Summa I q.77 a.1–2: Differences and Properties, the Definition of Faith, and Why the Soul Has Many Powers

Orientation #

He picks up a. 1 at the reply to the sixth objection, takes a break, then reads a. 2 (“two articles these days”). A student recalls “what you said about it last week” on John Paul II finding Thomas simple to read (prev. lecture). The recording cuts off at “Next time we’ll be looking at…”. The previous class worked through a. 1 on whether the soul’s essence is its powers; the next treats a. 3 on the distinction of powers by acts and objects.

The class, in order #

1. Reply to the sixth objection: potentiality in the soul and in angels (“has place in God, who is pure act”) #

The objection misreads the text: the soul is not composed of matter and form, yet has something of potentiality admixed.

1. In everything but God, the substance is not its existence; so substance stands to existence as potency to act.
2. Hence even an angel, though not matter-and-form, is not pure act, and so can be the subject of an accident.
3. The Boethian proposition the objection used holds only in God, who is pure act — the matter in which Boethius introduces it.

• Aside: Boethius is “the greatest mind between Augustine and Thomas.”

2. Reply to the seventh objection: differences named from powers (“nature loves to hide”) #

Rational and sensible as differences are taken from the rational and sensing soul, not from the powers; but since substantial forms are unknown to us in themselves and known through their accidents, accidents are sometimes laid down in place of substantial differences.

• Porphyry’s definition of difference, following Aristotle: a name said with one meaning of many things other in kind, signifying how they are what they are. So a difference is by definition not said of just one species — yet Aristotle seems to want one difference that makes a thing one kind. Thomas raises this in the commentary on the Posterior Analytics: the essential differences are hidden, so we need a combination of differences.
• “Rational animal”, the stock example in old logic books, is a bad example: rational fits only man, against the very definition of difference.
• Property in the strict sense (Porphyry): belongs to only one species, to every member, always. One such property separates the thing from everything else — “half of four” separates two — without being the difference that makes it what it is.
• Lacking the one essential difference, we use a combination of differences fitting only one thing. Square: equilateral right-angled quadrilateral — equilateral also fits the rhombus, right-angled also fits the oblong, the combination fits only square. “For the most part, that is the kind of difference you find all the way through philosophy.”
• Poetics: Sophocles and Homer alike represent men greater than us; Sophocles and Aristophanes alike present it acted out on stage. Tragedy is defined by both — “serious and of some magnitude” (shared with epic), “acted out” (shared with comedy).
• Alternatively a property is used in place of the essential difference, giving a convertible name: “rational” is named from an ability, in the genus of quality, but is meant to designate whatever in man’s nature makes reason follow — “a circumlocution in a sense.”
• Heraclitus (“the central thinker”): nature loves to hide; the natures of things are known through accidents closer to our senses. So “understanding soul”, “sensing soul”, “feeding soul” name a kind of soul (genus of substance) from its ultimate power, a property following on the nature.
• Aside: a science book in a bookstore titled Nature Loves to Hide, stolen from Heraclitus.

3. Digression: Augustine’s definition of belief as an example (“to assent while thinking about it”) #

An example of defining through two things neither of which belongs only to the thing defined.

• Augustine, followed by Thomas: to believe is to assent firmly while thinking about it. Three cases: (a) assent without thinking, because obvious — two is half of four, no odd number is even, a whole is more than a part; (b) assent after thinking it out — interior angles of a triangle equal two right angles; (c) faith: assent firmly to what is not obvious and will not be until we see God face to face, hence continuing to think about it.
• Student: does “assent” mean living it out? — No: the mind firmly agrees to it.
• This contains in seed Anselm’s “faith seeking understanding”; it would be against the nature of the mind not to think about what it assents to without understanding (three persons in God: how can this be?). Isaiah names Christ “wonderful.”
• “You’ve got to be very careful in theology”: a reason showing it must be so would eliminate faith; theology gives a reason that Thomas calls a consolation until the vision.

4. After the break: whose definition of difference (“Did we forget seven?”) #

A student asks whether objection seven was skipped; he confirms that was just treated, and that the definition of difference is originally Aristotle’s, repeated in Porphyry.

5. Article 2 read: objections and sed contra (“It seems that there are not many powers”) #

1. The understanding soul most approaches the divine likeness; in God there is one simple power, His essence; so in the soul too.
2. The more superior a power, the more united; the understanding soul excels other forms; so it should have one power.
3. To operate belongs to something existing in act; through one essence man has being at diverse grades (plant, animal, understanding); so through one power he operates at different grades. Sed contra: Aristotle in De Anima II lays down many powers.

6. First reason: Aristotle’s three grades from De Caelo (“obtain a perfect goodness”) #

Thomas’s first reason for many powers rests on Aristotle’s three-level comparison, which he calls “a very subtle thing.”

• Lowest things get an imperfect goodness by few motions; middle things a perfect goodness by many; highest things a perfect goodness by few.
• Aristotle’s comparison: one who cannot get perfect health but some health with few remedies; better, one who can get perfect health with many remedies; better still, with few; best, with none.
• Ballpoint pen (few parts, does little) vs. computer (many parts, does much); a machine doing much with few parts would be best. Timex ($15-20, simple, keeps better time) vs. his wife’s wedding-gift wind-up watch (many parts, needs expert cleaning).
• Applied: things below man attain particular goods, so have few determined operations and powers (plant simpler than animal, animal does more). Man can attain a universal and perfect good — beatitude — yet is lowest by nature among things capable of it, so needs many and diverse powers to get something like what angels have, and not as well.
• The cat Mappa: a can of food and water vs. our toasters, pans, tea kettles for “this high life.”
• Student: dolphins recognising a mark in a mirror — self-awareness, a different category? — No: not reason “as Shakespeare defines it,” though perhaps among the more intelligent animals.
• Angels: less diversity; God: no power apart from His essence, hence one Word; descending through angels, more thoughts are needed, the higher knowing more with fewer; man needs a separate thought for each particular thing.

7. Second reason: man on the horizon (“on the horizon of the spiritual and the bodily”) #

The Greek and Arab commentators say man is on the border of spiritual and bodily creatures, so the powers of both run together in him: understanding and will with angels, sensation and emotion with the dog, nourishment and reproduction with the tree.

• Scripture’s hymns praising God from creatures go from angels down through material things and end with man; the Summa follows the same order (angels, material world, man). The appropriateness of the Son taking on human nature: taking back the whole of creation, since man involves both worlds.

8. Reply to the first objection: perfection without simplicity (“God is altogether simple”) #

Man is more like God in attaining a perfect good, but through many and diverse means, in which he falls short of the angels.

• After q. 2 (existence of God), q. 3 treats God’s simplicity: no known composition, and no composition possible. Teresa of Avila: the closer to God, the simpler we become — Francis, Mother Teresa.
• The paradox: man is more in God’s image than dog or tree (“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” cannot be said to a tree), yet a stone is simpler than man. Resolution: angels are both more perfect and simpler than us; we are more perfect than animal, plant, rock, but more complicated.
• Student: because of the fall? — No; Aristotle already saw it in the health example (some healthy with no medicine, some with few, some with a whole list, some who cannot be made healthy at all).
• Thomas treats simplicity and perfection side by side because in known material creatures the more perfect is less simple and the simpler less perfect: botany vs. zoology (plants simpler, not “messy and smelly”; animals more perfect); envying the cat’s simple life; the old farmer needing less than we who need a stereo for Mozart and books.
• Exceptions where higher is simpler: Poetics on tragedy vs. epic — same effect, but shorter; the first radio filling a room vs. a tiny clear one.
• “For the most part, the material world, perfection involves complexity” — stone, tree, dog, man; the order is the reverse of God’s, so you must negate it: God altogether simple yet universally perfect.

9. Digression: simplicity in thinkers and questions (“asking the right question”) #

Perfection of thought can be expressed simply.

• John Paul II at the Angelicum finding Thomas simple beside the phenomenologists yet profound. Student: perhaps abstract writing was self-defence under communism. He: trained complicated speech gets in the way of understanding.
• De Koninck on Ron MacArthur: “Much better now — he’s asking simple questions.”
• Plato’s question reported in Nicomachean Ethics I: are we on the way from the beginnings or to the beginnings?
• Heisenberg: the Greeks taught us to ask questions of principle; Planck (quantum hypothesis, December 1900) trained on the Greeks; Bohr and Heisenberg in despair (“can nature be as absurd as it seems?”), then each alone found the solution; Gifford lectures: asking the right question is more than halfway to the truth.
• Aristotle’s plaque to Plato: the first to show by word and example that the virtuous life is the happy life.

10. Reply to the second objection: united vs. multiplied power (“if it extends to equal things”) #

A united power is superior if it extends to equal things; a multiplied power is superior if more things are subjected to it.

• Angels know universal and singular by one power; our understanding knows the universal, sense the singular. Better to have both powers than one that cannot cover both. If I could hear with my eyes I wouldn’t need ears; I can’t taste wine with my eyes.

11. Reply to the third objection: one existence, many operations (“of one thing there is only one existence”) #

Of one thing there is one substantial existence, but there can be many operations; so one nature of the soul, many powers.

• If man had several substantial existences he’d be a man and a dog and a tree, not one thing; yet through one soul he nourishes, senses and understands.

His words #

• ability — his rendering for the powers of the soul [ed.: potency/potentia]
• difference — “a name said with one meaning of many things other in kind, signifying how they are what they are” (Aristotle/Porphyry)
• property (strict sense) — belongs to one species only, to every member, always
• convertible — a name that fits only the thing defined and all of it (as “to have reason” with man)
• circumlocution — using a property-name (rational) to point at the hidden essential difference
• the central thinker — his name for Heraclitus
• to believe — “to assent firmly while thinking about it” (Augustine)
• consolation — what a theological reason gives, as opposed to a demonstration
• horizon — man on the border of spiritual and bodily creatures (Greek and Arab commentators)
• united power vs. multiplied power — superior respectively if it extends to equal things / if more things fall under it
• substantial existence — one per thing; operations many

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 77, a. 1, replies to objections 6 and 7
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 77, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1-3)
• handout “The First Definition of Reason”, p. 95 (verified source; the transcript itself shows only the remark on reason “as Shakespeare defines it”)

Mentioned

• Boethius (the proposition on pure act; the definition of difference)
• Porphyry, definition of difference and of property
• Thomas, commentary on the Posterior Analytics (essential differences hidden)
• Aristotle, Poetics (Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes; definition of tragedy; tragedy vs. epic)
• Augustine on belief; Thomas’s explanation of it; Anselm, faith seeking understanding
• Isaiah, Christ named “wonderful”
• Heraclitus, “nature loves to hide”
• Aristotle, De Caelo II (three grades); De Anima II (many powers)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, qq. 2-3 (and the following question on perfection); Tertia Pars on which Person should become man
• Scripture hymns of praise from creatures
• Teresa of Avila on simplicity
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (Plato’s question); Aristotle’s plaque to Plato
• Heisenberg (Gifford lectures), Planck, Bohr
• printed volume: DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 860 (verified source)

His questions #

• If rational is said of only one species, how can it be a difference at all? It is a property used in place of the hidden essential difference; real differences usually come in combinations.
• Does “equilateral” or “right-angled” alone fit only the square? No — the rhombus and the oblong share them; only the combination fits square.
• Does assent, meaning living it out, define faith? (student) No: the mind firmly agrees, while continuing to think about what is not obvious.
• Would it be better for man to have reason without senses, or senses without reason? Better to have both, since neither alone reaches both universal and singular.
• Are dolphins with self-recognition more than animals? (student) No — not reason as Shakespeare defines it; perhaps more intelligent animals.
• If man is more like God than the tree, why is the tree simpler? Man approaches God in perfection, not simplicity; in the material world perfection involves complexity.
• Is our complexity due to the fall? (student) No; Aristotle saw the three grades in the health comparison.
• If man exists at plant, animal and human grades, why not one power? One thing has one substantial existence but many operations, hence many powers.