Levels of Universality, the Via Negativa in Theology, and Particular vs. General Equivocation

Orientation #

He opens with “come back to what Aristotle said there” and refers to “the reading we just had” on the general before the particular; the proemium to Wisdom is “we saw back” (prev. lecture). On God he says “we’ll come back to this next time”; he stops “10 minutes to 5” and will begin next time with the second page, common and private experience. The previous class treated more known to us vs. more known simply against Descartes and Duhem; the next takes up the natural road, Boethius, and common vs. private experience.

The class, in order #

1. Two movements from confused to distinct (“one on horizontal level, staying on the same level of universality”) #

Point: the passage from confused to distinct is twofold, horizontal and vertical.

• Vertical: triangle → equilateral, isosceles, scalene; quadrilateral → square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid, trapezium. General to particular, descending.
• Horizontal: triangle → “a plane figure contained by three straight lines”; quadrilateral → its definition. Name to definition, same level of universality, since the definition converts with the name.
• Same pairing as before: composed whole → its parts (same level) vs. universal whole → its parts (descending).

2. Which comes first? The horizontal (“So you know what you’re dividing”) #

Argument (student supplies the reason, he confirms):

1. The division of triangle rests on the three straight lines being all equal, two equal, none equal.
2. So without distinct knowledge of “plane figure contained by three straight lines” one cannot understand the basis of the division.
3. Conclusion: define the genus first, then divide.

• Sonnet: Italian (Petrarchan) vs. English (Shakespearean). Define first (“a poem in 14 lines”); only then does the division make sense: three quatrains and a couplet vs. an octet answered by a sestet.
• Syllogism: definition first (“at least two statements laid down” from which something “follows necessarily”), then demonstration (premises seen as necessarily true) vs. dialectical syllogism (premises seen only as probable).
• Application: in the eight books of Natural Hearing Aristotle moves from confused to distinct on the level of the general; he descends to particulars in the book on the universe, on generation and corruption, on the soul, and the other books on living things.

3. The moderns jump (“jump from the general to particular without going that first movement”) #

Point: the moderns pass from a confused knowledge of the general straight to a distinct knowledge of the particular.

• Student asks for examples: they begin with chemistry, physics, biology, already a particular kind of change; natural philosophy is mainly about change, and Aristotle treats change in general before change of place, of quality, growth.
• They get away with it because they study nature mathematically: the mathematics “has to work”, and then they say “the mathematics is wiser than we are” (Heisenberg, Max Born [ed.: ASR “Max Bohr”]).
• Symptom: nobody can say what a figure of speech is in general, or what reasoning is; his colleagues cannot define it.
• Objection: “if we stop to get a distinct knowledge of the general, we never get to the particular.” Reply: some truth, it takes the mind a long time, but Aristotle did descend after gaining the distinct general. Chesterton on “fiddling while Rome burns”: had someone not fiddled there would be no theory of hydraulics and no fire trucks.
• More thoughtful physicists come back to the general later: Heisenberg’s books have chapters on the early Greeks, Plato, Aristotle, to see “in perspective” what he did as a young man; read from earliest to latest, he sees his achievement “more and more clearly”.
• Aside: these are “secondary readings”, not to be examined on, but the student should realize what Aristotle sees here and what a “grand mistake” it is for Descartes to deny it; a mistake at the beginning, “the further you go, the more you’ll be off”.

4. Descartes: certitude is not distinctness (“I’m sure I’m thinking. Therefore, I know exactly what thought is”) #

Point: one can be certain of something without knowing distinctly what it is, and conversely.

• “I think, therefore I am”: sure I am thinking, therefore I know exactly what thought is: “doesn’t follow at all.” Sure there is a God, therefore a clear and distinct idea of God.
• Thomas was famous for always asking “What is God?”: sure there is a God, wanting to know more distinctly what he is; what is the Incarnation; Cur Deus homo, why did God become man. A Syracuse professor’s remark on Fra Angelico’s saints facing the cross: most in devotion and sorrow, Thomas trying to figure out what it means.
• Converse error: when something is clear and distinct, pictures fit together, “then you think it must be true”; found in Descartes and other moderns.

5. Idealization: life as tragedy or comedy (“tragedy is what more precise than life really is”) #

Point: precision is bought by idealization, which is why precision lacks certitude.

• Friday, King Lear: Shakespeare says life is tragic; next Friday, The Comedy of Errors (he first says Merry Wives, corrects himself): life is a comedy. Which? “A mixture.” Tragedy and comedy are each more precise than life, each an idealization bringing one aspect into sharp focus; the more you say life is exactly one, the more you depart from reality. Saying it is both looks like a contradiction but is not, since the precision is in the forms, not in life.
• War: horrible stories and very funny ones; his cousin in the navy drilling through the hull for his radio, the part he thought above water being below since the ship was not yet loaded; Kasurik topping every navy story. A friend’s trouble suddenly striking us as funny: “which is it?”
• Boyle’s law fits the idealized gas, not the real one; idealization is “something imagination”, smoothing things out more than they are.
• Student: Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: biologists can picture species changes easily because they are only a few little changes, without understanding the biochemistry. He accepts it.
• Heisenberg, handout page four: keeping in mind the “intrinsic stability” of concepts of natural language in scientific development, the attitude in physics toward mind, soul, life, God would differ from the nineteenth century’s.

6. The via negativa and why the general matters in theology (“I’m getting closer to seven when I negate the general”) #

Point: negating the general brings us closer to God than negating the particular, so theology needs the general known distinctly.

1. Knowing seven affirmatively: number, odd number, prime odd number: the more particular, the closer (number separates seven only from non-numbers; odd narrows; prime odd more).
2. Knowing seven negatively: “not four” vs. “not even”: not even is closer, since it separates seven from two, four, six, eight and all evens; not four only from four.
3. So closer to God: “God is unchanging” rather than “God does not walk, does not grow”; “God has no parts” rather than “God doesn’t have two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen” (or C6H12O6).
4. You cannot understand a negation without knowing what is negated; so whole and part, change in general, are very useful in theology, and H2O “useless”.
5. If the general were replaced by the particular, there would be no way to know God in theology; and since the general is more certain, we have things we can use.

• Why the moderns jump to particulars: partly practical; knowledge of the particular is closer to action (proemium to Wisdom). But theology is primarily about God, who is unchanging: you cannot make or do anything of God, only understand; in this life through creatures, hence always by some negation.
• Consequence: never knowing the general distinctly, the moderns cannot understand distinctly the negations made, nor why they are made.

7. Toward page two: common and private experience (“what is the connection between the first page and the second page”) #

Point: the coming distinction is important for natural philosophy, experimental science, and theology (the passage from Paul VI).

• Connection: knowledge based on common experience is expected to be more general than knowledge based on private experience; so if the general is before the particular, knowledge for which common experience suffices comes before knowledge based on private experience. But the general/particular distinction is itself more general than the common/private one.

8. The sophist’s objection: Aristotle contradicts himself (“Different senses of before”) #

Objection: the road is from senses into reason; senses know particulars, reason knows the general; so particular before general, yet Aristotle says general before particular. “I’ve now overthrown Aristotle”: the sophist refutes the greatest mind to be honored for apparent wisdom; students fall for it. Solution: fallacy of equivocation.

• “Particular” A: the singular, individual, nothing universal; “general” A: universal, common to many. Socrates is a particular man.
• “Particular” B: the less universal; “general” B: the more universal. The dog is a particular kind of animal, yet universal.
• So singulars come before any universals, as senses before reason; among universals, the more universal before the less. He notes Aristotle has a text saying the particular is before the general (sense A). Second objection: the less universal is closer to the singulars, so from singulars we should reach the less universal first. Reply: the sophist forgets that we know confusedly before distinctly, so the first universals are confused and therefore more general.
• Classifying campus vegetation without taking anyone’s word: singular trees, bushes, grass first; then grass vs. tree before two kinds of grass. Added reason: the difference between tree and grass is greater than between kinds of grass, so more apt to be seen. College botany: broadleaf vs. needle trees never confused, Norway pine vs. other pines still unknown to him.
• Classifying alcoholic beverages: singular glasses first; then beer vs. wine, beer vs. whiskey, before Budweiser vs. Miller, Scotch vs. rye, Cabernet Sauvignon vs. Pinot Noir.
• Aside: teaching Hegel, he joked that Hegel’s method was superior to Aristotle’s syllogism; a student took it seriously (“someone has improved on Aristotle”), so he had to go back and undo it; “they can’t separate those different meanings of particular”.
• Harder equivocation: “the knowledge of reason is a knowledge of reason”: knowledge about reason is a knowledge belonging to reason, but not the only one (reason also knows triangles, God).

9. Digressions on certitude and reasons we do not see (“if you don’t see reason why, then there’s not a good reason why”) #

• Student: Raymond Brown says start by trying to find errors in scripture, and claims to have found some; his examples doubtful; he is more certain he found errors than that the church is right.
• BC lecture on evil (the Holocaust): the speaker’s basis was “I see no reason why God would allow this, therefore there is no reason”, which one would not want to admit. Human parallel: Kasurik forcing him to take Greek, others seeing a reason he did not; given the infinite distance of our mind, God’s reasons can escape us. Student: Bobby Fischer seeing sixty moves ahead, a move seeming dumb. Checkers as a kid, beaten by a cousin, “take me down a peg”. “God must have been asleep” when the planes hit the towers: we do not know why the innocent suffer. To that speaker the Holocaust is so horrible it is per se known that no reasonable person could allow it.

10. Does scripture use private experience? (“The Lord is my rock”) #

Student: scripture seems to use much private experience, the experience of one people; some metaphors seem private. Reply: for the most part its metaphors draw on what is common to everyone: the Lord is my rock, my shepherd, running water, the parched earth, the psalms of thirst; some need more help; there is also a need for intermediaries, God revealing to Moses or the prophet and they to us, Christ to the apostles and down the line (tradition). But articles of faith are defined in thoughts tied to “universal and necessary experience” (the Pope’s phrase): God has no parts, three persons in God, so they need not change as private experience grows; quarks, molecules, quantum jumps are not used of God, and changing scientific concepts do not affect theology. The main reason is the via negativa: to negate the general is more useful, so theology shows God unchanging, not that he doesn’t walk, run, jump, fly, swim. “Providential” that Aristotle and Thomas give us this; the definition of eternity negates much in the definition of time and the now (to come when the course treats time; the first book on change; perhaps Thomas’s eleventh reading, not yet given).

• Providence extends to the New Testament being in Greek: historical reasons (Alexander) aside, Greek is a better language for theology than Hebrew and lets Greek philosophy meet revelation.
• Modern scriptural scholars, for all their particular facts about the patriarchs’ times, do not illuminate scripture as Thomas, Augustine or the fathers do; some contribution, but not to what is most important.

His words #

• horizontal / vertical movement from confused to distinct; same level of universality vs. descending to the particular
• name to definition; converts (“and vice versa”)
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; book on the universe [ed.: De Caelo]; book on generation and corruption; book on the soul
• demonstration vs. dialectical syllogism: premises necessarily true vs. only probable
• “the mathematics is wiser than we are” (Heisenberg, Born)
• clear and distinct (Descartes) vs. certain
• Cur Deus homo
• idealization: precision by imagination, “smoothing things out”
• via negativa, by way of negation; unmoved mover; simple, not composed
• proemium to Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics]
• common vs. private experience; “universal and necessary experience” (Paul VI)
• particular: singular/individual vs. less universal; general: universal vs. more universal
• fallacy of equivocation
• sophist: refutes the greatest mind to be honored for apparent wisdom

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics I.1 (inferred): the general before the particular; “the reading we just had”, “this chapter here”
• Heisenberg, handout page four: intrinsic stability of the concepts of natural language

Mentioned

• Aristotle, proemium to Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics]: knowledge of the particular closer to action
• Aristotle, an unnamed text saying the particular is before the general
• Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”; clear and distinct idea of God
• Paul VI, passage on handout page two (universal and necessary experience)
• Chesterton, on fiddling while Rome burns
• Heisenberg’s books, chapters on the early Greeks
• Shakespeare, King Lear, The Comedy of Errors
• Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (student)
• Raymond Brown on errors in scripture (student)
• Thomas, “the eleventh reading” (handout, not yet given)
• Psalms (rock, shepherd, thirst)

His questions #

• Which movement from confused to distinct should you go through first? The same level of universality, definition first, “so you know what you’re dividing.”
• Should you move from sonnet to Italian and English sonnet first, or to “a poem in 14 lines”? To the definition; then the quatrains-and-couplet vs. octet-sestet division is understood.
• Could you give some examples of the moderns jumping? Starting with chemistry, physics, biology, particular kinds of change, before change in general.
• Is life a tragedy or a comedy? A mixture; each form is more precise than life.
• Knowing seven negatively, which is closer, not four or not even? Not even; negating the general gets closer.
• Which is more useful in theology, to know whole and parts or that water is H2O? Whole and parts; H2O is useless in theology.
• What is the connection between the first page and the second? Knowledge from common experience is more general, so prior; though the general/particular distinction is the more general of the two.
• Senses before reason, senses know particulars: does Aristotle contradict himself? No; two senses of particular (singular vs. less universal) and of general.
• Isn’t the less universal closer to the singulars, so known next? No; we know confusedly first, so the more universal first (grass vs. tree, beer vs. wine).
• What are the two senses in “the knowledge of reason is a knowledge of reason”? Knowledge about reason, and knowledge belonging to reason, which is not the only one.