of the text preceding Article 1). The argument I am considering occurs in Question 1. I take his prefatory announcement of the intention to investigate the ultimate end of human life in general (in communi) as indicating that he will be concerned only with the concept of an ultimate end and not with what objects or states of affairs actually satisfy that concept.

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Aquinas's account of practical rationality is entirely independent of those later arguments, and so any objections that rely on his, or anyone else's, substantive views about ultimate ends will be mis- guided.24 This strategy will be particularly important to my defense of [C] in Section IV.

III.

Human action is end-directed; it is action done for a reason. Sometimes there is only one reason or end for which an action is done: for example, I may read fiction for pleasure, or go for a swim just to relax. Sometimes there is more than one reason or end, and when this is the case these ends typically constitute an ordered series of ends some of which are subordinate to others: for example, Alice may go to college in order to get a degree, wanting the degree so that she can get a high-paying job, which she wants for the sake of living a comfortable lifestyle. In arguing for [B] Aquinas argues that a fully rational human action is not merely end-directed but also ultimate-end-directed, that is, that any series of ends associated with a fully rational human action must contain at least one ultimate end.

Some terminology for talking about these claims will be helpful. Where x and y are distinct actions or ends, x may be said to be subordinate to y (and y superordinate to x) if and only if x is for the sake of y. I will assume that the for-the-sake-of relation is transi- tive-hence, if x is subordinate to y and y to z, then x is subordinate to z (and z superordinate to both y and x)-but whereas the for- the-sake-of relation can be reflexive (x can be for its own sake), the requirement that the relata of the relation of subordination be distinct means that that relation cannot be reflexive (hence, x cannot be subordinate to itself). A series of ends is an end-tree for a particular action if and only if that series of ends is structured by relations of sub- and superordination and that action is for the sake of

241f I am right about Aquinas, and if Aquinas is a faithful interpreter of Aristotle, then Aristotle's commentators have been mistaken in using Aristotle's substantive views about eudaimonia (for example, that it consists in theoria) as an interpretative key for understanding the opening argument of the Ethics. The opening argument qua purely formal sketch of rational activity may well be compatible with a wide variety of substantive views about eudaimonia. See Section IV below.

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the ends comprising that series. An action might have an end-tree containing just one end, in which case it is a simple tree, or more than one end, in which case it is a complex tree. The most subordinate end in an end-tree for some action is a proximate end for that action. My explication of [B] and [C] will require me to distinguish four different species of the subordination relation, but this much will allow us to get started.

According to [A'] every human action has an end-tree, and according to [B] every end-tree for a fully rational human action contains at least one ultimate end. Aquinas argues for this claim in the following passage:

In all cases in which things have a per se order with respect to one another, it must be that when the primary thing has been taken away the things that are ordered toward the primary thing (ad primum) are taken away.... Now in the case of ends one finds two sorts of order -the order of intention and the order of execution-and there must be something primary in each sort of order [of ends]. For a kind of principle that moves the appetite is primary in the order of intention. Thus, when that principle has been taken away, the appetite would be moved by nothing.... But the principle of intention is the ultimate end . . . therefore in [this] case it is not possible to proceed to infinity, because nothing would be desired (appeteretur) if there were no ultimate end . . . (Article 4).25

The conclusion of this passage is that the end-tree for a fully rational human action must be a series of ends ordered per se. Series of ends ordered per se are end-trees in which (i) there is at least one end (a primary or ultimate end) that is an end in itself and (ii) all the ends in the tree that are not ends in themselves (the secondary ends) are subordinate as purely instrumental ends to some ultimate end. To say that one end is subordinate to another purely instrumentally is to say that it has its status as an end only by virtue of being subordinate to that other end. An end that is subordinate to another in this way may be said to be instrumentally subordinate to that other end. Since each secondary end in an end- tree ordered per se is instrumentally subordinate, a distinguishing feature of a tree of this sort is that none of its secondary ends would be an end if the tree had no primary, ultimate end. A

25See also the argument in In X Ethic. 1.2 (nn.20-22).

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painful medical treatment is an end so long as one is ill and it is a means of regaining health; but the painful treatment ceases to be an end when one no longer has the goal of achieving health. The end-tree consisting of the painful medical treatment and health is a series ordered per se.26

The argument for this conclusion is that one can satisfactorily explain a movement of rational appetite (or will) only by appealing to some end or good that is in itself capable of moving the will- that is, by appealing to an end that is viewed as desirable in itself. Now, every human action is the result of deliberated willing (that is, is done for the sake of some end or good); but if the proximate end that moves the will is seen as a purely instrumental good, then it has no power of its own to move the will and moves it only by virtue of being instrumental to some end that moves the will of itself (that is, an ultimate end). Hence, in order for a good to have the power to move the will it must be viewed either as being itself an ultimate end or instrumentally subordinate to some ultimate end. Insofar as an agent is rational, her ends in acting will form an end-tree ordered per se.

Aquinas intends this argument to show that an end-tree for a fully rational human action cannot be infinitely long; if it were, no end in the tree could explain the movement of will resulting in the action. But the argument works equally well to show that such a tree cannot stop just anywhere. An agent who does an action for the sake of a certain end but finds that end neither desirable in itself nor desirable insofar as it is instrumental for something that is desirable in itself is not rational in this respect.27 Anscombe, then, is wrong in claiming that our chains of ends can stop just anywhere, at least if she is talking about end-trees for our actions insofar as they are fully rational.

I should emphasize that I have said nothing so far about what it

26Aquinas discusses causal series ordered per se in ST Ia.2.3; 7.4; 46.2.ad7; Summa contra gentiles 1. 13; In VIII libros Physicorum expositio L. 8, 1. 9; In XII libros Metaphysicorum expositio L. 12, l. 6; and In Librum de causes expositio Pr. 1, 1. 1. For more detailed treatment of this notion, see my "Aquinas's Parasitic Cosmological Argument," forthcoming in Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991).

27Despite what she says in the passage quoted at the beginning of the paper, Anscombe seems to agree with this-see her account of the practical syllogism in Intention, Sections 33-43, especially 36-40.

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is that makes some end desirable in itself. Aquinas's argument so far is not intended to advance a substantive claim about which particular ultimate ends it is rational to pursue. His point is purely formal: if human actions are to be fully rational, they must be directed not only toward an end but toward an ultimate end, where the criterion for an end's being an ultimate end is its being desirable in itself.

As Aquinas develops the notion in this argument, an ultimate end is just that which in itself is capable of moving the will, an end desirable in itself. I will call this Aquinas's weak conception of an ultimate end (to distinguish it from a stronger conception that emerges in subsequent articles), and I will call any end that satisfies this conception a weak ultimate end.28 Weak ultimate ends are to be contrasted with ends that are instrumentally subordinate to some other end; the former are ends in themselves while the latter are ends solely in virtue of being instrumental for some other end. [B], then, can be restated as:

[B'] Each fully rational human action is for the sake of at least one weak ultimate end.

One must be careful not to commit Anscombe's fallacy here. Aquinas has not yet argued that there is some ultimate end for the sake of which all fully rational human actions are done, only that for each fully rational human action there is some ultimate end for the sake of which it is done. To make this point clear, let a be a human action and Eal be the proximate end for the sake of which a is done (the subscripted numeral representing the end's relative proximity). [A'], then, tells us that given a, there is an Eal. [B'] tells us that insofar as a is fully rational, Eal is a member of an end-tree for a which has as a member at least one weak ultimate end Ua. Presumably, Ea, might be identical with Ua (in which case the tree will be simple) or distinct from Ua and instrumentally subordinate to it (in which case the tree will be complex). A complex end-tree

28This conception of a weak ultimate end seems to me to correspond to what Aristotle had in mind in speaking of final (telejon) ends (1097a25ff.). It is stronger than von Wright's conception of an ultimate end; he defines an ultimate end negatively as any end not pursued for the sake of another end (op. cit., p. 88).

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might contain just two ends {Eal instrumentally subordinate to Ua}

or many (but not infinitely many) {Eal instrumentally subordinate to Ea2 instrumentally subordinate to . .. Ean instrumentally subordinate to Ua}. Now, if we let a and b be two distinct human actions, [B'] requires only that a and b, insofar as they are fully rational, have two (possibly distinct) end-trees, each containing at least one ultimate end, Ua and Ub respectively (possibly distinct from one another). So it is compatible with Aquinas's argument to this point that there is more than one such end-tree, and hence more than one weak ultimate end for fully rational human actions.

IV.

In Articles 5 and 6 Aquinas argues that all the human actions of a fully rational human being are ultimately subordinate to a single ultimate end-that is, that there is some single ultimate end for the sake of which all the human actions of a given fully rational agent are done. Given his view that rational action must be weak- ultimate-end-directed, he must think that all the weak ultimate ends of the human actions of an individual fully rational agent either coincide in or are subordinate to some single, further ultimate end.

The move from [B'] to [C] can be characterized as a move from a weak to a strong conception of an ultimate end, and Aquinas introduces the strong conception in the first of his three arguments for [C]:

[S]ince each thing desires (appetat) its own perfection, one desires as an ultimate end that which one desires as one's own perfect and complete good.... Therefore, it must be that the ultimate end fulfills the whole desire (appetitum) of a human being in such a way that nothing outside it remains to be desired. But this cannot be if something beyond it is required for [the human being's] perfection. And so it cannot be that desire tends toward two things as though each were its perfect good (Article 5).29

I will discuss the argument contained in this passage below, but here I want to point out only that it provides the basis for what we might call a strong conception of an ultimate end. An ultimate end is a

29See also In X Ethic. 1.9 (nn. 109-112).

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strong ultimate end if and only if it completely fulfills all a human being's rational desires. Not all weak ultimate ends will be strong ultimate ends, since there could be things desirable in themselves that do not completely fulfill all a human being's rational desires. But presumably a strong ultimate end will meet the condition for being a weak ultimate end-that is, it will be desirable in itself. Aquinas's [C], then, can be restated as:

[C'] There is some single strong ultimate end for the sake of which all the human actions of a fully rational human being are done.

I think [C'] is likely to seem the most dubious of the claims we have looked at so far, and the argument for it is where one might expect to find the sort of illicit quantifier shift of which Anscombe accuses Aristotle and his medieval followers.30 My defense of it will come in two stages: first, I will defend it against two common objections by showing that they are based on misunderstandings of the nature of Aquinas's claim; second, I will offer a positive argument for [C'] properly understood that consists in an explication of the terse argument from Article 5 quoted above. My explication of that argument draws attention to features of Aquinas's meta- physics and moral psychology that seem to me presupposed by but left implicit in Aquinas's own statement of the argument. It will show that Aquinas has good grounds on which to hold [C'], grounds that involve no illicit quantifier shift.

First, one might object to [C'] that it is simply false that individual human beings perform all their actions for the sake of a single ultimate end: they pursue many different ends as ends in themselves.31 But this would be to misunderstand Aquinas's claim. [C'] is not meant to be an empirical generalization about human behavior but an implication of the concept of rational agency.

Second, one might object that [C'] is not true even of a fully rational agent. It seems false that it is rational to pursue just one

30Kenny claims that though it seems Aristotle does not commit Anscombe's fallacy, Aquinas is guilty of it in the passages I am looking at (op. cit., p. 26).

31For statements of this objection to Aristotle's argument, see note 3 above.

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thing in all one's actions: Aristotle himself seems to recognize this since he admits that pleasure, honor, and virtue are ends desirable in themselves (1097b2ff.). And even if some (a hedonist, for example) might dispute this, a claim such as [C'] would require an entirely different sort of argument from the one Aquinas actually gives here. So even if [C'] is not derived by means of Anscombe's fallacy, and even if it is in fact true, Aquinas is not entitled to it at this stage of the argument.

Aquinas considers an objection of this sort in his discussion of [C']. The objector claims that there are in fact four ends that human beings view as ultimate: pleasure, tranquility, the primary natural goods, and virtue; and he clearly intends these to be four distinct weak ultimate ends, each desirable in itself and no one completely satisfying a human being's rational appetite. The objection concludes: "Therefore one human being can establish the ultimate end for his will in many things" (5.obj 1). We might restate the objection in our own terms: [C'] cannot be true since a fully rational human being might have two or more distinct weak ultimate ends that are not subordinate to any other ends.

Aquinas replies to this objection by claiming that the weak ultimate ends of a given fully rational individual might together constitute a single strong ultimate end for that individual.

In reply to the first objection it must be said that those many things were taken under the concept (in ratione) of a single perfect good constituted from them by those who supposed that the ultimate end [is found] in them (5.adl).

I will return to this primafacie puzzling notion of a single perfect good constituted from many ultimate ends below. But here I want to point out that this reply shows that Aquinas does not intend [C'] to be a claim about a single, determinate strong ultimate end of the sort the hedonist and his critics have in mind. The objection to [C'] we are considering assumes that it claims that there is a single thing-for example, pleasure-at which all the actions of a rational agent aim. Someone who takes [C'] in this way is reading it in accordance with what might be called a monolithic conception of a strong ultimate end.32 Hedonistic utilitarianism is a paradigm of

32Following Ackrill, op. cit., p. 17.

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this sort of view. For the hedonistic utilitarian, pleasure (or the absence of pain) is the only end desirable in itself; all other ends are desirable only insofar as they maximize pleasure (or minimize pain). Hence, pleasure will be the hedonistic utilitarian's monolithic strong ultimate end.

Someone who accepts [B'] and adopts a monolithic view of strong ultimate ends will be committed to the view that there is in fact no weak ultimate end that is not also a strong ultimate end. On this view all the end-trees for all the human actions of a given fully rational agent converge on a single superordinate weak ultimate end; or, put another way, the weak ultimate end for any end-tree for a human action of a fully rational agent is identical with the weak ultimate end for any other end-tree for any other action of the same agent. Thus, supposing that a and b are distinct human actions of a single fully rational agent, the end-trees for a and b (Eai instrumentally subordinate to Ea2, etc. and EbI instrumentally subordinate to Eb2, etc., respectively) must share the same single ultimate end U; or, put another way, Ua and Ub must be identical.

But Aquinas's reply to the objection shows that [C'] need not be read as presupposing or endorsing a monolithic conception of ultimate ends. He suggests that we might conceive of a strong ultimate end not only as a single, determinate end such as pleasure but also as a sort of aggregate of determinate weak ultimate ends -in the case at issue, an aggregate of pleasure, tranquility, the primary natural goods, and virtue.33 This conception might be called the aggregate conception of a strong ultimate end.34 The

33In ST IaIIae.1.6.adl-2 Aquinas treats two other putative counterexamples as examples of weak ultimate ends partially constitutive of an aggregate strong ultimate end: "Amusing actions ... are ordered toward the good of the one who does them insofar as they offer pleasure or re- laxation. But the consummate good of a human being is his ultimate end. And something similar should be said ... about speculative knowledge, which is desired as a kind of good of the knower (speculantis), which is included within the complete and perfect good, which is the ultimate end."

34The notion of an aggregate strong ultimate end might be understood as entailing the existence of either (a) more than one weak ultimate end- and so as incompatible with the notion of a monolithic strong ultimate end-or (b) at least one weak ultimate end-in which case a monolithic strong ultimate end would be one kind of aggregate strong ultimate end (the case in which the strong ultimate end is an aggregate of only one weak ultimate end). I will understand the notion in the latter way.

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aggregate conception of a strong ultimate end is like the monolithic conception in allowing that a fully rational individual can have only one strong ultimate end, but it is unlike it in being non- reductive with respect to weak ultimate ends: the aggregate conception allows that an individual can have both weak ultimate ends and a strong ultimate end. The weak ultimate ends that make up an aggregate strong ultimate end are desirable in themselves, but only the aggregation of them completely satisfies all an agent's rational desires.

On the aggregate conception, then, the relation between a fully rational agent's weak ultimate ends and her strong ultimate end is the relation of the constituent parts of a thing to the thing constituted by them. Consider an example of this relation that does not involve ultimate ends. Suppose Kate runs a ten kilometer race in the course of competing in a triathlon. Her running the race is a constituent part of her competing in the triathlon, it is what her competing in the triathlon partly consists in (since one of the three parts of a triathlon is a 10K race), and her running the race is the partial realization of her competing in the triathlon.35 In this case Kate's running the race is subordinate to her competing in the triathlon and something she does for the sake of competing in it.36

Aquinas actually uses the term "aggregation" (aggregatio, congregatio) in IaIIae.3.2.ad2 and 3.3.ad2, where he endorses Boethius's definition of happiness as the state completed by the aggregation of all goods. He says that Boethius's definition expresses the common conception of happiness, the perfect or complete good. He also speaks of the complete good as comprehending or including other goods (see, for example, ST IaIIae.1.6.adl-2, quoted in note 33). This notion of a complete good, a state completed by the aggregation of all goods, seems to me to leave the number of goods entirely undetermined, and so to square with the notion of aggregation explicated by (b) above. As will emerge (see pp. 54-58 below), Aquinas conceives of aggregate ultimate ends as exhibiting a kind of internal structure and coherence, not as mere lumps or collections of various goods.

35See Wiggins, op. cit., p. 224. 36In my example the constituent part (Kate's running the 1OK race) is a

logically necessary part of the whole (Kate's competing in the triathlon), but this is not essential to an action's or end's being a constituent part of some other action or end. Ackrill's examples are putting as a constituent part of golfing and golfing as a constituent part of a good holiday (op. cit., p. 19). In neither of these cases is the constituent part logically necessary for the whole (since it is possible to play a round of golf without ever having to putt and to have a good holiday without playing any golf). Cf. Wiggins, op. cit., p. 224.

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Now consider a fully rational agent R who has an aggregate strong ultimate end S composed of weak ultimate ends W1, W2, and W3. For R, each of W1, W2, and W3 is desirable in itself. But none of these weak ultimate ends is such that it completely satisfies R's rational desires since, given the satisfaction of R's desire for W1 (say), R's desires for W2 and W3 remain unsatisfied. S, however, is not only desirable in itself for R but also completely satisfies R's rational desires. So for R, W1, W2, and W3 are constituent parts of S, and so are desirable not only in themselves but also for the sake of S.37 An action or end that is subordinate to another end in this way might be said to be subordinate-as-a-constituent-part to it. On the aggregate conception of a strong ultimate end, then, weak ultimate ends are subordinate-as-constituent-parts to an aggregate strong ultimate end.38

(Given this account of the relation between weak and strong ultimate ends, we can revise the definition of a weak ultimate end so as to make the classes of weak and strong ultimate ends mutually exclusive: weak ultimate ends are all and only those ends that are desirable in themselves and subordinate-as-constituent-parts to some strong ultimate end. Henceforth I will use the phrase "weak ultimate end" to designate ends of this sort. No strong ultimate end can be a constituent part of any other end, and so no strong ultimate end will also be a weak ultimate end.)39

Weak ultimate ends constitutive of an aggregate strong ultimate end are examples of ends subordinate-as-constituent-parts, but, as the example of Kate's competing in a triathlon shows, actions or

37See, for example, In X Ethic. 1.9 (n. 111; commenting on 1097b2ff.): "We never choose [happiness] for the sake of something else but always for its own sake. And we choose honor, pleasure, understanding, and virtue for their own sakes (for we would choose or desire them even if nothing else resulted from them for us); and nevertheless we choose these things for the sake of happiness." See also ST IaIIae.2.2 and 2.6, where Aquinas speaks of happiness and its parts.

38The case in which a strong ultimate end is an aggregate of only one weak ultimate end is an exception; an end cannot be subordinate to itself, and hence cannot be subordinate-as-a-constituent-part to itself.

39Hence, the traditional threefold distinction among ends or goods: goods sought solely for the sake of something else (purely instrumental ends), goods sought for their own sake and for the sake of something else (weak ultimate ends), and goods sought for their own sake and not for the sake of anything else (strong ultimate ends). See In X Ethic. 1.9 (n.1 10), and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics i.7.

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ends subordinate-as-constituent-parts need not be weak ultimate ends. Kate may have no desire to run the 10K race apart from her desire to compete in the triathlon, in which case her running the 10K race will be subordinate-as-a-constituent-part but merely instrumentally subordinate to her competing in the triathlon. So actions and ends subordinate-as-constituent-parts can be either weak ultimate ends or ends instrumentally subordinate to some other end.

Commentators on Aristotle have drawn attention to what I am calling the relation of subordination-as-a-constituent-part in order to distinguish it from the relation of subordination that holds between a causal, productive, or preliminary means to some end and the end that is the effect, product, or outcome of these means.40 An action or end subordinate in this latter way to some other end might be said to be subordinate-as-a-means to that other action or end. Undergoing a painful medical treatment might be a means to health, Kate's taking a bus to the site of the competition might be a means to her competing in the triathlon, and her competing in the triathlon might be a means to raising money for charity. In each of these cases the action or end subordinate-as-a-means brings about or is a preliminary step toward achieving the end to which it is a means, but none (partially or wholly) realizes or constitutes the end to which it is subordinate. Hence, being subordinate- as-a-constituent-part to some end is clearly different from being subordinate-as-a-means to it. But like actions and ends subordinate-as-constituent-parts, actions and ends subordinate-as- means to some further end can be either purely instrumental (and hence instrumentally subordinate) to that end, or desirable in themselves in addition to being means to some further end (and hence weak ultimate ends as well).

Aquinas usually lumps ends into only two groups, those that are desired for the sake of some other end (ad fine) and those that are not. But this grouping should not obscure the fact that there are at least two distinct sorts of end that are for the sake of some other end.41 On the one hand, an end might be for the sake of

40See, for example, Greenwood, Nicomachean Ethics VI (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1909), and the commentators men- tioned in note 6 above.

4'The persistent translation of Aquinas's phrase "ad fine" (which cor-

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some other end in that it is subordinate to it as a constituent part. On the other hand, a means to some further end is for the sake of that end in that it is productive of or a preliminary step to it. The possibility of an aggregate view of ultimate ends, then, requires us to distinguish three different relations of subordination among ends: instrumental subordination, subordination-as-a-constituent- part, and subordination-as-a-means.42

So [C'] should not be rejected on the grounds that there are objections to the monolithic view of strong ultimate ends; reading [C'] in accordance with an aggregate view can accommodate those objections. But I do not think Aquinas should be taken here as rejecting the monolithic view in favor of the view that the strong ultimate end is an aggregate of more than one weak ultimate end. Both views are substantive views about the nature of strong ultimate ends and any decision about their correctness will depend on certain substantive matters that Aquinas is not interested in set- tling here-viz., on which and how many particular things are in fact desirable in themselves. Aquinas's claim is merely that a fully rational agent will act for a strong ultimate end of some kind or other. The only restriction on a strong ultimate end is that it not be subordinate to another end in any of the ways I have specified. For someone who believes that only a single, determinate end is desirable in itself-the hedonistic utilitarian, for instance-actions will be fully rational only to the extent to which they are ultimately instrumentally subordinate to a monolithic strong ultimate end, the single ultimate end determined by the arguments for hedonism. For someone who believes that many distinct things-for example, pleasure and virtue-are desirable in themselves, actions will be fully rational only to the extent to which they are instrumentally subordinate to pleasure or virtue, which are subordinate- as-constituent-parts to a single, aggregate strong ultimate end. Aquinas does not intend [C'] to settle the issues between radically different sorts of substantive theories about the human good; it is

responds to Aristotle's "pros to telos") as "means to an end" contributes to the neglect of this distinction; see, for example, John A. Oesterle's translation of this part of ST, Treatise on Happiness (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983).

42There is one other way in which an end might be subordinate to some other end, as I explain in Section V below.

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compatible with a wide range of them. He will propose his own substantive theory in due course, but that theory is neither presupposed nor recommended by his argument here.

But even if these common objections fail to show that [C'] is false, why should we think it true? I have already quoted one of the arguments from Article 5 for this conclusion (Section IV, second paragraph above).43 In that passage Aquinas argues that a (fully rational) human being (i) desires at least one strong ultimate end (because she desires her perfect and complete good, and a strong ultimate end just is a complete good, that is, a good that satisfies all one's rational desires), and (ii) cannot desire more than one strong ultimate end (because a strong ultimate end is an end that completely satisfies desire). Given (i) and (ii), it seems that all the human actions of a fully rational agent will be subordinate to a single strong ultimate end.

But the first part of this argument might seem worrisome. As Aquinas presents it, it involves the premise that everything seeks its own perfection, and apparently Aquinas would justify that premise by appealing to a sort of natural teleology that is now widely rejected. But I think we can leave aside that dubious premise and the universal natural teleology it invokes and still see the point of the argument.44 That is, I think we can establish on Aquinas's own principles (principles that seem to me plausible independently of considerations about natural teleology) that a fully rational human being will desire her own perfect or complete good and that each of her human actions will be subordinate to it.

As I have said, Aquinas holds that human actions properly so- called are actions arising from rational appetite, that is, from the will's desire for a good presented to it by the intellect. Intellect, then, has a central role in rational desire, and Aquinas thinks that one particular intellectual capacity-the ability to form universal concepts-affects the nature of rational desire in a particularly important way. In virtue of possessing intellect, human beings are

43That argument is the first of three arguments given in that article. It seems to me to be the most interesting of the three, and so I will leave the others aside.

44For discussion of the relation between Aquinas's natural teleology and his moral psychology, see my "Egoistic Rationalism: Aquinas's Basis for Christian Morality."

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capable of forming a general or universal conception of the good.45 As a result, human beings are capable not only of end- directed action based on the perception of particular goods (animals, too, are capable of this), but also of end-directed action on the basis of a conception of particular goods as good, that is, on the basis of viewing them as instantiating their concept of the good.46 The conception of particular goods as good seems to be a necessary condition of viewing particular goods in relation to one another, and hence of comparing and weighing them, seeing that some conflict, that some are subordinate to others, and so on. These are fundamental elements in deliberation or practical reasoning, and so practical reasoning is possible in part because of the intellect's ability to form a universal concept of the good.47 Unlike the case of non-rational animals, whose perceptions are limited to what is particular and whose desires are determined by the apprehension of particular goods, a human being's apprehension of a particular good is not sufficient for her willing it because she can reflect on it as good and view it in relation to other goods.48

So in any individual case a human being has the capacity to consider the desirability of a proposed object or action not only in itself but insofar as it fits with other of her actions, desires, and

45A concept of this sort need not be very sophisticated. Aquinas thinks, for example, that the concept of the good is the concept of what is desirable; see ST Ia.5.1, IaIIae.1.5, 1.7, and 5.8.

46"The object of the will is the end and the good universally (in univer- sali). Hence, there cannot be will in things that lack reason and intellect since they cannot apprehend the universal; but there is in them a natural or sense appetite determined to some particular good" (ST IaIIae.1.2.ad3). See also Ia.59; 59.adl; IaIIae.2.7; 2.8; 4.2.ad2; 5.1; and 19.3.

47Hence, Aquinas claims that two conditions of an action's being volun- tary in the strict sense (that is, properly human) are that the agent not only apprehend the thing that is the end but also know (1) the nature (or concept-ratio) of an end and (2) the relation of this end to other ends (ST IaIIae.6.2). For more detailed discussion of these as conditions of voluntariness, see my "Egoistic Rationalism: Aquinas's Basis for Christian Mo- rality."

48Hence, Aquinas distinguishes between consent and choice (ST IaIIae 14-15, especially 15.3.ad3), both of which are acts of the appetitive power. A rational agent consents to an end if she finds it acceptable or desirable considered by itself, but her choosing some end requires not only that she consent to it but also that she find it desirable considered in relation to her other relevant ends.

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beliefs. That is, a human being has the capacity to adopt and pursue particular ends under the guidance of practical reasoning that incorporates considerations involving her current desires, desires directed toward future ends, expectations about what her future desires will be, and beliefs about the world. By actually re- flecting on her ends on the basis of considerations of this sort and extending the scope of these considerations, a human being will be able to coordinate her rational desires both synchronically and diachronically in a way that guards her from pursuing incompatible ends and allows her to adjust her ends in light of her beliefs and other ends. Practical reasoning of this sort, then, will allow her to maximize satisfaction of her desires; and so it seems clear that a fully rational agent will govern her actions by it.

Now it seems that the same reasons that make it rational for an agent to strive for structure and coherence among certain of her actions and ends will make it rational for her to strive for structure and coherence among her ends generally. So a fully rational human being will incorporate in her practical reasoning as broad a range of her desires and ends as possible; that is, it will be rational for a human being to extend the scope of practical reasoning as much as possible. The limiting case of the extension of that scope is the formation and use in practical reasoning of an overall conception of one's life and its constituent goods. Of course the process of extending the scope of practical reason might require an agent to abandon some ends, adopt some other ends not previously desired, reconsider the weights previously assigned to certain ends, and so forth. The ideal result will be a coherent overall plan intended to realize the best life.49 A fully rational agent, then,

49This claim should not be taken as implying that a fully rational agent will have every detail of her life planned out in advance. Of course it is impossible for a human agent to have every detail of her life planned out in this way since (for example) it is impossible for her to know at one time the circumstances in which she will have to act at future times. An overall plan might allow for this and other sorts of indeterminacy (see the discussion of indeterminate ends and their specifications below). It may be part of a rational agent's plan to leave certain matters undecided until a future date when she will have more evidence on which to base her decision; or she may decide on a specific range of alternatives that she will choose among when the time comes; or she may plan not to plan some matter at all; and so on. It seems, then, that a fully rational agent's overall plan must develop in certain ways over time.

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will adopt and pursue her ends under the guidance of an overall conception of the best life.50

I think Aquinas's conception of a strong ultimate end, an end that completely satisfies a human being's rational desires, is best thought of as a conception of the overall best life. But of course the overall plan that results from the sort of practical reflection I have described may not incorporate all the desires, perhaps not even all the weak ultimate ends, an agent had prior to reflection, and for this reason it might seem that this sort of overall plan cannot be a strong ultimate end satisfying all an agent's rational desires. In order to be fully rational, for instance, Albert Schweitzer may have had to choose between incompatible conceptions of the best life (one including a career as a medical mis- sionary but not as a concert pianist, the other including a career devoted to music rather than medicine). But surely when Schweitzer chooses the life devoted to medicine to the exclusion of music, it does not thereby become irrational of him to continue to view a career devoted to music as an end desirable for its own sake. If Schweitzer forgoes the career as a musician but nevertheless continues to view it as something desirable for its own sake, then it seems that he has a rational desire that he chooses to leave unsatisfied and that the overall conception of the best life that he adopts is not a strong ultimate end.

But notice that after Schweitzer has chosen the medical career, it seems odd to say of him that he has a desire for a career in music, although it does not seem odd to make the weaker claim that he views a career in music as something desirable. We would not make the former claim, I think, because if Schweitzer is fully rational, his desire for a career in music can no longer be practically relevant for him; its exclusion from his overall conception of the best life

50Since one can act on the basis of certain considerations or for the sake of certain ends without consciously thinking of those considerations or ends (see Section II above), nothing I have said here implies that on any given occasion a fully rational agent will actually bring to mind a broad range of considerations or consciously engage in deliberation that appeals to an overall plan. On the basis of actual consideration at one time we can form intentions and dispositions that govern our actions at other times. More- over, forming more and less general intentions about the future serves the function of limiting the range of considerations relevant to subsequent practical reasoning. See Michael Bratman, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).

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means that it can play no role in his deliberations about what actions to perform, and so can no longer be for him a reason for acting. It seems clear that for some agent at some time a desire that cannot be a reason for acting cannot be a rational desire. Of course it remains rational of Schweitzer to view a career devoted to music as desirable in itself; he might recommend it to others, and it may even be the case that he might rationally have chosen an alternative conception of the best life that includes it. Nevertheless, after he has settled on a conception of the best life that excludes that career, the desire for it cannot, strictly speaking, be a rational desire for him.5'

So a fully rational agent's rational desires are the desires included in her post-reflective overall conception of the best life, the desires in the light of which she will guide her actions. Hence, it will be trivially true that a fully rational agent's overall conception of the best life satisfies all her rational desires; and so an overall conception of this sort meets Aquinas's requirement that a strong ultimate end fulfill "the whole desire of a human being in such a way that nothing outside it remains to be desired."

We can see, then, how Aquinas's understanding of the nature of intellect and its role in rational desire justifies the view that a fully rational agent will adopt a strong ultimate end. Moreover, we can see the justification for supposing that a fully rational agent will subordinate all her human actions to a single strong ultimate end. The same reasons that make it rational of an agent to adopt an overall plan of life make it rational of that agent to adopt a single overall plan; to adopt and act on the basis of different overall plans at one and the same time would be to pursue uncoordinated ends.52 So a fully rational agent will guide her actions by an overall plan of life manifesting a hierarchical structure that assigns pri-

511t seems that there could be alternative overall plans of life each of which would completely satisfy an agent's rational desires, in which case there would be more than one possible strong ultimate end for that agent. But at any given time a fully rational agent can adopt and act on only one such plan.

520f course a fully rational agent's overall plan might develop and change over time-see note 49 above. But because of the advantages for maximizing satisfaction of one's desires of relatively stable, long-term intentions, radical changes in a rational agent's overall conception of the best life will not be typical.

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orities among her ends and incorporates ends purely instrumental to the ends she desires in themselves. If reflection reveals that only one end-for example, pleasure-is desirable in itself, the overall plan adopted will structure ends under a monolithic strong ultimate end. If it reveals that more than one ultimate end is practically desirable in itself, the overall plan will structure ends under an aggregate strong ultimate end composed of these weak ultimate ends. Hence, a fully rational agent's actions will be subordinate to either a monolithic strong ultimate end or a post-reflective aggregate strong ultimate end composed of more than one weak ultimate end. Thus, Aquinas has good reason to think that [C'] is true.

V.

In the course of defending [B'] and [C'] I have introduced some of the elements of a framework for describing the end-trees for fully rational actions, and before taking up [D] I want to introduce one more concept and assemble that framework.

Notice that general conceptions of a life or general plans of action can be more or less determinate, and insofar as they are indeterminate they may need to be specified in certain ways before one can act on them. For example, an agent who supposes that the best life is realized in a life of political power must proceed to a more determinate specification of that end before she can act on it. She may decide that the life of political power in her case will consist in holding high political office or in leading a revolutionary army, and any definite actions she takes subordinate to living a life of political power will have to be subordinate to some more determinate specification of that end. Thus, she may decide to go to law school as a preliminary step to running for political office, which she does for the sake of a life of political power. More determinate specifications of this sort, in turn, will be subordinate to the indeterminate end they specify, not as means or constituent parts but as specifications. We might call them ends subordinate-as-specifications to the ends they specify.

Hence, a fully rational agent will reason about particular actions in light of her conception of the complete good, and reasoning of this sort may sometimes require her to specify that conception. Of course, other sorts of ends besides strong ultimate ends might require specification in this way. Suppose Kate has as an end partici-

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SCOTT MACDONALD

pating in some athletic competition as a means to maintaining good health and she desires health as an end in itself; for Kate, then, participating in athletic competition is subordinate-as-a- means to her maintaining good health. But in order actually to act on these ends she still needs to determine what sort of athletic competition she will engage in: she might join the departmental softball team, join a tennis club, or begin training for the charity triathlon. Supposing that she decides to become a triathlete, her training for and competing in the triathlon will be subordinate-as- a-specification to her participating in athletic competition.53

Having identified three sorts of ends-strong ultimate ends, weak ultimate ends, and ends that are purely instrumental to weak ultimate ends-and four relations of subordination that some action or end might bear to another end-instrumental subordination, and subordination-as-means, -as-constituent-parts, and -as- specifications-I want to draw attention to the structural com- plexity these distinctions allow us to recognize in series of ends. Consider the following example.54 Kate buys a pair of shoes for the sake of running a 10K race (subordination-as-a-means and instrumental subordination-since she buys them only for the sake of running the race); her running the race is something she does both for its own sake (weak ultimate end) and for the sake of competing in a triathlon (subordination-as-a-constituent-part), which she does for the sake of raising money for charity (subordination- as-a-means) and for the sake of engaging in athletic competition (subordination-as-a-specification), which she does for its own sake (weak ultimate end related to her weak ultimate end of running the race) and for the sake of relieving stress (subordination- as-a-means), which she does for the sake of maintaining health (subordination-as-a-means), which she does for its own sake (weak ultimate end), for the sake of pursuing her career (subordination-as-a-means), for the sake of pleasing her parents (subordination-as-a-constituent-part), and also for the sake of the best life (subordination-as-a-constituent-part), which she desires for its own sake (strong ultimate end).

This case is by no means complex as real-life cases (as opposed to

53Wiggins emphasizes the importance of problems of specification for practical reasoning (op. cit., p. 228).

54See the accompanying diagram in the Appendix.

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potted philosophical examples) go, and yet all the distinctions I have drawn are necessary to an adequate description of it. Hence, recognizing the kinds of ends and possible sorts of relations that hold among them that Aquinas's account has allowed us to identify is necessary not only for defending [C'] against common objections but also for understanding the nature of human end-directed activity.

VI.

The fact that creatures with intellect are capable of forming a universal concept of the good is the starting point of Aquinas's defense of [D]. In Article 7 he distinguishes between a purely formal conception of the strong ultimate end and a material realization of that ultimate end.

We can speak about the ultimate end in two ways: [1] in accordance with the concept rationedm) of the ultimate end and [2] in accordance with that in which the concept of the ultimate end is instantiated (in- venitur) (Article 7).

Aquinas thinks that the formal concept of the ultimate end is the concept of the complete or perfect good, that which completely satisfies desire. He thinks that that which instantiates this concept is in fact vision of the divine essence, the highest and perfect good, though different people take it to be different things, activities, or kinds of life-for example, being wealthy or famous or maximizing pleasure.55

He uses the distinction to explain [D]:

Therefore as far as the concept of an ultimate end is concerned, everyone shares a desire (appetitu) for the ultimate end.... But as far as that in which this concept is instantiated is concerned, it is not the case that all human beings share an ultimate end (Article 7).

[D], then, can be restated as:

[D'] All fully rational human beings share a purely formal strong ultimate end.

55See ST IaIIae.2.1-8 for Aquinas's survey of some of the (in his view) unacceptable alternatives.

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SCOTT MACDONALD

[D'] follows straightforwardly from [C'] and is compatible with the denial that all human beings in fact share some material strong ultimate end. Aquinas holds that despite the fact that all human beings desire the best life, nevertheless different people conceive of the perfect good in different ways-they have different substantive views about the material strong ultimate end-and so desire different things, activities, or kinds of life as their strong ultimate ends. Hence, [D] is not the false empirical generalization that all human beings desire the same objects, activities, or kinds of lives as their ultimate ends.

The fully rational agent, then, desires a purely formal strong ultimate end, but she cannot act for the sake of a purely formal end without acting for the sake of some particular material strong ultimate end. In order to act, a rational agent must determine what the strong ultimate end actually consists in. Arriving at a de- termination of this sort will be an instance of reasoning to an end that is subordinate-as-a-specification to some other end, since a material strong ultimate end is a specification of an (entirely) indeterminate formal strong ultimate end.56 Aquinas argues against certain common conceptions of what the perfect good consists in in Question 2 of ST IaIIae and in favor of his own conception in Question 3.

VII.

I have defended each of the four main stages of the argument with which Aquinas begins his moral theory. My general strategy has been to show that the relevant claims should not be read as empirical generalizations about human behavior or psychology but as criteria of rational agency, and that they should be taken to ex- press not substantive but purely formal criteria of rational action. In this last section I want to leave the details of that argument aside and look at the conception of practical rationality that has emerged from it.

According to Aquinas, action that is fully rational is action subordinate by virtue of relations of instrumental subordination, and subordination-as-means, -as-constituent-parts, and -as-specifications

561n some cases specification may require the identification of an aggregate end's constituents.




to a strong ultimate end, and for this reason practical reasoning consists at least in part in ordering one's actions and ends in such a way that they are subordinate in one or more of these ways to one's strong ultimate end. Attention to the distinctions among the four sorts of relation of subordination will allow us to clear up some common misunderstandings of Aquinas's account of practical rationality and avoid common mistakes about the nature of practical reasoning in general.

Aquinas's account of practical rationality is commonly characterized as teleological in nature, and this characterization is clearly correct insofar as the notions of various sorts of ends and of the relations of subordination that might hold among them are central components of that account. But Aquinas's account shows that we need to be careful not to conceive of teleological theories of practical rationality as including only those theories that explicate practical rationality solely in terms of reasoning about causal or productive means to ends. The relation of a means to an end is only one of the four species of the subordination relation we have found in Aquinas. His teleological account shows that although actions or ends that are constituents or mere specifications of some other action or end are not means to it, they are nevertheless subordinate to that action or end and desired or done for the sake of it. Thus, on Aquinas's theory, practical reasoning is end-directed and even strong-ultimate-end-directed, but it is much more complex than reasoning merely about means to an end. Indeed, Aquinas's account itself seems to me to show conclusively the defi- ciency of means-end accounts.

If Aquinas's account of practical reasoning is not to be identified with means-end accounts, then objections that point up the defi- ciencies of these accounts will be irrelevant to his. For example, it has sometimes been objected that ultimate-end-directed conceptions of rational action are unacceptable because they require that a rational agent always subordinate her actions to her ultimate end when in fact some actions ought to be done for their own sakes. One ought not to love one's children for the sake of anything else, not even for the sake of living the best life. Thus, ultimate-end- directed accounts are unacceptable because they provide an agent with the wrong sort of motive for certain actions.

But this objection will not count against Aquinas's account because he can allow that there are ends other than the strong ulti-

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mate end that are desirable in themselves: some ends that are subordinate-as-specifications and some that are subordinate-as- constituent-parts to the strong ultimate end might nevertheless be desirable for their own sakes. Moreover, when I say that I love my children both for their own sakes and for the sake of my own strong ultimate end, it need not be that I take my children to be means of any sort to my own perfect good. My children may be constituents of my perfect good rather than productive means to it. If so, although it will be true that I cannot live the best life without loving my children, it will also be true that I cannot love my children without doing part of what constitutes living the best life. Only an account of ultimate-end-directed action that denied these kinds of relation of subordination would be vulnerable to this objection.

The assumption that practical reasoning is merely means-end reasoning has provided some philosophers with grounds for the claim that one's ends can never be subject to reason. On the means-end model, practical reasoning starts from presupposed ends, and so can never be about ends-at least the most basic or ultimate ends. These must simply be taken as given.

Aquinas's account not only shows that the assumption on which this view of the scope of practical reasoning is grounded is false, but his account points out two interesting ways in which reasoning is applicable to ends, and even to strong ultimate ends. First, a person might seek to construct a coherent aggregate strong ultimate end. She considers her pre-reflective weak ultimate ends in- dividually, in relation to one another, and in relation to her beliefs, and on this basis forms a strong ultimate end constituted from her post-reflective weak ultimate ends. In a case of this sort, her practical reasoning might lead her to reject some weak ultimate ends she took as given (pre-reflectively) and adopt new weak ultimate ends. She will be reasoning about the constituent parts of her strong ultimate end, and so quite literally about what her strong ultimate end will be. Nevertheless, it will be true to say of her that she is reasoning about what is for the sake of an end, viz., about weak ultimate ends that are subordinate-as-constituent-parts to a strong ultimate end.

Second, a person who has a purely formal conception of the best life and desires it as a purely formal strong ultimate end must engage in reasoning in order to determine what the best life actually

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consists in. Such a person might consider Aquinas's arguments for the beatific vision of God, Aristotle's arguments for the life of con- templation or the life of civic virtue, and Bentham's arguments for hedonism, among others. As a result of reasoning of this sort such a person might arrive at a conception of a material strong ultimate end. Nevertheless, it will be true to say of her that she is reasoning about what is for the sake of an end because that determinate material end (whatever it is) is subordinate-as-a-specification to her purely formal end of living the best life.

This second possibility shows that, in Aquinas's view, there is at least one end presupposed in all practical reasoning, that must be taken merely as given, viz., the purely formal strong ultimate end. But to say that the scope of practical reasoning does not extend to one's purely formal strong ultimate end, to one's desire to live the best life, is a very weak restriction on reason's scope. If Aquinas's account of practical reasoning shows how not only our instrumental ends but also our weak ultimate ends and even our material strong ultimate end can be brought under the sway of reason, then the sort of rationalism it endorses is very powerful indeed.57

University of Iowa

571 am grateful to Laird Addis, David Brink, Panayot Butchvarov, Evan Fales, Richard Fumerton, William Heald, Norman Kretzmann, Donald Marshall, Christopher Shields, David Stern, Eleonore Stump, and the edi- tors of The Philosophical Review for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. I read versions of the paper at the University of Iowa Philo- sophy Colloquium and the Central Division Meetings of the APA in 1989; I am indebted to members of those audiences for useful discussion and to Gareth Matthews who was my commentator on the latter occasion.



APPENDIX

strong ultimate

Living the best life end

(as a (as a

constituent) constituent) Pleasing parents*

(as a Pursuing career* constituent) (as a

means) ~~wea means) ~~~ultimate

Maintaining health en

t (as a means)

Relieving stress

(as a means)

weak ultimate

Engaging in athletic competition end

Raising money for charity* (as a specification) (as a specification)

(as a means) Competing in the triathlon

(as a constituent)

/ weak \

Running the race ultimate

END-TREE (as a means)

ACTION

Buying running shoes

"X -Y" = "X is subordinate to Y" *1 have left these branches of the end-tree incomplete; if Kate is a fully rational agent, each branch of the tree will be either directly or indirectly subordinate to her strong ultimate end.

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Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinas's Aristotelian Moral Psychology and Anscombe's Fallacy

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