ut sine fine amet summam essentiam - the eudaemonist ethics of st. anselm

“UT SINE FINE AMET SUMMAM ESSENTIAM”: THE EUDAEMONIST ETHICS OF ST. ANSELM∗

Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn

T would spark no great controversy to claim that on the level of meta-ethics, the eudaemonist mode of thinking was by far the dominant one

throughout the early and high Middle Ages, as indeed it had been in Greek and Roman thought at least from the time of Plato onwards.1 Within this gen-eral mode of thought, to which a wide variety of different ethical doctrines could belong as species, ethics is seen as teleological in that it aims at de-scribing the true end, or telos, of humanity and how it may be attained, and it is seen as eudaemonist in that the true end of human beings is identified with happiness, eudaimonia—often defined as the full realization of the specific faculties of human nature.2 This was the point of departure for the thinkers of late antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages such as Augustine, Boethius, and Gregory the Great, who had a profound influence on subsequent thought, and it remained the predominant frame of reference for ethics throughout the

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∗ I would like to thank my colleagues at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University

of Bergen for their input on earlier versions of this paper, in particular Professor Leidulf Melve and Dr. Aidan Conti. I would also like to thank the editor of this journal and an anonymous reader for their very instructive comments which saved me from making a number of errors. Any and all errors still remaining are naturally my own.

1 For a fascinating and convincing recent account of the development of eudaemonist modes of meta-ethics, see Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study, vol. 1: From Socrates to the Reformation (Oxford, 2007). This dominance in the early Middle Ages should not, of course, be understood as the necessary exclusion of alternative modes of thought.

2 See, e.g., ibid, 2–5. For definitions of these traditions in an Anselmian context, see Jef-frey E. Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, ed. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge, 2004), 222–23; Bonnie Kent, “The Moral Life,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. S. McGrade (Cambridge, 2003), 235–37; and Katherin A. Rogers, “Anselm on Eudaimonism and the Hierarchical Structure of Moral Choice,” Religious Studies 41 (2005): 249. Eudaimonia is a very difficult term to translate; I have chosen to follow convention in using “happiness” as an English substitute. The post-classical tendency, most pronounced among the Utilitarians, of defining happiness as a senti-ment rather than an activity makes this a potentially hazardous translation, but one which necessity and convention still prescribes.

Mediaeval Studies 70 (2008): 1–28. © Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

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golden age of scholasticism, quickened rather than supplanted by the discov-ery of Aristotle’s metaphysical works in the thirteenth century. For this very reason, deviations from this paradigm would rightfully de-mand considerable interest—particularly if the deviator in question is as notable a thinker as Anselm of Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury. Anselm’s ethical and meta-ethical positions have for a long time been the subject of intent and detailed discussion,3 but several of the most prestigious and widely dissemi-nated interpretations of the twenty-first century agree in hailing Anselm as an early pioneer in the development of a deontological ethical paradigm. In con-trast to eudaemonist systems, deontological ethics are based on an account of rightness and duty divested from any account of the good; its proponents hold as the duty of a moral subject to act rightly without consideration of his or her own happiness. Today such an ethical paradigm is usually associated above all with Kant, while John Duns Scotus has been acknowledged as a central medieval figure in the development of this mode of thought.4 Authoritative expositions of medieval ethics in general as well as Anselmian ethics in general have recently concluded that Anselm should be considered in this

3 Among the most important contributions to this aspect of Anselmian studies over the last

century are Jean Rohmer, La finalité morale chez les théologiens de saint Augustin à Duns Scot (Paris, 1939), 139–78; the brief but brilliant analysis in Robert Crouse, “The Augustinian Back-ground of St. Anselm’s Concept Justitia,” Canadian Journal of Theology 4 (1958): 111–19; Philippe Delhaye, “Quelques aspects de la morale de saint Anselme,” in Spicilegium Beccense I: Congrès international du IXe centenaire de l’arrivée d’Anselme au Bec (Paris, 1959), 401–22; Robert Pouchet, La rectitudo chez saint Anselme: Un itinéraire augustinien de l’âme à Dieu (Paris, 1964); Gottlieb Söhngen, “Rectitudo bei Anselm von Canterbury als Oberbegriff von Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit,” in Sola ratione. Anselm-Studien für Pater Dr. h.c. Francis-cus Salesius Schmitt OSB zum 75. Geburtstag am 20. Dezember 1969, ed. Helmut K. Kohlen-berger (Stuttgart, 1970), 71–78; G. Stanley Kane, Anselm’s Doctrine of Freedom and the Will (New York and Toronto, 1981); Eduardo Briancesco, Un triptyque sur la liberté: La doctrine morale de saint Anselme (Paris, 1982); Mechthild Dreyer, “Veritas – rectitudo – iustitia. Grund-begriffe ethischer Reflexion bei Anselm von Canterbury,” Recherches de théologie et philoso-phie médiévales 64 (1997): 67–85; Engelbert Recktenwald, Die ethische Struktur des Denkens von Anselm von Canterbury (Heidelberg, 1998); Bernd Goebel, Rectitudo. Wahrheit und Freiheit bei Anselm von Canterbury: Eine philosophische Untersuchung seines Denkansatzes, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, n.F. 56 (Münster, 2001); Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 222–56; Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, “Anselm’s Account of Freedom,” in Cambridge Companion to Anselm, ed. Davies and Leftow, 179–203; and Rogers, “Anselm on Eudaimonism,” 249–68. For reasons of space I will not provide a full discussion of earlier literature here but will rather refer to individual texts where they make important points pertinent to the present discussion. The main secondary texts considered here do not make extended use of earlier literature, with non-Anglophone studies a particularly notable absence.

4 See Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 223, with bibliography.

THE EUDAEMONIST ETHICS OF ST. ANSELM 3

category as well, making him much more of an original inventor and less of the staunchly traditional Augustinian he often has been made out to have been.5 While standard medieval eudaemonism identified the supreme good with happiness, according to this recent view Anselm prefigured later devel-opments towards the primacy of justice.6 Aiming for happiness, it is now ar-gued, was equal to loving oneself more than God; only through loving justice for its own sake could human beings be said to put God first.7 In what fol-lows, I intend to throw my lot in with those who object to this latter view, both past and present, and argue for a fundamentally eudaemonist and Au-gustinian reading of Anselm’s ethics.8 Anselm’s ethical thought, I will argue, is best seen as the logical extension of his commitment to the Augustinian tra-dition of philosophy and theology. In an often quoted passage, Anselm distinguishes between two kinds of good found in common speech, which he calls respectively the good of com-modum—variously translated as, for instance, advantage or benefit—and the good of iustitia—justice.9 Jeffrey Brower, the most cogent and explicit propo-

5 For an Augustinian view, see, e.g., Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London, 1955), 128–39; Crouse, “Augustinian Background of St. Anselm’s Con-cept Justitia”; Pouchet, La rectitudo chez saint Anselme; and also Goebel, Rectitudo. Wahrheit und Freiheit bei Anselm von Canterbury. This traditional view does not, of course, rule out originality on Anselm’s part but rather sees his originality in residing in a development of Augustine rather than a rejection of his thought. A more in-depth discussion of the question of originality in Anselm’s thought should be kept distinct from the matter presently at hand.

6 This claim has most recently been made in Kent, “Moral Life,” 235–37, Brower, “An-selm on Ethics,” 222–23; and Visser and Williams, “Anselm’s Account of Freedom,” 194. The distinction between rightness and well-being has been universally noted, and is emphasized by, e.g., Rohmer, Delhaye, and Pouchet, and more recently by Recktenwald, but without thereby explicitly grouping Anselm with deontological moral philosophers; see n. 3 above. Rohmer does, admittedly, draw some important parallels between Anselm and Duns Scotus (La finalité morale, 174–78). The evident, but highly complex relationship between Scotian ethics and An-selm’s thought must be left out of the present discussion.

7 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 241–42. 8 The most recent eudaemonist reading of Anselm, directed specifically at the recent

proponents of a deontological interpretation, is found in Rogers, “Anselm on Eudaimonism.” Although the approach of the present paper is rather different from that of Rogers, her article has had a deeper influence on the final formulation of my own arguments than what mere cita-tion would suggest. My focus here is strictly with the deontological reading of Anselm, how-ever, and instead of discussing Rogers’s contribution in detail, I would refer the reader to her work for a parallel argument rejecting the deontological interpretation of Anselm’s ethics.

9 The main passage here is from Anselm, De casu diaboli 12 (ed. F. S. Schmitt, S. Anselmi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi Opera omnia, 6 vols. [Rome and Edinburgh, 1938–61], 1:255): “M. Beatus autem non potest esse, si non vult beatitudinem. Dico autem nunc beatitudinem non beatitudinem cum iustitia, sed quam volunt omnes, etiam iniusti. Omnes quippe volunt bene

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nent of the deontological reading to date, argues that to Anselm the good of advantage equals the traditional eudaemonist notion of good as the perfection of natural capacities to achieve a natural telos, while the good of justice equals the moral duty divested from any notion of happiness, as found in the ethics of Duns Scotus or Immanuel Kant.10 Furthermore, he finds the deonto-logical or duty-based mode of ethics to be more fundamental to Anselm than the eudaemonist.11 Advantage and justice are on this view species of the ge-nus of value, and are not reducible to one another.12 They can therefore be in conflict, and in those cases one should always follow the disposition for jus-tice rather than the disposition for happiness in order to remain just. In this way, Anselm is said to depart from standard medieval eudaemonism in giving the good of justice priority over a distinct good of happiness considered in the traditional way. Duty, rather than happiness, is the first principle of ethics. This reading of Anselm is in many ways a natural development from a long line of research into Anselm’s moral psychology emphasizing the dominance of rightness and justice as guiding principles of his moral thought.13 Still, the

sibi esse. Excepto namque hoc quod omnis natura bona dicitur, duo bona et duo his contraria mala usu dicuntur. Unum bonum est quod dicitur iustitia, cui contrarium malum est iniustitia. Alterum bonum est quod mihi videtur posse dici commodum, et huic malum opponitur incom-modum. Sed iustitiam quidem non omnes volunt, neque omnes fugiunt iniustitiam. Commodum vero non solum omnis rationalis natura, sed etiam omne quod sentire potest vult, et vitat in-commodum. Nam nullus vult nisi quod aliquo modo sibi putat commodum. Hoc igitur modo omnes bene sibi esse volunt, et male sibi esse nolunt. De hac beatitudine nunc dico, quia nullus potest esse beatus qui non vult beatitudinem. Nullus namque beatus potest esse aut habendo quod non vult, aut non habendo quod vult. D. Non est negandum. M. Nec beatus debet esse qui non vult iustitiam. D. Nec hoc minus concedendum.” Cf. similar notions expressed in Anselm’s later work, De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae Dei cum libero arbitrio 3.11 (ed. Schmitt in Opera omnia 2:281): “Nam sicut visus plures habet aptitudines, scilicet ad vivendum lucem, et per lucem ad videndum figuras, ⟨et per figuras⟩ ad videndum colores: ita instrumentum volendi duas habet aptitudines, quas voco ‘affectiones’. Quarum una est ad vo-lendum commoditatem, altera ad volendum rectitudinem. Nempe nihil vult voluntas quae est instrumentum, nisi aut commoditatem aut rectitudinem. Quidquid enim aliud vult, aut propter commoditatem aut propter rectitudinem vult, et ad has—etiam si fallitur—putat se referre quod vult. Per affectionem quidem quae est ad volendum commoditatem, semper vult homo beatitu-dinem et beatus esse. Per illam vero quae est ad volendum rectitudinem, vult rectitudinem et rectus, id est iustus esse. Propter commoditatem autem vult aliquid, ut cum vult arare vel labo-rare, ut habeat unde tueatur vitam et salutem, quae iudicat esse commoda. Propter rectitudinem vero, ut cum vult cum labore discere, ut sciat recte, id est iuste vivere.” For translations of these passages, see pp. 22 and 26 below.

10 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 228–29. 11 Ibid., 223. 12 Ibid., 229. 13 For studies emphasizing the role of rightness and justice in Anselm’s thought, see in par-

ticular those of Rohmer, Delhaye, Briancesco, Pouchet, and Dreyer. But see also Crouse’s


explicit categorization of Anselm’s ethics as belonging to a deontological paradigm is taking this emphasis to a length that has rarely been attempted in the past. In my opinion, it is one step too far; I will argue in the following that the indubitable emphasis in Anselm’s works on rightness, justice, and renun-ciation is consonant rather than mutually exclusive with a fundamentally eudaemonist moral outlook. Since Brower’s exposition of Anselm’s ethics is the most recent as well as one of the most cogently and explicitly presented deontological readings of this part of Anselm’s thought, his main claims form a natural point of depar-ture for further discussion. I wish to focus particularly on two main, interre-lated theses: 1) Happiness and justice are to Anselm two distinct types of good, two species of the genus value, and may therefore potentially conflict with each other;14 2) Anselm held justice to be the supreme good, to be cho-sen above happiness whenever the two types of good are in conflict.15 The deontological reading of Anselm arguably depends on the correctness of both of these theses for its sustainability. Conversely, if these two claims can be shown as mistaken or implausible, the deontological reading would appear to be unfounded. Let us therefore look more closely at these claims and their textual bases to gauge the extent to which they can be maintained. We may start with discussing the notion of happiness at play in Anselm’s works as well as in medieval ethics generally. According to Brower, standard medieval eudaemonism defines happiness as the complete actualization of the kind-specific properties of a thing.16 In a teleologically ordered universe, each thing has over and above its existence a set of natural capacities towards the actualization of which it is inclined to move, and which constitutes the good of that thing. Brower goes on to claim that the identification of the good of a

“Augustinian Background of St. Anselm’s Concept Justitia,” pointing out of the fundamental role of justice in earlier theologies and Christian philosophies, most notably in Augustine. There is also the question of how central terms are used. Pouchet and Delhaye, for instance, seem to define eudaemonism as the striving for well-being—something, therefore, resembling hedonism; see Pouchet, La rectitudo chez saint Anselme, 89–90; and Delhaye, “Quelques as-pects de la morale de saint Anselme,” 409. They do not, however, thereby conclude that Anselm’s ethics were deontological. The various usages of terms like eudaemonism make comparison between studies difficult.

14 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 228; cf. Kent, “Moral Life,” 236–37. 15 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 242; cf. Visser and Williams, “Anselm’s Account of Free-

dom,” 194. 16 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 225–27. Brower distinguishes between what he calls

“essential goodness,” the goodness that comes with having a nature or essence, and “kind-relative accidental goodness” which comes with the realization of the kind-specific capacities of each thing.

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thing with the actualization of a set of natural properties makes the proponents of standard medieval eudaemonism “deny that goodness is anything ontologi-cally over and above such properties.”17 Goodness is seen as a “functional property” completing the members of each kind according to their natural properties and capacities. This is presented as an Aristotelian response to the Platonic doctrine of independently subsisting forms.18 Anselm, still on Brower’s reading, incorporates this notion of happiness into his own ethical and meta-ethical system. But Brower finds some signifi-cant differences. First of all, Anselm is portrayed as deviating from standard medieval eudaemonism in terms of positing a form of good according to the Platonic notion of form.19 To Anselm, goodness has an ontological status of its own over and above the essence of individual kinds. In opposition to the Platonic view, the forms exist on Anselm’s account in God, who is perfect simplicity; but the conceptual distinction between the form of goodness and the form of justice allows Brower to claim that Anselm found it possible to participate in the latter without participating in the former.20 The second difference found is the role that happiness thus conceived plays in the devel-opment and perfection of human beings. As mentioned above, Brower identi-fies the good of advantage, as presented in the quotation from De casu diaboli above, with the notion of happiness ascribed to medieval eudaemonism. Anselm, on this reading, introduces in this same passage an additional good, justice, which is fundamentally distinct from happiness and which is the supreme good for human beings.21 On Brower’s view, then, Anselm incorpo-rates the eudaemonist notion of happiness into his ethical system by subor-dinating it to the supreme good of justice. Happiness is thus no longer the ultimate end for human beings but rather something to be renounced in order to maintain justice and reach salvation.22 There are several problems with this account of happiness, both as pertains to Anselm’s thought and as pertains to the claims concerning the so-called standard medieval eudaemonism. Starting with the latter, it must first of all be

17 Ibid., 229. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 229–33. 20 Ibid., 232. 21 Ibid., 228. 22 Ibid., 241–2. This is a much more radical reading of Anselm than earlier studies em-

phasizing justice and rectitude as central concepts in Anselm’s ethics. Rohmer and Pouchet, for instance, emphasize the fundamental place of finality in Anselm and see his ethics as belonging to the same formal category as Aristotelian eudaemonism, even if the definition of the ultimate end is different; see Pouchet, La rectitudo chez saint Anselme, 195–96.


noted that the notion that human goodness consists of participating in an in-dependently subsisting, absolute, and supreme goodness is not something that marks Anselm out from what we may call standard medieval eudaemonism but rather posits him squarely within it.23 Augustine frequently employs Pla-tonic conceptual schemes and Platonic language in discussing the supreme good, and Anselm’s insistent presentation of this view is no more than the repetition of his professed master’s doctrine.24 Furthermore, the idea of participation is not inextricably bound to the Platonic idea of forms; Thomas Aquinas rejected Plato’s doctrine,25 but he still states with clarity and explicit-ness exceeding Anselm the claim that ideas or forms exist in the mind of God.26 This notion therefore does not distinguish Anselm from Aquinas but rather serves to highlight a great affinity between the two on this issue. It is, of course, in principle possible to argue the existence of a standard medieval eudaemonism in which Augustine and Aquinas played no part; but such an argument would meet with great controversy and should at least not be as-sumed without question. But even if we grant that Anselm in this respect adhered to the prevalent modes of moral thought of his times and tradition, it may still be argued that other facets of Anselm’s notion of happiness significantly diverged from the received standard. Brower claims that Anselm’s notion of happiness stops short of the highest good, and merely denotes the completion of the specific properties of human nature without reaching the supreme good of God’s jus-tice. This is not, in my opinion, the only possible reading of Anselm’s pro-nouncements on happiness, and I would even go as far as to claim that other readings are more likely. One feature of the material at hand here must be addressed immediately: happiness is not an entirely univocal term in Anselm’s usage. Anselm uses the

23 Brower’s description of standard medieval eudaemonism here may fit classical Aristote-

lian thought on happiness, but it would not very well, I think, fit most Aristotelian adaptations throughout the Christian Middle Ages.

24 For Augustine and Platonism, see particularly Robert Crouse, “Paucis mutatis verbis: Augustine’s Platonism,” in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (London, 2000), 37–50; and also Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, trans. L. E. M. Lynch (London, 1961), 197–209. Augustine’s admiration for Plato shines through in particular in De civitate Dei 8.

25 Thomas Aquinas seems to approve of Aristotle’s arguments for rejecting the Platonic doctrine of forms; see Aquinas’s Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, lectio 1, 7. For Aquinas and participation, see above all Etienne Gilson, Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Laurence. K. Shook and Armand Maurer, Etienne Gilson Studies 24 (Toronto, 2002), 72–73.

26 See in particular Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1.15.1; and Gilson, Thomism, 131–33.

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term beatitudo to denote happiness and the ultimate end and good of rational beings; but this term is employed and defined in several different ways in his works. Throughout Anselm’s preserved works we may find explicit defini-tions of, as well as implicit reliance on, certain notions of happiness; and we may find formal as well as substantive—and general as well as specific—dis-cussions of the concept: God is supreme happiness essentially;27 happiness is to enjoy God;28 happiness is the sufficiency of goods without any defi-ciency;29 happiness is the end of all action and volition, and what everybody wants.30 These definitions cannot easily be reduced to one another without further argument. This feature of Anselm’s moral language carries great potential for confusion, and may be the main cause of the variance of readings found in modern scholarship. But the main question for our present purposes is this: may we find some core meaning or principle that ties these disparate definitions together and makes them coherent with each other? Here we have several options on how to proceed. We may, on the one hand, carry out close readings of each of Anselm’s discussions of happiness and see what they add up to. On the other hand, we may try to read Anselm in the light of the intellectual tradition to which he professes his adherence. There are a number of things to say in fa-vour of the latter approach. Profound criticism has been directed at the ten-dency to extract philosophical statements from their original context in order to create a timeless discussion between, so to speak, disembodied philoso-phers across all ages.31 This criticism could also in principle be directed at the reading of Anselm in the light of the writings of Duns Scotus. Anselm could only avail himself of the conceptual and linguistic framework present to him in his own time, and there seems to be real risks involved in finding potential developments of or divergences from these frameworks in the light of thought and texts from the significantly different intellectual context of the fourteenth century and after. That is, of course, not to suggest that philosophers are pris-oners of their own times and context, nor to claim that any reading of a text in the light of later developments are invalid. It is rather to suggest that the ob-scurity of Anselm’s language and arguments, together with the fact that he claims to follow orthodoxy and tradition rather than reject it, makes it neces-

27 E.g., Anselm, Proslogion 23, and Monologion 70 28 E.g., Anselm, Monologion 70 29 E.g., in the lecture notes made by one of Anselm’s pupils in Dicta Anselmi 5 (ed. R. W.

Southern and F. S. Schmitt, Memorials of St. Anselm [Oxford, 1969], 128). 30 Anselm, De casu diaboli 12. 31 See, for instance, Quentin Skinner, Regarding Method, Visions of Politics (Cambridge,

2002), 57–89, which sums up his considerable output emphasizing this very point.


sary to attempt to place Anselm within a historical tradition of thought. The obvious focal point of the tradition of which Anselm found himself a part is the thought and writings of St. Augustine. While a study of Augustine’s ethics as thorough as the subject deserves would be out of place here, a few main features must at least be noted. Im-portantly, Augustine’s discussions of happiness show the range of interrelated meanings the term may be given. One parameter ranges from the purely for-mal and general definition of happiness as that which everyone seeks, to the substantive and specific definitions of individual doctrines, in this case the Christian definition of happiness as God.32 Another parameter ranges from happiness considered absolutely to happiness considered in relation to human beings—there is a fundamental and unbridgeable difference between God, who is happiness in an absolute and essential sense, and human beings, who participate in God’s happiness.33 The distance between these two modes of conceiving of the telos is arguably more apparent within Christian ethics than in many of its classical predecessors. When Aristotle, for instance, defined eudaimonia as a kind of energeia, he thereby minimized the difference be-tween the telos considered absolutely and the human activity in relation to it; a certain form of human activity is the telos absolutely considered.34 Within Augustinian thought, the telos for creation absolutely considered was God; while the telos in relation to the human species was conceived of as the en-joyment of God’s happiness according to the specific faculties and properties of human nature. Can these parameters help us in finding some form of order in Anselm’s discussions of happiness as well? In my opinion, the fundamental text and cornerstone for Anselm’s meta-ethical position is found in his major theological treatises, the Monologion, Proslogion, and Cur deus homo. In these works, Anselm sets out to explicate central tenets of faith through the use of reason rather than by reference to Scripture.35 His main focus is on the rational proofs of the existence of a single highest being, which in perfect simplicity is both the highest essence

32 For Augustine’s use and definition of happiness in a formal, universal sense, see, e.g., his discussions in De doctrina christiana 1, De civitate Dei 19.1–3, and also the very perceptive discussions in Gilson, Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, 1–10, and in T. H. Irwin, “Splendid Vices? Augustine for and against Pagan Virtues,” Medieval Philosophy and Theol-ogy 8 (1999): 105–27, and Development, 397 ff. For the God of Christianity as the substantive fulfilment of the universal definition, see, e.g., Augustine, De civitate Dei 19.4 and 10 ff, and De beata vita 2.11, as well as Irwin, “Splendid Vices?”

33 See, for instance, Augustine, De libero arbitrio 2.36 and De moribus ecclesiae 1.3.5 ff,; and Gilson, Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, 3–24.

34 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.7 (1098a). 35 See, e.g., the preface to the Monologion.

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and the highest good, on which all creation depends and to which all creation should turn in loving obedience. As I read them, these works contain, in varying degrees, the various facets of Augustine’s notion of beatitude as de-scribed above. Let us first look at the formal and general definition of goodness and happi-ness. Like Augustine, Anselm starts from the assumption that everybody de-sires happiness, and that desired objects are apprehended as good on account of their perceived conduciveness to happiness.36 Happiness, furthermore, is that fullness of goods without any lack or impediment that forms the base of most classical notions of happiness as well as their Christian successors.37 These general statements, treated as self-evident, form the basis of Anselm’s demonstration in the Monologion of the existence of a highest, self-sufficient, and single good from which all goodness comes. If things are desired from their goodness, and goodness is the same quality predicated of all good things, and if goodness admits degrees, as it does, there has to be a best.38 If hap-piness could be defined as the enjoyment of goods, complete and pure hap-piness would then be the enjoyment of this highest good. It would be nonsensical for Anselm to deny that something could be better than another thing—for one thing, this would put orthodoxy and heresy on an unacceptable par. Therefore, there has to be a best, something that is good in itself and not by virtue of some other thing.39 Armed with this formal definition of the supreme good as that which all seek, which is good by virtue of itself, and from which all goodness origi-nates, Anselm proceeded to argue the case for the substantive definition ad-vanced by Christianity, identifying this highest good with God as the most reasonable. The only possible location for the supreme good is in the Supreme Being, God. God’s essence by necessity must be simple, as any elements in God’s constitution would be logically anterior to his being and hence prior to the first being, which would be absurd. God must therefore be goodness; goodness must be identical with the essence of God.40 God is thus to Anselm

36 Anselm, Monologion 1: “Etenim cum omnes frui solis iis appetant quae bona putant . . .” (ed. Schmitt in Opera omnia 1:13).

37 See, e.g., Anselm, De concordia 3.11. 38 This is in fact the opening statement of Anselm’s career as a theologian and philosopher,

from Monologion 1. See also, e.g., Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 9 vols. (Lon-don, 1946–66), 3:159; G. R. Evans, Anselm (London, 1989), 49–55; and Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh Cen-turies (Princeton, 1983), 336–37.

39 Anselm, Monologion 1–4. The argument in chap. 4 relies on a notion of infinite regress as absurd.

40 See, e.g., ibid., chaps. 3–4 and 16–17; and Copleston, History of Philosophy 3:161–62.


the only thing to be sought for his own sake alone, and the attainment of God is the only true beatitude. This feature is repeated in the Proslogion, albeit in a slightly different form and with a slightly different emphasis.41 The main focus in the Monologion as well as in the Proslogion is on the su-premacy and infinite goodness of God considered in himself. But towards the ends of both treatises, when the doctrine of God’s supremacy has been taken as long as human perception and reason is able to follow it, Anselm proceeds to discuss the highest good and supreme happiness in relation to his creation, the pinnacle of which was rational creatures. God is not only the supreme good in and of himself but is also the supreme good for human beings, and the proper way to seek beatitude in him is through that most Godlike of human faculties, the intellect.42 The goal for human life is to seek and love God for his own sake through the exercise of the intellect, and human beings as ra-tional creatures were created for this very purpose.43 As God’s true nature is beyond the direct perception of created beings,44 we can only attain knowl-edge of God through inspection of creation, and more so to the extent to which the thing inspected is similar to God.45 The rational mind is therefore unique both as that by which knowledge of God can be attained, and that from which such knowledge is derivable. It is both the mirror and the image of God, in that it is alone in creation in being capable of remembering, under-standing, and loving itself.46 But this self-directedness is not the purpose for which it was created:

41 E.g., Anselm, Proslogion 22 (ed. Schmitt in Opera omnia 1:116–17): “Et vita es et lux

et sapientia et beatitudo et aeternitas et multa huiusmodi bona, et tamen non es nisi unum et summum bonum”; and 25 (ed. Schmitt, 1:118): “Cur ergo per multa vagaris, homuncio, quaerendo bona animae tuae et corporis tui? Ama unum bonum, in quo sunt omnia bona, et sufficit. Desidera simplex bonum, quod est omne bonum, et satis est. Quid enim amas, caro mea, quid desideras, anima mea? Ibi est, ibi est, quidquid amatis, quidquid desideratis.” This statement is evocative of what is probably the best-known and most often quoted of all Augustine’s statements, Confessiones 1.1 (ed. L. Verheijen, CCL 27 [Turnhout, 1981], 1): “fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te.”

42 Cf. Anselm, Monologion 66 (ed. Schmitt, 1:77): “certum est quia per illud magis ad eius cognitionem acceditur, quod illi magis per similitudinem propinquat. . . . Patet itaque quia, sicut sola est mens rationalis inter omnes creaturas, quae ad eius investigationem assurgere valeat, ita nihilominus eadem sola est, per quam maxime ipsamet ad eiusdem inventionem proficere queat”; and 67 (ed. Schmitt, 1:78): “Omnino autem cogitari non potest rationali creaturae natu-raliter esse datum aliquid tam praecipuum tamque simile summae sapientiae, quam hoc quia potest reminisci et intelligere et amare id, quod optimum et maximum est omnium.”

43 See the text quoted in n. 47 below. 44 Anselm, Monologion 65–66. 45 Ibid. 66. 46 Ibid. 67.

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Furthermore, for a rational nature to be rational is nothing else than being able to distinguish the just from the unjust, the true from the untrue, the good from the not good, the greater good from the lesser good. This ability would be en-tirely useless and vacuous, unless it loved or rejected what it discerned ac-cording to the judgement of true discretion. Hence, therefore, it is seen clearly enough that all rational nature exists for this purpose, that just as it judges something through the discretion of reason to be more or less good or not good at all, so it also loves or rejects this same thing to the same degree. Nothing is, therefore, more clear than that rational creatures are made for this purpose, that they should love the Supreme Essence above all goods, as it is the highest good; or rather, that they should love nothing else but it or on account of it, for it is good in and of itself, and nothing is good except through it. But they will not be able to love it unless they remember it and strive to understand it. It is clear, therefore, that rational creatures ought to spend all their ability and will to remember, understand, and love the Supreme Good, for which purpose they acknowledge to have their existence.47

The human soul is obviously a rational creature; hence, it was created for the purpose of loving the highest essence.48 Through this love, if it is persever-ingly and tenaciously maintained, the human soul is able to attain blessedness, beatitudo.49 The natural end for human existence and human endeavour is the fullness of joy that can only be had through loving communion with God. God is the single, indivisible, and sufficient good for all creation, and the end for humanity is to participate in his fullness of happiness. This participation is

47 “Denique rationali naturae non est aliud esse rationalem, quam posse discernere iustum a

non iusto, verum a non vero, bonum a non bono, magis bonum a minus bono. Hoc autem posse omnino inutile illi est et supervacuum, nisi quod discernit amet vel reprobet secundum verae discretionis iudicium. Hinc itaque satis patenter videtur omne rationale ad hoc existere, ut sicut ratione discretionis aliquid magis vel minus bonum sive non bonum iudicat, ita magis aut mi-nus id amet aut respuat. Nihil igitur apertius quam rationalem creaturam ad hoc esse factam, ut summam essentiam amet super omnia bona, sicut ipsa est summum bonum; immo ut nihil amet nisi illam aut propter illam, quia illa est bona per se, et nihil aliud est bonum nisi per illam. Amare autem eam nequit, nisi eius reminisci et eam studuerit intelligere. Clarum ergo est ra-tionalem creaturam totum suum posse et velle ad memorandum et intelligendum et amandum summum bonum impendere debere, ad quod ipsum esse suum se cognoscit habere” (ibid. 68, ed. Schmitt 1:78–79); translations given in this paper are my own unless otherwise noted. For the sake of clarity, I have chosen to translate “rationalis creatura” as plural.

48 Ibid. 69. 49 Ibid. 69–70; cf. Anslem, Cur deus homo 2.1 ff. Again, the very same notion is present in

the Proslogion; see chap. 25 (ed. Schmitt, 1:120): “Sed si deum sic diligent tot corde, tota mente, tota anima, ut tamen totum cor, tota mens, tota anima non sufficiat dignitati dilectionis; profecto sic gaudebunt toto corde, tota mente, tota anima, ut totum cor, tota mens, tota anima non sufficiat plenitudini gaudii.”


attained through clinging lovingly to God for his own sake through the per-ception of the intellect and the strength and love of the will.50 If my reading of Anselm so far is valid, it seems to follow that happiness as Anselm conceives of it should not be relegated to the secondary role in the moral life that the deontological reading wants to confer on it. On the con-trary, there appear to be good reasons for ascribing a traditional eudaemonist notion of happiness to Anselm. For one thing, this is the most reasonable interpretation of the passages of the theological treatises mentioned above, where he quite clearly states that there is but one supreme good, and that the human soul was created to love this highest good to the best of its natural ability.51 This action of loving would thus constitute both true beatitude and conformation to God’s will.52 Anselm never explicitly retracts this view; it re-mains as a strong undercurrent throughout his literary and intellectual pro-duction. It is hard to reconcile his insistence on the absolute simplicity, supremacy, and goodness of God with an idea of two separate species of good. Whenever Anselm discussed goodness and happiness in themselves, happiness is presented as the highest good, or enjoyment of the highest good-ness, for humankind. There seems to be little or no grounds in the passages discussed above to suggest that there should be a higher good for human be-ings over and above happiness defined as the enjoyment of good. Whatever the definition of justice at play in Anselm’s discussions of moral psychology, the elevation of justice to the highest good for human kind would jar with the consonant accounts of goodness and happiness found in these theological treatises. That still does not, however, mean that the deontological reading has been shown to be mistaken. One may still claim, as Brower seems to do, that hap-piness for Anselm is wholly extrinsic to the moral life, and that it is awarded in the next life only to those who have renounced it in this.53 If this claim is

50 In this, then, Anselm follows his avowed model Augustine closely; cf., e.g., Augustine, De doctrina christiana 1.3–4, De beata vita 4.33–34, and De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus manichaeorum libri duo 1.19.

51 See pp. 11–12 and n. 47 above, and more generally, Anselm, Monologion 3–4 and 66–68. Anselm also repeats a very Aristotelian definition of beatitude in De concordia 3.13 (ed. Schmitt, 2:285): “In beatitudine . . . est sufficientia competentia commodorum sine omni indi-gentia. . . .” Cf. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 1.7 (1097b). See also Pouchet, La rectitudo chez saint Anselme, 194.

52 Cf. F. Vandenbroucke, La morale monastique du XIe au XVIe siècle (Louvain, 1966), 63: “La beatitudo coïncide avec la rectitudo définie comme il a été dit: elle est autre chose que le bien-être.” True beatitude is thus not to be identified with any kind of well-being, but of com-munion with God in a basically Augustinian sense.

53 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 240–41.

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sustainable, we may still envisage a deontological base for Anselm’s ethics in which happiness plays no part in moral motivation or the morally good tem-poral life. The fact that it is the supreme good for human beings needs then not enter into the account of ethics per se. On the other hand, even if Anselm sees happiness as something belonging only to the afterlife, it does not imme-diately follow that it plays no part in moral motivation. The impossibility of perfect happiness in this life is a common notion in Christian tradition and a cornerstone in Augustine’s rejection of classical pagan ethics, and hence Anselm’s propagation of this view does not suggest a uniqueness of outlook on his part.54 Anselm must be shown to have rejected happiness as a factor in legitimate human motivation in order for the deontological reading to be vin-dicated. To see whether Anselm’s moral psychology and practical ethics matches this criterion, we must move on to discuss the passages in which jus-tice and happiness are pitted against each other. Does Anselm here present justice as a good separable from happiness, and viable as moral motivation without happiness playing a part? We should note at the outset what kind of opposition between happiness and justice would be needed for the deontological thesis to be substantiated. If Anselm truly held that happiness as such may need to be renounced for the precepts of justice to be maintained, then he would need to show not only that the formal, universal definition of happiness could conflict with what the definition of justice prescribed, but that the specifically Christian, substantive definition of happiness is irreconcilable with the commandments of the spe-cifically Christian, substantive definition of justice in the context of moral motivation and the morally good life. If this criterion fails to be met, all that will be shown is that Christian justice demanded the rejection of the substan-tive content of classical, pagan ethics, very much like Augustine had argued in book 19 of De civitate Dei. Anselm’s definition of and preoccupation with justice is one of the defining features of his thought. His definition finds its most explicit expression in chapter 12 of De veritate. The overall purpose of this work is, as the title im-plies, to discuss truth. The main problem Anselm sets out to solve is what is meant when Scripture says that God is truth—do we thereby say that God is the truth of all things we call true? In other words, the purpose is yet again to show how the teaching of Scripture conforms to what reason can tell us.55 Anselm starts with defining the truth of propositions. The disciple of the dia-logue admits his inability to define truth beyond the realization that a state-

54 See particularly Augustine, De civitate Dei 19.4. 55 Anselm, De veritate 1.


ment is true and has truth inasmuch as it signifies as being that which actually is; that is, that it predicates being of actually existing things. The master leads his pupil towards a definition of truth as equalling rightness.56 To Anselm, a statement was right by virtue of the same quality by virtue of which it was true: its signifying as being that which actually is. Importantly, the argument behind this claim shows the fundamentally teleological notion of truth and rightness at the heart of Anselm’s thought: rightness is here identified with fulfilling one’s purpose, and functioning as one ought to function.57 Anselm proceeds to show that the same conditions obtain for the other usages of the predicate “true.” We say that thought is true if what is thought as being actu-ally is; the very purpose of our faculty of thought is our thinking of the actu-ally existing as being and of the not-existing as not-being.58 Therefore, our thought fulfils its purpose when it thinks of actually existing things as being; hence, the truth of thought is its rightness.59 Again, the argument relies on premises the sustainability of which is argued elsewhere—as we have already seen, the theological treatises argue in full the claim that rational nature is created for a specific purpose. Anselm then, crucially, moves on to discuss the truth of will: “But the Truth itself speaks of truth also in relation to will, when it says that the devil stood not in truth. For he was not in truth, nor did he desert truth, apart from in his will.”60 The will, like reason, was given to rational creatures for a spe-cific purpose. The devil’s defection from truth consisted in willing something other than that for which he had received a will, and hence something other

56 Ibid. 2 (ed. Schmitt in Opera omnia 1:178): “M. Ad quid facta est affirmatio? D. Ad sig-

nificandum esse quod est. M. Hoc ergo debet. D. Certum est. M. Cum ergo significat esse quod est, significat quod debet. D. Palam est. M. At cum significat quod debet, recte significat. D. Ita est. M. Cum autem recte significat, recta est significatio. D. Non est dubium. M. Cum ergo sig-nificat esse quod est, recta est significatio. D. Ita sequitur. M. Item cum significat esse quod est, vera est significatio. D. Vere et recta et vera est, cum significat esse quod est. M. Idem igitur est illi rectam et veram esse, id est significare quod est. D. Vere idem. M. Ergo non est illi aliud veritas quam rectitudo. D. Aperte nunc video veritatem hanc esse rectitudinem.”

57 See the text in the preceding note. The most important thing to note here is the apparent equivalence Anselm here finds between something functioning as it ought to, and its truth and justice.

58 Anselm, De veritate 3 (ed. Schmitt, 1:180): “Ad hoc namque nobis datum est posse cogitare esse vel non ese aliquid, ut cogitemus esse quod est, et non esse quod non est.”

59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 4 (ed. Schmitt, 1:180): “Sed et in voluntate dicit veritas ipsa veritatem esse, cum

dicit diabolum non stetisse ‘in veritate.’ Non enim erat in veritate neque deseruit veritatem nisi in voluntate.” Cf. Augustine’s shorter treatment of this problem in De civitate Dei 11.14–15. Anselm’s three dialogues, De veritate, De libertate arbitrii, and De casu diaboli, can be re-garded as extended commentaries on these passages of Augustine.

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than what he ought to will. Now, what the devil ought to will is identical with the rightness of his will. Therefore, the truth of the will, deserted by the devil, is the will’s rightness.61 The Bible also speaks of the truth of actions; Anselm duly demonstrates that the truth of actions is identical with their rightness, ac-cording to the same mode of reasoning as in the other cases.62 To round off this discussion of the various things of which truth is predicated, Anselm shows how things, inasmuch as they have their being from the Supreme Be-ing, also must have their truth from the Supreme Truth, and how this partici-pation in Truth constitutes what things ought to be, and hence that the truth of each individual thing is its rightness in relation to the Supreme Truth.63 To distinguish truth from related kinds of rightness, Anselm concludes by defin-ing truth as rightness perceptible only by reason.64 Having thus reached a definition of truth, Anselm moves on to discuss jus-tice. The disciple points out that the definition of truth makes it hard to distin-guish between rightness, truth and justice. Anselm concedes that these three concepts may mutually define each other.65 There are, however, some reserva-tions, in that there are some usages that should be reserved for each of the terms alone. Justice is usually invoked to apportion praise or blame; in that respect it differs from some of the usages of rightness and truth. Furthermore, praise or blame is awarded on the basis of the rightness of the will; justice must therefore be identical with the rightness of will. As we have seen, right-ness is the conformation to an appointed telos; rightness of will therefore means willing what one ought to do, or that for which one has been given will. This rightness should not, however, be praised if it is caused by external pressure or the hope of an exterior reward; the rightness of will that merits praise and hence is identical to justice is therefore aimed at rightness for its own sake.66 Justice, then, is rightness of will preserved for its own sake, recti-tudo voluntatis propter se servata.67 This definition is one of the main grounds invoked to support the deonto-logical reading. If justice should be loved exclusively for its own sake, then, it has been claimed, it cannot be loved for the sake of happiness.68 This is the crux of the matter, according to those who favour this interpretation of An-

61 Anselm, De veritate 4–5. 62 Ibid. 5. 63 Ibid. 7. 64 Ibid. 11. 65 Ibid. 12 (ed. Schmitt, 1:192): “. . . invicem sese definiunt veritas et rectitudo et iustitia.” 66 Ibid. 12. 67 Ibid. 68 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 241, cf. Kent, “Moral Life,” 236.


selm. They see Anselm as presenting a distinction between loving one’s own good and loving God as the highest good for his own sake and not for one’s own. Seen in conjunction with the distinction between the will for iustitia and the will for commodum from the passage of De casu diaboli quoted above, this definition has been seen as explaining why Anselm had to reject the pursuit of happiness in favour of the pursuit of justice. Justice is raised by Anselm to a good in itself to rival happiness. But is this the only possible in-terpretation here? In my opinion, both historical and textual considerations point in a rather more eudaemonist direction. As stated above, historical considerations do not prepare us for the clean break that an Anselmian deontology would entail, but rather they lead us to expect something more in line with the Augustinian eudaemonism to which we have seen some of his writings betray an affinity. This, however, is in itself no proof that the deontological reading is wrong. There are, in the main, three grounds for my preference of a more eudaemonist reading even of Anselm’s notion of justice. The first of these has to do with the arguments presented in modern scholarship concerning the incompatibility between the definition of justice given in De veritate and the eudaemonist aim for happi-ness, the second concerns the definition itself in relation to Anselm’s other writings, and the third has to do with the precise terms and formulations used in the crucial passages from De casu diaboli and De concordia. Crucial to our interpretation of Anselm’s definition of iustitia is how we should read the propter se servata clause. The deontological reading requires us to treat this as the raising of justice to the status of an end in itself, the highest good. The arguments presented to substantiate this claim, however, are not entirely convincing. Brower argues that Anselm introduces the will for justice to counter the problems that arise through loving happiness for its own sake—how, then, can we at the same time love God for his own sake?69 Only by loving justice for its own sake may we escape the fundamental sin of lov-ing happiness more than we love God. An obvious objection to this argument, acknowledged by Brower, is that there does not seem to be any significant difference between loving happiness for its own sake and loving justice for its own sake—in either case, we love some other thing more than we love God. Brower meets this objection by pointing out that the conception of God’s per-fect simplicity, to which Anselm clearly professes his adherence, holds that God’s rightness and justice is identical with God’s whole being. There is, then, no opposition between loving rightness for its own sake and loving God for his own sake. This, however, merely displaces the objection instead of

69 See the preceding note for references.

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overcoming it; does not this response also apply in the case of happiness? God’s happiness is also identical with his whole being according to Anselm’s theology. Brower argues that there is a subtle difference between the love of rightness and the love of happiness here: “To love God for the sake of happi-ness, as Anselm sees it, is not to love Him for the sake of the goodness with which He is identical (i.e., standard of goodness), but rather to love Him for the sake of one’s own goodness with which He is not identical.”70 It is diffi-cult to see how this claim can be vindicated, however. It appears that this ar-gument applies as much to rightness as to happiness. The doctrine of divine simplicity in which creatures participate partially and imperfectly does not open for a necessary distinction between justice and happiness on this score. Happiness, goodness, and justice exist perfectly and fully in God’s being and imperfectly and partially in the beings of creatures; and in the case of justice as well as happiness is it in principle possible to love either one’s own right-ness or God’s rightness—even though only the latter can be called true right-ness. Furthermore, as we have seen, the concept of happiness at play in Anselm’s texts ranges from the formal and universal definition which most paradigms of ancient ethics shared, to the specific and substantive definition of Augustinian Christianity. We cannot, therefore, prima facie claim that lov-ing happiness equals loving one’s own happiness, one’s own enjoyment of goods in general. It seems quite clear that a hedonistic notion of happiness would conflict with the demands of Christian justice; it does not follow that aiming for happiness as such is irreconcilable with having a just will. This is not, of course, on its own sufficient to show that Anselm did not envision such a distinction between justice and happiness—it only shows that such a notion would be problematic, whether he actually held it or not. There are, however, more positive indications that Anselm in fact did not harbour the view that has been ascribed to him. This can be seen if we move on to my second grounds for rejecting the perceived distinction between happiness and rightness in Anselm’s thought, the definition of justice itself. In the De veri-tate, rightness (rectitudo) is defined as doing what one ought to do, “facere quod debet.”71 Doing what one ought to do, moreover, is identified with doing that for which one was made.72 Anselm made it abundantly clear that rational creatures, including humans, were made “to love for eternity the Supreme

70 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 242. 71 Anselm, De veritate 2. 72 See in particular Anselm, De veritate 4 (ed. Schmitt, 1:181): “Nam si quamdiu voluit

quod debuit, ad quod scilicet voluntatem acceperat, in rectitudine et in veritate fuit . . .” (my emphasis).


Being” (“ut sine fine amet summam essentiam”).73 The inclusion of the phrase sine fine is important here. Anselm is here not only speaking of the love of God harboured in humanity’s temporal existence but also, and more perfectly, the eternal love and enjoyment in the eternal afterlife—which is identical with true beatitudo. Rightness, on this reading, is not so much a thing as an activ-ity; it is facere; it is amare. It is an extended and perseverant directing of the will towards its true object, imperfectly in this world but perfectly in the next. It is, moreover, the activity in which true beatitude consists. Aristotle fa-mously defined happiness as an “activity of the soul,”74 a definition which was retained by most subsequent philosophical schools. Although Anselm as far as we know never read Aristotle’s ethical works, it is not unreasonable on the basis of his own texts to find traces of a similar notion. If we thus con-ceive of rightness as a teleologically orientated activity directed towards God as the highest good, there is no longer any necessary opposition between willing happiness and willing justice. True happiness conceived of as partici-pation in God’s supreme happiness is the end of human life and endeavour; justice is the mode of willing that makes the realization of this end possible.75 From the characterization of justice as a stable, teleologically orientated ac-tivity it is but a small step to the doctrine of virtues so pervasive in classical and medieval Christian ethics. Even though Anselm does not address the issue in any detail, it is quite clear from his writings that he followed the classical and Christian traditions of ethics in conceiving of the moral character in terms of virtues, defined as stable habits of character aligning those who embodied them towards their own good.76 This is, admittedly, an aspect that is strangely absent from Anselm’s officially accepted canon, and one to which we need to devote more attention. While the preserved source material allow the devout monk and the profound thinker in metaphysical and mystical theology to stand out, the moral teacher is rather harder to glimpse. However, if the testi-mony of his biographer and erstwhile confidant Eadmer is to be credited, moral teaching was a task for which Anselm displayed both an ardent dedica-tion and a particular aptitude:

[Anselm] uncovered the origins, and, so to speak, the very seeds and roots and process of growth of all virtues and vices, and made it clearer than light how

73 Anselm, Monologion 69. 74 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.7 (1098a). 75 See also Goebel, Rectitudo. Wahrheit und Freiheit bei Anselm von Canterbury, 189–

280, esp. 269. Goebel here equates amor Dei propter seipsum, iustitia, and rectitudo voluntatis propter se servata, and sees these as the kind of love that leads towards beatitudo cum iustitia.

76 See the perceptive comments in Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 245 ff.

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the former could be attained and the latter avoided or subdued. . . . It is need-less to say how ready and how assiduous he was in holy exhortations, for it is said that, being himself indefatigable, he wore out almost all his listeners. . . .77

As Southern and Schmitt point out, this is precisely the program of the work known under the name De humanis moribus per similitudines, for a long time ascribed to Anselm himself.78 This work is in its present form almost certainly not an authentic, finished Anselmian work, but as it contains either Anselm’s own dictations to an amanuensis or notes made by one of his disciples, South-ern and Schmitt hold that it still provides an authentic presentation of Anselm’s practical ethics, in substance if not in the detail of expression.79 In De moribus, Anselm treats of human habits, mores, defined along the lines of the classical notion of virtues and vices: “Mores indeed are qualities of the soul which have been turned into stable habits. . . . Some of these habits are good, and some of them are evil. The good habits are called virtues, the evil are called vices. Virtues issue in good exterior acts, vices in evil.”80 The vir-tues and vices, then, are the mediating principles between the instrument of the will and its operation in singular acts. That being said, the individual vir-tues and vices are more taken for granted than explicitly treated even in this work. The main argument at play here is that a will correctly aligned with the will of God more or less necessarily issues in the growth of virtues which again are the principles of good actions. This lack of detailed discussions of the virtues, however, is not an anomaly for Anselm’s period and intellectual environment. It has rightly been claimed that Peter Abelard was the first twelfth-century thinker to treat virtue and virtues in detail; before his time, only the most general of classical and Augustinian definitions were preva-lent.81 The lack of detail should not be taken to mean that virtues were unim-

77 Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita s. Anselmi 1.8 (ed. and trans. R. W. Southern, The Life of St

Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury by Eadmer [London, 1962], 13–14): “Origines insuper et ipsa ut ita dicam semina atque radices necne processus omnium virtutum ac vitiorum detegebat, et quemadmodum vel hae adipisci, vel haec devitari aut devinci possent luce clarius edocebat. . . . Quam promptus vero atque assiduus in sanctis exortationibus fuerit, supervacuum est dicere, cum illum semper in ipsis infatigabilem omnes ferme audientes constet fatigasse. . . .”

78 Printed in Southern and Schmitt, eds., Memorials, 39–104. 79 See ibid., 4–8. 80 Anselm, De moribus 133–35 (Southern and Schmitt, eds., Memorials, 89): “Mores quip-

pe qualitates sunt animae in habitum iam redactae. . . . Horum autem morum alii boni, alii vero sunt mali. Boni ergo virtutes, mali ergo vitia dicuntur. Virtutes autem bona exterius opera, vitia vero pariunt mala.”

81 See Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, 6 vols. (Louvain, 1942–60), 3:99; cf. D. E. Luscombe’s introduction to Peter Abelard’s Ethics (Oxford, 1971), xxv.


portant; it rather seems to indicate that the time-honoured definitions of the classical and patristic writers were taken for granted. The passages from Eadmer’s eyewitness report as well as the “memorials” of Anselm’s active teaching show us that this complex of concepts was crucial to Anselm’s moral psychology and practical ethics. We are not, moreover, wholly reliant on evidence from reports and works of dubious authorship for our impression of Anselm’s reliance on virtues. As Brower points out, Anselm’s depiction of justice in the dialogues clearly is of “the sort of disposition that the medieval eudaimonists have in mind by vir-tue—that is, a stable disposition or habit for choosing what is right for the right reason.”82 Anselm’s ethics focus on God as the absolute and highest good; on the highest good for humanity conceived of as the enjoyment of God in the right way; and on the development of stable dispositions of will as the correct and proper way of developing towards human perfection. In this, Anselm was fundamentally a man of his own time and just as fundamentally removed from the moral paradigms of modernity. In regarding justice as a virtue, we also see yet another clear affinity to Augustinian thought in An-selm’s works. Augustine’s preoccupation with justice is well known, and the concept is central to some of his most important lines of reasoning.83 To Augustine, as to Anselm, justice was giving to each what was his or her due;84 and that meant above all to give everything to God, to whom everything was due.85 Moreover, regarding justice as a virtue conforms to what I have said earlier about justice being a mode of willing rather than an end in itself dis-tinct from goodness. But, pace Brower and others, the presentation of justice as a virtue does nothing to strengthen the deontological reading of Anselm. Anselm’s acknowledged master Augustine followed Cicero in claiming against the Stoics that virtue could not be its own end.86 The virtue of justice, then, required an end outside of itself as its necessary point of reference. If my reasoning above is tenable, it is not likely that Anselm saw this end as justice exclusive of happiness, but rather that happiness conceived as the participa-

82 Brower, “Anselm on Ethics,” 248. 83 See, e.g., Crouse, “Augustinian Background of St. Anselm’s Concept Justitia,” 116 ff. 84 See, e.g., Augustine, De civitate Dei 19.21 (ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, CCL 48 [Turn-

hout, 1955], 668): “Iustitia porro ea virtus est, quae sua cuique distribuit.” 85 See, e.g., ibid.: “Quae igitur iustitia est hominis, quae ipsum hominem Deo vero tollit et

immundis daemonibus subdit? Hoccine est sua cuique distribuere? An qui fundum aufert eius, a quo emptus est, et tradit ei, qui nihil habet in eo iuris, iniustus est; et qui se ipsum aufert domi-nanti Deo, a quo factus est, et malignis servit spiritibus, iustus est?”

86 For an exposition of Augustine’s doctrine of virtues in relation to the various classical alternatives, see Irwin, “Splendid Vices?”

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tion in God’s happiness was the end towards the attainment of which the vir-tue of justice played an indispensable part. It is the virtue-ethical background of Anselm’s ethics, then, which finally enables us to see how the opposition between justice and happiness that some scholars have found in his works is not a necessary feature of the true essences of these concepts. Having moved from an attempted definition of the telos and first principle of Anselm’s ethics to a consideration of how this may be linked to human moral psychology, we need to find a corresponding interpretation of the cru-cial passages from De casu diaboli and the De concordia which has formed the point of departure from the deontological interpretation. Let us therefore revisit the crucial passage from De casu diaboli 12:

M: He87 cannot be happy if he does not will happiness. But I speak now of happiness [sc. in general]: not happiness including justice, but what everybody wants, even the unjust. For all want their own well-being. But disregarding the fact that all creation is called good, two goods and two evils opposed to them are spoken of in common usage. One good is called justice, for which the contrary evil is injustice. The other good is that which to me seems possible to be called advantage, and this is opposed by the evil of disadvantage. But not everyone wills justice, and not everyone flees injustice. Not only all rational creatures but even all sentient creatures will advantage, and avoid disadvan-tage. For no one wills anything but what he in some way finds to be advanta-geous. In this way, therefore, all will their own well-being and avoid their own detriment. It is of this happiness I am now speaking, because no one may be happy who does not will happiness. For no one is made happy by having what he does not want, or not having what he wants. D: That cannot be denied. M: And he who does not want justice ought not to be happy. D: This is no less to be conceded.88

Several things must be noted here. First of all, the actual words and formula-tions used in this passage call for attention. Anselm is quite explicit in ex-pressing the precise status of the terms he defines. He carefully makes clear that he is dealing with common usage and shared moral language; he does not posit the two different goods of iustitia and commodum as two different meta-physical entities. These terms are “spoken of in common usage” (“usu dicun-tur”) and called (“dicitur”) or appear possible to be called (“videtur posse dici”). These are not the words of a thinker making a conscious and funda-

87 The “he” here refers to the devil, but this is clearly meant to have a general application. 88 See n. 9 above for the Latin text. See also Augustine’s treatment of this same problem in

De civitate Dei 11.


mental break with a long and ubiquitous tradition. In keeping with his method in all of the dialogues on liberty, justice, and free will, Anselm takes common usage and scriptural authority as his points of departure and uses something resembling Aristotelian dialectic to refine and define terms to show their rea-sonableness and usefulness.89 Seeming inconsistencies and contradictions within Scripture are revealed to rest on a harmonious unity consonant with reason and convention. Earlier in the chapter, Anselm made it clear that the two goods of beatitude and justice are one and the same good in the perfect simplicity of God;90 in the passage quoted above, the careful emphasis on us-age and language rather than metaphysics has the effect of escaping any pos-sible contradiction on this issue. Important for our purposes is also the claim that no one wills anything but what he finds to be advantageous (“nullus vult nisi quod aliquo modo sibi putat commodum”). This appears to place Anselm firmly within the tradi-tional eudaemonist moral psychology of Augustine and his followers; the primary object of will, the object that ultimately moves will to act, is happi-ness, or what is conceived of as happiness. No one wills at all unless one wills for something apprehended as good.91 Justice, then, is not an object that can move will to act unless it is apprehended as aliquo modo commodum. That does not mean that everything that is apprehended as good actually is good. We should note that Anselm here explicitly invokes the distinction be-tween the universal, formal notion of happiness and the substantive version of Christian thought. He makes it perfectly clear here that he is speaking about the former and not the latter—the kind of happiness “quam volunt omnes, etiam iniusti.” If this is so, the just must also want what is commodum; other-wise it would be senseless to emphasize that even the unjust aim for this good. This can be interpreted in two ways: either the just also aim for commodum, but through an act of will absolutely distinct from the act aiming for justice; or iustitia must be considered a species of commodum and hence in a sense subordinated to commodum. In this way, one could through the same act of

89 I am here relying on the interpretation of Aristotelian dialectics advanced in Terence H.

Irwin, Aristotle’s First Principles (Oxford, 1990). I do not mean to suggest that Anselm was actively following Aristotle or relying on Aristotelian texts, but simply that a number of fea-tures of Aristotle’s thought had become the common property of an entire intellectual culture.

90 Anselm, De casu diaboli 12 (ed. Schmitt, 1:253): “immo quoniam beatitudo et iustitia non sunt in illo diversa sed unum bonum.”

91 Cf. Thomist ethics and the entire Aristotelian tradition. This is also Gilson’s interpreta-tion of Anselm’s thought in this context; see his claim that to Anselm, the will for advantage is inseparable from the will, while the will for justice is separable (History of Christian Philos-ophy in the Middle Ages, 136).

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will aim for both commodum and iustitia, as a desire for a species necessarily entails a desire for part of the genus. Now if the two goods were in fact abso-lutely distinct, it would not be possible to seek them both through the same act of will. Anselm, however, quite explicitly states that such a convergence of will is possible. In chapter 14 of De casu diaboli, he explains through the voice of the magister of the dialogue that in order to render rational creatures responsible and potentially culpable, God had to make possible a convergence of the will for happiness and the will for justice,

so that the added justice would temper the will for happiness in such a way that it could contain the excess of the will for happiness without removing the power to exceed [what is just]. In this way, while the fact that he [Satan before the fall] wills for happiness enables him to exceed his bounds, through his justice he does not want to exceed them; and thus, having a just will for hap-piness, he both can and should be happy.92

The explicit possibility of having a just will to happiness, iusta beatitudinis voluntas, shows that the two kinds of goods cannot be absolutely distinct. Rather, iustitia must be encompassed by commodum in such a way that you can will for what is commodum without willing for what is just, but not vice versa. When Anselm discusses the counterfactual possibility that God may have given to rational creatures only the will for justice, he speaks of will’s objects not as iusta but as convenientia.93 From the fact, repeatedly stated, that everybody wills for what they apprehend as good, it follows that these con-venientia must be included by the commoda, as the goods that are licit and fitting objects for a just will. This reading is consistent with the variation of meanings of “happiness” discussed above. According to the formal and universal definition, happiness consists of the enjoyment of goods. Commoda, being goods that may be en-joyed, is a group encompassing all potential objects of will. As all things ac-cording to the doctrine of participation have goodness to the degree that they have being, everything that exists has some measure of goodness that may be enjoyed. At the same time, however, both reason and revelation prescribes that God, the highest good, is to be loved for his own sake exclusively, and

92 Anselm, De casu diaboli 14 (ed. Schmitt, 1:258): “. . . necesse est ut sic faciat deus

utramque voluntatem in illo convenire, ut et beatus esse velit et iuste velit. Quatenus addita iustitia sic temperet voluntatem beatitudinis, ut et resecet voluntatis excessum et excendi non amputet potestatem. Ut cum per hoc quia volet beatus esse modum possit excedere, per hoc quia iuste volet non velit excedere, et sic iustam habens beatitudinis voluntatem possit et debeat esse beatus.”

93 Ibid.


nothing is to be loved unless on account of this highest good. At this point, we should keep in mind the distinction between the highest good considered ab-solutely and considered in relation to human kind. God, the highest good, is good per se, self-sufficiently and uniquely, and created things have their natu-ral goodness through participation in the highest good. This does not mean that these secondary goods necessarily are conducive for human beings to the highest good. For Anselm justice is, as we have seen, to love God first and creation only in relation to God. This imposes a categorical limitation on the goods that may be legitimately enjoyed; this, again, means that only those who are discriminate in the objects they desire and suborn their own will to that of God has that just will for true beatitude that is the realization of God’s ultimate purpose for rational creatures. Everybody shares the will to happi-ness; only the just have the correct mode of willing true happiness.94 The account of the devil’s fall from grace illustrates this point. It was in Anselm understanding a failure to preserve a just will, a will to the goods which rational creatures ought to pursue, that the devil sinned and fell: “Therefore, he sinned through willing a certain advantage which he did not have, and should not at that point will, but which nevertheless could add to his happiness.”95 In a world where everything is good in itself, everything is potentially an object of will, even those things the desire for which might lead a rational mind away from the love of God. The attempt to satisfy the desire for such things, chosen for their own sake instead of for God’s, was the root of the fall of the devil. The final clause in this last quotation must be seen in conjunction with the various levels of specificity in the definitions of happi-ness; the goods for which the devil reached unjustly could not add to his true, eternal and perfect happiness—in fact, reaching for them deprived him of them forever leaving him eternally miserable—but, in being great goods, they could add to happiness defined formally as the enjoyment of goods. Good could for Anselm not be per se contrary to good,96 which would be the conse-quence of reading this statement as saying that the enjoyment of illicit goods added to the devil’s happiness correctly and substantively understood. Again, then, Anselm is speaking of happiness in terms of moral psychology and mo-tivation instead of positing several irreducible categories of good.

94 For a similar argument, see Rogers, “Anselm on Eudaimonism,” 256–57. 95 Anselm, De casu diaboli 4 (ed. Schmitt, 1:241): “Peccavit ergo volendo aliquod commo-

dum, quod nec habebat nec tunc velle debuit, quod tamen ad augmentum illi beatitudinis esse poterat”; cf. Augustine’s treatment of this same problem in De civitate Dei 11.14–15 and 17.

96 Cf., for instance, De casu diaboli 12, and the appendix to De moribus, in Southern and Schmitt, eds., Memorials, 94–97.

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In De concordia, Anselm explicitly states that he is speaking of the psy-chology of human actions, and thus that he is not making a magisterial pro-nouncement on the metaphysical doctrine of good—which he had treated quite adequately elsewhere. Furthermore, the analogies he employs to clarify what he means by the will’s two inclinations or affectiones show that he is not envisioning the will-for-beatitude and the will-for-justice as watertight com-partments:

For just as sight has several capacities—that is, to see light, and, through light to see figures and colours—so the instrument of will has two capacities, which I call affectiones: of which one is the capacity to will for benefit [commodi-tas], the other to will for righteousness. For the will, regarded as an instru-ment, certainly does not will anything but the beneficial or the righteous. Whatever it wills beyond these, it wills on account of its benefit or righteous-ness; and to these, even if it is mistaken, it purports to refer whatever it wills. Through the inclination to will what is beneficial, the human being always wills blessedness and to be blessed: through the one which inclines towards righteousness, he wills righteousness, and to be righteous, that is, just. On ac-count of the beneficial, he wills particular things, as when he wills to plough or to work, so that he may have what he needs to ensure life and health, which he considers beneficial; on account of righteousness, he wills to strive at learning, so that he may know how to live rightly or justly.97

The parallel to vision shows that the two inclinations need not be on par with each other; one may be suborned to the other, in the way seeing colours and figures is suborned to seeing light. Anselm’s insistence that the will for justice is needed to ensure that the will for beatitude truly is conducive to its aim shows that he envisions such an order between the will’s two inclinations as well. Moreover, at no point does Anselm speak of two rival versions of good, or of a duty to do right divested from the desire to be happy. Rather, the will-to-rightness is the ordering principle through which the will-to-beatitude is directed at its appointed end.98 If my readings of Anselm are correct, then, we see that the main claims of the deontological interpretation fail to be vindicated by the source material. Happiness need not be seen as necessarily distinct from justice; the definitions of the two may on the contrary be seen as converging in the Augustinian defi-nition of beatitude and the true end of human kind. As I see it, the fundamen-tal error behind the deontological interpretation is reading the passages from De casu diaboli and De concordia quoted above as propositions of meta-

97 Anselm, De concordia 3.11; see n. 9 above for the Latin text. 98 See Rogers, “Anselm on Eudaimonism,” 257–59.


physical theology explaining moral psychology rather than propositions of moral psychology intended to eliminate certain potential contradictions from metaphysical theology. The stated purpose of the three dialogues on truth, free will, and the fall of the devil is not to propose a new meta-ethics or meta-physics, but to see how certain apparent contradictions in Scripture in fact are consistent with each other, reason, and orthodox doctrine.99 Through showing that God had instilled the will to beatitude as well as the will to justice in ra-tional creatures, and that the will to beatitude must have the will to justice as its guiding principle, Anselm was able to demonstrate at least to his own satis-faction that free will was possible for rational creatures, and that even if will was granted by God, sin originated in the sinners themselves. This was con-sonant with Augustinian doctrine, and other thinkers in the centuries follow-ing Anselm would make many of the same points but in different ways and from different principles. Within Thomist ethics, good and happiness was the object of will for all, but the guidance of right reason was necessary in order to attain will’s desired end. This could only be done through an inculcation of the virtues, of which justice was certainly of supreme importance.100 Although Anselm expressed his moral thought with a very different emphasis and with-out the systematic exposition of the virtues that is so striking in for instance the pars prima secundae of Thomas’s Summa theologiae, he arguably may be portrayed as having thought along the same basic lines of argument. Despite my criticisms here, recent research on Anselm has provided many valuable insights and perceptive readings. Still, important elements have been missed. Anselm’s preserved works were not written to present a systematic doctrine of ethics, and they need to be seen in their original context to be un-derstood correctly. The deontological reading rests on the removal of key pas-sages from their original, Augustinian context and reading them as part of an artificial and anachronistic discourse on duty. Unless the historical dimension is taken into account, the full significance of central propositions will invaria-bly be lost. If my argument so far is tenable, the apparently revolutionary moral doctrine of Anselm of Aosta may validly be read as conforming to the Augustinian tradition that was the core of the intellectual milieu in which Anselm lived, and in which his potential readership predominantly moved. It is in this tradition we must look for the light to clarify Anselm’s more obscure arguments; and in this light, I would argue, the obscurity may be eliminated.

99 See the preface to De veritate. 100 For Thomist ethics see, e.g., Gilson, Thomism, 287 ff. Ralph M. McInerny, Aquinas on

Human Action: A Theory of Practice (Washington, D.C, 1992); and Irwin, Development, 434–652.

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Finally, it must be pointed out that, although monastic devotion for Anselm called for a very real renunciation of a great number of goods, this austerity did not lead Anselm to reject the possibility of attaining at least echoes of the perfect beatitude that the just would enjoy in the afterlife.101 We have seen that happiness was defined as the enjoyment of God through the specifically human faculties of reason and will. Although Anselm emphasized the perfect beatitude to come, I find it fitting to conclude with a report from Eadmer sug-gesting that Anselm himself experienced a fleeting glimpse of such joy through devout and humble contemplation:

. . . it came into his mind to try and prove by one single and short argument the things which are believed and preached about God, that he is eternal, un-changeable, omnipotent, omnipresent, incomprehensible, just, righteous, mer-ciful, true, as well as truth, goodness, justice and so on; and to show how all these qualities are united in him. And this, as he himself would say, gave him great trouble, partly because thinking about it took away his desire for food, drink, and sleep, and partly—and this was more grievous to him—because it disturbed the attention which he ought to have paid to matins and to Divine service at other times. When he was aware of this, and still could not entirely lay hold on what he sought he supposed that this line of thought was a tempta-tion of the devil and he tried to banish it from his mind. But the more vehe-mently he tried to do this, the more this thought pursued him. Then suddenly one night during matins the grace of God illuminated his heart, the whole matter became clear in his mind, and a great joy and exultation filled his in-most being.102

Anselm immediately went to write down the new ideas, which ended as the Proslogion. Anselm’s theological treatises, therefore, represent both the phi-losophical consecration of monastic life, and the mystical reward for such a life. To him, the spiritual joys that devotion and contemplation could bring were the closets a human being could come to experiencing vera beatitudo in this life. A life lived in humble devotion could, on rare occasions, yield im-measurable rewards. The seemingly paradoxical realization that happiness may be found in austere asceticism is arguably what guides Anselm in his moral teaching while making him a difficult figure to interpret for modern minds. University of Bergen.

101 Brower seems to hint at such asceticism in “Anselm on Ethics,” 240–41. 102 Eadmer, Vita s. Anselmi 1.19 (ed. and trans. Southern, 29–30).

ut sine fine amet summam essentiam - the eudaemonist ethics of st. anselm

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