Know Thyself; Aristotle's Divisions Toward Defining the Soul (De Anima II.1)

Orientation #

He says Aristotle has now finished with the predecessors and “makes a fresh beginning” on what the soul is; he recalls the comparison “living body vs. non-living body, like cat/dog or cat/act” as “my simple comparison” from before, and the Physics I doctrine of change as “recall that from natural philosophy”. The previous class opened Book Two with the divisions of substance and first/second act; the next continues with the equivocal senses of “body” and “understanding”.

The class, in order #

1. “Know thyself” and to whom it is addressed (“Know thyself, right? The seven wise men”) #

Point: the Delphic exhortation, put up by the seven wise men of Greece, is addressed by degrees to man, to the soul, and to reason, and this course is an obedience to it.

1. An exhortation must be addressed to one who can know himself but does not. Gods and angels primarily know themselves; beasts cannot know themselves; so it is addressed to man.
2. More to the soul than to the body: the body cannot know what a body is, the soul can know what a body is (as in the philosophy of the continuous) and what a soul is.
3. Most of all to reason: reason can know eye, ear, hand, but is the only part of man that can know itself, and “has a hard time with itself”.

• The definition of reason (“that the great Shakespeare gave us” [ed.: as heard; possibly a mis-hearing]) is “knowledge of reason in both senses”: knowledge had by reason and knowledge of reason itself, whereas reason’s knowledge of the triangle is knowledge of reason in one sense only.
• The commentators take “know thyself” as a knowledge of knowledge; so the definition of definition, or “statement about statements”, come close to it, though “that seems a little bit forced”.
• Socrates takes it as a command to find out whether we know or only think we know; so reason knows itself when it knows what it knows and does not know; but “more basically” it does not know itself when it does not know what reason is, “because that’s itself most of all”.
• Aside: St. Paul’s man who looks in the mirror and walks away forgetting what he looks like is about the moral law [ed.: the mirror image is at James 1:23–24 (inferred); he attributes it to Paul] — reading the virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics and finding “I don’t have that one either… I guess I’m mild enough.”
• Aside: the shooting at the monastery/seminary in Kansas.

2. The fresh beginning: a definition of “something of another” (“something by itself, or something of another”) #

Point: because the soul is defined as something of another, Aristotle must proceed by divisions: three about the soul itself and three about that of which it is something.

• Precedent for this kind of definition: time, and “in a way” motion, and place too (he would not take that up).
• The first three divisions are on the side of the soul, the second three on the side of “what you might call the subject in which the soul is”. “Is that clear as mud?”

3. First division: the soul is in the genus of substance (“ten figures of predication”) #

Point: of the ten figures of predication, the soul is in the genus of substance rather than the most likely second choice, quality.

• Phaedo: Socrates speaks of the soul as a substance distinct from and complete apart from the body; Simmias proposes the Pythagorean view that the soul is the harmony of the body, i.e. a quality, a disposition of the body.
• Reasons (from students, endorsed) for substance over quality:
  1. It can exist by itself (not shown until Book III, and then of the human soul); an accident, a harmony, could not exist apart.
  2. The soul itself has qualities and dispositions.
  3. If the soul has some activity the body does not share in, it is something substantial; an accident of the body would have no activity except in the body. This “is going to lead into the immortality of the soul”.
• Socrates’ argument against the harmony view: the soul sometimes resists the body’s inclinations, and a harmony of the body would hardly resist the body.

4. Second division: matter, form and composite in substance; why substance is one (“substance in three senses”) #

Point: substance is distinguished as matter, as form or species, and as the composite; we believe there is matter and form within substance because there is substantial change, and the surest cases of substance are man and dog.

• Our first notion of matter is an actual body (clay, stone) and of form something that happens to it (shape, disposition, sense quality); the question is why we think there is something proportional inside substance.
• Best example of a substance: Aristotle in the Categories and elsewhere gives first a man, second a dog (or cat, horse), not a plant, still less a stone. A stone may be many substances fused like metals run together; some plants propagate by division and both parts grow; starfish cut up were multiplied not destroyed.
• What man and dog have that plant and stone lack:
  • personal experience of unity: nobody in sober moments thinks of himself as “we” (the editorial “we” only lends authority to “one fool by himself”);
  • sensation, an activity that many substances cannot share.
• Transitive vs. immanent activity: several men can share one lifting of the heavy table, or one pulling of the rope in a tug of war (acting on something outside); but the crucifix is not seen if I see the vertical and you the horizontal, nor the painting if each sees half — the whole is seen only by one. Sensing “remains within the one doing it” (the Latin word).
• Same for defining and syllogizing: if one knows quadrilateral, another equilateral, a third right-angled, the three together do not know what a square is; one must see “equilateral right-angled quadrilateral” whole — “that’s why it’s a common good”. If I know every mother is a woman and you know no man is a woman, together we cannot conclude that no man is a mother; one head must hold both premises (though each can do the other the favour of supplying the missing premise).
• Conclusion of the segment: men and dogs are substances and come into and go out of existence, so there is substantial change.

5. From change to matter and form: recall of Physics I (“the hard becomes soft”) #

Point: since whatever changes has something remaining (matter, subject) and something acquired (form, act), substantial change requires matter and form in the genus of substance.

• The apparent contradiction: “becomes” means “comes to be”, so “the hard becomes soft” says the hard is soft, i.e. hard and not hard; likewise the healthy becomes sick. Parmenides’ side: then change is contradictory, the healthy are always healthy (“be thankful”), the sick always sick (“too bad”).
• Two ways of untying it:
  1. A third thing besides the contraries: butter is subject of hardness and softness, able to be both but not at once; the body is able to be healthy and sick.
  2. “Healthy”, as a name, signifies confusedly and does not distinguish the health from its subject; health itself cannot be sick, hardness cannot become soft; it is the body, the butter, that changes.
• So what changes is composed of two things, one in ability (potency) to the other, the other as act or form; and if a man becomes a lion (“the Coliseum”), there is matter and form in the very genus of substance.
• Reads 412a: substance is one genus of being; of this, one is as matter, which of itself is not a “this something”; another is form or species, by which a thing is right away called a “this something”; a third is what is from these. Matter is as potency/ability, species as actuality/act.
• He is going to conclude the soul is as form, hence as act.

6. Third distinction: first act and second act (“having knowledge and using the knowledge”) #

Point: act is distinguished into first act (the form) and second act (the operation), exemplified by knowing geometry and thinking geometrically; the soul is act as first act, i.e. substantial form.

• Geometry: my mind is formed when I have learned geometry; afterwards I think much better about angles and figures — that is the second act.
• In what sense “first” and “second”? Student: the one can be without the other, not conversely. He: partly, but also in generation and time (I learned geometry before I could think this way); in the third sense of before and after, the order of knowing, “the second would be first, and the first would be second” — “the first shall be last”.
• Metaphysics IX (“the ninth book of Wisdom”): “act” came from operation or motion and was later applied to form; in English too “act” first suggests a doing.
• Student: first act seems like an ability to act. He: yes, but an active ability, an ability to do something, as opposed to the ability of matter, which is for form. Babies acquire the ability to see and then see; acquire the ability to digest before they can be given a steak. When a thing has its form, its nature, it is able to do what that kind does — that further act is second act. This will return with the powers and their operations.
• Not strictly a subdivision of form-in-substance (operation is not in the genus of substance) but a subdivision of act.
• Signs, though Aristotle gives no reason here: the sleeping or hibernating animal does nothing yet is not dead, so the soul is first act, not second. And the living body differs from the non-living not as “cat” from “dog” but as “cat” from “act” (an analogy only): otherwise non-living water and minerals could not be built up into the living thing nor the living broken down into the non-living; the matter remains under a different form, so the soul, “as the word means, the cause of life”, is form not matter.
• Notice how these three divisions are ordered — genus; matter, form or composite within it; first or second act within form.

7. The other side: three divisions of the subject (“bodies seem to be substances most of all”) #

Point: the soul is something of a body, of a natural body, of a natural body having life.

• Bodies seem to be substances most of all “to us” at the beginning; the question of wisdom (Metaphysics) is whether there are also immaterial substances, as Anaxagoras and Plato had reason to think.
• Physics IV on place quotes the common Greek opinion: whatever is must be somewhere; being in place is a property of body, so they identify what is with body. Everyone asks “where is heaven?”, “where is God?” — yet God or an angel is not contained in a place. In wisdom one must rise from substance-as-body to substance as more general, body being one kind.
• Care with “being is what the mind first understands” (Thomas following Avicenna): misunderstood as the wise man’s being common to material and immaterial; Thomas when precise says being considered in material things; Cajetan’s jargon: ens concretum quidditati sensibili.
• Natural vs. artificial body: natural ones are more seen to be substances; the living body is natural.
• Natural bodies having life vs. not. Life is not defined here; he exemplifies its lowest grade, common to all living bodies: self-nutrition, growth and shrinking (student asks why diminution: “because that’s what happens” — his driver’s licence now says five foot eight, not five foot ten). Man, animals and plants have at least this much; reproduction comes later.

8. Gathering the definition; the equivocation of “body” and “material” (“every natural body sharing in life”) #

Point: reading 412a14, every natural body sharing in life is a substance, and substance as composite; but “body” is used equivocally.

• Sometimes “body” names the composite (a complete substance, with form and matter within it); sometimes the matter. In the definition, as Thomas explains it, “body” is taken as one part of the living body.
• Another such equivocation, begun and left unfinished: Thomas says the human soul is not a “material form” while other souls and substantial forms are; “material” there means existing only in matter; whether it means the same when substance is divided into material and immaterial substance — the recording ends here.

His words #

• know thyself: exhortation of the seven wise men at Delphi, addressed to man, more to the soul, most to reason.
• something of another: what the soul is defined as, like time and motion; hence definition by divisions.
• ten figures of predication [ed.: the categories].
• harmony of the body: Simmias’ Pythagorean view; a quality or disposition.
• remains within the one doing it: immanent activity, vs. transitive activity (lifting, pulling).
• common good: what is known whole by each knower (the square, the syllogism).
• natural hearing [ed.: Physics].
• ability [ed.: potency]; “both words sometimes in English”.
• this something [ed.: hoc aliquid / tode ti]: an individual or complete substance.
• first act / second act: form vs. operation or doing; having vs. using knowledge.
• ninth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX]; “act” from operation, later applied to form.
• active ability: first act as ability to do, vs. ability of matter, which is for form.
• cat/dog vs. cat/act: living body differing from non-living by a different matter vs. by form in the same matter.
• ens concretum quidditati sensibili: Cajetan; being concrete in a sensible what-it-is.
• material form: a form existing only in matter.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima II.1, 412a12–14 (his line references): the three senses of substance; matter as potency, species as act; every natural body sharing in life is a substance, and substance as composite.

Mentioned

• Plato, Phaedo: soul as complete substance; Simmias’ harmony; the soul resisting the body.
• Aristotle, Categories: man, then dog, as examples of substance.
• Aristotle, Physics I: subject remaining, form acquired; the apparent contradiction of change; Parmenides.
• Aristotle, Physics IV: “whatever is must be somewhere”.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX: the word “act” from operation.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: the virtues (aside).
• St. Paul (as he says) on the man at the mirror (aside).
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on De Anima (no locus): “body” as part of the living body; human soul not a material form; Thomas/Avicenna on being first understood; Cajetan.

His questions #

• To whom is “know thyself” addressed? To man, who alone can know himself yet does not; more to the soul; most to reason.
• Is the soul defined as something by itself or something of another? Of another; hence the divisions.
• Why think the soul is in the genus of substance rather than quality? It can exist by itself; it has qualities; it has an activity not in the body; it resists the body.
• What makes us think there is matter and form in the genus of substance? Substantial change: substances come to be and pass away.
• Which is the best example of a substance? A man, then a dog; not stone or plant.
• Could six or seven men share in seeing that crucifix, or a painting half each? No; seeing remains within the doer and cannot be shared, unlike lifting a table.
• How did we untie the apparent contradiction in “the hard becomes soft”? A third thing, the subject (butter, body), in potency to both; and the confused name.
• In what sense is first act first and second act second? In generation and time first act is first; in the order of knowing the reverse.
• Is the soul act as operation or as form? As form, first act, substantial form (sign: the hibernating animal).
• Does “material” mean the same in “material form” as in “material substance”? left open (recording ends).