The Soul as Gateway, Naming God's Simplicity, and Student Questions

Orientation #

He says chapters 12 and 13 (Thomas’s lectiones 17 and 18), on the order among the powers, are the end of book Gamma and “we may not get through both of them next time.” After that, two options: another part of philosophy, or Thomas’s treatise on the soul in the prima pars; he recommends the latter. Verified sources put the class at the handout “The Before and After in the Acts of (Looking) Reason,” p. 7 (about ten minutes read from it), and DHB Vol. III p. 954. The previous class treated animal motion and the practical syllogism; the next takes up the order among the powers.

The class, in order #

1. Where we are and where next (“distinction comes before order”) #

Point: the survey of the powers is done; twelve and thirteen treat the order among them, and that is the natural sequence, since in general distinction comes before order.

• Next term: either another part of philosophy, or the treatise on the soul in the Summa (asks whether people have a Latin or at least English copy). Reason for the second: the study of the soul is “so central,” “a necessary gateway” to talking about the angels and ultimately about God; without it one “almost ends up a materialist.”
• The Arab philosophers after Plato and Aristotle: the human soul is “on the horizon between the material world and the immaterial world,” hence the gateway to understanding the immaterial.

2. Aside on the next life and what we will know (“we’ll know everything we naturally desire to know”) #

Point: after death the soul lives in the immaterial world; he wonders how much of this life we will recall.

• Aside: none of these buildings, his house, Assumption College will be around; “a new and glorious Assumption College” at the resurrection; whether people will reminisce about sniffles and ulcers.
• A student: Thomas says that since the object of our knowledge is generic, we will know everything in heaven. He: in seeing God face to face we will know everything we naturally desire to know about the natural world; otherwise we would not be completely satisfied.
• But not everyone’s secret thoughts: the singular contingent matter (who married whom, how many wives a Hollywood actor had) is no perfection of the mind. Thomas goes so far as to say it does not pertain to the perfection of the teacher’s mind to know what a student understands or whether he is diligent or lazy; it is a concern for action, and in action the singular matters, but “the singular as such is not a perfection of our mind.” (Practically one may want to know who is wiser, Aristotle or someone, so as to learn from him.)

3. Student question: God as “true” and as “truth” (“the concrete and abstract word”) #

Point: we have two words because our proper object is composed.

1. The proper object of our mind is “what it is” of something sensible or imagined, especially of natural or mathematical things.
2. These are all composed of matter and form or something like it (a subject and an accidental form).
3. So we have a concrete word and an abstract word: health names something like a form in a subject; the subject having that form is not said to be health but to be healthy. “My body has health,” “my body is healthy,” never “my body is health”: a real distinction between the have and the had.
4. God is in no way composed, “altogether simple” (he cites Teresa of Avila; the closer you get to God the simpler you become, but never altogether simple like him). “Whatever God has is God.”
5. Hence the dilemma: say “God is wise” and we seem to say he has wisdom and is distinct from it; say “God is wisdom” to remove the distinction, and we seem to say he is not wise but that by which something is wise (“is health healthy, or that by which something is healthy?”). Either way we speak, we fall short of God.
6. Thomas: all these words are inadequate; we can both affirm and deny them. God is wise (he really is); deny it if it means he has wisdom distinct from him. God is wisdom itself (no real distinction); deny it if it means he is merely that by which something is wise. Same with good/goodness.

• Student: is it because we only participate his being? He: no, it is because, as Aristotle taught here, our reason is the reason of a soul that is the form of a body, so its proper object is what it is of something sensed or imagined; our way of forming thoughts reflects that object, which has sensible or at least imaginable (extended) matter.

4. Reason distinguishes as well as orders (“nothing is before or after itself”) #

Point: the power to distinguish matter from form belongs to reason as the ability to look before and after.

1. Recall the definition: reason is the ability for “large discourse, looking before and after” (Shakespeare).
2. Axiom of before and after: nothing is before or after itself. Today is before tomorrow and after yesterday, but not before or after today.
3. So to see before and after one must see two things, hence some distinction. No difference between today and tomorrow, no “today is before tomorrow”; no difference between wine and beer, no “wine is better than beer.”
4. Conclusion: reason is the ability to see distinction as well as order.

• Objection he raises: reason is even more capable of small discourse; why define it by large? Answer: we define an ability by the utmost it can do. How fast can my car go: its greatest speed. Weight-lifting ability: if I can lift 200 lb (but not 201), that includes lifting 100, but “100” would not give the full ability. So defining reason by looking before and after includes the lesser ability to see distinctions.
• Examples of distinction without order, never the reverse: John Dryden, who as a young man saw two or three plays of Fletcher performed for every one of Shakespeare and only gradually saw Shakespeare was better, must have seen a difference first; two students distinguished outwardly long before one knows which is the better student; two students one older than the other, or himself looking younger than his age, distinguished without knowing who is before in time. The wine-tasting “Socratic test”: if you cannot tell Cabernet Sauvignon from Zinfandel unlabelled, still less can you say one tastes better; Budweiser vs. Miller likewise; but telling them apart does not yet let you judge which is better.
• Application: reason is apt to distinguish matter and form. Clay molded into a sphere then a cylinder: matter vs. shape. My body sometimes healthy, sometimes sick: body vs. health. The same man sometimes good, sometimes bad, virtuous then vicious: the man cannot be the same as his virtue. We name things as we know them, so health/healthy, virtue/virtuous: Socrates is not virtue but may be virtuous.
• Boundary case: the Blessed Virgin said to the young lady “I am the immaculate conception,” not “I am immaculately conceived”; it puzzled the priest as an incorrect way of speaking; “some special reason why she said that,” which he is not sure we fully understand yet.
• He says “they call healthy the abstract word and health the concrete” [ed.: reversed from the usual; the sense he gives is the form-word vs. the has-the-form word].

5. The two names applied to God (“no way of speaking can be adequate”) #

Point: both kinds of word are needed and each must be negated in part.

• Which word for God, good or goodness? Christ: “Why call me good? God alone is good.” But “good” signifies as having goodness, hence a distinction of haver and had; in creatures, where our knowledge begins, what has goodness is not goodness.
• Why keep the concrete word: if a man had wisdom but were not wise, or a body had health and were not healthy (“like it’s in your pocket”), what perfection would that be? So if God is not wise, good, just, what perfection would he have?
• Why keep the abstract word: to bring out that there is no distinction: God is wisdom itself, ipsa bonitas, justice itself; “God is love” (St. John), whereas you cannot say my will is love, only that it loves. “Ego sapientia, I am wisdom.”
• Thomas often quotes Dionysius: we can affirm and deny. Not a contradiction, because not for the same reason. There is always some negation in our knowledge of God in this life: we negate the imperfection in our way of knowing.

6. The separated soul and the fixed will (“we won’t turn to images”) #

Point: the separated soul knows like the angels in a way, but differently.

• We will not turn to images, being free of the body. Student: that is why the will is fixed in good or evil. He: and we will not be in time; “frozen, so to speak.” So long as a man is in time he can change from good to bad or bad to good, so we never despair of a living man though doubtful of his salvation. The angels’ minds were fully formed at creation, so their choice was forever: “a frightening thing,” while we “dilly dally.”
• Student: won’t we still acquire knowledge, from higher angels? He: yes, but not essential things; the mind will be satisfied as to what it naturally desires; the rest is accidental, secondary.

7. Student question on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (“if you can’t understand what the man is saying”) #

Point: he has never read the book and cannot judge it.

• The student describes a Catholic University professor for whom the book “is his life” and who called it unassailable by argument. He: like Heidegger, if it basically does not make sense there is nothing to judge; this is what turns people off in intro courses; “thinking themselves wise, they become quite foolish.”

8. Student question on processed food (“at what point is the cornmeal no longer cornmeal”) #

Point: raised, not answered.

• Is a Hostess Twinkie food? Labels say “food product,” even “non-dairy food product” cheese. The student likens it to the boat whose planks are moved one by one: where is the boat? and asks when denatured food loses its nature. He: “that’s very involved.”
• Aside: American bread; the Italian boule needing a 9 on the toaster where Wonder bread needs 3 or 4, “no substance there”; imported-style loaves cost more; his late father-in-law the baker courting his wife with goodies, and the family eating a whole loaf on the way home from Mass.

His words #

• distinction before order; distinguishing the powers precedes seeing their order
• the soul “on the horizon” between material and immaterial (the Arab philosophers)
• the singular as such: not a perfection of our mind, only a concern for action
• proper object of our mind: “what it is” of something sensed or imagined
• concrete and abstract word: healthy vs. health, what has the form vs. the form; he states the labels reversed once
• the have and the had: a real distinction in creatures, none in God
• “whatever God has is God”
• altogether simple (Teresa of Avila)
• affirm and deny (Thomas quoting Dionysius): not for the same reason
• ipsa bonitas; ego sapientia
• large discourse, looking before and after: Shakespeare’s definition of reason
• axiom of before and after: nothing is before or after itself
• define an ability by the utmost it can do
• “Socratic test”: the unlabelled wine or beer tasting
• negate the imperfection in our way of knowing God
• “frozen”: the will out of time

Texts #

Read in class

• none read aloud; the handout “The Before and After in the Acts of (Looking) Reason,” p. 7, is the matter of segment 4 (verified source)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima III, chapters 12-13; Thomas, Lectio 17-18
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, prima pars, treatise on the soul
• Thomas on the beatific vision and on the teacher not perfected by knowing the singular (no locus given)
• Thomas quoting Dionysius on affirming and denying (no locus given)
• Shakespeare, “large discourse, looking before and after” (Hamlet, inferred)
• John Dryden on Fletcher and Shakespeare
• Gospel: “Why call me good? God alone is good”
• St. John: “God is love”
• “Ego sapientia” (no locus given)
• Bernadette (inferred) and “I am the immaculate conception”
• Teresa of Avila on God’s simplicity
• Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; Heidegger
• DHB Vol. III p. 954 (verified source)

His questions #

• Can you say my body is health? No; it has health, is healthy; the have and the had differ.
• Is health healthy, or that by which something is healthy? That by which; so “God is wisdom” alone seems to deny he is wise.
• Can today be before today? No; nothing is before or after itself, so before and after presuppose distinction.
• Why does Shakespeare define reason by large rather than small discourse? An ability is defined by its utmost, which includes the lesser.
• If I can’t tell Cabernet from Zinfandel, how can I say one is better? I can’t; but telling apart does not yet give which is better.
• Can the man be the same as his virtue? No, since he is sometimes virtuous and sometimes vicious.
• What good would it be to have wisdom and not be wise? None; so the concrete word must be kept for God.
• Is affirming and denying of God a contradiction? No, not for the same reason.
• Is a Hostess Twinkie food? left open (“very involved”)