Reply to Augustine and Plato: Truth Between Two Extremes, and Must We Know Things the Way They Are?

Orientation #

He opens on “the third objection… the one from Augustine” of q. 77 a. 5, continuing where the previous class stopped (prev. lecture), and refers back to an earlier class “when we were talking about… the difference between Aristotle and Plato about knowing” and about natural philosophy vs. mathematics (“some of you were here”). He closes: “Let’s take a little break here, then we’ll go try to do Article Six.” The previous class worked through a. 5 and its first two objections; the next takes up a. 6 on the powers flowing from the essence.

The class, in order #

1. Two ways of being false (“more than the truth, and to say less”) #

Point: Plato’s error on the soul’s powers is one of two opposite extremes; truth is “in between two extreme mistakes”.

• Extremes named: some say all powers of the soul are in the body (“the brain is the organ of thought”); Plato puts more powers than reason and will in the soul alone — sense powers, even the power to move the body. Aristotle avoids both.
• Shakespeare: Kent in King Lear, “All my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so”; Falstaff in Henry IV: those who say more or less than the truth are villains “and the sons of darkness”.
• Definition: saying more than the truth = saying what is not is; saying less = saying what is is not. Example: “how many students today?” — “ten” adds four who are not here; “two” says some who are here are not.
• Trinity: adding — as three persons, so three natures (he attributes this to “Arius and people like that”); subtracting — as one nature, so one person (Sabellius). Truth (three persons, one nature) is between.
• Incarnation, the reverse (unity of person, not nature): adding — two natures, so two persons (Nestorius, “Mother of Christ” not “Mother of God”; the church at Constantinople “started throwing things”); subtracting — one person, so one nature.
• Court oath “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is not reiteration: “whole” = not subtracting, “nothing but” = not adding. Bar example: John and Thomas were there; “just John” subtracts, “John, Thomas and Paul” adds.

2. The truth about the soul’s powers, and why truth explains falsehood (“the truth is in between two excesses”) #

Point: some powers are in the soul as subject (the ability to understand, the ability to will, “and also what is called the act of understanding. We’ll meet again” [unclear in recording; possibly the agent intellect]); all others are in the body.

• Two errors: no powers outside the body; or powers the other animals share with us put in the soul alone — so for Plato the animal soul would also be immortal.
• Virtue of reason (to know the truth) is like a moral virtue: courage lies between cowardliness and foolhardiness (“closer to foolhardiness, by the way”; see Coriolanus).
• Argument that truth explains falsehood: (1) if the truth is three persons, one nature, one sees why someone might think three natures (to match the persons) or one person (to match the nature); (2) neither error could explain the other — if there were three of each, or one of each, there would be “no part of the truth” grounding the opposite view; conclusion: a sign, “as Aristotle himself said”, that one can show not only the truth but why people are mistaken — what element of truth they saw.
• Student: that case rests on Scripture and Church teaching, not natural law. Reply: same principle in the history of philosophy — determinists/“rationalists” (everything necessary, mathematical) vs. existentialists (everything contingent, “up for grabs”); truth: some things necessary, some contingent; each error is “seeing one part of the world… boast of having seen the whole, as Empedocles says”; neither extreme can explain the other. “It’s very important to see.”
• Second case: reason should rule the emotions as a father rules his son, not as a master a slave (Aristotle, Ethics). Epicureans (“if it feels good, do it” — the ones “all around us”, not strictly historical) deny any rule; Stoics (Shakespeare’s pun “stocks”, wood) want to eliminate the emotions — the Stoic told his son had died: “I always knew he was mortal.” Hence bringing up children on good music (Baroque, Haydn, Mozart) and good fiction, which let reason rule as a father.
• Slave vs. son: slave ruled only for the master’s good, no say; son ruled for his own good and has a say. A father’s mean: not forcing the son to be a doctor/lawyer like himself, not leaving him with no direction.

3. The Phaedo: before and after the body (“neither existed before nor after the body”) #

Point: truth — only the human soul is immortal, only it has powers not in the body; errors — no soul immortal / even the sensing soul a candidate for immortality.

• Phaedo: Simmias — soul neither before nor after the body (soul merely form of the body, nothing not in the body); Socrates — soul before and after (soul a thing “entrapped in the body, like a man in a prison”, not really one with it). Truth: “neither one of them” — the human soul did not exist before the body but will exist after it.
• Student: how reconcile “I knew you before I formed you”? Reply: that says God’s knowledge is not in time — points to Book V of the Consolation of Philosophy (segment 4).

4. The central question of philosophy (“the way we know be the way things are”) #

Point: “like the center of a circle, everything meets here.”

• Philosophers talk about only two things: the way things are (natural philosophy, political philosophy, wisdom — natural, political, all things) and the way we know (logic).
• Question: Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Two answers, yes or no. Plato seems to answer yes, Aristotle no; most famous names follow Plato’s position (not that they learned it from him), Aristotle’s followers “few and far between”.
• Why the pull toward yes? Student: wanting to control/explain. He: everyone has the hazy notion that truth is conformity of the mind with things (“Berquist is standing” true, “sitting” not), so one might think it requires that the way we know be the way things are.
• Where Aristotle’s “no” first appears: natural philosophy, distinguishing pure mathematics from it. The mathematician considers number, sphere, cube “in separation from all sensible bodies”; hence no matter in the geometer’s definition of sphere; Aristotle’s “footnote”: nothing false in considering in separation things that don’t exist in separation. Plato, convinced of mathematics’ truth, posited a mathematical world; Aristotle: our mind separates.
• Knowing in separation, examples: white sugar — the eye knows whiteness without sweetness, tongue sweetness without whiteness; incomplete, not false; false only in saying “this sweet thing is not white”. Philosopher/grandfather — the hospital nurses (who wouldn’t hand over the grandchildren until his son-in-law identified them) know him as grandfather, students as philosopher; one is knowable without the other. Boundary: you cannot know him a grandfather without knowing him a man (man is in the understanding of grandfather; the old workmate in church: “you’re responsible for all this”), though the reverse is possible.
• Knowing in a contrary order: he knows students before their parents, though parents came first — not false. Generally effect before cause: Sherlock Holmes to Watson, “reason backwards… from the effect back to the cause”. God, beginning of all, is last known — Aristotle rises to God in “the twelfth book of wisdom”; “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”
• Rule: no mistake “provided you don’t attribute one to the other” — false only if you conclude that because you know students first, they came first in reality. So far from truth requiring it, requiring it yields “all kinds of falsehood”: Spinoza (Ethica more geometrico demonstrata: order of ideas and order of things the same); Hegel, following him, identifies the first and most confused idea in our mind, being, with “I am who am”. Thomas, SCG I, has a whole chapter showing the being said of all things is not the being that is God — a “very gross mistake”.
• Boethius, Consolation, five books, prose and verse (“very thoughtful poems”); the greatest mind between Augustine and Thomas; in the dialogue with Lady Wisdom he calls himself a member of the Academy, yet in Book V, to understand how God’s eternal, changeless knowledge truly knows things in time (past, present, future in his eternal now — “non-temporal way”), he follows Aristotle, whom Lady Wisdom introduces at the start of Book V. Thomas is the second great mind following Aristotle, with Boethius’s benefit before him.
• Simplest case: remembering the past now (old times; the beginning of this class) — the knowing is now, the known is past; false only if you say the past must be now.

5. Thomas’s reply to the third objection (“senses some things with the body and some without”) #

Point: Augustine’s Platonic phrase is either a recital of Plato or must be taken in a special sense.

• Plato’s opinion: to sense is an operation proper to the soul, as to understand — adding to the truth (brain people subtract).
• First reply: in many philosophical matters Augustine uses Plato’s opinions “not asserting them, but simply reciting them”.
• Second (“kind of abstruse”): “with/without the body” can determine the act of sensing (a) on the part of the one sensing — then nothing senses without the body, since sensing proceeds from the soul only through a bodily organ; (b) on the part of the object — some things sensed with the body, i.e. existing in it (a wound, vulnus: “stick a knife at me”); some without, i.e. existing only in the soul’s apprehension (being sad or rejoicing at news heard: mother died, father sick, won the sweepstakes — joy or sadness “not about something in my body”).
• Upshot: Augustine either reports something false as Plato’s, or speaks in this “strange way” — “but he should not say something false”.

6. Pious exposition and dangerous words (“it should be piously expounded”) #

Point: a loose way of speaking may be explained charitably but should not be continued.

• Greek fathers “a little bit sloppy in the use of words”. Basil: the Holy Spirit is the image of the Son — Thomas: never said in Scripture; Image is the proper name of the Son; Basil means only that the Spirit is like the Father and Son, not that he proceeds as an image (from his reading of the treatise on the Trinity today).
• Boethius’s “fate” for the order providence establishes — the opinion correct, but the word is used by star-determinists, so avoid it.
• “Mary the mother of Christ”: careful, since Nestorius used it to deny she is mother of the person who is God.
• Papal documents translated with “value” where the Latin has “good”: value theory makes it subjective, bestowed extrinsically, not good in the thing — he avoids such words.
• Greek fathers: “the father is the cause of the son” — a misuse; the Son proceeds from the Father as from a beginning, not a cause; “every cause is a beginning, but every beginning is a cause” [ed.: evidently a slip for “not every beginning is a cause”]. Not heretical, but explain the text and don’t adopt the way of speaking.

7. Languages for philosophy, theology and poetry (“Greek is a better language for philosophy”) #

Point: Msgr Dionne’s remarks on language, applied to Thomas, French and English.

• Dionne: Greek better than Latin for philosophy/theology (Greek more concrete, Latin more abstract), yet the careful formulation of the Articles of Faith was perfected in Latin first — attributed to Latin’s tie with the papacy, a supernatural help. Sign of Thomas’s excellence: he could think so well in Latin.
• Dionne and Fr Boulay (both French-speaking): English better than French for philosophy and for poetry; Dionne on Berquist’s “to think out, to reason out”: “in French you can’t speak that way” — Berquist’s compliment: a sign of Dionne’s mind that he could think so well in French. Student: wouldn’t a less concrete, “flowery” language suit poetry? — No, the same language is better for both. Proportion: French : English :: Latin : Greek; French very abstract “since Descartes”. André Gide’s preface to the Pléiade Shakespeare: French “presque antipoétique”.
• Particular words: English “understanding” better than the Greek word or Latin intelligere; “example”/“sample” (as St. Beaune [ed.: reading uncertain] noted); Latin sapientia = sapida scientia, savory knowledge, more concrete than “wisdom” — Romeo at the tomb: “Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide.”

His words #

• more / less than the truth — saying what is not is / saying what is is not; the two ways of being false
• the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — not subtracting / not adding
• the central question of philosophy — does truth require that the way we know be the way things are?
• truth — conformity of the mind with things, “an agreement”
• in separation — considering (mathematics) what does not exist in separation
• reason backwards — from effect to cause (Holmes)
• twelfth book of wisdom — [ed.: Metaphysics XII]
• eternal now — how God knows time non-temporally
• proper / private to the soul — Plato on sensing
• vulnus — wound
• piously expounded — explaining a loose text charitably without adopting the phrase
• beginning vs. cause — Father is a beginning of the Son, not a cause
• value vs. good — subjective bestowal vs. good in the thing
• sapientia, sapida scientia — savory knowledge

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 77, a. 5, reply to obj. 3 (verified source)
• Aquinas on Aristotle, Metaphysics VI, lectio 4 — handout “Note for Sixth Book of Wisdom, Reading 4”, p. 14 (verified source; the necessary/contingent discussion, probably)
• handout “The First Statement and King of Statements (Commentary on First Statement)”, p. 3 (verified source, 10 min; passage not identified from the transcript)
• Shakespeare, King Lear (Kent); Henry IV (Falstaff); Romeo and Juliet (quoted lines)

Mentioned

• Plato, Phaedo (Simmias, Socrates)
• Aristotle, Ethics (reason rules as father over son); natural philosophy on mathematics (locus unstated); Metaphysics XII (inferred from “twelfth book of wisdom”)
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, Book V
• Spinoza, Ethica more geometrico demonstrata; Hegel (unspecified)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, a chapter on being said of all things; ST on the Trinity, the Image (locus unstated)
• André Gide, preface to the Pléiade Shakespeare
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus
• printed volumes DHB Vol I, p. 103; Vol III, p. 635 (verified sources; not identified in transcript)

His questions #

• What does it mean to say more or less than the truth? To say what is not is (more); to say what is is not (less).
• Why does the oath say “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”? “Whole” excludes subtracting, “nothing but” excludes adding.
• If the whole truth were three natures and three persons, why would anyone think there’s one of each? No basis in the truth; only the true position explains both errors.
• What is the truth about the soul in the Phaedo? Neither Simmias nor Socrates: the human soul did not exist before the body but will exist after it.
• Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Plato yes, Aristotle no; his answer no.
• Is the eye false in knowing the whiteness of the sugar without the sweetness? No — incomplete, not false; one is knowable without the other.
• Is my knowledge of you false because I know you before your parents? No; false only if the order of knowing is attributed to reality.
• Is my mind false, remembering the past now? No; false only if one says the past must be now.
• What does “senses with the body / without the body” mean in Augustine? Either on the part of the one sensing (then nothing without the body) or on the part of the object (wound vs. sadness at news).
• Isn’t a less concrete, flowery language better for poetry? No — the same concrete language (English, Greek) is better for both philosophy and poetry.