Article 7 and the objections to Article 8: whether something joins the soul to the body, with a digression on Augustine

Orientation #

He opens by saying they start article seven today and will do the “next two” articles before going on to the powers, which are “more proportioned to us”; “you really know the soul through its powers.” He refers back to what “has been said already” that the soul is united to the body as form (prev. lecture). The previous class read a. 6 (union through accidental dispositions) and the next continues a. 8 on whole and part.

The class, in order #

1. The objector imagines quantitative parts (“the equivocation of the word part”) #

The point: a. 7 asks whether the soul is united to the body of the animal by means of some other body; the objector is thinking of parts like the pieces of a wooden chair joined by glue or a screw.

• First meaning of “part”: quantitative. The written word cat has three parts, C, A, T, which can be cut apart and set anywhere; a chair’s legs, seat, back can be separated and exist by themselves. Aristotle on quantitative parts: divisible into parts that can exist by themselves; they are substances.
• Question put: is a part something outside or within the thing? Within. Can anything within a thing be called a part? By that account, it seems so.
• Cat vs act: same letters, not the same word, so something else is in the word: the order. Letters plus order are “parts” of cat in a different sense; they are not two parts the way C, A, T are three.
• Manhattan cocktail: rye whiskey and sweet vermouth (and cherry) are parts in the first sense; but only in the ratio two to one (one to one is too sweet). The ratio is also “inside” the Manhattan: a part in another, not the original, sense.
• Rubber ball: the rubber and the ball shape; the shape is inside the ball, not outside; the ball is “put together from” both.
• The two common kinds of parts in the world around us: quantitative parts and matter and form, “which they sometimes call the essential parts.” More senses of part come in the next reading. Essential: take the order out of cat, or the shape out of the rubber ball, and you no longer have the thing; a tire needs rubber and the circular shape.
• Boundary case: a straight line divided in half — each part is still a straight line; when quantitative parts do not differ in kind, the parts are “as much what the whole is.”
• Conclusion: body and soul are parts of man in the second sense, essential parts, not quantitative.
• Student: aren’t the letters the material cause and the order the formal cause? Yes; the order is to the letters as form to matter, and the letters themselves are the quantitative parts, not the order.

2. Why quantitative parts are more known, and the false imagination (“to carry apart”) #

The point: quantitative parts are the original meaning because they can be taken apart; imagining essential parts this way is the root of the objections.

• You can cut the letters apart, take the chair apart, cut up a chicken or turkey; but you cannot put this table’s shape over there and leave the wood here. Nothing is clearer to us than distinctness of one here, one there.
• Word aside: “difference” in Latin and diaphora in Greek come from “to carry apart”; laying out parts of something you assemble yourself.
• When we say a whole is more than a part we usually think first of the quantitative whole.
• Argument he flags as the reason for the whole discussion:
  1. If essential parts are imagined as quantitative, they are two actual things existing independently (two pieces of wood).
  2. Two actual things need a third thing (glue, screw) to make them one.
  3. But the shape of the rubber ball and the rubber need no third thing; an agent (a machine, a person) shapes the rubber, but nothing stands between rubber and shape.
  4. Because the form is “nothing other than the act of an ability that the rubber has”: rubber is able to be sphere, cube, cylinder, and is actually one through the form. Conclusion: form and matter are united immediately; the objector “is falsely imagining the kind of parts that soul and body are.”

3. The objections of article 7 (“by means of some other body”) #

The point: three (with a fourth position) objections, each resting on a subtle intermediary body.

• Obj. 1: Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter, book 7 (he notes the title means commenting “right down to the individual words”): the soul “through light, that is fire and air,” which are more like spirit, administers the body; these are bodies. “Even the good Augustine” is brought in to object, but Thomas understands Augustine better than most.
  • Spiritus: an indistinct ancient notion of something very fine but material involved in bodily movement; comparable to electrical impulses or brain waves; “spirit” is originally breath, material but fine. Aside: Louis de Broglie’s book Matter and Light contrasts matter and light though moderns hold light material; Aristotle and Thomas did not think light was matter at all (diagram mentioned before).
• Obj. 2: what taken away dissolves a union seems to be a middle; when the spirit fails the soul separates. Illustrated by “brain dead”: when the impulses stop, the man seems dead.
• Obj. 3: things very distant are united only through a middle; the understanding soul is at a great distance from the body because not bodily and incorruptible; so it needs an intermediary, an incorruptible body between it and this corruptible body “sniffling here and getting old.”
• Further opinion mentioned: a celestial light that “conciliates the elements so they don’t fight too much” and makes something one.

4. Sed contra: the wax and its shape (“Calls Aristotle by antonomasia the philosopher”) #

The point: Aristotle, On the Soul II: no need to ask whether soul and body are one or what makes them one, any more than the wax and its shape; the figure is united to the wax with no body between.

• Substantial form vs accidental form: Aristotle compares the union of soul (substantial form) with its subject to that of the wax’s shape (accidental form) because the accidental form is more known to us, sensible; substantial form must be understood, cannot be seen or pictured. Once one sees the union is like wax and shape, “one is the act of the other,” nothing is between.

5. Body of the article: mover vs form, one and being (“the engine might move the caboose”) #

The point: if the soul were only a mover, as for the Platonists, intermediary bodies would be suitable; as form, impossible.

• Mover at a distance moves through many intermediaries: engine to caboose through the cars; Plato’s soul in the body like a sailor in a boat, a man in his car. All this “collapses” if the soul is united as form (already said).
• Argument:
  1. A thing is one in the same way it is a being (developed in wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics], where Aristotle treats being as being and then the one and the many). Illustration: chair or table keeps its being only while its parts are united; breaking them destroys it; a thing holds to its unity as to its being; an army losing its order and chain of command is a rabble, “divide and conquer.”
  2. The form by itself makes the thing be in act, since form is by nature act, and gives existence through no middle.
  3. So the unity of matter-form composite is through the form itself united to matter as its act; nothing unites except the agent that makes the matter be in act, Metaphysics book 8. Illustration: what unites rubber and sphere is only the maker who reduces the rubber’s ability to being a sphere; nothing within the ball is between rubber and shape.

6. The false opinions and the digression on light (“fictitious and derisible”) #

The point: Thomas lists intermediary-body positions and calls them fictitium et derisibile.

• Platonists: the understanding soul has an incorruptible body naturally united to it, never separated, and through it is united to the corruptible body. Others: a “spiritual body” or corporeal spirit, a fine thin body. Aside on the word: breath/air, extended to any fine subtle matter, then carried to angels and God (“God is a spirit,” must be worshipped in spirit), naming what is not material at all because air is hardly visible.
• Others: light as intermediary, a body of the fifth essence. Old science: four elements, earth, air, fire, water, “the most long lasting chemical theory in the world,” from Empedocles to Shakespeare; Boyle, The Skeptical Chymist (1600s), doubts them; the heavenly bodies were a fifth nature.
• The detailed version: feeding soul united by light of the heaven of the stars, sensible soul by the crystal heaven, understanding soul by the Empyrean heaven. Thomas: fictitious (a work of imagination, no reason given) and derisible, worthy of laughter. Aside: Thomas rarely says this; Albert the Great does more often (“so asinine,” to be laughed at rather than refuted).
• Aristotle and Thomas themselves mistaken about light not being a body. Aristotle’s argument: if illumination is a local motion (a subtle body spreading from the sun across the sky) it takes time; but it does not take time; therefore not local motion. The minor premise, if true, gives the conclusion necessarily; but we now know light travels 186,000 miles per second, detectable only by an ingenious apparatus. Thomas’s awareness of such weakness: he says of Aristotle’s incorruptible stars (probable because always seen) that their corruption could take longer than many generations of men; likewise light could be too fast to detect by eye.
• Aside: cell phones, watching things millions of miles away; the ancients would not believe it.

7. Second reason and the replies (“the first tool of the moving power”) #

The point: fifth essence cannot be an intermediary, and the soul is form.

• Second reason: the fifth essence does not enter materially into the composition of a mixed body, being an ultimate (old science). “But also because the soul is immediately united to the body as form to matter”: “That’s the argument I insist upon, that’s the main one.”
• Reply 1: Augustine speaks of the soul as it moves the body (“administration”); grosser parts are moved by subtler: bones by muscles, muscles by electrical impulse (electrons are material); the first tool of the moving power is the spirit, Aristotle, On the Cause of the Motion of Animals. Spirit as very fine body, like electricity going through metal, “seems almost not to be a body.”
• Reply 2: when the spirit is subtracted the union fails not because it was the medium but because the disposition making the body suitable is removed; yet spirit can be a middle in moving, as first tool.
• Reply 3: soul and body are distant if considered by themselves; if each had being separately, like quantitative parts, many intermediaries would be needed; but as form the soul has no being apart from the body’s being — the body shares in the soul’s existence, though not completely, which is why the soul has abilities not in the body (understanding, choosing). Any form as act is at a great distance from matter, which is potency or ability only.

8. Article 8: Augustine’s sed contra and objection 1 (“the whole soul is in each part”) #

The point: whether the whole soul is in each part of the body; the sed contra is Augustine, On the Trinity VI: the soul in every body is whole in the whole body and whole in each part. He does not know where Aristotle says this explicitly, though Aristotle would agree; Augustine, barely acquainted with Aristotle, is to be admired for seeing it.

• Obj. 1: Aristotle, On the Cause of the Motion of Animals: not necessary that the soul be in each part, but in a certain starting point from which motion originates. Resolution anticipated: Aristotle speaks of the soul as mover, Augustine of the soul as form.
• Aside: the Athanasian Creed says nothing is more like the union of the Word and human nature than the union of soul and body. Not, as heretics read “the Word was made flesh,” that the divine nature is the form of a body without human soul. Thomas (Summa Contra Gentiles): the body is not only subject but the joined tool of the soul, unlike a hammer or saw; so Christ’s human nature is joined to his divinity as a tool, which is why it has power to redeem. Aristotle: soul is to body as an art to its tools; not any art uses any tools, not any soul is in any body.

9. Objections 2–5 of article 8 (“very subtle, very subtle”) #

• Obj. 2: from the definition of the soul, first act of a body composed of tools (organic); not each part of the body is a body composed of tools, though perhaps part of a tool; so the soul is not in each part.
• Obj. 3: Aristotle’s proportion in On the Soul II: part of soul to part of body as sight to the eye, so whole soul to whole body; if the eye were an animal, sight would be its soul. Then if the whole soul were in each part, each part would be an animal.
  • What Thomas must do: distinguish the way the soul is in the whole body from the way it is in each part, without denying that the whole soul is in each part; only the whole body is an animal (“animal” comes from “soul”). “That’s a very subtle thing… very subtle, very subtle.” If “whole” is taken as quantitative whole it makes no sense: the whole line is not in each part, the whole circle not in each semicircle; and if the whole were in one part nothing would be left for the others.
  • Aside: the Catechism’s quote from Augustine’s treatise on hope on the natural desire for happiness; Aristotle: some things we try to say better than our predecessors, some as well; Augustine, like Shakespeare, sometimes says a thing so well you despair of bettering it; Pablo Casals to the pianist: “we play it the way the master wrote it.”
• Obj. 4: all powers of the soul are founded in its essence; if the whole soul were in each part, all powers would be in each part, sight in the ear, hearing in the eye — “a nice objection.”
• Obj. 5: if the whole soul were in each part, each part would depend immediately on the soul, so no part would depend on another nor be more principal — manifestly false: cutting off the head finishes you more than cutting off an arm.
• Sed contra again (Augustine, On the Trinity VI): “incredible” that he saw it.
• Aside: Boethius, trained at Alexandria under Ammonius Hermias in the Greek tradition, translated at least Aristotle’s logical works into Latin; Augustine, trained in the rhetorical schools, still reaches such subtlety, a first-class mind. Story (he does not vouch for it) of Augustine appearing to Thomas, as Paul did while he wrote his commentaries, Augustine saying Thomas was superior because of his chastity. Augustine’s greatest work: not the Confessions or City of God or the works on grace (a Pope said the mind of Augustine on grace is the mind of the Church), but On the Trinity, less orderly than Thomas (soul and incarnation mixed in), but full of things. Its line: nothing more fruitful than understanding something of the Trinity, nothing more dangerous than error; and the “immature and perverse love of reason,” common in universities; its opposite, a mature and rectified love of reason as in Aristotle, recognises reason’s weakness and its need of props and supports.
• Class stops for a break before the body of the article, “which has got a lot of holes and parts” [ed.: “wholes and parts”].

His words #

• quantitative parts: the first meaning of part; parts that can exist by themselves, substances (chair legs, letters of cat).
• essential parts: matter and form as parts of a thing (letters and order; rubber and shape); the sense in which soul and body are parts of man.
• ability: what the rubber has to be sphere, cube, cylinder [ed.: potency]; form is “the act of an ability” of the matter.
• difference / diaphora: from “to carry apart,” one here, one there.
• false imagination: picturing essential parts as quantitative, two actual things needing a third.
• spiritus / spirit: originally breath; a very fine material thing moving the body (like electrical impulses); extended to angels and God.
• antonomasia: Thomas calls Aristotle “the philosopher.”
• wisdom: Aristotle’s science of being as being [ed.: Metaphysics].
• fifth essence: the heavenly bodies as a fifth nature beyond earth, air, fire, water.
• fictitium et derisibile: fictitious (work of imagination without reason) and worthy of laughter.
• body composed of tools: [ed.: organic body]; first act of such a body is the definition of soul.
• joined tool: a tool that is part of the one having it, as body to soul and Christ’s humanity to his divinity, unlike a hammer.
• immature and perverse love of reason (Augustine): its opposite, a mature and rectified love of reason.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 76, a. 7 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 76, a. 8 (objections 1–5 and sed contra).
• Aristotle, On the Soul II (wax and shape; sight to eye), as quoted in the articles.
• Augustine, On the Trinity VI (whole soul in whole body and each part), as quoted.
• Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter VII (soul administers the body through light, fire, air), as quoted.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics (being and one; book 8, form united to matter as act; agent).
• Aristotle, On the Cause of the Motion of Animals (spirit as first tool; soul in the starting point of motion).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (human nature of Christ as joined tool).
• Athanasian Creed (union of Word and human nature like soul and body).
• Louis de Broglie, Matter and Light; Boyle, The Skeptical Chymist.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church quoting Augustine’s “treatise on hope” on the desire for happiness.
• Augustine, Confessions, City of God, works on grace; Boethius’s translations of Aristotle’s logic.

His questions #

• What are the parts of the word cat? Three, C, A, T: the first sense of part; but letters and order are parts in another sense.
• Is a part something outside or within the thing? Within; so anything within seems, on that account, a part.
• What are the parts of a Manhattan? Is any ratio a Manhattan? Rye whiskey and sweet vermouth (and cherry); no, two to one, so the ratio is also “inside.”
• What would be the parts of a rubber ball in the second sense? The rubber and the ball shape.
• Do you need a third thing to unite the rubber and its shape? No; an agent shapes it, but nothing is between them, since form is the act of the matter’s ability.
• Why did Aristotle say light is not a body? Illumination does not take time, so it is not a local motion; the minor premise is now known false (186,000 miles per second).
• What unites the rubber and the spherical shape? Only the agent who reduces the rubber’s ability to act.
• How can the whole soul be in the whole body and in each part, when only the whole is an animal? Left open for the body of a. 8: some distinction between the two ways, not a quantitative whole.