Aquinas, Summa I Q88 a1: Can we know the angels in this life? Plato, Averroes, and names made equivocal by reason

Orientation #

He says they “looked at the objections last time” and will “start with the body of the article” (prev. lecture); the objections will be seen again at the replies. Just before the prayer: “we’ll have to wait until next week to find out” whether we can know the angels. The verified-source system places the class between ST I q. 87 a. 4 and q. 88 a. 2; the transcript itself says “question 88”, so the article is q. 88 a. 1 (inferred).

The class, in order #

1. Plato: immaterial substances are the first known (“according to the opinion of Plato”) #

Point: Thomas opens the body with Plato’s position that the immaterial forms are the proper and first object of our understanding, and that the more the understanding is purified of sense and imagination the more it perceives immaterial truth.

• Republic image: the soul turned toward material things; mathematics “turning the soul to the side”; then turning all the way round to the immaterial world.
• Aristotle vs. Plato: for Aristotle it is not by turning away from the material world but through the material world that we reason our way into the immaterial.
• Why the Church Fathers liked Plato: they cared about supernatural knowledge of God; the “dark night of the soul” (St. John of the Cross) is a turning away from the sensible world, but for a supernatural knowledge through God’s enlightening. Naturally, we know the immaterial only through the material.

2. Aristotle: the intellect turns to images (“has a natural relation to the natures of material things”) #

Point: Thomas holds with Aristotle (“which we more experience”) that in this life our understanding is naturally related to the natures of material things and understands nothing except by turning to images.

• Evidence he gives: alcohol, drugs, tiredness, Alzheimer’s (a parishioner of thirty years who no longer knows him) interfere with thinking. The brain is not the organ of thought, but the object of thought is there in some way, since the what-it-is is something imagined; disturb the imagination and you interfere with thinking.
• De Anima: our reason’s own object is the what-it-is of a thing sensed or imagined (natural or mathematical thing). Immaterial things are known only by reasoning from these and negating their materiality.
• Conclusion read: immaterial substances, which do not fall under sense and imagination, cannot be understood by us first and through themselves.

3. Averroes’s opinion: continuation with the agent intellect (“a continuation and union of a certain separated substance”) #

Point: Averroes (commentary on De Anima III) holds that in this life man can come to understand separated substances through union with a separated substance he calls the agent intellect. He calls it “a strange opinion”: the agent intellect not a power of our soul but something like an angel illuminating us. The argument as Thomas states it:

1. We understand through the agent intellect and through the intelligibles looked upon (as we understand conclusions through principles).
2. So the agent intellect is related to them either as chief agent to tools (the artist and the saw cutting wood) or as form to matter (heat and fire in heating). He grants there is something to this even on the true view: the agent intellect “lighting our mind”, the others its tools.
3. Either way it is related as perfection to perfectible, act to potency. Perfectible and perfection are received together, as the visible-in-act and light in the pupil: colour and the light that makes it visible are received at once. So the intelligible and what makes it intelligible are received together in the possible intellect.
4. The more intelligibles we receive, the nearer the agent intellect is to being perfectly united to us; when all are known it is perfectly united and we understand both material and immaterial things. In this Averroes placed man’s last happiness.

• Aside: in the Contra Gentiles Thomas shows true happiness is not in this life; Averroes and the like, though wrong about the how, have “some inclination to the truth” that something more than natural knowledge is wanted; the beatific vision is supernatural.
• It makes no difference to the proposal whether the possible intellect understands separated substances through the agent intellect (Averroes) or, as he attributes to Alexander, the possible intellect is corruptible and man understands them through the agent intellect alone.

4. Thomas’s five reasons: “all this cannot stand” (“all this cannot stand, he says”) #

1. If the agent intellect is a separated substance, we cannot understand through it as by a form, since that by which an agent acts formally is the form and act of that agent; every agent acts insofar as it is in act (as said above of the possible intellect). His illustration, put to a student who did not see it: “How can I understand something by your understanding?” — I cannot see him by your eyes or hear you by an ability to hear in you; the guardian angel’s ability to understand cannot be mine.
2. Even so, a separated agent intellect would be united to us not by its substance but only by its light as partaken in the things looked upon, not as to its other actions; as when we see colours lit by the sun, the sun’s light is united to us, not its substance so that we could do what the sun does.
3. Even granting the union, they say it is complete not after one or two intelligibles but after all. But all intelligibles fall short of the agent intellect’s power, since understanding separated substances is much greater than understanding all material things; so even knowing all material things “there’d still be a distance there”.
4. Hardly anyone in this world understands all material things, so none or very few would reach happiness — against Ethics I, where happiness is a common good open to all not deficient in virtue; and against reason that the end of a species be reached rarely (ut in paucioribus; his “potioribus” is a mishearing) by its members.
5. Ethics I: happiness is operation according to perfect virtue; Ethics X, having enumerated the virtues, concludes it consists in knowledge of the most intelligible things according to wisdom, which Ethics VI makes head of the speculative sciences. So Aristotle places last happiness in knowledge of separated substances such as the speculative sciences can give, not the continuation “feigned by some” — confictor, whence “fiction”, something made up. Wisdom is an epistēmē, the highest reasoned-out understanding, not a continuation to the agent intellect. Confirmation: it was shown above that the agent intellect is a power of the soul, extending actively to what the possible intellect receives (De Anima III: possible intellect “by which one can become all things”, agent “by which all things can be made”). Both extend in this life only to material things; so by neither can we understand immaterial substances in themselves. If at all, through material things: as causes, by negation, as excelling — “what they are in themselves, we don’t know”.

5. Augustine’s objection and the reply (“a knowledge about the soul is a beginning”) #

Objection (De Trinitate IX): as the mind gathers knowledge of bodies through the bodily senses, so through itself it gains knowledge of immaterial things. He grants “a lot of truth”: the soul’s rising above matter, the immateriality of understanding and will, is the gateway to knowing angels and God as far as we can. But does it tell us exactly what angels are? We know they are immaterial, understand and will (as we say of God), but in a way superior to ours — old teacher Kasurik: the guardian angel watching you decide is like you watching an angleworm decide. Reply read: what the mind can get of knowledge of bodiless things it knows through itself; even the philosophers say knowledge of the soul is a beginning of knowing separated substances; by knowing itself the understanding reaches such knowledge as it can have — not simply and perfectly.

• Aristotle on why knowledge of the soul is wonderful: the soul is the best thing in the material world, so its knowledge is the best of natural philosophy; useful for ethics (virtues in parts of the soul), for logic (directing a power of the soul), and for what we can know of angels and God — by understanding our own understanding and will, then negating their imperfection.

6. Overshadowed understanding: angel vs. us (“intellectus adumbratus, an overshadowed understanding”) #

Point: Thomas often quotes Isaac (not the patriarch; a writer, he thinks, in Spain, cited with authority) that ours is an intellectus adumbratus; most of what we understand we must reason out.

• Shakespeare’s definition of reason, “ability for a large discourse, looking before and after”: looking means effort to understand.
• Angels understand all they naturally understand at once, like being born with all arts and sciences (his son Marcus asking why we can’t be born knowing; “you ought to be an angel”). We begin as the tablet with nothing written (De Anima III); the angelic understanding is “filled with forms”.
• A hint of the angelic state: what a professor has taught over and over he understands at once whenever he wants. But habits like geometry take long to acquire and are lost: great-books graduates who read Euclid once are mixed up ten years on; he must reread Euclid himself.
• Worked example at the board: Euclid’s fundamental parallel theorem — a straight line falling on parallels makes the alternate angles equal; from this the exterior equals the interior opposite, and the interior angles on one side equal two right angles. Asked how the theorem is proved, students do not remember; he gestures at the earlier theorem that the exterior angle of a triangle is greater than either interior opposite angle and lets it go (“maybe we’ll put that”). Moral: unattended, these things almost disappear; hence “overshadowed” — a student adds “under the images”.

7. Intellectus / ratio: a name kept by one, new name for the other (“kept by one of those two things as its own”) #

Point: intellectus is said of human and angelic understanding with the same meaning, but sometimes one of two things sharing a name keeps it as its own and the other gets a new name; this happens in two ways.

• Way A (defect): one has fully what the common name means, the other defectively, so the defective one gets a new name. Angel understands anything it naturally understands whenever it wants; we hardly understand, most of what we could we never do, and even geometry escapes unless revisited — so we get ratio. Yet in another sense reason is an ability to understand. He calls this “a very common way that you have a name equivocal by reason”.
• Way B (addition): one adds something significant and gets a new name; the other keeps the common name. Animal: beast adds nothing, keeps “animal”; man adds understanding and reason, gets a new name — so man is an animal and is divided against the animals (his mother: “I don’t mean he’s just an animal” — “Well, that’s better”). Examples, each attached to its way:
• Boy vs. man (and girl vs. woman): boy has imperfectly what a man is — way A.
• Categories: disposition divided into disposition and habit; habit is a firm disposition, not easily lost, adds firmness — way B. Mood passes in an hour or two (“don’t disturb the boss”); habit is firm.
• Plant vs. tree: at the nursery a tree is not “a plant”; the tree, most magnificent, gets a new name, the little ones keep it — way B.
• Thing vs. person: “treat her like a person, not a thing”; yet a person is a thing, else nothing — way B.
• Rhetorical syllogism (enthymeme) and rhetorical induction (example): sometimes called syllogism/induction, sometimes divided against them.
• Fingers and thumb: five fingers, or four fingers and a thumb; the thumb stands out and gets a new name — “probably the best example because it’s very sensible”.
• Student: is sensing knowing? Yes in a sense; but sensing is imperfect knowing and “knowing” is restricted to the fuller — way A.
• Like vs. love: daughter, “I don’t like this, I love it”; love a strong liking gets the new name, like kept for weak — way B.
• Think vs. know: “do you think two is half of four?” — you know it, knowing is a kind of thinking; “will George Bush be re-elected?” — you think, do not know. Knowing adds being sure — way B.
• Doing vs. making: making is doing but adds a product, so gets the new name; listening to Mozart or thinking through a theorem is doing, not making — way B (he corrects a student: not imperfection but addition). Summary as he gives it: a name said with roughly the same meaning of two things becomes equivocal by reason when kept by one and a new name given to the other, in two ways: (i) one adds something noteworthy, (ii) one has the meaning perfectly and the other deficiently. The relevant one for the text is intellectus/ratio (way A).

8. The other way: a name carried over (“carried over from one thing to another”) #

Student: all these differ from words equivocal by chance? Yes; but there is another way a name becomes equivocal by reason: by being carried over, by connection or likeness. Healthy said of the body, then of exercise, diet (preserving health) or complexion (sign of health), by relation to the body’s health. So two ways overall: (1) said of one thing then carried over; (2) said of two things with the same meaning, kept by one, new name for the other, in the two sub-ways on the board. “Very, very important.”

His words #

• “the what proper object” / “the what images”: his habitual “the what” is a prompt, not a term.
• forms (Plato’s) — subsisting immaterial forms, first and per se understood.
• acting upon understanding / active understanding / agent understanding [ed.: agent intellect]; possible understanding [ed.: possible intellect].
• understandables looked upon [ed.: intelligibilia speculata].
• chief agent vs. tools; form vs. matter/subject — the two ways an action is attributed to two principles.
• ability [ed.: potency]; act.
• continuation — Averroes’s union of the agent intellect with us.
• ut in paucioribus (heard “potioribus”) — “in the fewer cases”; the end of a species is not reached rarely.
• confictor / feigned — made up; “where we get the word fiction”.
• epistēmē — reasoned-out understanding; wisdom the highest.
• “by which one can become all things” / “by which all things can be made” — possible and agent intellect.
• incorporeal or bodyless substances.
• intellectus adumbratus — overshadowed understanding (Isaac).
• “ability for a large discourse, looking before and after” — Shakespeare’s reason.
• tablet on which nothing is written.
• ratio vs. intellectus — reason as defective understanding gets a new name.
• equivocal by reason vs. equivocal by chance; a name kept by one and a new name given to the other; carried over.
• disposition / habit — habit a firm disposition, not easily lost.
• enthymeme = rhetorical syllogism; example = rhetorical induction.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I q. 88, body of the article and reply to obj. 1 (a. 1 inferred).
• Augustine, De Trinitate IX (quoted as the first objection). Mentioned
• Plato, Republic (turning of the soul).
• Aristotle, De Anima III (object of reason; agent/possible intellect; tablet).
• Averroes, Commentary on De Anima III; Alexander (possible intellect corruptible).
• Aristotle, Ethics I, VI, X (happiness common good; wisdom head of speculative sciences; happiness in knowing the most intelligible).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (happiness not in this life).
• St. John of the Cross, dark night of the soul.
• Isaac (intellectus adumbratus); Shakespeare on reason; Euclid, parallel-lines theorem and exterior-angle theorem; Aristotle, Categories (disposition/habit); Aristotle on rhetorical syllogism and induction (no locus given).

His questions #

• How can I understand something by your understanding? I cannot, any more than see by your eyes; I understand by an ability within me.
• What’s the fundamental theorem about parallel lines? A straight line falling on parallels makes the alternate angles equal.
• How do you prove that? Students don’t remember; he points to the exterior-angle theorem and leaves it (“maybe we’ll put that”).
• Is a boy a man or a woman? A man — yet boy is divided against man as the imperfect case.
• How many fingers do I have? Five, or four fingers and a thumb: “finger” in two senses.
• Is sensing knowing? In a sense yes; but it is imperfect knowing, so “knowing” is often restricted.
• If I love something, do I like it? Yes; love is a strong liking that gets a new name.
• Do you think that two is half of four? Yes — and you know it; knowing is thinking that adds being sure.
• Why does making get the new name rather than doing? Not because of imperfection but because making adds a product.
• Are these distinguished from words equivocal by chance? Yes; and there is also equivocation by carrying over (healthy).