The Nutritive Soul: Answering Empedocles, Food as Object, Nourishment, Growth and Generation, and the Sacraments

Orientation #

He picks up in Thomas’s commentary at no. 147 (the lesson on food and generation) and continues through nos. 149 and 153, referring back to “the grades of life” and to the definition of the soul “we saw before”. He says sensing as alteration will be treated “if we take up that”. The previous class had reached the start of no. 147 after the Catechism material on soul as form of the body.

The class, in order #

1. In what sense the feeding soul is “first” (“the first and most common power”) #

The point: Aristotle calls the plant/feeding soul the “first” soul, and “first” here has more than one sense.

• First as common: the others cannot be without it, but it can be without them. Same order as the grades of life: feeding and reproducing without sensing; sensing without understanding; sensing without local motion; local motion without understanding — “but not vice versa, in mortal things”.
• Perhaps first in time/generation too: in the fertilized egg growth appears first, then senses, “last of all, the use of reason”.
• In the fourth sense of first, the first soul is the rational soul, “the understanding soul, as Shakespeare calls it”.
• Thomas notes that before treating this soul Aristotle clears up preliminaries and “answers a couple mistakes”.

2. No. 147: the works of the feeding soul (“the works of which soul are generating”) #

He reads: one must first speak of food and generation, since the nutritive soul is in all living things, is the first and most common power, and its works are generating and using food.

• Using food is the clearer work: you use food to maintain yourself and to grow (immigrant children towering over short fathers because of a better diet: growth by food).
• Generation is tied to food “in a more obscure way”; Thomas says Aristotle, having earlier spoken of the first soul mainly as feeding, now wants to show that generation “very much pertains to a living thing”.
• Read: the most natural work of living things that are complete (mature, not mutilated “like the eunuch, as Thomas says”, not spontaneously generated) is making another like themselves. He notes Aristotle and Thomas held some insects were spontaneously generated: “we do not want to follow them in that opinion.”
• Making another like oneself seems present even in non-living things: fire generates fire (forest fires in Colorado and California jumping across a road; his son Marcus relighting an extinguished candle by holding a match above the smoke). So generation is common to all natural things and therefore most natural to living things.

3. Generation as striving to be like God (“striving to be so far as possible”) #

The point, which he calls “very subtle”: in generating another like themselves mortal things are striving to be, so far as possible, like God.

• Why it comes naturally to a Greek: Homer’s near-synonyms “men and gods” / “mortals and immortals”; the mortal perpetuating itself by generation strives toward the immortal.
• Plato and Aristotle, “the chief philosophers”, both see generation as ultimately aiming to be like God. In the Theaetetus (where wonder is called the beginning of philosophy) Plato gives one of the two Platonic definitions of philosophy: becoming like God so far as possible; this seems to put philosophy very high, but all living things when they reproduce are doing something like it.
• Individuals cannot go on forever, but by reproducing the same kind they in a way go on. Shakespeare’s first twenty sonnets urge someone to marry on just this ground; Sonnet 1’s “from fairest creatures we desire increase” (increase = offspring) so that beauty’s rose might never die. His classroom question: who is re-produced? Not the child (produced the first time) but the parents.
• Read: “all things have an appetite for this”. Cross-reference to Natural Hearing Book I, where Aristotle and Plato agree that form is something godlike: nature forms things to perfect them, and God is universally perfect, so growth to perfection is a distant likeness to God; reproduction aims at the immortality of God. The Greek couples “aei” (always) with the divine.
• Read: all things do whatever they do by nature for the sake of this. Plants do not know they are trying to be like God; their nature is.
• Link to the Ethics: the first definition of the good, “the good is what all desire”, can be understood as each thing seeking its own good, or as all seeking to be like God, who in one sense alone is good.
• Perverse cases show the same drive: Marx setting man’s mind as the highest divinity; mad tyrants seeking power, “God is all powerful”.

4. “That for the sake of which” is twofold (“that for the sake of which is twofold”) #

The point: the end can be that which or that for which; Thomas gives two explanations of the obscure phrase.

• The doctor acts for the sake of health, or for the sake of a healthy body: one is the good itself, the other that of which it is the good.
• The other reading: the end vs. what is for the sake of the end.

5. Why it is impossible to share in always-being continuously (“cannot persist the same in one number”) #

The point: mortal things share in the divine not continuously but by remaining one in species, not one in number.

• Read: no corruptible thing persists the same in number; each takes part “this one more and that one less” (long-lived California trees vs. bugs whose whole lifespan is a day).
• What persists is not the individual but what is like it: dog produces dog, oak produces oak.
• Ethical application (Thomas on sexual ethics): is there sin in a man walking on his hands? Little, since it hardly interferes with the good of man, though hands are not made for walking. But the sexual organs are ordered to reproduction, hence to the common good of the species and ultimately to being like God, so the individual lacks “the leeway” to interfere with that order. We do interfere with animals and plants, but they are subordinated to us. Parallel: truth is the common good of the whole universe, so you are not free to think whatever you want.

6. Beauty, sexual attraction, and the beauty of the soul (“why is there a desire to reproduce”) #

The point: the Symposium explains why one desires to reproduce with the beautiful, and extends the desire from beauty of body to beauty of soul.

• That the beautiful pleases the eye (“the beautiful is what pleases when seen”) is a separate matter; the question is why one desires to reproduce with the beautiful person. Answer, back to Shakespeare’s line: to perpetuate and make eternal, so far as possible, the beauty seen; a natural desire to perpetuate the beautiful, not the ugly. “That’s actually very profound.”
• Plato then passes to immortality of the beauty of the soul, which is what the teacher is after: knowledge passed on (a violinist wants others taught the art; St. Cecilia, patroness of music, named in passing). Heisenberg asking Planck whether to leave Germany under Hitler; Planck: if all of you leave, German science dies — a concern for perpetuating truth. Good parents want to pass on their virtue: an honest man does not want a thief for a son, nor a courageous man a coward.

7. No. 149: the soul is cause in three of four ways (“cause and principle of the living body”) #

The point: “cause” and “principle” are said in many ways; the soul is a cause of the body in three of them.

• Review of the four causes from Natural Hearing Book II, in the order matter, form, mover, end, on his chair: the wood (and metal) is matter; the shape and order of parts, the angles, the form; the carpenter the mover; its purpose the end.
• Read: the soul is cause as whence motion (our first notion of life is self-movement), as end (“that for the sake of which”, the definition of in), and as substance of ensouled bodies, where substance means form, as Thomas says. Aristotle keeps “matter” for matter but uses “substance” for form; this is confusing at first, but form was defined as “what was to be”, and substance means what a thing is.
• In no way is the soul a cause as matter; he defers the reason for “three and not four” to segment 10.

8. The soul as cause in the sense of form (“substance or form is the cause of being”) #

The point: two arguments show the soul is the form of the body.

1. In all things form is the cause of being: wood is a chair, table or door only in ability, and is one of them when it gets its form. So the soul is the cause, for living bodies, of their living, where “living” is taken as the very being of a living thing (alive vs. dead), not the operations of life.
2. The soul is the act of a being in potency, the first act of a natural body composed of tools (the definition seen before); that is what form is.

• Student: don’t these two come to the same? His answer: similar but not the same. In the first the form is compared to the being it grounds; in the second to its subject, as actuality of the matter’s ability. Example: geometry forming his mind makes Duane Berquist a geometer — a kind of being, though not his being simply, like being healthy through health; and geometry is also an actuality of his mind.
• Student: is act the genus of soul? Yes, the soul is the first act of a natural body composed of tools; equally, its substantial form.

9. The soul as cause in the sense of end (“the art that uses commands”) #

The point: as mind acts for the sake of something, so does nature; and since form is the end of matter, the soul as form is the end of the body.

• Review of Natural Hearing Book II, the last argument that nature acts for an end: the proportion of three arts — the art that uses the product, the art that forms it, the art that prepares the raw materials. His father’s Elco Implement Company (“Grain King” wagons) formed the product; others delivered wood and steel; the farmer used it. Field-testing an engineer’s new design (“see how it performs”, as Detroit tests a car) shows use judging form.
• The art that uses commands the art that forms (the soldier’s jamming gun sends the designers back), and the art that forms commands the arts preparing matter (redesign means ordering different steel). Why: use is the end of form; the prepared matter is for the sake of the formed product. Cheap wagons that snap on uneven farmland and are redesigned with bigger steel show the whole chain.
• Conclusion: the soul, substantial form of the body, is the end of its matter, so a cause as end too; form is also called the end of generation (the sculptor chipping marble aims at a form).
• Read: the soul seems the end not only of that natural body but of the whole of natural bodies: plants use water and soil elements, animals use plants and animals, man uses all; all natural bodies are in some way tools of the soul, those of plants as well as of animals. He notes this repeats the earlier distinction.
• What it points to: if an understanding soul is the end of the whole natural world, “light produces light”, one thinks of a greater mind behind nature directing it toward the understanding soul, and before that directing generation to be like itself. God is end of the universe not by receiving anything from it but as that toward which all is directed by trying to be like him. The understanding soul and, more so, the angels not only become like God but have two operations, understanding and loving, that attain God in himself (seeing God face to face, with God’s help). The cat Moppet cannot love God in himself, though as a mother she became like God so far as possible.
• Asides: dropping a steel bar on his foot and the stitched toe; the union representative and the outside steel-unloaders; the woman who ran a steel company; the State Fair neighbour with the girl in the low-cut gown versus people coming to look at his father’s wagon, “the ultimate proof of superiority of my product”.

10. No. 153: mover, and why not matter; God’s “two and a half” causes (“two and a half”) #

The point: the soul is also whence first comes local motion; all three ways rest on actuality, which is why the soul can never be matter.

• Local motion is not in all living things, only in higher animals and man. “Sense seems to be some alteration”: said only because Aristotle has not yet shown how sensing differs from alteration.
• Argument: form is the act of the body; the end is the act of ability (Wisdom Book IX: ability for the sake of act; seeing, understanding, piano-playing, matter for form); a thing moves others insofar as it is in act (fire actually hot heats air potentially hot). Matter is essentially passive ability (beginning of natural philosophy). Hence the four causes divide form, mover, end against matter; act is what you give to something in ability.
• God: in how many of the four ways a cause? “Two and a half” — mover/maker, end, and form only as external form, the model (the soul made to God’s image and likeness), never intrinsic form. Intrinsic form would make him a part, parts are like matter and imply potentiality, and “God is in no way a part of anything” (“partial” always means incomplete); one must even be careful calling God a whole, though the completeness of the whole is found more in him. God being pure act cannot be matter even more clearly than the soul cannot.
• Thomas’s order: consider the body to consider the soul, the soul to consider angels, angels to consider God; the soul’s threefold causality prepares the mind for God’s, “not identically”, because of that distinction.

His words #

• first soul: the plant/feeding/nutritive soul; “first” as most common, perhaps first in time; the rational soul is first in another sense
• the understanding soul: the rational soul (Shakespeare’s phrase)
• complete living things: mature, not mutilated, not spontaneously generated
• aei: Greek “always”, coupled with “divine”
• becoming like God so far as possible: Plato’s definition of philosophy in the Theaetetus
• reproduced: it is the parents, not the child, who are reproduced
• that for the sake of which: definition of the end; twofold, “that which or that for which”
• one in number vs. one in species (kind)
• the beautiful is what pleases when seen
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• matter, form, mover, end: the four causes in Aristotle’s order
• substance: used by Aristotle for form; form defined as “what was to be”
• living: here the very being (to be) of a living thing, not its operations
• act of a being in potency; first act of a natural body composed of tools [ed.: organic body]: definition of the soul
• ability [ed.: potency]; passive ability: what matter essentially is
• the three arts: that uses the product, that forms it, that prepares the raw materials
• form is the end of generation
• tools of the soul: all natural bodies
• Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics]
• external form: the model; the sense in which God is a cause as form (“two and a half”)
• partial: always used for something incomplete

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima II with Aquinas’s commentary, nos. 147, 149, 153 (food and generation; the soul as cause in three ways; soul as whence local motion)
• Shakespeare, Sonnet 1, opening lines (quoted)

Mentioned

• Plato, Symposium (generation as striving for immortality; beauty of body and of soul)
• Plato, Theaetetus (wonder; philosophy as becoming like God)
• Homer (mortals and immortals)
• Aristotle, Natural Hearing Book I (form as godlike, in the discussion of Plato) and Book II (four causes; three arts; nature acts for an end)
• Aristotle, Ethics (the good is what all desire) and Thomas’s explanation
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (substance used for form; Book IX, ability for the sake of act)
• Thomas Aquinas on sexual ethics (walking on the hands) (locus not stated)
• Thomas Aquinas on the order body, soul, angels, God (locus not stated)
• Catechism/Council of Vienne material is not revisited beyond “we saw before that the soul is the form of the body”

His questions #

• In what sense is the feeding soul first? As most common, and perhaps first in time; the rational soul is first in the fourth sense.
• What are the works of the feeding soul? Generating and using food; food serves maintenance and growth, generation more obscurely.
• Who is reproduced in reproduction? Not the child, who is produced the first time, but the parents.
• Why, other things being equal, does one desire to reproduce with a beautiful person? To perpetuate the beautiful, “that thereby beauty’s rose might never die”.
• Is there any sin in a man walking on his hands? Hardly, since it barely interferes with man’s good, unlike misuse of organs ordered to the species’ good.
• In how many of the four ways is the soul a cause of the body? Three: form, end, mover; not matter.
• Aren’t the two arguments for soul as form the same? Similar, not the same: one compares form to the being it grounds, the other to its subject as act.
• Which of the three arts commands which? Use commands forming, forming commands preparing matter, because use is the end of form and form the end of matter.
• In how many ways is God a cause? “Two and a half”: mover, end, and form only as external form or model.
• Why cannot the soul (or God) be a cause as matter? Because matter is passive ability and the soul is act; God is pure act.