The Self-Moving First Mover, the Eternity of the World, and the Meanings of Spirit

Orientation #

He begins by going “back to the paragraph where I took off from” (prev. lecture: the second way in SCG, per se before per accidens). He says the first two arguments are only being gone through “a bit” to show they depend on the Physics (books three and six) and on the De Anima, “which is the next thing we’re going to study”; copies of his translation will come next time. The previous class began this same second-way passage with a digression on per se / per accidens.

The class, in order #

1. The first mover: wholly immobile, or moved by itself (“could be in two ways”) #

Point: from “a first mover not moved by another outside it” it does not yet follow that it is altogether immobile; Aristotle divides.

• (a) The first thing is wholly immobile: then what was proposed is had.
• (b) It is moved by itself: this “seems probable”, since what is per se is always before what is per alio, so among moved things the first moved is reasonably moved by itself.
• Given (b), the same conclusion follows anyway. Argument: the whole cannot be moved by the whole, for then someone would at once teach and be taught (and likewise the other motions), and something would be at once in ability and in act — the principle used in the first argument: the mover as such is in act, the moved as such in ability; giver as such in act, receiver in ability.
• Aside: “more divine to give than to receive” is “almost an understatement”: God as pure act can only give, cannot receive; hence (Avicenna, “the Arab philosopher”, he thinks) God alone is truly liberal, expecting nothing back and getting no added good act from giving, being simple. Our thanksgiving is like a child buying his parents a gift out of his allowance — giving back what he got. Thomas’s prayer after communion begins Gratias tibi ago. Praising someone for going to daily Mass is like praising him for collecting $1,000 bills handed out at the drugstore; “I go to Mass because I can’t think of anything better to do” — same for philosophy.

2. Nothing gives what it does not have (“Nemo dat quod non habet”) #

Point: the self-mover must have two parts.

• Aristotle’s proposition, quoted constantly by Thomas: omne agens agit inquantum est in actu — what is given is as act to what receives; what receives is as ability to act; so for something to give itself something it would have to have and not have.
• The old seminary priest’s nemo dat quod non habet to every student who could not answer: using the occasion of ignorance to inculcate the principle.
• Therefore one part is moving only, the other moved: the same immobile mover as before. Excluded, because the foregoing contradictions (moving and moved by the same according to the same species of motion; ability and act at once) would follow: both parts moved by each other; one part moving itself and then the other; the whole moving the part; the part moving the whole — and further, the whole would not then be first moving itself, but the part.

3. The soul moved per accidens; a first self-mover that is eternal (“famous argument in the De Generatione”) #

Point: Aristotle’s new step — in animals the moving part, the soul, though immobile as such, is moved per accidens (the soul is in the body, and when the body is moved the soul is moved “through another”); he must show the moving part of the first self-mover is moved neither per se nor per accidens. Argument:

1. Self-movers among us (animals) are corruptible, so their moving part is moved per accidens.
2. If motion is eternal (his supposition — “he’s going to come back to that”), the generation of generable and corruptible self-movers must be perpetual.
3. The cause of this perpetuity cannot be one of them (it is not always), nor all of them together (they are infinite, and they are not together).
4. So there must be a perpetual self-mover causing perpetual generation in these inferior self-movers; its mover is moved neither per se nor per accidens.

• His gloss: I move myself but begin and end in time, as does every animal; if motion is to continue we must generate another like ourselves, else there would be no living things and all motion would stop. I cannot be cause of human generation going on forever; a cat (“Orange” — a name, apparently) cannot be cause of cat generation going on forever, not having been here before or after; nor me plus father plus grandfather plus son plus grandson — we do not all exist together, so how can we cause anything? For Aristotle the cause was the heavenly bodies, always moving, incorruptible. “That has some probability” and we “want to rethink that a bit”, but even today: things blossom because of the sun’s position; without the sun no continuous generation of plants or animals.

4. Self-movers that begin to move newly (“the food digested, or the air being altered”) #

Point: a second reason the mover of the first self-mover is not moved even per accidens.

• Some self-movers begin to move newly on account of a motion not from themselves — food digested, air altered — by which the self-mover is moved per accidens. Example: sleeping, a bang, I wake; I am not responsible for the sound, so I am not always in motion.
• Hence nothing whose mover is moved per se or per accidens is moved always; but the first self-mover is moved always (else motion could not be always — “he’s assuming that”), since every other motion is caused by its motion; therefore its mover is moved neither per se nor per accidens.
• Animals sleep, wake, stop; they cannot cause motion’s eternity. So one needs an incorruptible, eternal thing — but on this probable proposition one has only reached a self-mover, hence a body, always in motion; not yet the altogether immobile.
• The sentence on the movers of the inferior orbs moving with eternal motion yet said to be moved per se by reason of their mobiles: “we don’t worry about that too much yet.”

5. From the part-mover to the separate mover, in the Metaphysics (“everything moving itself is moved by appetite”) #

Point: since God is not part of a self-mover, Aristotle in the Metaphysics goes from this part-mover to another mover, wholly separate, which is God.

1. Everything moving itself is moved by appetite or desire.
2. So the part-mover moves on account of the desire of something desirable, superior to it in moving — the end is the cause of all the other causes.
3. The desiring thing is a moved mover: I see the food, that moves me to want it, and because I want it my body moves to the dining room; my hunger, having been moved, moves me. (Understood better once one has the De Anima.)
4. The desirable is a mover wholly unmoved; therefore the first separate mover is entirely immobile, and this is God.

6. First weakness: the eternity of motion (“via efficacissima”) #

Point: two things seem to make (infirmare) these processes weak; the first is that they suppose the eternity of motion, which among Catholics is supposed false, the universe having a beginning.

• Thomas: the most efficacious way to proving God to be is from the supposition of the eternity of the world. Student: because if the world had a beginning, obviously there had to be a creator to start it. He: right — what does not exist cannot bring itself into existence; that case is very clear. So “efficacissima” does not mean easier but stronger: if God is shown even on the harder supposition, he is a fortiori shown on the easier. Speaking by reason alone, a known beginning would make God more manifest; the eternal world is the less clear case.
• Early Thomas (the Sentences) calls Aristotle’s eternity of the world (Physics VIII) a mistake; elsewhere Thomas says he is taking the more difficult case. Disjunction: the universe always was, or had a beginning; the beginning case is left to the reader.
• Student: which was written first, Physics or Topics? He does not know, but in the Topics Aristotle gives whether the universe is eternal as an example of a dialectical question, to be reasoned about only probably. Thomas discusses it in the Summae and in a separate work on the eternity of the world, concluding that no argument for or against is a demonstration, only probable, and that we know only by faith that the universe was not eternal. Aristotle may have held the opinion of eternity, but from the Topics he seems aware he has no demonstration.
• Comparison (not to be misunderstood): Euclid, as Heath’s notes point out, takes the most difficult case of a theorem and leaves the other cases to commentators like Proclus. “Eternal” here does not mean eternal as God is.

7. Student questions: angels, and the border of natural philosophy (“the end of natural philosophy”) #

• Is an angel moving something moved per accidens? Not as the soul, a form in a body, is; there is a kind of time in angels, which Augustine calls discrete rather than continuous — left till the angels are studied, as speaking of time or motion in angels might confuse.
• Do these arguments conclude only to a separate immaterial mover? In the Physics probably yes; the Metaphysics goes beyond. Motion in the strict sense involves a body (book six); once at a mover that is not a body you are at the border of natural philosophy. In Metaphysics XII, aware of more than one immaterial substance, one must see why they go back to one; the passage on the desirable touches this. Why do the movers of the heavenly bodies move them always? To have something of God’s eternity reflected in the material world. Plato (Symposium) and Aristotle (De Anima II): reproduction in animals and plants is trying to be like God so far as possible — the kind goes on forever though the individual cannot. Shakespeare’s first sonnet, “From fairest creatures we desire increase”, is about the desire to reproduce as a desire for immortality. Likewise teaching keeps a science alive: Planck to Heisenberg, “if we all leave, what happens to science here?”; the violinist wants someone to play after him. So they are moved by something eternal they try to be like — the movers moved as desire is moved by the desirable, trying to be like God as cause; Dionysius: the ultimate likeness to God is to be like him as a cause — true of animals and plants, able to reproduce when perfect; “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”; the Old Testament “Am I who give generation to others to be without the ability to generate?”, which the fathers refer to the generation of the Son.
• Does the first argument of chapter 13 conclude only to a material being not moving strictly? Depends how universally act and ability are understood. Later in SCG Thomas pulls act and ability out into a separate argument in a couple of forms. Metaphysics IX: first part, ability and act only in reference to motion (active and passive ability) — “not our main interest, but where we have to start”; second part, act more universal than motion and other senses of ability; third part, the before and after of act and ability, the basis for the first cause being pure act. In that broader sense even angels have ability and act: their substance is not their existence, and substance is to existence as ability to act. SCG II shows this composition in angels, then that substance/existence is not the same as matter/form (many confuse them), nor as mobile/motion, nor form as operation — but there is a proportion. Whether the immaterial is one (Anaxagoras) or many (Plato) is a question of Metaphysics III; natural philosophy knows nothing of it. Three places where natural philosophy comes to the border: the unmoved mover that is not a body; the immortality of the human soul (De Anima III), the opening to knowledge of immaterial substances; Anaxagoras’s greater mind, which could not order things if mixed with them. “The end of the United States is the beginning of Canada.”
• Student: Plato thinks of motion more broadly? Better to say act and ability are understood more broadly than motion; motion is the act most known to us — Shakespeare, “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs”. God “guiding the world with thoughts” (Heraclitus) is a metaphorical extension of “motion”.

8. The replies read; the second weakness (“the celestial body can be moved from itself”) #

• Reply to the first: from the supposition of the eternal world, minus fide data, it less seems manifest that God is; if the world and motion began de novo, there must be a cause producing them newly, since whatever comes to be newly takes its origin from some innovator — nothing brings itself from non-being to being. Aristotle takes the harder case, “like our friend” Euclid.
• Second weakness: the arguments suppose the first moved, the celestial body, can be moved from itself, whence it would be animated — not conceded by many. Reply: if the first mover is not moved from itself it must be moved immediately by something entirely immobile; hence Aristotle brings in his conclusion under a disjunction — either a first separated immobile mover, or a self-mover — and takes the less evident case, from which again one comes to a first separated immobile mover.
• Then Thomas turns to the argument from the maker (not read). His purpose: to see that these arguments depend on the Physics (definition of motion, book three; book six) and, especially the second, on the De Anima. Logistics: six copies of his translation next time; one student is bowing out until the Metaphysics.

9. The meanings of “spirit” (“the first meaning of spirit is wind”) #

A student, given Pentecost, asks the ordered meanings of “spirit”.

• First: wind or breath. Carried over because air is almost non-sensible and thin — the Tempest’s actors “all spirits… melted into air, into thin air”; Anaxagoras calls his immaterial mind the thinnest of all things; Scripture’s word of God sharper than a sword, sharpness coming from thinness. So applied, at least by a metaphorical continuity, to what is wholly outside the sensible world.
• It names angels and God more than the soul; the human soul is called spirit as immortal and having understanding and will, powers above matter (De Anima III to come). Soul most properly = form of the body; a dog’s or plant’s soul is a soul, not a spirit (“animal” comes from “soul”; his plant-soul affinity — plants named Desdemona and Othello, the Shakespeare garden at Stratford).
• Magnificat: “my soul magnifies the Lord” — praise vocally through the body, and she bore our Lord in her womb; “my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour” — the higher part: the senses cannot know God, emotions cannot have him as object; charity is in the will, rejoicing primarily in the will, with an overflow into the body. Something like this distinction in the Hail Mary: “full of grace” vs. “blessed is the fruit of thy womb” — sanctifying grace is in the soul (its subject), the theological virtues in reason (faith) and will (hope, charity), as reason and will follow the soul’s nature. Even “Lord” (of creation, part of it material) vs. “God” fits the distinction.

His words #

• per se / through itself vs. through another; what is per se is before what is through another.
• ability [ed.: potency] / act; the giver as such in act, the receiver in ability.
• omne agens agit inquantum est in actu: every maker acts insofar as it is in act.
• nemo dat quod non habet: nothing gives what it does not have.
• moved per accidens / by happening: the soul moved because the body it is in is moved.
• moved mover: the desiring thing; unmoved mover: the desirable.
• infirmare: to make weak (the two objections).
• via efficacissima: the most efficacious way, from the supposition of the eternity of the world.
• de novo: newly; minus fide data: less, faith being set aside [ed.: reading of the garbled phrase].
• “book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics]; ninth, twelfth, third books.
• animated: the celestial body moved from itself would be animated.
• spirit: wind/breath → air → immaterial; soul as above matter.
• Gratias tibi ago: I give thee thanks (Thomas’s prayer after communion).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. 13 (second way: the self-mover; the two objections and replies).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics VIII (inferred; “the eighth book of the physics”), III (definition of motion), VI.
• Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione (“the famous argument”).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII, IX (three parts), III.
• Aristotle, Topics (eternity of the world as a dialectical question).
• Thomas, Sentences; De aeternitate mundi; SCG II (composition in angels).
• Aristotle, De Anima II, III; Plato, Symposium.
• Euclid with Heath’s notes; Proclus; Augustine (discrete time in angels); Dionysius; Anaxagoras; Heraclitus.
• Shakespeare, Sonnet 1; the Tempest; the Magnificat; Hail Mary; Thomas’s prayer after communion.

His questions #

• Why can’t the self-moving whole be moved by the whole? Someone would at once teach and be taught, be in ability and in act.
• What is the cause of generation going on forever — me, my father, my son, all of us together? None of us: none is always, and we do not all exist together.
• If it moves itself and is responsible for motion always being, what must it be? Always in motion, a body — not yet the altogether immobile.
• Why does Thomas say the way from the eternity of the world is efficacissima? Not easier but stronger: shown on the harder case, a fortiori on the easier.
• Is an angel that moves something moved per accidens? Not as the soul is; there is a discrete time in angels — left for later.
• Does the first argument of chapter 13 conclude only to a material being? Depends how universally act and ability are taken; the wise man takes them beyond motion.
• Where does natural philosophy come to its border? Three places: the unmoved mover, the immortal soul, Anaxagoras’s mind.
• What are the meanings of “spirit” in order? Wind/breath, air, the immaterial (angels, God), the human soul as above matter.
• Why does Mary say “my soul magnifies” but “my spirit rejoices”? Soul as form of the body praises and gave birth; the spirit’s rejoicing is in the will.