Sensing as Undergoing: Empedocles, Potency and Act (De Anima II.5, Part 1)

Orientation #

He begins “these things being determined” — the plant/reproducing soul having been treated — and turns to chapter five, “let us speak in common about every sense.” He refers back to the earlier fragment of Empedocles “we handled” and to the food question of the previous study (prev. lecture). He postpones the two kinds of ability and act to “a little bit later on” and the senses sensing their own sensing to Book III. Verified sources place the class in the printed translation (DHB Vol. III, School of Aristotle, p. 1195) with about ten minutes read from the handout “Effects of Love,” p. 25. The previous class ended the nutritive soul (food, growth, reproduction); the next takes up the two kinds of potency and act in II.5 with the Meno.

The class, in order #

1. Sensing is an undergoing by its object (“let us speak in common about every sense”) #

The whole of chapter 5 aims to show that sensing is an undergoing: the sense is acted upon by its object.

1. Powers of the soul divide into those where the power acts upon the object (digestive power) and those where the object acts upon the power (senses).
2. The division is exhaustive: if neither acted on the other there would be no connection between power and object. Text (170): “sense or sensing occurs in being moved… and suffering, as was said.”

• Aside: “what is worth saying can be said twice” (Aristotle).

2. Suffering, paschein, passio: a word stuck in its first meaning (“come back to that word suffering there”) #

Point: the Greek paschein (verb; the Categories’ “to undergo”) and Latin passio are carried over from harmful suffering to any being-acted-upon; English “suffering” is stuck.

• First meaning: being acted upon by another contrary to your nature or well-being (the passion of our Lord).
• Carried over “in the third way”: part of the meaning is dropped (contrary to nature) and part kept (being acted upon, receiving). In sensing the being-acted-upon perfects and actualizes the power.
• Boundary: sensing is still bodily, so staring at something too bright damages the eye; understanding is a wholly immaterial being-acted-upon, and thinking about something very understandable perfects rather than hurts.
• Why he prefers “undergoing”: its first sense is also harmful (“under the weather” = made sick by the elements; “he has undergone a lot” = suffered), but as the correlative/passive of “acting upon” it moves more easily to the extended meaning, as the Greek and Latin did.
• Shakespeare’s Benedick, “yes, I do suffer love… I love you against my will”: English “suffer” already moving toward the other senses.

3. Dunamis, potentia, “power” vs. “ability” (“Greek word for the powers of the soul”) #

Point: the same problem afflicts “power.”

• First meaning of dunamis/potentia/power: active ability to act upon something; Greek and Latin then extend it to the ability to be acted upon.
• English derivatives stay in the active sense: dynamite, dynamo, potent.
• So he translates by “ability,” because “able” easily takes the passive sense: breakable glass, burnable table, movable thing.
• Example: a boxer (name unclear in recording) put in the ring with Cassius Clay — you would not call him a powerful fighter, but he is beatable, breakable, bustable: passive ability.

4. Love too is being acted upon (“you made a big impression on her”) #

Point (Thomas, from the love and friendship course): the ability to love is acted upon by its object.

• “You made a big impression on her”: to impress is to act upon.
• Cupid’s arrow: the arrow acts upon you, and in the first sense an arrow acts contrary to nature.
• Teresa of Avila’s increase of love under the image of an angel piercing her heart (a mark reportedly found in the heart afterward); a similar wound seen by “Saint Teresa of Susa” [name unclear in recording] at the stations of the cross.
• Mercutio on Romeo moaning about Rosaline: “he jests at scars that never felt the wound.”
• Why carry over a word like “suffering”: you notice being acted upon when kicked or pricked with a pin, not when your eyes and ears are acted upon during a lecture; yet the movement is “tremendous,” from something bad (a knife harms) to something very good (God acting on your heart, a beautiful painting on your eye perfects).
• Student: is the moral object the same sense — what moves your will? Yes.
• Aside: the love course uses a dialectic between passages where love is active (“give your love”) and where the heart receives; “which is it?” left for that course.

5. Aisthesis: sensing or sense; alteration; like suffers from like (“sensing occurs in being moved and suffering”) #

Point: aisthesis can mean the act (sensing) or the power (sense), like “understanding” (Locke’s power; also an act) and “sight” (object, seeing, power) — equivocal by reason.

• He would translate the reverse of the class text: 170 “sensing occurs in being moved”; 171 (see §6) “sensing of the senses”; Thomas and Moerbeke take 171 as the power.
• “It seems to be a certain alteration”: in alteration you are changed (hard/soft, hot/cold); he will later qualify that it is alteration only in a different sense.
• “Some say like suffers from like”: how possible and how impossible was said in the general works on acting and suffering (Generation and Corruption); shown in particular for food (prev. lecture): food is unlike the fed at first (unless you are a cannibal), like at the end.
• Universal principle: the agent acts on what is unlike/contrary and makes it like itself in the end — God acting on the sinner makes him like God.

6. Empedocles and the two difficulties (171) (“by earth we know earth”) #

Point: the senses have their object only in ability at first, so must be acted upon by it.

• Empedocles: we know earth, water, air, fire, love, hate because we are composed of them. His element of truth: the known is in the knower (“can you grasp what I’m saying?”; he has your shape and color in his head when he recognises you on Wednesdays). His error: taking it as being in matter; Aristotle will show at the end of the book it is in an immaterial way.
• Aristotle’s standing objection: Empedocles says there is no hate in God (cf. John, “God is love”), so God would not know hate and we would know something God does not — absurd for all the great Greek philosophers.
• Two falsehoods following from “like knows like”:
  1. The senses would sense themselves; but the eye does not see the eye (only in a mirror), the ear does not hear the ear.
  2. They would sense without the outside object; but you cannot see the men if they are not here, or water without the glass.
• “Of which things there is sensation in virtue of themselves and in virtue of the accidents in these”: Thomas — in truth we sense only the accidents, reason knows the things themselves; the early philosophers did not distinguish sensing and reason well.
• Conclusion: the sensitive power is not in act but only in potency/ability, “whence it does not sense” by itself. Comparison: the ignitable does not ignite itself without what is actually fire; if water were hot of itself it would not need fire — needing fire shows it is hot only in ability.

7. “To sense” is said in two ways (172) (“he doesn’t see”) #

Point: sensing names both the ability and the act.

• “He doesn’t see” of a blind man in a room = lacks the ability; “he doesn’t see you” across the room = lacks the act. Hence “the potentially hearing or seeing hears or sees, even should it chance to be sleeping.”
• The more precise division (two senses of ability, two of sensing) is postponed.

8. Suffering, being moved, being at work; the grammar of “to see” (173) (“figure of diction”) #

Point: being moved is in some way an act (imperfect act, definition of motion, Physics III = “Natural Hearing”), so “suffering, being moved and being at work” may first be treated as the same; energein (“being at work,” from ergon) means to act.

• Grammar: “to see/hear” is active, “to be seen/heard” passive, said of power and object respectively — the reverse of the fact that the sound acts upon the ear.
• Sophistical Refutations: thirteen fallacies, six in speech, seven outside. Equivocation and amphiboly: a word or speech with many meanings actually (“Chianti is dry, dry is not wet, so Chianti is not wet”; “the Bible is the Word of God, the Word of God is the Son of God”; “Aristotle’s book”: owned or authored). Composition, division, accent: many meanings potentially, one actually (students writing the wrong word from the accent). Figure of diction: an “imaginary multiplicity” (Albert the Great) where the ending makes a word seem to signify what it does not.
• “My eyes fell upon it,” “casting an eye upon you” fit the grammar; but the object rather falls upon the eyes.
• Same with love: Goethe, “we are shaped and fashioned by what we love” — lover of beauty already a little beautiful, of wisdom a little wise, of foolishness a fool.
• Student: why is the grammar almost the opposite of the fact? Not for the logician to answer; but it shows being acted upon is less known to us in seeing than in being kicked, pushed, stabbed.

9. Acted upon by what is in act; the soul is in some way all things (174) (“the unlike suffers, while the like has suffered”) #

Point: what undergoes is acted upon by something already in act (water heated by fire, already hot), and is unlike at the beginning, like at the end.

• Hence sensing is in a way becoming the thing sensed, understanding becoming the thing understood; in Book III he will say the soul is in some way all things — not as God is (Thomas on “I will show you every good” / “I am who am”), but the soul is the most godlike thing in this world. “It’s a very important thing to see.”

10. Two kinds of potency and act (175, begun) (“one must distinguish however in regard to potency”) #

Point: ability and act have each been spoken of without distinction; there are two senses of each (not reached this class).

• “Potency” in English is also stuck on the active sense (potent, omnipotent, impotent, “a potent thing you said”); being stuck shows that is the first meaning. “Ability,” with “able,” is more extendable.
• His mother’s phrase: “you can’t move the word” — thinkers get stuck on the first meaning of words equivocal by reason. Hobbes on infused virtues: stuck on “infuse” = pour in, so cannot understand it; yet “infused” says the virtue does not come from the exercise of the power but from outside.

His words #

• undergoing / suffering: paschein, passio; being acted upon, receiving; first meaning contrary to nature, extended to perfective reception
• “carried over in the third way”: extension of a word by dropping part of its meaning [ed.: analogy by extension]
• ability: dunamis, potentia; first meaning active, extended to passive [ed.: potency, power]
• sensing vs. sense: act vs. power, both aisthesis
• alteration: change of quality, hard to soft, hot to cold
• like suffers from like: unlike at the start, like at the end
• being at work: energein, from ergon; to act, be actual [ed.: actuality, energeia]
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• figure of diction: fallacy where the grammatical form (ending) feigns a meaning; “imaginary multiplicity” (Albert)
• equivocal by reason: one word moved to several meanings (sight, understanding, sense)
• infused: poured in; virtue not from the power’s own exercise

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima II.5, paragraphs 170–175 of the class translation (with Thomas’s reading of 171 and Moerbeke’s “sense”)
• Empedocles, fragment on knowing (quoted from memory)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption (“general works on acting and suffering”)
• Aristotle, Physics III (definition of motion)
• Aristotle, Categories (to act upon / to undergo)
• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations (thirteen fallacies)
• Aristotle, De Anima III (senses sensing themselves; soul in some way all things)
• Thomas Aquinas, on love as being acted upon (love and friendship course; handout “Effects of Love” p. 25, verified)
• John, “God is love”; Exodus, “I will show you every good,” “I am who am” (Thomas)
• Shakespeare: Benedick (“I do suffer love”); Romeo and Juliet (“he jests at scars”)
• Locke, Essay on Human Understanding
• Goethe, “we are shaped and fashioned by what we love”
• Hobbes on infused virtues; Albert the Great on figure of diction

His questions #

• Sensing is a what? — An undergoing; the object acts upon the power.
• What is the first meaning of suffering? — Being acted upon by another contrary to your nature.
• In what way were these words carried over to sensing? — In the third way: dropping “contrary to nature,” keeping “being acted upon.”
• Is understanding an act or a power, or both? — Both; like aisthesis and “sight.”
• Does the eye know what an eye is, the ear what an ear is? — No; so the senses are not composed of what they know.
• Can I see you if you are not here, or water without the glass? — No; the senses need the outside object, so they are in ability to it.
• “He doesn’t see” — what does it mean? — Blind, lacks the ability; or, “he doesn’t see you,” lacks the act.
• Is my ear acting upon the sound, or the sound upon my ear? — The sound upon the ear; the active grammar deceives (figure of diction).
• Why is the grammar almost the opposite of the fact? — Not the logician’s question; left open, though it shows the being-acted-upon is less evident here than in being kicked.
• Is love active or receiving (“give your love” vs. the heart receiving)? — Left for the love course.