Summa I q.76 a.3: One Soul or Three? The Objections, Substantial Form, and the Meaning of Per Se

Orientation #

The recording opens on the tail of “my little sermon for today” (connecting music and love/charity), then the prayer and the announcement: “another long article”, q. 76 a. 3. The previous class covered q. 76 on one intellect for all men and a closing reflection on love, praise and music; the next continues the unity-of-soul question in Thomas’s De Anima commentary.

The class, in order #

1. Why the soul is hard to think about (“you can’t sense the soul”) #

Point: the topic resists us because the soul cannot be sensed or imagined; “if you try to imagine it, you imagine it falsely.” He returns to this later (“otherwise your imagination takes over”).

2. The four objections (“besides the understanding soul, there are in man other souls”) #

Point: the objector holds that the soul by which I nourish, the soul by which I sense, and the soul by which I understand are not the same soul.

1. Obj. 1: corruptible and incorruptible are not one substance; the understanding soul is incorruptible (shown earlier), the sensing and feeding/reproducing souls corruptible; so not one essence.
2. Obj. 2 (against the reply that man’s sensing soul is incorruptible): Metaphysics X, corruptible and incorruptible differ in genus. The sensing soul of horse, lion and the brutes is corruptible; if man’s were incorruptible, “animal” — named from the sensing soul — would not be one genus of man and dog. His gloss: the name animal would then be said equivocally of you and the dog, whereas a genus is said univocally, with one meaning, of many.
3. Obj. 3: Generation of Animals, the embryo is an animal before it is a man; impossible if sensing and understanding soul were one essence. His gloss: the seed or fertilized egg does not have a human soul at once; first what you might call a plant soul (cell division, growth, what we share with plants, no sensation), then sensing begins, then something recognizably human.
4. Obj. 4: Metaphysics VIII, genus is taken from matter, difference from form. Why? — wooden chair, wooden table, wooden desk: what they have in common is the wood; they differ by shape, i.e. form. So the genus states what is common to different forms and is taken from what is as matter. “Rational” (the constitutive difference) is from the understanding soul; “animal” from a body animated by a sensing soul; so understanding soul : sensing-animated body :: form : matter, and the understanding soul presupposes the sensing soul as a material subject. His picture of the objector’s view: plant life by one soul, sensing life on top of it, understanding on top of that.

3. Sed contra: the Book of Ecclesiastical Dogmas (“nor do we say that there are two souls”) #

Point: the Church’s authority is against two souls. The Liber de Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus is a collection of authoritative texts (compare the Enchiridion Symbolorum); the collection is by Gennadius, and the students’ notes do not identify “James/Jacob and the other Syrians”. The text rejects one animal soul that animates the body and is mixed with blood, and another spiritual soul that ministers to reason; there is one and the same soul which by its association vivifies the body and by its own reason disposes itself. He flags the contrast anima vs spirit — “they’ll come out again” — and promises scriptural texts on it if time allows (it does not).

4. Plato’s souls in organs and Aristotle’s worms (“the nourishing power was in the liver”) #

Point: Plato placed diverse souls in one body, distinguished by organ — nourishing in the liver, sense desire (concupiscible) in the heart, knowing in the brain.

• Aristotle disproves this in De Anima, as regards parts of the soul using bodily organs, from animals like worms that live when cut: each part senses and feels pain when pricked, so the powers are not located each in its own place but spread through the body; such a soul could not be a soul if principles diverse in nature were distributed to diverse parts. About the understanding part Aristotle “seems to leave under doubt” whether it is separated from the others only in definition or also in place.
• Plato’s opinion could be sustained if the soul were joined to the body as mover (sailor in the boat, man in his car): nothing absurd in one mobile moved by several movers, especially in different parts. But if the soul is the body’s substantial form (earlier articles), many souls differing in nature in one body is “altogether impossible”. Asides: in Shakespeare’s time the liver is the seat of love; the Frenchman’s ailment is always the liver, “which may be because he thinks too much”; Egyptians mummified the body but pulled out the brain as unimportant, thinking thought was in the heart, as in Homer and the Greek poets; are we aware of thinking “up here” only because we have been told the brain is there?

5. Review: substantial vs accidental form (“Both are an act”) #

Point: before the three arguments, recall what soul (substantial form) and forms like health, my geometry, or the table’s shape (accidental forms) share and how they differ, since imagination otherwise takes over.

• Common (hint: Aristotle calls the soul the “first act” of a natural body): (i) both are an act rather than a potency; (ii) by both something is in act — by health I am actually healthy, by geometry actually a geometer, by its spherical shape the rubber is a ball. The body can be healthy but is not always; wood can have the shape but not always — the subject is as ability.
• Difference 1: substantial form comes to a subject that is only in ability and exists only through it, giving existence simply; accidental form comes to an already actual substance, giving qualified existence. Test: recovering from sickness, I “came to be healthy”, not “came to be”; when wood became a chair, the wood did not come to be.
• Difference 2: matter is for the sake of form; the accidental form is for the completion of its subject — geometry, health, the virtues are for the completion of Duane Berquist [ASR: “Wayne”], not I for them.
• Application: with two or three souls, would I be one thing? No — a plant, an animal and a man there, “which is absurd.”

6. First argument: one thing through one form (“nothing is simply one except through one form”) #

Point: from the same form a thing has that it is a being and that it is one.

1. A thing tries to preserve its unity as it preserves its existence; divide it and it ceases to be (developed at length in “wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics]).
2. Hence things denominated from diverse forms are not one simply — the Metaphysics example of accidental being, homo albus, a white man.
3. If man were alive by the vegetable soul, animal by the sensing soul, man by the rational soul, man would not be one simply — Aristotle against Plato, Metaphysics VIII.
4. Aristotle’s further point (De Anima I): what contains the several souls, i.e. makes them one? Not the body, since the soul unifies the body rather than the reverse — sign: when the body loses its soul it falls apart and decomposes. Appeal to experience: are you cohabiting with a plant and an animal in the same body? No; it is one and the same that senses, digests and thinks.

7. Second argument begun: modes of predication (“either per accidens … or per se”) #

Point: things taken from diverse forms are said of each other per accidens if the forms are not ordered (white is sweet), or per se in the second way if ordered, because the subject is placed in the definition of the predicate. Aristotle treats the senses of per se in the Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics V; he stops to explain.

8. Digression: demonstration and the two Analytics (“the conclusion is seen to be necessarily true”) #

Point: demonstration is an argument whose conclusion is seen to be necessarily true, which requires (a) that it follow necessarily and (b) that the premises be necessarily true.

• Syllogism, from the Greek “to calculate”: six men in the room, two legs each, so twelve legs — certain only if there are just six men, each has two legs, and six times two is twelve (aside: equivocation on “leg” with chair legs). Syllogism gets a third statement from two, as calculation gets a third number from two.
• Prior Analytics: taking apart an argument to see if the conclusion follows; Posterior Analytics: taking apart the premises to see if they are necessarily true. Recall (prev. classes) the two arguments that the brain is the organ of thought: in one the conclusion did not follow, in the other a premise was not necessarily true.

9. Necessary, kath’ hauto, and the two modes of per se (“two through itself is a number”) #

Point: Aristotle links necessary with kath’ hauto, Latin per se, English “through itself”/“by itself”.

• He reasons both from necessary to per se and from per se to necessary; Thomas asks whether this is circular, and answers that the actual demonstration runs from necessary to per se, but granting that scientific premises are per se one may also reason to their necessity.
• Necessary: two is half of four necessarily; a triangle is not necessarily green — a student: without it, it cannot be; so the necessary is “what is not able not to be,” what must be.
• “Through itself”: itself is a reflexive pronoun, so an example is needed. “Two through itself is a number” = two through being two is a number; likewise half of four. English equivalent: “as such” (two as two). A triangle, even if green, is not green through being a triangle: it is per accidens green, it happens to be green.
• Student: is this the separable accident vs a property present in all members at all times? He: notice the two examples were chosen on purpose. Half of four (a third of six, a fourth of eight) is a property following on the nature of two; number (or even) is in the very definition of two. Two modes: (1) what is in the definition of the subject is said of it per se; (2) the subject is in the definition of the predicate, as its cause. So the difference is said of the subject in the first way, a property in the second (student’s question, confirmed).
• Third linked word: cause. Aristotle’s first definition of demonstration: a syllogism making us know the cause, that of which it is the cause, and that it cannot be otherwise; Plato in the Meno and Phaedo already held the best reason for a statement is why it must be so, i.e. its cause.
• Aside: Kant’s analytic propositions see only predicate-in-definition-of-subject vs not; he misses the second sense of kath’ hauto. The class ends here; Thomas’s second argument is not completed.

His words #

• understanding soul, sensing soul, feeding soul; his renderings for intellective, sensitive, nutritive/vegetative soul
• “not one kind of thing”; his gloss on “not of one substance/genus”
• equivocally vs univocally; a genus is said with one meaning of many
• first act; Aristotle’s phrase for the soul as substantial form of a natural body
• ability; the subject’s potency to a form [ed.: potency]
• existence simply vs in a qualified way; substantial vs accidental form
• homo albus; white man, the Metaphysics example of accidental being
• wisdom; [ed.: Metaphysics]
• kath’ hauto / per se / through itself, by itself, “as such”
• per accidens; “it happens to be” green
• the necessary; what is not able not to be, what must be
• first and second mode of per se; predicate in definition of subject / subject in definition of predicate

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 76, a. 3: objections 1-4, sed contra, and the body through the first argument and the opening of the second (verified)
• Gennadius, Liber de Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus, as quoted in the sed contra

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics X (corruptible/incorruptible differ in genus), VIII (genus from matter, difference from form; against Plato on unity), V “fifth book of wisdom” (senses of per se); Generation of Animals (embryo animal before man); De Anima I (worms; what contains the souls)
• Aristotle, Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics (demonstration, kath’ hauto)
• Plato, Meno and Phaedo (cause and necessity); Kant on analytic propositions
• Enchiridion Symbolorum (compared with the Book of Ecclesiastical Dogmas)

His questions #

• Why is the genus taken from matter and the difference from form? Wooden chair, table, desk share the wood and differ by shape; genus is what is common under different forms.
• What do a substantial form and an accidental form have in common? Both are an act, and by both something is in act.
• What is the difference between them? Substantial form comes to a subject only in ability and gives existence simply; accidental form comes to an actual substance and gives qualified existence; matter is for form, accidental form for its subject’s completion.
• If there were three souls in me, would I be actually one thing? No — a plant, an animal and a man; absurd.
• Is it your inward experience that you cohabit with a plant and an animal? No; one and the same thing senses, digests and thinks.
• Before you can see a conclusion is necessarily true, what two things must you satisfy? It follows necessarily from the premises, and the premises are necessarily true.
• What does it mean to say two is necessarily half of four but a triangle not necessarily green? The necessary is what is not able not to be.
• What does “through itself” mean? Two through being two is a number; the triangle is green only per accidens.
• Would the difference be said per se in the first way and the property in the second? Yes.