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1 Introduction: The Place of the Common Good in Medieval Philosophy and Theology

The relationship between the individual good and the common good is one of the most important topics in medieval theology, ethics, and politics.Footnote 1 It is obviously impossible to give a full presentation of this topic in a short paper. Instead, I will present some aspects of this complex issue that should mark out the way for a study of the relationship between the good of the individual and the good of the community in the late Middle Ages, in particular by taking into account the theological point of view.Footnote 2

To understand the relation between the common and the individual good in medieval theology, it is crucial to focus on the theological virtue of love, or charity, and its relation to politics. The point I am going to make is the following: Albert the Great (ca. 1200–1280) and Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274) seem to think that it is impossible to understand and define the good of the individual without at the same time understanding and defining the good of the community (in particular of the Church, that is to say, the community constituted by the faithful). Indeed, the individual good is a true authentic good only if the moral subject accomplishes his or her own good by accomplishing the good of others. Selfish actions are therefore anti-social actions, and the only way the subject can do his or her own good is to do the good of the community first. The birth of the concept of self-interest is one of the fundamental topics of this collection of essays: whether or not it is appropriate to talk about self-interest for the Middle Ages, it seems clear to me that the authors that I examine here would endorse the idea that the individual can accomplish his own good only by including the good of others in his actions.

Before going to the subject-matter of this chapter, there is an important aspect of medieval discussions that should be understood, namely, we will observe, in the texts and authors considered here, a profound exchange between philosophy and theology. By this exchange, I mean that certain fundamental structures of Aristotelian politics and ethics sustain and enrich medieval theological reflection on charity, which is the theological virtue considered to be the highest of the virtues, especially on the grounds of Saint Paul (1 Cor. 13:1–13). More precisely, philosophy lends theology the concept of “architectonic disposition” (taken from book one of Nicomachean Ethics: 1094a1–b11) – that is, a disposition that submits to its own end the end of inferior dispositions, which it regulates and directs.Footnote 3 At least from the time of Albert the Great’s commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, which was the most important theological textbook in use in the thirteenth century, it is impossible to grasp the nature of charity without considering the contribution of the Aristotelian conceptions of the common good and of politics.

In order to see the deep exchange between theology and philosophy, the main sources to take into account are the treatises dedicated to the theological virtue of charity, which appeared in the commentaries of the Sentences. Of course, interesting material can also be found in other kinds of texts: a comprehensive survey should take into account the commentaries on Politics, on Nicomachean Ethics, and other political treatises such as Dante’s Monarchia or Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis; nevertheless, even the narrower scope of the present chapter allows us to grasp the core of the problem that I have proposed to study.

2 Politics as Architectonic Disposition in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle’s teleological conception of human activity is crucial for understanding the function that he assigns to politics.Footnote 4 This same teleological conception explains part of the reflections that medieval theologians devoted to charity as a supreme virtue. To understand this issue, one of the fundamental texts of the Aristotelian corpus is the first chapter of book one of the Nicomachean Ethics (1094a1–b11). Here Aristotle establishes the superiority of politics over other dispositions by virtue of the fact that its object is the ultimate end, that is, the excellence of the human being.

Regarding the role of politics, we can state the following: first, politics has as its object the ultimate end of human life, that is, happiness or excellence (aretē). Second, it subordinates all the dispositions that have as their object intermediate ends:

It [the best good] seems proper to the most controlling science – the highest ruling science. And this appears characteristic of political science. For it is the one that prescribes which of the sciences ought to be studied in cities, and which ones each class in the city should learn, and how far; indeed we see that even the most honoured capacities – generalship, household management, and rhetoric, for instance – are subordinate to it. And since it uses the other sciences concerned with action, and moreover legislates what must be done and what avoided, its end will include the ends of the other sciences, and so this will be the human good.Footnote 5

The ends of the various arts and techniques are means that allow the political community to prosper and remain in the best condition. But this implies that politicians, or legislators, establish to what extent these arts and techniques should be cultivated and developed (in the same way that, today, politics are regulated by laws and by decisions of production, e.g., of weapons). This does not mean that politics should determine the objects and processes of other disciplines, but it should limit their exercise on the basis of their utility for the common good.

Moreover, if politics enjoys this special condition with respect to the other sciences, dispositions, and capacities, it is because of the fact that its object is the common good, that is, the good of the political community:

For even if the good is the same for a city as for an individual, still the good of the city is apparently a greater and more complete good to acquire and preserve. For while it is satisfactory to acquire and preserve the good even for an individual, it is finer and more divine to acquire and preserve it for a people and for cities. And so, since our line of inquiry seeks these [goods, for an individual and for a community], it is a sort of political science.Footnote 6

This passage is essential for understanding the theory of charity in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. As we shall see, in fact, the two Dominican theologians will have recourse to a reasoning similar to that of Aristotle, but they will replace political prudence – which is, according to them, the part of Aristotle’s practical intelligence (phronēsis) which pertains to the good of the political community – with charity.Footnote 7 In so doing, they obtain two consequences worthy of attention: first, they subordinate the whole of the virtues and of moral science to charity, that is to say, to an infused disposition that is received through grace.Footnote 8 Second, they identify the human end with a supernatural end – the love of God and love of one’s neighbour inspired by God (that is, supernatural friendship) – and with the good of a community that is not, like the political community according to Aristotle, a natural community, but the good of the Church and the faithful.

3 Politics and the ‘Ontology of Charity’

Charity has both a theological and a political nature. It is, in fact, a supernatural form of friendship that regulates human love for God and for one’s own neighbour. More precisely, because it enables human beings to love God, it also enables them to love their neighbour.Footnote 9 In general, the acquisition of the cardinal virtues and the infusion of the theological virtues is a remedy for the effects of original sin: indeed, concupiscence (concupiscentia) prevents the peaceful cohabitation of men and constitutes an obstacle to the constitution of fair and happy communities. Charity thus allows the constitution of a society based on supernatural ground. The idea that charity has this political function goes back to Augustine, who referred explicitly to charity as a social disposition, as he speaks of social charity (caritas socialis):

These two loves – of which one is holy, the other unclean, one social, the other private, one taking thought for the common good because of the companionship in the upper regions, the other putting even what is common at its own personal disposal because of its lordly arrogance […].Footnote 10

In the thirteenth century, we witness the formation of what we can call an “ontology of charity”, by which I mean the psychic structure in virtue of which all the dispositions and actions of the faithful are subject to the end of charity. This subordination designates an ontological character, insofar as charity transmits its form to the other dispositions. As we shall see, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas strive to understand the formal relationship that binds the faithful with God and their neighbour.

In the following two sections, I present certain aspects of the theory of charity found in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. Due to the theological importance of charity, both authors devoted numerous texts to it, and therefore a selection has been necessary. However, their central ideas can be seen in the works discussed here. For Albert, I rely on the commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (written around the middle of the 1240s), and for Aquinas, I rely on the Quaestio disputata de caritate (1271–1272).Footnote 11 The joint study of these two authors will show that, in spite of differences in the argumentation and the demonstration of their theses, they agree on the fundamental theses concerning the relationship between politics and charity.

4 Albert the Great

Charity is the subject of distinction 27 of book three of Albert’s commentary on the Sentences. Albert explains the nature of charity in the light of the Aristotelian theory of the good as final cause. However, the Dominican master proposes a much-altered version of Aristotle’s theory. In fact, Albert includes love among the specific activities of the human being, activities whose realisation contribute to the perfection of his being and achieve his happiness. According to Albert, Aristotle theorised the principle of loving a self-sufficient good. However, even though philosophers (that is, those who grasp the truth by their natural intellect, without the gracious help of revelation) know that God is the sovereign good, they have not been able to theorise the gratuitous love of God. In other words: God is an object of love, and thus a source of happiness; philosophers love him as a source of good for themselves, not gratuitously.Footnote 12 Here, Albert opposes two types of love of the good: a love of the good as a source of one’s own happiness (bonum sibi or bonum homini) and a love of the good in itself (bonum without further specification). Only the first is accessible to philosophers, while the second is accessible to the faithful. The gratuitous love of the highest good is the act of charity.

According to Albert, we can therefore affirm that the natural love of the good, the one that the philosophers have known and that men can practice even without knowing the truth of the Christian Revelation, is always a “selfish” form of love. It allows individuals to love a good only when it is a source of happiness for the one who loves it.

Following an ancient tradition, which likely originated from the Ambrosiaster (an anonymous author of the end of the fourth century whose works have long been attributed to Ambrose) and Jerome, and which was carried on by Augustine, Albert refers to charity as the “mother of virtues” (mater uirtutum). Albert seeks to determine what precisely it means that charity is the mother of virtues. According to him, the expression means that charity is in some way the most final of the virtues and that the acts of the other theological and cardinal virtues depend on it. Moreover, charity is the “motor of the virtues” (motor uirtutum) since by its affective energy it sets in motion every other virtuous disposition.Footnote 13 The most important point is: charity is the “form of the virtues” (forma uirtutum).

The authors of Albert’s time devote many reflections to this point: how to understand the fact that charity is the form of the virtues. I will limit myself to the essential. Albert attributes to charity the same function that Aristotle attributes to what medieval authors called political prudence, that is, an architectonic function. There is therefore a structural analogy between politics and charity, and it can almost be said that charity is a supernatural form of politics: just as political prudence, as a disposition, allows the realisation of the common good and the individual good, so charity, as a virtue, allows the realisation of the supernatural common good and the individual good.

In the political field, where a technical skill is at the service of other [skills], we see that, just as horsemanship moves the art of making bridles, so that the bridle is adapted to the horse, hence there is one form of the bridle that depends on the art of making bridles, and another [form] by which one applies that form to the horse; in a similar way, it seems to me that charity does not give any virtue its specific being, nor does it give it the being of grace: indeed, according to my judgment, charity is not grace but a part of it, just like any other virtue; but [charity] gives [to virtue] the form of an efficient, of an ultimate motor, so that virtue acts by love and liberality: and [charity] gives it the form of order, that is, the form which orders it not to the proximate end, but to the ultimate end; [end] which is not the object of a single act, but of all acts, and such an end is God, so that virtue may serve the sovereign good which is God ; and in the third place gives him union with [God]. Indeed, it is one thing to direct to the ultimate end, and it is another to reach it: it would be impossible to reach it, if there were not love in every virtue: without love, the particular virtues can reach their own ends: thus, the art of making bridles, in the absence of the art of horsemanship which gives it form, would reach only the form of the bridle, and would not reach the ulterior end that the military art or the art of horsemanship could reach.Footnote 14

In this text, Albert does not mention Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, but he clearly alludes to it when he mentions the architectonic function of the higher arts in relation to the lower or subordinate arts.Footnote 15 The importance of this theoretical position should not be underestimated: subordinating all the cardinal and theological virtues to charity means subordinating the whole of practical science, including ethics, household economics, and politics, to it. In other words, (Aristotelian) practical philosophy loses its autonomy and becomes subject to charity. I will come back to this point in my conclusions.

Let us look at the details of Albert’s position. Medieval authors in general approach virtues through the Aristotelian distinction between matter and form, and they suggest that virtuous acts have their corresponding forms that make them virtuous. However, Albert does not think that charity gives the other virtues their own forms: these forms are only those of the virtues themselves. For example, the acts of courage have their form only through the virtue of courage, but if the act of any virtue is performed by someone who also possesses the virtue of charity, then charity adds three formal elements to that act. First, the form of the ultimate mover: indeed, the love of God, which is the act of charity, can impel to perform acts of other virtues, for example, courage. Second, the order: thanks to charity, the acts of the other virtues are ordered to a higher end, namely the love of God. Thus, thanks to charity, other virtues go beyond their immediate end to reach a higher end. Third, charity confers on every virtue the capacity to join with the ultimate end, that is God. Any virtue can indeed reach its own end by itself, but accompanied by charity, due to the love that charity spreads, any virtue can reach its own end and also join to the end of charity.

This last point is extremely important for understanding the role of charity in relation to the common good. It shows that, according to Albert, the common good and the good of the individual, the interest of the individual and that of the community of which he is a member, are no longer distinct in the ideal of charity since charity is the love of God and love of neighbour and, as such, it unites the community of the faithful. The most important point is that charity, as the love of God and neighbour, is the principal cause of the merit of the faithful.Footnote 16 This means that the faithful obtains the salvation of his soul only through the gratuitous love of God and of the other. Thus, Albert describes a paradoxical situation in which the surest way for the moral agent to pursue his own interest is to put the other’s interest before his own. In fact, the love of charity differs from selfish love since in charity, the love of God and of one’s neighbour is the only motor of the action. In other words, what counts is not the action itself with its consequences but the psychological conditions according to which the action is performed.

5 Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas’ views on charity converge with those of his teacher, Albert the Great. However, his analysis is more careful to make the ontology of charity conform to Aristotelian psychology. As I have already said, the most important text for understanding Aquinas’ position is his disputed question on charity (the Quaestio disputata de caritate, which he held in Paris at the end of his second teaching period, that is, 1271–1272). Attentive, as Albert, to the traditions of late antiquity, Aquinas sets out to offer a metaphysically loaded demonstration that charity is the form, the end, the motor and the root (forma, finis, motor, radix) of other virtues.Footnote 17

Aquinas analyses charity in the light of Aristotelian teleology and, in particular, in the light of the principle according to which the final cause of an act defines and constitutes the form of the same act. As a result, the ultimate will be the most capable of providing the form to the acts that depend on it. Thus, for instance, a person who fornicates to make a profit is, to use medieval categorisation, materially an intemperate, as he or she fornicates, but formally an unfair person because he or she fornicates in order to make an illegal profit.Footnote 18 The concept of ‘end’ is in fact identical to the concept of ‘good’.Footnote 19 Therefore, the virtue that has as its object the greatest good also has as its object the ultimate end. This virtue is charity, which has as its object the ultimate end and the greatest good, that is God. Consequently, it provides the form to the other moral and theological virtues:

[…] charity is the form, the motor, and the root of the virtues. To understand this point, we must know that we judge dispositions by acts […] in voluntary acts, the formal element comes from the final cause […] the form of the will is its object, that is, the good and the final cause, just as the intelligible is the form of the intellect. It follows that the final cause constitutes the formal element of the act of the will. Consequently, the same kind of act, if it aims at one end, has the form of virtue, and if it aims at another end, it has the form of vice, as it appears in the case of the one who gives alms for God or for vain glory […]. It is evident that the act of all the other virtues is subordinated to the proper end of charity, which is its object, namely the sovereign good […]. Therefore, it is evident that in the acts of all the virtues the formal element comes from charity, and for this reason it is called the form of the virtues.Footnote 20

Two points should be stressed. First, Aquinas asserts that charity is the form of the moral virtues. Moral virtues have as their object the created good, which is less perfect than the uncreated good, and they are therefore subordinate to the form of charity. Second, charity is a form of the other two theological virtues (faith and hope). In fact, even though these two virtues have God as their object – God is the object of faith insofar as he is the truth (ueritas) and the object of hope insofar as the union with him is a future good that is possible to obtain but arduous (arduus)Footnote 21 – nevertheless the fact that God is the greatest good, and therefore an object of reasonable desire, is included in the object of faith and hope: the desire to know God as true (act of faith) and as arduous (act of hope) depends on the desire to unite with God as the highest good (act of charity).

Again Aquinas establishes the political nature of charity, that is, the relationship between this disposition and the common good, on the basis of ontological considerations. God and one’s neighbour do not differ formally as objects of love, that is, as objects of the will: in both cases, the act of the will is an act of love that is aimed to a good. However, the love of God is the reason why we love our neighbour since we love our neighbour because God is in him or her. Thus, through charity, we love God in Himself and our neighbour in God.Footnote 22 This means that charity is the disposition that establishes the unity of the community. This idea concerns only the community of the faithful even though Aquinas conceives the possibility of a natural love of the community based on the natural disposition to love individuals of the same species. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the love of one’s neighbour, insofar as it is founded in God, and the natural love of one’s neighbour, insofar as it is founded in the resemblance between the individuals of the human species. This means that, according to Aquinas, Aristotle was able to conceive a form of general friendship between individual human beings, but, unlike charity, this friendship is not founded in God but in the neighbour himself.Footnote 23

I have argued above that Albert the Great subordinates all the other virtues to charity. We find, in Aquinas, a very similar position. Charity is indeed an “architectonic” disposition that uses the perfections of the other virtues to accomplish its own perfection. Like Albert, Aquinas also uses the first chapter of book one of the Nicomachean Ethics to ground this doctrine, and like Albert, he reaches thus to make of charity a kind of supernatural political disposition. When an act depends on several principles and these principles are hierarchically ordered, Aquinas assumes on the one hand that the perfection of the act requires the perfection of all the principles, and on the other that the lower principles be subordinated to the highest principle. Thus, since the highest principle in human acts is the one that has the final end as its object the most, that is charity, Aquinas concludes:

Charity is therefore a different disposition from those which have the means as their object, and yet the [disposition] which has the end as its object is more principal and architectonic with respect to those which have the means as their object, like medicine with respect to the art of pharmacy and the military art with respect to horsemanship. It is therefore evident that charity is a special virtue distinct from the other virtues, but it is principal and mover with respect to them.Footnote 24

As it appears clearly, Aquinas takes from Aristotle the model of architectonic disposition and is inspired by the Nicomachean Ethics for the example of military art and horsemanship. This model allows him to provide an interpretation of the theological notion of charity that explains the connection between the common and the individual good.

Lastly, Aquinas’ view converges with that of Albert the Great as far as merit (meritum) is concerned. Aquinas often stresses the link between charity, grace, and merit. Merit, which is the fruit of acts of charity and thus implies grace, gives the faithful access to heavenly rewards, namely to the beatific vision of God.Footnote 25 The faithful can thus obtain their ultimate good only through the realization of the common good and this in a particular form, that is, by putting the love of God and of the other before their own private interests.

6 Conclusion

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between the individual and the common good in medieval philosophy and theology would have to take into account a considerable number of texts and authors. Nevertheless, the small choice of texts and authors that I have presented here allows me to make some general remarks.

First, it is useful to distinguish practical contents from psychological structures. Thus, the object of the virtues that enable the realisation of the supernatural end is not the same as that of Aristotle’s virtues. However, if we look at psychological structures, we must recognise that Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas have adapted (or tried to adapt) Aristotelian finalism to a system of final causes that Aristotle had not taken into account: indeed, it is a matter of supernatural causality and a realisation through love.

Second, the importance of another aspect must be stressed, namely the insistence on the gratuity of acts of charity. Acts of charity are a source of merit because they are free, that is, they are perfectly free. They are chosen and carried out by a subject who is capable of going beyond the satisfaction of his own interests and to place himself at the service of God and of his neighbours. This aspect cannot be underestimated for the development of modern moral philosophies, especially those based on the concept of duty and on the frustration of individual inclinations (e.g., Kant’s practical philosophy).