Why the Understandable Doesn't Always Understand; Reading Aristotle through Thomas; Liberal Education

Orientation #

He refers back to “the previous part,” where the object of our reason was distinguished (nn. 329–330) and to the first difficulty already treated; he notes the last sentence of 330 “we didn’t talk about” last time (prev. lecture). He points forward to “the next chapter,” where Aristotle compares the act of understanding to light. Text-matching found readings from two handouts (“An Introduction to the First Road in Our Knowledge,” p. 9; “Pride as a Cause of Error,” p. 8) and from DHB Vol III pp. 934–1009; the transcript’s Hesiod passage and the “more known to us / more known by nature” distinction are the likeliest matches, but the transcript does not name them. The previous class set up the two objections of 331–332 and the need for an agent intellect; the next takes up chapter five.

The class, in order #

1. Reason becomes understandable when it actually understands (“it is itself understandable just as are the understandables”) #

Point: n. 334 says the reason (nous) becomes actually understandable only when it actually understands something else, which raises the other side of the problem.

• Comparison he reports (“sometimes they compare”): our reason in the order of understandables is like first matter in the material world: only potentially something, understandable “in ability,” actually understandable only when actually understanding.
• The text: “for in what is without matter, the understanding and the thing being understood are the same; for speculative science and what is thus known are the same.”
• The objection this generates, which he calls “very very interesting”: if the understanding in act is the understandable in act, why don’t other things, when they become understandable, also understand?

2. “Speculative,” “theoretical,” “looking” (“I translate that as looking philosophy”) #

Point: his translation of theoretike / speculativa as “looking.”

• Greek checked: he gar episteme he theoretike. Theoria = looking; Latin speculativa from the Latin for looking. Looking = trying to see, in the sense of trying to understand; theoretical philosophy is philosophy whose end is just to understand, against practical philosophy (ethics), whose end is to do something.
• Why the English words fail: “speculative” today means guessing (the stock market), but geometry is speculative philosophy and is not guessing; “theoretical” suggests a construct removed from the real world, whereas “looking at” is concrete.
• Theorem: “something to look at,” like a sunset, a rainbow, a painting, but looked at with the reason rather than the eyes.
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy: Lady Wisdom (Sophia / sapientia, feminine) consoles the imprisoned, falsely accused Boethius in dialogue form; her clothing bears theta (theoretical philosophy), placed higher, and pi (practical); her gowns are torn because men grabbing for wisdom have dismembered it, as Empedocles says: men seeing a part of the truth boast they have seen the whole.
• Aside: a commentator on Thomas’s Summa remarks that women are better at consoling than men, hence wisdom as a lady.

3. The cause of not always understanding: the understandable does not understand (“one must look into the cause of not always understanding”) #

Point: n. 335 (bottom of p. 37) is, as Thomas explains, not about why reason doesn’t always understand but why the understandable doesn’t always understand.

• He admits “the average dimmer like me” would read it the first way; Thomas’s context fixes the second.
• Problem restated formally: what understands is what is understood; what understands obviously understands; so why doesn’t what is understood always understand?
• Student’s answer: the pencil is understandable but lacks the faculty of understanding. His reply: that speaks of the ability to understand, but the problem concerns actual understanding, which is more than the ability. In God there is no ability to understand distinct from his actual understanding, otherwise he would be composed and not pure act. So looking only at actual understanding, which is the understandable, the problem remains: “this thing is getting sideways.”
• His resolution, from the previous part: the object of our reason is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined; it must be separated from those to be actually understandable, i.e. become in a way immaterial. The cat walking around, the chair, even the triangle (in the continuous) are material and as such not actually understandable, so they cannot actually understand. The thing in itself does not become immaterial; it becomes immaterial only in the mind.
• Reading the text: among things having matter, each of the understandables is only in potency; hence the mind will not be present in these, for the mind is a potency of such things, an ability (dunamis) without matter, able to receive these things without their matter because it is itself without matter. He prefers “understandable” to “intelligible.”
• Greek re-read: what has matter is not understandable in act; to such things nous will not belong; nous is a dunamis without matter of such things, and to it belongs the understandable. The bracketed “having matter” in the English “is not in the Greek anyway.”
• Conclusion: these understandables don’t understand because they are actually understandable only when their what-it-is is separated from individual matter, and then they become one with something already immaterial, the mind.

4. Angels and God: understandable in act and understanding (“something is understandable to the extent that it is separated from matter”) #

Point: the principle emerging is that understandability follows immateriality.

• Angels and God are understandable in act by their very nature, because immaterial; so in their case the understandable does understand. A dog or cat is not actually immaterial, so only able to be understood.
• Student: wouldn’t angels and God then be equivalently intelligible, both being immaterial? Reply: they are understandable in different ways (differences not gone into now); as far as being actually understandable, true of both. God is much more understandable than the angels, “but not to us.”
• Aristotle’s famous distinction: what is more known to us is less known by nature; what is more knowable by nature is less knowable to us, because of the weakness of our mind.

5. The last sentence of 330 and the three parts of looking philosophy (“as things are separable from matter”) #

Point: “generally therefore as things are separable from matter, thus also are they things which concern the mind” grounds the division of looking philosophy.

• Natural philosophy: natural things cannot be understood without matter, at least in general, sensible matter (man with flesh, blood, bones; tree with bark, xylem, phloem).
• Mathematics: found in matter, understood without sensible matter, but not without extension, which Aristotle calls understandable matter and he calls “a kind of imaginable matter” (sphere, cube).
• Metaphysics or wisdom: no matter at all; God and angels understood even without extension, which is very difficult for us: we understand more that they are not continuous than what they are positively. Aristotle shows the three parts in the sixth book of wisdom; the moderns, not seeing this, see no basis for the division.
• “kind of a gateway to understanding the angels and God”: the connection between immateriality and understandability.
• Heisenberg: passing from Newtonian mechanics to quantum theory one must “learn a new meaning of the word understanding”; he takes the other side of the coin: those things are understandable in a different way, and, standing back from physics (one part of natural science), the objects of the three parts of looking philosophy are understandable in different ways, so “understanding means something different.”

6. Two meanings of “understandable”; the act of understanding as light (“he compares it to light”) #

Point: much of 335 turns on understandable-in-ability vs understandable-in-act, which sets up the agent intellect of the next chapter.

• The paradox: to become actually understandable, material things must be made in a way immaterial; hence the act of understanding, compared analogously to light, which makes colors actually visible; without light colors are visible only in potency. The act of understanding is a spiritual, immaterial light making the what-it-is of sensible and imaginable things actually understandable.
• “The light which enlightens every man who comes into the world”: the agent intellect as a partaking of the divine light, so weak in us that we ask God and the guardian angel to strengthen the light of the mind. The Church teaches, as an article of faith, that God’s existence can be known by the natural light of reason, though not that most people can know it.
• The objections, though answered in this ninth reading, “should leave you a little bit of uneasiness,” so that one begins to see the need for the act of understanding. Another route: there is no world of forms; if forms acted directly on our mind, no act of understanding would be needed.
• Light of glory (Thomas): unlike Aristotle’s light, it is not to make God understandable in act, since he dwells in light inaccessible and is most understandable, though not to us; it disposes our mind to receive God as both that by which we see and what we see. “The problem’s not in him, like is material things.”
• Kant was right that the thing in itself is not knowable, but should have said not knowable in act in itself, knowable in ability; missing the distinction he ends up knowing nothing (Empedocles again: part of the truth boasted as the whole). Three cases: not understandable in any way; understandable in ability and therefore not in act; understandable in act.
• Difficulty of understanding ability: even Plato confused the ability of matter with lack of form, whence the Platonists (explicitly Plotinus) call matter evil, confusing matter with non-being; like confusing your ability to know with your ignorance. “If your mind was your ignorance, then you’d be in pretty bad shape.”
• “extremely subtle”: what Aristotle says in the second difficulty; “it takes a wit like Thomas to illumine the dim wits like us.”

7. Wits, dim wits, nitwits; reading Aristotle through Thomas (“Aristotle means what Thomas says he means”) #

Point: the order of teaching and the discipline of careful reading.

• Hesiod (cited in Aristotle): best is the man who understands by himself; next, who learns from the discoverer; who does neither is useless (Thomas softens: useless for acquiring knowledge, may have other worth). “Know thyself” of the seven wise men: are you a wit, a dim wit or a nitwit? Modern philosophers: dim wits who think they are wits.
• Monsignor Dion on Cajetan: he should have commented on Thomas, not directly on Aristotle. Cajetan compared the order among minds to the angels, each illumining the one below: Aristotle illumines Thomas, Thomas us, we our students; skipping Thomas one misses and misunderstands.
• Example: Dion and John Galt on Metaphysics V ch. 1, six meanings of “beginning”: under the second meaning Aristotle compares to beginning from what is more known to us, which some take as the second meaning itself; Dion: “look what Thomas says.” Rule of thumb: Aristotle means what Thomas says he means, allowing rare cases of a defective Latin translation.
• Greek commentators vs Thomas: Thomas penetrates far more; Ammonius (Hermeiou, teacher of Boethius) is very good but survives in few works.
• Student: did Aristotle not realize how far below him everyone was? Reply: the texts may be Aristotle’s notes or the school’s official notes, like a professor’s index card expanded in class; in ancient schools the spoken word carried more of the teaching, and before printing no one wasted words (contrast John Locke apologizing at the end of the Essay for prolixity but too lazy to revise); hence the need for a tradition of living teachers.
• De Koninck, bedridden and refused by the Dominicans, read Thomas carefully; he compared it to Thomas locked up by his brothers memorizing the Bible and the Sentences: one needs a period free of distraction. His own quiet last two college years with his mother “kind of like a monastery.” Kasurik: “you don’t read very carefully, Duane,” until he learned to read.
• Student: read closely at first or generally then closely? Either, but as his father said of winter driving, you must “learn how to drive again”: learn to read again.
• Thomas, Secunda Secundae, on being teachable: read the words carefully, frequently, with reverence; the way Thomas read Augustine and Aristotle. Reading Thomas as one reads a novel gives indigestion.

8. The end of the study: eternal life is understanding God (“understanding God is like understanding eternal life”) #

Point: these few words anticipate the study of God and angels, which is the end.

• Thomas: I study the body to study the soul, the soul to study the angels, the angels to study God.
• John 17: Christ prays out loud for our instruction, in order: first for himself, then the apostles, then all who will believe; so pray first for yourself, then those close, then the whole church and all men; “charity begins at home.” He found Thomas’s commentary on ch. 17 by chance in his “Current” folder.
• “This is eternal life, to know you alone and whom you sent”: Thomas explains life as applied to the mind; since the understanding is the understandable, understanding God, seeing him as he is, is eternal life because he is eternal life.
• Student (reporting Dr. MacArthur): learning more of Christ from St. Paul than the Gospels; is that because one is not spiritually there? Reply: one needs the Church Fathers or Thomas to unfold the meaning; Thomas on John uses chiefly Augustine and Chrysostom, occasionally Hilary and others; Cajetan in the proem to the Summa: Thomas inherited the mind of all the Fathers through reverence for them. Chrysostom’s feast a week ago (calendars differ); many times exiled from Constantinople. Thomas (on Matthew, he thinks): never does one fully unfold the meanings of Christ’s words.

9. Liberal education and “the truth will make you free” (“education of reason for the good of reason”) #

Point: preparing a talk for parents at the Tribune School, he gives the reason for the name “liberal.”

• Liberal education is for the good of reason itself, against education for the good of the body (medicine), the food (the Culinary Institute), the car (mechanic school). Since man is better than the animals by reason, its good should not be neglected.
• The analogy: the slave works for the good of another, the master; reason serving the body, house, car is enslaved; pursuing its own good it is free. Hence liberal vs servile education.
• The Fathers connect this with Martha and Mary: Mary chose the better part, the good of her mind listening to Christ; Martha the good of the dinner; “it shall not be taken away from her” because completed in the next world. Yet we need more Marthas than Marys, and even the liberally educated man must often pursue other goods.
• “You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free”: students give “free from sin,” “free from error”; he grants these but adds: reason pursuing truth pursues its own good and is free, most of all knowing the first truth, God, in the beatific vision, where reason is no longer enslaved to anything; this life’s knowledge anticipates that.
• “Are you a king?”: Christ’s kingdom is a kingdom of truth, i.e. of reason. Aristotle, second book of wisdom: wisdom is knowledge of truth by antonomasia; truth belongs more to looking than to practical knowledge, because it is the end of looking knowledge, and practical knowledge deals with contingent truths (France, England’s enemy in the Napoleonic and French and Indian wars, ally in the world wars); the cause is more true than the effect, so the first cause is most true, and as things are in being they are in truth; wisdom, about the first cause, is most true.
• Asides: the old Oxford English translation of Aristotle is “abominable” in places; Richard Berquist (his brother) is the source of a story; a teacher asked “Where’s your Greek?” and made him take it; later he read Aristotle in Greek with Koval; whatever Greek he has is a marvelous help.

His words #

• understandable; his preferred rendering of “intelligible”; in two senses, in ability (potency) and in act.
• ability; his rendering of dunamis [ed.: potency].
• looking philosophy / looking knowledge; theoretike, speculativa [ed.: theoretical, speculative]; philosophy whose end is just to understand.
• theorem; “something to look at” with the reason.
• wisdom; his name for the Metaphysics; second, fifth, sixth “book of wisdom.”
• the act of understanding; the “agent intellect, as it’s sometimes called”; a spiritual light.
• imaginable matter; his gloss on Aristotle’s “understandable matter” (extension) in mathematics.
• wit / dim wit / nitwit; the three men of Hesiod.
• teachable; reading carefully, frequently, with reverence (Thomas).
• liberal vs servile education; education of reason for its own good vs for the good of another.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima III.4, n. 334 (“it is itself understandable… speculative science and what is thus known are the same”), with the Greek.
• Aristotle, De Anima III.4, n. 335 (“one must look into the cause of not always understanding… the mind is a potency of such things”), with the Greek.
• Aristotle, De Anima III.4, n. 330, last sentence (“as things are separable from matter…”).
• Handout pages found by text-matching: “An Introduction to the First Road in Our Knowledge,” p. 9; “Pride as a Cause of Error,” p. 8 (probably the Hesiod and “more known to us” material).

Mentioned

• Thomas, Commentary on De Anima, ninth reading (this division).
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy (Lady Wisdom, theta and pi).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI (three parts of looking philosophy); V ch. 1 (six meanings of beginning); II (wisdom and truth).
• Hesiod, via Aristotle and Thomas (three kinds of men).
• Plotinus (matter as evil); Kant (thing in itself); Heisenberg (new meaning of understanding).
• Cajetan, proem to the Summa; Cajetan on the order of minds.
• Ammonius Hermeiou; the Greek commentators.
• John Locke, Essay (closing apology).
• Thomas, Secunda Secundae (teachableness); Thomas on John ch. 17; Thomas on Matthew (never fully unfolding Christ’s words).
• John 17 (Christ’s prayer; “this is eternal life”); “the truth will make you free”; “are you a king?”; Martha and Mary.
• Oxford English translation of Aristotle.

His questions #

• If the understanding in act is the understandable in act, why don’t other things, when they become understandable, also understand? Material things are understandable only in potency; made actually understandable by separation from matter, they are one with the immaterial mind; angels and God, immaterial by nature, do understand.
• Is “the cause of not always understanding” about the reason or about the understandable? Thomas: about why the understandable does not always understand.
• Does saying the pencil lacks the faculty of understanding answer the problem? No; the problem is about actual understanding, which is the understandable, not the ability.
• Wouldn’t angels and God be equivalently intelligible? (student) Both understandable in act, but in different ways; God more understandable, though not to us.
• Why is looking philosophy divided into natural, mathematical and metaphysics? Because their objects are diversely separable from matter.
• Is the light of glory like the light Aristotle speaks of? No; it disposes our mind rather than making God understandable in act.
• Should one first read closely or first generally? (student) Either; but one must learn to read again, carefully, frequently, with reverence.
• Who should you pray for, and in what order? As Christ in John 17: yourself, those close to you, then all.
• What do “you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free” mean? Besides freedom from sin and error, reason knowing truth pursues its own good and is free, most of all in knowing the first truth.