God's Simplicity, Macbeth's 'Fair Is Foul' and the Two Roots of Error: Speech vs. Things in the Fallacies

Orientation #

He does not say what was done last time or what comes next, beyond a back-reference to “the eight senses of in” and the order Thomas thinks out for them (prev. lecture) and to Shakespeare’s definition of reason as looking before and after (his earlier handout). Verified sources: he reads from his handouts “Shakespeare on Error” (pp. 3–5) and “Foreword to Logic” (p. 4), and briefly from “Shakespeare’s Exhortation to Use Reason” (p. 5); the sophist material is the “School of Aristotle” volume. The previous class was on the ordering of Aristotle’s post-predicaments and the opening of Metaphysics III; the next continues the division of fallacies from language.

The class, in order #

1. Prayer, then: I am not my knowledge, God is his (“me and my knowledge are two different things”) #

Point: in us, knower, knowledge and love are three really distinct things; in God they are one.

1. I am not my knowledge, and I am not my love; and my knowledge of a thing is not my love of it, even when the object is the same (knowing God and loving God, even face to face in the next world, remain two).
2. In God there is no distinction of things between God and his knowledge of himself (by which he knows all he knows), nor between God and his love of himself, nor between his knowledge and his love.
3. Conclusion: God “is something that is both” knowledge and love; Scripture says “God is love,” and one may equally say “God is wisdom.” “He’s very strange, God… altogether simple.” He announces this will be applied to the day’s texts: both Thomas and Macbeth say a mistake comes either from a defect of reason or from the will.

2. The witches’ couplet: two errors, two sources (“fair is foul, and foul is fair”) #

Point: the couplet closing Act I Scene 1 states the two errors about good and bad and touches the two causes of error.

• Poetic devices first (“rhyme as well as reason”): rhyme fair/air; alliteration in F (fair, foul, fog, filthy); trochaic meter, the reverse of iambic. Aside from Aristotle: iambic is closest to daily speech, into which we fall without thinking; Shakespeare uses trochaic for the unusual and for unfamiliar creatures; the lines are catalectic (a part of a foot left out).
• Line 1, the two errors: thinking the good bad (fair is foul) or the bad good (foul is fair). If one can make the first, one can make the second, and vice versa, because one cannot tell them apart. Compare Aristotle: a man can think he does not know what he knows, shown by the fact that he can think he knows what he does not.
• Line 2, the two sources: on the side of the mind, “the defect of the mind, as Thomas will say,” signified by fog (the mind confused, off in the fog); on the side of the heart, signified by filthy.
• Shakespeare underlines fair/foul: Macbeth, just before meeting the witches, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen”; Banquo after the hailing, “why do you start and seem to fear things that sound so fair?”

3. Fog is the cause on the side of the mind (“no darkness but ignorance”) #

Point: two other plays confirm that fog signifies ignorance, a defect of reason.

• Twelfth Night: Malvolio locked in a dark room as a madman (the subplot’s prank), the clown impersonating Sir Topas through the door: “there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.” He calls it “a magnificent play… one of the love and friendship plays” and recalls reading it twice through in a row.
• The Tempest, Prospero: the charm dissolves, “as the morning steals upon the night, melting the darkness,” their senses “chase the ignorant fumes that mantle their clearer reason.” “You couldn’t say it better than that.” Application: this is why we are deceived in dreams, cut off from the senses; waking, with the senses back, we say “thank God, just a dream.”

4. Filth is the cause on the side of the heart (“in our own filth drop our clear judgments”) #

Point: filth signifies moral vice blinding reason, and Shakespeare uses it for both directions of error.

• Alliteration clarified: it concerns the beginning of words, as rhyme the end.
• Antony and Cleopatra, Antony: “when we in our viciousness grow hard… the wise gods seal our eyes, in our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut to our confusion.” Commentary as he reads it: “grow hard” = habit of vice acquired by repeated bad acts, since a habit is a disposition hard to change; “misery on it” fits, since Thomas says in the Summa Contra Gentiles that error is a great part of misery (one reason we cannot be perfectly happy in this life); “seal our eyes” fits, since he who does not live by reason is punished by losing the act of reason; “confusion” is the opposite of glory. Contrast: “ignorant fumes” (Tempest) is on the side of the knowing powers, “our own filth” on the side of the desiring powers; this passage is filth causing the error that the foul is fair.
• King Lear, Albany to Goneril (“one horrible creature”): “Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile; filths savour but themselves” — filth causing the reverse error, the fair seeming foul.

5. Contemporary illustration: abortion, and the capital vices (“anything to avoid calling a spade a spade”) #

Point: the errors about abortion exhibit both fog and filth.

• Both errors: supporters say the foul is fair; attacking opponents, they say the fair is foul.
• The fog: “pro-choice” for pro-abortion, “termination of pregnancy” for the painful killing of the unborn, opponents “interfering with the rights of women”; “the fog is so thick that it would take the knife of reason to cut it”; a smokescreen so that “ignorant fumes mantle their clear reason.”
• The filth: the capital vices, those that draw other vices into the service of their ends, divided by the goods of man — pride (good of the soul), lust and gluttony (good of the body), avarice (exterior goods). Behind abortion, as behind hard pornography and Hollywood’s “more insidious” kind, a union of avarice (those who perform it, sometimes parents avoiding another mouth) and lust (those who have them); add the vainglory of politicians seeking lobby money and three capital vices cover the whole spectrum of human goods.
• Aside: the great questions on evil are “the most complete treatise… if you want to really know why evil.”

6. The goals of the sophist, in order (“refutation of the respondent is his first goal”) #

Point: a suggested order of the five sophistic goals, perhaps visible in Plato’s Parmenides. Order given: (1) refutation, getting the respondent to contradict himself (“Professor, you just contradicted yourself”); (2) getting him to say something false; (3) something paradoxical; (4) a solecism, a defect of grammar; (5) to repeat himself. Passed over quickly: “we want to come to the main thing.”

7. The distinction of the ways into two: from speech, from things (“fallacies from speech and fallacies from outside speech”) #

Point: the first division of sophistical ways is by opposites, in dictione vs. extra dictionem, the latter also stated positively as ex re.

• Alexander of Aphrodisias (named after Aphrodisias) divides into fallacies from speech and outside speech, then says explicitly “from things.” The De Fallaciis (attributed to Thomas, in the Marietti short works; some think written for fellow students after his brothers kidnapped him; “not altogether sure”), Albert and Thomas say the same.
• Correspondence with the tools of dialectic: the second tool distinguishes the senses of a word (speech); the third and fourth look at things, their differences and likenesses.

8. The seven things we think out (“we think about things for the sake of thinking them out”) #

Point: the philosopher’s end in thinking is to think something out, and there are perhaps seven such things.

1. A distinction. 2. A division (a distinction in particular of the parts of a whole). 3. A definition (a division of, e.g., square into genus and differences; every definition is a division, not every division a definition). 4. An order — of the senses of an equivocal-by-reason word, of things in goodness, of things as known. Example of distinction and order separated: Physics IV, Aristotle thinks out the eight senses of “in” but not their order; Thomas thinks out the order, imitating Aristotle in the fifth book of Wisdom, starting from Aristotle’s clue that the first sense is being in a place (“in this room”) up to “I left my heart in San Francisco.” 5. A likeness (the fourth tool). 6. A statement — needed even not as a conclusion but as a beginning, per the definition of syllogism (“speech in which, some statements laid down, another follows necessarily because of those laid down”). 7. A conclusion. Example of 6 and 7: Berquist thought out the statement that nothing is before or after itself, then the conclusion that you must see a distinction before you can see order.

• Student question: what sense of “in” answers to thinking “out” a conclusion? Out has as many senses as in (Aristotle’s place of the opposite); answer reached: the premises contain the conclusion as an active ability [ed.: potency]. Aside: seven is a symbol of wisdom.
• Application: now we are thinking out the ways the mind is deceived; Aristotle, then Alexander, Albert and Thomas, distinguish them by opposites, from speech and outside speech — an opposition matching the second tool. “Speech, very deceptive thing.”

9. The handout text on the two ways (“because something appears something and is not it”) #

Point: fallacies are distinguished, like dialectical places, by the moving principles that give apparent firmness.

• Quoted from the bottom of handout p. 1 (cited as Sophistical Refutations ch. 4, with commentary): from these two things a man is deceived; hence the locus sophisticus is called fallacy, the cause of deceiving as such, though no one is deceived in act without some ignorance. Two ways: (a) ex parte vocis, when the unity of the vocal sound is taken for unity of the thing signified (the common “dog” example); (b) ex parte rei, when things that come together in some way seem simply one (as said above of subject and accident).
• Albert: secundum apparentiam, some fallacies in dictione, the others extra dictionem — or affirmatively secundum rem; the beginning of deception is in speech for the first, in the thing originally for the second. In every fallacy, in or outside diction, deception comes from being unable to discern what is the same and what is other.

10. Same and other: distinction under order; likeness a cause of deception (“likeness is a great cause of deception”) #

Point: Albert’s “same and other” links the fallacies to Shakespeare’s definition of reason and to the order of the tools.

• Reason = looking before and after; but one cannot look before and after without looking for distinctions; things are distinct when one is not the other, so the question is always same or other.
• Why tools 2 and 3 precede tool 4: likeness is a great cause of deception; if you do not see differences you are deceived (the eight senses of “in” are very similar, hence deceptive). “He’s got probably many more reasons.”
• Order presupposes distinction; the order of “distinction” and “order” is itself distinction then order — “coming back upon yourself,” characteristic of logic: Albert’s book on division divides division (integral whole, universal whole); there is a definition of definition, an order of order. Aside on how he loves to “torture students” with “what sense of before does one sense of before come before another?” and Peter Piper.
• In the Categories, before “before and after” comes “opposites” (a student first offered “together”: “that’s after”), the basis of formal distinction. Formal vs. material distinction: bisecting a line gives two parts, a material distinction, division of the continuous, divisible forever; formal distinction is by opposites — dog barks, cat does not; cat meows, dog does not (contradiction); dog bites, cat scratches; I am two-footed, the dog is not. Aside: Lucy the cat “came close” to barking when mad.

11. Handout pp. 2–4: fallacies from things; the twofold root of error (“the root of error is twofold”) #

Point: outside diction the motive is res not sermo, and Thomas’s commentary gives the same two roots as Macbeth.

• Albert: in fallacies outside diction the cause and motive is not sermo but res, though speech is the tool expressing it; it is not unfitting that one paralogism have many causes and modes of deception; a refutation may fail because the conclusion does not follow or the premises are improbable.
• “Ad bonitatem doctrinae,” going back to something more general: Thomas’s commentary [ed.: on 1 Timothy 6, inferred from the lemmas] — the root of error is twofold, in the appetite, or the defect of the understanding. He recalls the opening: in me reason, will and self are distinct, so both can cause me to err; not so in God.
• The sick man: as one who easily catches cold, so in the understanding a man without a foundation in truth or the power to judge falls into error at any difficulty, hence “languens circa quaestiones,” sick about questions. Aside: as a boy he blew his nose from arrival at school till noon.
• Boethius: intellect is to reason as center to circle; reason runs around (discursion, “Shakespeare said”), considering acts, defects, relations; unless it resolves to understanding of the true, reason is vain; attaining the truth it has it as at the center — but some “always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth.”
• “Quaestiones” and “pugnas verborum”: doubt is sometimes ex parte rei, sometimes ex parte verborum et nominum — the same distinction as Alexander and Albert; questions about things “do more than the building up of God, which is in faith”; fights of words, dissension from words only (Proverbs: “who only follows words has nothing”). Bottom of p. 3: fallacy sometimes ex voce, sometimes ex re — “so many texts here, to make sure this is the teaching.”

12. Faith corrupted by fallacy (“profane newness of voices”) #

Point: faith, like any science, can be corrupted by fallacy of either kind.

• Handout p. 4: as said in the first book of the Elenchi, fallacy is from speech or from the thing; so faith is corrupted by disordered vocal sounds — Jerome, “ex verbis inordinate prolatis” comes heresy; Paul, avoid “profanas vocum novitates et vaniloquia” — example, “she should not be called mother of God but mother of Christ”: Christotokos against Theotokos (the transcript’s “Dostarius” = Nestorius, inferred; “Camerini said he invented that word with his father the devil” — the speaker’s name unclear in recording). Paul also: “formam habe sanorum verborum,” healthy words heard from me in faith and love in Christ Jesus. And faith is sometimes corrupted by “rationes reales sophisticas,” from things (res). Class ends here.

His words #

• defect of reason vs. the will: the two sources of a mistake in both Thomas and Macbeth
• fog: cause of error on the side of the mind; filth: on the side of the heart, the ability to desire
• catalectic: a foot left short
• trochaic vs. iambic: iambic closest to daily speech; trochaic for the unusual
• capital vices: those that draw other vices into the service of their ends, divided by the goods of man
• locus sophisticus: “by another name, fallacy,” the cause of deceiving as such
• ex parte vocis / ex parte rei; in dictione / extra dictionem; secundum rem: the two ways, stated negatively and positively
• thinking out: the end of thinking; seven things thought out (distinction, division, definition, order, likeness, statement, conclusion)
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; “fifth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V]
• active ability [ed.: active potency]: how premises contain the conclusion
• distinct: one is not the other; in order: one before or after the other
• formal distinction (by opposites) vs. material distinction (division of the continuous)
• ad bonitatem doctrinae: going back to something more general
• languens circa quaestiones: sick about questions; pugnas verborum: fights of words
• discursion: reason running around the center (Boethius’s circle)
• reales sophisticas: sophistical reasons from things (res)

Texts #

Read in class

• Handout “Shakespeare on Error” (pp. 3–5): Macbeth I.1 couplet; Twelfth Night, Malvolio/Sir Topas; The Tempest, Prospero’s speech; Antony and Cleopatra, Antony’s “viciousness” speech; King Lear, Albany to Goneril; abortion passage on capital vices
• Handout p. 1 (bottom): quotation cited as Sophistical Refutations ch. 4 with commentary on the two ways
• Albert the Great, Commentary on the Sophistical Refutations (several short texts, handout pp. 1–3)
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary (inferred: on 1 Timothy 6), handout pp. 3–4: root of error twofold; Boethius circle/center; quaestiones et pugnas verborum; faith corrupted by fallacy; Jerome; Paul on healthy words

Mentioned

• Alexander of Aphrodisias, commentary on the Sophistical Refutations
• De Fallaciis (attributed to Thomas; Marietti opuscula)
• Plato, Parmenides (order of the sophist’s goals)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (error a great part of misery)
• Aristotle, Physics IV (eight senses of “in”) and Thomas’s commentary on it; Metaphysics V (inferred)
• Aristotle, Categories (opposites; before and after; together)
• Albert the Great, book on division
• Aristotle on iambic and daily speech (no locus given)
• Scripture: “God is love”; Proverbs on following words only; 1 Timothy / 2 Timothy phrases (loci not stated)
• Jerome on disordered words; the “great questions about evil” (work not named)

His questions #

• Is there any real distinction between God and God’s knowledge of himself, or his love? No: same thing; God is both knowledge and love, altogether simple.
• What kind of meter is the witches’ couplet? Trochaic, the reverse of iambic, and catalectic.
• What is the purpose of thinking about something? Students: understand, knowledge; he: more precisely, to think it out.
• What comes after distinction among the things thought out? Order.
• What sense of “in” corresponds to thinking “out” a conclusion? The premises contain the conclusion as an active ability.
• What does it mean to say things are distinct? One is not the other; the question is same or other.
• Why do the second and third tools come before the fourth? Because likeness is a great cause of deception; you must see differences first.
• What is the order of distinction and order? Distinction, then order — reason “coming back upon itself.”
• What does Aristotle take up before “before and after” in the Categories? Opposites (not “together,” which comes after) — the basis of formal distinction.
• How would you distinguish a dog and a cat? By opposites: barks/does not bark, meows/does not meow, bites/scratches.