Ability and Beginning: Mover and Matter, and Thomas's Texts on Power (with Shakespeare and Mozart Asides)

Orientation #

He opens by “coming back upon some things in this first reading before we go on the second reading, which you may not go on till this afternoon”; he recalls “the general point I was making at the beginning of class,” that the senses of ability are both kinds of things and senses of a word (prev. lecture). The verified-source list places the audio in Book V–VI; the transcript itself says the class is reviewing the first reading of the ninth book and I follow the transcript. The previous class opened Book Nine and divided ability into active, passive and resistive senses; the next takes up the second reading on irrational and rational abilities.

The class, in order #

1. Ability and act cast light on the four causes (“Agent and matter”) #

Point: the two fundamental senses of ability answer to two of the four causes.

• Ability to change another vs. ability to be changed by another: a student answers “agent and matter,” and he agrees — the mover (his name for the agent cause) and the matter.
• Through matter a thing is able to be moved by another, which is why a science about things involving matter is a science about things involving motion; the mover is “the source, most of all, of the motion of the matter.”

2. Beginning, cause, element; which causes are “beginnings” (“beginning is more general than cause”) #

Point: matter and mover connect with the idea of beginning more explicitly than form or end do.

1. Beginning is more general than cause (from Thomas at the beginning of the commentary on the “eight books of Natural Hearing,” and the words beginning, cause, element at the start of Metaphysics V): every cause is a beginning, not every beginning a cause — the point is a beginning of the line but not its cause. Aristotle in the Physics uses beginning and cause “almost interchangeably” because he thinks of beginning in that sense.
2. The six meanings of beginning in the first reading of Book V, as he runs through them: (i) the edge of the table, the beginning of the road; (ii) where it is convenient to begin on the road; (iii) the fundamental part — foundation of the house, keel of the ship (“Aristotle’s not quite sure which is the first in body,” the natural body) — “a little more like matter”; (iv) tied up with the mover; (v) beginning in our knowledge; (vi) the end, which “finally appears to be in some sense a beginning,” first in intention.
3. The definitions: end, “that for the sake of which,” does not show beginning clearly; form, “what was to be,” looks toward the end again; matter, “that from which something comes to be, existing within it,” goes back to beginning as “that from which something goes forward”; mover, “whence first there is a beginning of motion” — Aristotle seems to multiply words unnecessarily, but examine them: the mover is “more a beginning in some sense than the matter,” because the wood does not begin to move into being a table until the carpenter does.

• Conclusion: the first two abilities correspond to the mover and the matter, and to the third and fourth senses of beginning; form and end “will have their time later on in this book,” mainly the third part.
• Historical confirmation: the Greek natural philosophers, starting from the sensible world, all talk about some matter (water, air, fire, earth or combinations); the later ones (a bit Heraclitus, then Empedocles and Anaxagoras) talk about the mover; none talks about end; the one who talks mainly about form is “this crazy Pythagoras,” but he comes in from mathematics “where all you have is form” and is “tyrannized by the custom.” So matter and mover are more known to us, at least as beginnings of motion.
• He repeats the general point: the distinction of senses of ability is at once a distinction of kinds of ability in the world, of some kinds of causes, and of senses of the word.

3. Aside: the web site and the “note” on each reading (“under the heading Lyceum”) #

On the Society for Aristotelian Studies site, works of Aristotle go under Lyceum, Platonic things under Academy; for each reading with a Thomistic exposition he intends three things: Aristotle’s text (eventually in Greek, with an English “crutch”), Thomas’s lectio, and his own “note” — texts from elsewhere that clarify something not explicit in the lectio, plus a few of his own thoughts; “ad hoc,” not a replacement for text or lectio. The texts that follow are of that kind.

4. Sentences I, d. 42: the first imposition of “power” (“first was impositum”) #

Point: the word potentia was first laid down to signify the power of men and then carried over to natural things.

• Thomas: the name was first imposed to signify men’s power, “insofar as we say that some men are potentes,” powerful men (he adds a reference he hears as “the fourth tractatus of his metaphysics, chapter two” [unclear which text is meant]), and then translatum to natural things. Many words of natural philosophy come from human society — the obvious case, “law.”
• Second point from the same text: the powerful man is the one who “can make what he wants to do without impediment”; as he can be impeded, his power is diminished; a power, natural or voluntary, is impeded insofar as it can be acted upon by another (in quantum potest pati ab aliquo). Hence in the definition of power on its first imposition it seems to belong that it is non posse pati.
• This gives a second connection between the third sense of ability (not to be acted upon) and the first: Aristotle’s text connects them because the third sense is defined by reference to the mover; Thomas adds that the truly powerful man is the one nobody can stop. Hence even what can do nothing but is durable we call potens — the stone is dura because it has the power not to be cut, though it “doesn’t seem to do anything.”

5. Beginning as relation; the axiom that nothing is a beginning of itself (“nothing is a beginning of itself”) #

Point: since ability is defined by beginning, and beginning signifies a relation, one must ask how ability is a beginning.

• Beginning signifies a relation: one is always a beginning of something other than oneself. Aristotle uses this against Parmenides and Melissus in Physics I: if everything is one, beginnings and causes are done away with, since nothing is a beginning of itself, so a beginning implies distinction.
• Aside on axioms: Aristotle states few axioms explicitly; in Metaphysics IV he spends long on the beginning of all the axioms, those of being and non-being (impossible to be and not be at the same time in the same way; necessary to be or not be). Euclid enumerates some, not all. He proposes that “nothing is a beginning of itself” and “nothing is before or after itself” are axioms, alongside the stock “the whole is more than a part”; one should recognise such axioms as one sees them.

6. Four texts of Thomas on the definition of ability (“that which is a beginning”) #

Point: ability is not the relation of beginning but that which is a beginning — an absolute form, a quality.

1. De Potentia q. 1, a. 1, ad 3: potentia is called a principium not because it is the relation the name “beginning” signifies but because it is that which is a beginning. The question raised: is ability fundamentally a beginning, or something that is a beginning?
2. Summa Theologiae I, q. 41, a. 5, ad 1: potentia does not signify ipsam relationem principii — otherwise it would be in the genus of relation — but that which is a beginning, “not as the agent is said to be a beginning, but as that by which (id quo) the agent acts.” A new distinction: ability is not the same as the mover, who is also a beginning, but that by which the mover moves. (The context is the Trinity, “but we’re not going to the Trinity today.”)
3. De Potentia q. 2, a. 2, body (read twice): although the ratio of beginning belongs to power, and beginning is in the genus of relation, that which is the beginning of acting or undergoing is not a relation but aliqua forma absoluta, and that is the essentia of power. Hence the Philosopher places potentia not in the genus of relation but in quality, second species, “just as scientia,” though a relation necessarily happens to both.
   • Gloss on “absolute”: always opposed to relative, not the “crazy moderns” absolute. Quantity, quality and relation differ from substance (they do not signify what the individual is) and from the last six (they are really in the substance — “my clothes are not really in there”); quantity and quality are in me absolutely, relation in me toward another: I really am a teacher, but toward another; I am healthy, or have my size, in myself.
   • Gloss from the Categories (“a very important thing for you students”): Aristotle enumerates substance, quantity, quality, relation, but treats relation before quality. Porphyry likewise in the Isagoge enumerates genus, difference, species, property, accident, but treats genus, then species, then difference — difference is prior in being, but genus and species are defined toward each other, so are taken together. Aristotle’s reason is different: some qualities have a relation following on them. Knowledge is a quality (first species, habit or disposition) yet always knowledge of something, as a double is double of something; Plato’s definition of relation — what is said to be of or toward another — would make knowledge a relation. So Aristotle corrects it: relation strictly is that whose whole being is to be toward another. Later Latin: relativa secundum dici (knowledge) vs. relativa secundum esse (double, which is “nothing in itself”). Thomas learned this from the Categories and applies it to ability: this “casts a light” on the definition in the first reading that the lectio does not bring out — the sort of thing that goes in his note.
4. De Potentia q. 1, a. 1, ad 9 (on God): the essence of God suffices for God to act, yet potentia is not superfluous, since it adds, secundum intellectum only, the relation of beginning: the divine nature, from the fact that it is a principium agendi, has the ratio of power. So essence and power of God are not two things in reality, but in understanding.

7. Must “beginning” stay in the definition? Virtue, triangle, thinking (“you can’t define without beginning”) #

Point: unlike “praiseworthy” in the first definition of virtue, “beginning” belongs to the perfect definition of ability.

• Virtue is first called praiseworthy, but the perfect definition of moral virtue (“a habit existing in the middle towards us, determined by right reason”) drops praiseworthy, which becomes a property. Comparison: if geometry proceeded like the other sciences, one might first know triangle as “rectilinear plane figure with the least sides,” then find the least is three, and redefine it as contained by three straight lines, “least sides” becoming a property.
• Ability is different: it is in its very definition to be a beginning of motion in another, or from another, or of resisting being moved by another; this holds even in God. Likewise knowledge cannot be understood without being knowledge of something — a modern in Hegel’s school (he cannot recall: Hegel, Fichte, not Schopenhauer) said to think “absolutely,” and one can only think about something; but that relation is not what knowledge fundamentally is. What is true of knowledge (quality, first species, with relation following) is true of ability (quality, second species, with relation following) — clear to a student of the Categories “with Albert and Thomas and Ammonius.”

8. Analogous vs. metaphorical names (“the metaphorical likeness is more distant”) #

Point: answering a student, he warns that the carrying-over of “power” from men to things must be distinguished from metaphor.

• Both analogous (proportional) and metaphorical names rest on likeness, but the metaphorical likeness is more distant; one does not really name one from the other or know one from the other by it. Examples: “That time of year thou mayest in me behold” (old age as the end of the year); Pericles, the young men killed are the spring taken out of the year — proportional metaphors, the most beautiful kind Aristotle teaches; youth the spring, prime the summer, old age the winter of life; Gibbon in his autobiography looking forward to “autumnal felicity” before his health fails. You could not reason from such a likeness. The piano is “playable” (ability placed on it) not by such a distant likeness — a student’s suggestion (Chamberlain?) is rejected as “not such that you would name one from the other.”

9. Closing asides (“Mozart is above all the masters”) #

• Walter Gieseking in concert in Minneapolis: eleven encores, ended by playing Clair de Lune as the sign of “good night”; kept out of the country after the war for having played for Hitler; recorded all Mozart’s solo piano music on Angel.
• Washington Irving, finishing his life of Washington, told his nephew Pierre it is idle to claim credit: “Shakespeare said it all”; a man with a photographic memory could cap any poet’s line from Shakespeare; Shakespeare’s vocabulary the largest, but more to admire than that; he did not invent plots — his favourite praise, in the Hudson Shakespeare on As You Like It [name heard as “Lorenzo,” unclear], turns that to advantage: Shakespeare “in no way a victim of fashion,” interested in the universal, the natural.
• Praise of Mozart: Brahms on Figaro (“every number is perfect”); Wagner, “Mozart is above all the masters, in all the arts, and in all the ages” — he “tends to agree”; Einstein: Beethoven made his music, Mozart found it, as if always part of the universe; his brother Mark: one cannot imagine world literature without Romeo and Juliet. [Recording ends mid-sentence.]

His words #

• ability — [ed.: potency, potentia]; the two main senses: to change another, to be changed by another; third, not to be acted upon
• Natural Hearing — [ed.: Physics], “the eight books”
• beginning — [ed.: principle, principium]; more general than cause; signifies a relation
• mover — [ed.: agent/efficient cause]; defined “whence first there is a beginning of motion”
• books of wisdom — [ed.: Metaphysics]
• impositum / translatum — first laid down (on men), carried over (to natural things)
• non posse pati — not able to suffer; belongs to power on its first imposition
• id quo — that by which the agent acts, as opposed to the agent
• absolute — opposed to relative, never the moderns’ “absolute”
• forma absoluta — the essence of power, a quality of the second species
• relativa secundum dici vs. secundum esse — said of another (knowledge) vs. whose whole being is toward another (double)
• ratio — the definition or account, e.g. “the ratio of beginning”
• secundum intellectum solum — in understanding only (power adds to God’s essence)
• proportional metaphor — the most beautiful kind; distinguished from analogous name

Texts #

Read in class

• Aquinas, Scriptum on the Sentences I, d. 42, q. 1, a. 1, sol. (imposition of potentia; non posse pati)
• Aquinas, De Potentia q. 1, a. 1, ad 3 (power a principium as that which is a beginning)
• Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 41, a. 5, ad 1 (id quo)
• Aquinas, De Potentia q. 2, a. 2, body (absolute form; quality, second species; like scientia)
• Aquinas, De Potentia q. 1, a. 1, ad 9 (power of God adds only the relation of beginning)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V, first reading (six meanings of beginning; definitions of the four causes)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, first reading (the object of review)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V, beginning: the words beginning, cause, element; Aquinas, Commentary on the Physics, beginning
• Aristotle, Physics I (Parmenides and Melissus); Metaphysics IV (axioms of being and non-being); Euclid’s axioms
• Aristotle, Categories (order of treatment; correction of Plato’s definition of relation; knowledge as quality); Porphyry, Isagoge; Albert, Ammonius on the Categories
• Shakespeare sonnet “That time of year thou mayest in me behold”; Pericles on the spring taken out of the year; Gibbon’s autobiography and letters; Hudson Shakespeare on As You Like It; Wagner, Brahms, Einstein on Mozart; Washington Irving and Pierre Irving

His questions #

• Do you see any connection between those two senses of ability and two of the four kinds of causes? Agent (mover) and matter.
• Which of the four causes connect right away with the idea of beginning in their definitions? Matter and mover; not end, and form only through the end.
• Why do the Greek natural philosophers talk only of matter and mover? They start from the sensible world, and these are more known to us as beginnings of motion; Pythagoras’s form is imported from mathematics.
• Is an ability fundamentally a beginning, or something that is a beginning? Something that is a beginning — an absolute form (quality), not the relation itself.
• Why does Aristotle treat relation before quality in the Categories, and Porphyry species before difference? Porphyry: genus and species are defined toward each other. Aristotle: some qualities (knowledge) have a relation following on them, so relation must first be defined strictly.
• Why speak of the power of God if He acts through His essence? Power adds nothing in reality, only in understanding: the relation of beginning.
• Can you define ability without “beginning,” as virtue is later defined without “praiseworthy”? No; beginning belongs to its very definition, as “of something” to knowledge.
• Is “power” carried from men to things as youth is called the spring of life? No; that is metaphor, a more distant likeness from which one cannot reason or name one from the other.