Being Divided into the Ten Categories: Thomas's Exposition of Metaphysics V (and Why Being Is Not a Genus)

Orientation #

He refers back to “our profound study of the antepredicaments” (the four: universal/individual substance, universal/particular accident) and to “the other text where Thomas divides it” (prev. lecture), now turning to “page five” (page four in the students’ copies), Thomas on Metaphysics V. He says the terms first and second substance will be met “in the chapter on substance,” and that the senses of “opposite” will come up “in the post predicaments.” The previous class worked through Thomas’s threefold division of predication in his Categories commentary; the next takes up the Antepredicaments and the chapter on substance.

The class, in order #

1. A letter: do the souls of man and woman differ? (“does the soul of a man and soul of woman differ”) #

He reports answering a philosopher’s letter with a text from the prima pars and one from the Summa Contra Gentiles.

1. The soul fits the body; they are “like relatives,” proportional to each other. A living body is “a body composed of tools,” and one art cannot use another art’s tools — his wife with needle and thread cannot join wood, his carpenter brother‑in‑law cannot sew a dress with a hammer.
2. Hence the human soul cannot enter a dog’s body (Aristotle against Pythagoras and those who say a dead friend is now in a dog: “impossible”). Aside: a dog wandered into the room at that moment.
3. Proportion: human soul : man’s body :: dog’s soul : dog’s body; so my soul : my body :: your soul : your body. God created your soul to fit the body your parents had begun; our souls could not be swapped.
4. Man’s body and woman’s body differ, so the souls differ — but less than man’s from dog’s, since man and woman have the same powers (understanding, reason, will); the difference is “more individual.” Two illustrations of the difference: woman by nature more merciful, man more just (Mary is “mother of mercy,” not of justice; Hebrew for mercy comes from the word for womb); woman sees children as a fulfillment of herself, man as a continuation of himself — hence the man’s “selfish mistake” of wanting a boy (hospital anecdote at his second child: “you got what you wanted?”; Henry VIII; his father’s business friend assuming the son would succeed in the factory).

2. Metaphysics V and words equivocal by reason (“the fifth book of first philosophy”) #

Point: the whole fifth book of “wisdom” is devoted to names equivocal by reason, used most in first philosophy and in the axioms.

• Axioms (“the whole is more than the part”; “something cannot both be and not be”) are expressed in words like whole, part, being, which have many meanings with an order among them — “equivocal by reason.”
• Dialectical question: whether it is necessary to understand words equivocal by reason. Argument: axioms are known through themselves and all statements are known through them; but they are expressed in equivocal words, so one can fail to understand even the axioms; therefore necessary. Then, imitating Aristotle: is it necessary to understand the word “necessary”? If yes, understand it; if no, you must explain why — and so understand it.
• Aside: Warren Murray, asked by phone, could find no modern philosopher who stops on a word and distinguishes its senses in order; nor could he.
• Example: a graduate-school doctoral thesis on Marx. Dialectical materialism puts “conflict of opposites” at its center, yet Marx never distinguishes the senses of “opposite” (using “contradiction” for any opposition) — a word Aristotle distinguishes in book V and in the post-predicaments.

3. Thomas lays out the modes of being per se (“the modes of being per se”) #

Point: the subject of wisdom being being and one, Thomas exposes Aristotle’s division of being per se against accidental being, in three parts.

• Accidental being: “I am a Christian geometer” — no such thing as Christian geometry, the two make nothing together; it is said per accidens because each belongs to me. Likewise “white geometer.”
• Three things: (i) being outside the soul, ens perfectum, “dividitur in decem praedicamenta” (praedicamenta = Latin for categories); (ii) being only in the mind — Kasurik: “philosophy is the only subject we can get paid for talking about nothing.” “Nothing is nothing” is true (nothing is more true than that something is itself), yet the “is” there is only in the mind; “nothing isn’t” is also correct, but “nothing is not nothing” is a contradiction. Likewise the blind man Christ cured: blindness is an “unbeing,” yet “he is blind” is true — truth is in the mind; (iii) being divided by potency and act — he renders “ability and act” — which is more common (communius) than ens perfectum, since every predicament has act and ability, and God, pure act, is outside the predicaments.
• Order noted as “strange”: later books of wisdom take being by the figures of predication before act and ability, less universal to more universal, toward the immaterial — the opposite of natural philosophy, which goes general to particular, toward matter.
• “Commentary” is the wrong word for Thomas’s work; the technical word is exposition, a laying out to make plain.

4. Figures of predication; being is not a genus (“figures of what predication”) #

Point: things are said to be secundum se in as many ways as the figures of predication signify.

• “Figure” is equivocal by reason; first found in geometry: what is contained by a limit or limits. The order from highest genus down to lowest species (antepredicaments) is contained by limits — hence “figure”; the “tree of Porphyry” spreads like a Christmas tree (Laval party impersonation of the logic professor).
• Argument (sciendum): being cannot be contracted to something more determinate as a genus is contracted to species by differences.
  1. A difference does not partake of the genus; it is outside its essence (animal is not in the definition of “two-footed” or “rational”).
  2. Nothing can be outside the essence of being; what is outside being is nothing, which cannot be a difference.
  3. So being cannot be contracted like a genus. Same for other “sets of alls”: everything is something (“if you know the difference between something and nothing you know everything” — a student: “I’m gonna go home and tell my father that”); you cannot divide something by nothing. Genus signifies what a thing is, difference how it is.
• “Whence the philosopher proves in the third book” that being is not a genus. Aside: Latin lacks the article, so it cannot say “the philosopher,” only capitalize; naming by pre-eminence is a figure of speech the Bible favours (the Bible, the Gospel, the Church) — the figure’s name is not audible in the recording.
• Conclusion: being is contracted to diverse highest genera according to diverse ways of being, since “quotiens… totiens”: in as many ways as something is said of something, in so many ways being is signified. The things into which being first divides are called praedicamenta / categories because distinguished by diverse ways of being said of.

5. Link to the antepredicaments (“from our profound study of the antepredicamenta”) #

Point: the four-fold antepredicament distinction was needed because the ten highest genera are distinguished by the ways something can be said of one of the four, namely individual substance (you or me). Thomas does not spell this out, but it is clear from the text; everything else is said of or exists in individual substances (philosophy is said of its kinds and exists in individual minds — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle at least). Aristotle sometimes calls the first category ousia, sometimes ti esti (quid est); the others: quale, quantum, situs, where, when. To each way of being said, some kind of being — “a likeness of proportions.”

6. First way: the predicate is what the subject is (“a predicate is able to have itself in three ways”) #

“Socrates is an animal”: Socrates is that which an animal is; such a predicate signifies first substance, the particular substance of which all things are said.

• Terms: “particular” was met in the antepredicaments; “first” and “second” substance will be met in the chapter on substance. Same thing, differently named: first substance = individual substance; second substance = its species or genus. “First” speaks of order: first substance is primarily and most of all substance, what “stands under.” Species is more substance than genus because closer to you or me: man more substance than animal.

7. Second way: in the subject — absolutely or towards another (“something in it”) #

• Absolutely: following upon matter, quantity (everything material has size); following upon form, quality. Boundary case: the guardian angel has no size, need not worry about weight, yet has qualities — wiser, cleverer than he.
• Towards another (ad aliquid; Aristotle’s pros ti): four is double towards two, half towards eight, in itself neither; he is a father towards one, a son towards Victor Berquist of Parkers Prairie, teacher towards the class, husband towards Rosalie, grandfather, taller than some and shorter than others (a Tuesday-night student) — “something in us towards another.” Four highest genera so far. Thomas uses the abstract quantity/quality here, earlier quale/quantum like the Greek; he does not use the abstract “relation,” still less “relationship.”
• Asides: the Sisters of St Joseph told children to leave room on the bench for their angel; a sister’s story of a priest with a drinking problem cursing a gossiping parish; the old pastor asking how he was baptized “Duane” (actually Hugo Dwayne); the pastor declaring holidays after school Mass.

8. Third way: taken from outside the subject (“taken from that which is outside”) #

A little different from the other text: divided first into two (wholly outside vs. partly in the subject), then four against two.

• Wholly outside, not a measure: habitus (Aristotle’s echein, to have) — Socrates calceatus (shod; the “discalced”), vestitus (clothed). “Man’s category,” with an affinity to size (one asks the size of clothes and shoes).
• Wholly outside as extrinsic measure (extrinsic as opposed to quantity, the intrinsic measure): from time, not time but when (time itself goes in quantity; time already carries order, before and after, so only one category); from place, either ubi/where, without the order of parts in place, or situs/position, considering that order — he is in this room (where), but lying, sitting or standing (position). Four more.
• Partly in the subject (not to be put back under the second division, though “a beginning of it”): action / “acting upon,” where the beginning of the action is in the subject — if he kicks you, you hold him responsible because the source was in him; passion / “undergoing,” terminated in the subject undergoing — you are being kicked. On the word: “passio” gives “passion,” as in the Passion of our Lord, being acted on harmfully; English “suffering” has not been moved to a wider meaning, so he prefers “undergoing,” which can carry something bad (“he’s undergone a lot”) yet can be moved, as Aristotle says the senses undergo and are perfected. Cause imagined above effect — though hammering into the ceiling is tiring.

9. Where “is” is not added; proportion (“this word est”) #

• In most predications “is” appears (I am a man, five foot ten, healthy, a father, clothed, sitting), but “he walks” has no “is”; does it pertain to the predication of being? Thomas: in all of them being is signified, since any verb resolves into est and the participle — “he is walking.” Statement divided into two (noun, verb) or three (subject, copula, predicate): “the rule of two or three or both.”
• “In as many ways as predication comes about, in so many ways being is said.” Much in philosophy is seen by proportion, first in math: 2:3 :: 4:6 (students say 5). Likeness — especially of things far apart — is a tool of dialectic in the “book of places” [ed.: Topics]. In the ninth book of wisdom act cannot be defined, being too universal, but is known by proportion.

10. Digression: the five attributes of God and negation (“thinking about God again”) #

Thomas: we know more what God is not than what He is. Of the five attributes of the divine substance, unchanging (negation of motion; unmoved mover), infinite (negation of limit), one (not divided into many), simple (Thomas eliminates every form of creaturely composition, an inductive argument, then shows universally God cannot be put together) are plainly negations; perfect seems not to be — and “it’d be stupid” to say it negates imperfection. His resolution: the middle term for all is pure act (“for lazy people like me”), and “pure” is a negation — no ability to be actualized; the others carry a double negation. Motion is “the act of what is able to be, insofar as it’s able to be.”

• Why pure act: after distinguishing ability and act (Met. IX, “a favorite book”) Aristotle shows the order — what goes from ability to act does so because of something already in act (tea water goes from cold to hot because of something actually hot); so simply (haplos) act is before ability, and the first being must be pure act. Universal division: first matter, pure ability, at one end; pure act at the other. Act before ability in knowledge (ability known only as ability for an act), in goodness (ability for the sake of act), in being.

11. Review: counting the divisions, two or three (“let’s review a bit”) #

Thomas does not divide into ten at once but into three. First member unsubdivided. Second: two (absolute / towards another), the absolute into two. Third: two (four wholly outside / two partly in), the four into three and one (extrinsic measures vs. habitus), the last into two (acting upon / undergoing). A confused count aloud, ending: “a division into three and a division into two. Complicated” — he follows the rule of two or three. He states no final tally of divisions.

• Same rule applied to the five attributes: Thomas ties infinity to perfection and unity to simplicity, so: unchanging; simplicity and unity; perfection and infinity. The Compendium of Theology (written for his confessor/helper) treats unity under simplicity and takes infinity before perfection, noting God’s infinity is not material infinity, which would be imperfect — “a little confirmation of my fanaticism about two or three.”
• The mind has a hard time with a division into more than three: you would cut a length of wood into two or three, not ten — “the decimal system is not sensible.”

His words #

• equivocal by reason: many meanings with an order among them; his rendering throughout [ed.: analogous].
• wisdom / first philosophy: his names for the Metaphysics; “the book of places” for the Topics.
• ens perfectum: being outside the soul, divided into the ten praedicamenta.
• ability and act: his rendering of potency and act [ed.: potentia/actus].
• exposition: laying out, making plain — preferred to “commentary.”
• figures of predication: figure = what is contained by a limit or limits (from geometry).
• sets of alls: words like being, something, that cannot be divided like a genus.
• first substance / second substance: the individual vs. its species or genus; “first” = order, primarily and most of all substance.
• ad aliquid / pros ti: towards another; he avoids “relation,” rejects “relationship.”
• habitus / echein: to have; calceatus, vestitus.
• extrinsic measure: time and place, against quantity as intrinsic measure.
• ubi vs situs: where, without order of parts; position, with order of parts.
• acting upon / undergoing: action and passion; “suffering” too narrow, “undergoing” movable.
• haplos: simply; act is simply before ability.
• the rule of two or three: divisions the mind can take in.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Exposition of Metaphysics V, the passage distinguishing the modes of being per se (three parts) and the three ways a predicate stands to its subject, through “in as many ways predication comes about, in so many ways being is said.”

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics III (proof that being is not a genus, cited in Thomas’s text); Metaphysics IX (act and ability, order of act before ability).
• Aristotle, Categories: antepredicaments; chapter on substance (first/second substance); post-predicaments (senses of “opposite”).
• Aristotle, Topics (“book of places”), likeness as a tool of dialectic.
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae, prima pars (soul and body; the five attributes of God’s substance); Summa Contra Gentiles (soul fitted to body); Compendium of Theology (unity under simplicity, infinity before perfection).
• Porphyry (difference outside the genus; tree of Porphyry).

His questions #

• Does the soul of a man differ from the soul of a woman? Yes, as bodies differ, but individually — same powers, unlike man and dog.
• Whether it is necessary to understand words equivocal by reason? Is it necessary to understand the word “necessary”? Yes; either answer forces you to understand it.
• Is nothing something? What does “is” mean in “nothing is nothing”? A being only in the mind; “nothing is not nothing” would be a contradiction.
• Is animal in the definition of two-footed, or of rational? No; the difference is outside the genus.
• Can you divide being (or something) by nothing? No; so being cannot be contracted like a genus.
• Does my guardian angel have size? Does he have qualities? No size; yes, qualities — quantity follows matter, quality form.
• In itself, is four double or half? Neither; only towards two or eight.
• Where am I, and how are my parts arranged? In this room (where); sitting, standing or lying (position).
• Does “perfect” escape the rule that we know what God is not more than what He is? No; shown through pure act, and “pure” is a negation.
• Would you cut a length of wood into ten or into two? Two or three — the mind cannot take a division into more than three.