Ignatius and Aristotle (and Aquinas)

I saw a letter to England's Gordon Brown from Aristotle at Thinking Faith on the subject of the financial crisis, and probably wouldn't have been that intrigued, aside from the Aristotle-having-been-dead- awhile part :) but then I saw that Ignatius was involved, so thought I'd post just the beginning of the letter (read the whole thing at the link) ......

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Aristotle writes to Gordon Brown by Joe Egerton

Dear Prime Minister

Please don’t be alarmed at a missive appearing in your Inbox from somebody who has been what you call dead (and we call truly alive) for the last two thousand three hundred years. You may not think of me as the most obvious source of advice as you try to steer the country through the financial crisis, but let me offer you some food for thought. A number of us talk earthly developments over and I have learned from those who have arrived after me – as you will see from the four propositions that I now offer for your consideration, Thomas Aquinas and Ignatius of Loyola have especially enriched my own thinking.

First proposition – Greed is not the cause

It is a large error to regard the crisis in the financial system as caused by “greed”. Greed is the name of a particular type of desire, a particular motive for the activity of acquisition, the activity of obtaining more. To cause the crisis, people had to do things. They had to move from having an inordinate desire to putting it into effect. Ignatius pointed out that he had discussed this in his Spiritual Exercises[1]: when an evil thought comes to me, “I can sin venially by dwelling on it slightly, or admitting some pleasure in the senses, or when I am somewhat slack in repulsing the thought”[2]. Then “I can sin mortally in two ways. The first is when I consent to the bad thought, intending to carry it out if that is possible. The second is when one actually carries out the sin. This is graver… through [the] greater harm [it causes] to other persons.”[3]

Ignatius explains why greed may be a motive but it cannot be the action that causes a crisis. As he says, you need action to do harm – and harm certainly has been done. What was this action that caused the crisis? I say it must have been the activity of seeking more. Eudemus’s[4] note of what I said in my course on Personal and Spiritual Development[5] all those centuries ago is absolutely correct – but there has been a difficulty in translating the Greek. There is no exact equivalent in Latin or English for the words I used – pleonexia to name the defect opposed to the excellence or virtue of justice or integrity, and pleonektikos as the adjective applied to the one who lacks integrity[6]. Pleonexia is simply the activity of acquiring more. I did explain what I meant. I said that the unjust person[7] is pleonektikos, that is somebody who is going round the place always acquiring more good things – or avoiding bad things.[8]

Thomas Aquinas carefully explained exactly what I said in his Commentary [9] and then went on to take exactly the same position that I did in the Summa Theologiae. Because he did not have Latin words that exactly corresponded to the Greek words, he spelt out what he considered injustice to be[10] in the very terms I used. Thomas – according to his English translators - at various points uses covetousness to label this vice. It is highly instructive that that Thomas distinguishes between “covetousness” and “the daughters of covetousness”[11], a series of gravely wrong actions, including violence, perjury and fraud. To these Thomas added treachery, citing as an example Judas’s betrayal of Christ for 30 pieces of silver.

What caused the financial crisis was pleonexia – the activity of acquisition, not just by the bankers but, as far as I can see, by most of the western world; people were borrowing huge amounts to acquire. Of course as they did so – Thomas is quite right to point to the daughters of this vice of acquiring – some did all sorts of other wrong things as well. But only a tiny amount of the damage was done by fraud, and even less by violence. The damage to the system was done by nearly everyone trying to acquire ...........

[1] I am using the translation by George E Ganss SJ of the Institute for Jesuit Sources; references are preceded by EXX.
[2] EXX 35
[3] EXX 36-7
[4] The reference that follows is to fifth book of the Nicomachean Ethics (EN V) – a set of notes of a course on Personal Development given by Aristotle attributed to Nicomachus; but most modern scholars regard EN books 5 to 7 as coming from the set of notes of another course also given by Aristotle made by Eudemus. Anthony Kenny uses the term “Aris­totelian Ethics” to name the three books that are common to the Nicomachean Ethics (EN) and the Eudemian Ethics (EE). But it is probably easier to stick to the traditional way of referring to these texts, which places them in the EN.
[5] None of the works actually “published” by Aristotle in his lifetime (384-322BC) have come down to us other than the Constitution of the Athenians. The texts that have survived are usually described as “lecture notes”; although this is misleading as it gives the impression that Aristotle stood on a podium and “lectured” his pupils. The evidence we have suggests Aristotle conducted something much closer to workshop or seminar – a proposition that explains some of the problems with the texts that have come down to us.
[6] EN Book V section 1, 1129a30 – 1129b30
[7] If we translate “ho dikos” as “the person of integrity” rather than “just person” there is no English phrase that is its opposite in the way “ho adikos” is the opposite of “ho dikos” To get opposites, we need “the just” and “the unjust” or “the righteous” and “the unrighteous”
[8] Ibid, 1129b1 to 1129b11; pleonexia is used by Thucydides to describe the Athenians’ efforts always to expand their Empire; their success in growing their power drove the Spartans to war with them, a war that culminated in the complete defeat of Athens in 404BC.
[9] St Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, Lecture 1.
[10] ST IIa IIae Q59 Art 1.
[11] A phrase of St Gregory the Great discussed at ST IIa IIae Q118 Art 8

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