Metaphysics IX, Lectio 2: Natural vs. Rational Ability, and Nature vs. Will

Orientation #

The recording opens on the tail of the morning session (Shakespeare striking his brother Mark as Mozart struck Einstein) and the proposal to “look at the second reading” this afternoon; he then begins with the prayer. He refers back to “what we mentioned” about the English word ground for cause, and to the will being “a second species of quality, as you mentioned before” (prev. lecture). Verified sources place the audio with a handout “An Excellent Play” (p. 18), presumably the Shakespeare material; the transcript itself says the text is the second lectio of Book IX. The previous class treated the first reading’s division of ability and its placement in the category of quality; the next develops the second solution, that reason and will are natures.

The class, in order #

1. How Thomas divides the first four lectios (“distinguishing the first kind of ability”) #

Thomas sets the first lectio (basic kinds of ability in respect to motion) against the next three (ability compared to the subjects in which it is found). More simply, the second lectio divides the first kind of ability, the active ability, into its two main kinds: a natural ability and the abilities found in the soul, especially the understanding and willing soul (“the understanding soul,” as Shakespeare calls it), with some anticipation even in lower souls.

2. The text: abilities without reason and with reason (“hot of to heat only”) #

He reads: such beginnings exist in things without soul (apsychois), in things with soul, and in the soul itself, especially the soul that has reason; hence some abilities are alogoi (without reason) and some meta logou (with reason). All the arts and making sciences are abilities, beginnings of change in another as other.

• The distinction: natural abilities are determined to one of two opposites (fire heats only); rational abilities are of contraries (the medical art, hē iatrikē, is of sickness and health; the doctor can make you well or make you sick).
• Aristotle in Politics V shows how to preserve a government and how to overthrow it (same knowledge of opposites).
• Nature is contrasted sometimes with reason (which is of contraries) and sometimes with the will (which chooses between contraries).

3. Shakespeare sees the same difference: Coriolanus (“nature, not to be other than one thing”) #

In Coriolanus Act 4 Scene 7, Aufidius speculates on three possible causes of Coriolanus’s fall: pride (in the will), defective judgment (in reason), or “nature, not to be other than one thing”, i.e. custom as a second nature, determined to one. He then slips into “Shakespeare asks why” and corrects himself: “I think they confuse these two guys” — it is Aristotle who asks why.

4. Why nature is determined to one and reason is not (“the same knowledge of opposites”) #

Argument as he gives it:

1. Nature operates through a natural form, and there cannot be two contrary natural forms in one thing; so nature is limited to one.
2. Reason operates through knowledge, and knowledge of one opposite is in some sense knowledge of the other (blindness known through sight); “there is the same knowledge of opposites.”
3. Therefore reason is able for contraries, nature only for one. Inductive confirmation through the sciences: in logic one learns correct and incorrect reasoning (so the logician knows how to deceive students as well as teach them); at the end of the Symposium, Socrates tells Agathon and Aristophanes that if they knew what they were doing they could each write both tragedy and comedy; Homer and Shakespeare wrote both (Homer’s comic work lost); the good rhetorician can defend or prosecute you, “so get him on your side.”

5. The cause: episteme is a logos showing the thing and its lack (“privation is the first of contraries”) #

He reads around line 7: the cause (aetion) is that the practical episteme is a logos, and the same thought shows the thing and its privation, though not in the same way: it is of both, but more of the positive. The definition of blindness is through sight (its non-being in a subject able to have sight).

• Aside on aetion: the Greek word for “responsible” (the grandfather in church “responsible” for all the grandchildren); the English ground is more like mother earth. Wood, shape, carpenter, use are each “responsible” for the table: cause defined as what is responsible for the being and becoming of something.
• These sciences are also of contraries because one contrary is a lack in respect to the other (Natural Hearing I): cold, the empty, vice (disorder) each involve lack. So medicine is more about health but in some sense about sickness too, by negation and removal. Privation (steresis) is the first of contraries, shown in the tenth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics X].
• Contraries do not come to be in the same thing, but science is a power in having a thought and the soul is its beginning: the healthy makes health only, the hot hotness, but the science makes both.
• Best objection he ever had against teaching ethics: a St Mary’s student said that by the same knowledge of opposites students learn how to become vicious as well as virtuous, “since you are inclined to be vicious.”
• The fire as such tends only to heat; a fire engine cooling you when it burns down a house is not the fire as such. The medical art can save a life or kill (abortion). Student: is one contrary always positive and the other a lack? Answer: lack is always the non-being of something, but one contrary always seems lacking in respect to the other, hinting that privation lies behind contrariety. Student: why can the form of knowledge be of contraries? Answer: the immateriality of the mind: in matter one contrary excludes the other, in knowledge it helps you know the other; this is one of the most convincing arguments for the immateriality of the mind.
• Even the plant soul (On the Soul II) shows something of overcoming determination to one (the tree growing in contrary directions), but not as much as the understanding soul.

6. The distinction fits Aristotle’s examples of the mover (“the father and the advisor”) #

The first two kinds of ability were compared to the mover and to matter. In Physics II, Aristotle’s examples of the mover are one from nature and one from reason: the father and the advisor; later the seed, the advisor, and the doctor. Thomas notes the significance: reason and nature are the two movers known to us in ordinary experience.

7. End of the lectio: ability to do at all and to do well (“worth doing is worth doing badly”) #

He recalls the order of the two senses: one cannot be able to do well without being able to do at all, but can do imperfectly without doing well. Chesterton’s paradox, “a thing worth doing is worth doing badly,” has some truth to it.

8. Thomas on nature vs. will: a double determination (“determined to one in two ways”) #

De Potentia q. 3 a. 13 c.: nature is determined both as regards what it produces and as regards producing or not producing. Paper in the fire: the fire can only burn, not freeze it, and cannot not burn it. The will is determined in neither way: the artist can make a box or a table, and can make or cease from making (steak or chicken, and steak or no steak). Fire cannot but heat if its subject is present, nor induce any effect other than what is like itself. “That makes it a little more explicit than what you see in the text of Aristotle.” A second Thomas text (locus not given): the effect is likened to the form of the agent; a thing has only one natural form through which it exists, so “such as a thing is, such does it do”; but the form by which the will acts is many, according as there are many rationes, so what is done through will is such as the agent wills and understands. The will is beginning of what can be thus or otherwise; nature of what cannot be except thus. Student: so it is not only the same knowledge of opposites but many thoughts. Yes, “expanding upon the form” through which it operates.

• Grammar: he can say “I am your professor” or “I is your professor” and knows which is wrong; one without the art might do either without knowing.
• Logic: “every mother is a woman, no man is a mother” — students think “no man is a woman” follows because all three are true, though it is not a syllogism; “every dog is an animal, no cat is a dog” has the same form and deceives no one. Knowing the art, he knows how to deceive.

9. “A Misunderstood Distinction” (“the division appears exhaustive because it’s by opposites”) #

From his own paper: either an active ability is determined to one of two opposites or it is not; no third. Reason by dialectic and rhetoric argues to opposite conclusions: dialectic is defined as reasoning from probable opinions, sometimes “even to contradictory conclusions”; in the Meno, Socrates argues with probability that virtue can be taught and then that it cannot; rhetoric persuades that he is guilty and not guilty; debate teams (his sister-in-law; Casiraghi’s college tournaments) must defend both sides; men reach opposite conclusions and the same man moves from affirming to denying (“I’ve done it myself”). The will likewise can will to do or not, this way or the opposite. Some thinkers take the distinction to mean that reason must assent to no side of any contradiction, and the will must will nothing: Mill’s On Liberty, where liberty of thought respects a reason never determined to one side; Sartre, the will with no determination to any object; and the scientific custom (Claude Bernard) that every thought is a hypothesis tested by consequences, where even confirmation does not force assent (affirming the consequent is no syllogism), so “doubt is intrinsic to the experimental method.” These positions seem to agree with Aristotle’s own distinction by excluded middle. “The devil can quote scripture.” This lies behind “all the Elizabethan stuff we have today” [ed.: word as heard]. To go along with them is to misunderstand the distinction.

10. The problem in Thomas, and his first solution (“the will is founded in some nature”) #

The problem arises where Thomas (with Aristotle) holds that reason naturally knows some things (the axioms, especially the statement about contradiction) and cannot not know them, and that the will naturally wills happiness and cannot will its opposite, misery — obvious contraries. “What’s happened to your distinction?” Student: reason seems to depend on nature. First solution, ST I-II q. 10 a. 1 obj. 1 and ad 1. Objection: natural agents are divided against voluntary agents (Physics II), so the will is not moved to anything naturally. Reply: will is divided against nature as one cause against another (the will is Lord of its own act, nature determined to one); but because the will is founded in some nature, the motion proper to nature is to some extent partaken of in the will, as what pertains to a prior cause is partaken of in the later; nature is prior because ipsum esse, through nature, is before velle. Hence the will naturally wills something. “Very subtle, huh?” The same could be said of reason: to be is before to reason. Comparison (De Potentia q. 2 a. 6 ad 1): a power may be commanded to one act by the will and inclined to another by nature: our understanding is inclined to believing by the will and led to the first principles by nature (reason assents to the articles of faith not from evidence but as moved by the will; Augustine, followed by Thomas). Expanding: one would not say reason is a will because it is moved by the will, so neither is reason a nature because it is moved by nature; conversely, when the will partakes of the order of reason (want to be rid of a headache, so want aspirin) it is not thereby reason. So reason and will can do something naturally, determined to one, without denying that the causes are distinct.

11. Difficulty with the first solution; second solution: reason and will are natures (“the will is a certain nature”) #

Difficulty: with the causes working oppositely, reason’s determination to the axioms or the will’s to happiness would seem a violent or forced necessity, like the will leading reason captive to faith (St Paul); but Thomas calls it natural necessity. Why is it not more like faith? Second solution: reason is a nature and the will is a nature, taking nature in the broadest sense, where everything that is has a nature. ST I-II q. 10 a. 1 c. (after Boethius, “the book about the two natures”, and Metaphysics V): nature is said in many ways: the intrinsic principle in mobile things (matter or material form, Physics II), or any substance or any being at all — vel quaelibet substantia, vel etiam quodlibet ens. Nature in this sense is what a thing is, first said of substance and extended to the other categories (seventh book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics VII]). Sentences I d. 17 q. 1 a. 1 ad (number unclear): grace is natura quaedam, “very striking.” De Veritate q. 25 a. 2 ad (number unclear): each power of the soul (quaelibet potentia animae) is a certain nature naturally inclined toward something. De Veritate q. 23 a. 4 c.: voluntas natura quaedam est and has a natural order to something. Since what a thing is is one, everything has a determination to one; so will or reason is determined to one insofar as each is a nature. De Veritate q. 22 a. 5 obj. 5: rational powers are of opposites (the philosopher); the will is a rational power; therefore not determined to one. Ad 5: the will as rational is of opposites (considering it according to what is proper to it), but as a certain nature nothing prevents its being determined to one; likewise reason as nature vs. reason as reason. “Strange, huh?” Sideshow (a reply to the third objection, same article (inferred)): to nature there always corresponds something one, proportioned to it — one in genus, in species, in the individual; the will being immaterial like the understanding, what corresponds to it is one common object, the good, as being or the true to the understanding; under good in general many particular goods, to none of which the will is determined. Eye to colour, ear to sound, reason to all being. This “gives you a little room,” but not full room: happiness and misery, you can will one and not the other. Left there.

His words #

• ability; his rendering of potentia, dynamis [ed.: potency, power]
• beginning; principium, archē [ed.: principle]
• lexio / reading; lectio of Thomas’s commentary
• alogoi / meta logou; abilities without reason / with reason
• the understanding soul; the rational soul, after Shakespeare
• aetion; the Greek for “responsible”; cause as what is responsible for the being or becoming of something
• ground; the English word for cause, akin to mother earth (prev. lecture)
• Natural Hearing; his name for the Physics
• steresis / lack; privation, the first of contraries
• logos; thought, definition
• wisdom, tenth / seventh book of; his name for the Metaphysics
• double determination / double indetermination; nature determined as to what and as to acting or not; will determined in neither
• rationes; the many thoughts or reasons through which the will acts
• partakes of; his rendering of participat in the ST reply
• Lord of its own act; the will, domina sui actus
• natura quaedam; a certain nature, said of grace, of each power of the soul, of the will

Texts #

Read in class:

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, lectio 2 (the division of abilities into alogoi and meta logou; the passage “around line seven” on the cause; the closing passage on ability at all vs. well)
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act 4, Scene 7 (Aufidius on Coriolanus)
• Aquinas, De Potentia q. 3 a. 13 c.
• Aquinas (unlocated): “nature and will differ in causing…”
• Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q. 10 a. 1 obj. 1 and ad 1; and the corpus on the senses of nature
• Aquinas, De Potentia q. 2 a. 6 ad 1
• Aquinas, Scriptum on the Sentences I d. 17 q. 1 a. 1 (reply, number unclear)
• Aquinas, De Veritate q. 25 a. 2 (reply, number unclear); q. 23 a. 4 c.; q. 22 a. 5 obj. 5 and ad 5; ad 3 of the same article (inferred)
• Handout “An Excellent Play”, p. 18 (verified source) Mentioned:
• Aristotle, Politics V; Physics I (contraries and lack), Physics II (four causes; examples of the mover); Metaphysics V (nature said in many ways), VII, X; On the Soul II
• Plato, Symposium (ending); Meno
• Boethius, On the Two Natures
• J. S. Mill, On Liberty; Sartre; Claude Bernard; Chesterton; Augustine; St Paul on leading reason captive
• His own paper, “A Misunderstood Distinction”

His questions #

• Why is nature determined to one but the rational ability capable of opposites? Nature works through one natural form; reason through knowledge, and there is the same knowledge of opposites.
• Is one contrary always positive and the other a lack? Lack is the non-being of something; one contrary always seems lacking in respect to the other.
• Why can the form of knowledge be of contraries? The immateriality of the mind: in matter contraries exclude each other, in knowledge one helps you know the other.
• Where is the big difficulty in this distinction between nature and reason, or nature and will? Thomas holds reason naturally knows the axioms and the will naturally wills happiness, which seems to abolish the distinction.
• One would not say that reason is a will because it is moved by the will, would you? No; nor a nature because moved by nature.
• Why should not this determination to one be more like St Paul’s description of faith, reason led captive by the will? Left open; it leads into the second solution.
• How can you hold the distinction and still say the will is a certain nature? The will as rational is of opposites; as a certain nature it is determined to one.