Metaphysics IX, Readings 7–8: Act Before Ability in Definition, Time and Perfection (The Chicken or the Egg)

Orientation #

He continues the handout on Book Nine, beginning at the bottom of page 8 and reaching page 10, and announces that “in reading eight” Aristotle turns to before in substance. He refers back to the senses of “before” in the Categories treated earlier (prev. lecture). The previous class worked through Book IX with Aquinas’s commentary and the senses of “before”; the next takes up readings 8–9 on the priority of act.

The class, in order #

1. Which senses of “before” are in play (“act is before ability”) #

Aristotle’s conclusion is that act is before ability, but it is not always clear which sense of “before” he means: he names before in time, in perfection or goodness, in knowing, but not explicitly before in being. In the Categories, after the four central senses he adds a further one — “the crowning sense,” crowning for reason that looks before and after and for the philosopher — the sense in which a cause is before an effect. He argues this added sense does not simply rank fifth: cause-before-effect most resembles before in being, since what comes after depends on what is before. So when Aristotle here says “before in time,” he takes him to include before in being and cause before effect.

• Ability here is not only the definite kind, “a beginning of change, another as other,” but in general every beginning of movement or rest — hence nature belongs in the same genus, being a beginning of motion in the same, not in another.

2. Before in definition (“the builder is able to build”) #

The point: an ability is defined, known and distinguished only through its act.

1. What is able is able in that it can act — the builder is able to build; the one with sight is able to see; the visible is what is able to be seen.
2. Therefore the definition and the knowledge of the act are before those of the ability.
3. You never see an ability itself: not the ballplayer’s ability but what he does through it — “Let’s see your stuff.” “I’m able to play the piano” — well, let’s see you do it. With injured eyes bandaged, no one knows until the patches come off whether he can still see.
4. Abilities are distinguished by their acts: the ability to talk and the ability to walk are the same ability only if talking were a form of walking; since the acts are distinct, the abilities are distinct. And you must distinguish things to define them.

• Application: this governs study of the powers of the soul — De Anima II says the ability is known through the act. Shakespeare’s definition of reason shows it: an ability “for a large discourse, looking before and after.”

3. Four common kinds of distinction, by way of the four mistakes (“what kind of distinction is being made here?”) #

A digression prompted by the distinction he is about to make. Two mistakes from words and two from things, matching four kinds of distinction:

• (1) Mixing the senses of a word — as with “before.”
• (2) Mixing the senses of two speeches: “geometry is a knowledge of reason; a knowledge of reason is a knowledge about reason; therefore geometry is knowledge about reason” — “of reason” names the knower in one, the known in the other. Likewise “the Bible is the word of God; the word of God is the Son of God; therefore the Bible is the Son of God.”
• (3) Mixing what is so kath’ hauto (per se, through itself, as such) with what is so by happening: Heraclitus, “day is night and night is day,” because day becomes night — true by happening, not as such. Also the objection to “the good is what all want”: the bad as such is not wanted.
• (4) Mixing what is so simply with what is so not simply but in some imperfect way: Meno’s paradox — you cannot look for what you do not know, for you would not know when you found it; and Socrates in replying makes the same kind of mistake (he wonders whether Plato did this deliberately). His classroom versions: “Does a student know what he wants to know?” and “Do you know my brother Mark?” — she says no, but she knows what a man is, and that is what Mark is; simply she does not know him, in some way she does.

4. Before in time: the qualification, and the first cause (“simply, act is before ability”) #

The point: in the individual, ability precedes act in time; simply, act precedes even in time.

1. Water able to be hot has the ability before it has the act — so in this thing, ability is before in time.
2. But it goes from ability to act by something already actually hot — so simply, act is before, and this brings in cause before effect.
3. Aristotle’s text: the same in kind acts before, not the same in number; matter, seed, the visible are before in time as this man, this grain, this seeing not yet in act; but before these are other beings in act from which they come to be — “man from man, the knower from the knower,” “there being always a first mover, for what is already an act.”
4. Back-reference to the discourses about substance (Book Seven, not read): everything that comes to be comes to be from something (matter, in ability) and by something in act (the mover and maker), the same in kind at least proximately — a man produces a man, a dog a dog.
5. The materialists’ error is exactly the mistake of simply and not simply: seeing ability in some way before act, they conclude ability is simply first in the universe, and make matter the first cause. Since simply act is before, the first cause must be most in act — Plato’s forms at least are acts; the early Greeks made matter the beginning. “This is maybe the most fundamental difference about the first cause.” Pure act can be used to show all the attributes of the divine substance, as in the Summa Theologiae.

• Chicken and egg: this individual is an egg before a chicken, but the egg came from a chicken — simply, the chicken first.
• Counting the class: he does not know how many students are present, but counts and gets twenty-three; he did not know twenty-three, yet knew it in some way as “the number of students in class,” enough to tell him to count.
• Kant’s thing-in-itself is unknown — “then why are you talking about it?” The Hegel–Kant controversy turns on this same distinction (he first says “Hegel and Marx,” then corrects himself).
• Nemo dat quod non habet — the old seminary professor’s line to students who could not answer. What is in ability cannot give itself the act it lacks; so it must be given it by something already in act.

5. Ability acquired by repeated acts (“learns to play the harp by playing it”) #

The problem: it seems impossible to be a housebuilder without having built, or a harpist without having played — yet one learns to play the harp by playing it. Hence the sophistical refutation that one not having the knowledge would do what the knowledge is for.

• The same objection in the Ethics: you become just by doing just things, courageous by doing courageous things (whence “moral,” from the word for custom) — but then are you not already just?
• His answer: before the virtue you do not do them as you do afterwards — with struggle, screwing up your nerve, instability; the virtue gives stability and makes the act more agreeable, or at least less painful.
• Aristotle’s answer from Physics VI: what is coming to be has already come to be. Driving up here, I have already driven some distance; before driving any distance you have driven some distance. So in learning there is always some knowledge already, before learning as well as from it.

6. Why “in substance” means in perfection (“this is Aristotle’s annoying way of speaking”) #

He has students write “in perfection” in parentheses after “substance,” but there is a reason for the word. Parallel from Physics II: nature is “a beginning and cause of motion and of rest, in that which it is first as such and not by happening”; nature is both matter and form (from Physics I, everything that comes to be has something like matter and something like form), but form is more nature — because nature is that by which something is natural, and by matter a thing is natural only in ability, by form in act.

• The harassed mother: why does the tree grow and the stone not, with the same sun, rain and soil? “It’s the nature of the tree to grow” — she means something within, in an active sense, the tree building itself into the sky. Then: Daddy’s log burns in the fire, the stone does not — nature now in the passive sense, something within the log that lets it be acted on and something in the stone that resists. Two senses of nature, active and passive.
• Likewise substance is matter and form, but matter is substance only in ability, form is substance in act or that by which substance is in act — so form is much more substance. Hence “before in substance” could be said more easily as before in perfection.

7. Form and end: act is more perfect (“what is later in generation is more perfect”) #

Where the earlier part of the book argued from mover and matter (active and passive ability), he now argues from form and end.

1. In generation — a house, for instance — what comes later is more perfect: not at the foundation but later.
2. What comes later in generation is form, which is act; matter is at the beginning, the raw materials.
3. Therefore act is more perfect than ability.
4. Further, ability is for the sake of act, so act is the end, and hence better: everything that comes to be goes toward a beginning and an end, “that for the sake of which” being the definition of end.

• Inductive manifestation from Aristotle: animals do not see in order to have sight, but have sight in order to see; men have the art of building in order to build, and speculative knowledge in order to look at it; they do not look in order to have the knowledge, except learners, and these look imperfectly, not out of any need. Geometry is not shelved and forgotten — you think back on the theorem and it becomes actual again, more easily because you retain something of the demonstration: a cyclical knowing, like going through the Summa and starting over. The ability to think about God is for the sake of thinking about God, not the reverse. Objection: is not the learner of French speaking in order to gain the ability? Reply: the ability to speak French is itself for the sake of speaking French.

8. Digression on “beginning” and on knowing the words you use (“every cause is some way of beginning”) #

The six senses of beginning from the chapter on beginning [Metaphysics V]: (1) the beginning of a magnitude, as the beginning of the desk; (2) wherever it is convenient to begin along the magnitude — going to where the water is, to bring it to his lips; (3) the fundamental part, the foundation of a house; (4) the maker, mover, king, general; (5) the starting point in knowing; (6) every cause, and hence even the end, is some way a beginning — “first in intention, last in execution.” That shows how far the word has moved, since the end is certainly not a beginning in the first sense.

• His “famous thin statements”: if a man understands the words he uses, then he is wise — false, wisdom is not chiefly knowing the meanings of one’s words; if a man does not understand the words he uses, then he is not wise. Hume on “natural” cannot sort out its many meanings, striking to anyone who knows the chapter on nature in Book Five; Kant’s “nature” is fused and abstract, far from the original meaning, birth. Such men are not wise — a friend’s remark: “they’re not even wise enough to play the fool.”

9. Use commands form, form commands matter (“the proof of the pudding is in the eating”) #

Matter is ability so that it may come to form; and there is a manifestation of this in Physics II comparing three arts — the art that uses the product, the art that forms it, the art that prepares the matter — in terms of who commands whom.

• Road-testing an automobile in Detroit reveals defects; back to the drawing boards, hence recalls. Captured German plans at the end of the Second World War: two aircraft taken, one less good than it seemed, the other very useful; Americans built a plane from the plans and discarded their own, and the Russians apparently had the same plans, so over Korea American pilots feared being attacked “by our own airplanes.” A gun jamming on the battlefield must be redesigned.
• His father’s company made farm wagons: tested on the farm, redesigned if defective (“got some interesting ideas, and I want to see if they’re any good”); the form-giver then orders the wood and steel people as to kind, size and thickness, since a bar too thin snaps in the farmer’s field.
• The chef says what raw materials he wants, but the ultimate judgment is the taster’s — the connoisseur’s, not the cook’s.

10. Perfect or complete, and why the end is better (“what has reached its end or purpose”) #

Three meanings of perfect/complete in creatures from Metaphysics V (he notes Aristotle there distinguishes God’s perfection from creatures’):

1. What has all its parts — a complete man with two arms and two legs; repas complet on Quebec menus, appetizer, main course, dessert.
2. What has all the ability of its kind — Homer a perfect poet: he taught the Greeks how to make a good plot (Aristotle), his characters are perfect (Hegel), his words good (Hegel and Aristotle). Dickens admitted trouble with plots, so not a perfect poet. Boundary case linking (2) back to (1): Dryden, who at first heard Fletcher’s plays more than Shakespeare’s, came to see Shakespeare the better and called Fletcher “a limb of Shakespeare” — Shakespeare has the whole ability of the playwright, Fletcher only part, like a man missing an arm.
3. What has reached its end or purpose.

• Two nearly obvious statements about what is better (after excluding that a thing is good because wanted): the whole is better than the part; the end is better than what is for the sake of the end. From the general proportion among the four causes, matter is to form as parts are to the whole (matter is that from which something comes to be, existing within; the whole comes to be from the parts and the parts are in it; form is like the whole, the order and distinction of parts). So form is better than matter, and matter is for the sake of form.
• The dialectic on the good: the good is what all want; but not good because wanted — otherwise the last drink of the party would be good for you; inductively, you want it because it is good, so the good causes wanting, and among the four causes it is the end. Hence act, as the end of ability, is better.
• The second paragraph on page ten he says is obscure and he always forgets its exact sense; but if act were no better than ability, the school would not show the student at a recital, nor the ballet school put the girls on the stage doing the steps.

11. Doing and making, and Marx’s mistake (“the act is in the thing that is being made”) #

Aristotle’s distinction: where nothing else comes to be besides the use — seeing a sight, looking, life in the soul — the act is the end and is in the agent; where something else comes to be, as a house besides the housebuilding, the act is in the thing made — building in the thing built, weaving in the thing woven, and in general the motion is in the moved. “Yet nonetheless, here the act is the end, while there it is more the end than the ability.” Happiness is a certain life, and life is in the soul.

• Criticism of Marx, who makes man’s ultimate perfection consist in the activity of making: making as such perfects the thing made, not the maker. God is in no way perfected by his making. It is accidental to the maker that he be perfected by making — one learns to make while making, but insofar as he is still learning he is not yet fully a maker. Making McDonald’s hamburgers day after day, you learn nothing; you perfect the hamburgers, not yourself.
• The same with teaching: teachers say they learn or see the matter more clearly when they teach — “if I knew at the beginning of the course what I know now, I would have taught the whole thing differently,” which shows he was to that extent not yet fully a teacher. Given the imperfection of the human mind this may be the human condition, and the objection presses: if it always happens, how is it accidental? His answer: it is still accidental, for you teach what you know, not what you are coming to know; he is a teacher only in what he knows. Aristotle says even the wise are deceived by the fallacy of the accidental, and Marx is so deceived because the perfecting seems always to be there. Parallel: Hegel’s “the power of the negative” — the negative is always there at the beginning of doing anything, but as such it gives rise to nothing.
• Aside: the workman who asked whether the house had a video machine, because he had just got a video on how to do the job and wanted to watch it first; and the bricklayer at his own split-level fireplace teasing his severe mother-in-law, “This is my first job.”
• He breaks here for a rest.

His words #

• “ability” [ed.: potency] — every beginning of movement or rest; the active kind is a beginning of change “another as other,” the passive kind is being able to be moved by another.
• “the crowning sense” of before — cause before effect, added in the Categories after the four central senses; crowning for reason and for the philosopher.
• “in substance” — Aristotle’s “annoying way of saying in perfection,” because form is more substance than matter.
• kath’ hauto, “per se, through itself, as such” — opposed to what is so “by happening” [ed.: per accidens].
• “simply / not simply but in some imperfect way” — the distinction governing Meno and the materialists.
• Nemo dat quod non habet — “no one gives what he doesn’t have.”
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• “looking knowledge” [ed.: speculative/theoretical knowledge].
• “thin statements” — his term for the two conditional statements about understanding one’s words.
• repas complet — a Quebec menu’s complete meal, illustrating “what has all its parts.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, handout pp. 8–10 (before in definition; before in time; acquired abilities; before in substance; the end; doing vs. making).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VII — back-reference in the text, “the discourses about substance”; not read in class.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories, on the senses of “before.”
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V, chapters on beginning, on nature, on perfect/complete; the general proportion among the four causes.
• Aristotle, Physics I (matter and form in what comes to be), II (definition of nature; the three arts), VI (what is coming to be has come to be).
• Aristotle, De Anima II (ability known through act).
• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations (the first two mistakes from words and from things; the fallacy of the accidental).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (becoming just by doing just things) (inferred locus).
• Plato, Meno; Plato’s forms.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (pure act and the divine attributes).
• Shakespeare (definition of reason); Homer; Dickens; Dryden on Fletcher and Shakespeare.
• Hume on “natural”; Kant on nature and the thing-in-itself; Hegel on the power of the negative; Marx on making.

His questions #

• Is an ability ever known by itself? No — only through the act for which it is an ability, and abilities are distinguished by their acts.
• Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? In this individual the egg is first in time, but it comes from a chicken, so simply the actual comes first.
• How can what lacks an act give itself that act? It cannot — nemo dat quod non habet; it must be given the act by something already in act.
• Is the first cause most in ability or most in act? Most in act; the materialists err by taking what is before in some way for what is before simply.
• How do you acquire the ability to speak French? By speaking it, imitating those who speak it — and the ability is still for the sake of speaking.
• If you become just by doing just things, are you not already just? No — before the virtue the act is done with struggle and instability; and what is coming to be has already in part come to be.
• Is the house more perfect when the foundation is laid or later? Later; what is later in generation is the form, which is act, so act is more perfect.
• Which of the four causes is the good? The end — you want it because it is good, and the good is the cause in the sense of the end.
• Does it belong to the teacher as such to be learning what he teaches? No; that is accidental, though it happens almost always — he is a teacher only in what he knows.
• What is the exact sense of the second paragraph on page ten? Left open — he says he always forgets it, and offers only the recital and ballet illustrations.