The Post-Predicaments I: Opposites, Distinction, and Speaking of Nothing

Orientation #

He opens by recalling “we’ve been talking about” having (clothing, virtue, height) and the ten categories, and says the class has been reading Thomas’s De Veritate. He does not announce a next topic beyond saying they may or may not go on to “the second chapter here about opposites” with its more particular questions. The previous class finished the last six categories and introduced the post-predicaments; the next works through before, together, motion and having.

The class, in order #

1. Why the post-predicaments come after the categories (“found in more than one category”) #

Point: the commentators say the post-predicaments name things found in more than one category, and so must be led back to the categories without landing in just one.

• Motion (Aristotle, bk. IX: “the first meaning of act”) is found in substance, quantity, quality and where — four categories, “not motion of motion” (“a very subtle thing”).
• Opposites can be in more than one genus; before and after and hama (together) are in every category, since the genus comes before its species and the co-divided species are together.
• To have: a virtue, a height, one’s clothing — across categories. Second reason (his own): we do not stop at the categories; in the parts of philosophy, of which logic is only a tool, we subdivide them, and the post-predicaments lay down the basic means for subdividing.
• Aristotle, On the Soul bk. II: substance is one genus, divided into matter, form, composite — which is the soul?
• Thomas, Prima Secundae: quality → habit/disposition → virtues and vices.
• Their Wednesday-night study of the soul: the powers fall in the second species of quality. Universal importance: Shakespeare’s definition of reason as “looking before and after” requires seeing distinction, and distinction rests on opposites; hence opposites and before/after matter for the whole life of the mind. Aside: reading De Veritate — the saints do not see everything in seeing God, but they do see everyone asking their prayers.

2. How reason grasps words equivocal by reason (“by a large discourse”) #

Point: a word equivocal by reason is understood by a large discourse — moving from one chief sense to the next, seeing both the connection and the distinction, “large” because such words (in, be) are very universal.

• Physics IV on place: Aristotle distinguishes eight senses of “to be in”; Thomas then looks before and after to see their order. Being in place is first (being in this room); second, “my teeth are in my mouth” — like being in the room, but as a part. Boundary case: a tooth knocked out and lying on the floor is in the mouth “just as in a place, so long as it’s attached” — the seats are like parts of the room, we are not. Against the moderns who would abolish equivocal words: without them we could speak only of what the senses note — not of God, angels or soul. Student: Gabriel Marcel called univocal time and place “twin forms of absence” — one can only be here and now, so no universality. Berquist: extending these words is natural; to refuse is to go against language.

3. Shakespeare on time, and whether time makes things better (“Shakespeare is wiser than any modern philosopher”) #

Point: Shakespeare, who calls time “a tyrant” and “our master” (cf. C. S. Lewis: you don’t have time, time has you), is wiser than the modern philosophers (though Homer is not wiser than Aristotle). Argument from Physics IV on time: Is time more the cause of things getting better or worse? Worse — left to themselves, the car and the unpainted house fall apart. A tyrant rules you not for your good; so “time is a tyrant” is exact. He told De Koninck this applies against evolutionists who deny nature acts for an end yet hold things get better with time.

4. Aristotle’s distinctions of four, and how to divide a four (“crisscrossing two distinctions”) #

Point: opposites are “said in four ways”, and Aristotle’s fours can be divided two-and-two or one-and-three.

• Antepredicaments: universal/individual substance and accident, from crisscrossing two contradictory pairs (said of another / not; exists in another / not): two substances vs. two accidents, or two universals vs. two individuals.
• Four causes: first two-and-two, intrinsic (matter, form) vs. extrinsic (mover, end). God as “Alpha and Omega, beginning and end” is extrinsic cause, not matter or intrinsic form. He tells students God is a cause “in two and a half senses” — three if form is split into intrinsic form and exemplar. The soul is cause of the body in three of four senses (form as first act, mover, end of generation), not matter. What the three share against matter: act vs. potency (passive ability) — matter is the ability to be formed, form is act, the mover moves as act, the end is act.
• Shakespeare’s 37 plays: set aside the 10 histories (historical data intrude on the poet’s imagination); divide the 27 into three — 10 tragedies, 5 comedies, and the in-between plays the Renaissance called tragicomedy (Aristotle in the Poetics had only tragedy and comedy); subdivide the middle into love-and-friendship plays (closer to comedy) and mercy-and-forgiveness plays, six each.

5. The four opposites: division and Aristotle’s order (“relatives first”) #

Point: the four opposites divide one-and-three, since relatives are unique; but Aristotle lists them relatives, contraries, having/lacking, contradictories. Why one-and-three: the other opposites exclude each other; relatives demand each other (shorter/taller, son/father). Hence distinction in the Trinity is by relative opposition, Father and Son. Why Aristotle’s order: he begins with pros ti because it is one of the ten categories, then takes what is nearest.

• Contraries: species of the same genus with a common subject — virtue and vice both habits, justice and injustice both in the will; double and half in quantity.
• Having and lacking: a common subject but no common genus, since the lack is non-being of something — blindness is not mere not-seeing (that would be the contradictory) but the non-being of sight in what by nature is able to and should have it.
• Contradictories: no middle, no common subject; one must be true — you see or you don’t. The stone does not see, but is not blind; you or I have sight or are blind. So contradictories are most opposed, and the reverse order (Aristotle or Thomas elsewhere) is “more sapiential”; this one accords with the order of the categories. Why the divine persons cannot be distinguished by the others: contradictories involve non-being, but every person is God, “I am who am”; lacking is a kind of non-being; even contraries, though both species, always show one lacking against the other (cold vs. hot, black vs. white). Aside: “kind of subtle guy, Aristotle.”

6. Opposites at work in the categories; relation the odd one (“Relation is kind of the odd animal”) #

Point: Aristotle’s own distinctions use these opposites.

• Universal/individual, substance/accident: contradictories. Substance into material/immaterial (“separated substances”): contradictories. Quantity into discrete/continuous: contradictories. Habits into virtue/vice, hot/cold: contraries. Thomas reaches relative distinction of the persons by elimination — not contradictories, contraries or having/lacking, so only relation remains. Student recalls the axiom: in God all is one except where there is opposition of relation. Admire Aristotle for seeing relation as opposition at all. Among the three, a real order holds; relation would come fourth, since it demands its correlative. He would not divide the four two-and-two.

7. Do contradictories exist only in the mind? “Nothing” and the first axiom (“nothing is nothing”) #

Student question; his answer: yes — negation is a being of reason. Thomas orders beings: substance, accident, then motion, then negation.

• Greeks: nothing comes from nothing; Warren Murray notes modern scientists say the universe arose from nothing. Did the Greeks mean something by “nothing”? Yes, but not the same something as something — the mind makes nothing something to talk about. Joke: philosophy pays you for talking about nothing. Boyhood puzzle: “what if there was nothing?” “There’s nothing in that room” (unfurnished) uses “is”. “Nothing is nothing” still uses “is”: we cannot think non-being except through being.
• “To be or not to be, that is the question” — why a question? Because you cannot both be and not be. Every dialectical “whether” (whether the soul is immortal) rests on this; it is the first axiom, beginning of all the axioms known through themselves by all men. Example: if an odd number were even, something would both be and not be divisible into two equal parts. “Something” is thus equivocal by reason; the being of reason is “a strange kind of being.”
• Student: is lacking then just non-being, unlike contraries? Contraries can both be; the lack is non-being in a subject that should have the form. A vice is not mere lack of virtue but a real inclination — the coward really inclines to run. Beings of reason are divided into negations and relations of reason; the mind makes them to be in some way.
• A friend: nothing is more true than “a thing is itself” — Socrates is Socrates, nothing is nothing.
• Hegel denies the equivocity: becoming is a mixture of being and non-being — “being, unbeing, boom, becoming.” Shakespeare wiser.

8. Digression: Hegel’s order of the fine arts, music and drama (“music is really closer to drama”) #

Hegel rightly puts drama first, then music, then painting and sculpture; colleagues who put painting above music (too emotional, not all at once) are wrong. Music has a plot: Mozart’s 23rd concerto (A major) has hidden sadness in the first movement, a tragic minor second, unalloyed joy in the third — beginning, middle, end, one work not three (a question shaped by the Poetics). The 27th, his farewell: resignation, then a childlike melody — “unless you become a child again.” Student: film? A kind of play, like opera, “complicating things.” Aside: his wife disgusted by a film Othello.

9. The distinction of distinction (“division of the continuous”) #

Point: Thomas distinguishes formal distinction (by opposites) from material distinction (by division of the continuous).

• Number, a species of quantity, arises by dividing the continuous: bisect a line, then again — since division is endless, number increases forever.
• Virtue/vice, substance/accident, universal/singular: formal. The Trinity is a formal distinction, not a cutting of one God into three partial gods. Division of division: division is distinction of parts of a whole; the composed whole (he prefers this to “integral”) vs. the universal whole, and perhaps a potential whole — “don’t get into all those things.” Definition of definition, statements about statements: reason comes back on itself, knows that it is, can define itself. Aside: Chesterton sets a reflecting university by water — Oxford — “they’re all wet.”

10. Categories ch. 10 read: how the opposites differ (“said towards others”) #

Point: after distinguishing the four, Aristotle shows they differ. Relatives are said to be “of” or toward each other (father of a son); his example is episteme, a quality with relation following upon it (recalling the earlier distinction). Contraries are not said of each other: the good is not the good of the bad. Some contraries have a middle, some not: health/sickness — one must belong to the body; odd/even — to number; black/white have a middle, so neither need belong. Virtue and vice? A middle perhaps, though not habits in the full sense. Toward the logic of the second act: what does truth mean in an either-or statement? “Every number is odd or even” true; “prime or composite” true; “square or cube” false. “Every human being is man or woman” — “you got trouble now”; they admit it has nothing to do with biology. Good and bad: is a newborn morally good or bad? — “before baptism or after? I’m a Christian philosopher.” Digression (Wednesday-night question): is there wanting in God? Wanting is to love and lack; joy is to love and have. Does God get anything from our love? We need to be loved; does the Father need the Son’s love — “depends on which theology.” Appetite is named from wanting because wanting is more like motion than love or joy, and motion catches the eye; likewise concupiscible (concupiscence = wanting) and irascible (road rage, Los Alamos fight). Having and lacking are not said of each other. Affirmation and negation: “here and here only one must be true, the other false.” Closing question: “Must I be double or half?” — left there.

His words #

• post predicaments; names found in more than one category, and basic means of subdividing them
• hama; together — co-divided species of a genus
• looking before and after; Shakespeare’s definition of reason, requiring distinction
• equivocal by reason; a word with connected but distinct senses, grasped by “a large discourse”
• Natural Hearing; [ed.: Physics]
• ability; [ed.: potency], in the passive sense, matter as ability to be formed
• two and a half senses of cause; God as mover, end, and form only as exemplar
• pros ti, towards something; [ed.: relation]
• having and lacking; [ed.: possession and privation], common subject, no common genus
• contradictories; affirmation and negation, no middle
• sapiential order; the reverse order, ending with relation
• being of reason; negation, relation of reason — the mind makes them to be
• first axiom; a thing cannot both be and not be at once in the same way
• formal distinction vs. material distinction; by opposites vs. by division of the continuous
• composed whole; his name for the integral whole
• logic of the second act; [ed.: On Interpretation, truth and falsity]
• wanting; to love and lack, vs. joy, to love and have

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Categories, ch. 10 — relatives said towards others, contraries not; contraries with and without a middle; affirmation and negation alone one true one false (“one thirty-one”, 13b inferred) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Physics IV — eight senses of “in”, place; time cause of worsening
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX — motion first meaning of act
• Aristotle, On the Soul II — substance as genus: matter, form, composite; soul cause of body
• Aristotle, Poetics — tragedy and comedy; unity of beginning, middle, end
• Thomas, Prima Secundae — virtue under quality/habit
• Thomas, De Veritate; De Potentia — disputed questions
• Antepredicaments (Categories, opening chapters) — the fourfold division
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (inferred) — reason “looking before and after”; “To be or not to be”; sonnets on time as tyrant and master
• Hegel — becoming; order of the fine arts
• Gabriel Marcel; C. S. Lewis; Chesterton

His questions #

• Which category does motion belong to? Found in four — substance, quantity, quality, where — not in one.
• Is time more the cause of things getting better or worse? Worse.
• Would you divide the four causes one-and-three or two-and-two? First two-and-two, intrinsic and extrinsic.
• In how many senses is the soul a cause of the body? Three of four — form, mover, end; not matter.
• How divide the four opposites? One and three; relatives demand their correlative, the others exclude.
• Which opposites are most opposed? Contradictories.
• Why can’t the divine persons be distinguished by contradictories, lacking or contraries? All involve non-being or lack; every person is God — so relation, by elimination.
• Are contradictories only in the mind? Yes; negation is a being of reason.
• Why is “to be or not to be” a question? Because one cannot both be and not be — the first axiom.
• Is there any wanting in God? Wanting implies lack; God has love and joy — left largely open.
• Must I be double or half? Left open at the close.