The body of Article 8: the whole soul in every part, kinds of wholes, and the Holy Spirit as the soul of the Church

Orientation #

He picks up in the body of the article (“I answer…”) and refers back to “the previous reading” where the objection from Augustine was a misunderstanding of the cause of animal motion, and to what “we were saying the other day” about hope as the helmet of salvation (prev. lecture). Next time: “question seventy-seven” (he first says sixty-eight, then corrects), the powers of the soul in general; prepare the first two articles, two articles a weekend. The previous class treated q.76 aa.7–8 on the soul-body union; the next takes up q.77 a.1 on whether the soul’s essence is its powers.

The class, in order #

1. Mover vs. form; the soul is not the arrangement of the body (“form of the whole, which does not give existence”) #

Point: if the soul were united to the body only as mover it could be in one part; since it is united as a substantial form it must be in the whole and in each part (Augustine).

• New difference between substantial and accidental form: the substantial form perfects not only the whole but each part. A “form of the whole” that does not give existence to the parts is only composition and order.
• Examples: the arrangement of a house or of the chair you sit on is in the whole, not in each part. Cebes in the Phaedo: soul as harmony of the body. Modern scientists say a body is alive by “the arrangement of the matter”; his automobile engine: the whole engine has an arrangement, not each part; replace the radiator or carburetor and the part exists by itself. That is to make the soul an accidental form; the arrangement of the engine is accidental because it does not give the parts their existence.
• Reason the human soul cannot be accidental: an accidental form would have no activity except in the body, but understanding and willing are not in the body.

2. “Dead man” is equivocal (“Is a dead man a man?”) #

Point: when the soul recedes nothing is called animal or man except equivocally, and likewise its parts.

• White man / black man vs. dead man: grammatically alike (noun + adjective), but white and black add something accidental while leaving “man” in the same sense; “dead man” uses “man” equivocally, of the shape only.
• Same for parts: hand or eye of a dead man is not the eye of a living man, since it has lost the operation of an eye. Sign from the Philosopher: no part keeps its own operation once the soul recedes, whereas whatever retains its species retains its operation. Eye of a dead man = eye of a statue; neither sees.
• Since an act is in that of which it is the act, the soul is in the whole body and each part.

3. Digression: two basic kinds of whole (“I just distinguish two kinds of whole”) #

Point: before Thomas’s threefold division, the most fundamental distinction, the one he gives in logic.

• Composed whole (Thomas: “integral whole”) vs. universal whole. Composed: put together from its parts but not said of them (“cat” from C, A, T; the chair from legs, back, seat; no letter or leg is the word or the chair). Universal: said of each part but not put together from them (number of odd and even; animal of dog, cat, horse). Only by proportion do we call these parts; “particular” comes from “part”; hence “universal whole” with “subject parts” vs. “composing parts.”
• Absurdity if animal were composed of its species: “a dog is an animal” would mean a dog is composed of cat, horse and animal.
• Every art and science divides both ways: grammar (sentence into noun, verb, adjective, adverb = composed; into statement, question, command = universal); chemistry (atom into nucleus and shell, or protons, neutrons, electrons = composed; the periodic table = universal, since a hydrogen atom is an atom but a proton is not); Aristotle’s logic (statement into noun and verb/subject, predicate, copula vs. affirmative and negative); theology (sacrament into matter and form: the water alone, or the words alone, is not baptism, vs. sacrament into the seven); political philosophy (government into legislative, executive, judicial vs. monarchy, oligarchy, democracy); poetics (plot into beginning, middle, end, or tying and untying the knot, vs. tragic and comic plot).
• Aside: Andrew Jackson on a Supreme Court decision, “let them enforce it themselves”: no branch alone is a government.

4. Aristotle’s four senses, divided two ways (“four kinds of holes and parts”) #

Point: in the “fourth or fifth book of wisdom” (he says both) Aristotle gives four senses; three of them are in Thomas’s text, one is not, and Thomas adds one Aristotle lacks.

• Three composed wholes: quantitative (circle into semicircles, book into pages or chapters), essential (matter and form: “cat” into letters and their order, as distinct from into the letters), parts of the definition (genus and differences); plus the universal whole. In all the composed cases a part is not the whole: a semicircle is not a circle, a five-inch line is not the ten-inch line it may be part of, a genus is not a definition.
• Second division: two of the four are wholes only in the mind (universal whole; definition, composed of universals), two are in things (quantitative; essential: form and matter in the rubber ball, letters and order in “cat” on the board). Outside the mind there are only singulars; the mental wholes have only a remote foundation in things.
• Thomas leaves out the universal whole and adds the potential whole, at which Aristotle only “hits” in the De Anima on the parts of the soul; it lies between two of Aristotle’s kinds, so he leaves it to a “more subtle consideration.”

5. Thomas’s threefold totality (“According to a threefold division”) #

Point: since a whole is what is divided into parts, a threefold division yields three totalities.

1. Quantitative: the whole line or body.
2. Of the definition and of the essence together: the defined resolves into genus and differences, the composed into matter and form. Why put together though one is more in the mind: genus is to differences as matter to form; as wood is shaped variously, adding isosceles, scalene, equilateral to triangle actualises what is only potential in the genus; in material things the genus is taken from the more material, the difference from the more formal. Analogous senses, not one.
   • Aside: Locke (and Berkeley) get “fouled up” by treating the universal whole as composed of all the particulars, and end with “all or none of these.”
3. Potential whole, divided into parts of the power: we speak of the whole power of a thing or a part of it.

6. Which totalities belong to forms; the case of whiteness (“except perhaps by accident”) #

Point: quantitative totality belongs to forms only per accidens, and only to forms indifferent to the quantity of their subject; the second and third belong to forms per se.

• Whiteness on the wall: what it is to be white is equally in a small or large surface, so dividing the wall divides whiteness by accident.
• A form requiring diversity of parts, like the soul (especially of perfect animals), is not divided even per accidens: cut a worm and the parts live on; cut up a man and there is no man. So quantitative totality belongs to the soul neither as such nor by accident.
• Totality of perfection of definition and nature belongs properly to forms; so does totality of power, because form is the principle of operation: through matter you receive, through form you act (through my ability to know I receive; through another’s actual knowing I am taught). Act vs. ability.
• Whiteness asked three ways: (a) quantitatively, the whole is not in each part; (b) by power, not in each part either, since whiteness over the whole surface moves the eye more (the white barn in summer sun is blinding); (c) by species and essence, the whole whiteness is in each part.
• Conclusion for the soul: no quantitative totality; whole soul in each part by totality of perfection and nature, not by totality of power, since sight is in the eye, hearing in the ear.

7. To the whole first, to the parts as ordered to it (“to the whole first”) #

Point: because the soul requires diversity of parts, it is not related in the same way to whole and parts.

• Its proper perfectible, proportioned to it, is the whole body (soul defined as first act of a natural body composed of tools). It pertains to the parts per posterius: insofar as they have an order to the whole. My liver or hand is informed in order to the whole; removed, it loses that order and is no longer informed.
• “This last paragraph is going to be important” for the replies.

8. Replies 1–3, and the Holy Spirit as soul of the Church (“the Holy Spirit is the soul of the church”) #

• Reply 1: Aristotle’s text is about the soul’s moving power, which is in one part of the body, not about the soul as giving existence to every part; the same misunderstanding of animal motion as with Augustine last time.
• Reply 2 (soul is act of an organic body, not every part is such): solved by segment 7; in the whole first and per se, in the parts by their order to the whole.
• Analogy (Leo): the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, perfecting the Church first and as such, each of us as part of the Church; cut off by sin or excommunication, one is not joined to the Spirit. He does not want to “overextend” it; the union of the Spirit with the individual is nonetheless immediate, not like an accidental form.
• Student: is the Spirit in the baptized differently than in the unbaptized, perhaps “outside trying to impact”? Answer: speak carefully; John Paul II has spoken on those never preached to; Paul, no one pleases God without faith; Thomas asks how explicitly one must believe: at minimum that God exists and rewards good and punishes evil, with implicit belief in the Incarnation; God can give grace outside the sacraments; there are degrees of belonging to the Church and many dead members who may be pruned.
• Asides: Báñez (Teresa of Avila’s director) held the Immaculate Conception near-heretical before its definition, after which the text speaks of “suffering shipwreck”; the gospel pruning parable, “manure it another year”, and a Dominican whose director “manured” him.
• Reply 3 (soul to whole body as this power to that part, so each part would be an animal): the animal is composed of soul and the whole body as first and proportioned perfectible; the soul is not in a part as in what is first and proportioned, so a part need not be an animal, any more than because the Holy Spirit is in me I am the Church. The Church is more proportioned to the Spirit than the individual, though less strictly than body to soul, since he could make the Church as big as he wanted.

9. Reply 4: which powers are in no part of the body (“I just made a choice”) #

Point: some powers exceed the whole capacity of the body and are in no part; the rest are in the part suited to them.

• Intellect and will are in no part. Hamlet on Horatio, “my dear soul was mistress of her choice… her election hath sealed thee for herself”: the soul chooses, since the will is in the soul, not the body.
• Bob O’Grady’s report of brain mapping: stimulating parts of the brain produced “I taste chocolate,” “I remember my mother,” but no part produced “I just made a choice”; so the will is not in the brain, hence in no part. He adds that the strict proof is the same as for reason: from its extending to the universal and to immaterial things.
• Common powers (sight, digestion) are not wherever the soul is, but only in the part proportioned to their operation. Separated soul cannot see, hear, taste; Socrates in the Phaedo on graveyard ghosts as lovers of the body cut off from every pleasure they knew. These powers are in the soul only as in a root, not as in a subject; they are realised in the body. The objection imagines the soul holding all its powers by itself.

10. Reply 5: principal parts, helmet and breastplate (“helmet of salvation”) #

Point: one part is more principal than another because it is the organ of a more principal power, or serves the same power more principally.

• The head: seat of the outward and inward senses (memory, imagination) that direct the other powers; lose it and you are finished, unlike a leg or hand. The heart also principal, diffusing blood; blood to the brain stopping is trouble too.
• Application recalled: hope is the helmet because by it we desire the kingdom and eternal life, our end, which directs the whole life as the head directs the body; faith and charity are the breastplate protecting the heart, source of life, since the life of the soul is Christ and Paul (Ephesians, he thinks) says Christ dwells in the heart through faith and charity. Hope is also the anchor, keeping you from drifting when you keep the end in view.
• Aside: radio report of an Al Qaeda plan to assassinate several prominent Americans simultaneously for shock effect; Kennedy’s remark that one who trades his life for yours cannot be stopped; a student adds the stock market.

11. Closing: q. 77 and “historia” (“historia in Greek means”) #

• Next: q.77, powers in general, then particular powers relevant to theology.
• Aristotle calls the study of the soul historia, investigation; Thomas: investigation is by nature incomplete, and Aristotle treats key questions, not all. This explains why history by antonomasia is named so: human affairs are most incomplete, historians always revising as new facts come to light.
• Aside: U.S. News section on spies; Major André’s capture, usually told as bad luck, apparently owed to someone suspecting his link with Benedict Arnold, who escaped just before Washington arrived.

His words #

• form of the whole: composition and order, not giving existence to the parts; an accidental form
• equivocal: “dead man” uses “man” in another sense, of the shape
• composed whole [ed.: integral whole]: put together from its parts, not said of them
• universal whole: said of each part, not composed of them; “subject parts” vs. “composing parts”
• “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V]
• essential parts: matter and form
• potential whole: divided into parts of the power; his added term for Thomas’s third totality
• ability [ed.: potency] vs. act; form is the principle of operation
• per posterius: the soul pertains to the parts “according as they have an order to the whole”
• proper perfectible: what is proportioned to the form, i.e. the whole body
• root: how sense powers are in the soul, as opposed to “as in a subject”
• historia: investigation, incomplete by nature; “history” so called by antonomasia

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.76 a.8, body and replies to objections 1–5 Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (“fourth or fifth book of wisdom”) on whole and part (inferred)
• Aristotle, De Anima on parts of the soul; the eye of a statue; historia
• Plato, Phaedo: Cebes’ harmony; ghosts of body-lovers
• Augustine on whole soul in whole and in each part
• Shakespeare, Hamlet, on Horatio
• St Paul, Ephesians (he thinks), Christ dwelling in the heart by faith; “no one can please God without faith”
• Leo (pope) on the Holy Spirit as soul of the Church
• Thomas on the helmet of hope, breastplate of faith and charity (prev. lecture)
• Gospel pruning parable

His questions #

• Is the arrangement of a house, or of the chair you’re sitting on, found in each part? No; the form of the whole is in the whole only.
• Is a dead man a man? No; “man” is used equivocally, as of the eye of a statue.
• Is the word “cat” said of the letter C? Is a leg of a chair a chair? No; a composed whole is put together from parts but not said of them.
• Dividing atom into protons, neutrons, electrons: which kind of division? The periodic table? Composed; universal.
• Is the whole whiteness of the wall in each part of the wall? Quantitatively and by power, no; by species and essence, yes.
• Through your matter you’re able to what? Through your form? Receive; do something.
• When the soul is separated from the body, do you still have the power to see, hear, smell, taste, touch? No; those powers are in the body, rooted in the soul.
• Is the Holy Spirit in the baptized and the unbaptized in the same sense? Left open; speak carefully, there may be degrees of belonging to the Church.