AQUINAS’ CONCEPTION OF THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING:

A MORE CONSIDERED REPLY TO LOVEJOY

Oliva Blanchette

When Arthur Lovejoy published his study of the history of the idea
of The Great Chain of Being in 1936,1 he created somewhat of a stir
among followers of St. Thomas Aquinas. In his account he presented
Aquinas as having tried to hold two different conceptions of the
universe as a whole that were irreconcilable with one another, and
of thereby leaving us with the “painful spectacle of a great intellect
endeavoring by spurious or irrelevant distinctions to evade the con-
sequences of its own principles, only to achieve in the end an express
self-contradiction” (GCB 78).
Of course, St. Thomas was no longer there to defend himself. But
there were Thomists who came to his defense. Edward Mahoney has
drawn up a list of these replies as of 1982 in a footnote to his study
of the “Hierarchy of Being According to Some Late-medieval and
Renaissance Philosophers”.2 In brief, Pégis was first to reply in his
1939 Marquette Aquinas Lecture,3 then Veatch several years later in
“A Note on the Metaphysical Grounds for Freedom”,4 and then Pégis
once again in two more articles. Most of these contributions were fol-
lowed by a rejoinder from Lovejoy.5 The argument could have gone on

1
Cf. A. J. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea,
Cambridge (Mass.) 1936, to be cited here as GCB according to the Harper Torchbook
edition of 1960.
2
E. P. Mahoney, “Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being According
to Some Late-Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers”, in: P. Morewedge (ed.), Phi-
losophies of Existence Ancient and Medieval, New York 1982, pp. 165–257, footnote 1.
3
Cf. A. C. Pégis, Saint Thomas and the Greeks, Milwaukee 1939.
4
Cf. H. Veatch, “A Note on the Metaphysical Grounds for Freedom, with Special
Reference to Professor Lovejoy’s Thesis in The Great Chain of Being”, in: Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 7 (1946), pp. 391–412, followed by Lovejoy’s reply, “The
Duality of the Thomistic Theology: A Reply to Mr. Veatch”, in: ibid., pp. 413–438.
5
Cf. A. C. Pégis, “Principale Volitum: Some Notes on a Supposed Thomistic Con-
tradiction”, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 9 (1948), pp. 51–70, followed
by Lovejoy’s “Necessity and Self-Sufficiency in the Thomistic Theology: A Reply to
President Pégis”, in: ibid., pp. 71–88; and “Autonomy and Necessity: A Rejoinder
to Professor Lovejoy”, in: ibid., pp. 89–97, followed by Lovejoy’s “Comment on
Mr. Pégis’s Rejoinder”, in: ibid., pp. 284–290.
156 oliva blanchette

forever, each side armed with its own texts from Aquinas seemingly
opposed to one another, the Thomists insisting on the side of freedom
in creation and Lovejoy insisting on the side of necessity in the created,
without any suggestion of how the two might be reconciled in the
idea of a single created universe representing the divine perfection and
goodness ad extra through a diversity and multiplicity of forms. The
exchange of salvos was stopped by the editors, who had had enough
of it and allowed Pégis the last word in a “Postscript”6 that settled
nothing and only re-emphasized a gap in understanding between the
two sides.
More recently, after Mahoney’s summation of the earlier debate,
I too have offered a reply to Lovejoy in the context of a more com-
plete exposition of Aquinas’ conception of the Perfection of the Uni-
verse.7 Lovejoy was no longer present to offer a rejoinder to that and
no one has come forth to take up the side of Lovejoy since then, even
though there is a lot to be said for the idea of necessity in the great
chain of being that he saw in Aquinas and that Thomists objected to
in their response to Lovejoy. It may be that the debate was closed too
soon, before the fullness of Aquinas’ thinking on the subject could
be brought out, since in fact Aquinas writes a great deal both about
necessity in the created universe and about freedom in the act of cre-
ating. In their rejoinder to Lovejoy, Pégis and Veatch were too quick
to accept on face value the opposition as set up by Lovejoy between
the different conceptions of the universe and to uphold one side of
the opposition, supposedly the Christian one about freedom, against the
other, supposedly the Greek one about necessity. Pégis’ and Veatch’s
tactic left Lovejoy free to continue to maintain that the problem with
Aquinas lay, not in accepting either one of the conceptions rather than
the other, but in trying to hold on to both at the same time. What
was not asked was whether Lovejoy’s way of setting up the opposition
between the two conceptions was in fact adequate. Could it not be that
the voluntary or ‘free’ creationist view of Aquinas required necessity
in the universe, and could it not be that the supposedly more rational

6
Ibid., pp. 291 sqq.
7
Cf. O. Blanchette, The Perfection of the Universe According to Aquinas: A Teleo-
logical Cosmology, Pennsylvania 1992, pp. 128–140.