Sensible in Act, Sound in the Forest, and Praying with Other Religions

Orientation #

He says they are “just at the end of this section” and will start “the second one, twenty-four, twenty-five next time,” where (284) Aristotle reasons from the act of sensing the difference between the private sensibles of different senses. “As he argued in the second book” is his own back-reference to De Anima II on the object acting on the sense. He notes the schedule: next Wednesday, then school begins on the 26th and the class must move to Tuesday or Thursday. The previous class examined how sensible-in-act and sense-in-act are one in being but differ in definition; the next takes up the “common sense” argument for discerning white from sweet.

The class, in order #

1. Why the object is called “sensible” and not “sense-making” (“either the power acts upon the object”) #

Point: the connection between a power and its object is exhausted by two possibilities, and for sense the object acts on the power.

1. A power and its object must be connected, or there is no reason to call this the object of that power; the only connection is one acting on the other.
2. So either the power acts on the object (the feeding power acts upon the food) or the object acts on the power.
3. For sense powers, as argued in Book II, the object acts upon the power.
4. Therefore: the sensible is what acts on the senses; the sensible in ability is what is able to act on them; the sensible in act is what is acting on them. Examples: the sound in the forest / a glass being tapped with nobody to hear it: something able to be heard but not actually heard, against nobody tapping the glass at all. Food before tasting: it is tasty “in a sense”; fully tasty only when tasted. He resists the student who denies altogether that it was tasty before, and diagnoses the difficulty as “the inability of our mind to understand ability” — the same problem they had with matter, that ability seems to be nothing.

2. The last paragraph: concord is a ratio (“concord is a certain sound”) #

Point: nothing new here; he reads it and notes the earlier point returns. Read: if concord is a certain sound, and sound and hearing are as one and are not as one same thing, and concord is a ratio, then hearing must be a certain ratio — “the sense organ, maybe.” Hence each excessive thing, the shrill and the strong, destroys hearing; “similarly in flavors.” This is the point made before about excess, brought in again because of the likeness of the two (sound and hearing).

3. Preview of 284: knowing the difference between white and sweet (“we sense the difference between the private sensibles”) #

Point: next time Aristotle reasons from the fact that we sense the difference between the private sensibles of different senses, and asks whether one sense can do it. Sight cannot know the difference between white and sweet, since it does not know sweet; taste cannot, since it knows only sweet. Can the two together? The syllogism analogy: if I know the major premise (every mother is a woman) and you know the minor (no man is a woman), can either of us syllogize that no man is a mother? Can the two of us together? Or must at least one of us get both premises into his head? “So it’s the same one” — left as the question for next time.

4. The mercy of God: taken from metaphor, not a metaphor (“What is the mercy of God?”) #

Point: pity as an emotion and mercy as God’s will differ, though the word is the same. A student asks what it would mean for the will to pity somebody. The Greek word for pity in Kyrie eleison is the same as for the emotion; the same word Aristotle uses for pity and fear in the book on the tragedy, and for the jury feeling pity in the Rhetoric so they let the man go or punish him less. The mercy of God is not a metaphor, but is taken from metaphor: it is not God feeling sorry and sad at our misery, but God’s will to relieve our misery, which is “so different” from the feeling we have when we see someone hurt or bereaved.

5. Love is a choice, and people cannot move the word (“it’s a very special feeling”) #

Point: people are stuck on the original (feeling) meaning of love and cannot see the second. A girl asked “what is love?” answered “a very special feeling”; in the love and friendship course they say the same. His reply: “so is anger, so is sadness” — they cannot say what feeling in particular, and cannot get beyond it. The marriage ceremony: the priest does not ask whether you have wonderful or nasty feelings about the person but whether you choose this person; you marry yourself, not by two feelings but by two acts of the will — a choice. Contrast with “see”: “I see, said the blind man, but he couldn’t see at all” (his mother’s saying) — students grasp the two meanings of “see” at once, whereas “I love you but I don’t love you” makes no clear pun; we have to say “I love you but not in love with you.” Attributed to Monsignor Dionne: “how much people are stuck on the original meanings of these things.”

6. Can one pray with those who have a false notion of God? (“we can’t pray together because we don’t have the same God”) #

Point: an open discussion, started by a student on traditionalist objections to ecumenical prayer with Jews or Muslims. The objection: the Jews deny the Trinity, so it is a different God, like praying with a devil-worshipper. His distinctions: praying with those who have an imperfect understanding of God is one thing; a perverse or false notion another; and often it is mixed — a general vague notion we share, with obstacles added. John Paul II has done it. Pressed further: many Catholics in the pew think God has emotions, or a body — the man surprised to hear God is not a father with a big white beard; the question how an angel gets in through closed windows; his cousin unable to convince his church-going mother that God in his divine nature has no body. Yet one would not say she prays to a different God. Complication he raises against himself: there are texts of Thomas where, God being simple, any mistake about God is almost like a denial of God — “very strong,” “you got to be careful about that.” Then Thomas’s more human remark that one can hardly say one Our Father without being distracted: am I praying with you when your mind is wandering? Aside on the ecumenical services themselves: the Pope had Buddhists there too; he did not study which prayers were used; and, a student adds, people can hold things that contradict their first principles without having eliminated those principles — so one could use what they still hold, leaving aside the errors.

7. Words first, understanding after: Psalm 18, Teresa, the rosary (“let the words of my mouth”) #

Point: prayer, like philosophy, is led by words whose meaning one comes to see more and more. Psalm 18 ends “let the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart find favor”: the words come first, then the thought. “Teach us how to pray” — He gives them the words, and the thoughts must eventually correspond to them. St Teresa of Jesus meditating on the words “Our Father,” how sweet it is to call him Father. Parallel: one learns the words of a definition (of motion; his brother Richard on emotion) long before understanding what they mean. Student’s question: can one think of the words of the Hail Mary and meditate on the mystery at the same time? His answer: no, not both at once — “if you’re Padre Pio, yeah.” Asides: Padre Pio to a visitor, “just one Hail Mary would have been worth all this”; his first reading of Padre Pio’s meditations; the long skepticism in Rome before canonization. Tomorrow the Assumption; today Maximilian Kolbe, who started an order devoted to Mary.

8. Praying with a child, with Indians, Muslims, Buddhists (“she thought the priest was God”) #

Point: a child may pray with a very imperfect notion of God, so imperfection alone does not bar common prayer. His son Marcus once thought Father Mungluso was Jesus Christ; an Irish girl thought the priest was God because “we’re going to church to see God” — “a pretty strong heresy,” yet a false notion one still prays beside. Some American Indians had one highest God who made everything, though other ideas about him were wrong; Muslims hold many of the attributes of God — one could agree on that. A Jesuit in Japan: he could pray with Protestants and Jews, but with Buddhists they only discussed and then meditated side by side, since some do not even think there is a God. Buddhist denial of soul or self — only sensations and thoughts, no one thing — compared to Hume: substance disappears from Berkeley to Locke to Hume. He notes the strict rule cuts the other way: then one could not go to church on Sunday beside people who think God has feelings, a body, or needs. Aside: Father Fessio walked out of a Jesuit-school mass with a woman Protestant minister at the altar — “conflicting reports.”

His words #

• sensible / “sense-making”: the sensible is what acts upon the sense, not what makes sense; sensible in ability = able to act on the sense, sensible in act = acting on it [ed.: sensible in potency / in act].
• ability: what the mind finds hard to understand, “ability is nothing” [ed.: potency].
• private sensibles: the sensibles proper to one sense (white, sweet) [ed.: proper sensibles].
• concord: a certain sound that is a ratio; hearing therefore a ratio (the sense organ).
• pity / mercy: one Greek word (eleison); of God, not a metaphor but taken from metaphor; God’s will to relieve our misery.
• imperfect vs. perverse/false notion of God: the distinction governing whether one can pray together.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima III (inferred), the closing paragraph: “If, however, concord is a certain sound… destroys hearing. Similarly, in flavors.”
• Psalm 18 (his numbering), closing verse on the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart. Mentioned
• Aristotle, De Anima II, that the object acts upon the sense power.
• De Anima III, section 284 and “twenty-four, twenty-five” (Thomas’s commentary numbering, inferred) for next time.
• Aristotle, “the book on the tragedy” [ed.: Poetics], pity and fear; Rhetoric, pity in the jury.
• Thomas Aquinas: God’s simplicity, any mistake almost a denial (locus not stated); hardly one Our Father without distraction (locus not stated).
• Luke, “teach us how to pray” (inferred), the Our Father.
• St Teresa of Jesus meditating on “Our Father”; Padre Pio, meditations on the Passion and on Mary Immaculate.
• Hume, Berkeley, Locke on substance.

His questions #

• Is the food tasty before I taste it? In a sense; fully tasty only when tasted — the difficulty is our mind’s inability to understand ability.
• Can the sense of sight know the difference between white and sweet? Can taste? Can the two together? Sight does not know sweet, taste does not know white; the two together — left open for next time.
• If I know the major premise and you the minor, can either of us, or the two of us together, syllogize? Left as a question; the suggestion is that one must get both premises into his head.
• What is the mercy of God? Not God feeling sad at our misery but His will to relieve it.
• Does the priest at the marriage ask whether you have wonderful feelings? No; he asks whether you choose this person — married by two acts of the will.
• Can we pray with the Jews or Muslims if they deny the Trinity? With an imperfect notion, yes; a perverse or false notion is another thing, and often it is mixed.
• Am I praying with you when you’re not even praying? Left open; Thomas says one can hardly say one Our Father without being distracted.
• Can you think of what the words of the Hail Mary mean while meditating on the mystery? No, not both at once — unless you are Padre Pio.
• Is it wrong to pray with a child who thinks the priest is God? Left open; implied no, a false notion does not make a different God.