Thomas's Proemia: Logic as the Art of Arts and Its Division by the Three Acts of Reason

Orientation #

He refers back to “the proemium to the wisdom” and “the proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics” (the four orders) as already seen, and to Shakespeare’s account of reason as “the ability for discourse” (prev. lecture). Looking ahead: the finer treatment of dialectical and rhetorical arguments is deferred “when we get down to that text of Aristotle there in the beginning of the Posterior Analytics”; the class closes turning to “some of these short texts on logic.” The texts read are Thomas’s proemia to the Peri Hermeneias and the Posterior Analytics, from the handout “The Proemia to Logic” (verified source). The next class continues with Thomas on Boethius’s De Trinitate on logic as art and tool.

The class, in order #

1. What a proemium is; Thomas’s two logic commentaries (“only two works of Aristotle’s in logic”) #

Point: “proemium” is best rendered “paving the way”; Plato gives one to the Timaeus, almost every Aristotelian work has one, and Thomas, when commenting, explains Aristotle’s proemium and adds his own, which stands back further and situates the work in the whole of our knowledge.

• Thomas commented on only two of Aristotle’s logical works: the Peri Hermeneias (unfinished; Cajetan completed it) and the Posterior Analytics. The two proemia are taken from these; the second is “much broader and deeper” and is called here the major proemium.

2. Man lives by art and reasonings; the broad sense of art (“the human race lives by art and reasonings”) #

Point: reading the major proemium’s first paragraph, Thomas takes “art” in a broader sense than the mechanical arts.

• “As Aristotle says in the beginning of the Metaphysics, the human race lives by art and reasonings.” “The philosopher” for Aristotle, “the apostle” for Paul (or Peter): antonomasia.
• The property of man touched here: other animals are led by natural instinct; man is directed in his acts by the judgment of reason; hence diverse arts perfect human acts “easily and orderly.”
• Common notion of art (crediting Monsignor Dionne): ars / technē first meant the practical arts that transform matter (carpentry made the table, metalworking the chair, glassblowing the glass). Thomas’s broad sense, read from the handout: an ordering of reason by which acts reach determinate ends through several means; this broad sense will apply even to logic.
• Example: driving here, reason has figured out how to use hands, eyes, feet; done now orderly, easily, almost habitually, while thinking of something else.

3. Logic: reason directing its own act; the art of arts (“reason is directing, not the acts of the hand”) #

Point: what is unique to logic is that reason directs not another part of man but reason itself.

• Argument (Thomas’s second and third paragraphs): (1) in the other arts reason directs some other part, hands, feet, eyes; (2) reason can also reflect on, “come back upon,” its own act, since the understanding understands itself; (3) so, as reasoning about the act of the hand yielded building or metalworking, an art is needed directing the act of reason itself, so that man proceeds “orderly, easily, and without error.”
• “Know thyself” (gnōthi sauton, the seven wise men) applies to reason in particular: the hand does not ask what a hand is or how it differs from a foot; reason asks what a hand is and what reason itself is. Reflected in logic: a definition of definition, statements about statements, reasoning about reasoning.
• On “orderly, easily, without error” (the third word newly added): the plumber or carpenter does things “one, two, three,” the beginner tries this and that, has difficulty, makes mistakes. Aside: his professional-carpenter brother-in-law on his basement carpentry, “What did you do that for, Duane?” He suggests the order matters: orderly first, which makes it easy, and proceeding in order one tends to avoid error.
• The art is named logic from reason itself (logos), and in a special way: every art is of reason, but this one is also about reason’s acts. Hence “art of arts”: it directs the director of all the rest; here he notes “a likeness of logic to what? To wisdom.”

4. The rule of two or three (“rule of two or three”) #

Point: most wholes, arts and sciences, divide into two or three parts; illustrated before dividing logic.

• Geometry: plane and solid; even Euclid’s first six books fall into rectilineal (I-II), circular (III-IV), proportion (V-VI), not “six parts.”
• Natural philosophy: change in general and in particular; the particular into three, change of place, of quality, of quantity as growth, the origin of physics, chemistry, biology. The tradition became customary and the reason forgotten; atomic physics really belongs with chemistry, not mechanics, as Heisenberg puts it in his Gifford Lectures. (A student’s confusion about “place, quality” is corrected: the two-part division, then the three.)
• Theology: God in himself, God as maker and Lord, God as end and provident one; a student supplies the Psalm (“Psalm eighteen?” he asks; the line is “Know that the Lord is God, he made us, his we are, his people the flock he tends”), which he says tells the three parts.

5. The three acts of reason and the division of the books (“understanding what a thing is”) #

Point: Thomas divides logic, and Aristotle’s logical works, according to three ordered acts of reason, each presupposed to the next.

• His own names: (1) understanding what a thing is (triangle, man, reason, dog, stone); (2) understanding the true or the false, putting together in an affirmative or separating in a negative statement what the first act understood (“man is not a stone” true; “man is a stone” false); (3) reasoning, from at least two statements to another (“every mother is a woman, no man is a woman, so no man is a mother”; “no animal is a stone, every man is an animal, so no man is a stone”).
• Peri Hermeneias proemium read: following Aristotle in the third book On the Soul, the operation of the understanding is twofold, the “understanding of indivisibles” by which it grasps the nature of each thing in itself, and “putting together and dividing”; a third operation, reasoning, proceeds from the known to the unknown. Thomas calls the first two both “understanding,” the third “reasoning.”
• “Simple grasping” as a name for the first act: he cannot grasp the centre of the table but can grasp the glass, because he can separate the glass from the air; sawing out the piece would make it graspable; to grasp what something is you must separate it from everything else, a word borrowed from the hand and applied to the mind.
• Why he prefers “understanding true or false” to “composition and division”: those words have other meanings in logic and elsewhere.
• First act ordered to the second: “a perfect number is a composite number” means nothing to students who do not know what a perfect number (or a composite number) is. Second ordered to the third: you need at least two statements to get a third, as in calculating you need two numbers to get a third.
• Division of the books: Categories to the first act; Peri Hermeneias (Latin de Interpretatione, really about the statement) to the second; Prior Analytics “and the books following it” to the third. Organon is Greek for tool (whence “organ”); logic is the tool of philosophy; the Random House McKeon edition groups these first. In the Peri Hermeneias proemium Thomas does not subdivide the third-act books, since he is explaining a second-act book; in the Posterior Analytics proemium he does.

6. Conceiving, forming, and discourse in the major proemium (“imagination through the understanding”) #

Point: the major proemium names the first act “conceiving what a thing is,” also “the forming of the understanding, or imagination through the understanding.”

• “Conceive” and “concept” are taken from the woman; Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, called himself an intellectual midwife.
• Do not confuse imagining with thinking, but there is a likeness: to imagine something absent I must form an image; to think of something absent I must form a thought. Seeing needs the object present; remembering you tonight, I form an image of you.
• “That’s very important later on when you try to understand the Trinity”: if our reason understood itself a thought of what reason is would proceed from it; when God understands himself a thought of God proceeds, and since in God to be and to understand are the same, that thought is God: “In the beginning was the Word.” He promises to return to this, with the Nicomachean Ethics proemium, “for a big hint” about what logic is about.
• Second act again called composition or division, served by the Peri Hermeneias. Third act is “according to that which is characteristic of reason”: to go from one thing to another, from the known to the unknown, Shakespeare’s “discourse” (prev. lecture); medieval logicians call it discursus. The rest of Aristotle’s logical books serve it.

7. The Phaedo: haters of arguments and three kinds of men (“hater of arguments”) #

Point: Socrates’ comparison in the Phaedo anticipates the very way the third-act books are divided.

• In the Phaedo Socrates gives about three arguments for the immortality of the soul; Simmias and Cebes, whispering in the corner, object, the arguments seem no good, all fall into despair, and the young hearer of Phaedo’s narration shares the sinking feeling. Socrates leads them out: you may become a hater of arguments because you trusted one you should not have; blame yourself, not arguments, for not knowing good from bad, and among good, necessary from probable.
• The misanthrope: a woman marries a no-good bum and begins to hate men; the fault is lacking the smarts to tell whom to trust. Three kinds of men: a few you can trust completely, some not at all, most in between, up to a point. Likewise men with women: a John Paul II, a Don Giovanni or Casanova, most in between. Aside: the Worcester tribunal priest who married him: “why the hell did you marry her in the first place?”
• Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (from Plutarch): generous host, then refused loans by fair-weather friends; he could blame himself for not knowing a true friend.
• Socrates concludes we need an art about arguments, “to my knowledge, the first time someone has explicitly said” we need logic.

8. Three proceedings of reason; the judging part (“reason imitates nature”) #

Point: the third-act books fall into three (the rule again), by the three ways reason, imitating nature, proceeds.

• Nature produces some things always and necessarily (the rising of the sun), some for the most part (a healthy baby), sometimes fails. So in reason (fourth paragraph read): a proceeding with necessity, in which a defective truth is not possible, giving the certitude of knowledge; one concluding the true for the most part; one departing from the true by the defect of some principle.
• Mapped to Socrates: Prior and Posterior Analytics, arguments trusted completely, “demonstrations” (Greek apodeixis, from “to show”: the Missouri plate, “you’ve got to show me”; Euclid’s Q.E.D., “what was to be demonstrated”); Sophistical Refutations, arguments not trusted at all; the books between, arguments trusted up to a point, producing opinion or suspicion, “a reasonable guess.”
• Why two books for demonstration: to be sure of a conclusion (1) it must follow necessarily and (2) the premises must be necessarily true. Prior Analytics takes the argument apart to check the following; Posterior Analytics examines the premises. Like the checkbook: either you added wrong, or you wrote a number wrong (decimal point, a seven that looks like a one).
• Thomas read: this part is the judging part, since judgment is with certitude; called analytic, “resolving or taking apart,” because certain judgment about effects comes by resolving to first principles; certitude from the form of the syllogism alone (Prior Analytics) or also from the matter, per se and necessary propositions (Posterior Analytics, the demonstrative syllogism).

9. The finding part: opinion, suspicion, representation (“finding part”) #

Point: the middle books give not certitude but a reasonable guess, graded as it approaches certitude.

• Thomas read: finding is not always with certitude, so judgment is required about what is found; as the stronger natural power fails more rarely, so there is gradation here. Opinion or belief: reason wholly turns to one side of a contradiction, “with fear of the other”; the Topics, the dialectical syllogism from probable opinions. Aristotle’s definition of a probable opinion: the opinion of all men, or most, or the most famous in some art or science. Suspicion: reason does not wholly turn, but inclines more to one side; the Rhetoric. Estimation by representation: the Poetics, “it belongs to the poet to lead into something virtuous through a pseudo-representation,” as a food becomes detested when represented under the likeness of something detestable.
• Representation reaching conclusions: Uncle Tom’s Cabin persuaded against slavery. His own case: he and his brothers planned to protect the neighbour boy Kenneth from his new stepmother, having got from fairy tales, never from experience, that stepmothers are cruel; his mother stopped it; the stepmother was the nicest woman in the neighbourhood, and Kenneth the joker yelled “Help! stop beating me!” from the window. A book (Warren Radler [ed.: name as transcribed]) on how the movies persuade young people how to act.
• Rhetoric is an offshoot (Greek paraphues) of dialectic and of political philosophy: persuasion works by arguments, by the image projected of oneself, and by moving emotions and prejudices; ethics and politics study these. In the four orders of the Ethics proemium, an offshoot of the second and third; modern experimental science, per Heisenberg, an offshoot of the first and fourth (physics from nature, mechanics from the mechanical arts), so not a purely natural science, as rhetoric is not purely logical. He suspects modern mathematical logic is likewise neither purely calculation nor purely logic. Rhetoric dominated the ancient world (Ambrose, Augustine; Christ to Jerome: “Are you a Christian or a Ciceronian?”); the modern is dominated by the other offshoot. Editions put Rhetoric and Poetics outside the Organon; Thomas includes them “in a very broad way.”
• Poetics and John Paul I’s Illustrissimi: a letter to Goethe (whose Sorrows of Young Werther led to suicides across Europe) on a work being moral intrinsically, not by a tag at the end; his “marvelous understatement”: after Oedipus Rex “one is hardly enthusiastic about incest.” All these pertain to rational philosophy, since it belongs to reason to lead from one thing to another.
• Sophistic serves the third proceeding (Sophistical Refutations): here reason is led astray; the logician studies it to avoid being deceived.

10. Student question: is rhetoric an offshoot of dialectic? (“an offshoot of from where”) #

Point: he confirms and fills out the two-sided offshoot.

• From dialectic: dialectic has syllogism and induction; rhetoric has the enthymeme [transcript: “antistrophe”] like the syllogism and the example like induction; details when they reach Aristotle’s text.
• From ethics and politics: the speaker must appear knowledgeable and your friend and fit his audience. Demosthenes mocking an opponent for scrubbing benches was good aristocratic rhetoric, bad democratic rhetoric, where the self-made man is admired; one talks differently to businessmen and to labour unions. Humphrey really liked people; the governor (Freeman) only appeared friendly.
• Beautiful example: Iago persuading Othello. He projects the friend, the observant man, one slow to state suspicions, so Othello is disposed to believe; then rouses jealousy, so that, as Iago says, a flimsy proof (the handkerchief) seems “like sacred scripture.”

His words #

• proemium: “paving the way”; Thomas’s own stands back further than Aristotle’s.
• antonomasia: “the philosopher” for Aristotle, “the apostle” for Paul.
• art (broad sense): an ordering of reason by which acts reach determinate ends through several means; techne / ars first meant the mechanical arts.
• art of arts: logic, since it directs the director of all the other arts.
• understanding what a thing is / understanding the true or the false / reasoning: his names for the three acts; Thomas’s: understanding of indivisibles (simple grasping), composition and division (putting together, dividing), reasoning (discursus).
• Organon: Greek for tool; logic as tool of philosophy.
• conceive, concept: taken from the woman; Socrates the intellectual midwife.
• demonstration: argument you can trust completely; Greek apodeixis, from “to show.”
• judging part / analytic: the Prior and Posterior Analytics; “resolving or taking apart.”
• finding part: Topics, Rhetoric, Poetics; opinion (wholly turned, with fear of the other), suspicion (more inclined), estimation by representation.
• probable opinion: of all men, most men, or the most famous in an art or science.
• paraphues: offshoot; rhetoric of dialectic and politics; modern science of natural and technical science.
• sophistic: arguments you cannot trust at all.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, proemium (lectio 1), paragraphs on art, art of arts, three acts, three proceedings, judging/finding/sophistic parts (handout “The Proemia to Logic”).
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Peri Hermeneias, proemium, on the twofold operation of understanding and the division of the books.
• Psalm line “Know that the Lord is God, he made us…” (he says “Psalm eighteen?”, uncertain). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, beginning; On the Soul, Book III; Categories, Peri Hermeneias, Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations, Rhetoric, Poetics.
• Thomas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, proemium (the four orders).
• Plato, Timaeus; Phaedo (immortality arguments, misology).
• Euclid, Elements I-VI; Heisenberg, Gifford Lectures; Plutarch on Timon.
• Shakespeare, Timon of Athens; Othello; John Paul I, Illustrissimi (letter to Goethe); Goethe, Sorrows of Young Werther; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Demosthenes’ speeches.

His questions #

• What is Thomas calling Aristotle “the philosopher”? Antonomasia.
• Why can reason direct its own act when the hand cannot? Reason reflects upon itself, understands itself; the hand does not ask what a hand is.
• Why is logic called the art of arts? It directs reason, which directs all the other arts; hence a likeness to wisdom.
• Into how many parts is theology divided? Three: God in himself, God as maker, God as end and provident one (the Psalm line).
• What characterizes reason, in the third act? Discourse: going from the known to the unknown.
• Why two books on demonstration? One to see that the conclusion follows necessarily (Prior), one to examine whether the premises are necessarily true (Posterior).
• Sometimes a man reaches a conclusion by what? Representation, the Poetics.
• Rhetoric is an offshoot of which of the four orders? The second and third; modern science of the first and fourth.
• Student: is rhetoric really an offshoot of dialectic? Yes, syllogism and induction have rhetorical counterparts; also of ethics and politics.