The Meanings of 'Necessary' and Metaphysics IX, Reading 4: Rational Ability, Choice, and Mind versus Love as First Mover

Orientation #

He opens on the word “necessary,” then says “let’s take a little break, and then we’ll do the fourth reading” — the fourth section of Metaphysics IX, on ability and act in the same subject. He ends: “that’s a good place to stop now because this is the end of the first part now of the ninth book.” The previous class treated potency and act, natural vs. rational abilities, and the refutation of the Megarians (prev. lecture; he refers back to “the second reading”).

The class, in order #

1. Is it necessary to understand “necessary”? (“it is necessary to understand the word necessary”) #

A dilemma showing the word cannot be escaped:

1. If you say it is necessary to understand “necessary,” you must understand it.
2. If you say it is not necessary, you must still understand it, since you cannot understand the negation of necessary without understanding necessary.
3. Further, in either case you will be asked why, and you must understand the word to give the reason. Conclusion: in one sense the word “necessary” is not necessary to understand “necessary,” but in another sense it is very necessary. Why so necessary? Because we want to understand the truth, and necessary truths are the ones we want to understand most. Next question: what is necessary to understand “necessary”? A student: the possible. His answer: more basically, what stands under the word — it is equivocal but equivocal by reason, so one must distinguish its meanings and see whether there is an order among them.

2. Two senses tested on examples (“it’s necessary that two be half of four”) #

Test case: “necessary that two be half of four” vs. “necessary to breathe” — not the same sense.

• Summa Theologiae I, q.1, a.1 (whether besides the philosophical disciplines another teaching is necessary): that sense is “more like breathing.”
• The distinction he draws: something is necessary when something else cannot be without it (breathing to live), and something is necessary for the well-being of something.
• Thomas on the necessity of belief: belief is necessary both for what reason can find out about God and for what it cannot. But not in the same sense — the Trinity reason could not know at all; the rest few men would know, late in life, and with mistakes, so they could not know them well without revelation.

3. Is logic necessary for a philosopher? (“could a man be a philosopher without being a logician”) #

His answer: necessary for the well-being, not for the being. Reasons: philosophy begins in wonder (Plato and Aristotle), and the first philosophers had wonder — Democritus’ fragment, “I would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of the Persians.” But logic is not discovered until Aristotle. He notes he is teaching the Phaedo, which as far as he knows is the first place where someone says we need an art about arguments: an art to distinguish good from bad arguments, and among good ones the necessary from the probable. This anticipates the three parts of the art: the Analytics (Prior and Posterior, on arguments necessarily true), the Topics or Places (good but not necessary), and refutations (simply bad arguments). Albert the Great remarks the early Greeks’ problem was that they lacked logic. So: they were philosophers, but perhaps one cannot philosophize entirely well without logic.

4. Necessary for being vs. for well-being (“is it necessary to love your neighbor as yourself”) #

A student asks the sense. His answer: absolutely necessary — if you want to get to heaven, it is not that you get there better, you do not get there at all. A student objects that this makes it conditional, and so a matter of well-being; he grants the “if you want to get to heaven” but keeps it necessary for being. St. Paul: without faith it is impossible to please God. Boundary example: family and city. The family is necessary for being, the city for well-being — the family is not sufficient for well-being “unless you have Mozart as your brother and Shakespeare as another brother and Euclid as another.” Two further senses: God is necessary to be to Himself — what cannot not be. And “it is necessary that there be three persons in God”: Thomas’ explicit article that the Father’s generating the Son was not a choice, not a voluntary act — a natural necessity. Conclusion: “it’s very necessary to understand the word necessary.”

5. Fourth reading: inborn vs. acquired abilities (“all abilities are either inborn, such as the senses”) #

Point: how one goes from ability to act in the same subject.

• Inborn abilities precede their act: I do not acquire the ability to see by seeing.
• Acquired abilities come to be by performing the act: playing the flute or piano, and the arts by learning. Whatever is by use or learning must be acquired by doing something before; not so for those not such, and for those “for undergoing” — the paper does not acquire the ability to be burned by being burnt.
• Paradox from the Ethics: if you become just by doing just things, aren’t you just already? His answer: before the virtue there is struggle, instability, strain and “a little ifiness”; after repetition there is a habitual inclination, stability, and it is more pleasant.
• Aristotle denies the virtues are simply inborn. You may have an inclination to one virtue or another but not to all, since some virtues work by restraining the emotions and some by strengthening them. Example: powerful men fit to command tend to have a certain anger — “we saw it in some of our presidents” — inclined to command but lacking mildness.
• Student: what is the difference between “by custom” and “by learning,” since flute-playing is an art? His answer: in flute-playing we mean the physical side, as against learning geometry by doing a geometrical theorem. Aside: geometry becomes pleasant once known, without the earlier strain. Aside: his friend Pat was convinced he had trisected the angle, and Mark cut him down by proving a theorem.

6. Natural ability acts of necessity; rational ability does not (“when the one that acts upon and the one that undergoes meet”) #

Reading of the second paragraph. Abilities with reason must be in something with soul; abilities without reason can be in soulless things too.

1. When a natural agent and its patient meet as they are able, the one must act and the other be acted on — the natural ability is determined to one (fire and paper).
2. Abilities with reason are of contraries (medicine of curing and sickening; Mozart could put a melody in major or minor key; teaching and deceiving).
3. It is impossible to do contraries at the same time — curing and sickening, delivering and aborting the same baby.
4. Therefore there must be something other which determines: desire or choice. Aristotle adds: you need not append “with nothing outside preventing,” since that is already in our idea of the possible — all the circumstances are there. And even one who wishes two contrary things at once will not do them, since he has no ability to do both at once.

7. The sophistical example: teaching or deceiving students (“Aristotle has clearly contradicted himself”) #

Illustrates that his own knowledge enables both. The trap he sets: in Physics I Aristotle argues the general comes before the particular, since we know confusedly before distinctly; elsewhere he says we sense before we understand, and sense knows only particulars — so Aristotle contradicts himself. The resolution is mixing the senses of a word (the most common mistake): “general” means both universal and more universal; “particular” means both singular and less universal. Singulars come before all universals; among universals the more universal comes first. Second objection he raises: if the singular comes first, the less universal is closer to it, so it should come first. Reply: we know confusedly before distinctly, in reason as in sense.

• Alcoholic beverages: all knowledge begins with singular glasses, but among universals you see the difference of wine and beer before Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir — also because the difference is greater, hence easier to see.
• Campus vegetation / his college botany class: no one confused a broadleaf tree with a needle tree, but they mixed up Norway pine with another pine.
• “Which is better, breathing or philosophizing?” Students say breathing, because without it you do nothing else — but that shows breathing is before in the second sense of before (before in being), not the fourth (better). Like arguing Chaucer is better than Shakespeare because earlier in time. So he can teach or deceive; what determines is whether he loves them or hates them.

8. Anaxagoras’ mind vs. Empedocles’ love and hate (“who’s right? or does each of them have a part of the truth”) #

Anaxagoras’ reasoning as a reasonable guess: like effects have like causes; the order in artificial things resembles the order in natural things so closely that if art made what nature makes it would make it in the same order (artificial teeth: the dentist would put biting teeth in front and chewing teeth in back); we know the cause of order in artificial things is the human mind; therefore a greater mind is a reasonable guess. Empedocles makes mindless love and hate the movers — like some modern evolutionists, things brought together again and again until eventually they make sense, God knows after how many failures. Parmenides, when he condescends to speak of the natural world, makes love the mover. His judgment: neither has the whole truth, each a part. A greater mind, being of opposites, cannot act automatically — if it did whatever it was capable of, it would do contraries, which is impossible. So appetite, love or hate, choice, is needed to determine it to one. Application: Thomas begins the Summa Contra Gentiles by arguing the end of the universe is the end of its first mover, its first mover is intellect, the end of intellect is truth, therefore truth is the end of the universe — emphasizing mind. Elsewhere the emphasis falls on God’s not producing by natural necessity, against the Neoplatonists and Spinoza, who would have the universe proceed from God as the equality to two right angles proceeds from what a triangle is; he thinks Vatican I is concerned with that error.

9. Why mind is the better guess (“which is a better separator of things, hate or mind?”) #

How he teaches the early Greeks: present their positions as reasonable guesses and look for reasons.

• Why is Anaximenes’ air a better guess than Thales’ water? Because the first matter should be the thinnest: you make the thick out of the thin (a thick book out of thin pages); an atom is thinner than a molecule, a proton or electron thinner than an atom. So from Mother Earth to water to air, the guesses get finer.
• Mind vs. hate as separator: it was mind, not hate, that split the atom; mind that figured out how to separate stains and wash clothes (boiling water poured on a red wine stain on a white tablecloth); geometry separates quantity and shape from sensible matter — not hate that separated them; the mind is always dividing.
• Mind vs. love as uniter: love looks better here, but Empedocles has love combine things in different ratios to make flesh, blood and bone — and ratio comes from logos, mind. The bartender combines whiskey and sweet vermouth two to one for a Manhattan by mind, not love; even “mixology” carries the word logos.
• Plus mind is one cause instead of two. Yet in the light of the reading: intellect and will — the mind, being capable of contraries, cannot produce automatically, so it needs desire or choice. “I need the love and hate of Empedocles.” Loving the students, he teaches; hating them, he deceives. The doctor who aborts the baby hates the baby (he may claim to love the mother, but he hates the baby); the one who delivers loves it; the medical art enables both and determines neither.

10. Natural necessity in God and in the Trinity (“the best of all impossible worlds”) #

Toward creatures, God’s choice is involved: He does not create by natural necessity. But within the Trinity there is no ability for opposites — the Father was not able to produce and not produce the Son; the Father and Son are not able not to breathe the Holy Spirit. Scripture says the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything, and the Fathers are clear it was not against His will but with His love — but not through love as a cause: God naturally understands Himself and so forms His thought of Himself, naturally loves Himself. Chesterton, asked whether this is the best of all possible worlds, answered: “No, it’s the best of all impossible worlds” — because it is not necessary by itself. Thomas spends much time reasoning against natural necessity; it came back in the modern mind with Spinoza and Hegel and creeps from them into others — “a dangerous, dangerous thing.”

His words #

• Necessary, equivocal by reason — not merely an equal-name; its meanings can be distinguished and ordered.
• Necessary for being / for well-being — what something cannot be without (breathing, family) vs. what perfects it (logic, the city).
• Absolutely necessary — cannot not be, or without which the end is not reached at all (loving your neighbour; God to Himself).
• Natural necessity — necessity without choice: the Father’s generating the Son; wrongly extended to creation by Spinoza and the Neoplatonists.
• Art about arguments — his rendering of what the Phaedo calls for [ed.: logic].
• Ability [ed.: potency] — inborn, by use or custom, by learning; “for undergoing” [ed.: passive potency].
• Ifiness — the instability of an act done before the virtue is acquired.
• Something other which determines — desire or choice, needed because rational ability is of contraries.
• The thinnest of things — his criterion for a better guess at first matter.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, fourth reading of the handout (pp. 4–5): paragraphs on inborn and acquired abilities, abilities with and without reason, and the fifth paragraph “necessarily, therefore, there is something other which determines.”

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.1, a.1; his article on the necessity of believing; his article on whether the Father’s generating the Son was a choice.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, opening (inferred).
• Plato, Phaedo; Aristotle, Physics I opening; Nicomachean Ethics on acquiring virtue (inferred); Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistical Refutations.
• Democritus’ fragment on discovering one cause; Albert the Great’s logical works; St. Paul on faith; Vatican I; Spinoza, Hegel, Chesterton, Dante.

His questions #

• Is it necessary to understand the word “necessary”? — Yes, in one sense; and most of all because necessary truths are what we most want to understand.
• Does “necessary” mean the same when I say two is half of four and when I say it is necessary to breathe? — No; it is equivocal by reason.
• Is logic necessary for a philosopher? — Necessary for well-being, not for being: the early Greeks philosophized without it, but not entirely well.
• In what sense is it necessary to love your neighbour as yourself? — Absolutely: without it you do not reach heaven at all.
• Do you acquire the ability to see by seeing? Does paper acquire burnability by being burnt? — No; inborn and passive abilities precede their acts, unlike arts and habits.
• What is the difference between abilities by custom and by learning? — Custom covers the physical side (flute-playing), learning the intellectual (geometry).
• If a rational ability is of contraries, what determines it to one? — Desire or choice, since it cannot do both at once.
• Who is right about the first mover, Anaxagoras with mind or Empedocles with love and hate? — Each has part of the truth: mind cannot act automatically, so appetite must determine it.
• Which is the better separator, mind or hate? The better uniter, mind or love? — Mind separates better (the atom, stains, geometry) and unites in ratio better (ratio from logos).
• Is this the best of all possible worlds? — Chesterton: the best of all impossible worlds — God does not create by natural necessity.