Speaker 1
If I could just maybe diverge just a wee bit just to explain that in the first way, when Thomas is talking about motion, he denies that there could be an infinite regress of move movers by pointing out that things which have the actuality of motion non-essential. Okay, so things that have the actuality of motion through another would not have that actuality unless there were something some principle of motion which possesses motion per se in itself. Thomas gives the example of the mind moves the hand to move the stick to move the stone. That's exactly gives him the first way. And he points out that the hand the stick in the stone, they don't have motion essentially. They can still be hands, sticks and stones without moving, but they depend on or participate in the causality of that which does have motion essentially or does have the actuality of motion essentially. And that's the mental agent. A mental agent doesn't need something to move it so that it can move its hands at sticks in the stones. You can get your golf clubs and go go to the golf course and hit golf balls without somebody forcing you to a mental agent is just able to originate motion. And this is this is what's known as a per se order to causal series. And no sorts of causal series they appear in every one of the ways. And the point is that if we have some causal actuality, which things don't possess essentially, they are dependent on something which has that causal actuality per se. And that's how he gets the prime mover in the first way, a primary cause in the second and so on. Well, it's the same here with the fifth way. He's talking about things which have this directedness towards their ends, their ends which are their goods. Okay, but they don't have that directed this per se. They need not have that directed this, but they do have it. So Aquinas is going to order argue that in so far as they don't have that directed this towards the good of themselves, there must be so they have it through another, there must be some per se source which directs them towards the good, which is the source of goodness. And that's going to be the conclusion of the fifth way. So in the same way, you have a per se source of motion or causality in the first and second way, you have a per se source of finality or goodness in the fifth way. Okay, so sorry for that we tangent, but that's just the kind of, you know, tell us where we're going. So Thomas, you know, so to continue, he says, it's apparent that things which act towards an end so that the best results, I they achieve their good. They do so not by chance, but by intention, they're ordered towards that end. Those things that do not have knowledge, they don't tend to an end unless they're directed by something with knowledge and intelligence. So we have something directing these, you know, unintelligent things towards their rant towards their goods. And that which so directs them must itself be intelligent in some way, because that direction towards an end is an intentional direction they intend that end. And that's simply what intention means. So there's something with with intelligent with knowledge, some principle by which these natural things are drawn towards their end. And that itself must be intelligent, must work with intention. And so he concludes all natural things in order to an end by something intelligent. And this is what we call God. And so that's the fifth way and the nutshell.