Dist. 1, Art. 2, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/1/q/bon-sent-I-d1-a2-q1
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### Article II. *What enjoyment is.*

Having treated of *use* and *the useable*, the inquiry next concerns *enjoyment* and *the enjoyable*, and first, what *enjoyment* is essentially — namely, whether it is an act of the will, or of the other powers.

### Sole Question. *Whether enjoyment is an act of the will, or of the other powers.*

1. That it is an act of the will is shown by the first definition, which is: *To enjoy is to cleave by love,* etc.; but love is of the will: therefore *enjoyment* likewise. If you say that love is taken there commonly, according as it is in any power whatever with respect to its own act; against this: in all the other definitions the same is said. Hence it is said in what follows: «We enjoy things known, in which the will, delighted, comes to rest.» But rest is of the will.

And in another likewise: «To enjoy is to use with joy.» But joy belongs properly to the will.

2. Likewise, it is shown by reason: because by fruition we are delighted, according as the delightful is a difference of the good, since the good is the honorable, the useful, and the delightful; but the good is the object of the will: therefore *to enjoy* is of the will alone.

3. Likewise, we enjoy that by which we come to rest; but rest regards the formal character of an end, «and an end the formal character of the good», and «the good is the object of the will»: therefore fruition, which orders to that, likewise.

**On the contrary:**

1. Every power seeks to be united to its object, and, this being had, is delighted (if it knows) and comes to rest: therefore motion together with rest and delight belongs to all the powers: therefore, since fruition is such, fruition will be in all, not only in the will;

2. Likewise, the absence of the loved thing rather grieves the lover than delights him; for what delights him is the fact that he sees it and has it. If therefore the motion of fruition is with delight, or is delight itself: therefore this is so because he sees that in which is the delight itself; but vision regards the cognitive [power]: therefore, etc.

3. Likewise, Augustine in the book *On Christian Doctrine*: «This is the highest reward, that we may enjoy himself.» But upon that of the Psalm: *I will show him my salvation,* etc., the Gloss says that «vision is the whole reward»: therefore if fruition is the reward, fruition is vision essentially; but vision is in the cognitive [power] or in reason: therefore, etc.

4. Likewise, by faith and hope we tend toward God: therefore either by enjoying or by using; but not by using, since God is not to be used: therefore by enjoying: therefore by faith and hope we enjoy; but faith is a habit of cognitive reason; but whose is the habit, his is the act: therefore the act of fruition is an act of reason; the same seems to be the case for the irascible [power]: therefore, etc.

### Conclusion.

> *To enjoy*, taken essentially, is an act of the will; taken dispositively, it is an act also of the other powers.

**I respond:** According to some *enjoyment* pertains to all the powers; and this they say, because all the powers will be rewarded; who say also that in glory it will be more properly of reason, because reason has a more immediate relation to delight.

But it seems must be said otherwise according to Augustine, namely that it is an act of the will itself. For since three definitions of *to enjoy* are given, all are given in terms of an act of the will, which can be considered in three ways. *First*, commonly, inasmuch as it signifies motion with delight; and thus Augustine defines it: «To enjoy is to use with joy.» *Secondly*, inasmuch as it signifies motion with rest; and in this way it is defined by Augustine in *On Christian Doctrine*: «To enjoy is to cleave by love to some thing for its own sake»; and in this way it is taken *properly*. *Thirdly*, it is taken inasmuch as it embraces both, namely rest and delight; and in this way it is defined by Augustine in book ten *On the Trinity*: «To enjoy is to come to rest in things known, the will being delighted for their own sake»; and so it is taken *most properly*.

Since, therefore, *to enjoy* according to every acceptation signifies delight or rest or both, and every such thing has the formal character of the good, and this is the object of the will: therefore, speaking essentially, *to enjoy* is an act of the will. But since the will is not delighted and does not come to rest except in that which it knows either by faith or by sight, and in that which it has by hope or in reality, therefore the acts of the other powers dispose toward this, but are not *enjoyment* itself, speaking essentially.

From this is clear the solution to that which is commonly wont to be asked: why *enjoyment* is not defined by an act of cognition, as it is by [an act of] delight. Yet this ques-

tion is founded upon a falsehood. For Augustine in one notification puts what is of cognition, when he says: «To enjoy is to come to rest in things known»; yet it falls in there as a disposition.

From this also is clear why it is not defined by faith and hope, as it is by charity, because charity is brought into the concupiscible [power], to which *enjoyment* belongs. Yet this question likewise is founded upon a falsehood, since the love by which *enjoyment* is defined is common to chaste love and to lustful love, by which the miser enjoys gold — not proper to charity itself.

**To the opposites:**

1. To that, then, which is objected, that every power has [the capacity] to be delighted and to come to rest when it is united to its object; it must be said that the will itself, as Augustine holds, loves for itself and for the others. And as Anselm also says: «The will inclines the other powers and merits for the others»; therefore its rest and delight redound to the other powers. Hence, just as the will does not know for itself, but reason knows for itself and for the will, so the will is delighted for itself and for reason, and makes reason come to rest.

2. To that which is objected, that the lover does not enjoy unless he sees or has [the beloved]; it must be said that to see and to have are required for *enjoyment*, likewise also to love. For if anyone sees something and has it, he is never delighted unless he loves; but vision is required otherwise than love. For vision disposes, likewise too holding, but love offers the delights. Hence it is, as it were, a piercing sharpness, and therefore it most befits it to unite and consequently to delight and to bring to rest: therefore essentially, not dispositively, it is fruition. On account of which it must be understood that the act of the will can be considered in two ways, namely by way of appetite and of complacency. In the first way it can precede the vision itself; in the second it follows, and in this is the perfect formal character of fruition itself, namely in the complacency of the thing seen and had.

3. To that: *Vision is the whole reward*; it must be said that this is not said properly, but by concomitance, because vision and complacency, in which is the perfect formal character of fruition, are inseparably connected.

4. To that which is objected, that by faith and hope we enjoy; it must be said that this is not true *per se*, because each of these receives its character of tending from charity; whence fruition does not arise from these except through charity. For charity alone considers the end under the formal character of end and of object. Hence no one is said to *hope for* God, as [he is said to] *love* [Him].