Higher Powers and Universal Objects; Q.77 a.4: The Order Among the Powers of the Soul

Orientation #

He opens mid-article, “the fourth objection,” continuing the reply on objects distinguishing powers (prev. lecture: the per se / per accidens object question), and closes: “next time we’ll go on to the next two articles.” The verified-source list also matches q. 77 a. 5 in the audio, but the transcript ends before a. 5 is read; the notes follow the transcript. Last time treated how per se vs. per accidens differences in objects distinguish powers; next time treats a. 5, whether all powers are in the soul as subject.

The class, in order #

1. Reply to the fourth objection: the higher power has the more universal object (“regards the more universal definition of an object”) #

Point: an objection said objects that distinguish some powers do not distinguish others (the common sense grasps what all the senses grasp); Thomas replies that the higher power, as such, regards a more universal notion (ratio) of object, so many things fall under one ratio for the higher power that differ under the rationes of the lower powers.

• Reason he gives: the higher a power is, the more things it extends to.
• Common sense vs. eye/ear: the common sense has “sensible as such” as its object and extends to the objects of all the senses; the eye’s object is colour as such, the ear’s sound as such — “sensible as such” is accidental to the eye.
• Angels: one knowing power, by which they know both universal and singular; we know the singular directly by sense (“I know you directly by my senses”) and what a man is by reason. Going up the scale of angels: fewer ideas, comprehending more, until God, who “in one word, said it all.”
• Reason vs. senses: reason can think about colour, light, sound, taste (a book on taste came in the mail) and much besides — a much more universal object.
• Will vs. sense appetite: the senses know the good only as agreeable to the senses; the will loves what reason judges good, with better criteria — candy vs. wisdom. Sense love reaches only my private good; by the will I can love the common good of my country (the soldier) and of the whole universe, God. The angels’ love of the common good is greater than ours.
• He flags: “this is a very common thing that you meet many times in Thomas.”

2. One will, two sense appetites; instinct beyond the agreeable (“the concupiscible one they’ll call it”) #

Point: an illustration of the reply, anticipating the treatise on the appetitive powers: the will is one, but the emotional powers are two.

• Concupiscible (Greek epithymia) vs. irascible (Greek thymos): the ability to want and enjoy what is pleasant to the senses vs. the ability to get angry at what blocks the pleasure or to fear what threatens pain.
• The concupiscible is limited to what is agreeable or disagreeable to the senses; but animals sometimes flee by instinct, not because of the sensible quality: small prey animals crouch when a big bird flies over, not because its colour is disagreeable; Roy Monroe’s kitten, playing happily with belts, was suddenly terrified of one studded belt that looked like an attacking snake — not because it was hurting it “like a flame.” Hence the irascible is “closer to reason.”
• Even in men, the angry man does not measure himself well but “has a reason for why he’s angry.”

3. Digression: anger and the tragic hero, concupiscence and the comic (“the tragic characters are more characterized by anger”) #

Point: the two appetites map onto the two kinds of drama.

• Tragic characters (better than us) are marked by anger when they have a fault; comic characters by concupiscence.
• A student adds St Francis de Sales, a doctor of the Church who struggled with anger; Berquist: powerful men, rulers, heads of companies, often have real anger — LBJ at St Mary’s College’s centenary chewing out subordinates (as the Christian Brothers described), Kennedy likewise; irascibility “goes with leadership.”
• Tragedy: King Lear; Coriolanus, the invincible soldier who cannot control his anger; the Iliad, “the wrath of Achilles,” the tragedy starting from the anger of Achilles and Agamemnon. Great men shown as lovers of honour: Henry V (“if to love honour is a sin, I’m the most offending”; “the fewer men, the greater the glory” at Agincourt), and fearless.
• Comedy: Falstaff — no anger, but indulgence in food, drink, women, grasping for money; laughable for fear (the Merry Wives of Windsor, terrified of the husband); the coward challenged to a duel whom the military man cannot understand.
• Break follows.

4. Article 4, objections and sed contra (“there is an order among the powers”) #

Point: he reads the three objections and the sed contra of “whether there is an order among the powers of the soul.”

1. Things under one division have no before and after but are naturally together (simul), like odd and even under number; the powers are divided against each other; so no order.
2. Powers are compared to the soul and to objects; the soul is one, so no order on its side; objects like colour and sound are wholly disparate; so no order.
3. In ordered powers the operation of one depends on another; but sight acts without hearing and vice versa; so no order.

• His counter to obj. 3: with reason and will, or senses and emotions, there is plainly an order of acts — I taste food before wanting it, understand wisdom before desiring it.
• Sed contra: Aristotle in De Anima II compares the powers to figures, which have an order (two triangles inside a parallelogram).

5. Respondeo: a threefold order (“dependence of one power upon another”) #

Point: since the soul is one and its powers many, and one goes from one to many in a certain order (especially in natural things), there must be an order; it is threefold — two from dependence of power on power, one from objects.

• Excursus on “according to the order of nature”: in Physics both matter and form are called nature, but form is more nature, since by matter a thing is natural only in ability, by form actually — as in art the shape, not the wood, makes the statue (the crucifix on the wall); wood is a work of art only in potency. Hence “before according to the order of nature” means before in perfection or excellence; “you have to understand a little bit about the word nature to see why it’s used that way.”
• (i) Order of nature: perfect before imperfect. Intellectual powers before sense powers — they direct and command them (at reason’s command you imagine something in order to think). Sense powers before nutritive — the cat refusing spoiled milk or bad meat, people using animals to test food, the cat sniffing at wine, beans, steak: feeding directed by the nose; for us too, looks, smell, taste decide whether we eat. Higher before as “a ruler directing.”
• (ii) Order of generation and time (the first sense of “before” in the Categories): imperfect before perfect — the reverse. After the fertilized egg: cell division and growth (common with plants), then sense organs (common with animals), finally the action of reason (unique to man).
• (iii) Order of objects, among the sense powers — “kind of subtle.” Visible before, as common to the superior bodies (sun, moon, stars, thought immortal) and inferior bodies: with hearing, smell, taste, touch alone I would know nothing beyond this earth; sight lets me explore the universe. Then audible, sound coming in air, which is naturally before the mixture of elements that odour follows — “a strange order, but let that stand”; air a simple body, odour a mixture, as air before and after cooking. A student: light is faster, smell is carried on something slower. Aside: waves in science, first water, then sound, then light.

6. Reply to obj. 1: together in predication, before and after in being (“species of some genus can be to each other according to before and after”) #

Point: species of one genus can be before and after in being (numbers, figures) while together in receiving the predication of the genus.

• Two before three, three before four (Categories, second sense of before: one before two, as he recalls). Rectilineal figure into triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon (no two-sided figure): together; but quadrilateral divided, as Euclid does, into square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid — quadrilateral before square, not together.
• Yet in being triangle is before quadrilateral, since a quadrilateral contains two triangles; in predication they are together. “Rectilineal figure” is said simultaneously of triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, but of rhombus only through quadrilateral. Same with “animal” said of you because “man” is said of you; not of dog because of cat.
• Being: two without three (two children, two dollars), never three without two; but logically, is two more a number than three? No — equally under number.
• Army example: two lieutenants together immediately under the captain, before the sergeants; yet for the attack the captain puts the better one first — together in one way, before and after in another. “Nothing prevents two things from being together in the same way, but in another way one being before the other,” since “before” has more than one sense.
• Asides: his twenty-year army student at St Mary’s, before him in time, after him as student to teacher (“Socrates was a soldier before he was a philosopher,” as he alludes in the Apology); a student recounts a war strategy of sending reserves first and keeping experienced pilots in the rear.

7. Reply to obj. 2: order on the soul’s side too; reason before will; image of the Trinity (“although it be one in its very essence”) #

Point: the order holds on the soul’s part, which in a certain order has aptitude for diverse acts though one in essence, and on the parts of object and act.

• He anticipates a later article: powers flow from the soul as a property from its subject, in order — one more immediately, another through it. Reason before will, since the will’s object is the good as known by reason.
• Theological aside: the Son proceeds from the Father by way of understanding, the Holy Spirit from Father and Son; in us reason forms a thought of itself (“what a good thing I am,” as with Shakespeare) and then comes to love reason — Augustine, “Intellectum volo ut ames” (as he renders it) [ed.: usually “intellectum valde ama”]; he corrects himself: not the Trinity reflecting us but our order of reason and will reflecting the Trinity, made to His image.

8. Reply to obj. 3: the lower disposes for the higher, the higher judges the lower (“the lower act disposes for the higher act”) #

Point: obj. 3 holds only for powers ordered in the third way (objects); powers ordered in the first two ways have acts that depend on one another.

• Disposition upward: fine arts — painting, music, fiction — dispose for the life of the mind; Aristotle in the proem [ed.: of the Metaphysics (inferred)], the philomythos is to some extent a philosopher. His own reading of all Shakespeare as a freshman disposed him for philosophy: easier to love and understand than philosophy; imperfect disposing for perfect in the order of generation.
• Judgment downward: philosophy lets him see more in Shakespeare and tell the young what to read instead of trash. TV after dinner: frustrated whether you finish or stop — better not to turn it on.
• Senses used for food are remote from the mind; senses used for Mozart, Homer, Sophocles dispose more closely. His joke-image of education: a dining room (cultivated eating vs. slobs), a door to a room with Mozart, a further door to Homer, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dante, then philosophy, then theology — gradually, and some stop at a stage.
• Father Schuller leading the parish choir from popular to good church music until people felt how stupid the popular was; first hearing The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro without hearing anything, then suddenly hearing; his cousin: baroque can be background, Mozart must be listened to; musical discipline makes good students (the pianist/organist who played Bach).
• The “Shakespearean universe” satisfies the young person’s curiosity about life and settles him to study, like a traveller ready to settle down; movies with cars blowing up give no insight.

His words #

• higher power, more universal ratio of object — many things fall under one ratio for the higher power that differ for the lower.
• sensible as such — object of the common sense; colour as such, sound as such — of eye and ear.
• private good vs. common good — sense love reaches the former, the will the latter.
• concupiscible appetite (epithymia) — wanting the pleasant to sense; irascible appetite (thymos) — anger at obstacles, fear of harm.
• ability — his rendering [ed.: potency]; “in ability” vs. “actually.”
• according to the order of nature (secundum ordinem naturae) — before in perfection, since form is more nature than matter.
• order of generation and time — imperfect before perfect, first sense of “before” in the Categories.
• simul, together — species equally under a genus in predication.
• philomythos — lover of fiction, “to some extent a philosopher.”
• feeding soul / feeding powers — [ed.: nutritive, vegetative].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 77, a. 3 ad 4 (inferred: “the fourth objection,” on the higher power’s universal object).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 77, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies 1–3).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima II (powers compared to figures); Categories (senses of before); Physics (matter and form as nature); proem on the philomythos (Metaphysics I, inferred).
• Augustine, “Intellectum volo ut ames” (as rendered).
• Euclid (division of quadrilaterals).
• Plato, Apology (Socrates’ military service).
• Homer, Iliad; Shakespeare, King Lear, Coriolanus, Henry V, Merry Wives of Windsor; Sophocles, Dante; Mozart, Magic Flute and Marriage of Figaro.

His questions #

• Is art more tied up with the wood or the shape of the wood? The shape — the wood is a work of art only in potency.
• Which powers are before in the order of nature, and which in the order of generation? Intellectual before sense before nutritive in nature; the reverse in generation and time.
• What do you see first after the fertilized egg? Cell division and growth, common with plants; then sense organs; then reason.
• Why is the visible naturally before the other sensibles? It is common to superior and inferior bodies; without sight I’d know nothing beyond this earth.
• Is two more a number than three? No — equally under number; but in being two is before three, since two can be without three.
• Are the comic characters characterized by what? Concupiscence (class answer), as tragic characters by anger.
• Does the act of sight depend on hearing? No; obj. 3 holds only for powers ordered by objects, not for those ordered in the first two ways.
• Are you being disposed for what, when the senses take in Mozart or Homer? Philosophy.