The One Substantial Form: Being Simply vs. Being in Some Way, and How Higher Forms Contain the Lower

Orientation #

He opens on the sed contra of the article, picking up the objections already done, and recalls the friendship example he gave earlier for a higher form containing the lower (“I give you example something like that in the case of friendship” — prev. lecture). He stops before the replies to the objections: “before we do the … objections”, break. The previous class covered the objections of q. 76 a. 4; the next takes the replies.

The class, in order #

1. Sed contra: one thing, one substantial being (“of one thing there is one substantial”) #

The point: the sed contra is a full argument whose first premise is known of itself.

1. Of one thing there is one substantial being — not to be proved, “known to itself”. (Contrast: my accidental being can be many — healthy, five foot ten, a geometer; but my substantial being cannot be many — I cannot be a man and a dog and a cat.)
2. The substantial form gives the substantial being.
3. Therefore in one thing there is only one substantial form.
4. The soul is a substantial form of the man. Conclusion: impossible that in a man there be another substantial form besides the understanding soul. He calls it “a very good” argument.

2. Respondeo, first move: soul as form vs soul as mover (“only as a mover, as some of the Platonists”) #

The point: the whole answer hinges on whether the soul is united to the body as form or only as mover.

• If the understanding soul were united to the body only as a mover, “as some of the Platonists laid down”, the body would need another substantial form to constitute it in its being — the way I move a glass, or move the cat around, and the cat still has its own substantial form whereby it is a cat.
• But if the soul is united as substantial form, “as we have said or shown above”, then no other substantial form is possible.
• “For the evidence of this”, the distinction: the accidental form does not give being simply but being in some way — heat makes its subject not to be, but to be hot.

3. Being simply vs being in some way, from the way we speak (“cease to be in this room”) #

The point: in ordinary language “to be” without any added word means substantial being; Latin adds simpliciter only to mark how we are speaking.

• Coming to be: before going to Omaha he was sick (stuffy, breathing through the mouth, fevers), took medication, and “came to be healthy” — not “came to be”. Monsignor Dionne told him to get Euclid’s Elements and read it; through Euclid he “came to be a geometer”, not “came to be”. When his parents generated him, he “came to be”.
• Ceasing to be: leaving the room — ceases to be in this room; forgetting his geometry (the old teachers warned these things get away from you) — ceases to be a geometer; dying — ceases to be, simply.
• Student: “My soul would go.” Answer: yes, “if I’m not just a soul” — Thomas sometimes says St Peter is not in heaven, the soul of St Peter is in heaven; but Mary and Christ are in heaven, not just the soul. This is part of the reason for the Assumption: without it Mary would not be in heaven.
• The courtroom test: if he tells students “if you leave this room you will cease to be” and is tried for threatening them, the judge says nobody would understand “cease to be” as “cease to be in this room”; everyone hears “die”. Stalin to his chief investigator: get a conviction “or we’ll shorten you by a head” — you will cease to be.
• Result: by a substantial form you are said to be without qualification; by an accidental form only in a qualified way — “you have to add that”.

4. Adding a word diminishes (“Annette means literally little Anne”) #

The point: in speech, adding something tends to diminish — a sign that “come to be [X]” is a diminished coming to be.

• Annette = little Anne; Juliet = little Julie. A woman named Annette, grown mature, announced she no longer wanted the diminutive, and was called Anne from then on.
• His wife’s cousin Charles, son of Charles, called “Charlie Boy” to distinguish him from his father; married with children, still Charlie Boy.
• So “I’ve come to be a geometer / healthy / in this room / clothed / hot” and “cease to be” in any of these ways: diminished senses, each needing an addition.

5. Footnote: the two main divisions of being both carry the distinction (“are there chairs in the trees”) #

The point: simply / in some way appears in both great divisions of being.

• Division 1, being according to the figures of predication (substance, quantity, quality…): only substantial being is being simpliciter; quantity, quality etc. are being in some way. Coming to be five foot ten is not coming to be; ceasing to be five foot tall is not ceasing to be.
• Division 2, act and ability: being in act is being simply; being in ability is being secundum quid. Are there chairs in this room? Yes. In the trees? No — unless you add “in ability”: wood in the tree is able to be a chair. “Do you know this?” of something not studied: “in ability” — to say “I know it, period” means actual knowledge.
• Boundary case, when ability is close to act people miss the difference: the practical man says if you know length and width of a rectangle you know its area; strictly, you are only able to know it. Same problem in the Meno: the slave boy, from his own answers, comes to see how to double a square; Socrates says he is only recalling what he knew — not true: he recalls things through which he is able to know, puts them together for the first time, and actually comes to know in the conversation (his first answer was wrong: double the side).

6. The fallacy of simpliciter and secundum quid (“Do you know my brother Mark”) #

The point: the second mistake “outside of speech” is mixing the two; the resolution of apparent contradictions is always the distinction.

• Meno’s argument: you cannot investigate or aim your thinking at what you don’t know. Solution: what you don’t know simply (haplos in Greek, simpliciter) you know in some way; no contradiction.
• Classroom example: “Do you know my brother Mark?” “No.” “Do you know what a man is?” “Yes.” “That’s who my brother Mark is.” She knows him and every man in some way (she knows what a man and a brother is), not simply; no self-contradiction.
• The door: you can’t see through it, you say “I don’t know who’s knocking”; you open it and it’s your mother. In some way you don’t know your mother — as the one knocking — though simply you do. “In some way you don’t know who you know.”
• Aside on Hegel against Kant: Kant says the world in itself is unknown; Hegel asks what he is then talking about. Someone called that sophistical on Hegel’s part — you can to some extent know what you don’t know.
• Asking a question: “if you know what you’re asking for, why ask; if you don’t, I can’t help you” — yet people ask intelligent questions, knowing in some sense what they don’t know. Socrates famous for knowing what he didn’t know; Einstein admired Newton more for knowing what he didn’t know than for what he knew.
• Parallel with being: I am not a sociologist, not a Russian — the one who is, is not, in some way. Per Aristotle, a real contradiction is to be and not be at the same time and in the same way; to be simply and not be in some way is none. “That’s a very common mistake in thinking.”

7. Where the fallacy matters: first cause, infinity, wisdom, perfection (“Homer is a perfect poet”) #

The point: the same confusion lies under the greatest errors and the term “perfect” is its root.

• Ninth book of Wisdom: in some way ability is before act (what goes from ability to act is an ability first), but it goes to act because of something already in act, so simply act is before ability; hence the twelfth book concludes the first cause is pure act. Those who put matter first confuse “before in some way” with “before simply” — on the ultimate question, what the first cause is.
• Student asks how secundum quid translates: “in some way”, “in some respect”; a qualified and diminished sense.
• De Fallaciis, “ad quosdam nobiles artistas” (to some noble young men), possibly Thomas’s very first work, perhaps written when his family interrupted his Dominican ways — attribution uncertain. It ties this fallacy to something very common, perfect and imperfect, complete and incomplete, in the fifth book of the Metaphysics; secundum quid is being in some imperfect way.
• Infinity: God is infinite simpliciter; man’s intellect infinite secundum quid. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (read young by Marx and Engels; “a perversion of Christianity” — not God becoming man but man being God), syllogizes: man’s mind is infinite, the theologians say the infinite is God, so man’s mind is God. Answer: in some way man’s mind is infinite, Godlike; not simply.
• Wisdom: the first attribute of the wise man in the proemium (some did it with him) is that he knows all things — “in some way”, by knowing the most universal. He tells students “in some way you know everything, you know what everything means”; they go home and tell their father. The Greeks: nothing comes from nothing; “something” is so universal that everything is something, so knowing what something is, you know everything — in a most imperfect way. So man is wise secundum quid, not simply.
• Perfect, fifth book of Wisdom: perfect in your kind, lacking nothing of your kind — Homer is a perfect poet; and perfect as lacking nothing at all, which Thomas says refers to God (perfectum dicitur). Since to be perfect is to be good, God alone is good without qualification — “that’s why our Lord is our Lord” [student remark]. “You can’t do any part of philosophy without that” distinction; it is universal because everything is perfect or imperfect.

8. Back to the text: generation simply, the ancients, and the conclusion (“the ancient natural philosophers”) #

The point: the respondeo’s argument, now read through.

1. When an accidental form comes, a thing is not said to come to be simply but to become such; when it recedes, not corrupted simply but in some way.
2. The substantial form gives being simply: its coming is generation simply, its recess corruption simply.
3. Hence the ancient natural philosophers, who laid down first matter as some being in act (fire, air, water, or all of these) and did not see it as being only in ability “like we learned in the first book of the Physics”, said nothing is generated or corrupted simply — every coming to be is only alteration (Physics I, “Natural Hearing”).
4. If besides the understanding soul another substantial form preexisted in matter making the subject a being in act, the soul would not give being simply, would not be a substantial form, and its coming would not be generation simply nor its removal corruption simply — “all manifestly false”. Conclusion: no other substantial form in man than the understanding soul, which contains in its power the sensing and feeding souls, and all the lower forms giving the body its aspect, and does alone whatever the more imperfect forms do. Likewise the sensing soul in brutes contains what the feeding soul gives, the feeding soul in plants the lower forms, and universally the more perfect form with respect to the less.

• Aristotle’s comparison in the eighth book of Wisdom of forms to numbers: three is two plus one, contains what two has plus more; five contains four, three, two, one in some way. The higher form does what the lower does and something more.
• He asks for further examples beyond friendship: students offer numbers, friendship, souls, soldiers. He adds computers — the new one does what the old did and more (usually; if you’re smart enough you can do the old thing on the new one). Student: hydrogen and oxygen virtually in water; he: maybe water doesn’t do everything they do, but something of the power of the elements remains. Break before the replies to the objections.

His words #

• “what being” — substantial being, what a thing is; “accidental being” can be many.
• “simply” / “simpliciter” / “haplos” (Greek) — without qualification; in language you add no word at all.
• “in some way” / “secundum quid” — in some respect; a qualified, diminished, imperfect sense.
• “ability” — [ed.: potency]; “being in ability” vs “being in act”.
• “being according to figures of predication” — substance, quantity, quality… [ed.: the categories].
• “fallacy of simpliciter and secundum quid” — the second mistake outside of speech.
• “Natural Hearing” — [ed.: Physics]; “Wisdom” — [ed.: Metaphysics].
• “understanding soul”, “sensing soul”, “feeding soul” — [ed.: intellective, sensitive, nutritive].
• “recess” of a form — its departure.
• “perfectum dicitur” — “perfect is said”; perfect in your kind vs lacking nothing at all.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 76, a. 4, sed contra and respondeo (verified). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Physics I (first matter as ability; ancients reduce generation to alteration).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (meanings of “perfect”), VIII (forms compared to numbers), IX (ability before act in some way, act before simply), XII (first cause pure act); the proemium (wise man knows all things).
• Plato, Meno (slave boy doubling the square; Meno’s paradox).
• Thomas (attributed), De Fallaciis, ad quosdam nobiles artistas.
• Euclid, Elements.
• Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity.
• Kant / Hegel exchange on the unknown world (no locus).

His questions #

• Would you try to prove “of one thing there is one substantial being”, or is it known of itself? Known of itself.
• Can my substantial being be many, as my accidental being can? No — I cannot be a man and a dog and a cat.
• Through studying Euclid, did I come to be? No, I came to be a geometer.
• If I leave this room, will I cease to be? Only cease to be in this room; if I died I would cease to be.
• Are there chairs in the trees out there? No — only in ability, and you have to add that.
• If you know the length and width of a rectangle, do you know the area? Strictly no; you are able to know it.
• Do you know my brother Mark? Not simply; in some way, by knowing what a man is.
• How does secundum quid translate? In some way, in some respect — a qualified, diminished sense.
• Do you know everything? In some way — knowing what “something” is — but most imperfectly, not simply.
• Other examples of a more perfect thing doing what the lower does and more? Numbers, friendship, souls, soldiers, new computers, elements virtually in water.