Relation, Part 1: Relatives Secundum Esse and Secundum Dici, the Trinity, and Beings of Reason

Orientation #

He begins “we were on page what five, I guess,” with “a couple of texts here where Thomas is explaining a little the distinction” of relatives secundum esse and secundum dici, and says he “mentioned, I think last time” the question by what the Father generates the Son (prev. lecture). At the end he says “when you get to the post predicaments we’ll come back to this” (kinds of opposites). The verified source places the class at DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 184. The previous class introduced the secundum esse / secundum dici and real / of-reason distinctions from De Potentia and extended them to the Trinity and providence.

The class, in order #

1. Two distinctions not to be confused (“Don’t confuse these two”) #

The point: Thomas explains the distinction relativa secundum esse vs. secundum dici, and there is another distinction, real relations vs. relations of reason; Thomas says do not confuse them.

• Aside: two Laval teachers whose native tongue was French (Fr. Boulet and Msgr. Dionne) held English better than French both for poetry and for philosophy; Msgr. compared English : French as Greek : Latin — Latin “kind of more abstract than Greek.” Prompted by his remark that “Latin is such an abstract language.”

2. Secundum esse vs. secundum dici (“whose whole nature is to be towards something”) #

A student proposes: secundum esse is something that has a relation towards another in reality (father and son); secundum dici is something that is not a relation but somehow implies one. He refines:

• Relative secundum esse: one whose whole nature (“being in the sense of nature, like human being”) is to be towards something; nothing in itself. Example: “I’m going to give you a double” — a double what? It could be tiny, “a double helping of pie” could be “the half of a half of a half”; double and half are nothing in themselves, only towards another. This is the highest genus “towards something,” sometimes called relation, but “towards something is more the real nature.”
• Relative secundum dici: “kind of what Plato was saying” — whatever is said to be of another; fundamentally something other than a relation, with relation following upon it. Example: knowledge is knowledge of something, so seems relative, but is it “fundamentally a relation, nothing in itself”? Test: can you teach because you have students, or because you know something? Knowledge is really a quality, with a relation to the known following.

3. Why Aristotle takes relation before quality (“Aristotle obviously got mixed up there”) #

The point: the order in the Categories changes because of a widely accepted but confused definition of relation.

1. When Aristotle first enumerates the highest genera (genera that are only genera, not species) the order is substance, quantity, quality, relation.
2. Taking them up in particular: substance, then ch. 6 quantity — one would expect quality next, but he gives relation.
3. Reason: an accepted definition of relation (Plato’s, in a sense) had some truth but mixed up what is fundamentally a quality having a relative aspect as consequence — i.e. it was defining the relative secundum dici. Since we want the genera of being, relation as a kind of being is “just towards another, nothing in itself”; he wants to clear that up first.
4. Evidence: at the end of the chapter on quality, after distinguishing four kinds of quality, he comes back to things that have a relative aspect.

• He notes this matters “later on when you talk about whether the relation is real or not” — a distinction Aristotle touches elsewhere, not in the Categories.
• Second example of a secundum dici relative: power or ability, defined as source or beginning of doing something other than itself. My ability to see is not my seeing but its source; my ability to make French fries is not making them. A beginning is “kind of a relative thing,” but ability is something in itself (“my muscles and my mind”); so it is relative secundum dici, put fundamentally in quality, second species of quality.

4. By what does the Father generate the Son? (“Was it by his substance? Or was it by his fatherhood?”) #

The point: the categories are needed even at the end of theology; Boethius (quoted by Thomas) says two of the ten categories are found in God, or something like them — substance and relation — though strictly God is not in a genus. Argument (a dilemma with reply):

1. If the Father generates the Son by his fatherhood: every agent makes something like itself, so the Father would communicate fatherhood to the Son — “sounds kind of heretical”: two fathers, the Son having a son, “a father before he got the son.”
2. What the Son has in common with the Father is that he is God; so it must be by the divine nature that he generates the Son.
3. Objection: the Son has the numerically same divine nature — can’t he generate a Son too? Reply: “maybe it’s not a complete statement” — it is by the divine nature as it is in the Father; that is why the Son cannot generate.
4. Conclusion: his ability to generate is the divine nature, not his fatherhood; and Thomas, following Aristotle, puts power in quality, something absolute rather than towards another. “It’s kind of very subtle.”

• Stresses: the study of God is the last thing we know, the Trinity perhaps last of all (Thomas treats the unity of God and his operations before the Trinity), and there “you’re going back to the categories,” the beginning of logic, the beginning of philosophy in the order of learning.

5. Thomas’s text on the two distinctions (“names are placed upon them to signify the relations themselves”) #

He reads/renders Thomas: some relativa secundum esse are not real; some relativa secundum dici nevertheless imply real relations, as is clear about science and sense. Things are said relativa secundum esse when names are imposed to signify the relations themselves; secundum dici when names are imposed to signify chiefly qualities or something of the sort, upon which certain relations follow.

• Applied back to §4: the Father’s generating is chiefly by the divine nature, a relation following upon having it, “as it’s in the Father.”
• From a before-class conversation: no real distinction between the Father and the divine nature, nor between the divine nature of the Father and of the Son, nor with the Holy Spirit — a distinction of reason only. Then: is the way the divine nature is in the three the same? Numerically the same nature (not just same in species as you and I share human nature), all equally God; but the relations make a difference in the way they have it: the Father has it not from another; the Son from the Father (“God from God, Light from Light… begotten, not made” in the Creed).
• Aside: Basil scandalized people by calling the Father “the idea” of the Son; Thomas distinguishes calling the Father the beginning of the Son (the Son proceeds from him) from cause (then they would not have the same being). “Kind of scary” given Basil’s greatness.
• The Holy Spirit: if you say the nature is in him “from the Father, period,” there is no distinction between Son and Holy Spirit (“two Sons”); so it is from the Father and the Son, proceeding from their mutual love.
• Aside: a Church Father says minds “stutter” when they speak of the Trinity — “it’s the mind stuttering”; it takes a long time to state these things correctly.

6. Real relations vs. relations of reason (“isn’t real distinction the same as secundum esse? No, no, no”) #

The point: this second distinction is not in the Categories (given ad bonitatem doctrinae) and is not the same as the first.

• For a relation to be real, there must be something besides the relation: in God, the divine substance (which is the same as the relations); in creatures, something else that causes it — I am a father because I generated a son, a teacher because I taught a student.
• Example of relation of reason: “the right side of the glass and the left side” — is there really a right and left in the glass? (Confusion over the mug’s handle “on the right side.”) Not a real right or left; but “I’m right-handed” — there is a real basis for right and left in me.
• Aristotle “was the first man to point this out”: knowledge is really related to the known, but the known not really to knowledge. Example: a window-peeker looking at the neighbor’s house — if they don’t know, no real relation of them to me, but a real relation of me to them. Our mind cannot think of one thing toward another without “turning it around, fair game,” hence a relation of reason.
• Before and after in the first sense, time: is today before tomorrow, after yesterday? Yesterday and tomorrow do not exist — so these are relations of reason. “Shocking,” “a weak little son of a gun.” Student question: is before (in any sense) secundum dici or secundum esse? “This part of the table is before this part, if you’re moving one way” — it does not seem something absolute in itself; “this is a very difficult thing” and left open, not necessary for the Categories.
• Why it matters: the relation of father and son — the heretic Sabellius said the same one is called Father insofar as he created us and Son insofar as he became man.

7. Logic and relations of reason (“Logic is about relations of reason”) #

Student: aren’t genus and species also relations of reason? Yes — another kind. Student: is the whole doctrine of relations of reason about logic? Yes, logic is about relations of reason, “we need those ones.”

• Defining requires a genus first: teaching Shakespeare’s exhortation to use reason, the genus of reason is ability, defined by what it is for: “large discourse, looking before and after.” Square: plane figure, rectilinear plane figure, or closer, quadrilateral, plus differences. Perfect number: a number equal to everything that measures it — four is measured by 1, 2 (not 3) and 1+2≠4; six by 1, 2, 3 (not 4, 5) and 1+2+3=6; next is 28. Thomas takes this up in considering the perfection of God.
• Student: can you define generally what a relation of reason is? He: probably equivocal, “by reason”; no single genus.

8. Being of reason among the senses of being (“kind of in no man’s land”) #

The point: where being of reason sits in Aristotle’s division of being in the Metaphysics.

1. Subject of metaphysics is being and one; “being” is equivocal (bk. V).
2. Being per se vs. per accidens — accidental not as opposed to substance but to per se: “a white logician,” “a Christian geometer.” Is a Christian logician a kind of logician? Not necessarily a better one; Aristotle, no Christian, is the father of logic; Euclid was not a Christian. To be a Christian and to be a logician happen to the same man but do not make one thing, “Christian logic.”
3. Being per se divided two ways: by the ten genera (chiefly substance, bks. VII-VIII, led in from logic in VII and from natural philosophy in VIII) and by act and ability (bk. IX).
4. Then the other sense: being of reason, “no man’s land” between per se and per accidens — not accidental (else no science, no episteme, of logic) but not as real or fundamental as the ten categories.

• Student objection: why not in quality, since knowledge is? He: knowledge is; but see the descending order below.
• Asides: Porphyry attacked the Church and Augustine speculates on his pride, yet Thomas always refers to the Isagoge and Cajetan commented on it. A parishioner named Euclid; a Euclid Hotel in St. Paul.

9. The descending order of being (“substance first, then accident, then motion”) #

• A living man is being in a fuller sense than sitting: “you will cease to be, Mr. Berquist, if you leave this room” — no; accident has no being by itself but is that by which substance is in some way.
• Below accident, motion: imperfect being, “act of what is able to be insofar as it’s able to be” (bk. III). Is learning the same as knowing, growing to be 5'10" the same as being 5'10"? Grandchildren growing; cadets at the military academy given a carbine until they shot up to carry an M1. Motion comes up in the post-predicaments.
• Then non-being: ignorant, blind, deaf, impotent, dead — “non-being is a kind of being,” which shows how equivocal “being” is.
• Then nothing: Boethius, no statement truer than one where a thing is said of itself (a dog is a dog), so “nothing is nothing” — what kind of is? A being of reason, in the mind only; we can make true statements (“something is not nothing”). Natural philosophers: nothing comes from nothing; Lear to Cordelia, “nothing will get you nothing.” Nothing is “the bottom thing,” a being of reason closer in this descending order to real being.
• Asides: Kasurik’s joke — philosophy is the only subject where you get paid for talking about nothing; Hegel thinks of becoming as a union of being and non-being, “kind of gets things confused.”

10. Two kinds of being of reason; genus and species (“things are universal only when they’re separated in the mind”) #

• Two kinds of beings of reason: a relation of reason (arising from knowing something, and more cases) — genus/species — and the negation kind (nothing; deafness or blindness, “not quite as much nothing as nothing is nothing”).
• Genus: a name said with one meaning of many things other in kind, signifying what it is; species: a kind placed under a genus of which the genus is said in answer to “what is it.” They are relative to each other — the reason Porphyry takes species right after genus rather than difference.
• Student: why isn’t genus-species a real relation? Answer reached with the class: it is a relation of universal to singulars; things are universal only when separated in the mind by the active understanding; not in things outside the mind, so not real. They can be called relativa secundum dici but are not real relations. He adds this is only “one” way the logical/real distinction works; some are based on negations.
• Blindness vs. negation: “this class doesn’t see” but the class is not blind; blind is non-being of the ability to see in what by nature should see (privation); the class’s not-seeing is mere negation. The post-predicaments will distinguish contradictories and lack. Thomas divides the substance of God into five in both Summas (order differs); one is that God is infinite, which Thomas first notes is not a privation (like a limitless line) but a negation — “going back to the categories.”
• Is genus-to-species in the category of relation? No — the categories are of being outside the mind.
• Student: how many kinds of relations of reason? “You’ve got to read the De Potentia”; one distinction: those like nothing (negation) vs. those like “you’re known because I know you.” Reason “makes nothing to be like a something”: “I did nothing.” Class ends.

His words #

• relativa secundum esse — whose whole nature is to be towards something, nothing in itself.
• relativa secundum dici — said to be of another, fundamentally something else (a quality) with a relation following.
• “towards something” — his name for the highest genus usually called relation [ed.: ad aliquid].
• “how much” — quantity.
• “ability” — power [ed.: potency], second species of quality; genus in the definition of reason.
• “beginning” of the Son, not “cause” — principle vs. cause in Thomas’s distinction.
• ad bonitatem doctrinae — the real/of-reason distinction given for the goodness of the teaching, not in the Categories.
• “distinction of reason” vs. “real distinction” — between Father and divine nature.
• being per se / per accidens; act and ability — Metaphysics divisions.
• episteme — science.
• “imperfect being” — motion, act of the able insofar as able.
• “lack” — privation, vs. negation; “post-predicaments” [ed.: postpraedicamenta].
• being of reason — in the mind only; two kinds: relation of reason and negation.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, text on relativa secundum esse / secundum dici (handout “page five”; DHB Vol. III p. 184, verified) — names imposed to signify relations themselves vs. qualities with relations following.
• Nicene Creed, “God from God, Light from Light… begotten, not made” (recited). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Categories: order of the genera; ch. 6 quantity, relation next, chapter on quality with four kinds; post-predicaments (opposites, motion).
• Thomas, De Potentia (for kinds of relations of reason).
• Boethius: two categories in God; “nothing is nothing” principle.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics bk. V (being equivocal; per se / per accidens), bks. VII-VIII (substance), bk. IX (act and ability).
• Aristotle, Physics bk. III (definition of motion).
• Porphyry, Isagoge; Cajetan’s commentary; Augustine on Porphyry.
• Both Summas: five parts of the substance of God; God infinite as negation.
• Thomas on the perfection of God (perfect numbers).
• Shakespeare, King Lear (“nothing will get you nothing”); “large discourse, looking before and after” (Hamlet, inferred).
• Basil; Sabellius; Hegel; Euclid.

His questions #

• Can you teach because you have students, or because you know something? Because you know something; knowledge is a quality with a relation following.
• Is my ability to see my seeing? No, it is its source; ability is something in itself, secundum dici, in quality.
• Was the Father able to generate the Son by his substance or by his fatherhood? By the divine nature as it is in the Father; not by fatherhood.
• Do Father, Son and Holy Spirit have the divine nature in the same way? Same numerically, but Father not from another, Son from the Father, Spirit from both.
• Isn’t the real/of-reason distinction the same as secundum esse? No; a real relation needs something besides the relation as its basis.
• Does the glass really have a right and left side? No; but in a right-handed man there is a real basis.
• Is today before tomorrow a real relation? A relation of reason — yesterday and tomorrow do not exist.
• Is “before” secundum dici or secundum esse? Left open — “a very difficult thing.”
• Is nothing something, or is nothing nothing? Nothing is nothing; a being of reason, in the mind only.
• Why isn’t the genus-species relation a real relation? Because the universal exists only as separated in the mind.