Metaphysics IX, Reading 9: Eternal and Corruptible Things, Necessary and Impossible, Pure Act, and What Is More Knowable to Us

Orientation #

He begins by recalling the eighth reading, where act was shown more perfect than ability within the same thing, and moves to the ninth reading, where the same is shown in different things. He reads from page eleven of the handout (third paragraph, “nothing incorruptible…”), and stops at four-thirty. The previous class treated act as prior to potency in definition, knowledge, substance and time.

The class, in order #

1. Recap of reading eight (“act is more perfect than what ability”) #

Two roots of act’s priority in perfection, reduced from the senses of “perfect” in Book Five:

• Whole/part: form is to matter as whole is to part; the whole is more perfect than the part; but form is act, matter is the ability to be formed.
• End: the end is better than what is for the sake of the end. The reason is the principle from Book Two of wisdom: when the same belongs to two things, but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause. Good is said of health and of medicine, but of medicine because of health — so health, the end, is better. We have the ability to see for the sake of seeing, not seeing for the sake of the ability. Act is the end of ability, therefore better.

2. Why reading nine is “more masterly” (“blow the soul up big so you can see it”) #

The point: taking act and ability in different things makes the same conclusion more evident.

• Republic: Socrates argues in Book I that the just soul is better off; at the start of Book II he is asked whether he wants really to have convinced them or only to seem to. He then blows the soul up big — the three parts of the city as a likeness of the three parts of the soul.
• Simpler two-term versions: reason is to the emotions as the man to the horse (the man must get up on the horse repeatedly until it obeys, not be dragged with his foot in the stirrup) — the distinction is visible outside us, whereas reason and emotions are hidden inside.
• Aristotle’s question whether reason rules the emotions as master rules slave or as father rules son: he concludes as a father rules a son — the father rules for the son’s good and the son has some say; the master rules for his own good and the slave has none. Easier to see than the inner case.
• Goods of the soul vs. goods of the body, mixed up in us: say soul is to body as man is to beast.
• Thomas on certain vices as “childish”: the undisciplined child becomes unruly; so with emotions always given in to. Conversely, disciplined children are emotionally happier; undisciplined ones run wild and are “ragged” and unhappy.
• Aside (his own image): the noon crowd at McDonald’s harassing the person behind the counter — that is the disordered concupiscible appetite making demands while reason runs about trying to satisfy it with drugs, alcohol, candy, whatever, and never can, “because there’s something infinite about the thing.”

3. The argument of reading nine (“no eternal thing is in what ability to not be”) #

Eternal/incorruptible things are to corruptible things somewhat as act is to ability; incorruptible things are clearly better; therefore act is better.

1. Eternal things are before corruptible things in substance, i.e. in perfection.
2. No eternal thing is in ability not to be. The ability meant is the ability of matter, an ability to contradictories — clay able to be sphere and cube, not both at once; able to be sitting or standing.
3. What is not able to belong will never belong; but everything able may not act; therefore what is able to be may both be and not be.
4. What may not be is corruptible — simply, or in the respect in which it is said (according to place, how much, or how). Aside on the three kinds of change: this is how natural science was first divided — physics (change of place: Galileo on falling bodies, Kepler on planets, Newton unifying), chemistry (change of quality, leading to change of substance), biology (living things, growth, change of quantity). We keep the division but have lost its reason, so it became sloppy: does atomic physics go with mechanics or with chemistry? Heisenberg in his Gifford lectures puts atomic physics with chemistry. “Nothing incorruptible, simply, is an ability simply, but nothing prevents it from being so in some way — how or where” — he is thinking of the heavenly bodies, which he held do not change substantially but change place.

4. Necessary beings and the third way (“for if these were not, nothing would be”) #

Necessary beings are the first things. This is what Thomas’ third argument in the Summa Theologiae touches: some things are able to be and not be, so why one rather than the other? Something necessarily is; the necessary is so through itself or through another; one cannot go on forever; therefore something necessary through itself — the first cause. Logical arrangement: necessary = not able not to be; impossible = not able to be; possible in the middle = able to be and able not to be. Question to the class: which are furthest apart? Necessary and impossible. The middle has two abilities; each extreme denies one of them.

5. The philomuthos and the plot (“the Philomythos is the philosopher’s pos”) #

From the Proemium to the Wisdom: the lover of myth is somehow a philosopher (Greek pōs, Latin quodammodo) — not simply, but because he wonders, and wonder is the beginning of philosophy.

• So one must have great stuff — Shakespeare, Homer. Personal aside: a freshman English course led him to buy a complete Shakespeare and read all the plays that year; he thinks this disposed him to be a philosopher.
• Muthos means myth, then story, and in the Poetic Art the plot. Two divisions of plot: (a) tying and untying of knots — as Books three through fourteen of wisdom, book three tying all the chief knots, four through fourteen untying them; Thomas does it constantly in the Summa, tying a knot in a disputed question and untying it; (b) Homer taught the Greeks that a plot has beginning, middle and end — a course of action, not just whatever happened to one man.

6. Beginning and end defined negatively (“the middle, in a way, is before the beginning and end”) #

Beginning and end are defined by before and after — and negatively: the middle is before something and after something (two affirmatives); the beginning is before something but not after; the end is after something but not before. Since the affirmative is before the negative in knowledge (as sight is before blindness), the middle is before the beginning and the end in knowledge. Likewise “able to be” is before “not able to be,” and “able not to be” before “not able not to be.” Time: the beginning of time is before the rest but after nothing; the end after everything but before nothing.

7. Pure act and prime matter as the two extremes (“pure means without any act”) #

Reason’s own object (from the book on the soul) is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined; hence Aristotle’s examples come from a natural thing and a mathematical thing. Natural things are of matter and form; mathematicals have imaginary matter (extension) and form — which is why in both there can be many individuals of one kind. Book Eight treated matter and form under substance; Book Nine extends to ability and act, which are more general but proportional to them.

• The first thing is act simply — pure act: grammatically affirmative, in meaning negative, “no ability” (passive ability).
• Prime matter is pure ability: again negative in meaning, “without any act.”
• Everything in the middle has some ability and some act: material things matter and form; even the angels, substance and existence, the substance being to existence as ability to act. So the beginning, middle and end recur as in a plot, the extremes known by one affirmative and one negative, the middle by two affirmatives — and we know the beginning and the end through the middle. God is difficult to know because he is too knowable; prime matter because of the thing itself — difficult for different reasons. He notes Aristotle’s order: beginning and end defined before the middle, because he first wants to distinguish before from after. Parallel in the Categories: what exists in something and is not said of something; what is said of something and does not exist in something; what both is said of and exists in another; and last of all (two negatives) what is neither said of another nor exists in another. [He first names the last item “individual substance” and at the end reaches it again — his listing of the four is loose.] Corollary for theology: God and prime matter are simple, but the simple is known through the composed. God knows composed things simply; we know simple things composedly. The composition is in us, not in the thing — hence a whole question that God is not composed, full of negations. “We know him not as he is, but as he is not.” Parallel on the impossible: we talk about the square circle, which not even God can make; God cannot change the past. It is a being in our mind — just as the Greeks who say you cannot get something from nothing thereby talk about nothing.

8. Reading the third paragraph, page eleven (“nor any of the necessary beings”) #

The incorruptible is what is not able not to be; the necessary likewise is what is not able not to be. Aside on moderns: the determinists for whom everything is necessary, the existentialists for whom everything is contingent; and the dispute in philosophy of nature over whether end is a cause.

9. Einstein digression (“the most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it should be comprehensible”) #

Einstein said all scientific work of a higher order rests on a belief like that of religion. He devoted his life to understanding the universe as a whole — special relativity 1905, general relativity 1915, the latter belonging to cosmology; confirmation came only after the First World War, by observation during a solar eclipse. When told he was confirmed he replied he knew it would be, it was too beautiful not to be. But why devote a life to understanding the universe unless one believes it understandable? Einstein sees an affinity between that belief and the believer’s view that the universe is the product of a great mind — Sir James Jeans: God is a supreme mathematician, in general the supreme mind — yet Einstein does not go all the way. If the universe is made by an understanding, it is not incomprehensible that it should be comprehensible.

10. More knowable simply vs. more knowable to us (“God is most knowable, but not to us”) #

The distinction corresponds to the second kind of mistake outside of words: confusing what is so simply with what is so in some imperfect, qualified way.

• What is most knowable simply: act is before ability in definition, and ability is knowable only through act — a thing is knowable because it is in act. Therefore pure act is most knowable, and God is most knowable, but not to us, since our mind goes from ability to act. He calls it “really kind of marvelous” that Aristotle saw this; he knows no one who sees it clearly except those who learned it from him. Students and Descartes are always mixing the two.
• Plato’s dialogues: asked what virtue is (Meno) or what piety is (Euthyphro), they give examples; a child asked what a nose is points to noses. Examples are more knowable to us, the definition more knowable simply and makes more known exactly.
• Joke: students call a distinction “confusing.” But the distinction is how you get out of confusion; it does not confuse, it reveals the confusion already in your mind. Say rather “I’m confused and can’t understand this distinction.”
• Descartes wants every science to proceed as geometry does, being most rigorous and certain. But the best way of proceeding is not the best way everywhere: geometry goes to some extent from cause to effect, which is better than from effect to cause, but not better for natural philosophy. Descartes confuses better simply with better here.
• Same mistake in politics (the best government is not the best government for these people) and in the church or the city (the best life is not the best life for everybody); and in daily life, doing what is bad because it is good in some way, or not studying because study in some way prevents partying.

His words #

• “what ability” — his recurring rendering [ed.: potency, potentiality]
• “in substance” — glossed by him as “in perfection”
• “Wisdom” [ed.: the Metaphysics]; “books three through fourteen”
• “philomuthos” — lover of myth/story/plot; pōs / quodammodo, “somehow,” not simply
• “Muthos” — myth, then story, then plot in the Poetic Art
• “pure act” — grammatically affirmative, in meaning negative: without any (passive) ability
• “pure ability” — prime matter: without any act
• “more knowable” vs. “more knowable to us”
• “mistake outside of words” — second kind: confusing simply with in-a-qualified-way

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, reading 9 (handout p. 10–11; third paragraph of p. 11, “nothing incorruptible… nor any of the necessary beings”)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics II (principle: what belongs to two, to one because of the other, belongs more to the cause); Book V (senses of “perfect”); Book VIII (matter and form under substance); Proemium (wonder, the philomuthos)
• Aristotle, Poetics (two divisions of plot); On the Soul (reason’s own object) — Book III (inferred); Categories (the fourfold division)
• Plato, Republic I–II; Meno; Euthyphro
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, third way (inferred locus)
• Heisenberg, Gifford lectures; Einstein; Sir James Jeans; Descartes; Galileo, Kepler, Newton; Homer; Shakespeare

His questions #

• Which things are furthest apart — necessary, possible, impossible? Necessary and impossible; the middle has two abilities, each extreme denies one.
• What does “pure” mean in “pure act,” given that it is grammatically affirmative? Negative: no (passive) ability. Likewise “pure ability” means without any act.
• What is in the middle between pure act and pure ability? Everything else — matter and form in material things, substance and existence in angels.
• How do you define beginning and end? By before and after, and negatively: the beginning is before but not after, the end after but not before; so the middle is first in knowledge.
• What is most knowable simply? Pure act, i.e. God — because a thing is knowable insofar as it is in act; but he is least knowable to us.
• Which is more knowable, the examples or the definition of virtue? The examples to us, the definition simply.
• Why would a man devote his life to understanding the universe? Because he acts on the belief that the universe is understandable; if made by an understanding, that ceases to be incomprehensible.
• What kind of mistake is Descartes making in demanding the geometrical way everywhere? Taking what is better simply as better here.