Summa I q.77 a.5: Are All the Powers of the Soul in the Soul as Their Subject? Soul and Spirit, and the Meanings of 'Of'

Orientation #

He opens by saying the plan is to do the fifth and sixth articles of question 77 today, with a break between them; the recording ends before the third objection’s reply and before article six. He refers back to “our study of the third book about the soul” and to the demonstration in book II that the soul is that by which we first live, sense, move and understand (prev. lecture not needed; he cites them himself). The previous class worked through earlier objections in q. 77 on the order among the soul’s powers.

The class, in order #

1. The question and the three objections (“all the powers of the soul are in the soul as in a subject”) #

He reads a.5’s question and its three objections, flagging in advance where the reply will fall.

• Obj. 1, a proportion: as the powers of the body are to the body, so the powers of the soul are to the soul; the body is the subject of the bodily powers, therefore the soul is the subject of the soul’s powers. He notes at once that the answer turns on the phrase “powers of the soul”: “powers of the body” may mean powers in the body as in a subject, while “powers of the soul” may be broader, including powers of which the soul is the origin even though they are in the body.
• Obj. 2: the operations of the soul’s powers are attributed to the body because of the soul, since (On the Soul II) the soul is that by which we first sense and understand; he recalls the demonstration that what we first live, sense, move and understand by is the form of the body. The proper principles of these operations are the powers; therefore the powers are in the soul before the body.
• Obj. 3, Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter XII: the soul senses some things not through the body but without it (fear and the like); if the sensing power were not in the soul alone as subject, it could sense nothing without the body. He remarks that Thomas “doesn’t like to go against Augustine,” so we’ll see what he does. (The reply is not reached in this recording.)
• Sed contra: Aristotle in On Sleep and Waking says sensing is not proper to the soul nor to the body but of the two together; so the sensing power is in the conjoined soul and body as subject, and the soul alone is not the subject of all its powers.
• Aside: Augustine wrote the books “to the letter” after Jerome thought an earlier Genesis work not close enough to the text. “See how concrete Aristotle was”: he wrote a book on sleep and waking.

2. “Operative” power, and accident denominating its subject (“that is the subject of some operative power”) #

The body of the article: a thing is the subject of an operative power if it is the subject of that power’s operation.

• Why “operative potentia”: the contrast he has in mind is not so much active vs. passive power as the potency of matter to form (the wood here is able to be a chair or a table: an ability for form). The soul’s powers are abilities to do something, or to undergo. A student notes sensing is an undergoing; he agrees, and love too is an undergoing: Beatrice asks Benedick for which of her good qualities he “first suffered love,” and he says he loved her against his will—the original meaning of “undergo,” to suffer.
• “Every accident denominates its proper subject”: denominare, to take its name from, a word from the Categories. Example: I, a man, am said to be healthy not as man but because health is in my body.
• Premise: the same thing is what is able to operate and what operates (“common sense”: whatever does something is what has the ability). Conclusion: whatever has the operation is the one that has the power as its subject, as Aristotle says at the beginning of On Sleep and Waking.
• Aside on Aristotle’s interest there: what is it to fall asleep—a temporary loss of the senses, or something the loss of their use follows upon? Anecdotes: the metal ball dropped into a vase to wake him; death from indigestion through overwork; Plutarch’s letter in which Alexander asks him not to publish the Metaphysics and Aristotle replies that only those who already know the subject will understand it. “Probably apocryphal,” but “good enough to be true.”

3. Operations without a bodily organ: understanding and willing (“some operations of the soul which are exercised without a bodily organ”) #

Two operations stand out as not in the body, understanding and willing; he recalls two arguments for the immateriality of understanding.

1. From the universal: what we understand directly is universal; the universal differs from the singular by being separated from what individuates. Any circle drawn on the board is here or there, hence singular; what a circle is is neither here nor there. Whatever is received in the body is received here or there, hence singular; so if “circle” were received in a bodily organ it would be singular, not universal. But reason understands the universal. “Thing is singular in sense, but universal and understood.”
2. From the definition: I understand a square by a definition, “equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral.” Do “equilateral” and “right-angled” meet at a point (then they’d be a straight line), at a line, at a surface? No: the parts of the definition are not continuous, though the square is. So I understand the continuous in an uncontinuous way. This cannot be due to the nature of the square (which is to be continuous), so it must be due to the nature of reason, which is therefore not a body, not continuous.

• The will likewise: one can love and hate the universal (“I hate all terrorists,” “hate all feminists,” as a class). Aside: his daughter, asked as a summer waitress whether she was a feminist, said “Heck no.” He promises to return to this when the powers are taken up in particular.
• Conclusion (Thomas): the powers that are the sources of these operations are in the soul as in a subject.

4. Operations through bodily organs: the composite as subject (“as seeing is through the eye”) #

Other operations are performed through bodily organs (seeing by the eye, hearing by the ear), so their powers are in the conjunction of body and soul as subject, not in the soul alone.

• Aristotle’s sign of the bodily character of sense vs. reason: too bright a light temporarily blinds (coming out of a dark theatre on a summer afternoon), a loud sound deafens; but after thinking of something very understandable, like God, lesser things seem easier to understand.
• The same holds of the feeding part (nutritive) and the sensitive part. The distinction, then: understanding and will, in the soul alone as subject; sensing, and “even more clearly” feeding, growing, reproducing, in the body as subject.

5. Digression: soul and spirit, and man as microcosm (“my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices”) #

The distinction explains scriptural usage of “soul” and “spirit.”

• Soul and spirit are one thing in us: called soul insofar as it animates the body, spirit insofar as it transcends the body, i.e. has powers (understanding, willing) not in the body. Angels and God are called spirits; an angel is in no way the form of a body, so never a soul except metaphorically. “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”: conflict between powers in the body and reason and will resisting the body’s inclinations.
• A student asks whether mens is the same as spirit: somewhat; Augustine (quoted by Thomas on the image of the Trinity in us) places the image in the mens, the intellectual part, which includes the will as well as reason; Aristotle sometimes says the will is “in reason” in that sense.
• Aside: the Canadian brain researcher mapping the brain by stimulation (“I taste licorice”) could never find a place producing an act of choice; inductively, the will is not bodily.
• “Soul” is sometimes kept for the soul with powers only in the body: Latin animal from anima, since the animal, unlike man, has only bodily powers (“these cats walking around here”).
• Man on the horizon between material and immaterial worlds, hence a microcosm: dimensions with the rock, nourishing/growing/reproducing with plants, sensing and emotions with animals, understanding and will with angels and God. One appropriateness (not the main reason) of God becoming man: he takes back the whole universe to himself.
• Why the study of the soul matters: Thomas’s “I studied the body so I can study the soul… the angels… God”; Aristotle at the start of On the Soul, desirable in itself and contributing to all knowledge. Ethics: prudence in reason, justice in the will, courage in the irascible appetite (Greek thumos), temperance in the concupiscible (Greek epithumia). Logic: Thomas’s proemium to the Posterior Analytics starts from Aristotle’s acts of reason. Complaint: colleagues talk of “the self,” never the soul—“a lack of wonder.”
• The Magnificat by the distinction: “my spirit rejoices”—intellect and will contemplating and loving God; “my soul magnifies the Lord”—as mother of Christ, in her body, conceiving and bearing him (“blessed is the fruit of thy womb”). He says he has never seen an explanation of it and this is how he understands it.

6. The two meanings of “of”: subject vs. source (“the word of has a number of meanings”) #

Reply to obj. 1: “powers of the soul” can mean powers whose subject is the soul, or powers of which the soul is the beginning or source.

• Amphibolies: “word of God”; “knowledge of reason” = knowledge about reason (object) vs. knowledge had by reason (subject); geometry is the latter, not the former. Shakespeare’s definition of reason (“large discourse, looking before and after”), if understood, is knowledge of reason in both senses. Aristotle’s fragment on wisdom: wisdom is knowledge of God in both senses—knowledge God alone or most of all has, and knowledge about God (he reasons: wisdom is knowledge of the first cause; the first cause is God). God’s own knowledge is knowledge of God in both senses. Our present study is knowledge of the soul in both senses. He says he is doing this only to show “of” has more than one meaning.
• Source-sense examples: “President Bush’s war” (the instigator, “pushing the button,” not himself fighting); Napoleon’s victory; “this book of Thomas Aquinas” (author, not possessor—it belongs to Duane Berquist). Aside: his teacher Casieri wrote his name across the title page since no one rips that out.
• Thomas’s reply: all the powers are said to be of the soul as of a beginning or source, not all as of a subject. The five general powers Aristotle distinguishes (to be developed at q. 78) are all “of the soul” as first source, though most are in the body; the body has them because a soul is in it. Aristotle: a dead man’s eye is no more an eye than a painted or sculpted one. A student mentions eye transplants; he replies a soul must then inform that eye.

7. Reply to the second objection and a student’s question (“as in a principle or a source, but not as in a subject”) #

Obj. 2 is answered the same way: the powers are in the soul “before” the body as in a principle, not as in a subject—the sense powers are not first in the soul by itself and later in the body; that the body has them results from the soul’s being in it. A student asks how the second reply differs from the first: it doesn’t, both use the same distinction. Another asks whether “soul as subject” means only in the soul: yes, that is the distinction of the body—understanding and willing are in the soul alone as subject; all five powers, including those shared with animals and plants, are of the soul as source.

• Closing example: knowledge in my mind as subject may have its source in my teacher; “Aristotle’s logic” is in my reason as subject, but Aristotle is its father, its principle; likewise Euclid’s geometry.

His words #

• “operative power” (potentia operativa); an ability to do or undergo, contrasted with matter’s potency to form [ed.: active/passive potency]
• “undergo” for pati, to suffer; sensing and love as undergoings
• “denominate” (denominare); to take its name from; accident denominates its subject
• “soul” vs. “spirit”; same thing, as animating the body vs. as transcending it
• mens; the intellectual part, reason and will together
• “microcosm”; man as a little universe, on the horizon of material and immaterial
• thumos / irascible appetite; epithumia / concupiscible appetite; subjects of courage and temperance
• “amphibole”; a phrase with several meanings (“word of God”) [ed.: amphiboly]
• “of” as subject vs. “of” as beginning or source (also “of” as object)

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 77, a. 5: objections, sed contra, body, replies to obj. 1 and 2 (obj. 3 reply not reached)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI, Aquinas’s commentary lectio 4, from the handout “Note for Sixth Book of Wisdom, Reading 4,” p. 14 (verified source; in the transcript this is the “fragment of wisdom” passage on wisdom as knowledge of God)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, On the Soul II (soul as that by which we first live, sense, move, understand) and III (immateriality of understanding); On the Soul I, beginning (excellence and usefulness of the study)
• Aristotle, On Sleep and Waking, beginning
• Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter XII; Augustine on the image of the Trinity in the mens
• Aristotle, Categories (denominare); Thomas, proemium to the Posterior Analytics
• Plutarch, Life of Alexander (letter about the Metaphysics)
• Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice and Benedick) (inferred); Hamlet, “large discourse, looking before and after” (inferred)
• Luke: Magnificat, “blessed is the fruit of thy womb”; “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 78, a. 1 (the five general powers, forthcoming)
• Printed volume DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 635 (verified source)

His questions #

• What kind of potentia is there that’s not operativa? Not so much passive power; matter’s potency to form, as wood is able to be a chair.
• Do equilateral and right-angled meet at a point, a line, a surface? No; the parts of the definition are not continuous, so reason understands the continuous uncontinuously.
• Why do I understand what is continuous by a definition that is not continuous? Not from the square’s nature (continuous) but from reason’s nature: not a body.
• Would mens be the same as spirit? Somewhat; the intellectual part, including will as well as reason.
• What are the two meanings of “knowledge of reason”? Knowledge about reason (object) and knowledge had by reason (subject).
• “President Bush’s war”: what does “of” mean there? He is its instigator, its source, not its subject.
• How is the reply to the second objection different from the first? It isn’t; both read “of the soul” as beginning, not subject.
• Does “soul as subject” mean only in the soul? Yes, for understanding and willing; all five powers are of the soul as source.