Shakespeare's 'Stumbling on Abuse': Nature, Bad as Privation, and Equivocal Words

Orientation #

He is finishing the talk on Friar Lawrence’s “wisely and slow” from last time (prev. lecture), summing up “the seven places” of wisdom that occurred to him, then turning to a second stumbling line from the same scene. Near the middle he says “next time we’ll look at St. Thomas” and that the class will “go on to the De Anima” (a student suggests chapter thirteen); the recording then resumes with “let’s come back to something last time,” the same Friar Lawrence passage. Verified sources place the class on his handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom”, p. 4, and DHB Vol. III, p. 453. The previous class read “wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast” as a meditation on wisdom’s deliberate slowness.

The class, in order #

1. “Thy will be done” and mercy over justice (“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”) #

An example he was giving: a second meaning of the petition. Usual reading: on earth we fail to do God’s will, in heaven they do it perfectly. His added reading: God’s will is done both in heaven and in hell; in heaven one sees more His mercy (St. Teresa of Jesus, “forever I will sing His mercies”, from the Psalms: misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo), in hell more His justice; so the petition asks for His mercy, not to be chastised as we deserve. The sung parts of the Mass ask mercy: Kyrie eleison (Greek, same word as pity/mercy in Aristotle’s Poetics), Agnus Dei … miserere nobis. The nearest Thomas comes to asking justice: that God give him grace and then reward His grace. Back-reference: God is chiefly responsible for the good you do, you for the bad; seems “damn unfair” but shows justice concerns punishment more, mercy the good.

2. Saying things as well as they were said (“some things we should try to say better”) #

Point: a wise man’s words sometimes cannot be improved. Aristotle in the Politics, on predecessors: some things we should try to say better than they did, others only as well. His experience: arguments fail to persuade, then a line of Shakespeare persuades because said so well. Heraclitus, “nature loves to hide”: unimprovable; aside on a science book in a bookshop titled Nature Loves to Hide that does not acknowledge Heraclitus (a student asks if it is any good; he only read the title, doubts the author saw the whole meaning). Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, where all the parts of philosophy are named: ethics is “happiness by virtue especially to be achieved”, which describes the Nicomachean Ethics better than Aristotle does.

3. Why nature loves to hide (“why does nature love to hide”) #

He asked his colleagues and they were stumped. Argument:

1. “Nature” is equivocal by reason; its first meaning is birth, and in birth the baby comes from within.
2. In every one of the seven or eight meanings (Aristotle orders them), nature is something within: the meaning defining natural philosophy, “the beginning and cause of motion and of rest in that which it is, first, as such, not by happening”; and the last meaning, what a thing is.
3. What a thing is is within it: hence the definition “brings out” what a thing is (no need if it were on the outside); Thomas: intelligere as intus legere, to read within, and the proper object of intellectus is what a thing is. Conclusion: the first (not the only) reason nature loves to hide is that what is within is hidden. He closes the previous talk: “those are the seven places” of wisdom; he did not set out to find seven.

4. The second stumbling line and the senses of “birth” (“revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse”) #

Earlier in the scene, before Romeo enters, the Friar is among his plants (whence the potion for Juliet): “Naught so vile that on the earth doth live but to the earth some special good doth give; nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.” He recasts it as a statement: what revolts from true birth stumbles on abuse. Question to the class: in what sense of “birth”? Greek phusis and Latin natura both come from birth, and Aristotle (fifth book of Wisdom) and Thomas order all the meanings. In English the carryover is often stopped because we import the Greek or Latin word in its later meanings, a danger for the modern mind: the word is used out of order. Class agrees Shakespeare has moved “birth” all the way to the last meaning, the nature as what a thing is, understood to involve its end. “Kind of a marvelous thing.” Either follow the Greek/Latin meanings to the English word, or extend an English word yourself (his “road” extended to the mind).

5. Applied to action: parts strained from their fair use (“my hands can be strained”) #

Hands: nature gives them to feed and clothe myself and to care for and guard children; strained from that use when I take drugs or poison (Romeo), or the abortionist kills the baby: stumbling on abuse. Vocal cords and tongue: for speech, since man is by nature a social animal (Aristotle, Politics) and needs to communicate; used to lie, they go against their natural purpose, as Cicero saw clearly. Sexual organs: misused contrary to their purpose (scandals through history). The moderns’ revolt is more general, from the nature and natural end of man himself; tied to the question whether nature acts for an end, which Shakespeare takes for granted.

6. Applied to the mind: three revolts from nature (“revolt, first of all, from wonder”) #

1. Revolt from wonder, the natural desire to know what and why, the cause. Hobbes and Marx reject knowledge for its own sake: all is for power, doing, making. Plato, making wonder the beginning of philosophy, saw its connection to God: the desire for the cause leads to the first cause. Heisenberg (Gifford lectures): the 17th–18th-century union of natural with technical science changed the attitude to nature from contemplative to pragmatic; though Max Born said nothing great in science is done without elementary curiosity. Augustine’s definition of belief, assentire cum cogitatione (firm assent while thinking, because one does not comprehend), and Anselm’s theology as belief seeking understanding respect this desire: grace and belief do not go against it.
2. Revolt from the natural road, from the senses into reason: attacking the senses is a “rite of passage” into modern philosophy (else you are naive). His reply: to attack the senses you must follow the road from the senses; once rejected, “you’re on your own.”
3. Revolt from the natural understanding of the axioms: Russell’s objection to “the whole is more than the part” (refuted by his teacher De Koninck); a Heideggerian tells him questioning the axioms is where conversation begins. Argument: the axioms are the natural beginning; statements not known of themselves are known through those we do know; so if we know none of themselves we know none at all. Mill, On Liberty: we never really know whether any statement is true, now commonplace (“the statements I’m sure about”: they leave the paper blank). Conclusion: philosophy is based on the natural road, the axioms, and wonder; revolt against nature is abuse of philosophy and of reason itself. De Koninck on Marx’s eleven theses on Feuerbach (Engels’ “brilliant germ”): the whole philosophy that began in wonder is abused. Hamlet: “Wonderful strange; then, as a stranger, give it welcome.” His TC talk on Heraclitus: wisdom is to speak the truth and act according to nature, “giving ear” like a docile student of nature; Shakespeare says the same.

7. Student question: “stumbling” and “abuse” (“to wander in illusions”) #

Abuse: misusing my parts in action; in the mind, rejecting the natural road, which is first and presupposed to all other roads, so rejecting it rejects all roads and leaves the mind to wander: Shakespeare’s “wander in illusions” (Comedy of Errors; error is Latin for wandering). Stumbling: to fall into error; we say fall for moral failure too (fall into sin, fall from grace, the devil compared to a falling star). We stumble in action and in thought; the Church Fathers say the mind “stutters” speaking of the Trinity, against the heretic who “raves”; stuttering is close to stumbling but less bad, an imperfection of speech. Aside on logos: first word, then the thought signified; in “In the beginning was the Word” it is closer to thought, as Thomas explains; his poem on the Father saying it all in one Word, Christ “the brevity and soul of wit”; Scripture’s verbum abbreviatum. “I learned more from Shakespeare than any of the modern philosophers.” Next time St. Thomas, then on to the De Anima (chapter thirteen suggested).

8. Resuming: “bad” is equivocal by reason (“nature is the measure of what’s good or bad”) #

Point: the Friar’s line rests on nature, what a thing is, as measure of good and bad, and this shows if one understands “bad”. “Bad” has at least three basic meanings, so is equivocal by reason. Equivocal = many meanings, where many means more than one (not opposed to few; “many” itself equivocal by reason). Equivocal by reason vs. by chance (Aristotle, Neoplatonists, Boethius, Thomas): by reason, there is an order among the meanings. Which sense of “reason”? Two English senses: (a) the power, Shakespeare’s “large discourse, looking before and after” (Hamlet); (b) a reason for a statement, the cause of one’s thinking it true, not necessarily of its being true (best case: the reason why it must be so; but “I see you sitting” is why I think, not why you sit). Connected: reason in sense (a) gives reasons in sense (b), one reason has many reasons. Distinguishing first by one and many: Socrates asks for one definition and gets many examples (“I asked you for one, you gave me many”, the Greek proverb of the dropped dish); univocal and equivocal are first distinguished by one and many. By chance: the meanings just happened to share a name; by reason: there is a reason, my reason as cause rather than chance, that placed the name on many.

9. “Equivocal by reason” against “analogous” (“every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason”) #

De Koninck’s offhand remark; the words in the axioms and in wisdom are all of this sort. Some use “equivocal” alone for by chance and call the other “analogous”: an instance of naming where the kind adding nothing keeps the common name and the noteworthy kind gets its own (his mother disliked “man is an animal”; the beast keeps “animal”, man gets “man”). His caution: analogia is Greek for proportion, and not all names equivocal by reason are so by proportion, so “analogous” narrows people’s understanding; he prefers “equivocal by reason”, though Thomas uses “analogous”. Student: how does Thomas define it? Two divisions, both acceptable: (i) names said of many things: entirely same meaning, univocal; entirely different, equivocal (by chance); partly same partly different, analogous, in between; (ii) univocal vs. equivocal, then equivocal subdivided into by reason and by chance. Parallel: goods of soul, body, exterior divided three ways at once, or inside/outside then inside subdivided (St. Paul’s “inner man”; others lump body with exterior as material goods). A third possible division: names by chance vs. by reason, then by reason subdivided into same meaning (“man” of each of you) and connected meanings (“man” of a picture, a likeness pointing back to you); “bat” (baseball, belfry) is by chance. Student: does Thomas use the Greek sense, proportion? Sometimes, from Aristotle: the Nicomachean Ethics text dividing names, one kind by proportion (analogia, Euclid’s “proportion”); the name of the part given to the whole for lack of a name. Same in “virtue”, taken from one virtue, courage; English manhood usually means courage in Shakespeare, but the boy who leaves the thieves because it goes against his manhood moves it to virtue in general (justice); Latin virtus from vir, the soldier being a man not a woman; aside on the Catechism specifying viri for ordination.

10. The three meanings of “bad” and the definition of lack (“the first meaning of bad is lack”) #

Superficial critics say Thomas and Augustine are wrong that evil is a lack (Hitler’s tanks are not a lack); a student suggests they misunderstand that privation must exist in something; he: rather, they miss that “bad” is equivocal by reason and Thomas speaks of the first meaning, in reference to which the others are understood. Three meanings: (1) lack in the strict sense; (2) what has the lack; (3) what causes something to have the lack. Example: blindness (1); a blind man, dog or cat (2); what blinds, poking an eye out, the Spanish Civil War torture with propped eyelids and light, Gloucester in King Lear (3). Order of distance: (2) nearer to (1) than (3). Parallel with “political”: the polis; government, which rules the polis; revolution, a change of government, furthest off. Definition of lack (fifth book of Wisdom, many meanings; full sense): non-being of something in a subject able to have it, by nature apt to have it, and when it should have it. So bad in its first meaning is opposed to nature: not bad for a chair or stone not to see (natural vs. artificial), nor for a tree, which need not move; perhaps not for Aristotle’s fixed marine animals that work by touch, whose meal comes to them; bad for a cat that hunts, which by nature should have sight. “If you understand what the bad is, it’s necessarily connected with nature.” Shakespeare hits the nail on the head, but the Greeks saw it too.

11. Why habit is the first species of quality (“well or ill disposed towards one’s nature”) #

Aristotle divides quality into four: disposition or habit; innate ability or inability; sense qualities; shape or figure. Why habit first, though ability seems more fundamental? Aristotle orders carefully when treating a matter as such. Thomas explains in the Prima Secundae, recalling the categories to say what kind of quality virtue is: by disposition or habit one is well or ill disposed toward one’s nature, and the nature, what a thing is, is first in the thing (it must be what it is before anything else), so habit looks back to what is first. “A very subtle explanation.” Hence habits are good or bad primarily (virtues and vices of soul and body: health a virtue of the body, justice of the soul); shape as such is not good or bad, but beauty is spoken of as a disposition. So again nature is the measure of good and bad, and those who miss it miss the basic thing needed to do ethics.

His words #

• misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo: the Psalm line St. Teresa took; the Mass asks mercy, not justice.
• Kyrie eleison: Greek for mercy, same word as pity/mercy in Aristotle’s Poetics.
• nature: equivocal by reason, seven or eight ordered meanings; first, birth; the natural-philosophy meaning, “beginning and cause of motion and of rest in that which it is, first, as such, not by happening”; last, what a thing is.
• intelligere as intus legere: to read within (Thomas).
• Natural Hearing: [ed.: Physics]; the fifth book of Wisdom: [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• true birth (Shakespeare): “birth” moved to its last meaning, true nature including end.
• wonder: natural desire to know what and why, the cause; the beginning of philosophy (Plato).
• assentire cum cogitatione: Augustine’s definition of belief, to assent while thinking about it.
• the natural road: from the senses into reason, presupposed to all other roads.
• wander in illusions: Shakespeare’s phrase; error = wandering.
• stutter vs. rave: the Fathers on the mind speaking of the Trinity vs. the heretic.
• verbum abbreviatum: Christ as an abbreviated word.
• equivocal by reason vs. by chance: many meanings with an order among them vs. a shared name by chance; he prefers this to “analogous”.
• many: more than one, not opposed to few.
• reason: (a) the power, “large discourse, looking before and after”; (b) the cause of one’s thinking a statement true.
• analogous: Greek for proportion; Thomas’s name for meanings partly same, partly different [ed.: analogia].
• virtus from vir; English manhood: courage, extended to virtue in general.
• bad: (1) lack, (2) what has the lack, (3) what causes the lack.
• lack (full sense): non-being of something in a subject able and by nature apt to have it, when it should.
• quality’s four species: disposition or habit; innate ability or inability; sense qualities; shape or figure.

Texts #

Read in class

• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene III, Friar Lawrence: “Naught so vile … revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse” (recast and expounded).
• Heraclitus: “nature loves to hide”; “wisdom is to speak the truth and act according to nature.”
• Augustine, definition of belief, assentire cum cogitatione; Anselm, theology as belief seeking understanding.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Secundae, on why habit is the first species of quality.

Mentioned

• “Thy will be done” petition; St. Teresa of Jesus; Mass prayers (Kyrie, Agnus Dei).
• Aristotle, Politics (on predecessors; man a social animal); Poetics (pity/mercy); Metaphysics V (meanings of phusis, of lack); Physics II (definition of nature); Nicomachean Ethics (names by proportion); Categories on quality (inferred locus); marine animals.
• Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew (parts of philosophy); Hamlet (“large discourse”; “as a stranger give it welcome”); Comedy of Errors (“wander in illusions”); King Lear (Gloucester blinded); the boy leaving the thieves for his “manhood” (play not named).
• Cicero on speech; Plato on wonder and the dialogues’ definitions; Hobbes; Marx, theses on Feuerbach, Engels; Heisenberg, Gifford lectures; Max Born; Russell on whole and part; De Koninck; Mill, On Liberty; Euclid (analogia); John 1:1 (inferred); Catechism of the Catholic Church on ordination (viri); Aristotle, De Anima (next class).

His questions #

• When we say “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” what are we asking for? His mercy rather than His justice: God’s will is done in hell too, but there justice shows.
• Why does nature love to hide? In every meaning nature is something within, and what is within is hidden.
• In what sense of “birth” is Shakespeare using the word in “revolts from true birth”? The last meaning: the nature as what a thing is, including its end.
• What do the modern philosophers revolt from in the life of the mind? Wonder, the natural road from the senses, and the natural understanding of the axioms.
• What is the difference between a word equivocal by reason and one equivocal by chance? By reason there is an order and a cause connecting the meanings; by chance the shared name just happened.
• Why does the equivocal by chance keep the common name while the other is called “analogous”? The kind that adds nothing keeps the common name; the noteworthy kind gets its own (as man vs. animal).
• From which particular virtue is the word “virtue” taken? Courage (virtus from vir; English “manhood”).
• Is blindness bad? Is it bad to be a blind man? What blinds a man? Yes in three senses: the lack, what has the lack, what causes it.
• Why does Aristotle put disposition or habit first among the species of quality? Because by habit one is well or ill disposed toward one’s nature, which is first in the thing (Thomas).