Who Is Sylvia? Shakespeare, the Wisdom of Reason, and the Fallacy of Figure of Speech (Seeing Is Not Kicking)

Orientation #

He refers back to the division of the six fallacies from speech into actual, potential and imaginary multiplicity, and to equivocation vs. amphiboly, “as you recall” (prev. lecture); “we did this last week” of the categories trap. The handout under discussion is “An Excellent Play”, p. 27 (verified source); he refers to “the first page”, “the second text” and “page two” of it. The previous class treated the division of fallacies in dictione with the “Word of God” and “wisdom of nature” examples, and the next continues with Thomistic texts on figura dictionis.

The class, in order #

1. Two Gentlemen of Verona: Sylvia, praise, principalities, heaven (“holy, fair, and wise is she”) #

Point: an opening reading of the play he likes despite an English professor’s surprise, with several observations that anticipate the class.

• “The heaven such grace to lend her”: lend is exactly right for beauty, since God gives it and the woman loses it with age; he compares Rush Limbaugh’s “brains unloaned from God”.
• “Love doth to her eyes repair to help him of his blindness, and being helped, inhabits there”: knowledge is the cause of love, so love comes to be once the blindness is helped.
• The rhyme excelling/dwelling: same ending -ing, yet not in the same category. “I just got this darn thing on my mind”: figura dictionis intrudes already.
• Valentine and Proteus: “flatter me, for love delights in praises.” He links it to the last line of the Anima Christi and to Thomas: seeing God face to face you love Him more than possible in this life, and you praise what you love (as he praises Shakespeare, Mozart, Thomas), so praise of God never tires.
• “If not divine, yet let her be a principality, sovereign to all the creatures on the earth”: the third order from the bottom of the angels (he usually calls them “princes”); an angel in charge of a whole country, as in Scripture. He reads the edition’s footnote listing the nine orders in three hierarchies: seraphim, cherubim, thrones; dominions, virtues, powers; principalities, archangels, angels. “How Shakespeare knew that.”
• His old question to Warren Murray, which one line of Shakespeare best describes heaven: the play’s last line, “one feast, one house, one mutual happiness” (two weddings; heaven as eating in the Father’s house).
• Aside: Titus Andronicus, the one play he finds disgusting, popular in its day; an acquaintance wanted to write on it because nobody else had.

2. Review: fallacies from speech; equivocation and amphiboly (“every respectable word in philosophy”) #

Point: recall the division before taking up figura dictionis.

• Six fallacies from speech fall under three heads: actual, potential, imaginary multiplicity. Under actual: equivocation (one word) vs. amphiboly (speech). In both, one name actually means many things.
• Examples of equivocal words: “before”, “being”. DeConinck: every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason.
• Amphiboly by reason: “the word of God” = the Bible or the Son of God; so “the word of God is about the word of God most of all”, and the Bible is the Word made flesh in a sense, as Dei Verbum said — it takes on the human way of speaking, with equivocal words and metaphors.
• “The wisdom of nature” (Shakespeare’s phrase): wisdom about nature (philosophy of nature) or the wisdom God pours into creatures, found in what nature does. Heraclitus: wisdom is to speak the truth and act in accord with nature, giving ear thereto (the ear as the sense of learning from a teacher). Aside: Warren Murray’s essay on the moderns’ neglect of nature.

3. Three senses of “the wisdom of reason” (“reason is not the brain”) #

Point: a new amphiboly, developed at length, with digressions on the soul and on the definition of reason.

1. First philosophy: the wisdom reason acquires by its natural abilities (theology is rather the wisdom of God, shared; infused wisdom would be God’s wisdom taken by faith, not this sense).
2. Wisdom about reason: the third book of the De Anima, where (Thomas notes the Greeks begin a new book) Aristotle starts to teach what reason is: immaterial, not the brain, not in the body. This opens the door to the soul’s immortality, which turns on whether the soul has any activity not in the body; the universal reason’s activity is not in the body, known partly from its knowing universally.
   • Digression: in the Generation of Animals, the human soul does not come from the parents (a dog’s or tree’s does); the parents begin this body and God creates the immortal soul fitting that body. Poe’s “Ligeia” (the dead intellectual wife seeming to take over the second wife’s body) and Pythagoras recognising a friend’s soul in a beaten dog: not orthodox. Aristotle’s argument: the soul is the first act of a natural body composed of tools; as an art is to its tools, so the soul to its bodily tools; one art cannot use another’s tools — his brother-in-law cannot sew wood with a needle, his wife cannot nail a dress. So a man’s soul cannot become a dog’s, nor even take over another man’s body; had this body not been begun, this soul would never have been created.
3. Logic, “rational philosophy”: the philosophy that directs reason.
   • Two definitions of reason. Shakespeare’s: the ability for “large discourse, looking before and after” — he refuses to add to it: you would lose the brevity of wisdom. Digression on brevity: God understands Himself perfectly and knows everything else by knowing Himself as cause and exemplar imitated (stone, tree, cat, man, angel). An angel knows primarily himself but needs other understandable forms for other things; higher angels have fewer thoughts and understand more; the human intellectus adumbratus (overshadowed) needs a little thought for everything and runs from one to another in discourse. Hence “know thyself” is for man, not angels. Teaching slow students multiplies examples; Dionysius’ manuductio, leading by the hand — Thomas’s five ways and five parts on God’s substance in both Summas, leading the mind with less universal propositions.
   • Hugo’s [ed.: Hugh of St. Victor] definition: reason is an ability to understand, reason, and direct itself and others. Its “plagiarism”: Aristotle’s rule that abilities of the soul are known by their acts and acts by their objects (ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX, inferred]). Thomas’s proemium to logic gives the acts of reason as understanding and reasoning, with understanding twofold: what a thing is (the Categories serve this) and the true or false, composition and division. So reason is defined by its acts, and not left “sitting in the corner”: it directs itself and others — the will, the motions, hands and feet, even other people (parents, government). Logic is the art of arts because it directs all the other arts and sciences.

• Result: the wisdom of reason = De Anima III, first philosophy, or logic — at least three senses.
• Aside: a steak dinner for fifteen the day before.

4. Figura dictionis, second mode: walking is in the category of where (“walking is in the category of where”) #

Point: one diction signifying in the mode of one predicament seems to signify in the mode of another (he skips the first mode on grammatical gender).

• Student trap: asked the category of walking, answers run “changing place”, “place”, then “action”. Place and time are species of continuous quantity, not categories; Aristotle names the categories concretely, where and when (Roman Kasurik “knocked into my head” as a freshman).
• Likewise Aristotle does not say “relation” but pros ti; Albert the Great renders ad aliquid, “toward something”. Reason: “relation” seems to signify toward-something in the manner of something absolute — figura dictionis in part. Toward his wife he is a husband, toward Paul a father, toward the grandchildren Grandpa (the Lego “world’s fair” on the dining table), toward the class a teacher. He becomes shorter than his immigrant child with no change in himself: “what a strange reality”.
• John 1:1: the Latin apud is weak; the Greek is pros ton theon, toward God, already indicating what Augustine, Boethius and Thomas teach: the persons of the Trinity are distinguished by relation — a student says “relation” and he corrects: toward-something. Thomas’s argument: (1) not a material distinction, which rests on the continuous (Euclid bisecting a line forever) — no such quantity in God; (2) so formal, by opposites; (3) not by being and unbeing, having and lacking, nor contraries (one contrary lacks something relative to the other) — since He is “I am who am”; (4) therefore by relatives, toward-something.
• Student: walking on a treadmill without moving? Motion is put in some category but as something imperfect there. Walking into the room, “I am not entirely here” (“you wouldn’t be here if you were all there”): coming to be somewhere, so in where. Standing: position. Warming up and learning: different species of quality. Coming to be: being, in some sense. Thinking: “I don’t know where that is”, left open.
• The fallacy: imagining something in the wrong category, or in the same category as another word, because of the shared ending.

5. Kicking vs. seeing (“my eye has gone out to that painting”) #

Point: the importance of the fallacy for our own acts.

• My kicking you proceeds from me into you; it is between us. My seeing you seems the same, but goes the other way: your colour and size act on my eye, and seeing results from the union of the two. Knowing and loving likewise proceed from a union, not from me to you.
• The man in the street, uncorrupted by philosophy, imagines seeing going out of the eye to the object — even the phrase colour as “the end of the transparent” tempts one to say the eye goes out to it; “my eye is studying that painting.” “There’s a little danger in this sort of thing.”

6. De Veritate q. 8 a. 6 obj. 3 and reply (“quantum ad modum loquendi”) #

Point: Thomas diagnoses the fallacy in an objection against an angel understanding itself.

• Objection: the same thing cannot be agens et patiens except one part acting and another undergoing (animals; Physics VIII, “Natural Hearing”); intelligens et intellectum are as agent and patient; so no agent understands itself wholly.
• Kicking is in the category acting-upon (Aristotle’s poiein and paschein, acting upon and undergoing).
• Reply: intellectum et intelligens non se habent ut agens et patiens, but both as one agens, quamvis quantum ad modum loquendi videantur (imaginatively) to signify agent and patient.
• Student: does the table undergo my knowing? No. Isn’t the painting acting on me when I see it? Maybe so, but the seeing arises from the union; the one seeing does not act on the thing seen. Which is more known to us, kicking or seeing? kicking, so we imagine seeing by it.

7. Obj. 11 and reply; imagination and likeness (“nothing falls in between a thing and itself”) #

Point: the same fallacy in a second objection.

• Objection: operation falls between agent and patient; intellect and understood are agent and patient; nothing falls between a thing and itself; so an angel cannot understand himself. “Can you kick yourself?” one part another; can this fist hit this fist? (student: clapping with one hand).
• Reply: operatio intelligendi non est media secundum rem — as opposed to secundum modum loquendi; it proceeds from both as united. Kicking really is in the middle secundum rem.
• Shelley: imagination delights in the likeness of things; reason wants differences — so imagination causes error, since it goes by likeness. Comedy of Errors runs on the likeness of two pairs of twins (the brother dining with the wrong wife and courting her sister); the native word “mistake”; his own congratulating the wrong sister after a play; twin girls switching dates; students mixing him up with his brother Mark; a twin brother’s “No, my brother’s ugly.”
• “My eyes fell upon my glasses”, “I was struck with her beauty”: ordinary speech sometimes gets the direction right.

8. De Veritate q. 8 a. 8 obj. 10 and reply (“one beginning of knowledge”) #

Point: whether the angel knows material things by forms or by its essence (it knows some things by itself, not all, so needs forms); the objection contains the fallacy Thomas names.

• Objection: the angel is more efficacious in knowing than fire in burning, yet fire burns without the combustible being in it.
• Reply: knower and knowable are not as burning and combustible, one agent and one patient; rather knower and knowable are one beginning of knowledge, insofar as from their coming together knowledge comes about; ratio non sequitur. Imagination makes it seem two acting things.

His words #

• Word of God; the Bible or the Son of God, an amphiboly by reason.
• Wisdom of nature; wisdom about nature, or the wisdom shown in what nature does.
• Wisdom of reason; first philosophy, De Anima III, or logic.
• Ability [ed.: potency]; known through its act.
• Intellectus adumbratus; “the overshadowed reason”, the human mind needing a thought for each thing.
• Manuductio; leading by the hand (Dionysius).
• Art of arts; logic, directing all other arts and sciences.
• Where, when; Aristotle’s concrete names for the categories, not place and time (which are species of continuous quantity).
• Pros ti / ad aliquid; “toward something” [ed.: relation], which “relation” misrepresents as absolute.
• Acting upon and undergoing; his rendering of poiein and paschein [ed.: action and passion].
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• Modum loquendi vs. secundum rem; the way of speaking vs. the reality.
• Composition and division; Thomas’s name for understanding the true or false.

Texts #

Read in class

• Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona: “Who is Sylvia” song; Valentine–Proteus exchange (“love delights in praises”, “principality”); last line “one feast, one house, one mutual happiness”.
• Handout (“An Excellent Play”, p. 27, verified): modes of figura dictionis, second mode.
• Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate q. 8 a. 6 obj. 3 and ad 3; obj. 11 and ad 11 (Latin read).
• Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate q. 8 a. 8 obj. 10 and ad 10.
• John 1:1 in Greek.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations (division of fallacies from speech); Categories; De Anima III with Thomas’s commentary; Generation of Animals; Physics VIII; “ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX, inferred]; Thomas’s proemium to logic.
• Albert the Great on the Categories (ad aliquid).
• Vatican II, Dei Verbum; Anima Christi prayer; Heraclitus fragment; Dionysius; Hugh of St. Victor’s definition of reason; Euclid’s bisection of a line; Thomas’s five ways in both Summas.
• Poe, “Ligeia”; Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet’s definition of reason (play not named; inferred).

His questions #

• Which category is walking in? Where: coming to be somewhere, motion as imperfect in that category (not place, not action).
• What is the difference between equivocation and amphiboly? Equivocation is one word, amphiboly is speech, each actually meaning many things.
• What could “the wisdom of reason” mean? First philosophy, the third book of the De Anima (wisdom about reason), or logic.
• Why is logic the art of arts? Because it directs all the other arts and sciences; reason directs itself and others.
• What category is standing? warming up? learning? thinking? Position; quality; quality (a different species); thinking left open.
• Does my seeing you proceed from me into you like my kicking you? No; it results from the union of your colour and size with my eye.
• Can you kick yourself? One part can kick another; a fist cannot hit itself.
• When I know the table, does it undergo my knowing? No; knower and known are not agent and patient, though the way of speaking makes it seem so.
• Which one line of Shakespeare best describes heaven? “One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.”