Metaphysics VIII, Reading 3 (Part 1): Form Compared with Plato's Separate Species

Orientation #

He states his own plan: in readings one and two Aristotle showed that material substance has matter and form; reading three (today) treats form, reading four matter, reading five their union — “it makes sense to talk about matter and form by themselves, so they can talk about their union.” He also refers back to something said “last time” about Book Seven, that in immaterial things a thing and what it is are the same. The previous class treated Book VII/VIII on sensible substance and the analogy of accidental to substantial form, and the next takes up the comparison of definitions to numbers.

The class, in order #

1. The plan of reading three (“he does so in comparison to the positions of Plato”) #

Thomas finds the principle of division of this reading in Plato’s positions. Plato tied forms up with the universal separated from things (the eidos, “ideas” in English — no good translation; eidos is also the logician’s “species,” genos the genus, morphē form), and compared forms to numbers out of his Pythagorean background. Whether Plato saw only a likeness or thought forms really are numbers is not sure; Aristotle too sees a likeness. So the reading has two parts, each a fourfold comparison: first form with the separated species, then (from the second paragraph of p. 5) form with numbers. Today is the first part only.

2. First comparison: does the name signify the composite or the form alone? (“sometimes it is hidden”) #

Point: the Platonists tried to make the whole nature of material things be form; Aristotle says that is wrong of these things, though there may be things whose whole nature is form.

• Aristotle: it is sometimes hidden whether a name signifies the composed substance (matter and form) or merely the act and form.
• Manhattan (his own example): is a Manhattan whiskey and sweet vermouth in the ratio two to one, or just the ratio? If just the ratio, a Stinger (two parts brandy, one part white crème de menthe) would have the same nature. So you need the matter too.
• Aristotle’s examples: house — a covering of bricks and stones laid thus, or simply the act of covering? Line — “two in length” or just “two”? (the Greeks: point a one, line a two, surface three, body four). Sphere — rubber or glass, or just sphere? Animal — soul in a body (Aristotle), or just soul?
• Socrates in the Phaedo: Crito asks where they shall bury him; “you have to catch me first” — if he is just a soul he’d be hard to catch. Same carryover in Origen: we were created as spiritual substances and those who sinned got stuck in bodies.
• If “animal” were said both of the soul alone and of the composite, it would be equivocal — not by chance but by reason, “not by one definition, but as toward one.” Parallel from ethics: reason is essentially rational, while will and emotions are rational by partaking of reason (they listen to reason) — not purely equivocal.
• He notes Aristotle’s own aside: this makes a difference to something else but nothing to the investigation of sensible substance. Boethius: divina substantia forma est — and the same for the angels.
• If an immaterial substance were complete, soul and what-it-is-to-be-soul would be the same; but man and what-it-is-to-be-man are not the same, unless the soul is to be called man.

3. Why many individuals of one kind (“what is the beginning of this possibility?”) #

Why can there be many of exactly the same kind? Because of matter as subject to quantity, hence divisible and extended, part outside of part.

• Many chairs of one kind: “you have enough wood”; many glasses: enough glass. Cookie dough rolled out and stamped, gingerbread men, one here one there.
• Mathematics too: in the first theorem the two circles differ as here and there; even the two endpoints of the straight line differ in no kind, only in position.
• Immaterial substances have no matter, no part outside of part — so only one of each kind. Hence only one God, and no two Sons in God.
• Your soul and mine remain distinct even when separated from the body, because each was created for its own body — so it goes back to matter.
• (He says “in the material substances a thing and what it is would be altogether the same” — from the argument this is a slip for immaterial.)

4. Second comparison: form is not a material part nor made out of the matter (“there must be something else besides these”) #

Two things: form is not one of the material ingredients, and the matter is not made into the form.

• cat / act: same three letters, different words, so besides the letters there is an order. But is the order a part like the letters, and is the order made out of the letters?
• His regress argument: the two words are made of the same letters, which is why sameness of letters cannot explain their difference — order must. But if the two orders were themselves made out of the same letters, then likewise that would not explain their difference, and you would need an order of the order, a form of the form, and so on forever.
• Same with a wooden chair and a wooden table of the same wood: same wood doesn’t explain the difference, so shape does; if the shapes were made out of the wood you would need a shape of the shape, forever. “So it’s better to stop at the beginning and say that the form is not only not a material part but it’s not made out of the matter.”
• What one can say: the letters are able to be in this order or that; the wood is able to be in this shape or that.
• Aristotle’s text: the syllable does not seem to be from the elements in composition, nor a house from bricks in composition; neither the composition nor the mixture is from the things it is a composition of. The threshold is by position, but the position is not from the threshold. Man is not animal and two-footed only — there must be something else besides these, neither an element nor from an element. And since this is the cause of being, it is the substance — which is why Aristotle tends to call form substance, form being much more substance than matter.

5. Third comparison: form neither generated nor corrupted, except accidentally (“did you also make the shape of the chair?”) #

This follows on the second. Aristotle: form must be eternal, or corrupted without being corrupted and come to be without coming to be.

• The carpenter: did you make a chair today? Yes. Did you make the shape in the same way? No — you make something out of material, and the shape is not made out of the material. He brought the shape into existence only in bringing the chair into existence. Break the chair: the chair ceases to be; the shape as such does not go out of existence.
• Parallels for accidental coming-to-be: you can make a Christian and make a geometer, but there is no making a Christian geometer as such. If I am taller than my son and later shorter, the change is really in his height, not in me — relation as such is not a kind of change.
• Consequence: a form not in matter would always be, not generated or corrupted even accidentally.
• The proof “elsewhere”: Book Seven, and the first book of Natural Hearing [Physics] — what comes to be is always composed of matter and form. Hardness cannot become softness; hardness as such cannot be soft; so there must be matter under the hardness able to be soft, losing hardness when it becomes soft.
• From this, the Summa syllogism in the second figure: whatever changes is composed; God is not composed (altogether simple); therefore God cannot change.
• The angel is created but not generated or corrupted, being form only.

6. The odd bird: the human soul (“that’s a very subtle thing”) #

A form existing only in matter cannot be without matter and ceases to be with the composite; so the question is whether the human soul’s existence is entirely in the body.

• Order of discovery: the effect comes first; you have to be before you can do — “since Descartes is right, I think therefore I am.” So look for something the soul does not in the body: understanding the universal.
• Argument: the cause of many individuals of one kind in material things is matter subject to quantity, so anything received in a body in the continuous is individual, here or there. If understanding were in a body, what is understood would be received individually, not universally. We do know universally; hence a doing not in the body, hence a being not entirely immersed in the body. The body shares in the soul’s existence, but not completely — “I don’t say the soul has an existence apart from the body. That’s a very subtle thing.” Plato and Aristotle discovered this; Aristotle shows it better.

7. Fourth comparison: separation, and why Plato invented the forms (“whether the substances of destructible things are separated”) #

Aristotle: it is not yet clear whether the substances of destructible things are separated, but clearly not for some — house utensils and the like, which involve accidental form; perhaps neither these nor anything not formed by nature is substance at all, since one would lay down only nature as substance in corruptible things. Aristotle refutes Plato’s position fully in Books thirteen and fourteen. Plato himself posited no house-itself or chair-itself, only man himself or God himself.

• Reconstruction of Plato’s motive, from the central question of philosophy: does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Plato answered yes. Since geometry and arithmetic are very certain, and we know sphere, cube, triangle in separation from sensible matter and motion, there must be such things outside the mind — the mathematical world.
• Aristotle’s reply: our mind can consider separately what does not exist separately, whenever one can be known without the other — sphere without rubber, glass or steel.
• Then Socrates’ influence: the dialogues are full of “what is it?” — virtue in the Meno, piety in the Euthyphro, courage in the Laches, temperance in the Charmides, justice in the Republic, epistēmē/scientia in the Theaetetus; and in the Phaedo, pressed by Simmias for a necessary argument for immortality, he uses definitions. Why is it certain no odd number is even, no prime composite, no circle a square? From the definitions. But in defining you know the universal apart from the singulars — so on Plato’s premise universals must exist apart. The falsity comes in only when what is truly separated in our knowledge is said to be separated in things.

8. The turn on Plato: forms without matter cannot be defined (“too bad Plato”) #

• From the Euthyphro: one begins by saying what a thing is in general — the genus — and adds the differences (asked out of the blue what a dog is, a student says “an animal”). From Porphyry: genus is to difference roughly as matter to form — genus taken from what is more material (animal, from the body), difference from what is more formal (rational, from the soul).
• Therefore a separated form, having nothing proportional to matter and form, has no basis for genus and difference and would not be definable. So Plato invented the world of forms to have something truly definable, and the very position makes definition impossible. “How can you define an angel?” Something like Antisthenes’ saying that you can’t say what anything is, only what it’s like — a stupid saying, but with some truth here.
• Parallel case of self-defeat — Heraclitus: day is night, hard soft, healthy sick, waking sleeping, because one becomes the other; Hesiod is mocked for thinking day and night two things. Parmenides reacts: if day cannot be night, nothing becomes, since “become” means comes to be — the healthy would always be healthy, the bad always bad. But if day and night really were the same, there would be no change either, since change is from hard to soft. So Heraclitus admits contradiction to save change and does not even save change. Likewise Plato: he invents the forms to save truth in definition, and ends with things that cannot be defined.
• He breaks here, at the logical division of the reading: end of the four comparisons with Plato’s species, the fourfold comparison with numbers to follow.

His words #

• the eighth book of wisdom — Metaphysics VIII; likewise “the third book of wisdom,” “the seventh book of wisdom.”
• natural hearing — Physics (“the first book of natural hearing”).
• species / eidos / ideas — Plato’s separated forms; he notes eidos is also the logician’s “species,” genos genus, morphē form.
• equivocal not by chance but by reason — many senses “not by one definition, but as toward one” [ed.: analogy, pros hen].
• the odd bird — his name for the human soul, the hard case between form-in-matter and separated form.
• the central question of philosophy — “does truth require that the way we know be the way things are?”
• divina substantia forma est (Boethius) — the divine substance is form; so too the angels.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII, reading three, paragraphs 1–4 (handout pp. 4–5): the hidden signification of names; syllable and house not from elements in composition; threshold and position; form neither generated nor corrupted; whether substances of destructibles are separated.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics III (Plato’s prominence there); VII (thing and what-it-is); XIII–XIV (refutation of separated species).
• Aristotle, Physics I (inferred): what comes to be is composed of matter and form.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: God does not change (locus not given).
• Boethius (inferred, De Trinitate): divina substantia forma est.
• Plato: Phaedo (Crito’s question, Simmias’ demand), Meno, Euthyphro, Laches, Charmides, Republic, Theaetetus.
• Porphyry, Isagoge (inferred): genus and difference.
• Euclid, Elements I.1 (inferred): “the first theorem,” the equilateral triangle.
• Heraclitus and Hesiod; Parmenides; Antisthenes; Origen; Descartes.

His questions #

• Is a Manhattan whiskey and vermouth in the ratio two to one, or just the ratio? Both — else a Stinger would have the same nature.
• Is the house the covering of bricks and stones laid thus, or simply the act of covering? Aristotle would say both.
• Is the order in the word “cat” another part like the letters, and is it made out of the letters? In a sense the parts are letters and order, but the order is not a part like a letter and is not made out of them — else, a form of the form forever.
• Did the carpenter make the shape of the chair in the same way he made the chair? No; only accidentally, in making the chair; the shape as such neither comes to be nor ceases to be.
• Why can there be many chairs, or many souls, of exactly the same kind? Because of matter as subject to quantity, part outside of part.
• Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Plato said yes and so posited separate forms; Aristotle: the mind can consider separately what does not exist separately.
• Does the human soul have its existence entirely in the body? No — since it understands universals, an act not in the body; but he refuses to say it has an existence apart from the body.
• If Plato’s forms were really just form, would you have a definition of them? No — no matter, so no basis for genus and difference; the position defeats its own purpose.
• Whether the substances of destructible things are separated? Left open in this text (“not yet at all clear”), though clearly not for artificial things.