The Equivocation of 'Body': Matter Receives Forms in Order, from Friendship to Geometry

Orientation #

He refers back to “what we learned in the physics” about first matter as pure ability, to his earlier discussion of whether nature acts for an end, and to “the first book”; he defers two matters (grasping vs. judging; the soul moving the body) to “the third book”. The previous class began Aristotle’s method of dividing to define soul; the next continues with the definition and the term organikon.

The class, in order #

1. The order of letters is not made out of the letters (“the word cat and the word act”) #

Point: a form exists only in matter but is not made out of matter.

1. Cat and dog are made of different letters; cat and act are made of the same letters, so the letters are the matter of the word.
2. Cat and act differ by the order of the letters, so the order is the form.
3. If the two orders were themselves made out of the same letters, they would need a further form to differ, and so on: “a form of a form of a form”. Conclusion: much simpler to say the order is not made out of the letters, though it exists only in them.

• “Material substance” = something made out of matter; “material form” = a form existing only in matter, not made out of it. A different distinction from the one under discussion.

2. Two meanings of “body”: subject part and composing part (“a subject part of substance”) #

Point: “body” can name a species of substance (subject part) or a component of a material substance (composing part).

• Parallel example, his own usage: he says philosophy is a “reasoned-out understanding” and also a “reasoned-out knowledge”, for a reason.
  • Boethius’s proportion: reasoning is to understanding as motion is to rest; “understanding” comes from “to stand”, hence rest; rest can be before or after motion, so understanding before reasoning (natural) or after (philosophy).
  • Knowing in a broad sense: sensing is one kind (I know the taste of licorice, chocolate, wine), understanding another (Avicenna: a thing is singular and sensed, universal and understood; one thing to imagine a triangle, another to understand what it is). Here understanding is a subject part of knowing (“a subject part, not a subjective part”).
  • But knowing is also divided into grasping and judging (to be seen in the third book): one thing to grasp what a philosopher means, another to judge whether it is true. Here “understanding” = grasping, an integral or composing part of knowing, and the inferior part; the perfection of knowing is judging, by the light of reason; “the wise man most of all” judges.
  • So “reasoned-out understanding” uses the subject-part sense; “reasoned-out knowledge” the composing-part sense, since philosophy is more judging than grasping.
• Same distinction in “body”: species of substance vs. component of man (“man is composed of body and soul”). The meanings are connected, not purely equivocal; in the second sense body is like the matter in the genus of substance, something imperfect or incomplete.
• Back-reference: those who deny nature acts for an end because they misunderstand what it means: “misunderstand” there is the grasping sense.
• Asides: his complaint about obscure modern philosophers: the proportion is wrong, all time spent grasping, none left to judge (“Water is the beginning of all things”: I understand that, now let’s judge it); a colleague at the University College still trying to figure out what Heidegger meant; his brother Richard’s huge vocabulary, no one dares ask, and “you misunderstood me”; Thomas on the theological poets, no one can know what they meant; most philosophy courses are historical, only about what people mean.

3. “Health is the form of a healthy body”: the danger of circularity (“defining the soul by itself”) #

Point: one may say the soul is the form in the living body (man, dog, tree are living bodies; “living body” names the composite), but the commentary does not want to define soul that way.

• Like “the spherical shape is the form of a spherical body” or “health is the form of a healthy body” (there health is an exemplar form): true, and it points to what health is, but “healthy body” already includes health, so it seems to define health by itself.
• Nevertheless worth saying, because the composite (healthy body) is more known to us than the parts; we then distinguish subject or matter from form within it.

4. First matter is in potency in a certain order (“in a certain what order”) #

Point: body as composing part looks like the matter in the genus of substance, but first matter is pure ability only in an order, and “body” brings out that order.

• First matter (as learned in the Physics) is pure ability to all substantial forms, but in an order (Aristotle sometimes, Thomas more explicitly): under the form of earth, air, fire or water it is in potency to a mixed body; under that, to a living body.
• What is private to the soul is the last perfection it brings; hard to understand.
• Forms are like numbers (a comparison Plato started, Aristotle follows “in the eighth book”): two is able to be three, then three able to be four; four is three plus one, three being as the matter, the one making it actually four, rather than three being a wholly different kind of number.
• Square before cube: his newborn grandson is able to know a cube, but strictly not before his ability to know a square is made actual; ability in the strict sense (Aristotle) is being one step away. Likewise you can learn wisdom only after logic, natural philosophy, geometry; wisdom is last in the order.
• So the soul gives what lower forms give and something more; the corporeality (three dimensions) is on the side of the ability to the soul.
• Student: is “body” then equivocal, naming pure ability and the next form of matter? He: body never names pure ability exactly; but pure ability is in potency to the soul in a certain order, and that is what “body” brings out. Student: could “matter” be equivocal for body? He: matter would not tend to name the complete substance.

5. The division of substance and why Aristotle says “body” rather than “matter” (“bodies seem to be substances most of all”) #

Point: Aristotle starts from body as a species, but in defining soul uses body as composing part.

• Substance divided by opposites into material and immaterial; material = body; immaterial = “separated substances” in philosophy, but we avoid that phrase and borrow “angels” from theology (three hierarchies, nine orders). Body → living/non-living → animals/plants. In this division the same thing is a species of a higher genus and a genus of lower species; body here is a subject part.
• Aristotle seems to begin from that notion (“bodies seem to be substances most of all, and of these the natural ones”), but in defining he uses body as composing part.
• Why “body”, not “matter”: “matter” suggests the pure ability of the first book, which is in potency to the soul only remotely; strictly it is capable of the soul only when it has some perfection. Signs: a dead man’s body does not go straight to pure matter but breaks down; in generation, first only growth in the fertilized egg, then sensation (certainly in the womb), finally reason: one presupposes the other.
• Commonly misunderstood: as if first matter were equally in potency to everything. Like imagining the mind as the centre of a circle equally related to every science on the circumference: “no, that’s not the way it is at all.” Meta ta physika means “after”: a precise name, as solid geometry is “after” plane geometry; we can know all the sciences but in an order.

6. The order of love: St Bernard’s four stages, petition, thanks, praise (“we love God then as being useful”) #

Point: the same principle in love: we are in potency to the higher loves only in an order.

• Bernard of Clairvaux (a piece in the Cistercian series; he used it for papers in his love-and-friendship course): (1) we love ourselves, not God; (2) aware of needs and insufficiency, we turn to God as useful, “need love”, like the useful friend of ethics, the lowest friendship, not charity; (3) turning to Him in prayer we become acquainted with His goodness and love Him for what He is; (4) loving ourselves for God’s sake, hardly realised in this life. One cannot love God for His own sake without first any reference to need.
• His favourite psalm, as he memorised it: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise”: one enters through thanksgiving, praises once fully in. Petitions in the Our Father are for goods (daily bread) or removal of evils (forgive, deliver), turning to God for my good; thanksgiving is less selfish, though still looking back at what was received (and one thanks before asking for more); praise is for what He is in Himself, as in “why do you call me good? God alone is good” (of His human nature). An ascending order: need, thanksgiving, praise.
• Same in human friendship: his father’s paint salesman, each useful to the other, who became friends going to the baseball game; St Rose of Lima’s suitor, first attracted by her beauty, then converted and became something of a saint.

7. Matter must be already organized; the higher has the lower in a better way (“the higher has what the lower has”) #

Point: so we do not say the soul is the substantial form of pure ability, though in a way it is; matter must be somewhat organized before receiving a soul, whether from the parents or from God, as reason is perfected by solid geometry only after plane geometry, yet it is still reason (matter) being perfected.

• Aristotle’s three friendships: useful, pleasant, noble (based on virtue). The noble friend is more useful and more pleasant than the merely pleasant, foolish friend; two thieves or two drunkards are alike in something not naturally pleasant, less pleasant than the friendship of Peter and John. The lower halves in a higher way.
• His old teacher: blood and sap; blood does for the animal what sap does for the tree (transport, growth) but has recuperative powers sap lacks.
• Student: difference between likeness of temperament and likeness in what is naturally pleasing? He: some things are naturally agreeable: courage is spontaneously admired even by the non-courageous, so two brave men have more reason to enjoy each other than two cowards (who may hang around to avoid service, and may dislike their own cowardice); drunkards likewise; generosity attracts even the stingy, so two generous men more than two stingy. Student: each enjoys the virtue in the other. Yes.
• The principle everywhere in education: the 5BX plan (Royal Canadian Air Force): in potency to a hundred push-ups but only through ten, fifteen, twenty; education of taste, fairy tales and Tolkien disposing the child for Shakespeare; education of love.
• The cynic: a man’s wife first a mistress (pleasure), then a friend, last a nurse (need): the best in the middle. Aristotle: the young pursue friendship of pleasure (“did you have a good time?”), the old need friendship of utility (old folks phoning daily), the prime of life the fuller friendship. Someone well known [unclear in recording who] said strong friendships form in early youth; perhaps those pleasure friendships meld into the higher kind. Loving you because you are pleasant is closer to loving you for your own sake than loving you because useful.
• Student: so one can malform someone by giving true things or good things in the wrong order. “Quite true.”

8. Does “body” mean a formed matter? Not a form on top of a form (“the soul is going to replace”) #

Point: we must be careful: if the soul came to a substance already formed, it would be a form on top of a form and hence an accident.

• So the soul replaces any substantial form already there, giving matter the perfection the lower forms gave plus more: a human soul gives sensation (animal soul) and digestion, growth, reproduction (plant soul) in a higher way.
• Mistakes: a body with another substantial form as subject of soul (some Arab philosophers, Avicenna); Plato, one soul in this part, another in that. One soul, one body, one substance.
• “I have a body / this is my body”: composing part. “I am a body, not an angel”, “a living body with sensation / with reason”: species or genus.
• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations: the commonest mistake is mixing senses of a word, especially with general words like being, one, body, and when equivocal by reason rather than by chance.
• Another equivocation: body as species of substance (body/angel) vs. species of continuous quantity (line, surface, body). Connected but different. Since nature loves to hide (Heraclitus), we identify the substance by its accident: a substance having length, width and depth.
• Summary: he uses “body” rather than “matter” to bring out that the soul perfects matter in a certain order; the bodily character, with all the order leading up to it, is on the side of the subject.
• Student: “my soul moves my body”: body a composing part, but including more than matter. He: that concerns one power moving another; wait for the third book, the power of local motion.

His words #

• material substance: something made out of matter; material form: a form existing only in matter, not made out of it
• subject part vs. composing part: a species of a genus (“a subject part, not a subjective part”) vs. an integral part of a composite
• reasoned-out understanding / reasoned-out knowledge: his two definitions of philosophy, by the two senses of “understanding”
• understanding: from “to stand”, rest; before or after reasoning; also = grasping, as against judging
• grasping and judging: the two parts of knowing; judging its perfection
• exemplar form: health in a healthy body
• ability: his word for potency [ed.: potency]; pure ability = first matter
• mixed body: compound of the elements
• ability in the strict sense: one step away (Aristotle)
• angels / separated substances: names for immaterial substance
• meta ta physika: “after the physics”, a precise name
• need love; useful friend, friendship of pleasure, noble friendship
• equivocal by reason vs. equivocal by chance (Sophistical Refutations)
• “nature loves to hide” (Heraclitus)

Texts #

Read in class (commented, not quoted at length):

• Aristotle, De Anima II, the definition of soul; “bodies seem to be substances most of all, and of these the natural ones”
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on De Anima II, on not defining soul as form of a living body Mentioned:
• Aristotle, Physics (first matter as pure ability; “the first book”)
• Plato and Aristotle, “the eighth book”, forms like numbers (Metaphysics VIII, inferred)
• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations (equivocation)
• Aristotle on the three friendships and on the young and old (Ethics, inferred)
• Aristotle, De Anima III (reason, grasping/judging; power of local motion)
• Boethius (reasoning : understanding :: motion : rest); Avicenna; Heraclitus
• Bernard of Clairvaux, piece on love, four stages; Psalm “Enter his gates with thanksgiving”; the Our Father; Christ, “why do you call me good?”; Thomas on the theological poets; lives of St Rose of Lima

His questions #

• How does the word cat differ from the word act, if made from the same letters? By the order of the letters, which is the form, not made out of the letters.
• What would you use for the knowing of reason? Understanding: a subject part of knowing, as sensing is another.
• Is understanding a subject part or a composing part of knowing? Both, in different senses: a species of knowing, or grasping as against judging.
• When I say man is composed of body and soul, what does “body” mean? A composing part of a material substance, not a species of substance.
• Is the baby able to know what a cube is before he knows what a square is? Not in the strict sense; ability in an order.
• Is four a three? No, but three is like the matter, able to be four with one added.
• Why “body” rather than “matter” in the definition? “Matter” suggests pure ability, remotely in potency; “body” brings out the order of perfection leading to the soul.
• Will the noble friend be pleasant and useful? Even more so; the higher has the lower in a better way.
• Does body in the definition mean a secondary, formed matter? Careful: not a form on top of a form, or soul would be an accident; the soul replaces the prior substantial form.
• How does my soul move my body? Deferred to the third book (local motion).