Nature and Reason: Distinction, Equivocal Names, and Why the Beginning Matters

Orientation #

He does not describe last time; the class opens mid-thought on custom as second nature and closes with him saying he will “say something here about six, seven, and eight” (readings), which cannot be covered entirely today. A verified text-match places this class at DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 286. The surrounding classes work through Physics VI on the divisibility of motion and time.

The class, in order #

1. Nature determined to one; reason looks before and after (“Custom is like a second nature”) #

Point: the distinction between nature and soul, or nature and reason/will, is what the class must get right.

• Custom is a second nature: like nature it is determined to one thing (customs that make a good soldier need not make a good citizen).
• Reason is defined by “looking before and after” (Shakespeare); included in that is the ability to find the distinction between things.
• Hamlet on choosing Horatio: “Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, and could of men distinguish…”; a baby’s soul is not yet mistress of choice because reason has not developed. “Give me that man that is not passion’s slave”: you cannot see that Horatio is the better friend unless you first see the distinction between the man who is a slave of his passion (anger, lust, drink, fear) and the man who is not.
• Conclusion: distinction always comes before seeing some order. Thomas in the Sentences: order is defined by before and after but presupposes distinction. That is why, in the two places Aristotle distinguishes the senses of “before” (the Categories and “the wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics]), he first distinguishes the senses of “opposed”; this is not by chance.
• Aside: Shakespeare baptized April 26, hence thought born the 23rd, St George’s day, since custom was baptism on the third day.

2. A mistake in the beginning; the right question (“the beginning is half of all”) #

Point: since these distinctions are the most fundamental (e.g. nature vs choice, which grounds natural vs practical philosophy), a mistake here is disastrous.

• Plato and Aristotle: a small mistake in the beginning is a great one in the end; compared to taking the wrong fork in a road, a little difference at the turn, far apart later. The beginning contains all the rest as a seed.
• So the wise man proceeds “wisely and slowly” on the most fundamental things; nothing more necessary than to begin well, nothing more dangerous than a mistake there. (He refers to Augustine and to the Greek archē, “the beginning is half of all”; Socrates says “more than half of all”.)
• Heisenberg (a text he gave them earlier): to ask the right question is to go more than halfway to the solution. Interesting because a question seems the least of beginnings, asserting nothing, yet it is more than half the line from ignorance to knowledge.
• Meno: Socrates gives the impression the slave boy recalls how to double the square, but Socrates does most of the work by asking the right questions.
• Two ways to come to what you don’t know: discover it yourself, or be taught by one who knows; the second should imitate the first, which is the perfection of teaching, best in one-to-one. The right question makes the next thing near enough for the student to see it himself.

3. Nothing is before or after itself (“Nothing can come before after itself”) #

Point: an axiom-like truth shows why distinction precedes order.

• Today is before tomorrow and after yesterday, but today cannot be before or after today. So there must be a distinction between what is before and what is after; misunderstand or miss the distinction and you cannot see before and after.
• But you can see a distinction without seeing the order: a young man [name unclear in recording] who saw plays of Fletcher and of Shakespeare again and again, knowing both, only gradually perceived how much better Shakespeare was.

4. Which kind of distinction? Virtue/vice vs two/three (“in three, in a way, there is a two”) #

Point: the distinction between nature and reason (or will, or soul) is of the two-and-three kind, not the virtue-and-vice kind.

• Virtue vs vice: virtue is never vice plus something, vice never virtue plus something; each excludes the other.
• Two vs three: three is two plus one; in three there is a two.
• Reason is a nature but not just a nature, as three is two but not just two. Naming rule: what is just a nature keeps the name “nature”; the nature with something noteworthy in addition (being open to opposites) gets a new name, “reason”.
• Reason as reason: open to opposites, as in dialectical reasoning which argues both sides (Socrates in the Meno). Will as will: choice, not determined to one.
• But some things are naturally willed (happiness; you cannot will the opposite) and some naturally understood (the axioms, known by themselves to all); these are the beginnings of choice and of reasoning. Thomas therefore places nous/intellectus above episteme, since episteme depends on it.
• Moderns misread the distinction as the virtue/vice kind: they see nature vs reason as absolute, so reason “never really knows anything,” is never determined to either side of a contradiction, and one must “keep the door open.” He points to what Thomas does in the SCG (chapter on liberty) against this.
• Thomas’s distinction: reason as a nature (determined) vs reason as reason. Compare: three as three is half of six, but the two in three is half of four; there is something in three that is half of four. So there is something in reason that is determined to one against the other; if no statements were naturally known, none could ever be known.
• Thomas’s example: we acquire what is not natural through what is natural, as we acquire external things. Language: speaking English is not natural; we acquire it by imitating mother, father, brothers, aunts; but imitating is natural to man, “the most imitative of all the animals” (Aristotle). Same for a foreign language.
• Likewise we naturally will happiness before we try to choose the things we think lead to it; we sometimes choose well, sometimes badly.
• Aside: his children, asked what the Romans’ greatest accomplishment was, answered “speaking Latin”.

5. Reason as reason is more known to us (“what he’s defining is reason as reason”) #

Point: definitions start from what is more known, which is reason as reason and will as choice.

• Shakespeare’s “looking before and after” defines reason as reason. In the De Anima (to be read after natural philosophy) Aristotle likewise begins from reason as reason, since reasoning is the act most characteristic of reason and gives it its name; he distinguishes reason from imagination by reason’s going “from one thing to another”; only later does he come to reason as nature.
• Will: defining it as the ability to choose is more known to us than that the will also loves and desires, though loving/desiring is more basic than choosing.
• Sartre: the will wills nothing naturally, so even the end is up for grabs; “a complete misunderstanding,” since the will naturally wills happiness. Moderns end saying you never know anything, are never sure, nothing is natural.
• Dividing the study of natural things into “life sciences” and “physical sciences”: not too bad, provided “physical” is understood as just nature and life sciences as involving soul, which is nature plus something.

6. Names where one keeps the common name and the other gets a new one (“keeps the name”) #

Point: this way of naming is very common and, if unrecognized, confuses readers; it is a kind of equivocation close to the original meaning, different from analogy.

• Animal: beast (adds nothing noteworthy) keeps the name “animal”, man gets “man”; hence “man and the animals,” though man is also an animal. His mother objected to “man is an animal” because she took “animal” in the beast sense; “I don’t mean he’s just an animal.”
• Plant: little things keep “plant” (wife: “water the plants,” not the trees; at the nursery a tree is not called a plant).
• Nomen/verbum (Peri Hermeneias): both defined as a vocal sound signifying by custom and agreement, no part of which signifies by itself; the verb signifies with time, the noun without; so the verb adds something and gets a name, the noun keeps nomen (also onoma in Greek). Ammonius keeps explaining this double sense. English avoids it with name/noun/verb.
• Man/woman: English lacks a common name; Greek and Latin have homo alongside vir and femina. “You just have to respect the language.”
• Episteme/sophia (scientia/sapientia): in the Ethics separate virtues, with nous a third; yet in the 14 books on wisdom Aristotle calls sophia an episteme. No inconsistency: episteme is reasoned-out knowledge of causes, and sophia, being about the very first causes and God, adds something noteworthy and gets its own name; the confusion is in the reader’s head. Same with knowledge vs wisdom.
• Intellectus: he renders it “natural understanding” since English “understanding” can be confused with knowledge. “Knowledge” is a broad word; “science” has shifted (geometry is a science in the ancient, not the modern sense).
• Return: to say there is a two in three (half of four) while three is half of six only seems a contradiction; not like virtue and vice, which can never include each other. Misunderstanding this beginning of all distinctions (of sciences etc.) makes freedom “something divorced from nature,” the will sui generis with nothing of nature in it; someone [name unclear in recording, “Spengler”?] speaks of that divorce. Hence why the greatest minds proceed slowly here.

7. Ability determined to one vs open to opposites (“open to opposites”) #

Point: Aristotle in the book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics, inferred] distinguishes abilities determined to one from rational abilities open to opposites.

• Fire always heats, never cools: determined to one.
• A patient before a doctor: the medical art can heal or kill (abortion: deliver the baby or kill it); no one knows better than the knowledgeable doctor how to kill.
• Grammar: by the same art he can speak correctly or, knowingly, incorrectly. Mozart’s Musical Joke shows how not to write music, obvious and subtle mistakes alike. Logic: the same knowledge lets one argue well and deceive; rhetoric persuades either way.
• Shakespeare saw the other side, nature not adapting: Coriolanus, a soldier used to commanding, cannot adjust to democratic customs (showing wounds, canvassing votes), turns against Rome, and only his family finally moves him.

8. Student questions: soul in plants; senses of order (“order is defined by before and after”) #

• Student: he never understood nature vs soul, since plant growth seems merely natural. Reply: the soul is not as fully in the plant as where there is appetite; in man the soul is in all the parts; the division of the soul is not like a division into species. Aristotle speaks of natural [word garbled: “vill-”] and those of the soul, so there is already a little difference at the level of soul, seen fully at reason; hence nature vs reason, nature vs choice. Moderns cannot see the order between nature and reason at all.
• Student: is order only before and after? Reply: yes, that is what it means, though there are many senses (chronological among them); Thomas’s text shows there must be something different in before and after, and behind distinction lies unity, since one is convertible with being.
• Closing: he will say something about readings six, seven and eight, though not entirely.

His words #

• “looking before and after”: his (Shakespeare’s) definition of reason.
• “distinction comes before order”: his summary of Thomas’s point that order (before and after) presupposes distinction.
• “the wisdom”, “the 14 books on wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics].
• “the beginning is half of all” (archē): Greek maxim; Socrates makes it “more than half”.
• “reason as a nature / reason as reason”: Thomas’s distinction; determined to one vs open to opposites.
• “the two in three”: his image for the nature contained in reason.
• “natural understanding” [ed.: intellectus, nous].
• “keeps the name”: the member of a genus that adds nothing noteworthy retains the common name.
• episteme/sophia = scientia/sapientia: reasoned-out knowledge of causes vs knowledge of the very first causes.
• nomen/verbum, onoma: noun and verb, the noun keeping the common name.
• “ability determined to one” vs “rational ability open to opposites” [ed.: potency].

Texts #

Read in class

• Shakespeare, Hamlet, Hamlet’s praise of Horatio (“Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice…”, “not passion’s slave”).
• Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias, definition of noun and verb (paraphrased). Mentioned
• Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences (order presupposes distinction).
• Aristotle, Categories and Metaphysics (inferred), senses of “opposed” and “before”.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (inferred), abilities determined to one vs open to opposites.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, episteme, sophia, nous as distinct virtues.
• Aristotle, De Anima; Aristotle on man as most imitative of animals (Poetics, inferred).
• Plato, Meno, slave boy.
• Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, on liberty (as he cites it).
• Heisenberg, a text on asking the right question (given earlier).
• Ammonius on the Peri Hermeneias.
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus; Fletcher’s plays; Mozart, A Musical Joke.
• DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 286 (verified source).

His questions #

• What does reason always see before it sees order? Distinction, since nothing is before or after itself.
• What kind of distinction is that between nature and reason: like virtue and vice, or like two and three? Like two and three: in three there is a two; reason is a nature plus something.
• Is it a contradiction to say there is something in three that is half of four while three is half of six? No; it only seems so if you fail to understand the two in three.
• If no statements were naturally known, could we know any? No; the axioms, known by themselves to all, are what all else rests on.
• How do we acquire what is not natural (a language)? Through what is natural, imitation; man is the most imitative animal.
• Why does Aristotle call sophia an episteme after distinguishing them? Sophia adds something noteworthy (first causes, God) and gets its own name; the other keeps the common name.
• Why was his mother offended by “man is an animal”? She took “animal” as the beast’s own name; man is an animal with reason.
• Is order only before and after? (student) Yes, in many senses; and before-and-after requires difference, which rests on unity.