The Second Way: Per Se and Per Accidens, and the Principle That What Is Through Itself Comes First

Orientation #

He opens by saying they now go on to “the second way” in the chapter on the proof of God’s existence in the Summa Contra Gentiles, and refers back to “a little bit of logic” done earlier and to the ends-and-means problem “we brought up a minute ago” (prev. lecture). He promises to “come back” to whether the eternity of motion is really impossible to deny. The previous class treated the first proof against an infinite regress of movers; the next continues with Physics VIII and the self-mover.

The class, in order #

1. Five proofs in each Summa (“the Summa Contra Gentiles is much more full here”) #

Point: locating the text. In both the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae there are five proofs, but in the SCG the first two are from motion and the third from the efficient cause (the maker), whereas in the ST one is from motion and the second from the efficient cause; so the SCG is “much more full” on motion. Thomas begins: “If every mover is moved, either this propositio is true per se or per accidens.”

2. Propositio, protasis, premise vs. statement (“Propositio originally is naming what”) #

Point: what Thomas means by propositio and why the word is a poor custom.

• Aristotle’s book is on what he would call in English the statement; in Latin they say enunciation.
• Propositio originally names the premise in a syllogism: something “laid down before” or “for the sake of” a conclusion, i.e. the statement insofar as it is part of a syllogism ordered to a conclusion.
• The Greek protasis, from proteino, is “even more excellent”: it means stretching forward, i.e. stretching forward to the conclusion. English premise (he keeps that spelling, others use “premiss”) = something sent/placed before.
• Men got accustomed to calling any statement a “proposition,” and Thomas sometimes follows the custom; he does not like it, just as “proportion” came to mean ratio when it “actually means analogy.”

3. “Define your terms”, predicament, category (“Define your terms”) #

Point: abstract logical words that drifted into daily speech.

• “Define your terms”: term comes from the logic of the third act. Syllogism laid out: every mother is a woman; no man is a woman; therefore no man is a mother. The two statements are premises (major, minor); mother, woman, man are terms; woman the middle term, mother the major, man the minor. They are called terms because they are the end of the resolution: Prior Analytics = “the prior taking apart” — a syllogism is taken apart into two premises, the premises into three terms. Really what you define is the word (“mother” can be defined apart from being a major term), so the expression is a strange pickup from logic.
• “I’m in a predicament”: from predicamentum, the name of one of the ten genera/categories. Once in a genus you cannot get into another (seven cannot leave the genus number for substance or quality or relation) — no way out; so a disagreeable situation with no course of action is a predicament. A testimony to Greek philosophy “floating its way down.”
• Category comes from the courthouse: accusation = categoria, defense = apologia (Socrates’ Apology = his legal defense). Why borrowed: to accuse you I must say something of you (“you are a murderer,” “you are a robber”); Latin predicamentum likewise from what is “set up” (said of). The ten categories are the ten set-ups, by antonomasia. Warren Murray calls them “the ten supreme accusations” — supreme because no genera above them.
• Student: did some of these phrases come through Shakespeare? Poets do pick up and popularize such words; he saw a book at Borders on Shakespearean phrases, but one can never be sure of the origin.

4. Statement defined by true/false, premise by affirmative/negative (“It almost seems like calling a straight line a side”) #

Point: Thomas here uses propositio in the sense of statement, and the difference between statement and premise is real.

• Calling a statement a proposition is like calling a straight line a “side”: a line is a side only as bounding a triangle. Likewise ethics looks at me as a man, domestic philosophy as a father, political philosophy as a citizen — “what is a citizen?” is a different question from “what is a man?”, though the citizen is a man. So “what is the premise?” differs from “what is the statement?”; “very subtle the way Aristotle defines those.”
• Aristotle defines the statement as speech signifying the true or the false, and divides it into affirmative and negative — but does not define it by affirmation/negation. In the Prior Analytics, for the premise, he talks about affirmative and negative, universal and particular, because these matter for the power to infer (e.g. no syllogism from two negatives); truth and falsity there look at the statement by itself, not in reference to drawing a conclusion.
• Example: “every stone is an animal, every man is a stone, therefore every man is an animal” (also with “dog”): the conclusion follows though all premises are false. Whether the conclusion follows is another question from whether the premises are true. For a good conclusion you need both: it follows necessarily, and from true premises — hence two books, Prior (form only) and Posterior Analytics (truth or falsity).
• Application: since Thomas asks in what way the statement is true (as someone maintaining it), he looks on it as a statement, or perhaps in the Posterior Analytics manner which descends to its truth.

5. Per se and necessary, per accidens and contingent (“It belongs to the square as such”) #

Point: the connection Thomas relies on between per se and necessary, per accidens and contingent.

• Translations: per se / kath’ hauto = “through itself”; sometimes “by itself” (Aristotle gives that as one meaning, “all by itself”); sometimes “as such” — Thomas almost identifies per se with secundum quod huiusmodi, which in English is “as such.”
• In the Posterior Analytics Aristotle in one place reasons from the premises being necessary to their being per se, elsewhere from per se to necessary. Moderns say he contradicts himself; Thomas asks “what is the master doing here?” (one should reason from more known to less known, not in a circle, as Aristotle himself warns). Thomas’s answer: the real demonstration is from necessary to per se; the other direction reasons from a probable opinion — for anyone brought up in Plato’s school, episteme is about the per se (the ideas, “man himself to himself by himself,” kath’ hauto underlined).
• Example: quadrilateral, equilateral, right angles, four angles belong to the square as such / to itself (through being a square) — and these also belong to it necessarily; conversely what belongs to it necessarily belongs to it as such. Green: a square can be green, but not necessarily, and not through being a square — “by happening,” per accidens. So per se ↔ necessary; per accidens ↔ contingent (what can be and not be). Per accidens rendered “through happening” or “by happening.”

6. First horn: if per accidens, motion could fail (“Aristotle has this for an impossibility”) #

Point: eliminate the possibility that “every mover is moved” is true per accidens.

1. Suppose it is true (Thomas does not agree, but suppose). Then it is true per se or per accidens — one or the other.
2. If per accidens, it is not necessary (what is true by happening is not necessary); so it is contingent, possible, that no mover is moved.
3. On the adversary’s view a mover moves only insofar as it is itself moved; so if no mover is moved, nothing moves anything — possible that nothing is moved, no motion at all.
4. Aristotle holds it impossible that at some time there was no motion (assuming motion always was).
5. From something false-but-possible, something impossible does not follow; so the antecedent was not contingent — the statement is not per accidens true. Form: an if-then argument eliminating one of two possibilities. Aside: Thomas sometimes speaks of the eternity of motion as Aristotle’s mistake, at other times “has a second thought”; “we’ll come back to that.” Student objection: couldn’t the mover be unmoved and still a mover? Answer: the adversary’s proposition is precisely that every mover moves insofar as it is moved; on that view an unmoved mover moves nothing.

7. Secondary, merely probable argument (“if white and musician are both found in Socrates”) #

Point: a second, weaker reason against the per accidens horn (“probable, nothing more certain than that”).

• If two things are joined by happening in something, and one is found without the other, it is probable the other will be found without the first: white and musician in Socrates; Plato musician but not white; so probably somewhere something white and not musician.
• Applied: if mover and moved are joined by happening, and something moved is found that moves nothing else, then probably a mover will be found that is not moved. No counter-instance from things where one depends on the other, since those are joined per se, not per accidens.
• Reminds him of the rhetoric point: if the false is sometimes believed, probably sometimes the true is not believed. So two reasons against per accidens: one leading to the impossible (stronger), one probable.

8. Second horn: if per se, same or different species of motion (“the one teaching is taught”) #

Point: if the statement is true per se, “something impossible follows” — Latin inconveniens, which he prefers as “it doesn’t fit together / doesn’t go with.”

• Either the mover is moved by the same species of motion by which it moves, or by another.
• Same: the one altering is altered, the healer healed, the teacher taught — and by the same science. Impossible: the teacher must have the knowledge, the learner necessarily lacks it; the same thing had and not had by him.
• Other: the one altering is moved in place, the one moved in place is growing, and so on; but genera and species of motion are limited, so one cannot go on forever — there is some first mover not moved by another.
• Objection: a circle — having completed all genera and species one returns to the first (the local mover is altered, the altered grows, the growing is moved in place). Reply: then what moves according to some species of motion is moved by the same species, not immediately but mediately — the same impossibility as before. Conclusion: it is necessary to lay down something first that is not moved by something outside.

9. Not yet wholly immobile; “through itself before through another” (“Eureka! I have found it. It’s water”) #

Point: from a first mover not moved by something exterior it does not follow it is entirely immobile; Aristotle (in the Metaphysics, he says) proceeds by two ways: either entirely immobile (which gives what we want), or moved by itself — and the latter “seems probable” because what is through itself is always before what is through another, so the first thing moved is reasonably moved by itself. Plato first brought this proposition out; it is about before and after (reason’s own business: before and after).

• Coffee is sweet, but not through being coffee; so before the coffee something sweet through itself — sugar. The dishcloth is wet, not through being a dishcloth; so before it something wet through itself — “Eureka,” water.
• Deeper applications: some statements are known through other statements, so there must be statements known through themselves; likewise simple terms — something known to be what it is not through knowing something else. The moderns, and some ancients Aristotle mentions, want everything proven, i.e. every statement known through another — then no statement could be known.
• Desirable/good (the problem raised a minute ago): if everything were desirable for the sake of something else, nothing would be desirable; something must be desirable to itself.
• Story: his father’s engineer, a practical money-minded man, kept asking why the Berquist brothers (Mark, Richard) studied philosophy; “for its own sake” was unacceptable; finally he answered himself: “It’s brain food.” “A hair of the truth.” Thales-type point: he could make money but that is not his interest.
• “What are you philosophers contributing to the common good?” Richard’s answer: “We are the common good” — to be qualified, but something like that. Contemplation of truth is man’s ultimate end; even the practical man in heaven will be doing that. Christ to Mary and Martha: Mary chose the better part, which shall not be taken from her — the Fathers and Thomas read this as the contemplative life continuing, more perfectly, in the next life, while the practical life ceases. Students’ joke: then leave the monastery for a practical order, since you can’t do it in the next life. Teresa of Avila appearing to a sister: both praising God, one face to face, one behind a veil.

10. Can a thing move itself? Plato’s forms and the limits of the principle (“Moppet is not a cat to being Moppet”) #

Point: the “through itself before through another” principle is highly probable but must be applied carefully.

• Is “the first mover moved by itself” true? Student: no — given the strict definition of motion it implies a contradiction for something to move itself; that is why it is not per se. He agrees: there cannot be a thing in motion through itself.
• Plato’s strange position (the forms) rests partly on this principle, yet he saw a truth: Socrates is not a man through being Socrates (that would limit man to him); Moppet, the cat at home, is not a cat through being Moppet, else Moppet would be the only cat; in material substances each is unique. Plato inferred: then Socrates is a man through another, so there must be something that is a man to itself — the form. Same for this circle: if not a circle through itself, circles by partaking of “the circle itself.” Aristotle in a playful mood compares this to anthropomorphic gods, a kind of Superman; he reasons against the ideas at length in the seventh book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics VII].
• Thomas’s usual reason for Plato: Plato thought truth required that the way we know be the way things are (Aristotle answers no); since through definitions we truly know the universal in separation from singulars, man must exist outside the mind apart from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; likewise a mathematical world, since in geometry one truly knows sphere and cube apart from ice cube, wooden cube — otherwise the certitude of geometry would disappear.
• Problem with “man himself through himself”: it tries to make something material and immaterial at once — matter belongs to what a man is, forms are without matter.
• Platonists sometimes speak of a “bad to itself” by the same principle; Aristotle in the ninth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX], and Thomas, argue there cannot be: the bad is a non-being of what one is able and by nature should have; it is always in a good subject, opposed to some nature; a bad to itself would have to be bad by its very nature — a contradiction. So: be careful in applying the statement, though it “has a great deal of probability.”

His words #

• propositio; Thomas means “statement”; originally the premise, a statement laid down for a conclusion [ed.: proposition]
• enunciation; the Latin name for the statement; his English is “statement” [ed.: enunciatio]
• protasis / proteino; Greek for premise, “stretching forward” to the conclusion
• premise (his spelling); “something sent before / placed before”
• proportion; properly means analogy, though it came to mean ratio
• term; a word as end of the resolution of a syllogism; “the prior taking apart” = Prior Analytics
• predicament / predicamentum; one of the ten genera, “set-ups”; “the ten supreme accusations” (Warren Murray) [ed.: categories]
• categoria / apologia; courtroom accusation and defense
• per se / kath’ hauto; “through itself,” sometimes “by itself,” sometimes “as such” (secundum quod huiusmodi)
• per accidens; “through happening / by happening”; connected to the contingent
• inconveniens; not “impossible” but “doesn’t fit together, doesn’t go with”
• book of Wisdom (seventh, ninth) [ed.: Metaphysics VII, IX]

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, chapter on the proof of God’s existence, the “second way” (ch. 13 inferred) — read and commented throughout §§6-9. Mentioned
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, the article with five proofs (I q. 2 a. 3 inferred)
• Aristotle, Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics (necessary and per se premises; syllogistic form)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (first mover immobile or self-moved); seventh book (against the ideas); ninth book (no bad to itself)
• Aristotle’s book on the statement (no title given) [ed.: On Interpretation]
• Plato, Apology (as apologia)
• Gospel, Christ to Mary and Martha (“the better part”)

His questions #

• When Thomas says propositio, what does he mean? Statement; though etymologically the word names the premise.
• Why say “define your terms” rather than “define your words”? Because terms are what a syllogism resolves into; but really one defines a word.
• If “every mover is moved” is true per accidens, what follows? It is not necessary; so possibly no motion at all — impossible for Aristotle.
• Does a square belong as such to being a quadrilateral, and green? Quadrilateral yes, and necessarily; green only by happening.
• If the mover is moved by the same species of motion, what follows? The teacher is taught the same science — had and not had, impossible.
• Is coffee sweet through being coffee? sugar through being sugar? No; yes — the through-itself is before the through-another.
• Is everything desirable for the sake of something else? No; then nothing would be desirable.
• Is it true that the first mover is moved by itself? Student: no, self-motion implies a contradiction on the strict definition; he agrees.
• Is Socrates a man through being Socrates? No — which led Plato to the forms.
• Can there be a bad to itself? No: the bad is always in a good subject, opposed to a nature.