Time, Metaphor and Boethius: Measuring Time and the Numbering Soul

Orientation #

He says he wants “to say a few more things about time and then about eternity,” taking up the question of being “in time” he had flagged (prev. lecture), and promises to “come back” to the Plato/Aristotle question about knowing things in separation “a bit here.” Verified sources indicate the class is probably also working from a handout, “The First Definition of Reason,” p. 18, and from DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 783 (text-matched; not named in the transcript). The next class works through Boethius’s definition of eternity as Thomas treats it in the Summa.

The class, in order #

1. Prayer, Daniel, and the Pope in Kazakhstan (“A man cannot be a man unless”) #

Opening aside before returning to time: he reads from the Pope’s address in Astana quoting the Kazakh thinker Abai Kunanbai, and draws out its philosophical connections.

• Reading at Mass: the three in the furnace in Daniel, with a fourth “like the Son of God” but an angel — “handy ones to have around.”
• Abai, first quote (from the Sayings): a man is not a man unless he seeks an explanation for everything; God distinguished man from animals by a soul; goods of the soul incomparably superior to the body’s. He links this to Socrates in the Apology examining Athenians for preferring bodily and exterior goods to those of the soul, and to the reason/animal difference.
• Translation complaint: the Pope connects Abai to Mark 8:36, but the current translation says “forfeit his life,” whereas the Greek has soul — the word soul “has become a non-word.” He suggests doing some philosophy of the soul from the three books On the Soul after natural philosophy.
• Second quote (from the poems): “If reason abandons itself to desire, it loses all its depth” — compared to Heraclitus’s fragment that you would not come to the end of the soul in any direction, so deep is its logos [ed.: he says “reason”]. “Can a pupil worthy of this name do without reason?”
• Third quote: all religions attribute love and justice to God; he doesn’t know whether Abai is Islamic, ancient or modern; spells the name for the class.

2. Three questions about time; what “in time” means (“to be measured by time”) #

He sets three remaining questions: (1) which motion to take for measuring time, (2) what it is to be in time, (3) would time be without the numbering soul.

• To be in time = to be measured by time = to have a beginning and an end in time. “That’s important” for the definition of eternity later: God’s life is not in time, has no beginning and end in time.
• Example: he attended both the bicentennial of Mozart’s birth (Minneapolis concerts) and of his death (New York, West Point operas): Mozart’s life much shorter than his, but both measured by time, with beginning and end.

3. Which motion measures time (“apparent motion of the sun around the earth”) #

Time is the number of motion according to before and after, but not just any motion serves as measure; one looks for a standard.

• A measure should be invariant and simple: you would not measure distance with a rubber binder that stretches; clothing, stockings, an old shoe all stretch — not what you want.
• The ancient choice: the (apparent) motion of the sun around the earth, because it is (a) regular, not speeding up like a falling stone or slowing like walking; (b) swift; (c) continuous, going and coming back again.
• Whether this is the best standard is “a question more for experimental science than for the philosophy of nature”; something better may be found.
• An additional ancient reason: the sky’s motion seemed a cause of changes here (weather, generation, plants growing) — a motion that causes other motions.

4. Would time be without the numbering soul? (“Was there ever eight of us in this room”) #

The “most interesting” question: Aristotle distinguishes time from a number like the number of chairs.

1. The chairs exist together in the room; so even uncounted, “it would still make some sense” to say there is a number of chairs.
2. Any number that is time (three years, days, minutes) numbers things before and after, which do not exist together.
3. Example: if each of us came into the room alone and left before the next entered, there never was eight in the room. Likewise not even one day, hour or minute is ever wholly here, since time always has a before and after. Conclusion (given in §6): time “would barely be” without the numbering soul.

5. Digression: metaphor in scripture, and what great fiction does (“poetry is what infima doctrina”) #

Thomas’s article in ST I q.1 on whether scripture should use metaphors leads him to what characterizes great poetry: making things seem more meaningful than they are.

• Objection: poetry is infima doctrina (the lowest teaching; “Homer was the teacher of all the Greeks”), sacred doctrine the highest; the sciences in between (geometry, natural philosophy) do not use metaphors — Aristotle says you cannot define by metaphors; so it is inappropriate for the highest to use what only the lowest uses.
• Reply (a student: metaphors are used for things not well known to us; “because they’re above”): sacred doctrine is about things above our mind, poetry about things below it; both use metaphors to reach our level, scripture bringing things down, poetry bringing things up — “for exactly in a sense the opposite reasons.” He notes there are many other reasons scripture uses metaphors; this is the one this objection draws out.
• He extends the point: great fiction makes things “more understandable, more intelligible… more reality than they really have.”
  • Dickens: the miser’s furniture looks “pinched”; in Bleak House the rotting country home of the decaying aristocracy carries the meaning of the aristocracy.
  • Aristotle in the Poetics: the statue of an assassinated man falls in a crowd and kills precisely his assassin — meaning where in real life it “could fall on anybody”; likewise Caesar killed near the statue of Pompey (“I don’t know if it’s historical”).
  • Romeo and Juliet: the Duke’s “Heaven has found me to punish you for your hatred” through the only son and only daughter.
  • Titian and portraiture: capturing a whole character in one expression, more meaning than any face in daily life; his students’ “blank face” that comes alive in the office; the Mona Lisa smile and the theories about it.
  • Mozart’s melodies: ordinary emotions “filled with much more meaning.”
  • The Iliad: perhaps historically a pirate raid, made an image of the whole struggle of mankind (“our life on earth is a warfare,” Job).
  • Boundary case: Dante and Milton are not characteristic fiction; they bring heavenly things down before the imagination, “fiction trying to imitate scripture.” Go to Homer for what fiction is.
  • Plot: Aristotle says Homer taught the Greeks that a plot is a course of action with beginning, middle and end — not the whole Trojan War, not the whole life of Odysseus. Reason looks before and after; order makes things understandable; real life “is more like the newspaper,” things without connection.

6. Waves vs. minutes: time and motion barely exist (“the next two or three days are not out there in the hall”) #

Returning to the third question via Shakespeare’s simile “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end.”

• Which has more being, the number of waves or the number that is time? The waves: at the shore in Florida the next two or three waves are already there; but the next days are not “waiting their turn” in the hall — they do not exist yet.
• Yesterday/today/tomorrow are “three days,” yet yesterday and tomorrow are not here and not even all of today; from two to five: three hours, only part of one present. So counting three days speaks “as if” there were three; without a numbering soul there never would be three days, “so it’s only one day at a time, and even that doesn’t exist, really.”
• “Notice the same thing could be said… about motion”: motion is never fully there. So reasoning from motion to the unmoved mover reasons “from what hardly exists” to “I am who am” — the extreme case of Physics I: more known to us, less known by nature. Motion is most known to us (hence seems most real) but “the least actual of all acts” (matter not even actual by itself); we go from the least actual act to pure act, from least knowable to most knowable.
• Metaphysics (he says “second book of Wisdom”) on the cause of difficulty: sometimes in us (knowing God — weakness of our mind), sometimes in the thing (hardly anything there to know); people find it hard to pass from one difficulty to the other.
• Back to the opening projections that time doesn’t exist: my motion from here to the post — part gone, part to come; even an inch or an eighth of an inch, if any distance at all, would require being here and there at once. Aristotle’s answer: not that it doesn’t exist, but that it barely exists. Yet, Ulysses in Shakespeare: “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs” — knowledge starts in sense, so motion grabs us first, which is why the study of motion and becoming is so basic.

7. Boethius: life, works, and the Consolation (“the greatest mind in the church between”) #

The definition of eternity Thomas discusses comes from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy; he introduces the man and the book.

• Studied at Alexandria with the Neoplatonists [ed.: transcript “Neocentonists”], perhaps Ammonius Hermeiou; took seriously Plato’s “until philosophers are kings”; served under the Ostrogoths, made enemies by his justice, imprisoned on false charges, executed; a local cult recognized by Rome, never formally canonized.
• Aimed to give the Latin world all of Aristotle; got through translating logical works. Own works in philosophy and theology: the definition of person comes from him; the De Trinitate, on which Thomas began a commentary (pages in the Marietti edition on one word) — Msgr. Dionne’s joke that it is so excellent “it’s the same as Boethius, I don’t believe it”; in Augustine’s tradition on the Trinity.
• The Consolation: written in prison, a dialogue with Lady Wisdom (sapientia, feminine), dialogue sections alternating with poems in elaborate Latin meter; translated by Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I. A commentary attributed to Thomas, not his but “not bad” (used by his brother Mark).
• Early books: true and false happiness; false treated first because more known to us — as Thomas at the end of SCG I shows God has abundantly all that men seek in false happiness.
• Second problem: how good men can suffer. Socrates’ last words in the Apology: God does not allow bad men to harm a good man; the martyr helped to a higher place by those harming him; Thomas More to the executioner: “he’s sent me straight to heaven.”

8. Providence, the problem of evil, and the order of questions (“an immature and perverse love of reason”) #

Providence and evil are “very difficult”; he warns against taking them out of order.

• Augustine’s Cassiciacum dialogues (De vita beata, Contra academicos, and a third): the third is mistranslated as “Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil”; its real title is De ordine, and its point is that this question is “out of order” — the young friends’ minds are not ready.
• Augustine, De Trinitate: an “immature and perverse love of reason” — applying reason to things out of the order in which it must consider them.
• Aside: free introduction-to-philosophy textbooks arranged by “problems” (evil, God’s existence) encourage this in freshmen who know no logic.

9. The last books: God’s knowledge and Boethius following Aristotle (“announces Aristotle as her true follower”) #

In the final books Boethius reaches providence (the definition of providence too comes from the Consolation), God’s knowledge, and knowledge of the future.

• Past, present and future are all present to God’s eternal knowledge; he knows temporal things non-temporally. So the way he knows differs from the way things are — which for Plato (things considered in separation must exist in separation, as in the mathematics/natural philosophy discussion) seems to involve falsity. To be revisited.
• Here Lady Wisdom announces Aristotle as her true follower: Boethius, a student of the Academy in the early books, must follow Aristotle in this. Thomas follows him.
• Why Thomas goes to Boethius: the elements of the definition are in Augustine, but Boethius spells out the complete definition — as Thomas takes the definition of belief from Augustine’s exact words, but eternity and person from Boethius. The Consolation was “a whole mine” for the Middle Ages. His opinion: Boethius the greatest mind in the church between Augustine and Thomas, though much involved in practical affairs.
• Closing image: Lady Wisdom’s garment with theta above (theoretical philosophy) and pi below (practical) — “Mary has chosen the better part”; torn because men fighting for the truth each got a part and tore it apart.

His words #

• in time: to be measured by time; to have a beginning and end in time.
• standard / measure: something invariant and simple; not elastic.
• numbering soul: the rational soul that numbers, on which time as a number depends.
• infima doctrina: “the lowest teaching,” poetry; opposed to sacra doctrina, the highest.
• Natural hearing [ed.: Physics]: first book, more known to us vs. more known by nature.
• second book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics II]: on the cause of difficulty in knowing.
• least actual of all acts: motion; opposed to pure act.
• sapientia / Lady Wisdom: the consoler in Boethius’s dialogue.
• immature and perverse love of reason: Augustine’s phrase for reasoning out of order.
• theta / pi: theoretical above practical philosophy on Lady Wisdom’s garment.

Texts #

Read in class

• Pope’s address in Astana, Kazakhstan (Sept. 24), quoting Abai Kunanbai’s Sayings and poems.
• Mark 8:36 (Greek “soul” vs. translated “life”).
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I q.1, article on metaphors in scripture (objection and reply).
• Shakespeare, sonnet “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore” (inferred: Sonnet 60).
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, the Prince’s closing speech (quoted loosely).
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy (structure and argument described).

Mentioned

• Daniel (three in the furnace); Heraclitus fragment on the depth of the soul; Plato, Apology (examining Athenians; Socrates’ last words); Aristotle, On the Soul; Aristotle, Physics IV on time, Physics I, Metaphysics II, Poetics (statue; Homer and plot); Dickens, Bleak House; Job (“our life on earth is a warfare”); Dante, Divine Comedy; Milton, Paradise Lost; Homer, Iliad and Odyssey; Shakespeare, Ulysses line (inferred: Troilus and Cressida); Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles I (end); Boethius, De Trinitate and Thomas’s commentary (Marietti edition); pseudo-Thomas commentary on the Consolation; Chaucer’s and Elizabeth I’s translations; Augustine, Cassiciacum dialogues (De vita beata, Contra academicos, De ordine), De Trinitate; Thomas More’s execution.

His questions #

• What does it mean to be in time? To be measured by time: to have a beginning and an end in time.
• What do you look for in a measure? A standard: something invariant, and perhaps simple.
• What motion did the ancients take to measure time, and why? The apparent motion of the sun: regular, swift, continuous, and seemingly a cause of changes here.
• Would there be time without the numbering soul? It would barely be: unlike chairs, the before and after never exist together.
• Was there ever eight of us in this room (if each came and left alone)? No — and likewise not even one day or hour is ever here.
• What is Thomas’s reply to the objection that poetry is the lowest teaching? Scripture’s objects are above our mind, poetry’s below; both use metaphors, for opposite reasons.
• Which has more being, the number of waves or the number that is time? The waves: the next waves are already there; the next days are not.
• What is the title of Augustine’s third Cassiciacum dialogue, and its point? De ordine: the question of providence and evil is out of order for the unprepared.
• How can Plato’s followers hold that God knows temporal things non-temporally without falsity? Left open; he says “we can come back to that question a bit here.”