The Properties of Substance, the Hypostasis of Christ, and Thomas's Texts on Substance

Orientation #

He opens by recalling the De potentia text on substance they had (prev. lecture) and the distinction of first and second substance and the four meanings of substance in the Categories, to which he had added two more (the substance of God; faith called substance). He closes: “the text on quantity we can start next time.” The previous class treated the antepredicaments, the senses of “in,” first and second substance, and analogy; the next begins with the Trinity and then turns to De Anima and the category of quantity.

The class, in order #

1. Recap: logician vs. wise man, and why species is more substance than genus (“no man or woman on that”) #

Point: the first/second distinction is not a division of a genus but an ordered distinction “by reason,” and second substance is called substance because it is said of first substance as regards what it is.

• Logic looks at things as they are in the mind; there the universal “man” can still be called substance. The wise man says that is nonsense: outside the mind there are only individual substances. Example: the college class list had Judy, Jane, Bob, Philip on it but never “a man or woman”; humanity never showed up for class.
• First vs. second implies order, and reason looks at before and after; hence an equivocation “by reason,” not two genera.
• Why species is more substance than genus: he draws two reasons from the text. (1) Closer to first substance: “what is Duane Berquist?” — “a man” is closer than “an animal.” (2) Likeness of ratios: as species is said of first substance, so genus is said of species; “Berquist is a man,” “man is an animal,” never “man is Berquist” or simply “animal is a man” (at most “some animal”). So man : animal :: Berquist : man.
• Aristotle first distinguished (antepredicaments), now sees order, “even the master.” Only the species and genus in which first substances are, not the accidents said of you, are secondary substances, because accidents do not say what the thing is.

2. First group of properties: not in a subject, said only univocally, a this something (“two groups of three”) #

Point: Aristotle’s properties fall into two groups of three; the first three belong to substance alone and are meant to make first and second substance distinct in the mind.

• Common to first and second substance: not to be in a subject (already in the antepredicaments); even the universal, though said of something, does not exist in another.
• Proper to second substance: to be said only univocally, in the narrow sense of the first chapter (said as signifying what a thing is), and never denominatively. In the broad sense “healthy” is said univocally of my body and the dog’s body; but healthy is a denomination from health.
• Digression on naming God (Thomas, “beautiful in his talking”): an objection says God cannot be named at all, since a concrete word (“good”) implies composition (the haver and the had) and an abstract word (“goodness”) signifies that by which something is, which God is not. Thomas’s reply as he gives it: our mind is designed to know what is sensed or imagined, i.e., composites of matter and form, whence our two words: health = that by which you are healthy (naming the form), healthy = what you have by that form (the composite). We say God is good because He really is good, and goodness itself because He is altogether simple (question 3, eight articles, shows this); no name is perfect, the way of speaking fits material things and is adapted as far as we can. In the Summa contra Gentiles (maybe the Summa theologiae too) he first shows God is good, then that He is goodness. Aside: “if you say God is ineffable, you’ve said something about God” (Augustine); bailing out of all names, “then you become a Muslim.” In God the haver and the had are the same; my body is healthy “enough for an eighty-year-old” but is not its health. Aristotle in the eighth book of wisdom treats material substance in terms of matter and form; only in the twelfth does he reach substance that is not composed but is just form.
• Proper to first substance: to be a this something, hoc aliquid. Famous controversy: Thomas calls the human soul a hoc aliquid “in some way” (immortality is the sign); but a this something is by itself, distinct from all others and complete in its nature, which the soul is not. Hence for ultimate happiness the body must be rejoined (“a new set of wheels”).

3. Second group: no contrary, no more or less (“not to have a contrary”) #

Point: the second three properties revolve around contraries and are shared by other genera (quantity), so they are properties in a broader sense.

• First: not to have a contrary; shared by quantity, “which perhaps points to its closeness to substance.” Contraries = species furthest apart in the same genus: black and white in colour; green, yellow are less far; a continuum white–yellow–green–blue–black.
• Second: not to be said more or less; this seems to follow on having no contrary, because contraries can be mixed along a continuum. Examples: white bread in the toaster going golden, black, dissolving; cold water heated until the kettle whistles. Also shared by quantity: “what numbers are furthest apart in the genus of number?”
• Natures as numbers (eighth book of wisdom): stone = 1 (just a body), plant = 2, animal = 3, man = 4 (body that senses, plus reason). His mother objected to calling man an animal: “not just an animal, Mama”; “just” means equal. Shakespeare’s “a beast no more” — if man had no greater good than the beast he is no more than a beast; note the word “more,” tied to number.
• Digression on comedy and tragedy as contraries: the detailed part of the Poetic Art on comedy is lost. Under Austin Farrer’s influence he argued dialectically: tragedy moves to pity and fear, so comedy should move to their contraries, mirth and boldness. Reading Thomas on the emotions he found the principal passions are joy, sadness, fear and hope (not boldness); so tragedy moves to a noble sadness, pity (undeserved misery of another), and fear, comedy to the other principal passions. Confirmation: a book on Latin comedies quoting St Paul (“faith, hope, charity, the greatest is charity”) says in comedy the greatest is hope. Shakespeare’s romances lie in between: love-and-friendship romances closer to comedy, mercy-and-forgiveness romances closer to pity; a continuum, which is what “more or less” between contraries is.
• Is one man more a man than another? In courage yes, but that is a quality. “All men are created equal” (Assumption night course for adults): not in strength, health, temper or knowledge; the only sense is that one man is not more a man than another. Quantity too: one circle is not more a circle, an equilateral triangle not more a triangle than a scalene; one three not more a three than another, though we do say more or less of numbers. Man is more than a beast, but one beast is not more a beast than another.

4. Third property: susceptible of contraries while remaining one in number (“sometimes I’m good and often I’m bad”) #

Point: this seems a property of first substance: Duane Berquist, one substance, is sometimes hot, sometimes cold; sick and healthy; good and bad. Aristotle makes things distinct not only by defining them but by such properties.

5. Difficulties from the appendix: “what a thing is” in every genus; genus and matter (“nothing should be in the definition”) #

Point: two difficulties he flags but does not press.

• How can one meaning of substance be “what a thing is” when that is found in all genera? The categories are first distinguished by the ways something can be said of the same thing; one needs something of which all else is said, first substances; only the species or genus of substance is said of them as regards what they are.
• Can accidents be defined? Definition comes from finis, limit; Greek horos (horizon). Nothing should be in the definition except the thing defined, but defining health as a good condition of the body defines by something outside it, so not a definition in the same sense. What-it-is is found primarily in substance; in another sense habit says what a virtue is, number what odd and even are. Immaterial substances not treated here.
• Subtle distinction from the later pages: in natural philosophy the genus is based more on matter, the difference on form; hence if heavenly bodies have a different matter (as they thought), they would naturally be in a different genus. “Don’t get too concerned about that.”
• Aside: students at a public university look up as if to say “why are you doing this to me?”; “we’re monks, we came to the monastery just to do this.”

6. The hypostasis of the Word and the genus of substance (“hypostasis of human nature in Christ”) #

Point: reading the Scriptum text (page eight of the handout): the hypostasis of the Word is not in the genus of substance simpliciter insofar as it is the hypostasis of the Word, yet insofar as it is the hypostasis of human nature it is in the genus of substance and the species of man; a hypostasis is ordered to genus or species only through the nature it has. Not as hypostasis of the divine nature, which is the same as God.

• Etymology vs. meaning: “perfect” comes from material things being perfected, made actual; God as pure act is perfect, but to identify etymology with meaning would make “God is perfect” mean “well made.” Hypostasis means stand under; but the hypostasis of a person does not stand under the divine nature, there is no real distinction or composition there. The three persons are one God, this one God three persons.
• Why keep the word? The church as “pillar of truth” stands under truth by a kind of metaphor; faith the foundation, hope the walls, charity the roof “covering a multitude of sins”; faith as “substance of things hoped for.” But with the Trinity you move a long way from standing under, since what stands under is not the same as what it stands under.
• Danger: since substance can mean what a thing is, translating three hypostases as three substances sounds unorthodox; Jerome warned of this “poison.”
• What justifies hypostasis: the real distinction among the persons, by relations of procession (creed: God from God, Light from Light); the Father is not the Son, the Father has not two sons; each is the same God. Compared to the divine nature no distinction; compared to each other a real distinction, not one of reason. The heresy: the same one called God because he created, Father, Son because he became man.

7. The closing texts: four ways of substance, individual in substance, De potentia (“this rubber is not that rubber”) #

Point: he runs through the texts appended to the chapter.

• Sentences: the four ways substance is said; in the fourth way substance is taken commonly, abstracting from first and second, and in the definition of person “individuum” draws it, as a difference, to stand for first substance; otherwise “individual first substance” would be redundant.
• Summa theologiae: universal and particular are in all genera (universal and particular accident), but the individual is found in a special way in substance: substance is individuated by itself, accidents by their subject (this whiteness insofar as in this subject). Two rubber balls of the same size: this rubber is not that rubber, and this sphere is not that sphere because it is in this rubber. Your knowledge and mine of the same theorem are two because in two minds, which are two because in two substances. This is why there are special names, hypostasis and first substance.
• De potentia: first and second substance is a division of an analogy, not of a genus; it seems a proportion in the sense of ratio, since second substance is the species or genus of first substance, looking back to it; first substance is substance most of all, species more than genus for the reasons given.
• De potentia on the Trinity (“the most powerful disputed question”; aside: a California philosophy department wanted them to stage a medieval debate; they declined): the human nature in Christ is a hypostasis but not a person; substance is put in the definition of person not for hypostasis but for what is common to first and second substance.
• Last text, the wise man’s view: Socrates first tried to define, and defined not Xanthippe or Solon but man, a universal; Plato’s ideas put the universal in separation from singulars as something very substantial, which individuals partake of, unexplained. Aristotle grows suspicious. Read: the Philosopher speaks in the Praedicamenta according to logical consideration, since the logician considers things as in reason, under the intention of universality, and predication (“to speak English, being said of”) is an act of reason; the first philosopher considers things as beings, so for him even to be said of a subject is not to be a substance, not only to be in a subject. “Very subtle… don’t worry too much about it.”

His words #

• logic vs. wisdom: logic concerns the way things are in the mind; wisdom, real substances outside the mind
• equivocation by reason: first/second substance as an ordered distinction, not two genera
• said univocally (narrow sense): said as signifying what a thing is [ed.: the first chapter's sense]
• denominatively: healthy from health
• this something / hoc aliquid: by itself, distinct from all others, complete in its nature
• contraries: species furthest apart in the same genus
• eighth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics VIII]; the Poetic Art [ed.: Poetics]
• “just”: equal, precise
• principal passions: joy, sadness, fear, hope
• definition from finis, limit; Greek horos, horizon
• hypostasis: Greek for person; etymologically “stand under”
• relations of procession: what really distinguish the persons
• praedicamenta: the Categories; predication = “being said of”
• proportion in the sense of ratio: the analogy of second to first substance

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Categories, ch. 5 (second part: properties of substance), from his handout “Substance – Chapter 5”
• Thomas, Scriptum on the Sentences: the hypostasis of the Word and the genus of substance (handout p. 8); the four ways substance is said
• Thomas, Summa theologiae: individual found in a special way in the genus of substance
• Thomas, De potentia: first/second substance as division of an analogy; human nature in Christ a hypostasis, not a person
• Thomas (handout, last text): logician vs. first philosopher on substance, against Plato’s ideas

Mentioned

• Summa theologiae I q. 3 (God’s simplicity, eight articles); Summa contra Gentiles on God’s goodness
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, books 8 and 12; Poetics
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (“a beast no more”) (inferred); his romances
• St Paul, “faith, hope, and charity”; Hebrews, “substance of things hoped for”; Augustine on “ineffable”; Jerome on “three substances”; the creed
• Austin Farrer; Thomas on the emotions

His questions #

• Which is more substance, species or genus, and does he give more than one reason? Species; two reasons: closer to first substance, and by likeness of ratios.
• Is God good or goodness? Both: good because He really is good, goodness itself because He is altogether simple.
• What are contraries? Species furthest apart in the same genus, as black and white.
• Is one man more a man than another? No; that is the only sense in which all men are created equal.
• Is one circle more a circle than another, one three more a three? No.
• Is the hypostasis of the Word in the genus of substance? Not simpliciter as hypostasis of the Word; yes insofar as it is the hypostasis of human nature.
• Are the three persons three gods? No: three persons are one God, one God is three persons.
• Why use the word hypostasis if it does not stand under? Because the persons are really distinct from one another, by relations of procession, like individual substances divided from others.
• Why is your knowledge of the theorem distinct from mine? Because it is in your mind, which is in your substance.