Predication and the Category of 'Towards Something': Cajetan, Aristotle's Two Definitions, and the Senses of Being

Orientation #

He opens on a Cajetan quote from the handout and says the discussion of relatives (equal/unequal, great/small) “was already begun” in quantity; the second definition of relatives “has us all puzzled” and the Thomas text on esse is given “because you want to know Aristotle.” The previous class finished quantity and began chapter 7 on relation with Plato’s definition and its revision; the next continues relation into the De Potentia text and Trinitarian theology.

The class, in order #

1. Who Cajetan is (“you know who Cajetan is”) #

The famous Dominican whose commentary is printed with the Summa in the Leonine edition; he wrote on the Isagoge and the Categories, finished Thomas’s unfinished Peri Hermeneias commentary, was sent by the Church to argue with Luther, and (he thinks) became Master General.

• Aside: Cajetan is supposed to have said a Dominican who does not study four or five hours a day is living in sin.

2. Praedicabilia and praedicamenta come from praedicare (“they both come from the word predicare”) #

Point: logic is defined by predication, “said of.”

1. Albert and Cajetan call the Isagoge de praedicabilibus and the Categories de praedicamentis; both from praedicare, “to say of.”
2. Genus is defined as a name said with one meaning of many things: something said of another.
3. Aristotle leads into wisdom sometimes from natural philosophy, sometimes from logic; Thomas describes each way in one word: natural philosophy proceeds by way of motion (nature defined by motion, time the measure of motion, the modern scientist watching particles collide), logic by way of predication.

• Aside: “the brevity of wisdom of which Shakespeare speaks” — he says “brevity,” not the usual “wit” [ed.: usually "brevity is the soul of wit"].

3. Univocal, equivocal, and the predicables (“said univocally of many things”) #

Point: the logician’s fundamental distinctions are all ways of being said of many.

• Univocal vs. equivocal; equivocal subdivided into by chance and by reason. Examples: “man” of the three of us (univocal, two-footed animal with reason) vs. “man” of the statue (equivocal, but perhaps not by chance); “I like you because you’re like me” (two senses of “like”).
• Predicables: ways something is said univocally of many, either as regards its nature or outside it. Genus: said of many differing in species, signifying what it is. Difference: said of more than one (equilateral of more than one quadrilateral), signifying how it is what it is. Species: signifies what it is, but not said of many differing in species. “The word species can become kind of critical.”

4. The categories as “said of all” (“the ten set of all”) #

Point: the ten categories are the highest genera, said of a vast multitude with more or less the same meaning.

• “Category” comes from the law court: the Greek word for accusing (the Pharisees accusing Our Lord); accusing = saying something of you (murderer, thief). Aristotle generalised it.
• He calls the categories “the ten said-of-all”; the syllogism rests on said-of-all and said-of-none (dici de omni, dici de nullo): if A is said of all B, A is said of whatever B is said of; if of none, denied of whatever B is said of.
• Exam example: “some of you passed.” Has he said some have not? No; he may have corrected only half the papers. Even if all passed, “some passed” is not false — all includes some. People wrongly “jump” to “some have not.”
• Induction: from “some men are white” can you conclude all are? The Watertown boy who told a black boy to “go home and wash your face”; someone in darkest Africa might think all are black.
• Kasurik’s Mars test: pink snow on Mars — surprising but you don’t see why impossible; “half a stone as big as a whole stone” — impossible. So one may not see the reason why skin could not be green (the Jolly Green Giant; the evergreen trees).

5. Cajetan text two: why ad aliquid comes right after quantity (“post predicamentum quantitatis”) #

Point: relation is treated immediately after quantity because it most of all follows upon quantity, though in the order of nature it comes after quality, action and passion.

• Reads the Latin: post praedicamentum quantitatis statim he treats ad aliquid (Greek pros ti, “towards something” — “a very good translation”); it most follows on quantity (double/half, taller/shorter, wider); the sermo about it was already begun in quantity (equal/unequal, de magno et parvo) and will be had again in quality; naturae ordine it is post qualitatem, action and passion.
• Cajetan’s own chief reason (he flags “I think myself here”): connected with the two definitions of the chapter. First (Platonic): those are towards something which, as to what they are, are said to be of another. Second: those whose being (being = nature) is towards something.

6. Double and half: nothing in itself (“whose whole nature is to be towards something”) #

Point: the category properly contains only things which are nothing in themselves, only towards another; he admits he “exaggerates a bit” in saying so.

• “I’ll give you double” sounds good, but double of what? Which is more, half of ten or double of two? Half of ten. Four is double towards two, half towards eight — and can be both at once.
• Double and half seem opposed, so when Aristotle treats opposites he begins with relatives, the least opposition: one cannot be hot and cold at once but can be double and half at once.
• Aristotle’s reason for correcting Plato: even parts of a substance (heart, liver “of my body”) are said to be of another; then a substance would be a bunch of relations — “make any sense? No.” So being said of another is not enough; the thing may be fundamentally substance (a part), or fundamentally quality (my knowledge of something, my power to do something). “Subtle thing.” Things go in the category where they most belong; later, in quality, Aristotle says the quality is in quality while the relation following on it may fall elsewhere.
• Aside: the student who was valedictorian of a very small class — an impressive title only relative to the size of the class (Harvard, MacArthur at West Point vs. three or four students).
• Reads the handout: the first definition is so broad as to include parts of substance and qualities with relations following upon them; the second limits the genus to that whose very nature is to be towards another; since the book is about names signifying what things are, this distinction must be taken into account.

7. How esse is understood in the second definition (“esse in the sense of existence, or nature”) #

Point: “being” in the definition means nature, not existence.

• English “being”: existence, or nature (“human being,” “feline being” — Tabitha the cat). Aristotle uses it in the second sense here.
• Loeb translation criticised: “the Loeb is notorious for being bad”; it renders that being explained by reference to something outside is “not the same as being necessarily relative,” which misses the idea. The Greek: ho proteros horismos parakolouthei pasi tois pros ti — the former definition follows upon all relatives — but it is not the same thing as to einai auta hoper esti (what they very are, their nature) heteron legetai. Loeb’s footnote suspects the text is corrupt; he says no, Aristotle is giving the reason for correcting Plato: there is truth in it, but it covers things not fundamentally relative which have an aspect of relation as a result of what they are.
• His own example: he turned 81, so is older than most men; being 81 is not the same as being older, the relation follows upon it. (His wife reading obituaries: “these people are dying younger than you.”)
• Conclusion: knowledge and power go primarily in quality; “father” might be put in relation; simply speaking the category is for what is nothing in itself. Thomas: quantity and quality are something absolute, relation nothing absolute, only towards another.
• Betelgeuse: in sixth grade he was impressed that the solar system fits inside it; but a line can be made twice, four times, a million times greater, forever — “big deal”; greater is relative, and he became “a little more cynical.”

8. Text on the senses of being; nothing is nothing (“ens dicitur in two ways”) #

Point: one sense of being is only in the mind, signifying the truth of a proposition.

• Reads: ens dicitur in two ways — as signifying the truth of a proposition (the copula; Averroes: being as praedicatum per accidens; not in the thing but in the mind joining subject and predicate, per Metaphysics VI); or as pertaining to the nature of the thing divided by the ten genera, sometimes taken for the essence.
• “Nothing is nothing”: true, yet “nothing is” is an odd sense of being — being in the mind only. Kasurik: philosophy is the only place you get paid to talk about nothing. Does “nothing” mean something? The word must have some meaning.
• Related puzzles, each one line: you can’t get something out of nothing (natural philosophy); King Lear to Cordelia, “nothing will get you nothing” (Lear senile, three daughters, Cordelia unable to flatter); creation “from nothing” means not from something, not from matter; a square circle is nothing — a very diminished sense of being; “he said nothing / they gave you nothing” = did not say/give anything.
• Aside: the Laval professor who referred to Shakespeare as his native language, embarrassing the Americans.

9. Text of Thomas: esse said in three ways (“esse is said in three ways”) #

Point: in the second definition esse means quiddity, not existence.

• Objection read: divine relations are either relativa secundum dici or secundum esse; not only secundum dici, else Sabellius’s heresy (Hilary cited in the handout note); so secundum esse; but per the Philosopher in the Praedicamenta, in such relatives ad aliquid esse is ad aliquid se habere; the divine essence is absolute, so the relation seems not the same as the essence.
• Reply: they are relatives secundum esse, but esse is said in three ways: (1) the whatness/nature, as when definition is “speech signifying what it is to be” (to be a man = two-footed animal with reason); (2) the act of essence, existence — as vivere for living things is the first act of the soul, not the second act which is operation (Descartes: you can be without thinking, not think without being); (3) the truth of the composition, the copula, in the understanding composing or dividing, founded on the act of essence. Aristotle’s definition is understood of the first, the quiddity signified by the definition, not of existence — the very nature of relation, by which it is put in that genus, is to be towards another. “Getting a little difficult for our purposes.”
• Note from handout: as every student of Metaphysics VII knows, Aristotle contracts “what was to be” to “to be” — “which I find kind of confusing.”

10. Summary of the distinction (“relativa secundum dici… relativa secundum esse”) #

Relativa secundum dici: said to be of another, whether fundamentally a relation or not. Relativa secundum esse: whose very nature is towards another — double and half. Knowledge, power, ability are something in themselves with a relation following upon them; ability is not just to be towards another, it is fundamentally a quality. [ed.: at the very end he says such things “are called relativa secundum esse”; the sense of the whole passage requires secundum dici — likely a slip or ASR error.]

His words #

• praedicabilia / praedicamenta: from praedicare, “to say of”; Albert’s and Cajetan’s titles for Isagoge and Categories.
• way of motion / way of predication: Thomas’s one-word descriptions of natural philosophy and logic.
• “said of all”, “said of none”: his English for dici de omni, dici de nullo [ed.: dictum de omni et nullo]; also his name for the ten categories.
• category: from Greek for accusing in court, generalised.
• ad aliquid / pros ti: “towards something”; the category of relation.
• relativa secundum dici vs. secundum esse: said of another vs. whose nature is towards another.
• esse / “being”: nature (quiddity), existence (act of essence), or truth of the proposition (copula).
• first act / second act: existence (vivere) vs. operation.
• “brevity of wisdom of which Shakespeare speaks” [ed.: usually "brevity is the soul of wit"].

Texts #

Read in class

• Cajetan, commentary on the Praedicamenta, on ad aliquid (two texts from the handout, DHB Vol III pp. 180-182).
• Aristotle, Categories ch. 7, second definition of relatives, Loeb translation and Greek.
• Text on ens dicitur in two ways, citing Averroes and Metaphysics VI (locus not stated).
• Thomas, objection and reply on divine relations, esse said in three ways (inferred: De Potentia q. 8 a. 2).

Mentioned

• Porphyry, Isagoge; Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias (Thomas’s commentary finished by Cajetan); Aristotle on opposites (Categories) and on quality; Metaphysics VII (“what was to be”); Metaphysics (“Book of Wisdom”) on senses of being; Hilary on Sabellius; Shakespeare, King Lear; Descartes, “I think therefore I am.”

His questions #

• If I say “some of you passed,” have I said some have not passed? No; perhaps only half the papers are corrected; all includes some.
• Can you conclude from “some men are white” that all are? No, you may only have seen white men.
• Pink snow on Mars — surprising or impossible? Half a stone as big as a whole? Pink snow surprising but not seen to be impossible; half a stone as big as a whole is impossible.
• Which is more, half of ten or double of two? Half of ten; double and half are nothing in themselves.
• Is four double or half? Both: double towards two, half towards eight.
• If parts of a substance are relatives, would substance be a bunch of relations? No; so being said of another is not enough for the category.
• Does “being” in “human being” mean your existence? No, your nature; that is the sense in the second definition.
• Is being 81 the same as being older than most men? No; the relation follows upon being 81.
• Would you say nothing is nothing? Does the word mean something? True, but a being only in the mind; the word must have some meaning — left as a puzzle.