Q5A1 & 2 -- Whether goodness differs really from being? Whether goodness is prior in idea to being?

OK, so this is actually one of those interesting questions.  The form it might take in another conversation--the one that got the generation of Ockham into all sorts of difficulties--could be something like, "Is whatever God creates, good?  Or does God choose good things to create?"  But Thomas is going to spare us the conflation of two quite different matters that lie hidden in that question, by carefully abstracting one set of differences from another.

So, then, saying something is, and is good, is not repetitive, because to the idea of actually being we now add the idea of being desireable:

a thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their own perfection. But everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Therefore it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it exists; for it is existence that makes all things actual [. . .]. Hence it is clear that goodness and being are the same really. But goodness presents the aspect of desirableness, which being does not present.  (Q5A1)

So our craftsman with the insight and skill to realize the potential table in a block of wood is only likely to make the table if he thinks the table will be desireable. 
As a thought experiment, we can alter the conditions a bit more, and see that an unskilled person imitating the craftsman might well know that the potential for a table exists in the block of wood, but may know well that his skills will not yield a desireable table.  Or a craftsman sitting in prison may well be forced to make a table, but he cannot be forced to consider it good (in fact, as long as it depends on his insight and skill, he cannot even be forced to make what he considers a good table--only to make what his captors consider good, if that is a realizable potential of the block of wood).


We will have to stretch a bit beyond the usual bounds of our craftsman analogy to get to the next one, though.  Well, OK, we can settle for the simplest version, and point out that only once the craftsman comes to consider the actual block of wood's potential to be an actual table can the craftsman consider whether a table made from that block of wood, or made with his current level of insight and skill, would be a good table.  Sure, the craftsman could fantasize endless tables, but those fantasies in no way represent knowledge about his insight and skill, or about the potential in the block of wood.  Only as the craftsman's insight and skill are brought to bear on the block of wood, first speculatively, then practically, does the table become susceptible of the term "good."

the first thing conceived by the intellect is being; because everything is knowable only inasmuch as it is in actuality. Hence, being is the proper object of the intellect, and is primarily intelligible; as sound is that which is primarily audible.  (Q5A2)

And, of course, this makes perfect sense insofar as our craftsman is a distant analogy for our Creator, who "formed all creatures with his Word, / And then pronounc'd them good."

Incidentally, I am convinced that various sidetracks and missed truths explain the resemblance of both the best of Continental Philosophy (especially here Heidegger) and the most rigorously developed Buddhist thought (especially here the Kyoto School) to certain key movements in Thomistic thought. 

Specifically, when it comes to his writing about the work of art as primarily work, with a certain ontological character prior to the experience of the viewer, I think Heidegger is converging with Thomas after centuries of philosophical alienation.  I find it intriguing that in this context I find Heidegger characterized as an "ethical realist."


While at the same time, when it comes to what I have been taught to call "dependent co-origination," or the doctrine of the twelve nidanas, Buddhism seems to converge with Thomas while also, I think, drawing the wrong lesson from the priority of being over goodness in conceptual order.  Because desireability depends on actuality, Buddhism seems to conclude that potentiality without desire would be preferable to sub-par actualization based on moribund desire; which, I suppose, would be a pretty decent option to hope for, if there were no always already actual God in the mix. 
Just a thought.