Shakespeare Introductions and Aquinas's First Way: The Infinite Regress of Moved Movers

Orientation #

He says that last time they were in the first argument and saw the two premises to be proved and the three reasons Thomas gives from Aristotle for the first of them (prev. lecture). He is unsure whether the Plato passage was covered last time and takes it up now. Nothing said about next time. The previous class began Thomas’s first way from motion in the Summa Contra Gentiles; the next continues with the second way.

The class, in order #

1. Shakespeare editions and a nineteenth-century introduction (“The true, not the new”) #

The point: an aside before the text, on why old school editions of Shakespeare are worth more than the modern scholarly ones.

• Arden editions: long introductions (64 pages), half the page in notes, several editions of the same play; the old New Hudson high-school editions “give you more what you want,” with a little on diction and versification, and “the people were more common sense in those days.”
• He reads Hudson’s introduction to As You Like It: Shakespeare made his plots out of what was familiar to his audience, is “very rarely, if ever, original”; the reflection then drawn: rich in invention but sparing in its use; “nature was everything to him; novelty, nothing”; “the true, not the new, was always the soul of his purpose”; Ben Jonson’s “not of an age, but for all time”; to be carried about by “the shifting mental epidemics of the day” is a confession of weakness. Hudson closes with a poet’s lines on truths “that wake to perish never.”
• Aside: the best discourse on fashion is in Troilus and Cressida. “I never have anybody in the twentieth century writing this way.”

2. Kittredge on Antony’s speech: Shakespeare’s precision (“a complete list of the qualities of a good orator”) #

The point: Shakespeare’s precision comes from wisdom, and the student must discover such things himself.

• Julius Caesar III.ii: “I have neither wit nor words nor worth, action or utterance, nor the power of speech to stir men’s blood.” Kittredge’s note: a complete list, six qualities of a good orator.
• He maps them onto Aristotle’s Rhetoric: the three means of persuasion (character of the speaker, moving the audience, arguments or apparent arguments), plus the words, style, delivery of book III. Not in logical order, because Shakespeare wants to alliterate; not meant to be caught in the theatre.
• Second instance: “Apply that part of philosophy that treats of happiness by virtue, especially to be achieved” — “I can hardly give a better succinct summary of what the Nicomachean Ethics is about”: happiness, and virtue as necessary to achieve it. “You won’t find that sort of thing on every page” of a critic; “you just have to discover things yourself.”

3. Recap: the two premises and the three reasons for the first (“two premises to be proven”) #

The point: the main argument rests on two statements, each backed by three reasons.

• Premise one: everything in motion is moved by another. Three reasons already seen: (1) from Physics VI; (2) an inductive argument; (3) from the definition of motion.
• Premise two (today): in movers and moved one cannot proceed forever.

4. Plato takes “motion” more generally than Aristotle (“takes the name of motion more generally”) #

The point: Plato’s “the first mover moves itself” is no objection to Aristotle, because Plato uses “motion” loosely.

• Aristotle vs. Plato on the word: Aristotle takes motion strictly, the act of what exists in potency (“ability”) as such, which is only in divisible things and bodies (proved in Physics VI); Plato takes it for any operation, so that to understand, to opine, to think would be “a certain to be moved.” Thomas notes Aristotle himself touches this way of speaking in the third book On the Soul.
• Illustration: grammatically understanding is signified by a verb, like walking, falling, growing; likewise Shakespeare’s definition of reason as “discourse” — running — though it is not motion in the strict sense.
• So for Plato the first mover moves itself not by motion as defined in the Physics but because it understands and loves itself, and by loving itself it loves other things (freely) and so moves them.
• Thomas’s verdict: nothing repugnant to Aristotle’s arguments; it differs nothing to arrive at a first that moves itself in Plato’s sense and a first altogether immobile in Aristotle’s.

5. Second premise, first reason: infinite bodies moved in a finite time (“all these infinite bodies are at once moved”) #

The point: an infinite series of moved movers would amount to one infinite body moved in a finite time, which Physics VI showed impossible.

1. If movers and moved went on forever, all of them would be bodies — because everything moved is divisible and a body (Physics VI).
2. Every body that moves another while being moved is moved at the same time it moves; so all the infinite bodies are moved at once when one is moved.
3. One of them, being finite, moves in a finite time; so the infinite things are moved in a finite time — impossible (Physics VI).

• Sub-proof that they are moved “as it were one mobile”: mover and moved are necessarily together (proved by induction over each species of motion); bodies are together only by being continuous or touching; so the whole series is like one infinite body moving a finite distance in a finite time.
• Student: “I don’t understand that argument.” He declines to go back to book VI now — the aim is to show how Thomas builds on it — but sketches the method: it works by proportions. In part of the time, part of the distance is covered, and that part of the time is to the whole time as the distance covered is to the whole distance; so whether a finite body is to cross an infinite distance or an infinite body a finite one, the infinite cannot have been gone over in that finite time.

6. Second reason: middle movers need a first (“all will be, as it were, middle movers”) #

The point: in ordered movers, removing the first means none of the others moves; an infinite series is all middles and no first, so nothing would be moved.

• Thomas: the first is the cause of moving to all the others; if the movers in order are infinite there is no first, “all will be as it were middle movers” (media moventia); therefore nothing is moved in the world.
• On its simplicity: Shakespeare’s sonnet complaint, “simple truth miscalled simplicity” — playing on the two senses (simpleton).
• Train example: engine, boxcar, caboose. The caboose is no mover (only pulled); the boxcar pulls the caboose, but only because it is itself pulled; the engine most of all pulls the whole train. The boxcar is a moved mover, “a pulled puller,” Thomas’s middle mover — middle because something is before it, in virtue of which it pulls, and something after it. Take away the engine and it makes no difference whether there are one or many wagons, finite or infinite: the series of linked pulled pullers is “one grand moved mover,” which cannot move anything without something before it. If every mover is a moved mover there is nothing before; so there must be an unmoved mover, an unpulled puller.
• Hanging-lamp example (“a little bit like”): links from ceiling to lamp; the lamp holds nothing up, the links are “held-up holders.” If the chain were never attached to the ceiling, no number of added links would hold anything; you must come to something not held up by another link — a beam. He judges the train the more exact example.
• Aside: Dewey speaking from a caboose platform when the train jerked; the Democrats’ use of it.

7. Generalising to the other causes (“one grand means”) #

The point: the same argument, which Aristotle repeats in the second book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics II], applies to every kind of cause, not only the mover.

• End: A desired only for the sake of B, B for C. A is not desired unless B is, nor B unless C. An infinite chain would be an infinity of means, “one grand means” presupposing an end — but there would be no end. So (Nicomachean Ethics, on happiness) there must be some good not desired for the sake of another; otherwise everything is a means and nothing an end.
• Second form: one could not begin to desire anything, since desiring anything presupposes desiring something else first.
• Student’s question: must one actually know the end, or is virtual knowledge enough? Answer: one must have it actually, in a confused way (e.g. a confused knowledge of happiness), because the object of the will is the good known by reason.
• The general form: there cannot be a caused cause without a cause before it, nor many caused causes, finite or infinite, since the series is “one grand caused cause.”
• “Almost a contradiction in the words”: a middle with nothing before it. Cf. the definition of middle in the Poetics (beginning, middle, end): what comes after something and before something. The moved mover is essentially middle — moving something, but only because moved.

8. Third reason: instrument and principal mover (“proceeds in a transposed order”) #

The point: almost the same as the second, but beginning from the superior, with the distinction of chief mover and tool.

• What moves instrumentally cannot move unless something moves principally; in an infinite series all would be instruments and none the chief mover; so nothing would be moved.
• A tool is used to achieve an end; with no one to use it, it is not used for the end, however many tools there are. A tool is “really like a moved mover,” almost the same definition as the middle mover.

9. Close: both propositions proved; comparison with the Summa Theologiae (“the proof of both propositions”) #

Thomas: thus the proof of both propositions supposed in the first way by which Aristotle proves a first immobile mover. Notice: the Summa Theologiae argument from motion has only a part of this — one reason for each premise — whereas here there are three, spelled out more.

His words #

• ability — his rendering of potency in “the act of what exists in potency or in ability, as such” [ed.: potency].
• motion, strict vs. loose — Aristotle’s act of the potential as such (only in bodies) vs. Plato’s “any operation” (understanding, opining).
• middle mover — Thomas’s media moventia; moved mover; “pulled puller” in the train case; essentially between something before and after.
• moved mover / unmoved mover — “unpulled puller.”
• one grand moved mover / one grand means / one grand caused cause — his name for any series of intermediaries taken as one.
• caused cause — the general form of moved mover for any kind of cause.
• second book of wisdom — [ed.: Metaphysics II].
• instrumental vs. chief (principal) mover — tool vs. the one who uses it.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, first way: the passage on Plato’s sense of motion and the three reasons for “no infinite regress of movers” (ch. 13 inferred).
• Hudson, introduction to As You Like It (New Hudson Shakespeare).
• Shakespeare, Julius Caesar III.ii, Antony’s “I am no orator,” with Kittredge’s note.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics VI (movable things are bodies; infinite cannot be moved in finite time; proportions).
• Aristotle, On the Soul III (the broader way of speaking of motion).
• Aristotle, Rhetoric (three means of persuasion; book III on words).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics II (“second book of wisdom”: the argument repeated).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (an end not desired for another).
• Aristotle, Poetics (beginning, middle, end).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, argument from motion.
• Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida (on fashion); a sonnet (“simple truth miscalled simplicity”); “apply that part of philosophy” (play not named).

His questions #

• Why does Shakespeare give a complete list of the qualities of an orator? Wisdom, precision on Shakespeare’s part; not to be caught in the theatre.
• Of the engine, boxcar and caboose, which is the mover? Most of all the engine; the boxcar in some sense, as a pulled puller; the caboose not at all.
• Why call the moved mover a middle mover? Because something before it pulls it, in virtue of which it pulls, and something is after it.
• If you take away the engine, does it matter whether there are one or many wagons? No; finite or infinite, they are one grand moved mover that moves nothing without something before.
• Would A be desired if B were not? Can the chain of means go on forever? No; an infinite chain is one grand means with no end.
• Must one actually know the end, or is virtual knowledge enough? (student) Actually, in a confused way, since the object of the will is the good known by reason.
• How can something be a middle with nothing before it? It cannot; almost a contradiction in the words (Poetics’ definition of middle).
• How does the third reason differ from the second? Hardly at all; it starts from the chief mover and treats the others as tools.