The Kinds of Sensibles (De Anima II.6), Sweetness as Metaphor, and Happiness vs. Joy

Orientation #

He recalls “the order of learning we saw” (prev. lecture): abilities of the soul are distinguished by their acts, acts by their objects. He announces that next time the class returns to chapter six on the common sensibles, then looks at chapter seven (sight) and the end of chapter eleven (touch), and later chapter twelve “carefully”, because there sensing is shown to be immaterial in a way, though not as immaterial as understanding. The previous class treated the two kinds of potency and act in De Anima II.5; the next continues with light, colour and the transparent in De Anima II.

The class, in order #

1. Chapter six as prelude to the outward senses (“the rest of book two”) #

Point: chapter six distinguishes the meanings of “sensible” because that is what lets one distinguish the outward senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching).

1. Powers are known by their acts, acts by their objects (order of learning).
2. Seeing and hearing differ because colour and sound differ; so one must see the difference between colour and sound to see the difference between seeing and hearing, and through that between the abilities.

• Aside on Book III: it begins with the inward senses (memory, etc.) because they are more apt to be confused with reason than the outward senses; nobody today thinks the eye or tongue is reason, “but they think the brain.” Thomas thinks this is why Book III begins there.

2. Three ways “sensible” is said (“I hear a cat”) #

Point: in daily speech we say we see or hear all three kinds of thing, but Aristotle says only two are sensed as such.

• Sight: I see the colour of the wine, the colour of the table (as such); the shape of the table, of the glass (as such); “I see a man” (not as such).
• Hearing: I hear a sound, a number of sounds (as such); I hear a cat, a dog, a mosquito (not as such).
• Argument that the cat is not heard as such: I hear the sound the cat makes; “something else in me” recognizes, from having learned it, that there is a cat at the back door. Same with hearing Moppet (his cat’s “awful sound” in the morning) or “I hear Joe” upstairs: I recognize the tone of voice; something else in me knows Joe is at the door.
• Terms: sensed as such = Greek kath’ hauto (plural kath’ hauta), Latin per se, English “through itself” or, better, “as such”; the third is sensed kata symbebekos, Latin per accidens, “accidentally”; he prefers “by happening” because it brings out that it is not as such. A student proposes “by belonging to”; he keeps “by happening.”

3. Illustrations of “by happening” from love and memory (“music hath a far more pleasant sound”) #

Point: the same per accidens structure appears in what we rejoice in.

• Shakespeare’s sonnet on the mistress: he loves to hear her voice though music has a far more pleasant sound; he rejoices not in the sound as such but because it is hers.
• Pavarotti on the telephone vs. the voice of someone you love: you rejoice more in the latter, not in the sound as such.
• Melodies loved because they were played when one was with a certain person or in a certain place (he associates certain melodies with San Francisco): the melody is not the favourite as such; something else happened.

4. Why we still say we hear the cat; two grades of accidental sensible (“that looks awful sweet”) #

Point: Aristotle stays close to everyone’s way of speaking, and there is a reason for “I hear the cat”: being a cat happens to that sound, that sound happens to a cat; but something else in us must know that.

• Accidental sensible in the full sense (Aristotle, and Thomas more explicitly): what no sense knows as such, namely individual substances; only understanding knows substance.
• Accidental sensible in a weaker sense: the object of one sense accidental to another. “That dessert looks awful sweet”: I do not see the sweetness; something else in me associates the frosting with sweet desserts. Artificial fruit in bowls that people grab thinking it real: one can be deceived here.

5. Among the sensibles as such: private vs. common (“proper or private”) #

Point: of what is sensed as such, one kind is perceived by one sense only (and that sense is not apt to be deceived about it), the other by more than one sense, some by all.

• Translation: Latin proprium, Greek idios/idion, usually “proper sensible”; he translates “private,” since private is the opposite of common as proper is the opposite of improper (proper connotes “correct”). People “are scandalized” by this, but it has the meaning better.
• Parallel from logic: Thomas’s communis modus procedendi, studied in logic, vs. the proprius modus of a science such as geometry; he would say the “private way,” meaning private to that science, not to one man.
• Text read: I call private what cannot be sensed by other senses and about which it cannot err: sight of colour, hearing of sound, taste of flavour; touch is of many differences; each sense does not err that this is colour or sound, but about what is coloured or where it is. Such things are the private sensibles, idia.
• Aside: forget the word “idiot”; an idiot is a man who lives in a world of his own.

6. Where the senses are and are not deceived (“the salt is the sugar”) #

Point: “This is something the moderns don’t do”: they talk about the unreliability of the senses without distinguishing private, common and accidental sensibles; one is more apt to be deceived about the accidental and the common than about the private.

• Optical illusions concern length and shape of lines (common sensibles).
• Phoning a house and mistaking which child (or grandchild) answers; his own convincing meow; the alibi with a recording of voices upstairs: none of these deceive about the sound heard, only about the accidental sensible (who or what is sounding).
• Salt put in the sugar bowl: Uncle is not mistaken that it is white (had it been black he would have hesitated, thinking pepper); he is deceived about salt vs. sugar, the substance.
• Common sensible known as a modification of the private: I know the shape of a card by eye because the colour “only goes that far”; by touch I know it through hardness, what resists and gives way. So the common sensible is known not by discourse but through the private sensible, yet still as such: a small white paper vs. a whole white barn on a sunny day acts differently on the eye; the accidental sensible as such in no way affects the sense.
• Objection: aren’t the senses sometimes deceived? Reply: when the organ is affected (his mother: eat your orange before your candy, or the orange tastes sour); with a sound organ one is not deceived about taste as such.

7. Enumeration of the common sensibles (“shape and magnitude”) #

Point: at 186 he lists motion, rest, number (seemingly known by all five senses), then shape and magnitude (the continuous ones), known by only two: sight and touch.

• Aside: the translator chose to translate the chapter on sight and part of that on touch.
• Student: “Can you hear the shape of something?” Answer: the poets say yes, but no; you cannot smell or taste a shape except insofar as taste is a kind of touch. Shakespeare’s mixing of senses would be metaphorical, e.g. “your sweet form.”

8. Thomas Aquinas on the metaphor “sweet” (“Taste and see how sweet is the Lord”) #

Point: metaphor rests on likeness; Thomas, commenting on the Psalm, finds three things in sweet: pleasant, restful, refreshing. He calls this “the best explanation of the metaphor sweet.”

• Pleasant: all children like candy (the Irish priest in Watertown, Minnesota, with candy in a sack).
• Restful: police buying a lost crying child an ice cream cone; his own stapled bags of M&M’s as “daddy treats” to quiet three children on a cross-country drive.
• Refreshing: the afternoon candy bar or soda “to pick you up” (aside: radio report on obese children and school vending machines).
• Applied to God: “thou made us for thyself… our hearts are restless till they rest in thee”; “come to me… and I will refresh you”; pleasant to think about.
• “Sweetheart” (heart a synecdoche for the whole): pleasant to be loved, restful to be with one who loves us, refreshing (Shakespeare’s sonnet: thinking of the dear friend restores all).
• “Sweet form” = beautiful: the beautiful pleases when seen; beautiful scenery is called “restful”; “a sight for sore eyes,” a beautiful painting refreshes tired eyes in a reading room. Properly speaking the form and the heart are not sweet; sweet is the private sensible of taste.

9. Empedocles on sight and touch (“the broadest road leading into the mind of man”) #

Point: an Empedocles fragment about not being able to see God or grasp him with the hands singles out sight and touch as the broadest road from the senses into reason; together they have an excellence the other senses lack: they alone know shape or form.

• Importance of form: forms of government, substantial form of the body, forms of fiction.
• Sight is important for clarity and knowing at a distance; touch for certitude: doubting Thomas trusts touch over sight (fingers in the nails, hand in the side).
• Stop and plan for next time (see Orientation).

10. Student question: joy, delight, happiness (“happy means lucky”) #

Point: happiness (eudaimonia, felicitas) in the Ethics names the end or purpose of man, not the joy of reaching it; English “happy” has taken on the sense of joyful.

• Opposite of happy in the Ethics sense: miserable, wretched; wretchedness is not sadness itself (Summa Contra Gentiles: to be mistaken is a great part of misery, yet the mistaken man is not sad).
• Three synonyms, three etymologies, three possible causes: eudaimonia = well-daemoned (daemon not originally bad; like a good or bad angel; Socrates’ daimon), hinting at a higher being; felicitas from felix, fruitful, happiness as natural result of virtuous deeds, misery of vicious (Macbeth: “unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles”); happiness from “hap,” luck.
• Some truth in all three: people are largely responsible for their own misery (“virtue is its own reward”); the common man says “somebody upstairs likes me”; luck: accidents, inheriting land with oil, meeting the right person. Stories: the only pack of cigarettes he bought (English Ovals, Boston) got him a job offer from a Canadian academic in a hotel bar; Boulay hired after chatting on a Florida beach; his brother Mark’s misread letter delayed one offer so he went to California and met Brian McCarthy.
• Student asks about beatitudo: used for the highest happiness; Aristotle has makarios.
• Poetics uses eutuchia, good luck, for happiness and misery in tragedy and comedy; corresponds etymologically to “happiness.” Romeo: trying to stop Mercutio and Tybalt, he becomes “fortune’s fool”; meeting Juliet (he came for Rosaline) was good luck; the friar’s delayed message bad luck. Latin also says bona fortuna for happiness; we call the happy “fortunate,” the wretched “unfortunate”; oddly “lucky” means good luck.
• Ethics fits felicitas best: it teaches not how to win higher beings or control fortune, but how by what we do we become happy or miserable; yet Aristotle is nuanced (Solon: call no man happy until he is dead; Oedipus); Titus Andronicus, “that disgusting play,” exaggerates the point (sons dead in glory vs. survivors facing misfortune).
• The etymology of a word is not its meaning; happiness in the Ethics = man’s own act done well according to virtue throughout life.
• Joy vs. happiness: gaining the end naturally results in joy (delectatio, gaudium), but the end is not joy; because joy accompanies happiness, people identify them. Dialectical rule: a word with more than one opposite has more than one meaning: happy vs. sad is a different sense from happy vs. miserable/wretched. Original sense “hap” in Two Gentlemen of Verona, beginning and end.
• “Happiness” degraded in English: Einstein says happiness is for the beast (the cat purring contentedly); a false understanding starts with Kant. The student’s occasion: a description of a religious order as “not happy but joyous”; he grants “happiness” is sometimes used for mindless contentment. Purity, raised last time, is left for later.

His words #

• outward / inward senses; the five external senses vs. memory and the like [ed.: exterior and interior senses]
• ability; the power of the soul [ed.: potency]
• as such / through itself; kath’ hauto, per se
• by happening / accidentally; kata symbebekos, per accidens; something else in us knows it
• private sensible; idios, proprium, what only one sense perceives and about which it does not err [ed.: proper sensible]
• common sensible; perceived by more than one sense (motion, rest, number, shape, magnitude)
• accidental sensible in the full sense; individual substance, known only by understanding
• common way / private way of proceeding; communis modus procedendi / proprius modus
• synecdoche; “heart” for the whole person in “sweetheart”
• eudaimonia, felicitas, happiness; names for the end of man; opposite miserable/wretched
• makarios, beatitudo; the highest happiness
• eutuchia, bona fortuna; good luck, the Poetics’ word
• delectatio, gaudium; delight, joy, what naturally accompanies the end

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima II.6: opening (“one must first… speak about the sensibles”); the three ways sensible is said; the definition of the private sensible (sight of colour, hearing of sound, taste of flavour, touch of many differences); the list of common sensibles (“186” in his translation).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima III (opening), II.7, II.11, II.12
• Empedocles, fragment on the broadest road into the mind of man (handout: Natural Theology Fragments p. 6; DHB Vol. I, p. 85)
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Psalms, “Taste and see how sweet is the Lord”
• Thomas Aquinas, on logic as the common way of proceeding (locus not stated)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, on being mistaken as part of misery
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (eudaimonia; definition of happiness; Solon); Aristotle, Poetics (eutuchia; tragedy and comedy)
• Shakespeare: sonnet on the mistress’s voice; sonnet on the friend restoring all; “your sweet form”; Macbeth; Romeo and Juliet; Titus Andronicus; Two Gentlemen of Verona
• Augustine, “thou made us for thyself” (inferred: he does not name the author)

His questions #

• Do I hear the cat as such, or do I hear the sound and think of a cat? I hear the sound as such; something else in me, having learned it, recognizes the cat.
• Why do we all say “I hear the cat” when we don’t hear the cat? Because being a cat happens to that sound; but something else in us must know that.
• Could you say “by belonging to” instead of “by happening”? “By happening” is better; it brings out that it is not as such.
• Was Uncle mistaken about the private sensible when he put salt in his coffee? No; he was right that it was white, deceived about salt vs. sugar, the substance.
• Why are the senses sometimes deceived even about their own object? Only when the organ is affected (candy before the orange); a sound organ is not deceived.
• Can you hear the shape of something? No; only sight and touch know shape; poetic mixing is metaphor.
• What is the likeness in the metaphor “sweet”? Pleasant, restful, refreshing (Thomas on the Psalm).
• Does happiness mean joy? No; it names the end of man; joy naturally accompanies reaching it.
• What about the word beatitudo? Used for the highest happiness; Aristotle’s makarios.
• Is there a distinction between joy, delight and happiness? Joy and delight are closer synonyms; “happy” as joyful is a different meaning from happy as opposed to wretched.