On The Argument From Gradation
I am, granted, a bit undecided on the profundity and utility of this argument, but I find it one of the more entertaining ones, if I may, as it regards aesthetic judgments we use frequently in everyday life. Perhaps, it is those aesthetic implications within this argument which, in my mind, make the characterization of “entertaining” appropriate.
Aquinas states:
“The fourth way is taken from gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and less good, true, noble and the like. But ‘more’ and ‘less’ are predicated of different things according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is the hottest; so that there is something which is the truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is the uttermost being; for those things that are the greatest in truth are the greatest in being, as it is written in [Aristotle’s] Metaphysics ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all other beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.”
–Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. ii. 3.
Quite briefly, we’ll take notice of the Argument From Cause being present in Aquinas’ explanation, and the prior causal exploration may help in illustrating how this works. In Aquinas’ statement here he speaks not only of causality for being but also of cause for the attributes within a thing. It is these attributes and adjectives where gradation is applied, and a relative relationship assumed.
Aquinas cites Aristotle, who wrote:
“It is right also that philosophy should be called knowledge of the truth. For the end of theoretical knowledge is truth, while that of practical knowledge is action (for even if they consider how things are, practical men do not study the eternal, but what is relative and in the present). Now we do not know a truth without its cause; and a thing has a quality in a higher degree than other things if in virtue of it the similar quality belongs to the other things as well (e.g. fire is the hottest of things; for it is the cause of the heat of all other things); so that [which] causes derivative truths to be true is most true. Hence the principles of eternal things must always be most true (for they are not merely sometimes true, nor is their any cause of their being, but they themselves are the cause of the being of other things), so that as each thing is in respect of being, so is it in respect of truth.”
–Aristotle, Metaphysics, II, 1.
Implicit in both Aquinas and Aristotle are a few forms of being, and each form has a truth value, based on an ability for change. A thing is labeled most true, or properly True, if it remains in a constant state, not affected, but producing an effect in everything else. A thing is less true if it is sometimes true and sometimes not, such as found in gradation. A thing might be more good or less good depending on a relative object, thus its attribution of good would be subject to change. This places it firmly in the plane of gradation. In addition, these imply something less true, or even never true, something impossible and by being impossible, unable to produce effect.
An example of one argument borrowing from Aquinas’ fourth way is called the Argument From Beauty. We will start from the premise of finding something beautiful in nature, say a mountain, glen, forest, or meadow. You might look at these things and say to yourself or another, “That is beautiful.” However, let us further suppose you are on a hike, and you encounter another scenic overlook, and you declare, “This is more beautiful than the other.” The Argument For Beauty states these words and distinctions have no meaning unless there is some ultimate beauty responsible for gifting beauty in other things and is therefore the most beautiful. These gradations of beauty and indeed other gradations wouldn’t exist if their maximum wasn’t found in something.
We might say there is not an ultimate object of gradation, and we need not recognize ultimate beauty, even if it did exist, since, after all, even the Bible suggests nobody has completely experienced it. Yet, Aquinas and Aristotle might argue there is a difference between the superficial relative judgments between two things and the implications of those judgments beyond the practical and present. A difference between temporary epistemological beauty and eternal ontological beauty. They reason these judgments would not exist without the ultimate beauty, truth, or what-have-you, existing, nor would we even be able to conceive of them without the source object of gradation giving them to us.
I suppose, regarding my own thoughts and initial impressions on the arguments from gradation and beauty in particular, I might well be in error. Some find the arguments from beauty to go quite beyond personal tastes to negatively afflict those who paradoxically find beauty in its absence. It may not be as harmless as it seems, though it could reasonably be pondered if it is the cause, or merely symptomatic. Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) saw this movement of the degeneracy of the arts arise and reasoned it falls in step with the state of culture and people. He dated the emergence of this to be parallel to the rise in prominence of the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
William Lane Craig writes:
“According to Schaeffer, there can be traced in recent Western culture a ‘line of despair,’ which penetrates philosophy, literature, and the arts in succession. He believes the root of the problem lies in Hegelian philosophy, specifically in its denial of absolute truths….In Schaeffer’s view, Hegel’s system undermined the notion of particular absolute truths (such as ‘That act is morally wrong’ or ‘This painting is aesthetically ugly’) by synthesizing them into the whole. This denial of absolutes has gradually made its way through Western culture. In each case, it results in despair, because without absolutes man’s endeavors degenerate into absurdity. Schaeffer believes that the Theatre of The Absurd, abstract modern art, and modern music…are all indications of what happens below the line of despair.”
–William Lane Craig, “Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics.” Third Edition. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010. Page 70.
When regarding Aquinas’ five ways, the absence of the Moral Argument is glaring. There are numerous apologists, such as Frank Turek, who cite the Moral Argument as being one of the most important arguments for the existence of God today, and its absence from Aquinas’ five ways might seem as some sort of shortfall. It must be remembered, though, this argument wasn’t formally formulated until Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Kant didn’t seek to prove God’s existence by it, only His necessity for justifying morality. Yet gradation is not necessarily absent altogether either, since the Argument From Gradation does indeed specifically reference what is “good” and what is “noble.”
While the Moral Argument does more than address its relative distinctions, as morally good, better, or worse, it does go beyond by reaching a God or Supreme Mind for the existence of moral judgments. Yet, in many of these arguments, say from Kant, C.S. Lewis, and Hastings Rashdall, who was purportedly the first to use the Moral Argument to construct a proof of God, they all use elements of gradation in their syllogisms and logical constructions.
In essence, extremes must exist for things to be judged on a spectrum, or through gradation. The true, good, and beautiful extreme is what we call God.
Brandon Devotional 