Touch, thinking vs. understanding, and studying the soul through its objects, acts and powers

Orientation #

He opens by calling the last class “a little excursion” to understand the one sentence in no. 140 on epithumia, thumos and boulesis (prev. lecture), and closes by saying that next week Thomas begins on the living powers: feeding, growing, reproducing, and so the plant soul; the sense powers come later, and the understanding power in the third book. The previous class divided the appetitive powers and their emotions; the next treats the Catechism on soul as form of body and Thomas’s lesson no. 147.

The class, in order #

1. Touch, food and desire: the end of no. 140 (“touch is a sense of food”) #

The point: those with the sensing powers have the desiring powers, and the middle term is the pleasant and the painful; among the senses, touch (and taste, a kind of touch) is common to all animals.

• Argument he reads: all animals have the sense of food; touch is the sense of food, because all animals are fed by the dry, moist, hot and cold, and touch senses these. Sound, colour and odour contribute nothing to food; flavour is one of the tangibles.
• Student question whether that is exaggerated: it obviously doesn’t mean food smells bad; the other sensibles feed us only accidentally.
• Hunger and thirst are desires: hunger for the dry and hot, thirst for the moist and cold, which are the objects of touch; flavour is “like some seasoning of these”. Aristotle: “one must be more certain about these things later.”
• Conclusion: living things having touch have desire present, because with touch come pleasure and pain, and therefore desire.
• His addition: touch involves the very life of the body; that the body is being destroyed, cut up, too hot, too cold, is known primarily by touch.
• Imagination is set aside for Book Three; the word “imagination” has some equivocation in it, to be seen.

2. Locomotion, thinking power and mind: dianoetikon and nous (“thinking power and mind, in men”) #

The point: in higher animals the power of moving from place to place is added; in men, the thinking power and mind; and Aristotle hints at “something more honorable” than man, the angels and God.

• Greek: thinking power is dianoetikon, the discursive power (Shakespeare’s word), the power of knowing one thing from another; mind is nous, Latin intellectus, English “understanding”.
• Understanding vs. reason: sometimes synonyms, but reason is named from reasoning (discourse), nous from understanding. English “understanding” names act or power; intellectus usually names the power.
• Nous/intellectus also names a virtue of reason: what one understands naturally without reasoning it out (Aristotle so uses nous in the Nicomachean Ethics; Thomas likewise uses intellectus). He calls it “natural understanding”, though “understanding, period” is not bad; Greek and Latin omit “natural” because they understand what they mean.
• Episteme: another virtue, what is reasoned out from nous and other things; geometry, natural philosophy, wisdom are episteme. Latin scientia; English “science” has been taken over by experimental science, so he imitates the etymology: episteme means coming to a halt or stop, hence “reasoned-out understanding”.
• Boethius’s proportion (given in Thomas’s De Caelo commentary): reasoning is to understanding as motion is to rest. Reasoning goes from one thing to another, like motion; understanding, as “stand” indicates, has penetrated something and is not moving.
• Does the analogy go further? Motion can come before or after rest (he stands still, walks, stops). If you understood nothing before reasoning you would have nothing to reason from; so there is an understanding before reasoning (nous, natural understanding) and one after it (episteme, reasoned-out).
• “Mind” is less precise than “intellect/understanding” because mind is sometimes used for anything that goes on inside us, imagination, memory, even emotions (newspaper column “Mirror of Your Mind”, on psychological problems).
• Student: do the gifts of the Holy Spirit, understanding and knowledge, correspond? Another use of the words; “better not get into that”, though there is some connection.

3. No. 142: the definition of soul is like the definition of shape (“no shape beyond the triangle”) #

The point: the general definition of soul relates to the particular souls as the common account of shape relates to triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon (he gave an arithmetical example before; Aristotle uses shape).

• More precisely: what Euclid calls a rectilineal plane figure; its definition is common to triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon and so on, yet there is no rectilineal plane figure that is not one of these. Likewise “first act of a natural body composed of tools” is common to plant, animal and understanding soul, and there is no soul apart from those three.
• Hence it is “laughable” to seek only a common account, which is the proper account of no being, while omitting the proper account of the indivisible species.
• “The prior is always in the consequent in potency”: a square or any parallelogram contains two triangles, so the triangle is included in the quadrilateral; what the plant soul has is included in the animal soul, but with something more, and the animal’s in the understanding soul, with something more. Aristotle also compares numbers: two includes one and something more, three includes two, four three.
• Latin name: the potestative whole. The human soul has the whole power of soul; going down the grades of life you get less of that power, so the plant soul is sometimes called a soul, sometimes “part of a soul”.

4. No. 143: ask what the soul of each is, and why in this order (“What is the soul of each?”) #

The point: knowing the general definition does not satisfy; one must ask what the plant soul, the animal soul (the beast’s) and the soul of man each is, which requires studying each power in particular.

• Each soul is understood by the power that completes it, as four differs from three by the fourth unit added.
• Distinction leads to order: why is the sensing power not without the feeding power while feeding is separate from sensing in plants? why no other sense without touch while touch is without the others (many animals lack sight, hearing, smell)? some sensing things move from place to place, some do not; fewest have “reason and thinking”.
• Greek for reason and thinking: logismos kai dianoia. Logismos: first calculating, then reasoning, then the faculty for both; close to Shakespeare’s reason as ability for discourse, the two chief discourses being counting/calculating and defining/reasoning. English borrows counting words for reasoning: the teacher’s “put two and two together” (join two premises, draw a conclusion), the hillbilly’s “I reckon”, “I figure”. Dianoia: understanding through something.
• Why these words rather than “knowing”: when first distinguishing this power from the others Aristotle uses words that indicate the movement of reason, because reasoning looks like doing something, understanding does not (Boethius again: rest looks like doing nothing). God understands everything and never reasons, never thinks anything out, yet understands more than we do by thinking things out, “a very, very weak mind.”
• Rest of 143: wherever reason is, all the other powers are; some animals lack even imagination, some live by this alone; the speculative mind has a different account (Book Three). Conclusion read: the most proper account of soul is the account of each of these sorts.

5. Digression: intellectus vs. ratio, and names equivocal by reason (“man has reason and not understanding”) #

The point: Thomas sometimes calls the angel’s understanding intellectus and man’s ratio; this is an example of a name becoming equivocal by reason, reviewed.

• Two ways a name becomes equivocal by reason (simplest case, two things): (a) the name is kept by one of the two as its own and the other gets a new name; (b) the name of one thing is carried over to another because of some connection. Within (a), two sub-ways: one gets a new name because something is added; the other because one of the two has fully or perfectly what the common name means.
• Cat vs. kitten: a kitten is a little cat, yet we divide cat from kitten; the kitten gets the new name because it is imperfect, lacking the full development of the cat.
• Animal vs. man: “man is an animal” is no insult, yet we also divide animal against man. Not because man is not fully animal, but because man is something very noteworthy in addition (an animal is a living body having sensation; man has reason besides); the beast keeps the common name, man gets a new one.
• Student answers which case understanding/reason is: the first, because of the imperfection of human understanding — we understand little and must reason most of it out. Thomas in the Sentences quotes the Greek phrase intellectus obumbratus, the overshadowed, dark understanding.
• Yet “rational” is also used almost as a synonym for understanding: Thomas explaining Boethius’s definition of person, “individual substance of a rational nature”, otherwise an angel could not be a person nor could there be three persons in God. Aristotle uses logismos at the end of 143 in that broad way, since strictly there is no calculating or reasoning in the more honourable things.
• Asides: Thomas: the distance between the greatest human mind and the angelic mind is much greater than between the greatest philosopher and the most ignorant peasant. His old teacher Kasurik: your guardian angel watching you try to reach a decision; and at death, meeting your angel, you’d take him for God, and he, like Paul in Acts tearing his clothes when they wanted to worship him as a god (he places it at Ephesus) [ed.: Acts usually places this at Lystra], would say no, a creature.

6. Nos. 145–146: power, act or object first? (“the works and the deeds are prior”) #

The point: Thomas ends lectio 6 here (chapter divisions are editorial, not Aristotle’s), and Aristotle answers the problem raised in the proemium: consider the power first, or its act? the act, or its object? — e.g. the ability to feed, feeding, or food?

• Read: one inquiring about these souls must grasp what each is, then look into what follows (Thomas: the bodily structure, in the later books) — what the understanding power is (Greek now noetikon, not dianoetikon; he is gradually introducing the word), the sensitive (aisthetikon), the feeding.
• Order determined: one must first say what understanding and sensing are, for acts and operations are before (proteron) the powers “in account”, kata ton logon, in definition.
• His argument: how do you know you have the ability to see? through seeing; to walk? through walking. How do you know they are different abilities? because seeing and walking differ. So you must know what seeing and walking are before you know you have the abilities, let alone what they are abilities for; seeing and walking are before in definition.
• Objects: “due to the same cause” (dia ten auten aitian) the objects must be treated first. Greek antikeimena, the opposites, a relative opposition; Latin “object”, same root as objection, something in your way. Example: to see is in the definition of the ability to see; if to see is to sense colour and to hear to sense sound, colour and sound are in the definitions of seeing and hearing.
• The order to never lose sight of: objects, then acts, then powers or abilities, then the soul. People get mixed up because Aristotle defines soul in general before the powers; but he came to the general definition through a less distinct knowledge of the powers, and now through a more distinct knowledge reaches the particular souls. He sometimes teaches beginning with the powers to avoid this misunderstanding.
• Aside: the separated soul reverses this, knowing itself directly through itself like an angel, being wholly separated from matter and so fully understandable to itself. Hence the seven wise men’s “Know thyself”: the soul can know itself, but only through a long discourse, so it needs urging.

7. The same order in ethics and in wisdom (“courage is about something”) #

The point: the objects-acts-powers order holds for virtues too.

• Student question, answered: acts of the virtues are known before the virtues, and the objects before the acts. Courage vs. temperance: courage is about what is painful and destructive to the body, from which one naturally withdraws, so the virtue strengthens one to go toward it; temperance is about what is pleasing and preserves the body or the kind, which one naturally goes for, so the virtue moderates or holds back. Knowing the objects shows why the acts differ.
• Theological virtues: what they share is their object, God in himself; you must know what God is in some way before knowing what it is to love God, and that before knowing what charity is.
• In the ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX] the first thing said in comparing act and ability is that act is before ability in definition. So the feeding power will be studied by talking about food first; “let’s stop there.”

8. Aside after class: Lincoln (“he was a postmaster, right?”) #

Conversation about Lincoln: postmaster with twice-weekly delivery, lawyer arguing some 300 cases before the Illinois Supreme Court, failed storekeeper (compared to Truman), fiancée who died, broke off and then married Mary Todd; nervous on his wedding day (“going to hell, I suppose”); a near-duel with a Democratic candidate over pseudonymous Whig satire Mary Todd helped write, Lincoln taking full responsibility, choosing swords, the meeting across the state line called off by mutual friends; his bouts of depression, a woman giving him a Bible; his “doctrine of necessity” against free will, and his unclear belief in God.

His words #

• epithumia, thumos, boulesis; Latin concupiscible, irascible, voluntary (voluntas)
• dianoetikon: the thinking, discursive power, knowing one thing from another
• nous: mind, Latin intellectus, English understanding; also a virtue, what is understood without reasoning
• natural understanding: his name for the virtue nous/intellectus
• episteme: from “coming to a halt”; reasoned-out understanding; Latin scientia [ed.: usually “science”]
• Boethius’s proportion: reasoning : understanding :: motion : rest
• threptikon: the feeding/living soul
• rectilineal plane figure (Euclid): the common account of shape
• potestative whole: the soul as having the full power, lower souls “part of a soul”
• logismos kai dianoia: calculating/reasoning and thinking-through
• name equivocal by reason: kept by one thing, or carried over; kept because the other is imperfect or because the other adds something noteworthy
• intellectus obumbratus: overshadowed understanding (Thomas, Sentences)
• noetikon, aisthetikon: understanding and sensitive powers
• proteron, kata ton logon: before, in account/definition
• antikeimena: objects, literally the opposites; “object” as what stands in the way (cf. objection)
• “ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX]

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima, nos. 140 (end), 142, 143, and the opening of 145–146 (Thomas’s numbering), with Greek terms Mentioned
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on De Anima, end of lectio 6; the proemium’s problems
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (nous as a virtue)
• Boethius, reasoning/understanding proportion, cited in Thomas’s De Caelo commentary
• Thomas, Sentences commentary (intellectus obumbratus)
• Boethius, definition of person, as explained by Thomas
• Euclid (rectilineal plane figure)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (inferred; “ninth book of wisdom”)
• Acts of the Apostles (Paul refusing worship)
• Shakespeare (reason as “discourse”)

His questions #

• Is “flavour is one of the tangibles” exaggerated? No; the other sensibles feed us only accidentally, and hunger and thirst are for objects of touch.
• Can you speak of understanding both before and after reasoning? Yes: without understanding before reasoning there is nothing to reason from; episteme names the understanding after.
• What are the Greek words behind “reason and thinking”? Logismos kai dianoia; logismos is calculating, then reasoning.
• Why does Aristotle use words of reasoning rather than of knowing when distinguishing this power? Reasoning looks like doing something; understanding, like rest, does not.
• Which way is “understanding vs. reason” equivocal by reason? The first: reason gets a new name because human understanding is imperfect.
• Why does cat keep its name and kitten get a new one? why animal and man? Kitten is imperfect; man adds something noteworthy (reason).
• Should one consider the power first, or the act, or the object? Objects before acts, acts before powers, powers before soul — all “before in definition”.
• How do you know you have the ability to see, and that it differs from the ability to walk? Through seeing, and through seeing and walking being different.
• In ethics, are the virtues, their acts or their objects known first? Objects first (courage: the painful and destructive; temperance: the pleasing), then acts, then virtues.
• Do the gifts of understanding and knowledge match nous and episteme? Another use of the words, with some connection; left open.