Why the Mind Cannot Err With Respect to Essence

In the Summa Theologica (I, Q 85, A 6), St. Thomas argues that the intellect cannot err with respect to a thing's essence. This seems counter-intuitive, as Thomas himself wrote an entire work on properly understanding essence. So why one cannot err in apprehending essence is not entirely clear. In order to understand what is meant by his claim, we will determine what the intellect is, how it operates, what an essence is, and what is meant by error on the part of the intellect. To the question treated in the Summa, we being with the sed contra:

Augustine says (Questions. 83, qu. 32), that "everyone who is deceived, does not rightly understand that wherein he is deceived." And the Philosopher says (De Anima iii, 10), that "the intellect is always true."¹

This gives us a two-pronged approach to the problem. On one hand, there is the proposition that deception implies an imperfect operation of the intellect. On the other hand, there is the proposition that the intellect itself is true by nature. This prompts an account of exactly what the intellect is, for if there is error or deception at all, it would seem to be on account of the intellect (as is stated in objections 1 and 2 of the same question).²

The intellect is understood as being passive in that it is predisposed to what is intelligible, as Thomas explains, “[T]he human intellect, which is the lowest in the order of intelligence and most remote from the perfection of the Divine intellect, is in potentiality with regard to things intelligible, and is at first 'like a clean tablet on which nothing is written,' as the Philosopher says.”³ Aristotle likewise compares the intellect to the senses because of its passivity to external objects. But neither intellect nor sense is purely passive. Though the senses receive impressions from external objects, they are passive only in that they are potentially receptive to their proper objects.⁴ In a similar way, the passive intellect receives external objects, and is potential to them in the sense that it must lack the natures which it apprehends, as Thomas explains, “if the intellect were restricted to any particular nature, this connatural restriction would prevent it from knowing other natures.”⁵ We can see this analogously in the eye: It is incorrect to say that the eye contains light and color by its nature, rather that it is by nature receptive to light and color. Moreover, the intelligible forms which we perceive in matter exist in matter, though matter is not intelligible per se. What makes them intelligible is the power of the active intellect which discerns form from matter by abstraction.⁶ So the intellect, in order to know, must have a nature that is distinct from all the other things that it knows. Therefore, if it can know all sensible things, it must be distinct from any sensible nature. This precludes any notion of the intellect as a bodily organ, which leads us to conclude that the intellect must be something immaterial.⁷

That the intellect is immaterial helps us to understand how it is passive in one respect but active in another. While both intellect and the bodily senses are receptive to their proper objects (not in the same way but analogously), they are each active in different ways. As Thomas explains, “the difference is that sensitivity acts in the body, but the intellect acts on its own.”⁸ We can see this in the effects their proper objects have on their operation: The eye sees by receiving light, so that the material organ is effected by a material object. Too much of its object can overwhelm the organ, as when the eye is blinded by an excess of light. But the intellect is never overwhelmed by “too much truth.” Rather than being blinded or brought low by its object, the intellect is strengthened in its operation such that what was difficult to receive at first makes it see all other objects more easily.⁹ Because the intellect acquires knowledge primarily through the senses, its activity presupposes the activity of the senses. But because the intellect does not of necessity work through some bodily organ, it works by its own intrinsic principle.

As said above, the intellect is receptive to truth as a kind of potency. It acquires knowledge with reference to sensible things, but it works in itself from the self-evident first principles that it possesses by nature. And there are also principles external to a man which can aid in the acquisition of knowledge. So there are two principles involved in the activity of acquiring knowledge, extrinsic and intrinsic; extrinsic in what man learns by instruction and intrinsic in what he discovers by his own act. Because the intellect acts by an intrinsic principle, it acts on an active potency.¹⁰ Hence instruction, being an extrinsic principle, is something secondary to the activity of the intellect, and is not necessary for its perfect operation. In order to ascertain whether it is possible for the intellect to err with respect to its own operation, we should focus primarily on the intrinsic principle of knowledge.

Having given an account of the intellect, what it is and by what principle it operates, we have now to explore how the intellect understands its object. We have already mentioned that matter is not in itself intelligible but that the intellect nevertheless understands in connection with the sensitive faculties. While matter itself is not something which the intellect directly apprehends it is perceived through the senses. And it is from its perception through the senses that the intellect creates an image (a phantasm) of what is perceived from which it can abstract the intelligible form.¹¹ According to St. Thomas, one can abstract in two ways. One way is to consider something to be separate from that in which it is understood as if they were separate in reality; e.g. if one were to abstract “red” from “surface,” taking the color to be something distinct and separate from colored surfaces. This type of abstraction admits error, because the intellect in this way does not consider things as they are. The second way in which the intellect can abstract is to consider something absolutely, such that we disregard those things which are not necessary to the thing in question; e.g. if we consider “red” apart from “apple,” we are not erroneously understanding what “red” is but regarding “apple” as something unnecessary to redness. Simply put, we may correctly understand “red” by itself as an (accidental) essence, but we cannot understand it as something which exists by itself.¹²

Aristotle's insight into the process of understanding is crucial to forming a complete account of the intellect's operation. In the beginning of the Physics he explains,

[T]he natural road is from what is more familiar and clearer to us to what is clearer and better known by nature; for it is not the same things that are well known to us and well known simply. For this reason it is necessary to lead ourselves forward in this way; from what is less clear by nature but clearer to us to what is clearer and better known by nature. But the things that are first evident and clear to us are more so the ones that are jumbled together, but later the elements and beginnings become known to those who separate them out from these. Thus it is necessary to proceed from what is general to what is particular, for it is the whole that is better known by perceiving, and what is general is a kind of whole since it embraces many things as though they were parts.¹³

So, taking as the object of intellection what is perceived by the senses, the intellect begins its process of coming to know with a general and confused image of things, and from there proceeds by means of abstraction to a more precise knowledge of things in themselves. Thomas expounds on this when he says, “the perfect act of the intellect is complete knowledge, when the object is distinctly and determinately known; whereas the incomplete act is imperfect knowledge, when the object is known indistinctly, and as it were confusedly.”¹⁴ So we refer to the act of the intellect from its active potency as being perfected in the complete and determinate knowledge of its object. But this process is not possible without having a starting point which is found in the first principles.¹⁵ Yet how these first principles are acquired must be explained in order to complete our account of the process of coming to know.

According to Aristotle, the first principles required for knowledge are neither innate, for infants would be as capable of knowledge as a grown man, nor are they acquired at some later point, for learning and discovery would be impossible until then. Because knowledge is acquired through sense-perception, he concludes that the first principles are gathered from sense-perception and the accumulation of memory which, over time, make up experience. Irrational animals have the capacity of both sense-perception and memory, but they are not capable of gathering the principles of knowledge which is a capacity of the intellectual soul.¹⁶ Thomas elaborates on this by reference to the agent intellect, reminding us that the intellect is not merely passive but must actively derive the universal from the experience of particulars.¹⁷

We are now equipped to give a complete account of the intellectual operation in man. A man begins by perceiving sensible objects through his senses (rust, a hard surface, heaviness, etc.). The objects of his senses are unintelligible, but his passive intellect receives an image of the thing perceived and holds this in memory. After many instances of this, the agent intellect is able to abstract from his experience a universal principle (the concept of iron). With the universal now in mind, he is able to proceed to knowledge of particulars (knowing what iron is in general, he can identify particular bodies of iron). It is clear from this that the intellect understands its object by combination and division.¹⁸ This is easily seen with respect to the twofold composition of material things. In one sense a thing is composed of form and matter, in another sense it is composed of substance and accidents. The intellect divides with respect to both these compositions, as our very consideration of them attests, and in combination we acknowledge those composites to be whole in reality.¹⁹

With the intellect and its operations accounted for, we now consider what essence is. Aristotle explains, “a thing's essence is what a thing is.”²⁰ An essence is like a definition, and is indeed expressed by a definition, but is strictly speaking a definition of a thing in its own right, rather than a property or something which can only exist parasitically on something else: E.g. 'man' or 'tree' is an essence but 'white' is not, because 'white' only exists as a property which adheres to man or tree. There are however essential properties of man which are not accidental. “Bipedal”, for instance, is an essential part of 'man'. There is a correspondence here to species, as 'man' is a species of the genus 'animal', and one of the differentiae which distinguishes 'man' from 'cow' is “bipedal,” though “bipedal” itself is not an essence. Aristotle thus concludes, “essence will not be found in any of those things which are not a species of a genus.”²¹

To understand an essence is the same as to identify it. That is, the question, “why is that a man” can be answered by explaining what a man is, and vice versa.²² So, in a general sense, an essence is what a thing is. Depending on what is meant by a “thing” however, there can be a distinction between an essence and a thing. For example, a man is a composite of form and matter. Thus the question “what is a man?” cannot be answered without reference to a body and its constituents. To the question “why is that body a man's body?” the answer will refer to the form which makes the body a man's body. The distinction between the composite and the components points to the substantial form which composes the elements into a whole: E.g. Even though a man by definition has body parts, a collection of body parts is not a man.²³

Essence, in the formulation of its definition, is generally understood with regard to species (though the two terms are not strictly synonymous). A species is a member of some genus which is distinguished from other species of that genus by some difference.; for instance, 'man' is defined as a 'rational animal'. He is generically an animal and specifically rational, 'rational' being the key difference from other animals. It is important to note that man is distinct from animals in species, but not in genus. Man is an animal, albeit a rational one.²⁴ Though there are many men in the species 'man', the species itself is one, as Thomas says,

“[I]t is evident that a multiplicity of parts in a definition does not signify a multiplicity of essential parts of which the essence is constituted as if they were distinct things; but all signify one thing which is made determinate by an ultimate difference. It is also evident from this that there is one substantial form for every species.”²⁵

An essence is expressed by a definition, so that there are many men does not prove that there are many essences or species of man, because where and how many they are does not belong to the definition of man. Neither does the multiplicity of “parts” implicit in the definition (for example man's two legs) mean that there are many essences within an essence, because essence belongs primarily to substance, but each of those so-called parts do not exist as a substance.²⁶ So one could say that there is a definition of “leg” and thus that a leg has in a certain sense an essence, but a leg is not a substance. Furthermore, a leg is defined as part of a body, so it cannot be a leg unless it is subsumed under the essence of the thing to which it belongs.

What we have considered thus far is essence in terms of its definition. But we should consider essence in terms of being as well. As regards to what a thing is in itself, essence is the composite of form and matter.²⁷ It is by its essence that an individual thing participates in being. This is not to say that everything which has an essence also has being, but that all things which exist do so insofar as they have an essence. As noted above, it belongs to the species of material beings to have matter, but not this or that matter. The prerequisite matter for a given species is called indeterminate matter, while the matter by which an individual participates in the species is called determinate. Therefore material things in particular participate in a species through determinate matter and, by the same token, are distinct from other individuals who share the same essence.²⁸ Though essence is the composition of form and matter, neither the form nor the matter are separate in reality, this means that essence cannot be broken into parts: It is understood by combining terms (form and matter, genus and difference, etc.) into a definition, but an essence is a distinct unity in reality.

Now that it is clear what the intellect is and how it operates, as well as what essence is and how it is known, we may at last consider Thomas' argument in full. He recalls the comparison between sense and intellect, viz. that both are always directed to their proper object, adding that, “as long as the faculty exists, its judgment concerning its own proper object does not fail.”²⁹ The senses may be deceived with respect objects that are “common,” such as size or color; e.g. the eye perceives the sun to be yellow and an inch across. The senses may also be deceived with respect to objects in an accidental way; e.g. salt may be mistaken for sugar. With common objects, the eye is deceived because what is perceives is other than what it is, as the sun is not yellow nor an inch across. With the latter case (salt and sugar), the eye is not deceived with respect to what it apprehends, for it takes the salt to be white and translucent, but is deceived in conflating its object with what appears to be an identical object but is in fact different. In both of these cases, one's sight functions perfectly; it apprehends precisely what it receives. This is why Thomas says, “as long as the faculty exists, its judgment concerning its own proper object does not fail.”³⁰

The proper object of the intellect is essence (in this instance referred to as quiddity which simply emphasizes the “what” of the thing). As we have said, a thing's essence is what a thing is, and it is something unified which we come to understand as a composition. So, in an absolute sense, we have an essence that is indivisible in reality which is apprehended by the intellect which is immaterial. But in order for the intellect to understand an essence, it must move to its act of knowing by means of combination and division. Thus we have two types of error to consider, the apprehension of an object by the intellect taken absolutely, and the understanding of it in terms of its definition (its intellectual composition). If the intellect is said to err with regard to apprehending something absolutely, as for instance one might be said to err in his understanding of what “space” is, then he does not know what it is. There is nothing complex about this type of “error.” Either one knows it or he does not. In fact, if one does not know “space” then he is not mistaken about it, because there is nothing in his mind to mistake. In this regard, i.e. with things that are apprehended simply, the mind cannot err. It is only in the process of discerning composition, as it pertains to a thing's definition, that the mind can be mistaken; for instance, if one were to regard a circle as a “three-sided figure.” Another way in which the intellect could err is to combine incompatible terms into a definition, as for instance in “rational plant.” The error in both of these examples is attributed either to the mis-attribution of a definition or to the combination of incompatible terms into an attempted definition.³¹ But both of these errors are accidental to intellectual operation. The result of both of these errors is to fail to understand an essence completely.

An analogous way of understanding the truth of intellection is by considering the various levels of “error” with regard to apprehension. For example, a young reader may come across a word never before seen and pronounce it “hoar-is-on.” The mistake is in combining the syllables in a way that misses the meaning of the word. The is no “half-understanding” in this regard; the word is a complete mystery. With help from his teacher, the child learns that the word is “horizon” and suddenly understands completely. In another example, a hunter might mistake an elk for a deer. He does not misapprehend the essence of elk, rather he completely understands the essence of deer and misappropriates it to the wrong sense object. Finally, in a more complex case, one might attempt to define an animal without reference to form or the soul, regarding it as merely mechanical or “purely material.” In this case, it should be said that either he does not understand what an animal is because, while he may understand the parts of its definition, i.e. the terms “matter,” “body,” “life,” “motion,” etc. are correctly apprehended, but they are out placed out of order in that definition. So he does not “half-understand” what an animal is; he does not understand what an animal is at all, though he understands all of the parts necessary to combine a correct definition and come to knowledge of its essence.

It may seem trivial to argue for the truth of the intellect if what is meant is simply that error is only in the process of learning and that substantial ignorance is absolute. But all science (especially philosophy) is at stake if this distinction is not understood properly. The intellect has the power to know the truth, it has the means to attain it, and it knows truth with certainty. That the means of attaining knowledge is prone to fault does not mean that the intellect does not know truth, for to say that the intellect is not true is to say that there is no intellect.

1 ST I, Q 85, A 6 sed contra.(Benziger Bros., 1947)

2 Op. cit. obj 1 & 2

3 ST I, Q 79, A 2 resp.

4 Aquinas, Commentary on De Anima, trans. Foster and Humphries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951) 676.

5 Op. cit. 680.

6 ST I, Q 79, A 3 resp.

7 Aquinas, Commentary on De Anima, 681.

8 Op. cit. 688.

9 Ibid.

10 St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Teacher in Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings, trans. Ralph McInerny (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998), 199.

11 ST I, Q 86, A 1 sed contra

12 ST I, Q 86, A 1 resp.

13 Aristotle, Physics in Aristotle’s Physics: A Guided Study, trans. Joe Sachs (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 33 (1.i).

14 ST I, Q 85, A 3 resp.

15 Physics 99b20

16 Physics 100a4

17 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, trans. Fabian R. Larcher, (http://dhspriory.org/thomas/PostAnalytica.htm), II, xx.

18 ST I, Q 85, A 5 resp.

19 ST I, Q 85, A 5, ad 3

20 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics, trans. John P. Rowan, (Chicago, 1961) (http://dhspriory.org/thomas/Metaphysics7.htm), VII, iii, 581.

21 Ibid.

22 Aristotle, Metaphysics in Commentary on the Metaphysics by Thomas Aquinas, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago, 1961) (http://dhspriory.org/thomas/Metaphysics7.htm), 1651.

23 Commentary on Metaphysics, 1674.

24 Aquinas, Commentary on Metaphysics, 1328.

25 Aquinas, Commentary on Metaphysics, 1339.

26 Op. cit., 1339.

27 Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968), 36 (IV.iii).

28 De Ente, IV.v

29 ST I, Q 85, A 6 resp.

30 ibid.

31 ST I, Q 85, A 6

Labor, Sloth, and Depression

The most misunderstood vice of our time is probably sloth. But to correctly understand sloth, one must first understand what a vice is. Quite simply, a vice is a bad habit, trained by repeated sin and inclining one to sin more. But a key element of every vice is a disordered passion. Our passions are good when properly ordered, but they multiply evils when disordered. Thus most vices can be defined according to specific passions. For example, fear is a useful passion that helps us avoid evil, but fear that causes more evil than it avoids means cowardice. Anger is a healthy response to confront evil, but anger that causes more evil than it battles is called wrath. Joy is felt when some good is possessed, but joy in response to evil is a sign of hatred.

It is vitally important to understand this distinction; that vice is a condition which manifests itself in the passions, but sin is a specific action. They are closely connected: Sin comes from vice, and vice is fostered by sin. For example, a man who eats too much does so because he is infected with gluttony; and every time the man eats too much, he becomes more gluttonous. But to say that a man is a glutton is only to say that he is inclined to eat too much. Knowing of his gluttony does not necessarily imply knowledge about his particular sins, past or present.

So then, which disordered passion amounts to sloth? Sorrow. St. Thomas defines sloth for us as follows:

“Sloth, according to Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii, 14) is an oppressive sorrow, which, to wit, so weighs upon man's mind, that he wants to do nothing... Hence sloth implies a certain weariness of work... Accordingly, [sloth] denotes sorrow for spiritual good...” (ST II.II, q. 35, a. 1)

Note that sloth implies a weariness of work, but that is only an effect. The essence of sloth is sorrow, specifically sorrow in response to good. A healthy sorrow is the response to an evil that cannot be avoided, which is the same as the loss of some good. When evil is first encountered, we may react with anger (in an attempt to remove the evil) or fear (in an attempt to escape it). If either fails, we are confronted with an insurmountable or inescapable evil, and we become sorrowful. Because anger or fear usually precedes sadness, both wrath and cowardice can lead to sloth (cf. Evagrios, “Praktikos,” 10).

Sloth is also called “acedia.” Acedia literally means “having no enemy” and the sense behind this meaning should be clear from what we now know. If sloth is an oppressive sorrow for good, then there is nothing left to be done in the face of evil: Neither good nor evil makes a difference. Cowardice reinforces sloth, because it keeps one at a distance from anything that might stir his soul to action. Likewise, wrath, far from being the antipathy to cowardice, is a companion to both cowardice and sloth. Wrath is an overreaction to evil and even mistakes the good for something to be despised and resisted. Often the man who spends much of his effort avoiding difficulty, forgoing many good things as a result, will become overwhelmed with passion if he finds himself cornered by it. Hence the coward may resort to wrath, and the wrathful coward is likely to be slothful, because he is so strongly moved away from anything in which he might find joy.

The effect of sloth is not always weariness for labor. Today, it is often the case that one labors too much rather than laboring too little. Laboring too much is a sign of vice because labor's purpose is to make leisure possible. If we labor to the exclusion of leisure then we are fostering sloth, because we are shrinking away from the good and are not working as we ought.

Because sloth is a disordered sorrow, it is often mistaken for “depression,” a physiological disorder. This confusion is partly due to the fact that vice generally evokes disapproval, whereas sorrow arouses pity; so a vice manifested in disordinate sorrow is unlikely to be considered a vice at all, especially by those without a sound moral formation. One who is misled into thinking that he is “depressed” would do well to make a concerted effort at cultivating the virtues opposed to sloth, and note whether his depression begins to subside.

The opposite of sloth is zeal, which is an intense love and devotion to the good. And zeal is accompanied by courage (the opposite of cowardice) which endures suffering for the sake of the good. He who has true zeal does not labor as much as he can; he labors as much as he needs to serve God and his neighbor. Likewise, courage does not suffer the pains of labor for their own sake, but for the sake of laboring well and attaining the good.

The virtues are not aimed at merely any good that one happens to notice. They are ordered in a heirarchy of goods, and ultimately at God,Who is Goodness itself. Thus all activities must be guarded by virtue according to their proper order: Pleasure and entertainment for the sake of labor, labor for the sake of leisure, and leisure for the glory of God.

Let us pray to God in the words of St. John Cassian, that He may stir up in us a feiry zeal, and that our souls, “which had been occupied by a sorrow that works death, will be taken by a godly sorrow and one full of joy. That which had been wasted by acedia, will at once be tilled by courage.” (Conferences V.23)

Capitalism Does Not Work

Capitalism is one of those theories that looks good on paper, but in reality just does not work. This is because the main problem with Capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

Competition:
Because a capitalist economy is competitive, what will always happen is that whoever has an edge over the competition will end up making more money. But making more money does not mean spending more money. A man who makes $35,000 per year will probably have a car and a house, the two most expensive things he owns. A man who makes ten times as much -- $350,000 -- will not own ten houses and ten cars. So what happens in this economy is that more and more money ends up in fewer and fewer pockets.

So, true capitalism will always fail in the end, because you can only get richer if there are other people who can pay you, but the richer you get, the poorer other people become, because there is only so much money to go around. Sooner or later, the money must stop changing hands. (Anyone who has played Monopoly knows what I mean.)

Where Money Comes From:

This is why our economy today uses an infinite supply of money. When the economy starts to slow down, the Federal Reserve (the Head Bank in the US) buys bonds from big banks (a bond is a note that promises to be paid back with interest). Those big banks can then give out loans to smaller banks and companies based on how much money they received for these bonds. This is where most money comes from: It's loaned to us.

But loans need to be paid back. If too many loans go into default, the whole economy can crash. So, banks depend on people and businesses to pay back their loans. People usually get their money by working at a business. And businesses get their money by selling things to people. But when you put businesses and people together, where does all their money come from?

The Poor:

There are plenty of people who can't sell things to other people and also can't find a job. In fact, the economy needs to have these people, because money comes from banks, and even if a poor person could get a loan, how would he pay it back? These people cannot get a job either, because if everyone had a job, the businesses that pay them will not be able to make a profit. For example, imagine there are only two businesses in the world; Business A pays its workers $100 for every box of clothes they make and Business B pays its workers $100 for every box of food. If a box of clothes and a box of food cost $100 each, then each business makes 0% profit and goes bankrupt. If each box costs $110, then each business is making 10% profit, but not for long, because the workers won't be able to afford to buy any boxes at this rate. So instead of raising the price, the businessmen just lay off some of its workers. How does this fix anything? I'll tell you.

Welfare:
Our economy needs people to buy things so that businesses can pay back the banks, so that the banks can make good on their bonds. But businesses cannot hire everyone. That's where the state comes in. The state gives "free" money to the poor, who use this money to buy things, so that businesses can keep making money and pay back their loans. Where does the government get this money? Well, the national debt is incredibly high. But that's ok.

Real Capitalism Has Not Been Tried?
But hold on! If the whole economy is dependent on state welfare, is this real capitalism? The simple answer is "no." At least, this is not what many people think capitalism should be. But we have seen that if a competitive economy is too simple and too honest, then it will fail pretty quickly. We need an infinite supply of money from the top and we need poor welfare recipients to fill in the cracks at the bottom. Notice what the key role of the government is: It declares that the money which the Federal Reserve creates is good money, it forces people to pay back their loans, and it hands out money to the losers at the bottom. Without the government's constant support, the whole system would collapse. This is the way we make capitalism "work" -- by force.

Labor and Technology

The most striking aspect of labor today is its relationship to technology. Technology is generally understood as the application or utilization of knowledge for practical ends. In a sense, technology is to labor what the liberal arts are to leisure. Because labor requires intelligence, it is near impossible even to think of a task of labor today which does not involve some technology, be it primitive or cutting-edge. But here I contend that technology can only be called good in the same sense that labor is called good. That is, it must be humane and ordered to its proper ends. As labor must be consciously performed for the sake of preserving man's physical nature (and by extension, the rest of creation) and disposing him for leisure-work, so technology must be consciously applied for the sake of aiding this good work. Thus, when technology hinders man's leisure (such as the worship of God), corrupts his physical nature, or distorts the order of creation in some way, it is not good and useful, but evil and destructive.

Martin Heidegger argued that there is a problem with modern technology, specifically in the relation between its application and the knowledge required to apply it. That is, the application of technology does not in itself have anything to do with the knowledge that made it possible. This can be easily observed in modern society: Always and everywhere, people make use of things whose inner workings are beyond their comprehension. And the more they make use of these things and become attached to them, the more estranged they become from reality. This is because, as Heidegger explained, technology's application determines how people understand reality. What a thing is, through its continued exploitation, becomes obscured by fixating on how it can be exploited. In this way, a thing's “usefulness” eclipses one's understanding and appreciation of the thing itself. This creates a peculiar moral predicament. As Heidegger puts it, “so long as we represent technology as a [mere] instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master it.” (17)

This insight into technology is related to a concept proposed by Marshal McLuhan. He argued that, as humanity progresses in technology, the modes of communication (i.e. media) change with it. Because our knowledge of the world is vastly dependent on communication, a change of media creates a change in how we approach and understand the world. Simply put, we perceive the world through media; so as media change, so changes the world (or so it seems). We can extrapolate from this idea another moral insight: As we use technology, we are forced to compete with it, in a sense. Our exploitation of creation is, in a word, reflexive: As we impose our own purposes on the world, we become increasingly confined by those same purposes, even in the manner in which we think about the world. For example, in a society where automobile travel is prevalent, distance is measured in minutes and everything between one's location and his destination is irrelevant. The auto-driver does not have a clear concept of space or direction; he is only concerned with duration and obstacles.

Considering this drastic effect technology has on our minds, it is easy to see what Baudrillard meant by “hyper-reality.” Modern man is generally not concerned with reality as such, but only the reality that is available to him; the sphere of action and information in which he lives. Whether the sun has risen is completely irrelevant to him; He rises at six o'clock am, Eastern Standard Time. He knows it is six o'clock because his computer screen has told him so. To him, the day has begun, solar and sidereal events be damned.

We now see the link between modernity's technological marvels and its moral distortions. Man has become so skilled at manipulating creation that he no longer comprehends creation, and without this comprehension, he no longer has a reason to manipulate it. Man's continued manipulation of creation is apparently driven by his unabashed desire alone, but this desire is not by any means “free”: It is informed by the world as he experiences it and this world is none other than the one shaped by his very manipulation. Of course this is not the result of inescapable material causes, but of imprudence and greed. We should have been asking ourselves at every avenue whether we are accomplishing the Thomistic ideal of art-perfecting-nature. Instead we have rather the inverse, the violent imposition of nature-becoming-art, or so it seems. Absurd!

Indeed every misapplication of technology both reveals a misunderstanding of nature and further obscures it. For instance, Heidegger asserts that a fixation on the use of something strengthens the will to master it; and we see the worst of this in making use of other human beings. One of the perennial criticisms of Capitalism is the exploitation of workers and, even in a society that condemns chattel slavery, we see a prevailing conflict of interests between disparate classes of people; most notably between those who use people and exert dominance over them, and those who are used and dominated. But on both sides of the class-conflict, whether they are aware of it or not, the working class looks to the owning class as conduits for “job-creation” or a “tax-base” and the owning class look to the working class as employees, consumers, and voters. Another example can be seen in the corruption of medicine: Doctors willingly kill and mame according to the whims of their patients. The integrity of the body is often seen not as a sign of good health, but as an obstacle to its exploitation, in an overt form of hedonism prevalent among those who objectify even themselves. One's body is seen as a tool to accompish some degree of pleasure or as a vehicle, rather than as a part of oneself, to be perfected and preserved. Even in the use of contraceptives, one is in conflict with her own body, demanding service in the form of pleasure but denying the outcome which her body is striving for.

The remedy to this state of affairs is not necessarily Ludditic. We must simply strive to be aware of the purpose of our labor. We must ensure that the technology we employ assists labor in its goal of serving us, rather than allow ourselves to become the tools that serve labor. This entails breaking out of the “hyper-reality” which we have created and imposed on ourselves. And when we are once again conscious of our nature and our purpose, we must be willing to do what is necessary to prevent the very work of our hands from becoming our masters.

Labor and the Human Person

Labor is not without reason and purpose. It is what St. Thomas Aquinas calls a human act. It requires conscious deliberation and is therefore a moral action. We do not labor unthinkingly, but with the intention of achieving a clear purpose: The laborer plans and makes predictions, designs and builds, troubleshoots and solves problems; in short, labor requires intelligence. This purpose, of course, is necessity. We must eat and sleep, we must stay reasonably warm and dry, we must guard against injury and disease, etc. Labor is first and foremost what man does to achieve these ends, which are the necessary prerequisites for life. In short, man labors because he has a body.

Because labor requires intelligence and is primarily for the sake of his material body, it is a peculiarly human activity; That is, he who labors is human. Furthermore, because the level of intelligence and particular intellectual gifts vary from person to person, a great deal of one's personality is manifested in his labor. Not only does each particular person approach his tasks according to his particular gifts and temperament, but the intrinsic personality of labor can be observed even in the mastery of particular crafts and disciplines: The greater the perfection of a given work, the greater its style and uniqueness. Labor is therefore not only peculiarly human, but peculiarly personal.

Unfortunately, modern labor is not only marked by a detachment from creation, but a detachment from humanity and from the human person. The modern norm has each person primarily pursue not a specific task or trade for the sake of a specific necessity, but a career (whatever it may be) for the sake of currency (the exchange commodity). This shift in labor's purpose has been adequately expounded elsewhere, but at present it is enough to note the divorce between labor and its purpose. Whether one is a pipe-fitter, a carpenter, an insurance adjuster, or a corporate accountant, the primary purpose of his labor is to make money; for without money, his material needs cannot be met. This detachment of course is only partial, as there is still a relation, albeit obscure, between his labor and his material needs. Beyond the mere fulfillment of these needs, however, there is a further obscurity of modern labor: As money is the reward of labor, so is money the means by which persons procure their material needs from others. As labor is vitally important for man's life and involves not only his relation to the world but to other persons, so has money not only become the bridge between labor and material needs, but between persons as well. The farmer need not know the persons for whom he grows his corn, and the person who buys his corn is incidental to the amount for which he buys it.

In addition to obscuring these relationships, the immediate purpose of money is quantification. Money is only useful insofar as it is countable. Whatever is exchanged for money likewise becomes quantifiable. No longer does a man expect the just reward of his labor to be precisely what he has wrought. Rather, he is compensated, while he is immediately divorced from the product of his work. Monetized labor is only useful insofar as it is countable. And so, as the laborer has been detached from his work, which is rendered replaceable, the laborer is rendered replaceable. Labor is no longer imbued with personality because labor is no longer personal.

What is, therefore, a quintessentially human activity has become absurd, because it has become inhuman.

Labor and Leisure

In his famous work, Leisure; the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper diagnoses the modern decline of culture, noting that we find ourselves in pursuit of labor for its own sake. That is, modern man tends to see labor as his highest calling. Of all things, production is the measure of man. This can hardly be considered hyperbole today, when “successful” signifies “having made a lot of money” and a man's “worth” is expressed in an exact dollar amount. When someone asks, “what do you do,” the expected answer involves the principle means by which you secure an income. The “big guy,” as opposed to the “little guy,” is the one who has much more money; especially one who controls the economic viability of the little guy. And “the man” is the one who controls and seeks to control, sometimes insidiously but usually overtly, every aspect of your life; “to keep you down” by employment, taxation, or inflation. We seem to find ourselves in a world in which material wealth is the only value to speak of.

There is a reason that leisure (and with it, culture) is still on the decline today. Pieper seems to point to a competition between leisure and labor. Leisure, as he explained, is not entertainment or “free time.” It takes work, and is the activity that gives content to culture. Michelangelo, Mozart, and Shakespeare all produced an immense amount of work. Yet they are remembered not for how much wealth they had, but for how much they contributed to culture. They were concerned with leisure-work. This is distinct from labor, which is how we put food in our mouths, keep a roof over our heads, stay dry, etc. Labor is necessary for survival, but leisure-work is no less difficult or important. In fact, leisure-work is more important than labor, because survival is small, temporary, and mean, but leisure aims at eternity. Leisure, he says, is nothing less than man's affirmation of creation; his echo of God's own evaluation on the first Sabbath, saying, “it is very good.” Leisure involves a kind of instinct toward the divine, and we find its utmost expression in the worship of God.

Though distinct, the difference between leisure and labor is not absolute. A man's labor is a response to the world as he sees it. He needs to eat and he needs to keep his family warm, safe, and dry. How one fulfills these needs depends entirely on his surroundings: Does he live on an island, on a plain, in a jungle? Is it hot, cold, or seasonal? What kinds of animals can he eat? What kinds of animals would eat him? A desert nomad might know all about herding, but nothing of fishing. A man in Russia will fear winter, while a man in the Amazon will fear leopards. As man's labor is a response to his environment and shapes the way he understands the world, so is his leisure shaped by this experience. It is no puzzle that the pagan mythology of Scandinavia is desperate and warlike, while the mythology of ancient Egypt is fair and optimistic.

It is therefore apparent that there can never be a simple competition between leisure and labor. Labor is done not for survival alone (for that would be a hopeless paradox) but for the sake of leisure, and leisure is informed by labor. A drastic change in leisure, then, is probably the result of a change in labor. As labor changes, so changes leisure, and thus culture. And this is the key to understanding why labor in the modern era seems to upstage and even replace the pursuit of leisure altogether. Modern labor has nothing to do with a man's location or environment. It is often monotonous, unseasonable, impersonal, isolating, dull, and almost completely divorced from all other aspects of his life, save that of the shared measure and master of his activity which is the arbitrary quantification of his time and effort – money. Factories in Russia look strikingly similar to factories in Germany. Offices in the Unites States are indistinguishable from offices in Brazil. If a man can drive a taxi in Saudi Arabia, he can drive a taxi in London. Not only does labor become more homogeneous across the globe, but the purpose of labor has already been reduced to one totemic fixation – money. Thus the apparent dissolution of culture, relegating all “authentic” tradition to history because it has become absolutely foreign to current life.

But even modern labor, perhaps, still informs “leisure” in a way. Consider that most men today consider “leisure” to be synonymous with “entertainment” or “free time” (i.e. time that is presumably free of obligation – an interesting notion). This is itself a strong indication of the effects of modern labor on what one might call “modern culture.” We have cheapened leisure, assigning it a place beside the sitcom and the chain restaurant. Another indication is that what little culture there is to speak of is more accurately ascribed to the realm of labor and production rather than to that of leisure. For example, one might consider football to be a prime example of American culture, and the watching of football has become a multi-billion dollar industry. I need not speak of the arts (especially music and film) or even the celebration of holidays (most of which are all but lost).

Pieper's insight into leisure is valuable, but the “world of total work” as he called it, is not simply a world of work prized for its own sake above all else. It is a world which has been working like mad to distance itself from creation and therefore from its Creator. We have not merely come to estrange the Sabbath. We have estranged God's entire work.

"Christian Libertarian"

Then the [Christian Libertarians] going, consulted among themselves how to ensnare him in his speech.

And they sent to him their disciples with the [Internal Revenue Service], saying: Master, we know that thou art a true speaker, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou dost not regard the person of men.

Tell us therefore what dost thou think, is [tax theft], or not?

But Jesus knowing their wickedness, said: Why do you tempt me, ye hypocrites?

Show me [a dollar]. And they offered him [a dollar].

And Jesus saith to them: Whose image and inscription is this?

They say to him: [Washington's]. Then he saith to them: Render to [Washington] the things that are [Washington's]; and to God, the things that are God's.

And hearing this they wondered, and leaving him, went their ways.