Folia Theologica et Canonica 2. 24/16 (2013)
SACRA THEOLOGIA - Sebastian Walsh, O.Praem., “Fidelissimus Discipulus Eius”: Charles De Köninck’s Exposition of Aquinas’ Doctrine on the Common Good
140 SEBASTIAN WALSH, O.PRAEM. considered precisely as good, diffuses itself not as an efficient cause, but by way of final causality.21 For De Köninck, the failure of many modern philosophers to account correctly for the relationship between the person and society results from a failure to approach the problem from the perspective of final causality: “Instead of discussing the problem in terms of “person” and “society,” I approach it in the fundamental terms of “proper good” and “common good.” Ultimately, person and society are not to be judged by what they are absolutely, but by what is their perfection, i.e., by what is their good; that is the only way in which Aristotle and St. Thomas ever discussed this problem. To look upon the absolute comparison of the person and society as the most basic consideration is distinctly modem. It is also distinctly modern to accord absolute priority to the subject (.. ,).”22 Distinction 3: The Good Perfecting the Speculative Intellect vs. the Good Perfecting the Practical Intellect The third distinction which De Köninck lays out is the distinction between the good as perfective of the rational creature in the speculative order and the good as perfecting the rational creature in the practical order. De Köninck understands St. Thomas to teach that in the speculative order and the order of separated substances the primacy of the common good has its truest application. Here is the text of St. Thomas, with the objection first followed by his response. “It appears that beatitude consists more in an act of the practical intellect than of the speculative intellect. For to the degree that some good is more common, so much more is it divine, as is clear in the first book of the Ethics. But the good of the speculative intellect singularly belongs to him who beholds, while the good of the practical intellect is able to be common to many. Therefore, beatitude consists more in the practical intellect than in the speculative intellect.” 21 Upon close examination it becomes apparent that these two modalities of self-diffusion of the good have a determinate order to each other. The reason for this is that final causality and efficient causality have a determinate order to each other. The final cause is the cause of the causality of the efficient cause. If the good were not diffusive, as good (i.e., by way of final causality), it would not be diffusive as something actual (i.e., by way of efficient causality), for the very inclination which is correlated to the good in the subject which desires the good is the principle of acting in that subject. Without this inclination, without some determinate end, the agent would have no reason to act one way rather than another, and so it would not act at all. Moreover, by being drawn closer to the end which is its good a being becomes more and more actual, and hence, more and more capable of acting upon others by way of efficient causality. 22 De Köninck, ŐST, 319.
