Metaphysics IX, Reading 10: Evil as Privation, God as Pure Act and the Best Thing, and Why Act Is More Knowable

Orientation #

He is finishing reading ten on handout p. 12. He says at the end: next time we finish the book with reading eleven, then look at “this dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith” before going into the Summa. He refers back to earlier classes on the first book of “natural hearing” (the Physics), the second book of wisdom, and the study of the soul. The previous class argued that actuality is more perfect than potentiality and prepared the claim that being as such is good.

The class, in order #

1. Bad in bad things: the metaphorical sense (“the end and the act is worse”) #

Aristotle concludes that in bad things the end and act are worse than the ability, since the same thing is able to be both contraries. “Gotta be very careful” — he is speaking there metaphorically. From the third paragraph on, Aristotle goes back to what the bad really is, strictly speaking.

2. Negation vs. privation (“the stone does not see”) #

The point: badness is non-being of a definite kind, a lack.

• “The stone does not see” is simple negation.
• “The man is blind” is not merely the negating of sight: it is the non-being of sight in a subject apt by nature to have sight, that should have sight, and when it should have it.
• Boundary case he presses: is this piece of chalk ignorant? It does not know — but it is not ignorant, because ignorance is non-being of knowledge in a subject able to have it and that should have it. “That’s very important.”
• Consequence for the axiom of contradiction (he quotes Hamlet, “to be or not to be”): with contradictories, everything falls on one side — you either know or do not know. With privation, not everything falls on one side: the chalk neither knows nor is ignorant.
• The four kinds of opposites (Categories; also fifth book of wisdom): contradictories; having and lack; contraries; relatives. Contraries share not only a subject but a genus — virtue and vice are both habits. Sight and blindness are not both powers: common subject, no common genus.

3. Augustine’s hyperbole and the goodness of the mug (“sin is nothing”) #

Nothing is bad about the mug not seeing, or the chalk not knowing; something is bad about his students being ignorant, or a man or dog being blind. So when Augustine says sin is nothing and the sinner becomes nothing he is using hyperbole — the root is a kind of non-being, but precisely it is the non-being called lack. Aristotle’s text: “the bad does not exist apart from things, for the bad is after ability by nature” — you could not have blindness unless something were able to see. Aside: so you should not be disturbed that you are not God — that is mere negation, not a lack of something you should have.

4. Matter is not the lack of form (“Plato should distinguish between matter and lack of form”) #

• Anaxagoras in a way confuses matter and form, falsely imagining everything in matter’s ability to be actually in the matter.
• The Platonists see matter and form differ, but in distinguishing matter from form they think matter as without form and so confuse matter with its formlessness. He hears a trace of this confusion in Augustine on first matter: “something that is nothing” (Berquist would say: nothing that is something).
• Aristotle’s argument from the opinion he shares with Plato: form is something God-like, good, desirable. Since God is pure act and form is act, form is God-like in a way matter is not, matter being ability. Since the act of a thing is its perfection, it is good and therefore desirable.
• Hence: matter is perfected by form — very concretely, matter desires form; its order to form is its good. But the lack of form, if it wanted form, would want its own destruction. So the lack of form, being opposed to form, is what looks bad; matter is not bad.
• Thomas on David of Dinant, who identified God with first matter: he “most stupidly thought” — even a stone is more actual than first matter; to say pure act is pure ability could not be further from the truth. Not a gratuitous insult.
• Augustine used this same argument against the Manichees, who held matter evil, apparently independently of Aristotle’s Physics: in De natura boni contra Manichaeos, matter, being capable of form, is also good — not as good as form.
• Lack is the bad generally, not only morally: the piano out of tune, the dish that “needs a little bit of this.”

5. Nothing bad in God (“the bad is after ability by nature”) #

Argument, as he syllogizes it:

1. For anything bad there must be an ability for some act which the thing could and should have and is deprived of.
2. God is pure act — no passive ability in Him, no ability that has been or could be actualized.
3. Therefore it is impossible for anything bad to be in God. Premise 2 rests on what was shown earlier: act is simply before ability, because what goes from ability to act does so through something already in act — the ability to be actual cannot give itself the act it does not have; that would be a contradiction. Hence the first cause must be pure act.

6. “With the truth all things harmonize” (Nicomachean Ethics I) #

Two independently reached results about the end of our knowledge:

• From the proemium to the fourteen books: the end of our mind is knowledge of the first cause — the mind wants to know why, and if the cause has a cause it wants the cause of the cause (I hit you because I’m angry; but anger has a cause; the insurgents blow us up because they hate us — but why do they hate us?). As shown in the second book of wisdom, not every cause has a cause; there is a first in each of the four kinds.
• From the beginning of De Anima I and of the Parts of Animals: more precise knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge; hence knowledge of the best thing is the best knowledge; and since the end is better than what is for the sake of the end, the end of our knowledge is knowledge of the best thing. If the first cause is the best thing, the two harmonize. The evolutionary humanists and materialists mistake what is before in some way for what is before simply (the mistake Meno and Socrates fall into): because ability precedes act in the thing that changes, they make the first thing most in passive ability, first matter — then the first cause is the least perfect thing, and the two truths clash: “you’ve got schizophrenia,” two different last ends. He notes honestly: “I haven’t seen the text where Aristotle puts it together the way I was just putting it together.” Aside: asked what he will do in retirement — “think about the best thing,” since knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge; and it turns out more interesting than anything else.

7. Nothing bad in eternal things (“neither failing nor corrupted”) #

Fourth paragraph, top of p. 12: in the things which are from the beginning, the eternal things, there is nothing bad, because there is no ability there — neither failing nor corrupted. So nothing bad in an angel as far as its nature is concerned; the question about the will he does not go into here. And above all nothing bad in God, who is pure act. Other ways of showing this will come later.

8. Act is more knowable than ability: the triangle (“if the line parallel to the side had been already drawn”) #

Last paragraph of reading ten: geometrical figures are found by act; we find by dividing, and if they were already divided it would be clear.

• Why are the angles of a triangle equal to two right angles? Because the angles about one point equal two right angles. Draw through the vertex the line parallel to the base; by the alternate-angles theorem the two outer angles equal two of the triangle’s angles, and the third makes up the two right angles. The parallel is in the triangle only in ability; you must make it actual before it is actually knowable.
• Euclid’s own way combines two things: extend the side to get the exterior angle, draw the parallel, use alternate angles, plus the theorem that the exterior angle equals the interior opposite.
• Thales’ theorem, that every angle in a semicircle is a right angle: draw the diameter, take any other point on the circle, join it to the endpoints, and draw the radius to it. The six angles of the two triangles equal four right angles; the two at the base (on the diameter) equal two right angles; so the remaining four equal two right angles. Since the radii are equal, the base angles of each isosceles triangle are equal (Elements I, theorem 5 — “the angles at the base are equal”); so the two at the vertex are half of four right angles’ remainder, i.e. one right angle. This theorem is in Book Three, the others in Book One. Details aside, “you have to make the lines actual in order for it to be knowable.” The construction is the genius of the theorem: once you see how the lines might be drawn, “oh yeah, now it all makes sense.”

9. Abilities known through their acts (“how do you know you have the ability to see?”) #

From the study of the soul: abilities are knowable only through their acts. You do not know you still have sight until you open your eyes tomorrow — people do go blind in the night, or have their eyes bandaged and do not know how much ability remains; a man may not know he is paralysed until he tries to move. Even the ability to be mistaken is known through mistakes: when all the Greek philosophers disagree, all but one at least are mistaken; if two tellers at a faculty meeting get different counts of yeses and noes, at least one has erred. General reason behind the example: the knower and the known become one in knowing, so as the knower is actualized what he knows must be actual.

10. Most knowable in itself, least knowable to us (“God dwells in light inaccessible”) #

Since God is pure act, God is most knowable. But (second book of wisdom) difficulty in knowing has two causes: a defect in the knower, or a defect in the known — and Aristotle says the difficulty is chiefly in us, comparing us to the bat, which he apparently thought flew at night because daylight was too bright. Scripture: God dwells in light inaccessible — He is too knowable. You will never know God as much as He is knowable; only God knows God so; we will see Him as He is, but not as much as He is — so, as Thomas says, you never get bored with God. The beginning of the eight books of natural hearing makes the same point: what is more knowable to us is less knowable, and what is more knowable is less knowable to us — again the distinction between what is so simply and what is so in some way. The Meno-type case, put simply: does the man asking a question know what he wants to know? He must know in some imperfect way, else he could not ask or investigate; if he knew it simply, he would not ask. So the man looking for the cure of cancer must in some way recognize the disease and know what a cause of disease is, without knowing what that cause is. Aside: people are afraid to ask questions lest they reveal ignorance — but if they don’t ask they stay ignorant; he had been reading of Einstein in Berlin, who was never afraid to ask a question, right to the point. The materialists’ error again: taking what is before in some way as before simply, making matter the beginning of all things.

11. The other kind of difficulty: things that hardly are (“how can something exist whose parts don’t exist?”) #

Matter, motion and time are hard to know because they hardly are — they are so potential. Time: the past no longer exists, the future does not yet, and there is no time in the now; how can something exist whose parts do not exist, as a chair could not exist if legs, seat and back did not? Parallel in love: it can be hard to love a thing because it is not lovable (rock and roll, cancer — the defect is in the thing), or because of a defect in one’s heart (wisdom, God). Somebody on EWTN: if you find the Mass boring, it is because you are boring — the defect is in you, not the Mass. But the Buddhist temple flat at the top for Nirvana, per the Human Life International newsletter: “I didn’t have to come all this way — I could have stayed home and turned on TV” — there the defect is in the show. So geometry is easier for us than natural philosophy or wisdom, but for two different reasons.

12. Metaphor in Scripture and in poetry (“just for the reverse reason”) #

Summa I, q. 1: whether Scripture uses metaphors. Poetry and Scripture use metaphor for reverse reasons — metaphor is a sign of what is not accessible to our mind, but God is inaccessible from the weakness of our mind, while the poet’s matter hardly has any knowability.

• The dramatist gives a plot a beginning, middle and end, an order the events of life do not have — witness the computer man in his office and sixty back emails just before class: what has that to do with this class?
• The portrait painter, a master like Titian, captures a whole character in one expression, though no real expression carries that much meaning; our snapshots never capture a person.
• Mozart gives an intelligibility to the emotions they may not have in life. His professor Mr. Eric[?] told him: “Duane, you think that’s more intelligible than it is.”
• Homer makes what may have been a pirate raid a symbol of the whole of human life — as Job says, man’s life on earth is a warfare. Dante, by contrast, tries to bring heaven down, imitating what Scripture does, which is perhaps not so appropriate for a poet; so Dante is not a poet in the ordinary sense. Aside: he offers a student his spare copy of Dante (or Homer) with the Gustave Doré illustrations.

His words #

• “natural hearing” — [ed.: Aristotle’s Physics]
• “ability” — [ed.: potency]; contrasted throughout with “act”
• “lack” — English word for the Latin “privation”
• “the first matter” — [ed.: prime matter]
• “the fifth book of wisdom,” “the second book of wisdom,” “the fourteen books” — [ed.: the Metaphysics]
• “proemium” / “premium to the fourteen books” — Aristotle’s prologue
• “with the truth all things harmonize” — his rendering of the Ethics I dictum
• “God dwells in light inaccessible” — “He’s too knowable”
• “schizophrenia” — his name for holding two irreconcilable last ends

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, reading 10, handout p. 12, paragraphs 2–4 and the last paragraph (bad and ability; eternal things; geometrical figures found by act).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics I (matter, form, lack of form); beginning of the Physics (more knowable to us vs. more knowable); Categories (four kinds of opposites); Metaphysics V (same); Metaphysics II (two causes of difficulty in knowing); Metaphysics I proemium; Nicomachean Ethics I; De Anima I, beginning; De Partibus Animalium, beginning.
• Augustine, De natura boni contra Manichaeos; Augustine on sin as nothing; Augustine on first matter.
• Thomas Aquinas on David of Dinant; Summa Theologiae I, q. 1 on metaphor; Thomas on never being bored with God.
• Euclid, Elements I.5 and the angle-sum theorem; Elements III (angle in a semicircle, attributed to Thales).
• Plato, Meno; Shakespeare, Hamlet; Homer; Dante; Job.

His questions #

• What is the difference between saying the stone does not see and saying the man is blind? — The first is simple negation; the second is the non-being of sight in a subject apt to have it and that should have it.
• Strictly speaking, is this piece of chalk ignorant? — No: it does not know, but ignorance requires a subject able and obliged to know.
• Is everything either knowing or ignorant? — No; only contradictories divide everything, not privations.
• Why can there be nothing bad in God? — Because badness is always after ability, and God is pure act, with no ability to be deprived of an act He should have.
• If the first cause were first matter, could the two accounts of the end of our knowledge fit together? — No: the first cause would be the least perfect thing, so knowledge of the first cause and knowledge of the best thing would be two different ends.
• Why are the three angles of a triangle equal to two right angles — and why must you draw the parallel? — Because the angles about one point equal two right angles; the parallel is in the figure only in ability and must be made actual to be knowable.
• How do you know you have the ability to see? — Only by its act — by opening your eyes and actually seeing.
• Is the difficulty of knowing in the knower or in the known? — Both happen: in matter, motion and time the defect is in the thing, which hardly is; in God it is the weakness of our mind.
• Do the events of our life form a beginning, middle and end as a play does? — No; the poet selects and so gives an order and meaning that things in life do not have.
• Does the angel’s will admit of badness? — Left open; he says Aristotle does not go into that here.