Metaphysics Book 8, Reading 4: How Matter Relates to Its Products, to the Other Causes, and to Coming to Be (with Wine and Vinegar and Socrates' Argument from Contraries)

Orientation #

He places the reading: the first two readings showed that matter and form pertain to sensible substance; the third reading (last time) treated form; this fourth reading treats matter; the union of the two comes in the fifth reading. Thomas’s division of reading four: matter compared (i) to the things that come to be from it, (ii) to the other causes, (iii) to coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. The class opens with prayer and ends at the break “right between the fourth and fifth reading.”

The next class takes up reading five, on what makes matter and form one.

The class, in order #

1. Proximate and remote matter (“yet there is its own for each”) #

Point: even if all things come from the same first matter remotely, each thing has its own proximate matter.

• Text: phlegm comes from the sweet or the fat, bile from the bitter — though perhaps these come from the same thing. So there are many matters of the same thing in a certain order, one being matter of the other (phlegm from fat, fat from sweet).
• Example: a sentence is made of words, and the words of letters; letters are the remote matter, words the proximate.

2. Two senses of “from” (“either because it’ll be further along the way”) #

Point: “from the matter” normally runs toward the product, but “from” is also said in the reverse, decomposing direction.

• Brick wall comes to be from bricks; but from the brick wall there come to be bricks. Water from hydrogen and oxygen (hydrogen = “that generates water”); but from water come hydrogen and oxygen — a different sense of “from.”
• Thomas’s two senses: because it will be further along the way (toward the product), or because it is taken apart into its beginning — as bile “comes from” first matter by being broken down.
• Aside: “from” is also used of the mover or maker. In the Summa, on appropriation to the Trinity, “from him and through him and in him” — from him appropriated to the Father, and there “from” means not from a matter but from the maker.

3. One matter, different products — and the limits of matter (“because of the moving cause”) #

Point: sameness or difference of product tracks both matter and mover.

1. Things other in kind can come from one matter because of the mover: a chest and a bed from the same wood.
2. But (against the misreading that the maker can make anything from anything) the matter of different things is necessarily other: a saw could not come to be from wood, and this is not in the ability of the mover — he could not make a saw of wool or wood or paper. You must have matter appropriate to it, especially the proximate matter.
3. If the same thing can be made from different matter, the art as mover is the same — a wooden chair and a metal chair, one form realized in this or that matter. For if both matter and mover were different, so would the product be.

4. State all the causes (“since the causes are said in many ways”) #

Point: “cause” is said in many senses, and the four are not one univocal kind.

• Background: the first Greek natural philosophers looked for only one cause, matter, and so had to get everything out of accidental collisions of matter (seen in Metaphysics III and in the fragments). Aristotle: one should state all the causes that happen to be.
• The four: matter (that from which something comes to be, existing in it), form (which completes the definition), the mover or maker, the end. You do not look for all four everywhere — in geometry you do not.
• Chair example: asked the cause of a chair you jump to the carpenter; yet sitting is responsible for the shape, wood for its being wooden, the shape for its being a chair. That you name the mover first is a sign “cause” is not said in one sense.
• Argument from the univocal case: “animal” is said equally of dog, cat, horse, elephant, so if I say I am thinking of an animal you have no more reason to guess one than another. Since with “cause” we do have a reason to say the mover first, “cause” is not said equally of the four.
• Hume, discussing causality, jumps to the mover as if that were the only cause. Historically the material cause is the most known and most undeniable; the question was whether there are other kinds besides.
• Aside: with the evolutionary humanists, which came first — the idea of evolution, or the idea that matter is the beginning of everything? If matter is the only cause, evolution is what must explain formal difference — even if it is not sufficient to.

5. The causes of man, and proximate causes (“but perhaps both of these are the same”) #

• Matter: the menstrual fluid (“I don’t know if that’s good biology”; blood feeds the whole body). Mover: the seed. Form: the what-it-was-to-be. End: that for the sake of which — “but perhaps both of these are the same,” hinting that form is the end of generation, though one may have an end beyond what one is, and then end and form differ.
• One must say the proximate causes: not earth, air, fire and water, but the thing’s own matter — flesh and blood and bones.

6. Eternal substances: the sun, moon and stars (“only matter that is movable according to place”) #

Point: things not generable and corruptible require another account; if they have matter it is only matter for change of place.

• That we have not seen them change is not a necessary but a probable reason for saying they do not change; Thomas: perhaps it takes longer than the lives of many men.
• Parallel: Aristotle and Thomas thought light takes no time to illuminate a room, because no time is perceptible to ordinary sense; very ingenious instruments were needed to detect its speed. Same possibility holds for the heavens.
• “Jager said the sun is a stone on fire” [ed.: the doctrine is Anaxagoras’; the name as heard may be Jaeger reporting it] — perhaps from meteors, rocky and sometimes still burning on impact (one in the southwest United States the Indians told of), and from “falling stars.” Aristotle’s reply: if they were rocks on fire they would have burned out long ago. Ordinary fire does not last — the great fire of London, the California forest fires burn out. The sun’s output is amazing: at 93 million miles, imagining the sphere of that radius, we receive a very small part of what it emits. He was told Weizsäcker, Heisenberg’s pupil, gave an explanation of why the sun can go on so long; perhaps it is gradually dying.

7. Accidents have no matter; the digression on God (“their subject is the substance”) #

Point: an accident has no matter but a subject, and the subject differs from matter because it is already actual.

• Matter in the genus of substance, taken by itself, has no actuality at all — it is pure ability; the substance in which an accident exists is an actual substance. The subject is like matter only in being able to receive.
• Digression (from his reading in Thomas that day): given God’s simplicity there is no real distinction in God of matter and form, nor of substance and accident. Socrates and his wisdom, Socrates and his justice, really differ; God and his justice, God and his wisdom, do not — the multiplicity is in our thinking, not in what we think about. God is his godhead.
• Why our language cannot escape this: abstract and concrete words (justice/just, health/healthy) answer to the real distinction in material things, and our mind is naturally turned to material things — as in De Anima III, reason’s own object is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined. Hence we must both affirm and negate: if we said only that God is goodness we would not be saying he is good, since “goodness” signifies that by which the good is good; but “good” signifies what has goodness, implying composition — so we add that God is his own goodness. “We never have a name that is adequate to God.”
• Trinitarian application (from an objection Thomas answers about the persons as subsisting relations): fatherhood and the Father are the same, since in God abstract and concrete do not differ — that denies matter/form composition; and between the Father and his being common spirator of the Holy Spirit there is no real distinction either — that denies subject/accident composition. In the Summa, the question on God’s simplicity, right after his existence, has one article denying matter-form composition and another denying subject-accident composition. “So kind of subtle, right?”

8. The eclipse and sleep (“probably there is no that for the sake of which”) #

Point: in a non-substance, the causes sought are not four.

• Eclipse: matter — none; subject — the moon, the substance that undergoes it; mover — the earth coming between; end — “probably there is no that for the sake of which.” Thomas: it is very difficult to study the heavens.
• Aside: Warren Murray, studying at the University of Minnesota, heard an Aristotelian scholar say Aristotle has a theory of four causes and applies it everywhere — yet here Aristotle himself says there seems to be no final cause.
• Form as definition: the famous Posterior Analytics example — a full definition of eclipse says not merely privation of light but privation of light because the earth comes between.
• Sleep: what it is and what undergoes it is not clear; it has to do with the senses, and the Greeks disagreed whether the heart or the brain is the center of sense.
• Asides: the apocryphal story of Aristotle holding a ball over a metal basin to wake himself — he does not believe it; Charles De Koninck going a day or two without sleep, thinking; people who get along on four hours. The story of the woman Aristotle warned Alexander against, who rode him about the room like a horse — “If she can do this to me, who am old and wise, look what she can do to you, who are young and foolish.” Also that he was a floppy dresser. Such stories make Aristotle more human, but he does not believe them.

9. Forms and points do not come to be (“such as points… and in general, forms”) #

Point: some things are and are not without coming to be or ceasing to be, namely forms.

• Soft butter put in the refrigerator: hard butter comes to be; hardness did not exist before and now does, but hardness as such did not come to be. “The white does not come to be, but the white wood.”
• Second example: I am taller than my son; he grows taller than me; I have changed from taller to shorter — but not really changing as such; something else changed.
• Reductio if forms did come to be: then the form would be made out of matter; but since different forms can be in the same matter, you would need a form of the form to distinguish them, and then a form of the form of the form, and so on forever.
• Consequence for angels: if they are forms only, without matter, they cannot come to be or cease to be even by accident — once created they always will be, ingenerable and incorruptible. Plato saw some of the truth about separate substances in holding his forms eternal. “That’s quite a creature.”

10. Contraries, and what has no matter at all (“whatever things are not without changing have no matter”) #

• Not all contraries come from one another in the same way: the text’s “a white man comes to be from a black man” — a strange example; compare hard butter from soft butter, though the soft as such cannot become hard.
• Heraclitus’ apparent contradiction: day and night are the same, since day becomes night and night day — really it is the air that can be light or dark.
• Whatever is not without changing has no matter. This returns to the question of the third book, whether everything that comes to be does so by motion: in the material world perhaps, but Aristotle seems to hint at creation. Avicenna held the human soul does not come to be by transformation of matter and did not pre-exist the body, so it must come to be by creation.

11. Does matter reach to both contraries? (“or is it the matter of one by having and by form”) #

Point: a difficulty he leaves as a difficulty, resolved only by the ordering of corruption.

• The body is in ability to health and to disease alike — as butter is immediately able to be hard or soft.
• But water and wine and vinegar: is water in ability to both, or is it matter of one by having and form, and of the other by lack and corruption besides its nature? Must it become wine first, and vinegar only through the corruption of wine?
• Same question for a body being alive or dead: immediately either, or living first and dead through corruption of the living? And the further doubt: why is wine not the matter of vinegar in ability, and the living not in ability to the dead?

12. The Phaedo argument and its answer (“is vinegar and wine like that?”) #

Point: the wine/vinegar case shows why the cyclical argument fails.

• Socrates’ first argument for immortality: by induction, change is between contraries — hard softened, soft hardened, wet dried, dry moistened, hot cooled, cold heated. If change went only one way, one contrary would have vanished: things go hot to cold every year and every sunset, light to dark every time the sun sets or the lights go off; if there were no reverse change all would be cold, all be dark. Living and dead are contraries; there is change from living to dead; therefore there must be change from dead to living, and souls must persist to be rejoined.
• Student-style objection he reports: “I see people dying; I don’t see the dead coming back to life.” His answer: that is why there is a reason given — it is a conclusion, not something seen. Comparisons: if you saw people leaving houses all day and never entering, the houses would be empty by now; seeing people still in them, you conclude they go in, perhaps by a back door. Likewise people getting out of cars all day at the supermarket — if nobody got in, all cars would now be empty.
• The answer to the argument: is wine/vinegar like a dishcloth getting wet and drying out, back and forth? No. Vinegar is a real corruption of wine; once wine changes to vinegar you cannot change back. Aristotle: the only way is to break it down to first matter and start over, because these things can come to be only in a certain order.
• Application: “Modern philosophy is to philosophy like what vinegar is to wine, or the dead is to living” — a corruption of it. You cannot go directly from modern philosophy back to Plato or Aristotle; you must go back to the first matter in philosophy, to the pre-Socratics, and gradually build up again.
• A further criticism of Socrates’ argument he allows: in a sense there is change from the non-living to the living — the chicken we eat is not alive and becomes living flesh, blood, bone. So change goes in both directions; but how exactly from the dead back to living, or vinegar back to wine, remains the difficulty. Left there for the break.

His words #

• “reading” — his unit of the handout text (readings one through five of Book Eight).
• “ability” [ed.: potency] — “is water, wine, and vinegar an ability”; matter of substance is “pure ability.”
• “mover or maker” [ed.: efficient cause].
• “the what was to be” [ed.: essence, to ti ēn einai] — the form as cause of man.
• “that the sake of which” / “that for the sake of which” [ed.: final cause].
• “by happening” [ed.: by accident] — forms come to be “by accident or by happening.”
• “common breather” [ed.: common spirator] — the Father and Son as principle of the Holy Spirit.
• “lack” [ed.: privation] — “of the other by lack and corruption besides its nature.”
• “first matter” [ed.: prime matter] — what a corrupt thing must be broken down into.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII, reading four (handout pp. 6–7), read and commented throughout.
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the same reading (its threefold division; the warning about proximate matter; on the difficulty of studying the heavens).

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: the article on appropriation to the Trinity (“from him and through him and in him”); the question on the simplicity of God, with its articles denying matter-form and subject-accident composition (inferred locus); an objection on the persons as subsisting relations.
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics — the eclipse as the standard example of definition including the cause.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics III — “everything that comes to be, comes to be by motion?”; the one-cause philosophers.
• Aristotle, De Anima III — reason’s object is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined.
• Plato, Phaedo — Socrates’ first argument for immortality.
• The pre-Socratic fragments; Heraclitus on day and night; Avicenna on the human soul; Hume on causality.

His questions #

• If all things come from the same first matter, does each thing still have its own matter? Yes — matters stand in an order, and the proximate matter is proper to the thing (words, not just letters).
• Can the maker make anything out of any matter? No — a saw cannot be made of wool or wood or paper; the matter must be appropriate.
• Is “cause” said in one sense of the wood, the shape, the carpenter and the sitting? No — if it were, as “animal” is said equally of dog and cat, you would have no reason to name the mover first.
• What is the end of an eclipse? Probably there is none; Aristotle himself does not force four causes everywhere.
• Does the form come to be? Not as such — the white wood comes to be, not the white; else you would need a form of the form, and so on forever.
• Then what about pure forms, the angels? Once created they cannot come to be or cease to be even by accident.
• Is water in ability to wine and to vinegar alike, as the body is to health and sickness? No — wine first, and vinegar only through the corruption of wine; the order cannot be reversed.
• What is wrong with Socrates’ argument that the dead must return to the living? The living/dead pair is like wine/vinegar, not like a dishcloth wet and dry; corruption runs one way, and recovery requires going back to first matter.
• Can you get from modern philosophy back to Plato or Aristotle directly? No — you must go back to the pre-Socratics and build up again.
• Is there any change from the non-living to the living? Yes, in a sense — the chicken we eat becomes living flesh; but how exactly from the dead to the living is left open.