Dividing the Categories: Substance, Quality, Relation, and Habitus

Orientation #

He refers back to Thomas’s fourfold division of “order in comparison to reason” (“remember that?”) and to the definitions of genus and difference already given (prev. lecture), and to “when we went to the Gospel of St. John.” He does not name last time or next time otherwise. The previous class worked through Porphyry’s predicables and applied “before and after” to genus and species.

The class, in order #

1. Divisions run together: two and three, not ten at once (“brevitati studens, you know, seeking brevity”) #

Point: Aristotle lists the ten categories flatly in the Categories and the Topics (same ten, same order), but Thomas, in the commentaries on Physics III (on acting, undergoing, motion) and on Metaphysics V, reaches ten by dividing into two and three, following “the rule of two or three” (to be treated later).

• Example from his own reading the night before: Metaphysics VI, second reading, “recalls four senses of being”; but in Metaphysics V Aristotle divides into two and subdivides one into three. Thomas’s phrase for Aristotle: brevitati studens, “seeking brevity, which is a soul of wisdom” — a division and a subdivision run together, which “you have to make explicit.”
• Same thing in Thomas’s own four “orders in comparison to reason”: really (a) order not made by reason vs. order made by reason, then (b) the latter divided by that in which it is made: in reason’s own acts (logic), in acts of the will (ethics), in exterior matter (carpentry, metalwork). The natural order is put first because it is more basic: “you got to be orderly in talking about order.”
• Sometimes Aristotle or Thomas makes the division explicit elsewhere; otherwise “we have to do a little thinking ourselves and take it apart.” No commentary by Thomas on the Categories (or the Isagoge) exists, so one gathers bits “summa coniectura” into a file.

2. The fundamental division: what it is, in it, outside it (“by reason of what they are”) #

Point: various things are said of individual substances (Socrates, the horse Champion, the cat Moppet and her mother Tabitha) in three basic ways.

1. By reason of what they are: Socrates is a man, Champion a horse, Moppet a cat; more generally animal, then living body (common with plants), then body, most generally substance. The Categories names this highest genus “substance”; the Topics calls it “what it is” — so Aristotle is thinking of individual substances. Early philosophers “tend to identify body and substance,” the only substance they know; later they see they differ.
2. By reason of something in them that is not what they are: courageous, wise, healthy, sick, beautiful, ugly, big, little (Socrates healthy while the rest of the Symposium table is drunk).
3. By reason of something outside them: “I am clothed” — the clothing is not what I am nor in me as health is.

• Plan announced: Thomas will not subdivide (1); (2) yields three highest genera, (3) yields six, “not as important as these three,” and Aristotle spends time on the first four, little on the last six.
• Asides: legends of Aristotle sleeping with basin and ball, dying of “chronic indigestion brought on by overwork” — “they don’t even know what these guys died of,” nor Mozart, nor Alexander. His freshman math teacher (paratrooper, cigar, filled blackboards round the room, “I can define anything I want to”) and his brother Marcus arguing with him.

3. In them: absolutely vs. towards another (“the Greek for towards another, is pros ti”) #

Point: what is said by reason of something in the substance is either absolutely (in itself) or towards another.

• Greek pros ti, “toward something”; literal Latin ad aliquid; the abstract word “relation” hides what it is about. Examples: I am taller/shorter than you; teacher, father, son — “by reason of something in me, but not in itself, but towards you.”
• Distinction he stresses: relation is not “something between us”; “I am to her a husband, she is to me a wife; I am to Marcus a father, he is to me a son.” Talk of “relationships” is “an abstraction of abstraction.”
• Application: John 1:1, en archē ēn ho logos, kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon — the Greek is pros, “toward God,” though Latin has apud and English “with.” The distinction of Father and Son is relative (“subsisting relations”), something of the character of relation in God, though different from this accidental kind; knowing Aristotle’s chapter on pros ti, the Greek of John “leaps out.” He says he has not seen Thomas or anyone in the West comment on the word; a student suggests the Greek fathers — “maybe, yeah.”

4. Absolutely: matter gives quantity, form gives quality (“Descartes never grew up”) #

Point: the absolute is subdivided by the fact that these are material things — with matter goes quantity (Greek: how much, how many), with form goes quality (how).

• Quantity vs. substance: to be a man and to be five foot ten are not the same; a bigger man is not more a man. Pythagoreans, Platonists to some extent, and Descartes (extension = material substance) confuse them. Playful argument: if quantity were substance, a change of quantity would be a change of substance, so “you never grew up”; growing up means the same substance with a different size.
• Theological application: transubstantiation — substance of bread and wine become substance of Christ’s body and blood, while the quantity and (sense) qualities remain; identify quantity with substance and the substance would remain. So Aristotle’s philosophy is compatible with faith, Descartes’ is not.
• But “it’s because it’s true that it’s useful in theology; it’s not true because it’s useful in theology”; Descartes is not false because incompatible, but incompatible because false (“the false contradicts the true”). Parallel: Euthyphro — pious because the gods approve, or approved because pious? He asks students the same of the commandments: is honouring parents good because commanded, or commanded because good? Students see at once it is the latter. Contrast: arbitrary commands (“stay in your room,” “drive on the right”) where one option is chosen for consistency.
• Result so far: substance, quantity, quality, relation — four, each with a whole chapter in Aristotle. Absolute vs. towards another is “very clearly” a division by opposites; matter/form is seen better in natural philosophy.
• The word “how”: the difference signifies “how it is what it is” (substantial quality); here it is accidental quality. Greek poios / poiotēs, concrete and abstract connected as Latin too; English must say “howness.”

5. The rule of two or three, and definitions given by the last part (“crisscrossing two divisions”) #

Point: division into more than three usually means either division plus subdivision or two divisions crisscrossed.

• Crisscross example: good men, bad men, good women, bad women — good/bad crossed with male/female; to understand it, go back to two divisions of two.
• The rule holds “only for the most part.”
• Brevity again (he thinks it is in the Peri Hermeneias commentary): Aristotle sometimes defines one thing fully and gives only the last part of the next definition — as saying “genus is a name said with one meaning of many things other in kind, signifying what it is; the difference signifies how it is what it is,” without repeating the shared parts.

6. Outside them: peculiar to man — hexis, habitus, “outfitted” (“the hand is sometimes said to be the tool of tools”) #

Point: Thomas divides the six “outside” categories as one peculiar to man against five common to man and other things; the peculiar one is Greek hexis, Latin habitus, his liberty “outfitted” — “an outfit is something that fits you outside of you.”

• Why man has it: nature did not give him what he needs; other animals have their tools built in (claws, horns, wings, stinger); man needs an unlimited variety (shovel, axe, rake this week digging; knife, fork, spoon, screwdriver, key, computer, car, fire extinguisher, pen), which he could not carry built in, so nature gave him the hand, “the tool of tools,” corresponding to reason, which has “something unlimited” about it (Anaxagoras’s fragment DK 12 on mind: first thing said is that it is unlimited).
• Anaxagoras: man is most intelligent because he has a hand; Aristotle in the biological books reverses it — because most intelligent, he has a hand. Aside: the first act of reason is called “simple grasping.”
• Clothing likewise: not fur like the cat (shedding now; brushing cats with water), and man wants different clothes for occasions — wedding, graduation — and weathers, “something of the infinity of him.” Other animals have it only in man’s service (saddle, horse armour). So man is said shod, clothed, armed (“armed and considered dangerous”).
• “This is man’s only category” — he has given a public talk on it: vestments of priests and religious, soldiers’ dress, the bride decked out all “say something.”

7. Common to man and others: extrinsic measure vs. extrinsic cause or effect (“place and time are the two extrinsic measures”) #

Point: the five common ones arise either from an extrinsic measure or from an extrinsic cause or effect — Thomas drawing on natural philosophy (Physics III, “natural hearing,” on motion, place, time).

• From time: when — “I am in the twenty-first century” (he also says twentieth). From place: where — Massachusetts, this room.
• A second thing from place: the order of parts in place, Greek keisthai, position — standing, sitting. He begins “am I sitting? My body could be…” and the recording ends; the cause/effect pair is not reached.

His words #

• brevitati studens — “seeking brevity, which is a soul of wisdom” (Thomas on Aristotle).
• summa coniectura — gathering Thomas’s scattered remarks where no commentary exists.
• what it is — the Topics’ name for the highest genus the Categories calls substance.
• absolutely — “in itself, not towards another.”
• pros ti — “towards something / towards another”; Latin ad aliquid [ed.: relation]; he prefers the concrete phrase.
• relationship — “an abstraction of abstraction.”
• how much, how many — the Greek concrete words behind quantity.
• how — the concrete word behind quality; poios / poiotēs; English “howness.”
• hexis / habitus — “outfitted” (his liberty) [ed.: habitus, having].
• tool of tools — the hand, corresponding to reason.
• simple grasping — the first act of reason [ed.: simple apprehension].
• natural hearing — “the physics as we translate in English” [ed.: Physics].
• keisthai — position, “order of parts in place.”

Texts #

Read in class

• John 1:1, Greek quoted: en archē ēn ho logos, kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon.
• Porphyry’s definitions of genus and difference, recited from memory (no locus).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories and Topics (the two lists of ten).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (senses of being) and VI, second reading.
• Aquinas, Commentary on the Physics III; Commentary on the Metaphysics V; Commentary on the Peri Hermeneias (his uncertain recollection).
• Aquinas’s fourfold order in comparison to reason (no locus given).
• Aristotle, Physics III (motion, place, time); “the biological books” on the hand.
• Anaxagoras, fragment “DK 12” on mind.
• Plato, Euthyphro; Symposium (Socrates sober).
• Aristotle’s “chapter on relation.”

His questions #

• How does Thomas get four orders in comparison to reason? Not by one division: two (not made / made by reason), then the second into three.
• What is Socrates? What is Champion? What is Moppet? A man, a horse, a cat — said of them by reason of what they are.
• If you are bigger than another man, are you more a man? No; you are bigger, but not more a man.
• Is it good to honour father and mother because commanded, or commanded because good? Commanded because good; likewise murder is forbidden because bad.
• Is Aristotle’s philosophy true because useful in theology? No: useful because true; Descartes incompatible because false.
• Why does man have this category (habitus)? Because he needs it: nature gave him not built-in tools but a hand and reason.
• Can you imagine having the hammer, saw, axe, knife, fork built in? No — hence the hand as tool of tools.
• Am I sitting? left open (recording ends).