The Object of Reason: What a Thing Is, Universals and Immaterial Understanding

Orientation #

He says the first part of chapter 4, “down to about through 328”, is “the part we looked at last time” (prev. lecture), and that a further power, “the act of understanding”, comes in “the next chapter”, to be set aside for now. The Shakespeare lines come from the handout “Shakespeare on Error”, p. 3 (verified source); the class text is the printed volume DHB Vol III, p. 1030 (verified source). The previous class covered the intellect as undergoing power and the sense/understanding comparison; the next continues with the theological digression on names of God and Aristotle’s two objections.

The class, in order #

1. Angels and our minds: images vs. the light of reason (“strengthen the light of our mind”) #

Point: a student presses an apparent contradiction — the angel acts on us only through the body, yet Thomas says the angel can “strengthen the light of our mind”.

• Student’s objection: strengthening the light of our mind requires direct contact with our mind, not only ordering our images; “a stronger light fortifies a lesser light.”
• His reply (partial): he was not sure he had asserted the first claim; Thomas “speaks of both.” Devils do not strengthen the light because they want to deceive.
• Distinction he finds “interesting” in Thomas: images relate more directly to grasping, the light of reason to judging. From images we get our basic ideas by separating what is common; the light of reason lets us judge, separate true from false, good from bad. So the devil moves our images (temptation) but will not aid the light of reason.
• Shakespeare’s witches as devil-like deceivers: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air” — he notes the meter (trochaic).
• Follow-up: angels do have some direct access to the spiritual part of us; they do not give grace directly but “reveal things to us.” Thomas: angels also know what we sense — if I am hungry, what I am seeing or smelling — “through the images.”
• Aside: Mozart’s C major as representation of magnanimity (36th “Linz” Symphony, Jupiter) vs. C major for joy (C major quintet); “very wise to appeal to the greatness” of people.

2. Recap of the first part: understanding as undergoing ability (“an ability that is acted upon by its object”) #

Point: chapter 4 has three main parts; the first (to 328) shows reason is an undergoing ability, and hence not a body.

1. Powers of the soul divide completely by whether the object acts on the power or the power on the object: if neither, there is no connection and no reason to call it the object of that power.
2. Aristotle compares understanding with the senses (undergoing, knowing powers), not with the vegetative powers (acting-upon, non-knowing). So understanding is an undergoing, “suffering, but not in the original sense” — a receiving.
3. We know what material bodies are, universally; so reason is open to receiving all their natures; so it must lack any bodily nature — “It’s not in the brain.”
   • Examples: the fluid of the eye lacking color, the tongue not being itself sweet, bitter, oily or salty, otherwise it could not receive all flavors; an eye with inborn color would be like tinted glasses impeding all other colors.
4. Sign of the difference in receiving: a very strong sensible object temporarily impedes the organ; considering something very understandable does not impede lesser objects but sharpens them — after studying the Trinity he sees the isosceles triangle, if anything, more clearly. Reason: no bodily organ.

• Being acted upon by the object is common to sense and also to the desiring powers: loving is originally an undergoing. Examples: pity and sadness — his wife moved by a newspaper story of a three-year-old running into traffic; Cupid’s arrow wounding the heart; “you made a big impression upon her” — to impress is to act upon.
• So 329–330 move from the general (an object that acts upon) to the particular: what that object is. “You’ve got to read them very carefully here because he unfolds himself.”

3. The phrase “what was to be” (“the what was to be”) #

Point: “being magnitude” in the text contracts Aristotle’s formula to ti ēn einai, and he gives his own account of why Aristotle uses it rather than “what a thing is”.

• In Greek the phrase is an infinitive (“to be magnitude”, “to be water”), a contraction of the whole formula “the what was to be”, which appears in full in 330 and at the start of the Topics when defining is treated. He usually translates it “what a thing is” because of its unfamiliarity.
• His reason for the phrase:
  1. Matter, the first and best-known cause, is defined in two parts: that from which something comes to be, and existing within it. A wooden chair comes from wood and the wood is inside it. The wet comes from the dry, but the dry does not exist within the wet, so is not matter; the chair comes from the carpenter or the factory, but they are cause as maker, not within the thing.
  2. The wood is not what a chair is; it is the form the wood acquires through the carpenter that makes it what a chair is. Aristotle defines form as “the definition of what was to be.”
  3. So “what was to be” looks back to the matter that was able to become a chair, table or door but was not yet what it was to be.
• Second difficulty: he then contracts the formula to einai, “to be” — a double obscurity.

4. A circle vs. what a circle is; water vs. what water is (“other than what it is”) #

Point: a magnitude (line, square, sphere) or a natural thing (water) is other than what it is; he asks the class why.

1. If this circle and what a circle is were exactly the same, there could be no other circle beside it; “to be a circle would be this circle.” Likewise this water vs. what water is — there is other water in the pond, the pipes.
2. Why the distinction? Because these things are material (natural things) or at least in the continuous (mathematical things). Two circles because one is here and one there; many identical window panes because there is enough glass, many chairs because enough wood or metal — “enough” means matter subject to quantity, part outside of part.
3. Recall from natural philosophy the first definition of the continuous: that whose parts meet at a common boundary (line at a point, solid at a surface); this implies parts outside each other, so it can be cut up or one placed here and another there.
4. Take away continuous quantity (rooted in matter), and there could not be many individuals of one kind — nor a distinction between a thing and what it is.

• Aristotle hints (the parenthesis “but it’s not so in all… for in some they are the same”) that there are things where thing and what-it-is are identical; considering them belongs to the wise man, not to natural philosophy or geometry.

5. Angels and God: thing and what-it-is identical (“there can’t be two gods”) #

Point: Thomas draws from this that there cannot be two angels of one kind, nor two gods.

• The Church says three persons, one God, each one and the same God. Our Lord in John 17 addresses the Father as “the one true God” — heretics read this as making the Son a highest creature; similarly “tu solus” (“you alone are the most high”) in the creed [ed.: Gloria].
• Thomas in the John commentary quotes Augustine: some say Father, Son and Spirit are God only all together; wrong — the Father alone is God, the Son alone, the Spirit alone, each God, but one and the same God. Not as Socrates alone is a man and Plato alone a man (different individuals), but one and the same individual God: in an immaterial nature no difference between God and what God is. One of the eight articles of Summa q. 3 on simplicity; likewise in Summa contra Gentiles.
• Angels too, being immaterial: no two of equal rank. A teacher of his [name unclear in recording] would say “God hates equality.”
• Student: is that why every angel is a different species? Yes. Student: is every circle then a different species? No — many circles of exactly the same kind, as in Euclid’s first theorem constructing two equal circles, one here, one there. Gabriel and what Gabriel is are identical, Raphael and what Raphael is; but Socrates and what Socrates is (a man) are not, because there is enough flesh, blood and bones to go around. Better stated: matter subject to continuous quantity is the reason why there can be many circles of one kind.

6. The universal and the immateriality of understanding (“a very subtle thing”) #

Point: a circle is an individual, what a circle is is universal — another way to see that understanding is immaterial.

1. What reason knows directly is the universal, separated from the continuous; we know continuous things in a non-continuous, universal way.
2. The senses are bodily and continuous, so receive only the singular: what is received in the continuous is thereby here or there, hence singular.
3. If reason were a body it would be continuous and would receive as singular; since we receive as universal, it is not a body. He specifies: the what-it-is of a circle or a dog, not of God or Raphael, is universal. “It’s a very subtle thing.”

7. Flesh and what flesh is: different powers, or one power “having itself differently” (“as the bent has itself to itself when extended”) #

Point: the soul knows what flesh is and this flesh either by different powers or by one power differently disposed — and he explains why Aristotle adds the second.

• First alternative: by reason I know what flesh, water, a cat is; by eye or finger I know this flesh, this water, this cat (the cats that come round his class).
• Objection: we compare universal to singular — the lowest species in logic is not divided into kinds but said of many singulars; we grasp the relation of circle to this and that circle, of man to me and you. By the argument from the discussion of common sense, comparing two things requires one power knowing both. So reason must in some way know the singular.
• Reply: reason knows the singular not directly (that needs a sense power) but indirectly, “reflectively”, coming back upon the origin from which its universal was taken.
• Text read: flesh is not without matter but, like the snub, “of this in this”; the soul discerns hot and cold by sense, flesh being some ratio of these, but discerns being flesh by a different power, or by one which “has itself as the bent has itself to itself when extended” — “beautiful way of speaking.”

8. 330: the mathematicals, Plato, and abstraction (“in beings in abstraction”) #

Point: the same holds for mathematical things, which raises the difference between mathematics and natural science.

• Plato: natural science knows the sensible world, mathematics another, mathematical world — because he was convinced of the truth of geometry and implicitly assumed truth requires that the way you know be the way the thing is; geometry knows in separation from sensible matter.
• Example: what a cube is (bounded by six squares) — not hard or soft, wooden (a child’s toy), plastic (his office cube) or ice. Aristotle: the mind is not false in understanding cube apart from wood, since the shape is understandable without sensible matter — but not without the continuous; the six squares are here, there, part outside part. Hence a cube and what a cube is are not identical.
• Text: the straight exists with the continuous, but its what-was-to-be is other; “let it be duality” — Plato’s notion: point one, line two, triangle three, pyramid four. So the soul discerns it by something different: reason knows what a line is, imagination pictures this line — different powers.
• Thomas’s commentary: reason differs from both sense and imagination, which know only a man, a circle; both have bodily organs and receive under the conditions of the continuous. We understand a material thing immaterially, a continuous thing non-continuously.

9. Universal as first object of logic; definition and the moderns (“universal and understood”) #

Point: Boethius, quoted by Albert the Great at the beginning of logic — a thing is singular when sensed, universal when understood — so the universal (or names said of many) is the first thing considered in logic.

• Defect of modern logicians: the logic of definition suffers most, a footnote in symbolic logic books; whereas Plato’s dialogues are almost all “what is something” (virtue to Meno, piety to Euthyphro), and Aristotle says the whole Topics is to some extent about defining. Mill says there are no definitions of things — “very strange.”
• Conclusion on the object: from the examples (flesh, water — natural; mathematical — imaginable) the proper object of our reason, proportioned to our mind, is the what-it-is of a thing sensed or imagined; more generally, the what-it-is. Hence when natural philosophy discovers immaterial things, reason naturally asks what it is — Thomas as a boy blurting out “What is God?”
• Since definition brings out distinctly what a thing is, to be uninterested in definitions is to be uninterested in using one’s reason: definition is fundamental.

His words #

• grasping vs. judging: images serve grasping (separating out what is common), the light of reason serves judging.
• undergoing ability / undergoing power: a power acted upon by its object [ed.: passive potency]; “suffering, but not in the original sense” — receiving.
• acting upon powers: the vegetative powers, which act on their object.
• what a thing is / “the what was to be”: his rendering of to ti ēn einai; “being magnitude” = the contracted einai.
• matter: that from which something comes to be, existing within it.
• form: “the definition of what was to be.”
• continuous: that whose parts meet at a common boundary; part outside of part.
• reflectively: reason knowing the singular indirectly as origin of its universal; he attributes the word to Aristotle in the text.
• lowest species: not divided into kinds, said of many singulars.
• book about places: [ed.: Topics].

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima III.4, nn. 329–330 in the class text (magnitude/being magnitude; water; flesh and the snub; “the bent… when extended”; the straight, duality).
• Shakespeare, Macbeth, witches’ couplet (handout “Shakespeare on Error”, p. 3).

Mentioned

• Thomas, commentary on De Anima (first part to 328; reason neither sense nor imagination).
• Aristotle, Topics (opening; the whole book about defining).
• Aristotle’s definitions of matter and form (Physics, inferred).
• Thomas, ST I q. 3 (simplicity of God); Summa contra Gentiles on simplicity.
• Thomas, Commentary on John ch. 17, quoting Augustine.
• John 17; the creed / “tu solus”.
• Euclid, Elements I.1.
• Boethius as quoted by Albert the Great; Plato, Meno, Euthyphro; John Stuart Mill.
• Mozart: Symphony 36 “Linz”, “Jupiter”, C major quintet.

His questions #

• How resolve that the angel acts only through our body yet strengthens the light of our mind? Not fully resolved; Thomas speaks of both; images bear on grasping, the light of reason on judging.
• Fair is foul, foul is fair — what meter? Trochaic.
• Is this water and what water is entirely the same, or can you distinguish? Distinguish — there is other water in the pond and pipes.
• Why are a circle and what a circle is, a dog and what a dog is, not identical? Because they are material or in the continuous: part outside of part allows many of one kind.
• If you did away with continuous quantity, could you have many things of the same kind? No — nor any distinction between a thing and what it is (angels, God).
• Is every circle a different species, as every angel is? No; Euclid I.1 constructs two equal circles, one here and one there.
• Why does Aristotle add “or by one having itself differently”? Because comparing universal to singular needs one power knowing both; reason knows the singular reflectively, as origin of its universal.
• Does the cube in geometry have any matter in the ordinary sense? No — abstracted from sensible matter, but not from the continuous.
• What is the proper object of our reason? The what-it-is of a thing sensed or imagined; more generally, the what-it-is.