Relations of Reason and the Four Species of Quality: Dividing by Two or Three, Virtue as the Road to Happiness, and Number in the Trinity

Orientation #

He says they already have a text on relations of reason he sent them, and proposes to “continue with quality now” and go back to relations of reason later if someone wants. He asks whether they have already seen the four species of quality (“Have we seen that already?”) and picks up at “page three” of the handout on quality (verified source: handout “Quality – Chapter 8”, p. 4). The previous class covered relations of reason and began Categories ch. 8; the next continues quality from Metaphysics V and the Prima Secundae.

The class, in order #

1. Finishing the De Potentia; the Orthodox and the Filioque (“nine arguments to to prove that”) #

Opening report on his own reading, leading to a remark on the Greeks.

• Finished the Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia; the last question, on the processions in the Trinity, ends with: would the Son be distinct from the Holy Spirit if the Spirit did not proceed from Him? About 24 objections; Thomas gives nine arguments in three groups of three — “magnificent.”
• Contra Errores Graecorum: Thomas quotes the greatest Greek doctors, and they themselves accept that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. Thomas died on his way to that council.
• Asides: a Greek festival tour in Worcester where the guide raised the Filioque (he declined to argue on a Sunday); a deceased bishop (name garbled, “Bishop Duane” in the recording) joked the Orthodox would still object because the Pope has no beard.

2. The four relations of reason, two from Aristotle, two from Avicenna (“Socrates is the same as Socrates”) #

Recap, prompted by rereading the De Veritate, of the same four relations of reason Thomas gives in the De Potentia.

• Thomas says two are found in Aristotle, two in Avicenna; neither has the complete list, and Thomas brings the two together.
• Aristotle’s two: (a) Socrates is the same as Socrates — a real relation needs two really distinct things; here there are two Socrates only in the mind (subject and predicate); (b) knowledge and the known — knowledge really depends on the known, but the known does not share in knowing and has no real relation back.
• Avicenna’s two: (c) today is before tomorrow — no real relation between being and non-being when a term does not exist; (d) relation of a relation (how is your fatherhood related to you?) — relation is already relation; a relation of relation would need a relation of that, “and on forever.”
• Student: how is genus a relation? Answer: genus and species are universals, and things are universal only in the mind; so this is a relation of things in the state of being known, distinguished from relations of reason said of the things themselves (Socrates really is the same as Socrates, but not by a real relation). “Really difficult stuff.”
• Aristotle’s order of examples in the postpredicaments (text not yet reached): double and half, or taller and shorter — real on both sides; then knowledge and the known — real on one side only. Putting it second almost hints at a real relation on one side but not the other; “his choice of examples is significant.”
• His teacher Kasruti [name uncertain in recording]: “you can tell a man’s intelligence by the examples he chooses” — Aristotle takes plain things, the modern philosopher an abstruse example appealing to imagination. De Koninck once explained the order of Thomas’s examples and remarked a modern Thomist would not bother.
• He will let the De Veritate “lay fallow” a year; its first question is on truth, but from about question 20 on it is about the good, so it should be “de veritate et bonitate,” as he divided it in his own setup.
• Student: on faith, unlike elsewhere, Thomas asks about the act first, not the object. Berquist: he has already treated the object (truth) in the earlier questions.

3. The rule of two or three (“three is the first number about which we say all”) #

He defends his “propaganda” rule against the objection that quality has four species.

• Quantity divides into two (discrete/continuous); relations divide by what they are based on — quantity (double/half) or action and undergoing (father/son, teacher/student, mover/moved). But quality has four species, “not two or three.”
• Defense: Plato always divides into two (the Sophist, dividing by opposites); Aristotle in the biological works says sometimes three makes more sense, and in the book on the universe (three lines at right angles) says three is enough, “the first number about which we say all,” used in praising God — not the Trinity, but the perfection of three (beginning, middle, end). Thomas calls Plato and Aristotle the philosophi praecipui; Albert says a complete philosopher knows both. Put them together: two or three, or both.
• Plot (Poetic Art): Homer taught the Greeks that a plot is not what happened to one man but a course of action with beginning, middle, end (three); elsewhere the plot is tying and untying the knots (two).
• Names said of many: univocal/equivocal, then equivocal by reason/by chance (all twos); or entirely the same / entirely different / partly same partly different — univocal, purely equivocal, analogous (three). Neither is incorrect; “one brings out something the other one doesn’t.”
• Family: parents and children (two) or father, mother, children (three) — the latter when the father is head; lex orandi, lex credendi: the litany of St Joseph calls him head of the Holy Family though wife and son were superior in many ways, and the head should be distinguished from the other parts.
• Aside: husband and wife are more two in one flesh in the child than in the marital act (temporary) — in the child forever; the child as common good fortifying the marriage; he thinks like his father, has his mother’s emotions (her hatred of dirty jokes).

4. Dividing the four species: three and one, two and two (“a quality about quantity”) #

Four can be divided into three-and-one or two-and-two by different principles, and both follow the order Aristotle enumerates.

• Three against one. Student: the fourth is a quality about quantity. Berquist, from the Nicomachean Ethics: virtue is a source of doing or not doing (courageous vs. coward, just vs. unjust — the church money-counting joke). What in the soul is a source of motion? habits, inborn abilities, and the “undergoing qualities” such as emotions — so Aristotle asks whether virtues are habits, natural abilities, or emotions, and concludes habits (not my ability to feel anger but my being habituated to moderate it). Quantity, and so shape, is not as such a source of motion; hence the first three go together and the fourth is last.
  • Anger examples: whether getting angry is virtue or vice depends on being habituated to be angry when and as much as one should; bumped in a hall — no anger; someone using your kid for target practice — anger; prudence looks at the situation. Aside: a friend who whacked the neighbour’s kid for smashing a potted plant.
  • Aside: Martin Bosworth [name uncertain] on controlling anger so as to speak more clearly.
• Two against two. The third species he first learned as “sensible qualities.” Private sensible (one sense: colour to eye, sound to ear) vs. common sensible (more than one: the shape of the glass by sight or by touch). The last two are sensible as such; the first two are not — I know my ability to see only through seeing, a sensible per accidens; “I don’t sense my justice or my courage.”

5. Why habit before natural ability; why quantity before quality (“well or ill disposed towards our nature”) #

His puzzle: the inborn ability seems more basic and closer to substance than habit, yet Aristotle lists habit first.

• Compare quantity before quality (order of the first enumeration: substance, quantity, quality, relation): quantity is more basic than shape and than sensible qualities (green spread over a surface), and is tied to the distinction of individuals of one kind — many tables because enough wood, many men because enough flesh, blood and bone; Aristotle’s sun made of all the matter that could be a sun, so only one; no such multiplication among angels.
• The second species — natural inborn ability or inability, the abilities of the soul — seems more fundamental, though less manifest.
• Thomas’s procedure in the Prima Secundae: he recalls there is a genus quality and comes down to habit and disposition, just as Aristotle in the De Anima recalls the genus substance, divides it (matter, form, composite) and asks which is the soul. That is part of the reason for the postpredicaments: to prepare you to subdivide by opposites and go further down each genus. Illustration: teaching Euclid, books I–VI (continuous: lines, surfaces) vs. VII–IX (number, discrete); teaching Shakespeare’s sonnets, iambic pentameter as feet, speech being the second species of discrete quantity.
  • Aside: seven as symbol of wisdom — wise men, angels, parts of philosophy, plays of Sophocles, gifts, sacraments, virtues.
• Thomas’s reason: by virtues and vices we are well or ill disposed toward our nature — closer to nature in a sense than the abilities, which we merely have because of nature. Shakespeare’s comedy character on the part of philosophy “that treats of happiness by virtue especially to be achieved”; Thomas: virtue is the road to happiness, vice the road to misery (the daily newspaper’s lesson). The end is most important, so maybe that is why habit is first.
• Parallel from the two greatest Catholic teachers: Augustine’s Enchiridion (“in the hand”) divides doctrine by faith, hope, charity, not by reason and will (the natural abilities), though faith is in reason and hope and charity in the will; “you can’t have faith unless you have reason.” Thomas’s Summa Contra Gentiles divides into three — God in himself, as maker, as end — by natural reason, then the same three in book IV by faith (“not for beginners”; the Summa Theologiae’s “beginner” is no grade-school kid). But Thomas’s catechetical instructions at Naples divide as Augustine does: creed under faith (Apostles’, then Nicene), Our Father under hope, the two commandments of love and the Ten under charity — what to believe, hope for, and love, proximate to our end.
  • Asides: “see Naples and die”; at Assumption College he asked a new theologian “Are you orthodox? Do you accept the Nicene Creed?”
• Hunger and thirst: the ability disposes toward nature well or badly (eating too much is bad for body and maybe soul). The first two species are “greater” than the undergoing qualities and shape.

6. Quality “said in many ways”: species or senses? (“more like the senses of a word”) #

Reading the handout: commentators are rightly puzzled that Aristotle says quality is among things said in many ways, and in Metaphysics V distinguishes four senses.

• Problem: how can three [as the handout reads it] species of quality be three meanings of “how”? Species have one meaning in their genus; these seem distinguished like senses of a word rather than by opposites.
• Aristotle in the chapter sometimes calls the species genera; the same thing can be species and genus (discrete quantity), but quality seems more apt to be called genera — “more spread out,” less narrow than quantity.
• People wonder whether there could be another species of quality, never of quantity; Fr Henri Dulac, his logic teacher, was open to it, and Aristotle in the chapter allows it. This way of speaking implies quality lacks the unity quantity has.

7. Three fingers and three persons: is “three” univocal? (“does three mean the same thing”) #

A student’s answer (“seems the same, you can count them”) is tested.

1. Number is in the genus quantity, under discrete; if three were said univocally of God there would be an accident in God.
2. Multitude arises from division of the continuous. Continuous (logic’s definition): quantity whose parts meet at a common boundary — line at a point, semicircle at a line, body at a surface; discrete: parts do not meet at a common boundary. Other definition: divisible forever. Aristotle’s two-birds argument: a faster body goes the same distance in less time; in that time the slower goes less distance; in that distance the faster takes still less time — alternating divides distance and time forever, which is why numbers go on forever.
3. Contrast the “strange notion” of number as merely mental multiplication: Socrates is Socrates gives two Socrates, the statement gives four, and on forever; likewise “I know that I know that I know” — empty; not what Euclid teaches in VII–IX.
4. God has no quantity, parts, or matter; so three of persons is not by division of the continuous. Conclusion: three fingers and three persons — not univocal; some likeness. “Likeness is the cause of deception,” which is why imagination, delighting in likeness, deceives.

8. Boethius: substance and relation in God (“two categories in God”) #

Boethius says there are two categories in God; strictly, is God in any genus?

• De Koninck liked “predicament”: the Latin praedicamenta; a predicament is a situation you can’t get out of — a substance cannot be a quality, a relation cannot be a quantity; “you’re confined.”
• Likeness to substance: substance is what a thing is, and God has what he is; Thomas in the Summa Theologiae, after proving God exists, treats about five things — simple, perfect (therefore good), unchanging, infinite, one — then says “having considered the substance of God” he turns to operations, understanding and will. Aside: an objection appropriating one, true, good to Father, Son, Holy Spirit — “never remember reading that before.”
• Likeness to relation: Father and Son remind us of a father and son; hard for those with a bad father (Thérèse of Lisieux, with a good father, delighted to call God Father); St John: “we are called the children of God, and we are.” Which is called father first is “a question” — left open.

His words #

• Filioque — the addition by the Pope that the Orthodox object to (garbled “Billy Oakway”).
• relation of reason vs. real relation — real requires two really distinct existing terms.
• towards something — the category of relation [ed.: ad aliquid].
• postpredicaments — the later part of the Categories, preparing subdivision by opposites.
• philosophi praecipui — Thomas’s phrase for Plato and Aristotle.
• rule of two or three — his name for dividing into two, three, “or both.”
• equivocal by reason / by chance; purely equivocal; analogous — partly same, partly different meaning.
• lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of praying is the law of believing.
• undergoing qualities — third species [ed.: passions/affective qualities]; also “sensible qualities.”
• private sensible [ed.: proper sensible] vs. common sensible.
• sensible per accidens — how the ability to see is known.
• natural inborn ability or inability — second species.
• continuous — parts meet at a common boundary; divisible forever. discrete — parts do not.
• Enchiridion — “in the hand,” manual.
• predicament / praedicamenta — category, as a situation you can’t get out of.

Texts #

Read in class

• Handout “Quality – Chapter 8”, p. 3–4: on quality “said in many ways” and species vs. senses (Aristotle, Categories, ch. 8).

Mentioned

• Thomas, De Potentia, last question (Son and Spirit); Contra Errores Graecorum.
• Thomas, De Veritate (relations of reason; question 20 onward on the good; on faith).
• Aristotle, Categories, postpredicaments (double/half; knowledge/known); Metaphysics V (four senses of quality); Nicomachean Ethics (virtue as habit); De Caelo (three lines at right angles) (inferred locus); biological works; Poetics (plot); De Anima II (soul, genus substance).
• Plato, Sophist (division into two).
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars (God’s substance, operations; appropriation of one, true, good) and Prima Secundae (habit and disposition); Summa Contra Gentiles (division into three plus book IV); catechetical instructions at Naples.
• Augustine, Enchiridion.
• Euclid, Elements I–VI, VII–IX.
• Shakespeare, sonnets; a comedy (part of philosophy “treats of happiness”).
• Boethius (substance and relation in God).
• Litany of St Joseph; St John (“children of God”); Thérèse of Lisieux.

His questions #

• Why does Aristotle give both double/half and knowledge/known, in that order? The second has a real relation on one side only; the order hints at it.
• How is genus a relation? A relation of things in the state of being known, since universals exist only in the mind.
• Should you divide a plot, or a name said of many, or a family, into two or three? Both; each brings out something the other does not.
• What do the first three species of quality have in common against the fourth? They are sources of motion or action; shape, a quality about quantity, is not.
• How do the first two divide against the last two? The last two are sensible as such; the first two are not (except per accidens).
• Why does Aristotle put habit before natural ability, which seems more basic? Thomas: by habits we are well or ill disposed toward our nature and toward happiness; the end is most important — “I don’t know,” offered tentatively.
• Why quantity before quality? Quantity is more basic than shape and sensible quality and grounds the distinction of individuals.
• Does “three” mean the same of three fingers and three persons in God? No: number arises from division of the continuous, and God has no matter or parts; only a likeness.
• Is God strictly in any genus, as Boethius’s “substance and relation” suggests? Not strictly; there is a likeness to substance and to relation (father/son).
• Which is called father first, God or man? Left open.