immanent causation in spinoza and scholasticism...zabarella and the aforementioned protestant...

Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism

by

Stephen John Zylstra

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Philosophy University of Toronto

© Copyright by Stephen John Zylstra 2018

ABSTRACT

Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism

Stephen John Zylstra

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Philosophy

University of Toronto

2018

Spinoza is well-known for his claim that God is the only substance that exists, and

that everything else is a mere “mode” of that substance. At the same time, Spinoza

maintains that all things depend causally on God for their being. But if all of reality is in

some sense identical with God, in what manner can God be its cause? Spinoza’s answer

is found in his claim that “God is the immanent, and not the transeunt, cause of all

things.” In this thesis, I investigate the scholastic roots of this distinction and its

implications for understanding the fundamental features of Spinoza’s monistic ontology.

The scholastics commonly distinguish between two kinds of activities, one which

“remains” in the subject doing it and the other which “passes” outside. Those classified

as immanent were primarily mental operations like thinking and willing. The first part of

this thesis examines how the scholastics disagree over whether this kind of activity ought

to be construed as a kind of production; the nature of its relation to its subject; and

ii

whether it is produced by means of ‘emanation’. The concept of an immanent cause

emerges within this context.

In the second part of this thesis, I bring this research to bear on our understanding

of Spinoza’s metaphysics. First, I support the interpretation that Spinoza’s immanent

cause emanates its effects within itself, in the manner that the properties of a thing follow

from its essence. Contrary to what some scholars have suggested, however, this entails

neither that it is a form of formal causation, nor that Spinoza’s conception of immanent

causation is fundamentally discontinuous with the scholastic tradition. Second, I look at

how Spinoza’s claim that an immanent cause undergoes what it does can be reconciled

with the apparent impossibility of God undergoing anything on Spinoza’s system. I

argue that we should distinguish between two senses of undergoing in Spinoza: God

cannot undergo in the sense of being determined by external causes. But as the immanent

cause of all things, God undergoes in the sense of being the thing that is affected by his

own action.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I feel extremely privileged to have written this thesis under the supervision of a

committee comprised of people I admire and from whom I have learned an enormous

amount. I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to my co-advisors, Martin Pickavé

and Marleen Rozemond, and to my internal readers, Deborah Black and Karolina

Hübner, for the careful attention they have given to this thesis and for the countless other

ways in which they have supported me over the years. Thanks as well to my two external

readers, Peter King and Tad Schmaltz, for their helpful feedback. I have also benefited

from incisive comments on individual chapters in one form or another by several others,

including John Carriero, Brian Embry, Jorge Gracia, Martin Lenz, Stephan Schmid, and

Andreas Schmitt; as well as by audiences in Berlin, East Lansing, Flagstaff, Groningen,

Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, St. Louis, Toronto, and Utrecht. Let me also give a special

thanks to Richard Burnweit at the Voskuyl Library of Westmont College, for tracking

down a great many sources I needed for my research, and to Marco Lamanna for his kind

offer to make copies of a bit of Goclenius’s Logic for me when he visited the library in

Wolfenbüttel. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the financial support for my

doctoral work from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Throughout my dissertation work, I was sustained by the love and support of my

family: Amanda, Henry, and now Benjamin, too. This thesis is dedicated to them.

An updated version of chapter five will appear in the Archiv für Geschichte der

Philosophie as Stephen Zylstra, “Action and Immanent Causation in Spinoza.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction..........................................................................................................................1

Chapter 1. The Nature of Immanent Action ........................................................................8

§1. Thomas Aquinas and the ‘duplex actio’ ................................................................10

§2. Immanent action and the ‘mental word’ in later Thomists ....................................20

§2.1. The extrinsic qualification ............................................................................24

§2.2. The modal qualification ................................................................................27

§2.3. The teleological qualification .......................................................................30

§3. Immanent action and immanent act in Suárez .......................................................35

§3.1. Suárez’s metaphysical argument for the inherent productivity of immanent

actions ...........................................................................................................35

§3.2. Suárez on the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions.............46

§4. Conclusion .............................................................................................................55

Chapter 2. Formal-Causal Interpretations of Immanent Action ........................................60

§1. Hervaeus Natalis ....................................................................................................63

§1.1. Hervaeus’s classification of kinds of operations ..........................................64

§1.2. Hervaeus’s classification of understanding and other mental operations.....69

§1.3. Evaluations of Hervaeus’s account...............................................................72

§2. Paulus Soncinas .....................................................................................................77

§3. Conclusion .............................................................................................................88

§4. Postscript: A formal-causal interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause? ...........91

Chapter 3. Immanent Action and Emanation.....................................................................95

§1. Giacomo Zabarella on the distinction between emanation and ‘proper’ efficient

causation ................................................................................................................99

§2. Francisco Suárez on the ‘causality’ of the efficient cause...................................103

§3. Franco Burgersdijk on the distinction between emanative and immanent

causes ...................................................................................................................109

§4. A defence of the Burgersdijkian account.............................................................121

v

§5. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................125

Chapter 4. Spinoza on Emanation and Immanent Causation...........................................127

§1. Spinoza’s dependence on Burgersdijk and Heereboord ......................................131

§2. Spinoza and emanative causality .........................................................................133

§3. Spinoza’s remarks on the immanent cause in the Short Treatise ........................137

§3.1. Equivalence with the internal cause............................................................138

§3.2. Simultaneity requirement............................................................................139

§3.3. Superlative freedom requirement................................................................141

§3.4. Mereological requirement...........................................................................142

§4. The causa emanativa in Protestant scholasticism................................................144

§5. The opposition of emanative and formal causality in Protestant scholasticism ..152

§6. Spinoza and mathematics.....................................................................................157

§7. Spinoza, Descartes, and the causa sui .................................................................163

§8. Causa adæquata, sive formalis ............................................................................171

§9. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................173

Chapter 5. Spinoza on Action and Immanent Causation .................................................176

§1. Immanent causation implies acting and undergoing............................................178

§2. Acting excludes undergoing ................................................................................181

§3. God is the adequate cause of all things................................................................182

§4. Immanent causation and divine undergoing ........................................................185

§5. Undergoing in the generic sense ..........................................................................190

§6. Are two senses of acting and undergoing necessary?..........................................196

§7. Conclusion: Spinoza versus the scholastics on essence, perfection, and the

capacity to undergo ..............................................................................................200

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................203

Abbreviations...................................................................................................................211

Bibliography

A. Primary Sources ...................................................................................................213

B. Secondary Sources ...............................................................................................222

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LIST OF TABLES

1. Burgersdijk’s classification of causes in his Institutiones logicae.............................113

2. Relevant divisions of the efficient cause in Spinoza and Protestant scholastics .......147

3. Zabarella and the aforementioned Protestant scholastics on the relation between

emanation and internal efficient causation ................................................................149

vii

INTRODUCTION

The first part of Spinoza’s Ethics is in many ways an assault on the ontology of

traditional theism. For a traditional theist, there are fundamentally two kinds of entities

in existence: there is God, and then there is everything else (‘creation’). The universe,

being made up entirely of created things, depends absolutely on God for its existence,

while God is completely self-sufficient and separate from the universe. God freely chose

to create such a universe out of his infinite goodness and wisdom. God is a personal

being, possessing, like us, an intellect and will, and the universe is providentially ordered,

working according to the ends that God has set for it.

Spinoza seems to dismantle this picture piece by piece. There are no purposes in

nature at all, and everything that happens, happens out of necessity. The thought that the

universe was created by an act of free choice is likewise false. The very notion of a

personal being that is separate from the universe is a chimera. Most fundamentally,

Spinoza seemingly abandons the basic ontological division between creator and creature,

holding instead that all of reality is a single “substance.”

All of this would appear to locate Spinoza’s position closer to that of

metaphysical naturalism than to traditional theism—except that, unlike contemporary

metaphysical naturalists, Spinoza continues to affirm that God, an absolutely infinite and

perfect being, exists. It’s just that Spinoza in some sense identifies God with the universe

itself—a view which is captured nicely by his famous phrase, Deus sive Natura. But

Spinoza’s agreement with traditional theism apparently goes further than this. Not only

does he hold that God exists, he also claims that everything depends absolutely on God in

a sense that a traditional theist would recognize. As Spinoza puts it, echoing both

Descartes and the medieval philosophical tradition, God is the cause of both the essence

and the existence of all things (E Ip25, E IIp10cs).

Spinoza’s particular combination of agreement and critique with respect to

traditional theism gives rise to an interpretive problem: how is this absolute dependence

of all things on God consistent with Spinoza’s monistic ontology? That is, how can God

1

Introduction 2

be the cause of all things while at the same time being in some sense identical with all

things? We tend to think of causation as a relation that obtains between two separate

things, as when one billiard ball strikes another billiard ball and causes it to move. For

the traditional theist, of course, God’s creation of things is like that, since created things

are understood to be themselves substances that are distinct from their creator. But on

Spinoza’s model of divine causation, the distinction between cause and effect is not

between two separate things, creator and creature, but between two aspects of a single

reality, or substance. One and the same Natura is divided into what Spinoza calls Natura

Naturans (Nature-as-cause) and Natura Naturata (Nature-as-caused). Hence, one can

ask: what must divine causation be like in order for it to escape the requirement of the

separateness of the cause and effect? And one might add, what does this kind of

causation imply about the nature of the identity (and distinctness) of the cause and effect

in the first place? In short, how does the relation between Natura Naturans and Natura

Naturata in Spinoza’s ontology differ from the creator-creature relation of traditional

theism?

Spinoza’s own answer to these questions involves an appeal to a distinction

between two kinds of causes. He writes,

I favor an opinion concerning God and Nature far different from the one modern Christians usually defend. For I maintain that God is, as they say, the immanent, but not the transeunt,1 cause [causam immanentem, ut ajunt, non vero transeuntem] of all things. That all things are in God and move in God, I affirm, I say, with Paul, and perhaps also with all the ancient philosophers, though [expressed] in another way, and even, I dare say, with all the ancient Hebrews, as far as we can tell from certain traditions, corrupted as they have been in many ways. Nevertheless, it is a complete mistake to think, as some people do, that the Theological-Political Treatise rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as Nature (by which they understand a certain mass, or corporeal matter). (Ep. 73 G IV 307)

1 I prefer ‘transeunt’ to Curley’s ‘transitive’ (CW II.457). The latter term, being borrowed from

grammar, seems to require ‘intransitive’ as its opposite, rather than ‘immanent’. In addition, it may give the false impression that a transitive verb always expresses a transiens causal relation. ‘Transeunt’ may be a term of art, but it is the one preferred in contexts such as this one by both metaphysicians (e.g., Armstrong 1997; Chisholm 1966; Stebbing 1933; Zimmerman 1997) and historians of philosophy (e.g., Bennett 2001 [with respect to Leibniz] Frost 2018 [with respect to Aquinas]; D. Garrett 2002 [with respect to Spinoza]; Stein 2014 [with respect to Aristotle]).

Introduction 3

In order to understand the relation between God and Nature on Spinoza’s ontology, then,

we ought to investigate what it means for something to be an immanent cause, and what

this says about the relation it has to its effect.

It is clear that Spinoza intends immanent causation to be the sort of causal relation

that obtains within a single substance, rather than across substances. That’s because his

claim that God is the immanent and not the transeunt cause of all things (which, it should

be noted, is repeated in part I of the Ethics) is directly connected to his claim that

everything that is, is “in” God (E Ip15; cf. E Ip18d). This claim in turn entails that God is

the only substance, and anything else that exists is merely what Spinoza calls a “mode”

[modus] of that substance (E Ip15d; cf. E Ip25c). By contrast, the ‘modern Christians’ to

which Spinoza refers presumably think that divine causation is transeunt because they

think that ‘creatures’ are substances existing outside of God.

Nevertheless, one can still wonder what all of this means for Spinoza. What

lessons are we to draw from classifying individual things like you and me as modes of a

substance? In what sense are all things “in” God? These concepts are basically at the

explanatory ground floor provided in the Ethics (see E Ia3; E Ia5; and E Ia1), and (no

doubt partially for this reason) their meanings are controversial among Spinoza scholars.

Hence, explaining immanent causation merely in terms of the Ethics’ basic concepts does

not appear to be particularly illuminating, and it is unclear how any attempts to say

anything more about it ought to be evaluated.2

Fortunately, some much-needed traction can be gained by looking at the

philosophical-historical background to Spinoza’s concept of an immanent cause. The

distinction between immanent and transeunt causes emerges from the scholastic tradition,

i.e., the sort of Aristotelian-inspired philosophy that was practiced in ‘the schools’ in

2 Important discussions of the immanent cause in Spinoza can be found in, inter alia: Carraud 2002;

Deleuze 1990; Dunin-Borkowski 1933-36; Garrett 2002; Gueroult 1968; Hampshire 1951; Lærke 2009; Lærke 2013; Macherey 1991; Macherey 1992; Macherey 1998; Martin 2015; Melamed 2006; Melamed 2013; Morrison 2015; Nadler 2008; Norton 1839; Ripley 1839; Ripley 1840; Sangiacomo and Nachtomy 2018; Wolfson 1958; and Żuławski 1899.

Introduction 4

Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and well into the modern period.3 Based on a

passage in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the scholastics commonly distinguish between two

kinds of activities [actiones / operationes] that things can be engaged in, one which

“remains” [immanens] and the other which “crosses over” [transiens]. The exact nature

of these two kinds of activities is itself contested; and it is within this dialectical context

that the distinction between immanent and transeunt causes [causae] eventually emerges.

Connecting Spinoza’s use of this terminology to its scholastic pre-history can help to

determine what it means for God to be the immanent cause of all things. In this manner,

we can use the concept of an immanent cause to explain the fundamental features of

Spinoza’s monistic ontology, such as what it means for something to be “in” God. In the

present study, I conduct just such an investigation.

Once upon a time, there was considerable scholarly interest in Spinoza’s relation

to scholasticism. When Étienne Gilson wrote his ground-breaking study on Descartes,

Index Scholastico-Cartésian, in 1913, he took inspiration from an earlier study by Jakob

Freudenthal on “Spinoza und die Scholastik”.4 But since Gilson, historians of

philosophy have created an enormous literature detailing Descartes’ many debts, great

and small, to the scholastic tradition, while analogous interest in Spinoza largely petered

out.5 No doubt this can be explained partly as a reaction to the way in which the earlier

generation of Spinoza scholars exaggerated the explanatory power of the scholastic

3 In the way I use it, the term ‘scholasticism’ only partially overlaps with ‘medieval philosophy’. First

of all, the scholastic tradition extends into the early modern period and includes many Protestant philosophers, several of whom we will encounter in chaps. 3 and 4 below. Second, I take the scholastic tradition to be distinct from the practice of philosophy in the Islamic world in the medieval period. This is not to deny the cross-pollination between these traditions. Still, to say that Maimonides, Avicenna, Averroes, and others (e.g.,) exerted a considerable influence on scholasticism is not to classify them as scholastics.

4 Gilson 1913: i; Freudenthal 1887. Other studies on Spinoza and scholasticism from roughly the same period as Gilson's study include: Dunin-Borkowski 1933-36; Lewkowitz 1902; Richter 1913; and Wolfson 1958 (originally published in 1934).

5 Consider that The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cottingham 1992) contains a whole essay (Ariew 1992) on “Descartes and Scholasticism”, while the word ‘scholasticism’ does not even appear in the index to The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (D. Garrett 1996) (as Krop 2011: 15 points out).

A notable exception to this trend prior to 2000 is Piero di Vona’s work; see especially Di Vona 1960; Di Vona 1969; and Di Vona 1977.

Introduction 5

background and under-played the obvious and massive influence of Descartes.6 The

result has been that we still lack a more sober and fine-tuned analysis of the nature and

extent of Spinoza’s relation to scholasticism. Happily, some Spinoza scholars have

returned to this task very recently,7 but research remains in its infancy. For instance, we

still lack a good sense of which scholastic authors Spinoza is likely to have been familiar

with. By measuring one particular dimension of the scholastic influence on Spinoza, I

hope to contribute to this wider project.

The present study falls into two parts. The first part examines in detail the

conditions that led to the genesis of the concept of an immanent cause within

scholasticism. Despite some acknowledgement that ‘immanence’ plays an important role

in scholastic thought,8 there has been little research into how and why the scholastics

distinguished immanent actions from transeunt ones. In chapters 1-3, I identify three

questions regarding immanent action that were both crucial and controversial for the

scholastics, and explain the philosophical motivations for the various answers to them.

Chapter 1 considers the question of whether immanent actions ought to be

conceived as a kind of producing or making (i.e., an activity that has a certain product as

its end or goal), or whether, alternatively, some or all immanent actions are not

productive. I argue that the development and critique of the production model of

immanent actions is bound up with the reception of Thomas Aquinas’s theory of

cognition, and that Francisco Suárez occupies a distinctive position in that history by

developing a systematic and metaphysically grounded defence of the view that immanent

actions are inherently productive.

In Chapter 2, I turn to the question of how immanent action relates to the

traditional Aristotelian scheme of four causes. The vast majority of scholastics thought

6 Wolfson notoriously boasted that he would be able to reconstruct the Ethics out of scraps of ancient

and medieval philosophy (1958: I.3). Wolfson’s methodology was sharply criticized by Gueroult (1968: 442); for an account of their dispute, see Laerke 2011a. Later, Bennett (1984: 14) would point to Wolfson to justify his own “inattention to Spinoza's philosophical ancestry,” claiming of Wolfson's work, “the labour and learning are awesome, but the philosophical profit is almost nil.”

7 See Bac 2010; Coppens 2003; Coppens 2004; Krop 2011; Manzini 2011; Schnepf and Renz 2008; Van Bunge et al. 2011; Viljanen 2008; and Viljanen 2011.

8 Oeing-Hanhoff 1976; and Mojsisch 1977-99.

Introduction 6

that one is an efficient cause with respect to one’s immanent actions: they are the sort of

thing one does. But this assumption is difficult to square with Aristotle’s account of an

efficient cause, which seems to require that it acts on another, insofar as it is other. I

examine two scholastics, Hervaeus Natalis and Paulus Soncinas, who are led to the

conclusion that the relation between an immanent action and the subject in which it exists

is not essentially efficient-causal; rather, it is a purely formal-causal relation. After

evaluating their respective accounts of immanent action and the reactions to them in

scholasticism, I end by considering what a purely formal-causal interpretation of

Spinoza’s immanent cause might look like, and how plausible it would be.

One possible way to alleviate the tension involved in the claim that an efficient

cause acts on itself is to claim that this is done (only) through an atypical form of

efficient causality. Chapter 3 examines the question of whether immanent action should

be understood as brought about through a form of efficient causality known as

“emanation.” In is in the context of this question that the concept of an immanent cause

(as opposed to action), is first introduced by the Dutch philosopher Franco Burgersdijk. I

argue that Burgersdijk introduces the concept of an immanent cause in order to

distinguish the form of efficient causality involved in immanent actions like thinking and

willing from mere emanation.

The second half of the present study brings the scholastic background to bear

more directly on Spinoza’s conception of immanent causation. In chapter 4, I consider an

interpretation of immanent causation in Spinoza as a kind of necessary entailment of a

property of a thing from its essence. Recent scholars advocating this interpretation have

classified this kind of relation as emanation and a type of formal causation. As a result,

Spinoza is seen as breaking decisively from the core Burgerdijkian conception of an

immanent cause as a kind of efficient cause. I argue that this interpretation is only

partially correct. I present additional evidence that Spinoza does in fact think of an

immanent cause as emanative in character, but I also argue that in Spinoza’s context, this

sort of causation was understood to be a form of efficient, not formal, causality.

Introduction 7

In chapter 5, I resolve a significant tension between Spinoza’s conception of an

immanent cause and his understanding of action. Like Burgersdijk, Spinoza sometimes

describes an immanent cause as one that is acted on by itself, or undergoes what it does.

Yet there is evidence that Spinoza thinks that God only acts and is incapable of

undergoing. I argue in favour of a distinction between two senses of the term

‘undergoing’ [pati] in Spinoza. God cannot undergo in the sense of being determined by

external causes. But as the immanent cause of all things, God undergoes in the sense of

being the subject that is affected by an action. This solution confirms the interpretation

of modes in Spinoza as existing ‘in’ God in the same manner that an accident ‘inheres’ in

a substance in Aristotelian ontology.

Chapters 4 and 5 effectively determine Spinoza’s answers to updated forms of the

second and third scholastic questions, namely: ‘what relation does immanent causation

have to the four Aristotelian causes?’ and, ‘is immanent causation a form of emanation?’

In the conclusion, I turn briefly to what Spinoza might answer to an updated the first

question, i.e., ‘does an immanent cause produce something distinct from its own action?’

Based on the conclusion that Spinoza has an emanational model of immanent causation,

and other evidence, I suggest that for Spinoza there is no distinction between the products

of immanent causation and the actions by which they are produced. This means that

modes in Spinoza’s ontology, i.e., things like you and me, are nothing other than God’s

very actions.

CHAPTER 1.

THE NATURE OF IMMANENT ACTION

Consider the sheer variety of activities there are. A snake slithers; a fly buzzes; a

bird builds a nest; Jill rides her bicycle; George plans for his upcoming trip; kids imagine

that they are in space. They have in common the fact that we (or other things) do them.

That makes them different from the sorts of things that are done to us—things like being

cut or being pushed. (Using traditional philosophical terms, we can call the activities

‘actions’ and distinguish them from these ‘passions’.) But one might wonder whether

there are certain basic differences among actions themselves. Such differences might

allow one to sort all actions into a number of irreducible, distinct, kinds.

In the scholastic tradition, it was widely held that all actions belong to one of two

kinds, typically called ‘transeunt’ and ‘immanent’. Transeunt actions are relatively easy

to describe: they are the sort of activity whereby the ‘doer’ of the activity, or agent, does

something to something else. Throwing a ball, burning a piece of wood, and building a

nest are all examples. Through them, an agent brings about some kind of change in the

patient (i.e., the thing the activity is being done to). E.g., when I throw a ball, I modify

the ball’s location, trajectory, and so on.

Many actions do not appear to have this basic structure. Some actions, that is,

seem to involve an agent doing something, but not to something else. In some cases it

may turn out that the action in question does in fact conform to the pattern of transeunt

action. For instance, one might initially suppose that a fly’s buzzing is like this, since we

don’t say that there is something that ‘is buzzed’ by the fly. On closer inspection,

however, one realizes that buzzing is a kind of vibration, so there is in fact a patient,

namely the air that is made to vibrate. Nevertheless, according to the scholastics, there

are some actions that really do not involve any external patient. Certainly the clearest

and least controversial examples (although not the only ones considered by the

scholastics) are mental operations like sensing, willing, and thinking. For instance, when

I understand some mathematical proof or see a tree in front of me, I am not doing

8

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 9

anything to the proof or the tree. The only being whose state has changed is me. To the

extent that one can speak of a patient of these activities, then, the patient is just the agent.

These were called immanent actions because they were said to ‘remain in’ [immanere]

the agent.

The scholastic concept of immanent action was anchored, in this fashion, by being

defined negatively in terms of the absence of an external patient, and by the use of mental

operations as paradigmatic cases. But of course it would be desirable to have a more

precise, and positive, description of the structure of immanent action. What is going on

when an agent is engaged in an immanent action? Since the action is said to “remain in”

the agent, the question can be reformulated as: what is going on in the agent when the

agent is engaged in an immanent action?

In this chapter, I explore the various, contrary ways in which different scholastic

authors answer this question. I begin, in the first section, with Thomas Aquinas, for

whom the concept of immanent action figures prominently. His critique of Averroism

(the theory that there is only a single intellect for all human beings),1 his defence of

orthodox (i.e., Chalcedonian) Christology, and the organization of his Summa Contra

Gentiles, for instance, all rely on it in significant ways.2 At the same time (and as I will

show), Aquinas’ remarks on immanent action are ambiguous on the question of what is

going on in the agent. The position he is most known for is found in his mature writings

on the Trinity, where he argues that immanent action is a type of production, whose

product is intrinsically united to the agent. So for example an act of thinking results in a

concept or mental ‘word’ in the intellect, and, in similar fashion, the Son, or Word,

proceeds from and remains one with the Father. Unfortunately, Aquinas never explictly

applies this account to other immanent actions such as sensing and desiring. And in other

writings, Aquinas adopts the opposite view that immanent actions do not have a product,

and that this in fact is what fundamentally distinguishes them from transeunt actions.

What is more, this opposing view seems to have the authority of Aristotle on its side.

1 Libera 2014: 245-56, 295-308, especially 301. See Aquinas, DUI §71-73; and ST I.76.1. 2 For a list of references to the concept of immanent action in Aquinas’s works, see Libera 2014: 316-

27; Lonergan 1967: 119-24; and Pini 2015: 87 n. 18.


In sections 2 and 3, I show that Aquinas’s ambiguous legacy is taken up in

different ways by, first, the later ‘orthodox’ Thomists like Capreolus and Cajetan, and

second, Francisco Suárez. The Thomists are inspired primarily by Aquinas’s explanation

of why the ‘mental word’ must be a product of thinking, distinct from the action of

thinking itself. They read Aquinas as saying that because it is possible to think of things

when they are not immediately present, the intellect must produce its immediate objects

of thought. But since certain other kinds of immanent actions, like sensations, require the

immediate presence of their object, they conclude that some but not all immanent actions

are productive, thereby effectively splitting the difference between Aquinas’s two

accounts. One has to wait until Francisco Suárez, himself no Thomist, to find a defence

of the claim that all immanent actions are productive. Unlike the Thomists, Suárez

begins unabashedly from an account of the metaphysics of action. He argues that action

is nothing other than the process of bringing about something new in the world. Hence,

once it is established that immanent actions truly are actions, we may conclude that any

immanent action must have a product. In this fashion, Suárez goes the furthest towards

treating immanent actions on the model of transeunt ones. Both Suárez and the Thomists

offer proposals for how the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions can be

preserved even though the property of being productive is found in both.

1. Thomas Aquinas and the ‘duplex actio’

Thomas Aquinas is one of the first philosophers to draw the distinction between

immanent and transeunt actions, and to use this distinction to great effect in his writings.

Of course, since the distinction was regarded by Aquinas and other scholastics as having

been laid down by Aristotle, perhaps it might be more accurate to say that Aquinas is one

of the first to draw forth the distinction, from the Metaphysics and a few other related

texts in the Aristotelian corpus that we will discuss below. In any case, Aquinas’s

account of the distinction has an enormous impact on scholastic debate over the nature of

immanent action, as I will show in later sections. I suspect that even the very adoption of

the labels ‘immanent’ [immanens] and ‘transeunt’ [transiens], terms which are not found


in the (Latin translations of the) relevant Aristotelian passages, is due to Aquinas’s

influence. In this section, I give a sketch of Aquinas’s account. I begin with the basics of

the account which Aquinas maintained throughout his career, basics that were also

accepted by most scholastics.3 I then turn to the controversial and ambiguous aspect of

Aquinas’s account: the question of whether immanent actions are productions, i.e.,

whether they are oriented to bringing about some kind of product distinct from

themselves.

Aquinas takes it as good Aristotelian doctrine that actions are divided

fundamentally into two kinds. Often Aquinas articulates this division in terms of an

action’s ‘location’ with respect to the agent doing it: one kind of action “remains in”

[manere in] the agent, while the other kind “crosses over” [transit] into something

outside the agent. In addition, Aquinas claims that there is a related way in which these

two kinds of actions are distinguished: the ‘remaining’ kind of action perfects the agent

that does it, while the ‘crossing over’ kind of action perfects the external patient that is

being acted on. So for example, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, he writes,

According to the Philosopher in Metaphysics IX, there are two kinds of action [duplex est actio]: one, which remains [manet] in the agent and is a perfection of that agent, as, for example, seeing; the other, which passes [transit] into exterior things [exteriora], and is a perfection of the thing being made [to be something] [facti], as burning [comburere] in the case of fire.4 Aquinas’s way of drawing the distinction is meant to capture the basic difference

between actions that fundamentally involve one thing doing something to another thing,

and actions that fundamentally involve just a single thing doing something. (Aquinas’s

examples make this clear: burning changes the thing that is burned, whereas seeing does

not change the thing that is seen.) That Aquinas’s account does so depends on some

principles of Aristotelian ontology that were fairly uncontroversial within scholasticism.

Start from the assumption (based on Aristotle’s Categories) that actions are a category of

3 In chap. 2 below, we will examine two notable exceptions. 4 Aquinas, SCG II.23.5.


accident.5 As such, it is their nature to exist in a substance “as in a subject,” as Aristotle

says.6 (The scholastics referred to this relation, which they regarded as the unique form

of ontological dependence that an accident bears to its substance, as inherence.) It might

be thought that actions must inhere in their agents, since they are always predicated of

their agents; for instance, when we say that fire burns wood, the action of burning is

predicated of the fire. However, according to Aristotle in Physics III.3, when an agent

acts on another thing, the action must exist in the patient. Fire’s action of burning exists

in the wood being burned, for example. For an agent to act in such cases is nothing other

than for the patient to be actualized or changed in a certain way by the agent.7 The

agent’s action just is this actualization of the patient, conceived as originating, or being

caused by, the agent.8 Given these Aristotelian assumptions, it makes sense to refer to

actions that affect an external patient as ‘crossing over’ [transiens], because they

originate (i.e., causally) in the agent, but inhere in the patient.9 Such actions can also be

said to perfect the patient because it is the patient, and not the agent, that is being

actualized or changed.10 By contrast, when an agent does something that affects itself

alone, as when an animal sees, it is apparent that such an action would have to inhere in

and actualize the agent itself. Such actions, then, could fairly be said to ‘remain in’ and

perfect the agent.

5 See Aristotle, Cat. 4.1b25-27; and Cat. 9.11b1-8. 6 See Aristotle, Cat. 2.1a20-1b9. 7 See Aristotle, Phys. III.3.202a13-b29; and Aquinas’s commentary, In Phys. III lec. 5. 8 Aristotle holds that the so-called passion of the patient is just this same actualization, conceived as

being undergone by the patient. See Aquinas, In Phys. III lec. 5 n. 320. I have here presented Aquinas as holding straightforwardly the Aristotelian view that a transeunt

action exists in the patient and is identical to the actualization of the patient. While many of Aquinas’s texts support this view, there are others which suggest that transeunt actions exist in the agent and hence are distinct from the actualization of the patient. How to reconcile these texts is a matter of scholarly controversy (see Frost 2018; Kane 1959; Lonergan 2013: 254-67; McDermott 1960; and Miller 1946). However, we can ignore this controversy for our purposes, since the key point is that transeunt actions are productions and perfect an external patient, which is true on any interpretation of Aquinas.

9 Aquinas calls this type of predication extrinsic denomination, because the predication is true in virtue of something outside of the subject of predication. See Aquinas, In Phys. III lec. 5 n. 322.

10 To clarify, Aristotle does speak of the action as being the actualization of the agent. However, he also says that this actualization of the agent exists in the patient, and is identical to the actualization of the patient. Because the patient, not the agent, is the true ontological subject of this actuality or change, it is the patient and not the agent that can be said to be perfected by it.


So much for Aquinas’s basic account of the division: one kind of action ‘crosses

over’ [transiens] and perfects an external patient, while the other kind ‘remains in’

[immanens] and perfects the agent itself. Now to the controversial part of his account.

Since immanent actions perfect the agent while transeunt actions perfect the patient, one

can ask whether they also differ in terms of how they perfect their respective subjects.

Since the model for transeunt action was fairly widely accepted, the controversial

question was whether immanent actions follow the same model as transeunt actions.

Consider another passage where Aquinas draws the distinction, this one from De

Potentia:

Now there are two kinds of operation [duplex operatio]. The one kind crosses over [transit] from the agent [operante] into something extrinsic, as heating [calefactio] crosses over from fire into wood. This kind of operation is a perfection of the one being acted on [operati], not the agent [operantis], since fire does not acquire something [aliquid] by heating; rather, the thing being heated [calefacti] acquires heat [calor]. The other kind, such as understanding, sensing, willing, and the like, does not cross over into something extrinsic, but remains [manens] in the agent itself [in ipso operante]. These operations are perfections of the agent [operantis], for the intellect is not perfected except by understanding actually, and similarly, the senses are not perfected except by sensing actually.11

How transeunt actions perfect an external patient is fairly clear from Aquinas’s

explanation. An agent acts so as to actualize a certain latent potentiality in the patient,

such as wood’s potential to be hot. Hence, as a result of the transeunt action, the patient

acquires some new characteristic or feature, which Aquinas here refers to as a

‘something’ [aliquid]. Transeunt actions are thus essentially productions. Their purpose

is to make something into something. So for example, fire’s characteristic transeunt

action is identified as, quite literally, “making-hot” [calefacere], i.e., the production of

heat [calor] in something, heat being a kind of accident falling under the category of

quality.12 Similarly, one can say that throwing is the kind of transeunt action that results

11 Aquinas, QDP 10.1. 12 Typically the scholastics focus on so-called accidental change (when a substance acquires a new

accident) when they discuss transeunt actions, but it is possible to extend the model to so-called substantial change (where a new substance comes into existence) as well. In such cases, prime matter could be considered the external patient that is perfected by the agent.


in a new location (for the object thrown), ship-building is the kind of transeunt action that

results in a ship, and so on. Every transeunt action has a certain product as its goal. All

of this fits well with how Aristotle describes action in Physics III and the efficient or

‘moving’ cause in Physics II.13

With this model of transeunt actions in place, one can ask whether immanent

actions operate in a similar way. Are immanent actions likewise to be understood as

productions? If not, then obviously there is no additional ‘something’ in virtue of which

the action perfects the agent; in that case, it must be the immanent action itself that

perfects the agent. This model of immanent actions as disanalogous to how transeunt

actions operate was the default view within scholasticism. The reason is that Aquinas

and indeed all scholastics take the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions to

have been laid down by Aristotle in a certain passage from book Θ of Aristotle’s

Metaphysics14 (which Aquinas usually cites, as in the Summa Contra Gentiles passage

quoted above). And in this passage, Aristotle seems to state categorically that actions

that exist in the agent do not produce anything. Aristotle begins by distinguishing

between those potencies whose actualization consists in the mere ‘use’ [usus] of the

power, and those whose actualization results in a certain product over and above its use.

The end-point [ultimum] of some [potencies] is the use [usus], as (for example) the act of seeing is the end-point of sight, and nothing else [nullum … alterum … opus] in addition to [praeter] this comes to be from sight. But from other [potencies], something else does come to be, as (for example) from the art of building, a house comes to be in addition to the act of building.

It is only after making this initial cut that Aristotle says things that are broadly reflected

in Aquinas’s basic account of the division:

Nevertheless, in neither case is there any less or any more of an end [finis] of the potency. For the act of building is in the thing being built, and it comes to be at the same time and exists with the house. Therefore whenever there is something else that comes to be in addition to the use,

13 By contrast, Aristotle does not seem to consider immanent action in these passages at all. 14 Aristotle, Met. Θ.8 1050a23-b2. Here I will rely on William of Moerbecke’s popular revision of the

‘translatio media’ of the Metaphysics (in AL 25), modernizing some of the spelling. For commentary on the original Greek, see Makin 2006: 200-04; and Stein 2014.


the actualization [actus] of [the potency] is in the thing being made, as the act of building is in the thing being built, the act of weaving in the thing being woven, and the same goes for the rest; without exception, motion [motus] is in what is being moved. But in those cases where there is not anything else [non est aliud aliquod opus] in addition to the action [praeter actionem], the action exists in the thing, as the act of seeing is in the one seeing, and the act of theorizing in the one theorizing, and life in the soul, and hence happiness [felicitas] as well, for it is a kind of life.15

On a straightforward reading of this passage, it seems clear that Aristotle holds that the

kinds of actions that exist in the agent are exclusively non-productive ones, i.e., the sort

consisting in the mere ‘use’ [usus] of a power, and not resulting in anything over and

above the use. It would seem, further, that in order for an action to result in such a

product, there must be some kind of material external to the agent that the agent, through

its action, is making into something. It is in this external material, which Aristotle calls

the ‘thing being made’ [facti], that such an action exists. Likewise, it seems clear that

whenever an action results in a product, the action is done for the sake of the product. All

of this would seem to indicate in no uncertain terms that only an action that is not

productive could both exist in the agent and perfect the agent.

Thomas Aquinas endorses this standard Aristotelian account of immanent actions

as inherently non-productive16 in several writings. For example, in his commentary on

the Metaphysics, he says the following in his exposition of Aristotle’s passage.

Now a difference among the aforesaid potencies must be considered, namely that when there is something produced in addition the

15 Quoniam uero est horum quidem ultimum usus [χρῆσις], ut uisus uisio, et praeter hanc nullum fit

alterum a uisu opus [γίγνεται], a quibusdam uero fit aliquid [γίγνεταί], ut ab aedificatoria [οἰκοδομικῆς] domus preter aedificationem: tamen non minus hic quidem finis, hic autem magis finis potentiae [δυνάμεώς] est. Nam aedificatio [οἰκοδόμησις] in aedificato [οἰκοδομουμένῳ], et simul fit et est cum domo. Quorumcumque ergo aliquid alterum est quod fit praeter usum [τὴν χρῆσιν], horum actus [ἐνέργεια] in facto [τῷ ποιουμένῳ] est, ut aedificatio in aedificato et contextio in contexto; similiter autem et in aliis, et totaliter motus [κίνησις ]in eo quod mouetur [τῷ κινουμένῳ]. Quorum uero non est aliud aliquod opus [τι ἔργον] praeter actionem [τὴν ἐνέργειαν], in ipsis existit actio [ἐνέργεια], ut uisio in uidente et speculatio [θεωρία] in speculante et uita [ζωὴ ] in anima [ψυχῇ] (quare et felicitas [εὐδαιμονία]; uita namque qualis [ποιά] quedam est). Met. Θ.8 1050a23-b2 (AL 25, p. 189-90 ll. 298-309); my translation of the Latin text is based on that found in Aquinas, In Met.

16 Here and throughout this chapter I call this the ‘standard Aristotelian account’ because it is both the more straightforward interpretation of the passage we have just examined, and because it is essentially the ‘default’ interpretation that scholastics accept unless it conflicts with some philosophical position they are strongly committed to.


actualization [actum] of these potencies, which is an action, the action of such potencies is in the thing being made and is the actualization of the thing being made…. And this is so, because when something produced [aliquod operatum] results from the action of a potency, that action perfects the thing being produced, not the producer [operantem]. For this reason [Unde] it is in the thing being produced as an action and its perfection, and not in the producer. But when there is not some product [aliquod opus] produced beyond the action of the potency, then the action exists in the agent and as its perfection, and it does not cross over into something external that needs to be perfected; for example, the act of seeing is in the one seeing as its perfection, and the act of theorizing is in the one theorizing, and life is in the soul (if we understand by life vital activity).17

This passage leaves no doubt that Aquinas read Aristotle as saying that transeunt actions

are productions while immanent actions are not—which is of course the straightforward

reading of the passage. What is more, Aquinas even presents the criteria that make up his

own basic account of the distinction as though they are grounded in this difference. That

is, he suggests that it is because a transeunt action is productive that it exists in, and

perfects, something external to the agent, and likewise, it is because an immanent action

is not productive that it exists in and perfects the agent. Hence, the way that an immanent

action perfects the agent is fundamentally disanalogous to the way that a transeunt action

perfects something external. For example, something being heated is perfected by the

heat it acquires as a result of the action, whereas something that sees is perfected by the

very act of seeing, not by something acquired by seeing.

Notwithstanding comments of this sort and the Aristotelian background, however,

Aquinas is not usually associated (either now, or in the Middle Ages) with the standard

Aristotelian account of immanent actions. Instead, Aquinas is known for an alternative

view that he develops in some of his later writings, such as the Summa Theologiae. On

this new account, immanent actions are in fact understood as a kind of production. What

distinguishes immanent actions from transeunt actions, on this view, is not that they lack

any product, but rather that their products are not brought about in an external patient. In

17 Aquinas, In Met. lib. 9 lec. 8 nn. 9-10 (emphasis added).


Aquinas’s terms, an immanent action is a processio ad intra, an action by which the

agent brings about an entity within itself.18

The change in Aquinas’s account of immanent action reflects a shift in his theory

of human cognition, the details of which are fairly well known.19 Aquinas follows

Aristotle in thinking human cognition as a process that begins with sensation and ends

with understanding, such that, e.g., understanding what it is to be an oak tree depends on

first seeing (or otherwise sensing) oak trees. In his early works such as his Sentences

commentary and the first draft of the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas holds that there

are two, and only two, elements generated in the intellect throughout this process. First,

there is an intelligible species, which is a certain form that is abstracted from sense-data20

and impressed on the possible intellect by the agent intellect. Then there is the act of

understanding that the possession of the intelligible species makes possible. The act of

understanding proper is an action performed by the possible intellect.21 At this stage,

then, Aquinas’s account of cognition conforms to the standard Aristotelian account of

immanent actions, since (on this account) the act of understanding does not result in some

further thing in the mind; the end of the process of cognition is just this action by the

possible intellect.

Later in his career,22 however, Aquinas adds to his account of the process of

human cognition a third and final element, which he variously calls a concept [conceptus,

18 The reason that Aquinas prefers the term processio appears to be theological; his new account of

immanent action is used to explain how it is that the Son “proceeds” from the Father (see below). As Aquinas uses it, the term is somewhat broader than productio inasmuch as the latter implies that the entity that is brought about is distinct from and dependent on the cause (cf. ST I.27.1 ad 2). It is only in the theological case that the entity which ‘proceeds’ internally is one in essence with the entity from which it proceeds (cf. ST I.27.2 ad 2).

19 Paissac 1951: 117-218; Panaccio 1999: 177-86; Panaccio 1992: 127-29; Pini 2012: 497-99; and Pini 2015: 87-93 (to which this paragraph and the next are particularly indebted).

20 More technically, information from the senses is processed into ’phantasms’ in the imagination, and intelligible species are abstracted from the phantasms..

21 By distinguishing these two elements, Aquinas is able to maintain that the intellect's act of understanding is on the one hand causally dependent on sensation (and ultimately the objects sensed), and yet on the other is something the intellect does, not something done to the intellect.

22 The first glimpses of his new view are in De Veritate, which was disputed between 1256 and 1259. By 1265, Aquinas had completed part I of the Summa Theologiae, the fourth book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, De Potentia, and his Commentary on the Gospel of John, all of which express his new account. See Pini 2012: 507 n. 28 for specific references.


conceptio], an intention [intentio], or (following Augustine23) a ‘mental word’ [verbum

mentis], also known as the ‘word of the heart’ [verbum cordis]. According to Aquinas,

the mental word is distinct from both the act of understanding and the intelligible species,

because it is something produced by the act of understanding and can be considered its

terminus (i.e., that at which the act of understanding is directed).24 Aquinas seems to

have been led to posit the mental word in order to explain how we are able to think about

particular things in terms of universals, such as when I understand what it is for

something to be a tree.25 There may have been theological motivations as well,26 since it

allows Aquinas to defend the orthodox (i.e.,) Chalcedonian doctrine of Christ by pressing

the Augustinian analogy between our act of thinking and the procession of the Son from

the Father: in both cases, an immanent action results in a product that is intrinsically

united to the producer.27 Whatever the reasons, Aquinas’s new theory of the mental

word is accompanied by a general account of immanent action as a processio ad intra.

E.g., Aquinas writes,

But since every procession is on account of an action, it follows that just as there is a procession ad extra on account of an action which is directed [tendit] into external matter, so too there is a certain procession ad intra on account of an action which remains [manet] within the agent. This is most clear in the case of the intellect, whose action, namely understanding, remains in the one understanding. For whenever someone understands, from the very fact that he understands, there proceeds something within [intra] himself. This is a conception [conceptio] of the thing understood, arising from the intellectual power and proceeding from the awareness [notitia] of the thing understood. This conception is signified by the spoken word, and is called the ‘word of the heart’ [verbum cordis] signified by the ‘word of the voice’ [verbum vocis].28

23 See Augustine, De Trinitate XV.12; cf. Friedman and Pelletier 2014. 24 Aquinas, SCG I.53; and QDP 8.1. 25 See the discussion of Aquinas, SCG I.53.2 in sec. 2 below; cf. Pasnau 1997: 259-71. 26 The change in Aquinas’s account of cognition corresponds to a shift in his position on the

theological question of how the name ‘Word’ is predicated of God. See Pini 2015. 27 See Aquinas, ST I.27.1. Similarly, Aquinas also compares the ‘spiration’ of the Holy Spirit from the

Father and the Son to the love that is produced in the human will by the immanent action of willing (see, e.g., QDP 10.1).

28 Aquinas, ST I.27.1.


Aquinas’s revision of the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions vis-

à-vis the standard Aristotelian account is revolutionary, yet he fails to pursue it to its

completion. As a result, there are a number of ways in which Aquinas’s position on

immanent actions remains ambiguous. First, Aquinas continues to falls back on the

standard Aristotelian view in a number of prominent late-period texts,29 such as the

commentary on the Metaphysics, quoted above. (To refer to Aquinas as having an ‘early’

and a ‘late’ account of immanent action, as some scholars do, is thus already to over-

simplify matters.30) Second, Aquinas rarely applies the processio ad intra account

explicitly to specific kinds of immanent actions other than intellection. This casts doubt

on whether Aquinas really thinks that every immanent action is necessarily a processio

ad intra. For example, do volitions result in something akin to a mental ‘word’ but

existing in the will rather than the intellect? As later scholastic authors were aware,

Aquinas seems to affirm it in some places and deny it in others.31 As for the senses, there

is little to no evidence that Aquinas thought that the act of sensing produces something

through which it senses external things.32 The same (mutatis mutandis) can be said for

the appetitive powers as well. Third, Aquinas continues to cite the locus classicus for the

distinction between immanent and transeunt actions in the Metaphysics when he gives his

29 To give another example, in SCG III.2.2, Aquinas writes, “An action sometimes results in something made [terminatur ad aliquod factum], as building [aedificatio] results in a house, and healing [sanatatio] in health. Sometimes, however, it does not, as in the cases of understanding [intelligere] and sensing [sentire]…. It follows therefore that every agent intends an end while acting, that end sometimes being the action itself, and sometimes being something made by the action.” Thanks to Marleen Rozemond for drawing my attention to this passage.

30 I note that Aquinas’s shift in his understanding of the Trinity (to which his change in account of the immanent-transeunt distinction is linked) was known in the Middle Ages. It was included in the list of articles on which Aquinas had changed his mind between his Sentences commentary and his Summa Theologiae that the Dominican order compiled shortly after Aquinas’s death. See a. 8 in Gauthier 1952: 303; for comment, see Pini 2012: 492 and 497. Thus, the ways in which the later Thomists tried to explain Aquinas’s view should not be dismissed as a failure to consider a developmental hypothesis.

31 Suárez, CDA d. 10 q. 2 n. 12; cf. DA lib. 5 c. 4 n. 9 (Opera Omnia 3.760-61). In favour of the thesis that volition has a terminus, Suárez cites Aquinas, ST I.27.3 and I.37.1 (cf. also Aquinas, QDP 9.9 and 10.1); against this thesis, he cites Aquinas, QDV 4.2 ad 7.

32 In later medieval authors, Aquinas is sometimes thought to hold that there is something akin to a word produced by the interior sense, but nothing is produced by the actions of the external senses (a view which some Thomist authors take). See Conimbricenses, In De An III cap. 7 q. 3 a. 4 p. 489 (citing Aquinas, ST I.85.2 ad 3 and Quodl. 3 a. 9 ad 3, the latter of which seems to be a corruption of Francis Sylvestris’s citation, which is 5 art. 9.2—see Sylvestris, In SCG I.53 [Opera Omnia 12.83]); and Suárez, CDA d. 5 q. 5 n. 2 (cf. DA 3.5.2 [Opera Omnia 3.631]), citing Aquinas, ST I.34.1 ad 2; QDP 8.1 and 9.5; and QDV 4.1 ad 1.


processio ad intra account. Given that Aristotle seems clearly to deny that immanent

actions can have products, this raises obvious questions about compatibility. But

Aquinas does not offer any explanation as to how Aristotle’s text can be reconciled with

the processio ad intra account, nor (alternatively) does he suggest that Aristotle needs

correction on this matter. In fact, Aquinas never even admits that his processio ad intra

account actually differs from the standard reading of Aristotle! Finally, Aquinas’s

processio ad intra account also leaves open the question of how an agent is perfected by

an immanent action. For example: is the intellect perfect in virtue of its act of

understanding, or in virtue of the mental word? If immanent action is truly analogous to

transeunt action, as Aquinas suggests, it would seem that just as an external patient is

perfected by a transeunt action in virtue of the thing produced by it, so too, the agent of

an immanent action is perfected in virtue of the thing produced by it. At the same time,

Aquinas sometimes makes it sound as though it is the immanent action itself that perfects

the agent, such as above, when he says that “the intellect is not perfected except by

understanding actually [nisi per hoc quod est intelligens actu], and similarly, the senses

are not perfected except by sensing actually [nisi per hoc quod actu sentit].”33 In

addition, there are good Aristotelian reasons for thinking, on the one hand, that the

product is the end of a productive action, but on the hand, that immanent actions must be

ends in themselves.

2. Immanent action and the ‘mental word’ in later Thomists

The ambiguities surrounding Aquinas’s remarks on immanent and transeunt

actions leave his account open to be developed in different ways. It may still come as a

surprise that the position of the most well known card-carrying Thomists, like Francis

Sylvestris, John Capreolus, and Thomas de Vio Cajetan, is that some but not all kinds of

immanent actions result in a product.34 In this respect, they split the difference between

the standard Aristotelian account of immanent action and Aquinas’s new processio ad

33 Aquinas, QDP 10.1 (emphasis added). Incidentally, the text quoted above is followed by a clear statement of the processio ad intra account of immanent action; he writes, “A certain processio is found in creatures on account of both kinds of operation [viz., immanent and transeunt]” (Ibid.).

34 See Suárez’s summary of the Thomists’ position in DM 48.2.5 (Opera Omnia 26.874-75).


intra account. But their inspiration for doing so is taken from Aquinas’s own mature

theory of the mental word. In a key passage of the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas

explains why a mental word, or “concept” [conceptus, intentio], must be produced by the

intellect when it understands something. He writes,

This is something necessary, because the intellect understands a present and an absent thing indifferently. In this the imagination agrees with the intellect. But the intellect has this characteristic in addition, that it understands a thing as separated from material conditions, without which the thing does not exist in nature. But this could not be the case unless the intellect forms the aforementioned concept for itself.35

Based on this remark, the Thomists hold that (Aquinas’s position is that) a product is

produced by an immanent action only when the object of that action does not, or need

not, exist outside of the mind in the manner in which it is cognized. For example, I can

imagine a tree when there is none present, so it must be the case that that image was

produced by my act of imagining. Similarly, when I understand what trees are, the object

of my act of understanding is the universal form of tree-ness; but since only individual

trees exist outside of the mind, that object must be produced by my act of understanding

itself.36 The Thomists reason that any immanent action whose object already exists

extramentally must be non-productive, since there is no need for a product. In this

category are included the actions of the external senses and the appetitive powers, but

also possibly certain intellectual acts known as ‘intuitive cognition’, such as the beatific

vision of God or angelic self-knowledge.37

As Claude Panaccio and others have shown, Aquinas’s theory of the mental word

was the subject of intense scrutiny in the generation or so after his death.38 To date, these

scholars have focussed mainly on criticisms having to do with epistemology and the

35 Aquinas, SCG I.53.3. 36 My description of this view in terms of universals is owed to Pasnau 1997: 256-62. The Thomists

tend to stick to speaking in terms of whether the object exists abstracted from matter in reality. 37 ‘Intuitive cognition’ is contrasted wth so-called ‘abstractive cognition,’ of which my understanding

of the universal nature of trees is an example. See Suárez, CDA d. 5 q. 5 nn. 1-2; cf. DA III.5.2 (Opera Omnia 4.630-31); Suárez cites Cajetan, In ST I.27.1; Capreolus; and Sylvestris, In SCG I.53.

38 See Friedman 2010: 75-93; Friedman 2013: 41-42; Friedman and Pelletier 2014; Panaccio 1992; Panaccio 1999: chap. 6; and Pasnau 1997: chap. 8, esp. 271-89. Panaccio (1992: 129) even describes the history of cognitive theory during this period as a progressive “destruction” of Aquinas’s view.


nature of cognition, e.g., the objection that positing the mental word as the object of

understanding results in skepticism.39 But the theory was also criticized on metaphysical

grounds having to do with the ontology of action.40 As we have seen, on the standard

Aristotelian account of immanent action, it is impossible for an immanent action to result

in a product distinct from the action itself. Production requires an external patient that is

transformed by the action, so only transeunt actions are productive. Hence, the most

basic metaphysical critique of Aquinas’s theory of the mental word simply applies this

point to the act of understanding.41 In later scholasticism, this argument was associated

39 As Suárez describes the Thomist position, “according to this opinion, the [mental] word serves as a

kind of mirror or likeness [imago] of the thing being cognized, in which that thing is cognized [secundum hanc opinionem verbum, sive idolum … deservit, ut sit velut speculum, vel ut imago rei cognitae, in qua ipsa cognoscatur],” (CDA d. 5 q. 5 n. 2; cf. DA III.5.2 [Opera Omnia 4.630]). According such a role to the mental word invites worries about how we can know whether reality is being ‘mirrored’ accurately. Note that this description undoubtedly is rooted in Aquinas’s remark in the Commentary on the Gospel of John that the mental word “is compared to the intellect, not as that by which the intellect understands, but as that in which it understands, because it is in what is thus expressed and formed that it sees the nature of the thing understood” (In Ion. I.1.25).

40 Although he passes over them to focus on epistemological criticisms, Panaccio (1992: 132) admits, ”Many of [the arguments for and against Aquinas's theory of the mental word] have to do with the analysis of the ideas of action, operation, and production, the central problem being whether specifically mental operations always require a distinct internal product or not.”

41 To be clear, these critics do not deny that there is such a thing as a mental word existing in the knower. Like Aquinas, they accept that the intellect possesses concepts that it understands. (Moreover, like Aquinas, they want to preserve at least the semblance of an analogy between human cognition and the procession of the divine persons.) But rather than positing the mental word as something in addition to the act of understanding, they identify it with the act of understanding itself. As scholars have noted, this means that their theories of cognition can be classified as ‘act-‘ or ‘adverbial’ theories, such that having the concept of (say) a tree is just to think tree-wise. (By contrast, Aquinas’s mature theory can be classified as an ‘act-object’ theory.)


especially with Durand of St.-Pourçain and John Duns Scotus.42 Here is Durand’s

version:43

It cannot be true that through any act of one who understands—whether that act is understanding, or ‘saying’ [dicere], or is called something else—some form is produced in the intellect which is not the act of understanding itself. This is clear from the nature of immanent operation [operationis manentis intra]. For nothing is constituted or produced through an immanent operation; but understanding or intellectual saying are immanent operations; therefore, nothing is constituted or produced through them. The major premise is clear from Metaphysics IX, where the Philosopher posits this difference between immanent operations and those that pass outside [transeunt extra]: there is always something constituted through transeunt [transeuntes] operations, while nothing is constituted through immanent ones. The minor premise is self-evident. Hence, etc.44

For Durand, Scotus, and other critics, Aquinas is guilty of a kind of category error: by

making the mental word into a “form” distinct from the act of understanding, he

attributes the defining feature of transeunt action, namely productivity, to an immanent

action.

42 Durand and Scotus were thought of as the two principal authorities who denied that the mental word

is something distinct from the act of thinking itself; see, e.g., Cajetan, In ST I.27.1, n. 9 (p. 307); Fonseca, In Met. VII.8 q. 3 (p. 298), who lists “Scotus, Durand, Bonaventure, Ockham, Palud, Gabriel, and others”; and Toledo, In ST I.27.1 (pp. 308), who mentions “Durand and Scotus and others”. The difference (well-recognized in the period) between the two is that Scotus distinguishes between the act of thinking that is identified with the mental word, and the act that produces it, while Durand thinks they are one and the same thing—the ‘word’ is only the act of thinking understood in a certain way. For more on Scotus’s understanding of the mental word as the act of thinking, see Cross 2009; Cross 2014: chap. 5, esp. pp. 117-21; Friedman 2013: 395-414; and Pini 2015: 93-103. For more on Durand’s theory, see Friedman 2013: 464-66; Friedman forthcoming; Hartman 2012; and Müller 1968: 97-107.

43 The direct target of Durand's argument is Hervaeus Natalis, an early defender of Aquinas’s theory of the mental word (see Friedman forthcoming; Koch 1927: 64-67; and Trottmann 1997). Hervaeus’s account of the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions does not resemble that of the later ‘orthodox’ Thomists discussed in this chapter. A full analysis of his idiosyncratic account is given in chap 2, sec. 1 below.

44 Primum istorum non puto esse uerum, scilicet quod per quemcunque actum intelligentis, siue ille actus sit intelligere siue dicere siue aliter qualitercunque nominetur, producatur aliqua forma in intellectu que non sit actus intelligendi. Quod patet primo ex natura operationis manentis intra sic: per operationem intra manentem nichil constituitur uel producitur; set intelligere uel dicere intelligibile sunt operationes intra manentes; ergo per eas nichil constituitur uel producitur. Maior patet ex IX Methaphisice, ubi PHILOSOPHUS ponit hanc differentiam inter operationes intra manentes et illas que transeunt extra, quia per transeuntes extra semper aliquid constituitur, set per intra manentes nichil. Minor de se patet; quare etc. Durand, In I. Sent. d. 27 q. 2 n. 12 (Durandus Projekt p. 804 ll. 170-81). Cf. the report of Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2, A§1.2, arg. 1 (p. 248); Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 6 (Opera Omnia 4.306); and Conimbricenses, In De An. III.8 q. 3 a. 1 arg. 2 (p. 483c).


The discussion of the nature of immanent action in scholasticism after Aquinas is

thus inextricably bound up with the reception of Aquinas’s theory of the mental word.

Given the common opinion that the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions

(a) carves nature at its joints and (b) was canonically and truthfully laid down by

Aristotle in the Metaphysics, the defenders of Aquinas are thus put in the position of

having to explain how the possibility of immanent actions having products (a) does not

collapse the distinction and (b) can be reconciled with what Aristotle says. Because the

Thomists hold that some immanent actions such as sensations are not productive, they are

blocked from construing the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions as the

difference between interior and exterior productions (i.e., just as Aquinas suggests with

his processio ad intra account of immanent action). Nor can they simply fall back on the

uncontroversial basics of Aquinas’s account and say that—regardless of whether an

immanent action produces anything—the difference between immanent and transeunt

actions is just that an immanent action exists in and perfects the agent, while a transeunt

action does not. Since it is undeniable that Aristotle is making some kind of denial that

immanent actions have products, their approach is to argue that Aristotle’s denial is

qualified in some way. As we will see, the Thomists regularly appeal to the case of

habits to buttress their argument. As they point out, it is an uncontroversial point that

Aristotle thinks that a habit is produced in the soul as the result of repeated immanent

actions, such as having the same thought many times; hence, Aristotle cannot possibly be

saying that no immanent action ever produces a product. How then should his claim be

understood? The Thomists came up with at least three interpretations.

2.1 The extrinsic qualification

The first way to interpret Aristotle’s text as consistent with Aquinas’s theory of

the mental word is to make what I call the extrinsic qualification of Aristotle’s denial that

immanent actions are productive. On this interpretation, immanent actions differ from

transeunt actions in that they (i.e., immanent actions) do not have products that exist

outside of the agent. This difference allows, of course, that some immanent actions may


involve the sort of procession ad intra that Aquinas discusses. As Francis Sylvestris puts

it,

Through immanent action, as such, nothing is produced that is outside the operating power; nevertheless, something can be produced which remains in the power itself.45 As an interpretation of Aristotle, the extrinsic qualification is admittedly strained,

but perhaps not intolerably so. Its plausibility trades on the ambiguity of the use of the

word praeter in the locus classicus. Recall that there, (the Latin) Aristotle distinguishes

between those powers that result in something praeter the ‘use’ [usus] or ‘action’ [actio],

and those that do not. These powers are supposed to correspond to transeunt and

immanent actions, respectively. On the standard Aristotelian interpretation, praeter is

taken to mean ‘in addition to,’ so that the sense of the contested claim is that immanent

actions can result in no product whatsoever (because any product would qualify as being

‘in addition to’ the action itself). But praeter can also mean ‘outside of’; taken in this

fashion, one could argue that a product that “remains in the power itself” (as Sylvestris

puts it) is not excluded by Aristotle, since it is intrinsically united to the action, and hence

in that sense it is not ‘outside of’ the action that produces it.

And of course this interpretation was also defended through the appeal to the

reality of habits produced by (repeated) immanent actions. As Capreolous says,

Aristotle does not mean to deny that through such [immanent] acts or operations something at some time would be constituted within the one operating, as is clear from habits of the affective parts [of the soul], which are caused by appetitive acts, and from habits of the intellective parts, caused by acts of the intellect.46

The extrinsic qualification makes the exception required for habits, since they are

produced within the agent. But this same qualification also allows for the Thomists’

45 Ad secundum dicitur quod per actionem immanentem, ut sic, nihil producitur quod sit extra

potentiam operantem: sed tamen produci potest aliquid quod in ipsa potentia maneat. Sylvestris, In SCG I.53 n. 9 (Opera Omnia 12.154).

46 Nec etiam intendit negare Aristoteles quin per hujusmodi actus vel operationes aliquid (α) quandoque constituatur intra operantem; sicut patet de habitibus partis affectivae, qui causantur per actus appetitivos, et de habitibus partis intellectivae, causatis per actus intellectus. Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2, B§1.2 (ad 1) (p. 256).


theory of the mental word as something distinct from and produced by certain intellectual

acts.

One potential problem that was identified with the extrinsic qualification

interpretation is that it threatens to render Aristotle’s point banal. Here is how Capreolus

formulates the objection, which he attributes to Durand of Saint-Pourçain and Peter of

Palude:

It might be suggested that the Philosopher does not intend simpliciter to say that nothing is constituted in any way by an immanent operation [operationem intra manentem], but just that nothing outside [extra] is constituted by it, so that within the agent [intra operantem] there is very well something that is constituted. But this reply does not succeed, because it would have been absurd for him to say something concerning which no one can doubt. And no one has ever doubted that nothing outside [the agent] is constituted by an immanent operation, for it is necessary that an operation reach [attingit] its product [operatum], but what remains within [intra manet] does not reach what is outside [extra]. Therefore, it was Aristotle’s intention to say, not merely that nothing outside is constituted by an immanent operation [operationem immanentem], but that nothing is constituted by it in any way, neither inside, nor outside.47

This objection rests on what could be regarded as a variant of the principle of charity:

don’t interpret the Philosopher as labouring to make a trivial, uncontroversial point. In

his response, Capreolus does not take issue with the principle; he argues instead that

denying that immanent operations have extrinsic products is far from trivial.

This argument does not succeed, because many have doubted whether an act of intellect or will produces something outside, as is clear from [the example of] Avicenna, who claimed that one intelligence causes another through its own intellection. Moreover, many claim that angels move the heavens through their willing and understanding.48

47 Si dicatur quod Philosophus non intendit simpliciter dicere quod per operationem intra manentem

nihil omnino constituitur, sed quod solum per eam nihil extra constituitur, tamen intra operantem bene constituitur aliquid; --non valet. Quia absurdum fuisset dicere illud circa quod nullus potest dubitare; sed quod per operationem intra manentem nihil extra constituitur, nullus unquam dubitavit; oportet enim quod operatio attingat suum productum; quod autem intra manet, non attingit illud quod est extra; igitur non fuit intentio Aristotelis tantum dicere quod per operationem immanentem nihil extra constituitur, sed quod per eam nihil omnino constituitur, nec intra, nec extra. Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2, A§1.2, primum (p. 248).

48 Nec valet prima improbatio. Quia multi dubitaverunt utrum actus intellectus, aut voluntatis, producat aliquid extra; sicut patet de Avicenna, qui posuit unam intelligentiam causare aliam per suam


Capreolus’s examples here are distinct from the (uncontroversial) notion that rational

agents act on the basis of their intellect and will. Normally in such cases, the immanent

actions of understanding and willing are distinguished from the transeunt actions that

they lead to, just as e.g., when an architect builds something, the conceiving of the

building and the decision to build it are actions distinct from actually building it in

reality. What Avicenna and some others hold, according to Capreolus, is that there are

certain cases where an immanent action produces an external product immediately,

without any additional, transeunt action. It is this kind of phenonemon that Aris

immanent causation in spinoza and scholasticism...zabarella and the aforementioned protestant...

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