Q.77 a.3: Powers Distinguished by Acts and Objects; Active vs. Passive Ability

Orientation #

He opens by placing this within the general question on the powers of the soul: article 3 concerns “something we learned in Aristotle,” that the powers are distinguished by their acts and the acts by their objects; he plans to do article 3, take a break, and then article 4 (the order among the powers). The recording ends at the close of the body of article 3, before the replies and before article 4. The previous class treated q. 77 aa. 1-2 and the next takes up per se vs. per accidens objects and the replies to these objections.

The class, in order #

1. Objection 1: nothing is specified by what is posterior or extrinsic (“the act is after the ability”) #

The point: the first objection against distinguishing powers by acts and objects.

1. Nothing is determined to its species by what is posterior to it or extrinsic to it.
2. The act is after the ability; the object is extrinsic.
3. Therefore powers are not distinguished by acts and objects. Gloss on secundum speciem: species names a particular kind of thing, genus a general kind.

2. Objection 2: contraries differ most, yet fall under one power (“the same power of contraries”) #

1. Contraries differ most of all — Aristotle sometimes defines them as the species furthest apart in the same genus (black and white in the genus colour).
2. If powers were distinguished by objects, there would not be the same power for contraries.
3. But that is false almost everywhere: the same knowing power knows white and black, the same taste knows sweet and bitter. Example from his natural philosophy class the same day: “Every woman is beautiful / some are / some are not / no woman is beautiful” — the first and last are the contraries, as far apart as you can be. Aside: Socrates in the Protagoras reasons from “something has only one contrary”; people want sweet to have two contraries, sour and bitter, but he thinks bitter is the true contrary, sour merely “next to bitter.”

3. Objection 3: the same object, diverse powers (“the same thing is known… and desired”) #

1. Cause removed, effect removed.
2. If difference of powers came from difference of objects, the same object could not pertain to diverse powers.
3. But the same thing is known by the knowing power and desired by the desiring power. He connects this with Aristotle on what moves animals: knowledge and desire, reduced in a way to one because the thing known is desired — I smell the good food and desire that same food; yet the ability to sense and the ability to desire are not the same power.

4. Objection 4 and the central sense (“sound and colour… belong to one power”) #

1. What per se causes something causes the same in all cases.
2. Diverse objects pertaining to diverse powers (sound and colour, hearing and sight) also belong to one power, the common or central sense. So how can objects be the basis of distinction if the same pair sometimes distinguishes two powers and sometimes is known by one? He recalls the De Anima III argument: we sense not only white from black, sweet from bitter, but white from sweet; the eye cannot (it does not know sweet), nor taste; so there must be an inward sense where the outward senses come back to a common centre. He calls it “central sense” because “common sense” is equivocal in English.

Recap of the three: contrary objects that do not distinguish powers; the same object with different powers (“the heart and the mind are not the same power”); and objection 4 with both at once. “Interesting objections.”

5. Digression: inward and outward experience (“known only by inward experience”) #

The point: the same thing can be known in diverse ways, and some things only one way.

• The common centre of the senses: known by inward experience (we sense the difference white/sweet), and perhaps also by outward experience if anatomy finds the outward senses converging — the same thing known both ways.
• Some things known only outwardly (mapping the brain, “very confusing”); some only inwardly: if reason and will are not bodies, they are known only inwardly — “I never find a choice as you cut up the brain.”
• Parallel from an Empedocles fragment read in class that day on the road from senses to reason, singling out sight and touch: sight excels in clarity and distance (all astronomy is eyesight), touch in certitude (doubting Thomas; the apostles fearing a ghost, Christ eating, flesh and blood). Together they alone know shape — the glass seen or felt; and we identify most things by shape rather than colour (desk vs. chair of the same colour; “you people are just human beings by your shape”; Friar Lawrence to Romeo: you have the shape of a man but act like a beast). Sight knows colour, touch does not; touch feels the coolness of the water, sight cannot. So with inward and outward experience of life: some things by one, some by the other, some by both.

6. Sed contra and the three-part shape of an article (“the acts are before the powers”) #

Posterior things are distinguished by prior things; “the Philosopher” (antonomasia, capital P = Aristotle) says in the second book De Anima that acts and operations are before the powers according to reason (definition), and the objects still before these. Therefore powers are distinguished by acts and objects. Aside: “three is enough” — Thomas’s articles divide into objections (with sed contra), body, replies; likewise the quaestiones disputatae, with more objections on both sides.

7. Translating potentia: “power” vs. “ability” (“the English word power seems to be stuck”) #

The point: dunamis / potentia has two ordered meanings, and “ability” carries both better than “power.”

• In “the ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX (inferred)] Aristotle distinguishes the ability to act upon another (active) and the ability to be acted upon / to undergo (passive); the word is equivocal by reason, with an order; the first meaning is the active one, carried over to the other.
• English derivatives stay on the first meaning: dynamic, dynamite, potent (“a potent medicine acts upon you”); “power” has not been moved to the second sense at all, “ability” has to some extent.
• Berquist in the ring with Cassius Clay: no ability in the active sense, yet “beatable, breakable, bustable” — able by the second kind of ability; a house is burnable, a dish breakable, by an ability to be acted upon.
• Student: is a student someone able to be acted upon who later becomes able to act on another? Yes, to some extent — as we are generated by parents and later generate; the student must first be moved by the teacher.
• Application: many powers of the soul are passive — colours and light act on my eye, sound on my ear (too loud, it deafens me), strong taste overcomes taste for a while; the heart / ability to desire is originally acted upon, moved by its object.

8. Translating passio: suffering and undergoing (“I’m under the weather”) #

Passio originally means suffering (the passion of our Lord = the suffering of our Lord in native English); when sensing is called a passio, the idea of being acted upon is kept and the idea of something painful dropped; eventually Aristotle says understanding is a “suffering.” English “suffering” is stuck on the first meaning, so he translates by “undergoing,” which has moved further: “under the weather,” “he’s undergone a lot” (acted upon in a bad way — not that he saw the paintings in the National Gallery or understood Thomas). Anecdote: a Colorado philosophy teacher on the students’ look, “why are you doing this to me?”

9. Body, part one: an ability is known and defined by its act (“you only know that you have an ability through the act”) #

1. An ability, as ability, is an ability for something, ordered to an act (Thomas’s first sentence).
2. We know we have an ability only through its act: you know you can see by seeing (people go blind in their sleep; the tense moment when the eye patches come off); you know I can walk because I walk; you know someone can play the piano by hearing them; anger — the perverse man who riles someone up shows the person has the ability to be angry; Charles I wearing something warm at his execution so shivering would not be mistaken for fear (the act is what shows or hides it).
3. We distinguish abilities by their acts (walking vs. seeing, neither under the other), and we must distinguish to define; so the definition (ratio) of an ability is taken from its act, and is diversified as the act’s definition is diversified. Boundary: the act is before the ability in definition and in our knowledge, not in existence — you have eyes before you see, the ability to digest before digesting, the ability to be angry before being angry.

10. Body, part two: acts distinguished by objects as beginning or end (“either of an active ability… or passive”) #

1. Seeing and hearing are both sensing; they are distinguished by colour and sound, and by them the ability to see and hear — as Aristotle already showed in De Anima II; now Thomas gives the reason.
2. Every act is of an active ability (to act upon, to do) or of a passive ability (to be acted upon, undergo). Plato in the Sophist had seen the universality of this: being is what can act upon something or be acted upon. It must be one or the other: if neither acted on the other, object and ability would not be connected at all. Digestion acts on its object (chomp, then breaking down); hearing is acted upon by sound. In the intellectual part too there is an active ability and a passive ability to understand. This is also a way to divide the powers of the soul.
3. To the act of a passive ability the object is compared as beginning and moving cause: colour, insofar as it moves sight, is a beginning of vision. The emotions are of this kind: an insult moves me to anger, a gun or instruments of torture to fear, bad news about those I love to sadness, winning a million dollars to joy.
4. To the act of an active power the object is compared as limit and end: the object of the growing power (virtus here = power, not virtue) is perfect or complete quantity for the kind of animal or plant, the end of growth — as the end of house-building is the house.
5. From these two, beginning and end, an act receives its specific nature: heating (calefactio) begins from something hot and ends in something hot (stove, water); cooling begins from something cold and ends in something cold (refrigerator, white wine).
6. Whence powers must be diversified by their acts and objects — immediately by acts, ultimately by objects, since acts are distinguished by objects. So reason and will are distinguished by understanding vs. loving/desiring/choosing, and by truth vs. goodness. Asides: lottery winners (a Canadian survey) and college superstars with big contracts often worse off; the shipping-dock co-worker who would “get a harem.” “Growth” carried over to the mind (St Paul, Colossians, he thinks; Greek philosophers say learning makes the mind grow) — a loose use, like “food for thought.”

His words #

• species / genus — particular kind of thing / general kind of thing.
• contraries — the species furthest apart in the same genus.
• central sense — his rendering for the common sense, avoiding the English equivocation. [ed.: sensus communis]
• antonomasia — “the Philosopher” with capital P meaning Aristotle.
• ability — his translation of dunamis / potentia, because “power” is stuck on the active sense. [ed.: potency]
• active ability / passive ability — ability to act upon another / to be acted upon, to undergo. [ed.: potentia activa / passiva]
• ninth book of wisdom — [ed.: Metaphysics IX]
• undergoing — his translation of passio in place of “suffering.” [ed.: passion, being acted upon]
• ratio — the definition, the understanding of a thing.
• virtus — here a power or ability, not a virtue.
• calefactio — heating.
• beginning and moving cause / limit and end — how the object stands to the act of a passive vs. an active power.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia, q. 77, a. 3: objections 1-4, sed contra, and body (replies not reached).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima II (acts before powers, objects before acts; seeing and hearing by colour and sound).
• Aristotle, De Anima III, beginning (common sense) (inferred).
• Aristotle, “ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX] on dunamis.
• Aristotle on what moves animals: knowledge and desire (locus not stated).
• Plato, Protagoras (only one contrary); Plato, Sophist (being = what can act or be acted upon).
• Empedocles, fragment on the road from the senses into reason.
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (Friar Lawrence on the shape of a man).
• St Paul, Colossians (growth of the mind, “I think”).
• Scripture: doubting Thomas; the apostles and the risen Christ eating.

His questions #

• Which of the four statements about women being beautiful are contraries? The first and last: every / no woman is beautiful.
• Taste is the same for the sweet and the what? Bitter (not sour, which is only next to bitter).
• Which is the first meaning of dunamis, to act upon another or to undergo? To act upon; then carried over to the other.
• By what ability is Berquist beatable, or the wood burnable? By the second kind, the ability to be acted upon.
• When you wake up, how do you know you’re able to see? By seeing.
• How would I distinguish between seeing and hearing? Seeing is sensing colour, hearing sensing sound.
• Does the ability to hear act upon its object, or is it acted upon? It is passive, acted upon by sound; digestion acts upon its object.
• Heating differs from cooling how? By their beginning and end: from hot to hot, from cold to cold.
• Which acts do powers distinguish by, and which objects? Reason and will by understanding vs. desiring, truth vs. goodness.