Imagination vs. Thought: Truth in Statements, Universal vs. Singular, Words and Metaphor, Music, and Loving Reason and Wisdom

Orientation #

He begins in the middle of the De Anima text on imagination and thinking (“in 258 he says imagination is different from affirmation and negation”), referring back to what “we pointed out before” about synthesis and to “that proportion that we gave earlier”. At the end: “next time we’ll go on to” the motive powers and the appetite, since “he’s through talking about the senses and reason by themselves.” Verified sources report an 11-minute reading from the handout “On the Natural Fragments” (p. 40; DHB Vol I p. 153); the transcript as given does not show where that reading falls. The previous class treated the mind’s dependence on phantasms through Locke’s general triangle, and the next turns to which power moves the animal from place to place.

The class, in order #

1. Imagination is not affirmation or negation (“the true or the false is an entwining of thoughts”) #

The point: an image, unlike a statement in the mind, is neither true nor false.

• The Greek is symploke noematon, an intertwining of thoughts (the symploke “I’m so fond of from the categories”); earlier the text called it a synthesis, a putting together.
• Argument: (1) truth is saying what is, is, and what is not, is not; falsehood is saying what is, is not, or what is not, is. (2) An image does not say that something is or is not. Conclusion: the image is not this kind of thought.
• Examples: imagining a glass mountain, or a unicorn — “strictly speaking” neither true nor false; “there are glass mountains in the world” is a statement, not an image, and is either true or false.

2. First thoughts are not phantasms, but not without them (“the first thoughts differ so as not to be phantasms”) #

The point: the thought of what a thing is differs from the image in being of the universal, while the image is of the singular.

• The last paragraph of the text does not spell out the difference; Thomas makes it explicit, “but Aristotle knows it, I’m sure”.
• Thought of what a man, a stone, a triangle is (Locke’s example, “that Locke is not seeing”): not a phantasm, yet not without phantasms.
• Image vs. thought: I imagine not just a particular kind of triangle but an individual of that kind; I have a thought of a particular kind of triangle and even of triangle in general.
• Why the thought is universal: it follows from the thought being of the what it is; the what-it-is of a sensible or imaginable, natural or mathematical thing is something common.

3. The three acts of reason, and Aristotle’s reverse order (“he goes in the what reverse order”) #

The point: Aristotle distinguishes imagining from thinking by working backward from the third act to the first, easiest to hardest.

• Recall from logic: first act, understanding what something is; second, truth or falsity, intertwining two things understood by the first act (man is an animal / is a stone); third, putting statements together to reason.
• Third act first: I can imagine without any reason to do so, but cannot think something without a reason. Examples: imagining a terrorist outside; imagining two semi trucks hitting him on the way home (“25 miles speed limit… plenty of time to get you”) — I have no reason to think it.
• Second act (in 358): truth and falsity, “easier to see too”.
• First act: image of the singular, thought of the universal — “the most fundamental difference and the most difficult to see”; this is where Locke goes wrong, trying to imagine the universal.
• Shakespeare’s definition of reason is by discourse (knowing one thing through another), not by knowing the universal; imagining is not discourse, yet resembles it a bit: having seen gold and mountains, I put them together into a gold mountain.

4. Why we confuse them: English usage, and Locke’s “idea” (“I think so. Yeah, I imagine so”) #

The point: ordinary speech treats “think” and “imagine” as interchangeable, which hides the distinction.

• “Do you think they’ll win Saturday?” — “I think so / I imagine so” mean the same; likewise about Santos being re-elected.
• Partridge’s etymological dictionary on “think”: “methinks”, “seems to me”, close to Aristotle’s words about the phantasm.
• The prologues of Henry V: the audience must fill out what the stage cannot show (two nations at war from a couple of men with swords; horses’ hoofs in the sand); he appeals to imagination but uses “imagine” and “think” indifferently. You would not notice unless you were a philosopher.
• Locke’s “idea” can refer to a thought or an image; and since you never think without imagining, the two are easily confused.

5. Student: is there understanding without an image? (“you don’t have a thought without an image”) #

The point: no thought without an image, because the object of reason is the what-it-is as of something sensed or imagined.

• Student’s puzzle: intuitive understanding all at once seems to come without an image. Answer: you are not concentrating on the image, but it is there; and there is a reason why.
• Argument by the earlier proportion: (1) the object of the eye is the colour of something outside it; the eye does not see the colour of the bricks without the bricks. (2) Reason knows the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined, so what is sensed or imagined is to thinking as the exterior bricks are to the eye. Conclusion: no understanding the what-it-is without at least imagining it.
• Contrast with Plato: if the what-it-is existed by itself and the soul knew it by contact, it would know the universal without turning to images. But “man himself by himself” cannot be, since man’s nature is to be material and that man could not be material — “then he wouldn’t be himself.”
• Consequences once seen: why man expresses affection by a hug, a kiss, a handshake — not an angel but an animal with reason; why the sacraments are proportioned to man, needing a sensible sign though grace is received in the soul.

6. Definitions and statements in words; deception by equivocation (“until they taught Caliban to speak”) #

The point: the mind’s dependence on the senses shows in its dependence on words.

• Aristotle in logic defines definition, statement and syllogism in words: a statement is a phone, vocal sound signifying the true or the false — not, as here in the De Anima, a synthesis of noemata.
• Prospero’s (or Miranda’s — “some question”) words: until taught to speak, Caliban did not know his own thought. I cannot inspect my thoughts without words; in a way I think in words.
• Sign of this: how commonly the mind is deceived by the equivocation of a word — his students taking Aristotle to contradict himself because they cannot separate two senses of “particular” and “general”. Only a mind dependent on the senses could take one word for one thought or one thing.
• Feuerbach’s syllogism (read enthusiastically by the young Marx and Engels; The Essence of Christianity): man’s mind is infinite; the infinite is God; therefore man’s mind is God — “the secret of Christianity is not that God became man but that man himself is God.” Enormous pride, but logically the fallacy of equivocation on “infinite”; pride helps one be deceived “in this flattering way”.
• Augustine went to hear Jerome for the Ciceronian style and, taking in the words, took in the thoughts too — even for a mind like Augustine’s, the words matter.
• Aside: something heard in weak French does not “come home” until put into English.

7. Metaphor in Scripture and in poetry (“poetry is infima doctrina, the lowest teaching”) #

The point: Scripture and poetry both use metaphor, for contrary reasons.

• Student: metaphors appeal to the imagination and please. He: the Summa’s first question has the objection that Scripture, the highest teaching, should not use what belongs to the lowest, poetry. Thomas’s answer: both deal with what is outside reason — poetry with what is below reason, theology with what is above it.
• Comparison: Judas betraying the Son of Man with a kiss — the kiss used for the opposite of love.
• Anecdote: Alfred Jim Francis on being told “I can’t understand you”: they like it, but it is because they are below reason, not above.
• Student: Thomas says you can corrupt someone’s understanding by corrupting the imagination. He: false imagination is the fundamental cause of error on the side of the knowing powers, and given the link between imagining and thinking, “an abundant source of error”.

8. Music as preparation for the moral life and the life of the mind (“music is a preparation for the moral life”) #

The point: Aristotle’s three reasons for music make it a remote disposition both to moral virtue and to the life of the mind.

• Three reasons in the Politics (Thomas’s commentary breaks off in book three, so no help here): relaxation (compared to the dance); moral education; diagoge, literally deductio in Latin.
• Moral: music moves the emotions in a way pleasing to them yet in harmony with reason, disposing remotely to the virtues that restrain and order the passions. Intellectual: music’s order of beginning, middle and end prepares for the life of the mind. Aristotle says painting does not do this to the same degree.
• Examples: Mozart’s Fantasia (K. 397) “like preparing the life of the mind”; his old joke that the D major quintet (K. 593) gives “the emotions of the philosopher at work” — “but it really is something very much like that”; the last symphonies (36, 38, 39, 40, 41) “most clearly part of moral education”.
• Shakespeare’s plays likewise (as Paul VI said, moral education) and also a preparation for the life of the mind; Mozart and Shakespeare are the examples par excellence of music and fiction doing both.

9. Loving wisdom, reason, and oneself (“you got to be a philosopher if you love yourself”) #

The point: love of wisdom, love of reason and true love of oneself are inseparable.

• For the freshmen (who know something of wisdom from the readings and of reason from “Shakespeare’s education”): can you love wisdom without loving reason, or reason without wisdom? Analogy: can you love health without loving your body, or your body without loving health? Wisdom is the greatest good of reason. Likewise reason and distinction-and-order, wisdom and distinction-and-order — “really inseparable”.
• Can you love yourself without loving reason? If sleeping and feeding is your chief good you love yourself as a beast, hence not yourself. Psalms: the man who loves iniquity hates his own soul (he cannot recall the verse; thinks it occurs twice). Since iniquity is the evil of the soul, as loving sickness would be hating the body: to love is to wish good, to hate is to wish evil. So man, an animal with reason, cannot love himself without loving reason, nor reason without wisdom — with a caution not to overstate “got to be a philosopher”.
• If wisdom is knowledge of God, the beatific vision (St John: seeing God as He is; St Paul: face to face) is most of all wisdom for us; unless you love that, “maybe you don’t really love yourself”.
• Shakespeare’s profoundest statement: Richard III’s dream — “Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I” — whether he really loves himself after all his evil.
• Student: a priest said penance is real self-love though it looks like self-hate. He: Aristotle derives love for another from love of oneself; self-love usually has the bad sense — favouring the body to the detriment of the soul — but there is a true love of oneself, presupposed in “love your neighbour as yourself”. Why no commandment to love yourself? Seemingly superfluous since one naturally does, yet the man whose chief good is to sleep and feed does not.
• Student: spiritual writers on people unloved by their parents who cannot believe God loves them. He: a mean or abusive father makes it hard to relate to God the Father; conversely Thérèse of Lisieux, with a wonderful father, could meditate at the end on “how sweet it is to call him Father”.

His words #

• symploke noematon: an intertwining of thoughts (the true and the false); earlier called synthesis, a putting together
• first thoughts: thoughts of what a thing is; not phantasms, but not without phantasms
• three acts of reason: understanding what something is; truth and falsity; reasoning
• discourse: Shakespeare’s mark of reason, knowing one thing through another
• the what it is: object of reason, as of something sensed or imagined; universal
• man himself by himself: Plato’s separate universal, rejected because man’s nature is material
• phone: vocal sound; Aristotle’s definition of statement in logic, in words not thoughts
• infima doctrina: poetry as the lowest teaching (Summa objection)
• diagoge / deductio: Aristotle’s third reason for music
• self-love: bad sense (favouring the body) vs. true love of oneself (wishing the soul its good)

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima III, the passage on imagination vs. affirmation and negation and the “first thoughts” (numbered 258 and 358 in the class text), with Thomas’s commentary on the universal/singular distinction
• Handout “On the Natural Fragments”, p. 40 (per verified sources; not locatable in the transcript)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories (symploke)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, first question, objection and reply on metaphor in Scripture
• Aristotle, Politics, later books (three reasons for music; painting); Thomas’s commentary breaking off in book three
• Aristotle on love for another from love of oneself (work not named)
• Shakespeare: Henry V prologues; Prospero/Miranda on Caliban (The Tempest, inferred); Richard III’s dream; “Shakespeare’s education”; his definition of reason by discourse
• Locke on the general idea of a triangle; Locke’s “idea”
• Partridge, etymological dictionary, “think”
• Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity; Marx and Engels
• Augustine hearing Jerome (as he says)
• Psalms, “he who loves iniquity hates his own soul”; the Gospel on Judas’s kiss; St John and St Paul on seeing God; the second commandment
• Mozart: Fantasia K. 397, quintet K. 593, symphonies 36–41; Paul VI on Shakespeare; Thérèse of Lisieux on “Our Father”

His questions #

• If I imagine a glass mountain, is it, strictly speaking, true or false? Neither: an image does not say that something is or is not.
• What would be the thought of what a man is, a stone is, a triangle is — is it a phantasm? No, but it is not without phantasms; the thought is of the universal, the image of the singular.
• Why don’t you think without an image? Because the object of reason is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined, as the bricks are to the eye.
• Does the eye see the colour of the bricks without the bricks? No; likewise reason does not grasp the what-it-is without imagining.
• Do you know what you yourself think until you put it into words? No — as Caliban did not know his own thought until taught to speak.
• Why should Scripture use metaphor if it belongs to the lowest teaching? Because theology treats what is above reason, poetry what is below it — contrary reasons.
• Can you love wisdom without loving reason, or reason without loving wisdom? No, as one cannot love health without loving the body; they are inseparable.
• Can you love yourself without loving reason? No; the man whose chief good is to sleep and feed loves himself as a beast, not himself.
• Why is there no commandment to love yourself? It seems superfluous since we naturally do — though the beast-lover does not; left as a suggestion.