Q&A: Motion and Rest in the Now, More Known to Us, Purgatory and Baptism

Orientation #

He opens by coming back “to something that you raised before” (a student’s claim that the now differs for a body in motion and one at rest) and closes by saying “we’ll see a little bit of those arguments next time”, then asks whether the monastery has an English Summa Contra Gentiles. The verified-source matching places this class at handout “The First Definition of Reason”, p. 114, and DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 879; the transcript itself shows no passage being read aloud, only discussion. The previous class treated Physics VI on “whatever has changed was previously changing” and change between contradictories; the next takes up Zeno’s paradoxes.

The class, in order #

1. Two bodies in one place in the now (“neither in motion nor at rest in the now”) #

The point: a student says a body at rest and a body passing through the same place differ even in the now; he presses the objection that no such difference can be in the now.

1. Nothing is in motion or at rest in the now; rest and motion are only in time.
2. So a difference between what is in motion and what is at rest cannot be a difference in the now, since neither term compared is in the now.
3. If you say “this one is going to stay, that one is not”, you are thinking of something outside the now, in the time on either side. (Student concedes: “Yes.”)

• Student’s line (the man standing in the door vs. the man walking through it): the walker is only there in an imperfect act ordered to a further act, per the definition of motion. He allows “there’s something to that” but the bodies are both actually there.
• Warning: those who compose time of nows/indivisibles have no real difference between rest and motion; “we don’t think that.”
• Student recalls Thomas on Aristotle’s two-bodies argument (two bodies at the same speed, one stops, one continues, to prove a body has moved before it is moving): Aristotle uses the stopping body because it is “more actual.” He: “maybe there’s some difference there.”
• Student suggestion: the difference is like a point on a line before and after it is made actual. “Okay, there’s something to that.”

2. Can you imagine a point? (“you can’t really imagine the point by itself”) #

The point: our trouble with the now comes from the imagination, which is always of the continuous.

• Point by itself: you imagine a little circle. But you can co-imagine it as the end of a finite line, as you imagine a line without width as the side of a square. (Recalling a conversation with Kymas [name unclear in recording].)
• Student: a five-million-sided polygon can be “imagined intellectually, not visually.” He: imagining and thinking are not the same thing.
• Aristotle in “the books on sensations”: we do not think without images, hence not without the continuous and time; but we know the indivisible negatively: body → surface (no depth) → line (no width) → point (no parts at all).
• Imagination drags in the continuous: picturing the stopping body you imagine the rest, picturing the passing body you imagine the motion.
• Student: motion “barely is”, but the object itself exists perfectly.

3. Bisecting a line; act manifests potency (“act is more known to us than potency”) #

The point: dividing a line makes actual a point that was there only in “ability”, and makes the halves actual in a way they were not; this is why Thomas says Aristotle argues from the stopping body.

• The stopping body makes it clearer that it has moved a distance; Aristotle manifests potency by act because act is more known to us.
• Two cautions against making much of the difference: (a) there is no motion or rest in the now; (b) those who compose motion or time of indivisibles have no distinction between motion and rest, which requires the continuous.

4. How Aristotle proves no motion in the now (“you have to divide the indivisible”) #

The point (student’s question: does he use the definition of motion?): he argues from faster and slower bodies.

1. Suppose the slower body goes a distance “during” the now.
2. The faster body goes that same distance in less than the now.
3. So the now would be divided—the indivisible divided.

• Could one argue from the definition of motion? “There’s something to be argued from there, yes.” Also from change itself: a thing is changed when it is different now from before, which implies before and after, hence divisibility.
• On time: Aristotle begins from time being connected with motion, argues time is not motion but is not perceived without motion, hence is something of motion—specifically of the before and after of motion, not of the definition of motion.

5. Democritus’s cone and Zeno’s points (“making more actual the points than they really are”) #

The point: after a student concludes “there is a difference in reality” (the original question was about the two objects, not two nows), he settles: “I don’t want to exaggerate the difference, but maybe there is some difference”, and shows the danger of over-actualising.

• Democritus’s cone cut parallel to its base: are the two circles equal or unequal? Say equal, and if you make all such circles actual you get a cylinder, not a cone. Same with a triangle cut parallel to the base: all-equal lines give a rectangle. The cut makes actual circles that were only potential.
• Zeno: to reach the door I must go half the way, then half the half—an infinity of points to pass through. He is making the points more actual than they are in the motion.
• Student: the cut lines occupy no width. He: true, but if they were actual before the cut you would have an infinity of equal lines on top of one another; between any two lines there is always potentially another (you “can’t keep slicing like the butcher”); the cut makes the line above and the line below as next to each other as they can be.

6. Definition of motion vs. before and after; one and many (“nothing is before or after itself”) #

The point (student: what connects the definition of motion with the before and after?): the two truths are in harmony, but the definition is in terms of act and ability, while before-and-after belongs to order and the one and many.

• Metaphysics: book four shows wisdom is about being as being, then about the one and the many (same reality, different in meaning); book five treats the multiple meanings of being and one. Act and ability are a distinction of meanings of being; but opposition (basis of distinction) and before and after are placed under names pertaining to the one. “Interesting.”
• Distinction: one is not the other. Aristotle against Parmenides and Melissus: if everything is one there is no beginning, on the axiom that nothing is the beginning of itself; a beginning needs a many. Likewise Thomas: distinction is presupposed to order, on the axiom that nothing is before or after itself.
• “It is a property of one to be a beginning”; the first meaning of one for us is not the one convertible with being but the beginning of number. Time as a measure involves the one and many.

7. “Has moved” as a division of motion (“motion is not composed of has moved”) #

The point: has-moved stands to motion as point to line and now to time—a division, not a component—and it is more actual in the body that stops.

• Retells Aristotle’s comparison: the equally fast body that stops there has clearly moved that distance, so the continuing body has too; Thomas: manifested through the stopping body because act is more known than ability.
• Student: the now is the beginning of rest for the stopping body and not for the other. He: true, but “probably more fundamental” is that has-moved is more actual there.
• Difficulty of motion: Aristotle and Boethius, Thomas following, say the cause of the difficulty is in the thing; we imagine it more actual than it is (a Heisenberg student, Sacha [name unclear], said imagining makes things actual in the imagination). Heraclitus fragment: men do not understand the things they meet every day though they think they do—anticipating Socrates; true of motion and time.
• Aside: young people think they know what sex is all about because they do it; “you don’t know the first thing about it.”
• Aside: light behaving as particle in some experiments and as wave in others—“those kinds of contradictions.”

8. How barely time and motion are (“the least actual of all acts”) #

The point: the objections against time’s existence are not answered by Aristotle but show how little being time has; motion is the least actual act yet most known to us.

• Objection against time: past no longer, future not yet, no time in the now. Parallel objection against motion: all of motion that is, is in the now, and there is no motion in the now. Aristotle takes these as forcing us to see how barely time is.
• No time “fully” without the numbering soul: time is a numbered number, which exists less than the number of chairs in the room, since the chairs exist together and the things numbered in time do not. Thomas calls it [Latin unclear in recording] a being “barely.”
• Ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX]: motion is the least actual act but most known to us; God, pure act, the most knowable but least known to us—extreme case of going from what is more known to us to what is more known by nature (a [name unclear] argument). If the chief difficulty were in things, the more knowable would be more knowable to us; so the difficulty is in our mind. “Shows the imperfection of our mind.”
• Parallels (simply vs. in some respect): the private good more loved than the common good, though the common good is more lovable—sign of the weakness of our heart; Christ, “God alone is good”; candy vs. wisdom (boyhood joke); the kid prefers soda pop to wine; ten push-ups more productive of strength for the weak person than a hundred.
• Student asks for a definition of the lovable: something is lovable because good; the common good is greater as the whole is better than the part. Student: the lovable imparts its good—he: that is a second sense of good, being good because it causes the good.

9. Beatific vision, purgatory, baptism (“God is the form by which we see”) #

The point: a theological digression begun from the question whether we will notice each other in heaven.

• In the beatific vision God is not only what we see but the form by which we see, joined to our mind, since we cannot see him by a created species; Scripture’s marriage metaphor is apt (you do not join yourself to just anybody; there must be love) yet the union is more intimate than marriage.
• Purgatory: someone [name unclear in recording] said the second-best place to be; Thomas speaks of it without detail; St Catherine of Genoa gives insight; his picture: cut off from distractions, a clarity about what it is all about (C. S. Lewis on the peculiar clarity of hell), extreme agony of wanting to see God while wanting to be purified. St John of the Cross: even a thread holding you down must be broken.
• Student objection: one baptised at thirty still has yesterday’s attachments and vices—why no purgatory? His replies: attachments are more in the body than the soul; no impediment to the vision; Thomas: a love of God strong enough would eliminate not only purgatory but any reparation; the baptised is truly “born again” (Christ’s words, “unless a man be born again”); the grace infused counteracts the vices. St Gertrude the Great’s spiritual exercises: one of seven is to regain the innocence of your baptismal day.
• Students add: such a one would have a lower degree of glory than a saint purified longer; the practice of delaying baptism until the last moment (Constantine [inferred from “constant time”], by an Arian); the drunk who confessed and killed himself so as to die after confession; the dark nights still needed for sanctity are something different from purgatory—left as a student’s reflection, unanswered.

His words #

• the now — indivisible of time; neither motion nor rest are in it, only in time
• ability — [ed.: potency]; the point in the line is there “only a liability” [ed.: ASR for "ability"] before division
• co-imagine — to imagine an indivisible together with what it limits (a point as end of a finite line)
• knowing the indivisible negatively — surface without depth, line without width, point without parts
• act is more known to us than potency — Thomas’s reason why Aristotle manifests “has moved” by the body that stops
• time is something of motion — of the before and after of motion, not of its definition
• opposition, the basis of distinction — “this is not that”; a name pertaining to the one
• distinction presupposed to order — axiom: nothing is before or after itself
• numbered number — time; exists less than the number of chairs in a room
• barely is — of time and motion, the least actual of acts but most known to us
• simply vs. in some respect — the more lovable simply is less lovable to us
• ninth book of wisdom — [ed.: Metaphysics IX]
• form by which we see — God in the beatific vision, joined to the mind, not a created species

Texts #

Read in class

• None read verbatim; the class is discussion of Aristotle’s two-bodies argument (Physics VI, inferred) and the treatment of time (Physics IV, inferred), with Thomas’s commentary cited from memory.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IV (wisdom about being as being, the one and many) and V (meanings of being and one) — stated
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX — “the ninth book of wisdom”
• Aristotle, “the books on sensations” (no thinking without images) — no locus
• Aristotle against Parmenides and Melissus (Physics I, inferred)
• Democritus’s cone paradox; Zeno’s dichotomy
• Heraclitus, fragment on men not understanding everyday things
• Boethius, on the cause of difficulty in knowing
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (asked whether an English copy is at the monastery)
• Scripture: “God alone is good”; “unless a man be born again”
• St Catherine of Genoa; C. S. Lewis on hell; St John of the Cross (the thread); St Gertrude the Great, spiritual exercises (seven meditations)

His questions #

• Is there any difference between the body in motion and the body at rest in the now? Not in the now, where there is neither motion nor rest; any difference is in the surrounding time—though “maybe there is some difference”, by analogy with the point made actual.
• When you say one is going to stay there, aren’t you thinking of something outside the now? Student: “Yes.”
• Can you imagine a point by itself? No; you co-imagine it as the end of a finite line, and know it negatively.
• When I bisect the line, am I making the halves more actual than before? Yes: the point that was there only in ability is made actual, and so the parts.
• If you cut a cone parallel to the base, are the two circles equal or unequal? Saying equal and actualising all circles gives a cylinder, not a cone—the cut makes actual what was potential.
• Is it possible to argue that there is no motion in the now from the definition of motion? Something can be argued from it, but Aristotle argues from faster and slower bodies dividing the indivisible.
• What is the connection between the definition of motion and the before and after of motion? The definition is in terms of act and ability; before and after belong to order and the one and many; the two are in harmony.
• Why does Aristotle manifest that the continuing body has moved through the body that stops? Because act is more known to us than ability (Thomas).
• Would there be time without the numbering soul? Not fully; time is a numbered number that “barely is.”
• Do you have a definition of the lovable? Lovable because good; the more good, the more lovable; imparting good is a second sense of good.