Summa Theologiae I, Q.84, Articles 5-6: Knowing in the Eternal Reasons, and Heraclitus on Common Reason

Orientation #

He finishes a thought from article 4 (“as we saw in the previous reading”, the stone/form comparison) and then, after a break, reads article 5. Verified sources: ST I q.84 a.5 for most of the class, a brief stretch of a.6, and two handout pages of his “Note for Book One of Natural Hearing” (the Heraclitus fragments he reads). The previous class treated a.4 (Avicenna’s separate agent intellect) and the next continues q.84 (a.6, whether knowledge is derived from sensible things).

The class, in order #

1. Tail of article 4: the agent intellect as light (“the light that enlightens every man”) #

Point: the light of the mind comes from God to begin with; not every man has the light of faith, but every man has the light of reason; angelic understanding “maybe” can strengthen our light to some extent. Aristotle: the agent intellect is “something actual” in our soul; he compares it to the agent or maker and the understanding that understands to matter, which is acted upon. Then a break before article 5.

2. Article 5, objections: Augustine’s authority and the eternal reasons (“does not know material things in the eternal reasons”) #

Point: Thomas seems, surprisingly, to take a side apparently against Augustine, so Berquist first stresses who Augustine is.

• Aside on Augustine: in the Catechism of the Catholic Church Augustine is cited even more than Thomas; “the greatest mind among the Church Fathers”; his work on the Trinity is the greatest among the Fathers (Thomas and Boethius follow him; Hilary good but Augustine “top man”). Augustine’s saying: nowhere is it more fruitful to find truth than about the Trinity, and nowhere easier to err.
• Obj. 1: that in which something is known is itself more known and known before. So if we knew material things in the eternal reasons we would know God before and more than these things. But in this life the soul does not know God himself; we know God “as He is not”, and our mind is joined to God “as to something unknown” (Dionysius, Mystical Theology ch. 1) — the highest state of the soul, realizing whatever it understands of God is infinitely less than God. Therefore we do not know material things in the eternal reasons.
• Obj. 2: Romans 1:20 — “the invisible things of God are looked upon through those things which have been made.” He flags this as the text Vatican I uses to make it a matter of faith that God can be known by natural reason. The eternal reasons are among God’s invisible things; so they are known through material creatures, not the reverse.
• Obj. 3: the eternal reasons are nothing other than the ideas: Augustine (Eighty-Three Questions) calls the ideas “the stable reasons of things existing in the divine mind.” So to say we know all things in the eternal reasons returns to Plato, who derived all knowledge from the ideas.
• Sed contra: Augustine, Confessions bk. 12 — if you and I both see that what you say is true and what I say is true, where do we see it? Not I in you nor you in me, but both in the unchangeable truth above our minds. That truth is contained in the eternal reasons; therefore the soul knows all things in the eternal reasons.

3. Digression: Heraclitus, “listen not to me but to reason” (“listening not to me, but to reason”) #

Point: the sed contra recalls Heraclitus’s fragment “It is wise, listening not to me but to reason, to agree that all things are one” — take the middle clause.

• Everyday usage: “he won’t listen to reason” (or “more likely, she”). He is not saying “listen to your reason instead of mine”; he supposes some common reason you and I both tap into, by which we judge what is private to each — consistent with his fragments that we must follow what is common.
• Objection of “the nasty modern”: why talk to us if he doesn’t want us to listen to him? There is only your reason, my reason, the next man’s reason. Reply: what we mean is what is common to all reasons, what every man with reason naturally understands, e.g. a whole is more than one of its parts.
• What reason naturally understands, common to all, is “really a reflection of the eternal reasons”, a partaking of them in every man’s reason. “We’ll see how Thomas does.”
• Aside: Heraclitus taught Cratylus, who with Socrates taught Plato (Plato’s dialogue Cratylus).

4. Respondeo, part 1: Augustine takes over and corrects Plato (“from unjust possessors”) #

Point: Augustine’s rule (De Doctrina Christiana bk. 2): what the philosophers say truly and in accord with faith is to be claimed from them “as from unjust possessors”; the Gentiles’ teachings also have superstitious figmenta (imaginings) to be avoided.

• Augustine was imbued with the Platonists and had little of Aristotle (“the Categories is all we think he had”); what fit the faith he took over, what was adverse he tried to change into something better.
• Plato: forms or natures of things subsist by themselves apart from matter, called in Greek ideai. Aside: “idea” in Latin is a transliteration, not a translation. By partaking of the ideas our understanding knows all things: as bodily matter by partaking the form of stone becomes stone, so our understanding by partaking the same form knows stone (seen in the previous reading).
• This seems alien to the faith, since the Platonists made “life itself” and “wisdom itself” created substances (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 11). So Augustine (Eighty-Three Questions) put in place of Plato’s forms the reasons of all creatures existing in the divine mind, according to which all things are formed and the soul knows all things.

5. Respondeo, part 2: two ways of knowing “in another” (“as in an object known”) #

Point: the answer turns on a distinction.

• In another as in an object known vs. in another as in a source or cause of knowledge. The first: as one sees in a mirror the things whose images appear in it — thus the soul in this life does not see all things in the eternal reasons; the blessed, who see God, know all things in Him this way. The second: as we say things seen through the sun are seen “in the sun” — in this way it is necessary to say the soul knows all things in the eternal reasons, by partaking of which we know all things.
• Reason: the understandable light in us is nothing but a partaken likeness of the uncreated light in which the eternal reasons are contained. Aristotle compared the agent intellect to light: as light makes potentially visible colours actually visible, the agent intellect makes the “what it is” of sensible and imaginable things actually understandable.
• Back to Heraclitus: what is common to all reasons is what is naturally known; what is naturally known is known in the light of the agent intellect; that light is a partaking of the divine light; so what is naturally understood is a partaking and likeness of the eternal reasons — “it’s not the eternal reasons.” Aristotle’s proverb in the Metaphysics: who misses the door?
• Psalm 4:6-7: “Who shows us the good?” (not my idea of good vs. yours; something common) — “There is sealed upon us the light of your face”: through a sealing of the divine light in us all things are demonstrated to us. “You have to respect the natural light of reason because that is a partaking of the divine light” — not only the light of faith.
• John 1: “the light that enlightens every man who comes into this world” refers to the light of reason, since (Paul) faith is not of everybody. Candle lighting other candles: each partakes of the original light. What is naturally understood is the beginning, “a seed of our knowledge” (Albert; also Thomas, Plato, Aristotle). In that sense we see everything in a likeness of the divine light and so “in the divine reasons”.
• Asides: Thomas’s prayer before communion, asking God for more light to approach eternal light in the Eucharist. In the Summa on the virtues of reason Thomas puts intellectus (Aristotle’s nous, natural understanding) above scientia (episteme), which depends on it. Boethius on statements “known to themselves by all men”, approved by everyone on hearing.

6. Respondeo, part 3: forms from things also required; Augustine’s real meaning (“investigation through places and times”) #

Point: besides the light in us, understandable forms taken from things are required for knowledge of material things; so we do not know them only by partaking of the eternal reasons, as the Platonists held the ideas sufficed for science.

• Augustine, De Trinitate bk. 4: though the philosophers were persuaded by most certain documents that all temporal things come about by the eternal reasons, they could not thereby see how many genera of animals there are or what the seeds of each are — that required investigation through places and times, i.e. going back to the senses.
• That Augustine does not mean we see the eternal reasons in themselves is clear from Eighty-Three Questions: not every rational soul but only the one “holy and pure” is suitable for that vision — the souls of the blessed; in this life one is not completely sancta and so not pura.

7. Heraclitus on the common: the sleeping and the city’s law (“we should not act and speak like those asleep”) #

Point: Heraclitus’s fragments on the common parallel Thomas.

• The sleeping are cut off from the senses (part of the meaning), but further: for the sleeping there are many private worlds; for the awake one common world. The true world is one and common, false worlds many and private. Examples: everyone awake gets 2+2=4, one common answer; asleep, each has a private answer (3, 5, 6), all false. Awake, we all sit at this table; asleep, one dreams of grandchildren, another of chapel, all falsely.
• “Those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all, as much as a city is strong in its law.” A city where I drive on the left and you on the right is chaos: a common law is needed. Likewise the life of the mind, conducted in two ways: (a) conversation among equals — “you’re wrong because I’m right” goes nowhere; we must find something common to judge our disagreement, like two experimental scientists devising an experiment where their hypotheses predict differently; (b) teacher and student — the teacher leads from what the student already knows (Euclid proving a new theorem from what you know), so those things must be common to both.
• “And even more so”: “for all the laws of the city are fed by one divine law, which is more than enough for all.” Examples: the speed limit at the intersection (a law unnecessary before cars) is fed by the law to preserve life and property — thou shalt not kill, not steal; kitchen inspections, the doctor’s licence, illegal discharge of a firearm (his St. Paul neighbour firing at midnight on New Year’s Eve). Whenever a new danger to life or property arises, new laws can be made, all fed by the divine law. One might say he means what Thomas calls natural law — but Thomas defines natural law as a partaking of the divine law in man; so Heraclitus is close to Thomas, going back to something divine. Sophocles’ Antigone appeals to the unwritten law against the injustice of the written law: the city’s law is measured by something more common.

8. The humility of the Greek philosophers against the moderns (“as a child is to a man, so is man to God”) #

Point: Heraclitus’s fragments show a humility found in the great Greeks and lost in the moderns.

• Heraclitus: as a child to a man, so man to God; as an ape to a man (ugly, less intelligent), so man to God.
• Pythagoras coined “philosopher”: asked not to be called wise, since God alone is wise — “call me a lover of wisdom”; so the word carries humility as well as love.
• Plato, Laws (his last work): “God is a measure of all things”, rejecting “man is the measure of all things”, which Berquist attributes to Pythagoras [ed.: usually attributed to Protagoras; kept as he said it]. Aristotle, Metaphysics: God alone, or God most fully, should be said to be wise. Socrates in the Apology: how can I be wise, I know nothing.
• Moderns: Marx’s preface to his doctoral thesis, the human mind as the highest divinity; French thinkers before Marx who wanted a new religion worshipping man — the recording cuts off mid-anecdote.

His words #

• eternal reasons — the reasons of all creatures existing in the divine mind (Augustine’s replacement for Plato’s forms)
• idea / ideai — Plato’s self-subsisting forms; “idea” a transliteration, not a translation
• figmenta — the “superstitious figments”, imaginings of the Gentiles
• Gentiles — those who are not believers (as in Summa contra Gentiles)
• agent intellect — the actual power of the soul compared by Aristotle to light and to a maker; the possible understanding compared to matter
• partaken likeness of the uncreated light — what the understandable light in us is
• sancta et pura — holy and pure, the soul suited to the vision of the eternal reasons (the blessed)
• intellectus / nous — natural understanding, placed by Thomas above scientia / episteme
• natural law — defined by Thomas as a partaking of the divine law in man
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics] (handout title)

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I q.84 a.5, objections, sed contra and respondeo
• Augustine, Confessions bk. 12 (in the sed contra)
• Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana bk. 2 (in the respondeo)
• Augustine, De Trinitate bk. 4, partly in Latin (in the respondeo)
• Fragments of Heraclitus (from his handout on Natural Hearing bk. 1): “listen not to me but to reason”; the sleeping and the common world; “strong in what is common … as a city in its law … fed by one divine law”; child/man, ape/man
• Psalm 4:6-7; Romans 1:20; John 1 (light that enlightens every man)

Mentioned:

• ST I q.84 a.4 (previous reading); a.6 (verified, briefly)
• Dionysius, Mystical Theology ch. 1; Divine Names ch. 11
• Augustine, Eighty-Three Questions
• Catechism of the Catholic Church (references to Augustine); Vatican I on natural knowledge of God
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (“who misses the door”; God alone wise); Categories (all Augustine had)
• Plato, Cratylus; Laws; Apology
• Sophocles, Antigone
• Boethius on common conceptions; Albert on the seed of knowledge; Thomas’s prayer before communion
• Marx, preface to his doctoral thesis

His questions #

• If we knew material things in the eternal reasons, what would we know before and more? God — but in this life we know God as He is not.
• What is the Romans 1:20 text famous for? Vatican I uses it to make natural knowledge of God a matter of faith.
• When Heraclitus says “listen not to me but to reason”, what reason is he asking us to listen to? Not his or yours, but what is common to every man’s reason — what reason naturally understands.
• What is common to your reason and mine really a reflection of? The eternal reasons; a partaking of them.
• Who knows all things in the eternal reasons as in an object known? The blessed, who see God and all things in Him.
• What is the understandable light in us? A partaken likeness of the uncreated light in which the eternal reasons are contained.
• What light does John 1 mean by “the light that enlightens every man”? The light of reason, since faith is not of everybody.
• Who is the soul “holy and pure” fit for the vision of the eternal reasons? The souls of the blessed, not souls in this life.
• Would you want to live in a city where I drive on the left and you on the right? No — chaos; a common law is needed, and so too something common in the life of the mind.
• Why is there a law about how fast you can drive? To preserve life and property; that law is fed by the divine law.