Before and After: Senses of Priority and Why Breathing Isn't Better than Philosophizing (ST I q.77 a.7, Part 1)

Orientation #

He recalls that Article 6 asked whether the powers flow from the soul, some into the body and others remaining in the soul (prev. lecture); Article 7 asks the similar question whether one power proceeds from another. He refers back to the chapter of the Categories on “before” that he handed out earlier. He ends by announcing the point he is “leading up to”: that the cause is before the effect in two different ways, as matter/subject and as mover or end, which he does not reach in this session. The next class continues with the twofold priority of the soul’s essence over its powers.

The class, in order #

1. Opening and the question of Article 7 (“does one power of the soul proceed from another”) #

He notes the day is the feast of the Annunciation and so of the Incarnation, then states the question: Article 6 asked whether the powers flow from the soul; now, whether one power arises from another.

2. Objection 1: things that come to be together (“of those things which come to be together”) #

Point: “together” (simul) does not exclude one thing arising from another.

1. Objection: what comes to be together, one does not arise from the other; all powers are created together with the soul; therefore none arises from another.
2. His answer-in-advance: simul is the opposite of before and after (the Categories chapter on “before” is followed by one on “together”), and there is more than one sense of “together” and of “arising from”.

• Two and half-of-four: the moment a number is two it is half of four; no time lapse — a property arises from a nature at once.
• Triangle: the angles do not “start to become” equal to two right angles after a while.
• Aristotle’s example: your sitting and the truth of “you are sitting” are together in time, yet the sitting is the cause of the truth; stand up and the statement ceases to be true — cause and effect together in duration.
• Trinity objection (“if the Son proceeds from the Father, He is after Him in duration”): does not follow; we picture a maker like a pie-maker or house-builder, who exists before the house because building takes time, but two does not exist before half of four.

3. Objection 2: one accident not the subject of another (“one accident is not an accident of another”) #

1. Objection: a power arises from the soul as a proper accident from its subject; one power cannot be the subject of another; therefore one power does not arise from another.
2. His preview of the reply: Thomas will not say one power is the subject of another, but that one power arises from the soul in a certain order through another; the ways are given in the body.

4. Objection 3: opposite does not arise from opposite (“dogs produce a dog”) #

1. Objection: an opposite does not arise from its opposite; each thing arises from its like in species (dogs from dogs, cats from cats); the powers are divided by opposites as diverse species; therefore one does not proceed from another.

• Aside: we divide things in general by opposites, so the difficulty is real.

5. Sed contra: powers known through their acts (“the act of imagining from the act of sense”) #

Point: the reply is taken from what is more known, the acts; the act of one power is caused by the act of another.

• Phantasia here means imagining in the sense of the image that remains when you look at someone and close your eyes, not the “creative” sense; that image arose from seeing.
• Billiard balls (from Aristotle, On the Soul III): the second ball moves less strongly than the first, the third weaker still; so the image is less vivid than the sensation, and fades with distance from the first mover.
• Witnesses to a street accident agree more the same day than the next day: images weakened by distance from the sensation. Imagining is “a motion caused by the sense in act”, an interior motion.
• Will and reason: the will desires what reason knows.
• Emotion from sense: the neighbour grilling bacon at six in the morning wakes the neighbourhood’s hunger; lying in bed, the smell makes you realise a hunger you did not feel; the cat at dinner looking up for a piece of chicken — an order between what you smell and the desire to eat.

6. The respondeo begun: the soul cause of the powers in more than one way (“nearer to the beginning or to the first”) #

1. In things that proceed from one according to a natural order, the first is cause of all, and what is nearer the first is in some way cause of what is more remote.
2. It was shown above that among the powers there is order of many kinds.
3. Therefore one power proceeds from the nature of the soul by the medium of another.

• The soul is beginning and cause of the powers in more than one way: as end, as something like maker or mover, and as something like matter, being the subject of the powers, by itself or in conjunction with the body. This is why he now turns to the senses of “before”.

7. Categories ch. 12: the senses of “before” (“the four central senses of before”) #

• Before in time: yesterday before today.
• Before in being: this can be without that but not vice versa; one before two; bricks before the brick fireplace (people even buy the weathered old bricks after the wall is knocked apart).
• Being vs. time distinguished by cases where they come apart: slicing a loaf by hand, one slice is before two in time and being; the bakery machine cuts all twelve at once, so not in time; twins are two at once, yet one is still before two in being, since if one child dies you still have one. Printing the word “cat”: c before the word in time and being; with a stamp, the whole word at once, yet c still before in being.
• Before in the discourse of reason (a student asks him to repeat it); to it can be attached “before in our knowledge”, as to the first sense are attached before in motion and before in place.
• Before as better — “much different”. Shakespeare’s pun (All’s Well That Ends Well): Helena kneels before the Countess and says “next to heaven and before you, I love your son” — before in place against before in goodness and in being loved.
• A fifth sense, the cause before the effect: the sitting example again, since here the cause is not before in being. He does not think it is really a fifth; it has an affinity to the second sense and is “kind of the crowning sense of before”.

8. Socrates and the three kinds of goods (“the gold medal and the silver medal and the bronze medal”) #

Point: a classroom exercise (from the Apology, where Socrates reproaches the Athenians for preferring goods of body and outside goods to goods of the soul) that will turn on the senses of “before”.

1. Principle already established in the course: the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end.
2. Induction that the outside is for the sake of the inside: glasses for eyes, not eyes for glasses; clothing for the body (else you are a department-store mannequin); the car for getting me to school; notebook and book for the mind. So outside goods get the bronze.
3. Body vs. soul: they don’t know enough to see the body is for the soul, so (following Socrates or Shakespeare’s imitation): man is better than beast, not by the goods he shares with the beast, therefore by the goods of the soul; God is better than man, and the goods of the soul are more godlike; the end of man (acting with reason according to virtue) is nearer the goods of the soul. Gold to the soul, silver to the body.
4. Students cannot defend the Athenians, yet admit Americans think as they do: “your whole life is based on a mistake.”

9. Breathing vs. philosophizing: mixing senses of before (“which is better, to philosophize or to breathe”) #

1. Every hand goes up for breathing. The quick girl’s reason: without breathing you’ll be dead and do nothing else; without philosophizing you still live.
2. His diagnosis: that shows breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense (being); the question was the fourth sense (better). You cannot reason from one sense of before to another — “Chaucer is before Shakespeare in time, therefore better” is no argument. “That’s the most common mistake in thinking, according to the father of logic.”
3. He strengthens their side: the opposite of the worse is better (probable rule) — worse to lose my son than my cat, so the son is better; worse to have my car stolen than my pen, so the car is more valuable; worse to stop breathing than to stop philosophizing for an hour, so some probability breathing is better.
4. The exception: when the lesser good is before the greater good in being, the loss of the lesser is worse, because it entails the loss of the greater, while the loss of the greater leaves the lesser. Breathing/philosophizing is exactly this case.
5. Theological example: charity greatest (St Paul, the Church), then hope, then faith; yet since faith is before hope and charity in being, losing faith is worse than losing charity, though charity is better. A student notes faith is also first in time; he agrees, adds “also in being”.
6. A student objects that breathing is always “more important”: he asks, more important as more necessary, or as better? More necessary — the second sense; “you’re mixing up the second and the fourth sense.”

10. “On account of which, more so” (“propter quod unumquodque tale et illud magis”) #

Point: the principle by which the end is shown better than the means, expanded from Aristotle’s and Thomas’s brief form: when the same belongs to two things, but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause.

• Sugar and coffee: sugar sweeter; fire and the air round the fireplace: fire hotter; water and dishcloth: water wetter; salt and French fries: salt saltier.
• Logic: known is said of premises and conclusion, but of the conclusion because of the premises, so the premises are more known; otherwise you would not use them to prove it. A student asks “aren’t they all the same?” — “No, that’s a subtle thing about this.”
• Mover: I and the chalk both move the eraser, the chalk because of me, so I am more the mover; if I push you off a cliff with a pole you punish me, not the pole.
• End and means: good is said of health and medicine, of medicine because of health, so health is better; of knowing and studying, so knowing is better. (Earlier in the passage he says “medicine is better than health”, evidently a slip against his own sense; he corrects to health as “gooder”.)
• Applied to breathing: “do you eat to live or live to eat?” — nobody makes breathing his end (some make eating theirs); breathing is for something else, which must be better; so philosophizing is better. “They’re finished off.”

11. Recap and the point he is leading to (“just to live or to live well”) #

• To live well is better than to live, though you can live without living well, not vice versa — same confusion of senses.
• One thing can be before another in several senses at once (Homer before Aeschylus and Euripides in time and in being better); the senses show most clearly when the order reverses: Chaucer before Shakespeare in time, Shakespeare before Chaucer for all the critics.
• Back to Thomas: beyond the five senses of before, “cause” itself has several meanings; what is most essential here is the difference between a cause as matter or subject and a cause as mover, maker or end — “they’re going to be before in two different ways.” The class ends here.

His words #

• simul; “at once or together”, the opposite of before and after.
• proper accident; the sense in which a power arises from the soul “like a property arises from a subject”.
• phantasia; imagining as the image remaining after sensation, “a motion caused by the sense in act”, not the creative sense.
• before in being; this can be without that but not vice versa (second sense).
• before in the discourse of reason; third sense, to which “before in our knowledge” attaches.
• “the crowning sense of before”; the cause before the effect, which he sees as akin to the second sense rather than a fifth.
• “the father of logic”; Aristotle, on the commonest mistake in thinking (arguing from one sense of a word to another).
• propter quod unumquodque tale et illud magis; “on account of which, more so”; expanded: when the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause.
• “gooder”; his playful comparative for “better”, to make the application of the principle visible.
• “the most common mistake in thinking”; reasoning from one sense of “before” to another [ed.: equivocation].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 77, a. 7: the three objections, sed contra, and the opening of the respondeo (verified source; translated as he reads).
• Aristotle, Categories, ch. 12 (on “before”), recalled from the handout he gave; the sitting/true-statement example.
• Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well: Helena’s “next to heaven and before you, I love your son” (quoted from memory).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories, the chapter on “together” following ch. 12.
• Aristotle, On the Soul, book III (the billiard-ball account of images from sensation).
• Plato, Apology of Socrates (Socrates’ examination of the Athenians on the goods of soul, body and outside goods).
• St Paul on charity as the greatest of faith, hope and charity (1 Corinthians 13, inferred).
• Handout “A Note on Practical Philosophy”, p. 8, per the verified sources, probably the passage on end and means / the goods; not named in the transcript.

His questions #

• Can one thing arise from another and still be together in time? Yes: two and half of four; your sitting and the truth of “you are sitting”.
• Which gets the gold medal: goods of the soul, of the body, or outside goods? Soul gold, body silver, outside bronze, because the end is better than what is for the end.
• Which is better, to philosophize or to breathe? Philosophizing: breathing is for the sake of something else, so that something is better.
• Why do you say breathing is better than philosophizing? Because without breathing you’d be dead — which shows only that breathing is before in being (second sense), not better (fourth sense).
• Is “Chaucer is before Shakespeare in time, therefore better” a good argument? No; you cannot reason from one sense of before to another.
• Isn’t the opposite of the worse better? Probably yes (son/cat, car/pen), except when the lesser good is before the greater in being.
• Which is worse, to lose charity or to lose faith? To lose faith, since it entails losing hope and charity too, though charity is the greater.
• Is it more important to be more necessary or to be better? More necessary — the second sense of before, not the fourth.
• Which is more known, the premises or the conclusion? The premises; otherwise you would not use them to prove the conclusion.
• Do you eat to live or live to eat? You eat to live; and nobody makes breathing his end.