The Four Tools of Dialectic; How Aquinas Orders God's Attributes in the Two Summas

Orientation #

He opens by asking the class to remember “the four tools of dialectic” and says of Shakespeare “I always quote” and of Haydn “I think I was quoting last time” (prev. lecture). He also refers to “last night” and “Wednesday night” classes with other students. He gives no locus for the Physics passage; the verified-source matching reports about 20 minutes of the episode against his handout “Note for Book One, Reading Thirteen” (Aquinas on Physics I, lectio 13), which corresponds to the first-matter proportion below. The previous class introduced the four tools, and the next takes up the ordering of the post-predicaments and Metaphysics III.

The class, in order #

1. What makes a statement probable (“the quantity or the quality of men”) #

The first tool is the selection of probable statements, and a statement is probable either by the number or by the quality of those holding it.

1. By quantity: what all men or most men say (e.g. that the sun goes around the earth, rises in the east, and, as the French say, “goes to bed”).
2. By quality: what all, most, or the most famous men in an art or science say — but, he adds, about a matter pertaining to that art or science (all or most doctors, or the most famous ones, on smoking).
3. Boundary cases: the “climate business” — the claim that “all scientists agree”, when engineers he talks to are skeptical and the large number may have been “created”; a Hollywood actor has no excellence about it, though what he says about acting counts more.
4. Thomas in the De Veritate objections quotes Damascene or Augustine: famous men speaking on the matter of their own science, theology. So “those five main things”: all or most men; all or most in an art or science; or the most famous of them.

• Haydn on Mozart’s “dissonant” quartet: the competent man said Mozart must have had a good reason — respect for the famous in his art.
• Student: the “celebrity intellectual” (Chomsky in politics, physicists on communism, Oppenheimer) — held up as gurus outside their competence. He agrees: “it’s got to be a matter of the own thing.”
• Wagner (words male, music female) vs. Mozart (words altogether obedient to the music): if Mozart said it, that’s how it should be done; even stupid plots are turned into something musical.

2. Dividing and ordering probable statements; Shakespeare on playing (“hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature”) #

Aristotle also divides probable statements by subject matter and orders them from the general to the particular. Shakespeare’s line that the purpose of playing is to hold the mirror up to nature is, he says, a probable statement about what the dramatist should do, since Shakespeare is the greatest and most famous dramatist, performed all over the world.

3. Second tool: places where you look for more than one sense (“a place is where you look”) #

“Place” (the book on places) means where you look to see whether a word has more than one meaning; the chief place is the opposite: if a word has more than one opposite it has more than one sense, and if its one opposite has many meanings so does it; another is use in combination.

• Liberal: opposed to conservative, to servile (liberal vs. servile arts), and to stingy — three opposites, so three meanings. Aside: conservatives give more to charity; a liberal is “generous with other people’s money.”

4. Third and fourth tools: finding difference, considering likeness (“consideration of the likeness of things”) #

Aristotle says finding differences but considering likeness, and the difference in wording matters.

• Likeness is in the same genus or species, or a likeness of ratios (2:3 as 4:6, 6:9, 8:12, two trillion to three trillion) — the ratio-likeness is more distant.
• Which exercises the mind more? Finding the difference of things that are close; finding the likeness of things far apart (ratios).
• Why “consider”: a difference once found is found, but likeness can deceive — you may think things alike in a way they are not.
• Example: 4:6 as 2:3; 2:3 is a prime to a prime, so is 4:6? No — the likeness was not considered. The likeness is not that 4 is less than 6 as 2 is less than 3 (then 2:3 would be as 4:5), but parts and whole: six is three twos, four is two of them, so four is two of the three parts of six as two is of three.
• Test: supplying the fourth term shows you see the likeness (seeing is to the eye as hearing is to the ear); his college students, given “2 is to 3 as 4 is to”, invariably say five — the same distance, but not what a proportion’s likeness consists in.

5. The first matter known only by proportion (“If a lion should eat me”) #

Aristotle investigates the matter underlying substantial change (a man becomes lion) by a proportion: first matter is to man and lion as clay is to sphere and cube.

• Objection: clay is an actual substance and sphere and cube are two accidents in the genus of quality; man and dog are two kinds of substance, more than shape — so the likeness seems not to hold.
• Reply: you have not considered sufficiently in what way they are alike. The likeness consists in this: as clay is able to be a sphere or a cube but not both at once, and ceases to be one in becoming the other, so first matter is able to be man or dog and, becoming one, ceases to be the other. Man and dog are not like sphere and cube as both substances or both accidents; substantial and accidental form are alike in both being act in comparison to something. “You want to overextend like this” is the error.
• Aristotle says this is the only way to know first matter; it is not knowable by itself.

6. Why the four tools come in this order (“Statements are made of words”) #

1. The tools serve dialectical argument, which is syllogism or induction; the syllogism is from premises seen as probable, so selecting probable statements is closest to the dialectical syllogism and comes first.
2. Consideration of likeness comes last: useful for induction, and also for the if-then syllogism, where one reasons from one ratio to another.
3. Why senses of words second, before the tools that concern things? A student answers and he accepts: statements are made of words, so to understand statements you must see what the words may mean — proximate to the first tool.

7. Shakespeare on reason; the senses of “before” (“looking before and after”) #

Shakespeare (wiser, he thinks, than the modern philosophers) says reason is the ability for large discourse, looking before and after — a probable statement about reason; but “before” has several meanings, so which is meant? He goes to the second post-predicament in the Categories.

1. First sense: before in time. Why first? Because most known to us from motion: time is the number of the before and after in motion, things in motion sooner catch the eye, and our knowledge begins with the senses. Laid alongside it: before in the motion itself, and before in the road or path one moves down.
2. Second sense: before in being — one thing can be without the other but not the other without it. Laid alongside: cause before effect, since what is after in being depends on what is before.

• Bricks can be without a brick house, walkway or fireplace, not the reverse; the letters C, A, T can be without the word “cat,” not the reverse — yet you cannot simply say the letters cause “cat,” since they might make “act.” The meanings are similar but not the same.

8. Thomas “looks before and after”: the five parts and the two Summas (“thinking about God has how many parts”) #

Thomas’s ordering of the treatise on God differs between the Summas, and he explains it by what comes before and what comes after.

• Thinking about God has five parts: (1) whether God exists — if not, “theology is over”; (2) the substance of God; (3) God’s operation, both what remains within him (understanding, willing) and what produces something outside (creating); (4) the Trinity; (5) the Word made flesh. The first three are shared with Aristotle (God exists, his substance, his understanding himself); the last two are ours as Christian believers.
• Existence: five arguments in both Summas, four the same. SCG (book I, ch. 13) has two arguments from motion; ST’s second is from the maker (SCG’s third); ST has the argument from able-to-be-and-not-be to something that must be, and to what must be of itself — not among SCG’s five in ch. 13 but given in chs. 15 and 16, “so there’s seven.”
• Substance, five parts. ST order: simple; perfect and therefore good; unlimited/infinite; unchanging; one. SCG order: unchanging first, with two arguments; simplicity; perfection and goodness; one; infinite last.
• Common to both: simplicity next to and before perfection; unity and infinity after those. Unity is like simplicity (one of his arguments for simplicity is from Plato’s “the One is before the many”; the Compendium of Theology treats unity with simplicity); infinity is tied to perfection — God’s perfection and goodness are endless. His Wednesday students, asked whether simplicity or perfection is “endless,” answer perfection at once. So unity is to infinity a little as simplicity is to perfection, and SCG’s unity-before-infinity is the more logical order.
• Why ST puts unity last: in the same first part he will treat the Trinity (De Deo Uno et Trino), so he wants to end on there being only one God, since people (the Muslims) are scandalized and think we say three gods. Student: “however we understand the Trinity, it’s not going to end up in being one God”? — “you’ll find out when you get to the part on the Trinity”; if your understanding goes against it, you have a problem.
• Why SCG differs: written not for beginners but for Dominicans meeting Muslims in Spain; it separates what can be known by natural reason as well as faith (books 1–3) from what is known only by faith — Trinity and Incarnation in book four — because you talk to Mohammed differently about the two.
• “The wild card” is unchangingness: first in SCG, fourth in ST.

9. The two middle terms in ST; SCG chapters 13–18 (“the glorious sixteenth chapter”) #

• ST proves unchanging and one by three arguments each, drawing on the endless perfection and the simplicity already shown: perfect, so nothing to gain by changing (“he’s got everything”); universally perfect, so not two gods, since one would have what the other lacks; not composed, so not a movable thing, since the first thing learned of the movable thing in Book One of natural philosophy is that it is composed of matter and form. “Quite beautiful”: two middle terms for both.
• SCG: begins the substance with unchanging, referring back to the two motion arguments, developed much more fully than ST (“A, B, C reasons” for each premise — “more than twice”). Ch. 13 the five ways; ch. 14 that we know more what God is not than what he is, by division; ch. 15 five arguments that God is eternal, attached to his being unchanging; ch. 16 six arguments that God is pure act — “the major little term” (middle term) for simplicity, perfection, infinity, “everything falls into place”; ch. 17: the chapter title says there is no matter in God, but what he actually shows is that God is not the cause called matter, four arguments (if the first cause were matter everything would be by chance; things would proceed from it by its being changed, but God is changeless), and the second half against “the stupid opinion of David of Dinant” that God and first matter are the same because distinguished by nothing — they are distinguished by themselves, pure act vs. pure passive potency; ch. 18 composition, done the reverse of ST: ST’s eight-article question denies six particular compositions and only in article seven argues no composition whatsoever (inductive, then syllogistic), while SCG argues first syllogistically from pure act (if composed, either one part is to the other as ability to act, or all parts to the whole) and then goes to particular kinds (not a body, no distinction of being and nature).
• ST is for beginners, “by hand,” less universal propositions; a mind prepared by pure act has the middle term for all of them. “I’m a lazy son of a gun, I don’t want to do little terms.”
• Aside: he phoned Warren Murray asking whether the chapter titles are in the original text; Warren thought not, and his Leonine-based edition has them.
• Aside: giving God something is like a child buying a Christmas present from the allowance the parents gave — his family could afford a single rose for his mother.

10. Back to the ninth book of wisdom: motion first, pure act last (“the first meaning of act for us is what”) #

The root of SCG’s procedure is Metaphysics IX (“the ninth book of wisdom”), which has three parts: two on the distinction of ability and act, the third on their order.

1. First part: the act which is motion, most considered in natural philosophy, and the abilities known through it — to be moved, to move another, natural vs. rational ability; since ability is known through its act, he starts from the act most known to us. “That’s kind of profound”: the first meaning of act for us is motion.
2. Third part, the order: in the thing that goes from ability to act, ability is before act — but only secundum quid; simpliciter act is before, because one goes from ability to act only by something already in act (the water for his morning tea becomes hot by the stove, which is actually hot).
3. Hence Marx’s dialectical materialism and the early Greeks who made matter the beginning commit the fallacy of confusing what is so simply with what is so in some respect; and hence the first cause must be pure act. So SCG, with twice the arguments from motion and much more developed, goes from the act most known to us to God as motionless and then to pure act — “far, far superior” on this point to ST, which looks after instead, to the Trinity.

• Aside: Thomas says three and nine have the same symbolism, a number and its square.

11. Student exchange: the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Muslims (“how to meet the Muslims”) #

Student: did SCG do its job for the Reconquista? He: it shows how to meet the Muslims — you do not defend the Trinity by natural reason (no necessary argument for three persons; Aristotle’s remark that we use the number three in praising God is very weak); you know it by faith, Scripture and the Church, and show it does not contradict the one God known by reason and faith, and is not absurd though above our mind.

• Student: Riley’s “The Closing of the Muslim Mind” — philosophy was once possible in Islam, then anti-philosophy factions won; was SCG before that? He: maybe in some places and not others; there was open-mindedness in Spain then. Student: the difference is Sunni (reject reason) vs. Shia (accept reason). Student: SCG might still work with professionally trained Muslims (a lawyer heading a Muslim university in Canada). He: they respected Avicenna and Averroes, but apparently forced such philosophers out.
• He gathers they do not hold God bound by the principle of contradiction and take his will as arbitrary, whereas Thomas always gives God’s will a reason; student: then “by jiu jitsu,” why can’t he be a Trinity? He: Mohammed stressed one God against the polytheists he started among, and learned Christianity from heretics, so their idea of Trinity and Incarnation is off.
• Student, closing: Wahhabi Sunni money funding Muslim studies departments in Western universities. The recording ends there.

His words #

• probable statement: held by all or most men, or by all, most, or the most famous in an art or science, about the matter of that art or science
• places: where you look to see whether a word has more than one meaning [ed.: topoi / loci]
• book on places [ed.: Topics]
• finding the differences vs. consideration of likeness: Aristotle’s own contrast in wording
• likeness of ratios: 2:3 as 4:6 — parts and a whole, not distance
• first matter: the matter underlying substantial change, known only by proportion
• ability / act [ed.: potency / act]
• simpliciter vs. secundum quid: simply vs. in some respect
• ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX]; first philosophy
• the movable thing: subject of natural philosophy, composed of matter and form
• pure act vs. pure passive potency (against David of Dinant)
• the cause called matter: what SCG ch. 17 actually denies of God
• De Deo Uno et Trino
• “little term” for middle term (his usage)
• looking before and after: Shakespeare’s phrase, taken as the senses of “before”

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Topics, the four tools (recalled and worked through, no locus stated)
• Aristotle, Categories, second post-predicament: senses of before (first two senses)
• Aristotle, Physics I, first matter known by the clay/sphere-cube proportion (inferred; verified handout: Aquinas lectio 13)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, chs. 13–18, reported chapter by chapter
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, five ways; simplicity question with eight articles; order simple–perfect–infinite–unchanging–one
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (inferred): “mirror up to nature”; “looking before and after”

Mentioned

• Thomas, De Veritate (objections quoting Damascene, Augustine)
• Thomas, Compendium of Theology (unity with simplicity)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, three parts
• Plato, “the One is before the many”
• Aristotle on the number three in praising God
• Riley, “The Closing of the Muslim Mind”; Avicenna, Averroes; Hegel, Marx; Wagner, Mozart, Haydn

His questions #

• What makes a statement probable? The quantity of men holding it (all or most) or their quality (all, most, or the most famous in an art or science, on its matter).
• Which exercises the mind more, finding the difference of things far apart or close? Close.
• Which exercises the mind more in likeness — same genus, or ratios? Ratios, because the things are far apart.
• 4 is to 6 as 2 is to 3; is 4:6 then a prime to a prime? No; the likeness is parts and whole, not primeness.
• In what way is first matter to man and dog like clay to sphere and cube? Each can be either but not both at once, and ceases to be one in becoming the other.
• Why is distinguishing senses of words second among the tools? Statements are made of words.
• Why is “before in time” the first sense of before? It is most known to us, from motion.
• Thinking about God has how many parts? Five: existence, substance, operation, Trinity, Incarnation.
• Why does the Summa Theologiae put the unity of God last? Because the Trinity follows in the same part; he wants to end on one God.
• Why does the Summa Contra Gentiles begin the substance with unchanging? It comes from its two developed motion arguments and leads to pure act.
• Would you think God’s simplicity is endless, or his perfection? His perfection.