Section — Bucceroni, Commentaries on Human Acts
Preliminary Notes
1.
Commentaries on Human Acts
- Human acts are, generally, acts of man, by which the same man orders himself to an end consonant with himself. For every agent acts on account of an end. But this is the distinction between rational nature and irrational nature: that the former, by its own acts, orders itself unto an end, while the latter is ordered unto an end by another. Aptly St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 1. a. 2: “It must be considered that something tends to an end by its action or motion in two ways. In one way, as moving itself to the end, as man does; in another way, as moved to the end by another, as an arrow tends to a determinate end from the fact that it is moved by the archer, who directs his action to the end. Therefore those things which have reason move themselves to the end, because they have dominion over their acts through free choice, which is the faculty of will and reason. But those things which lack reason tend to the end through natural inclination, as moved by another, and not by themselves, since they do not know the notion of the end. And therefore they cannot order anything unto an end, but are only ordered unto an end by another. For the whole irrational nature is compared to God as an instrument to the principal agent... And therefore it is proper to rational nature that it tend to the end as acting itself, or leading itself to the end; but it is proper to irrational nature as acted upon and led by another, whether to an apprehended end, as brute animals are, or to an end not apprehended, as those things are which entirely lack cognition.”
2.
- Wherefore human acts, concerning which these Commentaries treat, and concerning which St. Thomas treats in 1. 2., are acts of man as wayfarer, by which man tends toward Beatitude, so that, with divine grace assisting, he may merit it for himself and at last obtain it. Hence the Angelic Doctor first treats in 1. 2. of the ultimate end of man and of Beatitude, then of human acts. Hence human acts can be considered either relatively to the man who by them is ordered to the end, or relatively to the end to which man is ordered by their aid. We shall speak in an orderly way of human acts according to each consideration, in distinct Commentaries.