Summa Theologiae I, Q.84, Article 4: Against Avicenna, Understanding Requires the Senses

Orientation #

He refers back to “the position of Plato that we talked a bit about last time” (prev. lecture: articles 2 and 3, the soul knowing by its essence or by innate forms) and to “our first study of the understanding” and “all the way back in Aristotle” (the tablet on which nothing is written). The previous class treated a. 2–3 against knowing by the soul’s essence or by innate species; the next treats a. 5 on the eternal reasons. The recording ends mid-sentence in the reply to the third objection.

The class, in order #

1. Opening: saints and the three caskets (“All that glisters is not gold”) #

Small talk before the text: prayer; a query whether the calendar keeps Saint John Damascene today (they had Saint Barbara, patroness of artillery); an account of The Merchant of Venice traces the three-caskets story (gold, silver, lead, each inscribed; choose wrongly and stay a bachelor) back to John Damascene. The lesson he draws: people choose “for the outside of things rather than the inside.”

2. The article and its three arguments for Avicenna (“Everything that is such by partaking”) #

Point: article 4 concerns Avicenna, who gave up Plato’s subsisting forms but has a superior mind flowing understandable forms into ours, forms that stay only while we think them.

• Objection 1 (“a very famous statement”): whatever is such by partaking is caused by what is such essentially, as the ignited is reduced to fire. His example: the moral virtues partake of reason; the irascible appetite (anger) and concupiscible appetite (hunger, thirst, sexual desire) are moderated by reason without being reason, so they depend on what is essentially rational. The understanding soul in act partakes of the understandables, since the understanding in act is in a way the understood in act (recalled from the earlier study of sense and reason as receiving another’s form). What is understandable in act by its nature is form without matter; therefore our forms are caused by separated forms. Student asks whether this is already the agent intellect: he answers that the agent intellect comes later, but for Avicenna it is a separated substance like an angel acting on our mind; here the objection only claims something essentially understandable as source. He calls it “a very subtle argument.”
• Objection 2 (by analogy): understandables are to understanding as sensibles to sense; sensibles in act outside the soul cause the sensible forms in the sense; so understandables in act outside the soul, i.e. forms separate from matter, cause ours. His preview of Thomas: “you got to be careful with analogy”; the likeness is overextended, because what is primarily understandable for us is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, which our intellect must separate from the singularity of sense and imagination before it is actually understood.
• Objection 3: whatever is in potency (he says “inability, meaning passive ability”) is reduced to act by what is in act. Examples: cookie dough able to be a Christmas tree or bell gets its form from the cutter that actually has that form; water able to be warm is heated by what is actually hot. Our understanding is first in ability, a tablet on which nothing is written; so it must be reduced to act by an understanding always in act, and (the jump) that is a separated substance.

Student: are these objections or Avicenna’s arguments? Answer: arguments in favor of Avicenna; “Thomas always argues against the truth first.”

• Sed contra: then we would not need the senses to understand, which is clearly false, since one lacking a sense has no knowledge of that sense’s sensibles; a man born blind knows nothing of colors as such.

3. Body: Plato’s position and why he held it (“Socrates and what Socrates is”) #

Point: Thomas first sets out Plato, who laid down that the forms of sensible things subsist by themselves, “man himself” and “the per se horse.”

• Aside on “form”: Paul speaks so (“form of God,” “form of a slave,” Greek morphē); form there means the kind of thing. Thomas writes formam vel ideam: idea is from eidos, a Greek word for form, and to render it “idea” is transliteration, not translation; it should be translated “form.”
• Plato’s element of truth: Socrates and what Socrates is are not altogether identical. Argument: (1) Socrates is a man; (2) he is not a man through being Socrates, else one would have to be Socrates before being a man; (3) if Socrates and what a man is were identical, Socrates would be the only man. Contrast: in God and in the angels the individual and what it is are identical; each angel is its own kind, none equal (“God hates equality,” his old teacher used to say); Dionysius’s three hierarchies, three orders each, beginning-middle-end in each. Aside: Thomas asks whether angels would love one another more if equal, and says no: inequality makes an order which is the good of the universe; the more intellectual, the more one appreciates the common good, so the angels rejoice in being unequal. In material and mathematical things many individuals share one kind, and “the other side of the coin” is that they are not identical with what they are.
• The Platonic inference: what is not such through itself is such through another, and ultimately through something such through itself. Coffee is not sweet through itself but through sugar, which is sweet through being sugar; a dishcloth is wet through water, wet through itself. So Socrates is a man through something that is man to itself: the form of man; likewise dog, cat, horse. We partake of “man himself to himself.”
• What is wrong: wherever what a man is exists in flesh, blood and bones you have an individual, so “man himself” ends up nothing but a form; but Aristotle asks whether flesh and bone belong to what a man is—to define man you must bring in flesh and bone in general, so the forms “up there” lack the nature of man, since matter is in that nature.
• Second reason for Plato: definitions. Socrates got us going on definition; almost every dialogue defines something. Definitions give certain truth: “No odd number is even” vs. “No man is green”: students were sure of the first, only found the second highly probable (green men on Mars would surprise but not be impossible), because we know odd and even by definition well enough to see the opposition. But a definition of man is not a definition of you or me or Socrates, so there must be a world of things defined: the forms. Our mind partakes of them for knowing, bodily matter partakes of them for being; matter partaking of the form of stone becomes this stone, understanding partaking of it becomes understanding what a stone is. Partaking is by a likeness, as an exemplar is partaken by what is exemplified. Aside: sanctifying grace is described as a partaking of the nature of God, a likeness; in the Summa Contra Gentiles one reason grace causes love of God is that grace makes us like God, and likeness causes love. Plato referred the sciences and their definitions to the forms.

4. Body: Avicenna’s separated agent intellect (“species is another word for forma”) #

Point: since Aristotle proved in many ways that the forms of sensible things do not subsist without matter, Avicenna put them, immaterially, in separated substances.

• Aside on species: a form that is seen (cf. spectacles, speculum, speculative; Greek idea from idein, to see; English “looks”). A student mentions species impressa and expressa; he grants species can mean form generally, but the etymology carries “seen.”
• The forms preexist in the first separated substance, derive to the next, down to the lowest, which Avicenna names the agent intellect—“analogous to our guardian angel.” Stressed: the term is here equivocal with Aristotle’s, for whom the agent intellect is a power of our soul that makes actually understandable the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined; Avicenna’s is a separated substance acting on our mind directly. This is “something like what Augustine will be saying about God” (the divine ideas; De Veritate and the Summa treat them), but Avicenna means an angelic, not divine, mind. Student: one agent intellect or many? Answer: one for everyone—another student names it monopsychism. Avicenna also has sensible forms flow from it into bodily matter, so what a man is exists as a thought in this angel.
• Student: a theology book says God gives everything its understandability with its being—isn’t that close? Answer: very close to what we believe, but material things are understandable only in ability; they are prepared by senses and imagination and made actually understandable by our soul’s agent intellect.
• Agreement with Plato: forms flow from separate forms. Differences: (a) Plato’s subsist by themselves, Avicenna’s are in the lowest angel; (b) Avicenna’s forms do not remain after understanding in act ceases—the soul must turn again to receive them—so he does not make knowledge innate, as Plato did, for whom the partakings remain immovably. Aristotle, by contrast, has no innate forms, but once received they have a permanence as a habit, in full act only when one turns to them. He notes the usefulness of comparing two positions for what they share and where they differ.

5. Refutation: no sufficient reason for the union with the body (“in vain, it would be united”) #

Argument:

1. On Avicenna’s view no sufficient reason can be given why the soul is joined to a body.
2. Not for the body’s sake: body is lower; form is not for matter but matter for form, ability for act; the mover is not for the mobile.
3. The body seems necessary to the soul for its operation, understanding, since the soul does not depend on the body for its being (argued earlier under immortality).
4. If the soul received forms only by influence of separated principles and took nothing from the senses, it would not need a body to understand; so the union would be in vain. “Common sense.”

6. The reply from arousal, and Plato’s sleeping soul (“consopita”) #

Point: if it is said the senses are needed only to arouse the soul to consider forms it already has, this is insufficient: such arousal is needed only insofar as the soul is consopita, put to sleep, and quodammodo oblivious, forgetful, by union with the body, so the senses merely remove an impediment—and the cause of the union remains unexplained.

• Plato’s recollection argument (Phaedo, “a better one” than elsewhere): bodies are never really equal; two chairs that seem equal remind us of equality, and closer inspection (dents, nicks) shows they fall short. To judge that things approach equality yet fall short, you must know equality not derived from them. His comparison: you cannot say “this is a likeness of Berquist but his nose is shorter, he is fatter, grayer” without knowing Berquist independently of the painting. Same for flatness (the cord vs. the tabletop, which under inspection has dents). Same hint about happiness: whatever happiness we get, something is missing—he quotes the end of Vanity Fair, “who in this life ever gets what he wants, or having gotten it is satisfied”; where did we get the idea of true happiness to judge the false ones short of it? As if the soul once touched true happiness and then got stuck in a body.
• Aside: Heraclitus, Plato’s teacher through Cratylus, said we should not act and speak like those asleep: “Wake up.”
• Aside: the pagans spoke of the body as a prison, even a punishment; Plato makes the body something bad, Aristotle sees it as part of human nature; Plato and Aristotle together prepare the understanding of original sin—the body is part of us, yet something has happened so that it harms or leads astray the soul.

7. The Avicennan version of arousal, and the blind man (“one born blind could have a knowledge of colors”) #

Point: if, as Avicenna says, the senses arouse the soul to turn to the separated understanding, this too fails: if it is the soul’s nature to understand by forms flowing from that agent, it could sometimes turn to it from its own natural inclination, or, aroused by one sense, receive species of sensibles of which it has no sense; so one born blind could know colors, “manifestly false.” Conclusion: our understandable forms do not flow from separated forms.

• Aside: the mystics’ dark night of the soul and Paul carried to the third heaven not knowing whether he was in the body show that receiving from a separated substance would come by turning away from the senses, not by being excited through them.

8. Replies to the three objections (“there are intermediaries”) #

• Ad 1: Thomas does not deny the forms come from something understandable by nature: they are reduced to God as first cause, but from that beginning they proceed by means of forms of material and sensible things, from which our knowledge is collected (Dionysius). Chain: God, forms in sensible things, senses, imagination, then the soul’s power separating the what-it-is from the singular. Example: the imagined triangle is singular; what a triangle is, understood, is universal. Hence we reason back to God from sensible things; we do not receive forms from him immediately.
• Ad 2: material things as they are outside the soul are sensible in act but not understandable in act in their materiality, so sense and understanding are not alike here. The steps: being in the senses, in the internal senses, experience, then separating out what many have in common—having seen many dogs, comparing them and separating the common is “the beginning of something understandable in act.” The primary object of our mind is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined; what is not sensible we understand by negation or by relation to the sensible: “God is the unmoved mover” (unmoved = negation, mover = relation to things in motion). No face-to-face knowledge of God in this life.
• Ad 3: our possible understanding is reduced from ability to act by the agent intellect in Aristotle’s sense, a power of our soul, not by a separated understanding as proximate cause—“but perhaps through a remote cause.” Cf. the class prayer, “strengthen the light of my mind”: the light of the mind separates the what-it-is; “but maybe the light of my mind is derived from”— recording ends.

His words #

• understandable forms — his rendering of species intelligibiles, “the forms by which we understand” [ed.: intelligible species]
• partaking — participatio; being such by partaking presupposes what is such essentially
• irascible / concupiscible appetite — anger; hunger, thirst, sexual desire: they partake of reason without being reason
• understanding in act is the understood in act — sensing and understanding receive the form of another
• inability — “meaning passive ability” [ed.: potency]; ability for potency, act for actuality
• the what it is of something sensed or imagined — the primary object of our intellect
• form vel idea — idea from eidos, to be translated “form,” not transliterated
• man himself to himself — Plato’s subsisting form of man; “the per se horse”
• species — a form that is seen (idein, spectacles, speculum, “looks”)
• agent intellect — in Aristotle a power of our soul making the what-it-is actually understandable; in Avicenna the lowest separated substance; used equivocally
• monopsychism — (student’s word) one agent intellect for all
• habit — the permanence of received forms in Aristotle, in full act only when turned to
• consopita — put to sleep, stupefied; quodammodo oblivious — forgetful, from union with the body
• first cause / remote cause vs. proximate cause — how the forms are reduced to God

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 84, a. 4: objections 1–3, sed contra, body, replies 1–3 (reply 3 cut off)
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 84, a. 5 (verified source lists 2 min at the end; the transcript does not name it)
• Handout, “Note for Book One of Natural Hearing, Reading I,” p. 9 (verified source; not identifiable in the transcript)

Mentioned

• Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (three caskets, traced to John Damascene)
• Paul on the form of God and form of a slave (Philippians, inferred)
• Dionysius on the three hierarchies of angels
• Thomas on whether angels would love one another more if equal (locus not stated)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, on grace causing love of God (chapter not stated)
• Thomas, De Veritate, question on the divine ideas; the Summa on divine ideas (loci not stated)
• Plato, Phaedo (equality and recollection); Plato’s dialogues on definition
• Thackeray, Vanity Fair (closing lines)
• Heraclitus on those asleep; Cratylus as intermediary
• Paul carried to the third heaven; the mystics’ dark night of the soul
• Printed volume: DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 316 (verified source; not identifiable in the transcript)

His questions #

• Is Socrates a man through being Socrates? No; else one would have to be Socrates before being a man, and Socrates would be the only man.
• Is coffee sweet through itself? Is a dishcloth wet through itself? No; through sugar and water, which are sweet and wet through themselves—Plato’s model for the forms.
• Are you as sure that no man is green as that no odd number is even? No; the second is seen from definitions, the first only highly probable.
• Is a definition of man a definition of you, or me, or Socrates? No—hence Plato’s world of forms as what is defined.
• Did Avicenna have one agent intellect or one for each? One for everyone (monopsychism).
• Isn’t God’s giving understandability with being close to what we believe? Very close, but material things are understandable only in ability; our agent intellect makes them actual.
• Why is the soul joined to a body, if forms flow from a separated substance? No sufficient reason can be given; the union would be in vain.
• Where did you get the idea of perfect equality, flatness, true happiness? Plato: not from bodies, which fall short—recollection; Thomas’s answer to the “arousal” reply: it only explains a soul asleep, not the union.
• Is the argument against Avicenna the one about the blind man? Yes; on his view one born blind could know colors.
• Is the light of my mind derived from something higher? Left open (recording ends mid-sentence).