De Anima, Book Two: Defining the Soul by Division as Substantial Form and First Act

Orientation #

He says they did not go through the whole of Book One in the dialectic, and refers back to the earlier treatments of time and of the four causes and to the first book of natural philosophy (substantial change, matter and form). He ends by announcing that n. 113 (three divisions on the side of the body), the analogies manifesting the definition, and the demonstration from effect to cause come next; he will be away next week in California. The previous class dealt with the passions of the soul and how natural philosophy defines them; the next continues the opening of Book Two.

The class, in order #

1. Two ways of investigating a definition (“two ways of investigating a definition”) #

Point: Book Two begins again “as if from the beginning” to determine what the soul is and its most common account; in the Posterior Analytics (the book about demonstration, since definition is the beginning of demonstration) Aristotle contrasts two ways of finding a definition.

• Way one, comparing many instances and separating out the common from the differences. Example: the fireman rescuing the baby from the collapsing building, the girl who swam into shark-infested water and dragged the man in (and baptized him on the shore: “this actually happened”), the soldier advancing under machine-gun fire. Fire, shark, bullet have in common that they are fearful, can end bodily life; all three went to the fearful thing reasonably and for good reason (baby, man’s life or soul, country). That common element is courage.
• Way two, division. Example: the square. Figure; plane or solid; contained by circular or straight lines; three or four sides; then within quadrilateral one division is not enough: equilateral vs not (the rhombus is also equilateral), right-angled vs not; put together, “equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral” is a speech convertible with square. Euclid’s five quadrilaterals show why two divisions are needed.
• Which way for the soul? Division, because unlike squares (a child can lay several out and pick out four sides, angles, equality) “the soul is not that accessible.”
• Aside: in theology one proceeds by syllogism rather than induction (“there’s only one God, what’s induction going to be?”).

2. The soul is defined as something of another: time, health, point (“time, like the soul, is defined as something of another”) #

Point: since the soul will be defined not by itself but as something of another, one must divide twice: to separate that other from other things, and to grasp what the soul is of that other. Aristotle gives three divisions on each side (“you could enumerate six divisions”).

• Why think the soul is something of another? Its operations are seen first in and through the body; and the opinion that it is the harmony/organization of the body makes it something of the body. Element of truth in that opinion: the body does not stay alive when its order is lost; “the soul goes right when the body is disorganized.”
• Comparison with time: people speak of time as motion (flow, passage, fast, slow); Aristotle argues time is not motion (a fast or slow time would need another time to measure it) yet is not perceived without motion, hence something of motion; then more precisely something of the before and after in motion; then its number (“three hours is a number of the before and after”), taken in the most regular motion. “I’m not trying to teach time here again.”
• Comparison with health: a doctor never finds health or sickness without examining some body, but health is not a body; so it is something of a body. Divisions on the side of that of which: natural vs artificial body, living vs non-living (maybe animal more than plant, “maybe a plant body can be sick too”). Divisions on the side of what it is: quantity or quality; disposition or shape; good or bad disposition. “Is that clear as mud or what?”
• Comparison with the point: the limit of something; of what? of a line (not a part of a line, its limit/end). Ties to Aristotle’s question whether all things are defined the same way: some as complete substances, others as something of another.

3. Why the soul is of the body: psuche, harmony, ghost in the machine (“the cause of life within living bodies”) #

Point: the presupposed question, what makes Aristotle see the soul as something of the body.

• The Greeks never doubted they had a soul; they doubted what it is. Our difficulty is in the use of the word (he again notes the “bad custom” of eliminating “soul” from the Bible in parishes). Psuche meant the cause of life within living bodies, broader than the human soul; Latin anima, whence “animal.”
• That there is such a cause is obvious: orange the cat is alive, the stone is not; “alive” means able to move itself, i.e., having within itself a cause of its own motion. The word already carries a connection with the body.
• If the soul is the order of the body, it is plainly of the body, as the order of the letters in “cat” cannot exist without the letters. Even if it is not the harmony, when the organization is lost (head chopped off) the body has no soul; so it is only in an organized body.
• Against the soul as a complete substance distinct from the body: (1) the moderns’ jibe, “a ghost in the machine”: a ghost could leave and come back, or be in any body, which makes no sense; (2) our inward experience of the unity of man: an amputated limb is not like a part removed from my car, “this is me.” Illustration: the Ronald Reagan film scene, waking with a leg removed, “where’s the rest of me?” not “what happened to my car?” So the body is part of man.
• Socrates in the Phaedo against the soul as harmony: the soul sometimes resists the inclination of the body (how would the body’s order move the body?); the soul is sometimes disordered and philosophers try to order it, but “you don’t have an order of order,” so the soul’s order is not simply the body’s order.
• Conclusion he draws: the soul is something of the body, in the body in some way; the question is exactly what of the body. Hence division on both sides. Aristotle is brief here, “that’s why you need Thomas”: n. 112 gives three divisions to arrive at what the soul is, n. 113 three to arrive at that of which it is something. He takes 112 first.

4. First division: four kinds of things, four senses of “thing” (“four kinds of things in the world”) #

Point: the first division places the soul in the genus of substance, and this division of kinds of things is also a division of senses of the word “thing.”

• Recall: the distinction of the four causes is both a distinction of kinds and of four meanings of “cause,” whereas Euclid’s five quadrilaterals are kinds but not five senses of “quadrilateral.” Same here.
• Socrates and orange the cat in the room: What is Socrates? a man; what is orange? a cat (substance). How big is he? (quantity). How is he? healthy, just, cruel (quality). What is Socrates towards his sons, Plato, Xanthippe? father, teacher, husband (relation). “Chiefly” four kinds; more if the word is used loosely.
• Not said equally: a square is not more quadrilateral than an oblong, a dog not more animal than a cat; but you would hesitate to call a relation a thing. The man in the bar: nose and ear are two things; nose and shape of the nose? one hesitates, since the shape cannot exist apart from the nose; yet flatten the nose and the shape is not nothing. (Aside on his own Roman nose, “my mother’s nose.”)
• Thomas: quantity and quality say something absolute, relation is only towards another; to be double or a father is nothing in itself. Some in the history of thought held all relations to be of reason only. He disagrees: being bigger than his cat is “extremely important” (The Incredible Shrinking Man, nearly eaten by the family cat; a toy-soldier-sized man would be played with like a mouse), yet it is not as real as his size: size is in him, taller-than is in him towards her.
• Aristotle jumps to the one genus that matters: the soul is in the genus of substance. If, with Plato, the soul can exist apart from the body it is substantial; but even its resisting the body shows it is not just an accident of the body. Genus is Latin for kind (sui generis, one of a kind). This division is first taught in logic, in the Categories.

5. Second division: substance into matter, form, composite (“division of substance into matter, form”) #

Point: within substance, the soul is form.

• Source: natural philosophy, “the first book of natural hearing,” the Physics, from the fact of substantial change: in everything that changes there is something as matter and something as form; so if a man or a cat comes to be and dies, there must be matter and form within the genus of substance, and the complete substance composed of both.
• A student says he is confused about which is the first division; recap: Aristotle, studens brevitate, only touches the division of the genera of being, naming the one the soul falls in; the living body (man, cat, dog) is a substance, so it makes sense that the soul is in that genus; then he subdivides substance. One needs the Categories for the first and Physics I for the second, and “nobody today hardly knows” either.

6. Third division: first act and second act (“first act, which is almost the same thing as form”) #

Point: since matter is in potency (“ability”) for many forms and form is act, the soul is form, hence act; Aristotle then divides act into first act (nearly the same as form) and second act (operation, activity, doing).

• Manifested by something more known: science vs consideration. Having acquired geometry, my reason is formed (first act), though I am not always thinking geometry; actually proving the Pythagorean theorem at the board is a further act (second act). Before acquiring it my reason was in potency to the science.
• The soul is a first act, in the genus of substance, as a form (“substantial form of something”).
• Theological aside: he says it was at the Council of Ephesus that the Church officially adopted Aristotle’s understanding of the soul as form of the body, in the substantial sense; “kind of late in history”; text could be looked at another time. Most people do not understand what the soul is, so they drop the word: if you don’t use it you need not ask what it is.
• Asides: the Sphinx combining lion and king, “king of the beasts,” and his son Paul’s “beast camp” at West Point; 1984 and unpersons; Soviet photographs and history books rewritten as men were purged; Malenkov made head of a power station, Molotov sent as ambassador to Outer Mongolia; cheap official Moscow editions at the communist bookstore in New York; doctored pictures, Mao swimming the Yangtze.

7. Recap, the geometry illustration, and what comes next (“the equal is before the unequal in geometry”) #

Point: summary of the three divisions and a live example of second act.

• The three divisions: (1) kinds of things = meanings of “thing,” applied to the one the soul is in; (2) matter/form/composite, from natural philosophy; (3) since form is act, first vs second act. The soul will be defined as first act of something.
• Student: what does he mean by science and consideration? Answer: science is like a form of the mind, actualizing it; consideration is actually thinking about those things, a further act.
• His example of himself now considering: at the house he pointed out Euclid Book II 5, 9, 14 (5 equality, 9 inequality, 14 proved through 5); 6, 10, 11 likewise (11, dividing a line so the rectangle of whole and one segment equals the square on the other, proved through 6, not 10); II.12 and 13 (obtuse and acute triangles) proved through I.47 (right triangle). So the equal is considered before the unequal, and inequality theorems are proved through the equality theorem. In rethinking these “I’m actually thinking about those things”: second act. As Aristotle notes, with the first act I can go to the second whenever I want; without it I cannot acquire it at will.
• The soul as first act makes possible the second act, the operations of life.
• Next: n. 113, three divisions on the side of the body; then the definition manifested by analogies and proportions, then demonstrated from effect to cause. He will be away next week.

His words #

• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics]; “the first book of natural philosophy.”
• “something of another”: his phrase for what is defined not by itself but of a subject (time, health, point, soul).
• “speech convertible with square”: the definition as a phrase convertible with the defined.
• psuche: “the cause of life within living bodies”; anima, Latin, whence “animal.”
• “ghost in the machine”: the modern jibe at soul as a complete substance in the body.
• genus: Latin for kind; sui generis, “one of a kind.”
• “ability” [ed.: potency]: matter as in ability for many forms.
• studens brevitate: Thomas’s phrase, Aristotle “seeking brevity.”
• first act / second act: form vs operation; science vs consideration; “substantial form.”
• “absolute” vs “relative”: Thomas on quantity and quality vs relation.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima II.1, opening sentences (“Let what was handed down about the soul by our predecessors have been said… let us begin again”).
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on De Anima, n. 112 (three divisions: genus of being, matter/form/composite, first/second act), with n. 113 announced for next time.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, second book (two ways of investigating a definition).
• Aristotle, Categories (division of the genera of being).
• Aristotle, Physics I (substantial change, matter and form); Aristotle on time (locus not stated).
• Euclid, Elements: the five quadrilaterals; I.47; II.5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
• Plato, Phaedo (Socrates against soul as harmony).
• Council of Ephesus (as he names it) on the soul as form of the body.
• Films: the Ronald Reagan amputation scene; The Incredible Shrinking Man; Orwell’s 1984.

His questions #

• Which of the two ways will he investigate the soul by? Division; the soul is not accessible like squares that can be laid out and compared.
• Is the soul to be defined as something by itself or as something of another? As something of another, hence divisions on both sides.
• What was the starting point for investigating time? A connection between time and motion; time is not motion but not perceived without it, so something of motion.
• Does a doctor ever find health without examining some body? Is health a body? No, and no; health is something of a living body.
• What did the Greeks understand by psuche? The cause of life within living bodies.
• What do we mean when we say a body is alive? It can move itself, has within itself a cause of its own motion.
• How many kinds of things are there in the world? Chiefly four: substance, quantity, quality, relation; also four senses of “thing.”
• Are your nose and the shape of your nose two things, as nose and ear are? One hesitates, since the shape cannot be apart from the nose; yet it is not nothing.
• Is the soul in the genus of substance as matter or as form? As form, hence as act; specifically first act.
• What does he mean by science and consideration? Science is the mind formed (first act); consideration is actually thinking (second act).