The Soul as Act of the Body, and Substantial vs. Accidental Form

Orientation #

He continues the same article, picking up at Thomas’s “the falsity of this opinion, although it can be shown in many ways”; he says the soul’s being a substantial form “will become clear in the next article when you see that the soul is something subsisting.” He recalls “what we learned when we studied change,” “our study of the senses and reason” in the De Anima, and “when we looked at the Summa Contra Gentiles” on movers (prev. lecture, not resolved by the context block). The previous class opened this article and the next takes up article 2, whether the soul subsists.

The class, in order #

1. One way, more common and more certain (“falsity of this opinion, although it can be shown”) #

Thomas could refute the view in many ways but uses one, “more common and more certain,” and he reads this as Thomas “proportioning himself to us beginners.”

2. Not every principle of a living operation is a soul (“the eye, for example, would be a soul”) #

Point: the soul is the first beginning of life, and the emphasis on “first” separates it from bodily instruments.

• Eye is in some way a cause of vision, ear of hearing, heart of life (“if your heart stops pumping, you’re going to die”) — all are bodies and beginnings of life, but not the first beginning. Hence “you got to be very careful”: soul = first beginning or cause of life.

3. Why a body cannot be the first beginning of life (“does not belong to a body from the fact”) #

Argument as he gives it:

1. Being a beginning of life does not belong to a body because it is a body — otherwise every body would be living.
2. So it belongs to some body through its being such a body (Latin tali, “such”).
3. What makes it such is a principle called its act.
4. Recall from the study of change: in every changing thing there is matter and form; a living body changes and dies; matter as such is not alive; therefore the soul is the other, the form/act. Conclusion: the soul, first beginning of life, is not a body but the act of a body, “just as heat which is the cause of heating is not a body but a certain act of a body.”

• He notes Thomas compares to an accidental form (heat) because the emphasis here is only on the soul being a form; substantial vs accidental is not yet explicit.
• Wooden chair: it is not a chair because it is wooden (then a wooden table or house would be a chair) but by its shape, an accidental form standing to the wood as form to matter, act to ability.
• The letters of cat and act: same letters, so being the word cat is not through the matter (letters) but through their order; the order is the act by which the letters, able to be either word, are actually this one. So too living and unliving are made of the same matter; that one lives is due to something as act or form.
• “Two conclusions”: negative — the soul is not a body; affirmative — it is an act or form of the living body, i.e. of a natural body composed of tools, “almost back to the definition of the soul” in the De Anima; still to be shown that it is a substantial, not accidental, form.

4. Student: any other example of a substantial form? (“substantial forms are not sensible”) #

Answer: the human soul is the one most known to us; substantial forms are not sensible or imaginable, so no sensible example can be given — which is why Thomas uses an accidental form as example. The dog and plant have substantial forms too, unless the dog is “a combination of different substances,” which would destroy substantial unity. Order of evidence: we are most convinced we are one substance, then the dog, the tree less clear, the stone least (“just an amalgam of several things”).

5. Hermann Weyl on inward and outward knowledge of life (“life as known from inward experience”) #

Aside from the physicist Weyl: outwardly the plant is easiest to examine (cutting an animal kills it; man is extremely self-conscious); inwardly we know ourselves best, then a little of dog or cat, the tree hardly at all. Inwardly he is more aware of sensing and emotion than of digesting or growing (“are you aware of your growing as you grow?”). So inward knowledge reverses outward — and this is “very true about knowing the substantial form”: human soul best known, then animal, then plant, the lower more hidden.

• Asides: teachers get nervous when evaluated; children and adults are camera-shy while the family cat “would steal all these pictures.”

6. Reply to objection 1: not every mover is moved (“not every mover is itself moved”) #

Point: since whatever is moved is moved by another and this cannot go on, not every mover is moved (Physics VII–VIII).

• Train: the engine is pulled by nothing; each wagon is a “pulled puller,” a moved mover. If every mover were a pulled puller, no matter how many (one, many, finite, infinite), the whole is “one grand pulled puller with nothing to pull them” — no motion. Aristotle saw this contrary to his predecessors.
• Since to be moved is to go from ability to act, the mover gives what it has to the mobile. Three movers as Thomas lays them out: (a) a mover entirely immobile, moved neither per se nor per accidens, which moves a uniform motion (his gloss: like the motion of the sky); (b) a mover not moved per se but per accidens — the soul, moved when the body it is in is moved, hence its motion not uniform (he adds: also because sensations and desires differ, “before and after dinner”); (c) a mover moved per se — the body.
• Why the ancients erred: thinking there were only bodies, and a body moves only by being moved, they held every mover is moved per se, so the soul moving the body must be a body — “like when you play with puppets.”

7. Reply to objection 2: the likeness of the known in ability only (“the likeness of the thing known”) #

Point: what knows in ability before it knows in act need not actually contain the known; the likeness is in it in ability only.

• Colour is not in act in the pupil; the tongue is not actually sweet but able to receive.
• This is “the main thing we learn” about senses and reason: sensing and understanding are a kind of undergoing; they have nothing of the nature or sensible quality of what they know, so are not composed of them.
• The ancients, unable to distinguish act and ability, made the soul a body composed of the principles of all bodies so it could know all: “by earth we know earth … by love love, by hate hate” (he attributes this to “Democritus Empedocles” [ed.: the doctrine is Empedocles’]). If so composed, the soul would be a body; if it only receives them, and immaterially, it need not be.
• He notes the first two objections come from De Anima I.

8. Reply to objection 3: twofold contact (“a body is not touched except by a body”) #

Point: a body is touched by a body one way, but can be touched by an incorporeal thing that moves it another way.

• Ordinary speech: “I can reach over and touch you” vs “touch you for some money” or “touch you” so you feel sorry.
• SCG text: even two bodies touch in two ways — surface on surface, and one acting on the other (heating, cooling). The first cannot hold between non-body and body; the second can.
• The immaterial agent can act on the whole, even the interior, at once; a body acts only through the surface — heating pad on a sore muscle must work in from the surface. An angel (“that angel we’re imploring to help us order our images”) is in the material world where it applies its power, not as contained in a place.
• Student objection: how can an angel give anything to a body — his hand would pass through my watch. Answer: “you’re not transcending your imagination now”; Thomas’s point in SCG is that even bodies contact in more than one way.
• The cat on the electric stove: it contacted the burner not just surface-wise but by being acted upon, painfully — two things in bodily contact, only one of which is found with an immaterial substance. (Cat then kept to licking butter on the dining table.)
• He proposes stopping before article 2, then continues.

9. Accidental and substantial form: what they share (“what these two have in common”) #

Both are an act of something in ability, and by both something else (the subject) is in act. Health and sickness: my body is able to be either, and by health it is actually healthy. Clay is able to be sphere or cube and is actually one by a shape — “the very first meaning” of form.

10. Three differences (“the order is just the reverse”) #

1. Subject: of an accidental form, something already in act, an actual substance (clay, my body); of a substantial form, something only in ability, “a substance in ability,” first matter.
2. Order of act: with accidental form, act belongs to the subject first (“some accidents are caused by their subject”); with substantial form, act is in the form first and the subject is actual through it. “It’s not through geometry that I begin to exist, it’s through geometry I begin to be a geometer.”
3. End: matter is for the sake of the substantial form; accidents are for the sake of the completion of the subject. Is Duane Berquist for the sake of his health or geometry, or they for him? — the latter. Heraclitus (as he quotes): “the divine nature has understanding, human nature has none” — I actually understand by something added to my substance; without accidents “I’d be a rather incomplete fellow.” Sanctifying grace: an accident, for the perfection of the substance.

11. Why this matters for the soul (“leaves the door open to this strange thing”) #

“This is very important to see”: if the soul were an accidental form, existence would belong to its subject first; as substantial form, existence belongs to it before its subject. This opens the door to what we find in operation: understanding the universal (triangle, dog) and choosing are activities not in the body; you must exist before you act (“even Descartes saw that, I think therefore I am”); so if the soul has an activity not in the body, its existence is not just in the body — an existence the body shares in but not fully.

• Canadian brain-mapping scientist: stimulating the brain the patient reports tasting chocolate etc., but no spot where he says “I just made a choice”; he concluded choice is not in the brain — correct, though from exterior experience.
• Student: “before” must be clarified — not before in time (that would need the soul’s creation as dogma) but before in being. He adds: and before in causality: the subject’s actuality is all through the substantial form, whereas through geometry I am a geometer, not existing. Transcript ends mid-sentence (“It’s through logic that I …”).

His words #

• first beginning of life: soul as opposed to heart, eye, ear, which are beginnings but not first.
• tools: bodily instruments [ed.: organs]; “natural body composed of tools.”
• such a body: his rendering of tali.
• act / ability: [ed.: act / potency]; matter is ability, form is act.
• pulled puller: a moved mover, from the train example.
• moved per se / per accidens: soul moved per accidens because it is in a moved body.
• undergoing: sensing and understanding as reception.
• twofold contact: surface-on-surface vs acting upon (touched “by a power”).
• substance in ability: first matter as subject of substantial form.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 75, a. 1, corpus (from “the falsity of this opinion”) and replies to objections 1–3 (verified).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics, books VII and VIII (every moved thing moved by another; unmoved mover).
• Aristotle, De Anima, book I (source of objections 1–2; the definition of soul; senses and reason).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (movers; contact by power vs bodily contact; no locus given).
• Hermann Weyl, passage on life known inwardly and outwardly (no work named).
• Heraclitus, saying on divine and human understanding.
• Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.”
• A Canadian brain-mapping scientist (unnamed).

His questions #

• Which is the soul, the matter or the form? The form: matter as such is not alive.
• Is a wooden chair a chair because it is wooden? No, or a wooden table would be a chair; it is a chair by its shape, an act.
• Could you get any motion if every mover were a pulled puller? No; the whole would be one grand pulled puller with nothing to pull it.
• Which mover is moved per accidens? The soul, moved when the body it is in is moved.
• Is there a sensible example of a substantial form? No; substantial forms are not sensible or imaginable; the human soul is best known.
• Am I for the sake of my accidents, or are they for the sake of completing me? The latter.
• Is sanctifying grace substance or accident? Accident, for the perfection of the substance.
• In what sense is the soul “before” its subject? Not in time but in being and in causality (raised by a student, taken up by him).