Metaphysics IX: How Rational and Non-Rational Powers Pass into Act (Choice as Lord)

Orientation #

He opens (after a fragment of the end of the previous class and the prayer) with “the fourth reading now from the ninth book of wisdom,” i.e. Thomas’s lectio 4 on Metaphysics IX; he closes by saying that rather than go on to the fifth reading it would be appropriate to begin [something else]. He mentions no earlier class by content. The previous session treated possibility and impossibility in De Interpretatione and the next opens the second main part of Book IX with a discussion of Shakespeare’s definition of reason.

The class, in order #

1. Thomas’s division of the fourth reading (“Thomas again divides us into two parts”) #

The point: the reading has a short first part, on certain abilities where the act seems to precede the ability, and a longer second part on how abilities that precede their act pass into act, with special reference to the reasonable powers.

2. Three kinds of powers; act before ability (“the act coming before the ability”) #

Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of powers: (a) natural or inborn powers (sungenōn, “born with”), like the senses; (b) powers gotten by custom, like playing the guitar or a familiar instrument; (c) powers gotten by instruction, like the arts. In (b) and (c) one must act before (proenergēsantas): by playing the piano one acquires the ability to play the piano, by thinking one acquires the technē. In the inborn powers it is not by seeing that you acquire the ability to see; the ability comes first. Nor is a prior act necessary in the powers of undergoing.

Objection he raises: if you can do the act, you already have the ability, so how can doing the act give the ability? Answer, by the parallel in the Nicomachean Ethics (how do we become courageous, moderate, generous? by doing courageous, moderate acts; but aren’t we then already courageous?):

1. Before the habit, doing the act is a struggle and one is easily diverted from it.
2. After the habit, the act is done with ease and is agreeable, because the habit inclines and is a disposition with firmness or stability.
3. Some ability to begin the act must be there, perhaps natural; but the acquired ability comes after the act. “Aristotle likes to note all these things.”

3. First preliminary: what “capable of” means (“There’s no capability. That’s an ability to do what?”) #

The point: to say something is dunaton one must state what it is capable of, and all the conditions.

• Joke: he goes to the employment agency and says “I got capacity, I got ability”; the agent must ask how many words a minute you can type — you must say what you are capable of or he can’t match you with a job.
• Thomas’s example: the tree can produce fruit or leaves, but not in winter; you must add “at this time of year.”
• Also how (faster, slower) and by what tools or instruments (some things he can do only when there is light and he has the tool).
• And “nothing interfering”: he can think, but not when the rock and roll is playing. So the diorismos of “capable” includes what, when, how, by what, and nothing impeding — everything needed for it to do it.

4. Second preliminary: powers with reason and without reason (“some things are able to move kata logon”) #

Distinction: powers kata logon (with reason) vs. aloga (without reason). The former are found only in what has a soul, and an understanding soul; the latter in both ensouled and unensouled things. Even in man there are aloga powers: digestion goes on while he sleeps, the heart pumps, he breathes without thinking.

5. The difference: automatic vs. not automatic (“necessarily produces what it’s capable of”) #

Argument:

1. In powers without reason, when the maker able to act and the “pathetic one” (undergoer) are near (plēsiazōsi), the power necessarily produces what it is determined to: fire next to paper burns it automatically.
2. In rational powers this is not necessary: bring the patient to the doctor, put the wood in front of the carpenter, and he does not necessarily do anything, though capable and the object present.
3. Reason: in powers without reason one power is productive of one thing (“nature is determined to one,” as Shakespeare says, or as Aristotle said before); rational powers are capable of contraries.
4. If a rational power automatically produced what it is capable of in the presence of the object, it would produce contraries at once — straight and crooked, healthy and sick, teaching and deceiving; tout’ adunaton, impossible. This ends the first part of the second part.

6. What is lord: desire or choice (“something other be the kurion the Lord”) #

The point: something else must be the kurion (lord) determining which contrary; Aristotle calls it desire or choice (choice being more rational). Whichever of the two contraries one desires chiefly (kuriōs), this he does, when able and the pathetic one is present. Example: he enters class, the students (pathetic ones) are there, he is capable of teaching or deceiving; which he does depends on his desire, “which side of the bed I got up on.”

Aside on the first cause: Anaxagoras said the first mover is mind, seeing the mind is open to all things, unlimited; but a mind capable of contraries needs something else, so Hesiod says the first mover is love. Who is right? A student suggests both. His answer: more safely, each has a part of the truth; one must choose one contrary before the mind gives rise to anything, so the first mover must be not only a mind but also love, choice, will. Socrates following Anaxagoras brings out that there is the same knowledge of opposites. Aristotle in Book XII concludes there is a mind behind the natural world, and there must also be some love or desire, “otherwise nothing would proceed from the rational power.”

Student: something has to move the choice. Answer: that is developed in the De Anima — after vegetative, sense and intellectual powers he asks what moves the animal, thought or imagination and desire, and reduces them to the good, since it is the good as known that is desired; desire is a “moved mover.”

• Aside: “mover” is equivocal; the good moves as the fourth kind of cause, desire moves the bodily parts as the third, so two kinds of mover in “moved mover,” not within one genus of cause. Likewise “make” is used of the formal cause: geometry makes me a geometer, health makes me healthy, the shape makes the rubber a ball — “kind of strange the way we do that.”

Restatement with a current example: the medical art enables the doctor both to keep you alive and to end your life (delivering or aborting a baby, doctors putting people to death); the lord of which he does is not his knowledge but desire or choice.

• Student aside: the automatic action of natural powers looks like the second law of thermodynamics (spontaneous things, free energy); he hears it, adds the universe running down and randomness, and moves on.

7. The rational power acts of necessity when it desires (“Necessarily, when it desires that of which it has the ability”) #

Text: what is capable by reason necessarily, when it desires that of which it has the ability, and as it has it, does it; if not, it was not capable.

Parenthesis (Thomas: he excludes an objection): should one add “if nothing interferes”? No — that was included in defining “capable.” You are not capable of something when something is impeding you. Strictly, is the tree capable of producing leaves any time? No; you must add the time of year, nothing impeding (some sap or whatever it needs).

Student objection: this sounds close to the earlier error that there is no such thing as ability — fire has the ability to burn only when paper is present, i.e. only when it acts. Another student: the presence of the patient is not among the conditions of ability; it could have the ability with the subject absent. His answer: one is fully capable when it has all these things; with some missing you are saying something more partial, and the earlier argument concerned the partial sense.

Student objection: trouble could be made with “necessarily does what it desires chiefly” — e.g. the will not really wanting, or choosing a known lesser good. Answers: if his heart isn’t in it, he hasn’t really chosen to teach, and does something less (tells stories); “chiefly” means what you chiefly want now, not a chief or better good; Aristotle here says nothing about what determines choice, only that choice determines what you do — choice is treated in the Nicomachean Ethics.

8. The parenthesis at 16 and the word diorismos (“you are fully capable of doing something when you have everything”) #

Full sense of capable: are you capable of playing the piano without a piano? You have not lost the art, but in the full sense you are capable only when there is a piano and the door isn’t locked; not everything is spelled out because you couldn’t, “that’s kind of common sense.” So the impeding things were “taken away in the diorismos”: fire with a big wind blowing against it may not burn the paper.

• Etymology aside: horismos is definition, from limit (cf. horizon, sky and land); prefix di- through or by, a divided thing; the root is like finis in “definition”; in Metaphysics V the last meaning of horos, limit, is definition.

9. Last point: no ability for contraries at once (“he’s not capable of doing contraries at the same time”) #

The point: one need not worry that the rational power does contraries at once, because it is not capable of both together; the doctor can keep you alive or end your life, he can teach or deceive (part of a talk each), but not exactly the same act both. Even if someone wanted both (“a love-hate relationship”), he wouldn’t, since not capable: wanting to have your cake and eat it is beyond your power.

Student: what of the contingency of the will, its turning to the opposite even after choosing? Answer: then you wouldn’t be wanting it at that moment; the tempted man has something saying “don’t” and something saying “do,” but when he does it he does it because he wants to. Student: once the choice is made and the object present, isn’t the will’s causality just like natural causality, determined to one? Answer: there is some likeness — one must be determined to one, since the ability for both results in neither; the indeterminacy of the will is prior to the choice. Aristotle here is not defending or explaining why the will is free; that is in Nicomachean Ethics III on choice.

His words #

• “ninth book of wisdom”: Metaphysics IX [ed.: Metaphysics].
• sungenōn (dunameōn): inborn powers, “born with.”
• proenergēsantas: “to act before.”
• technē: the art.
• dunaton: capable, able; must say of what, when, how, by what, nothing interfering.
• diorismos: the definition/delimitation of what “capable” means; related to horismos, horos (limit).
• kata logon / aloga: powers with reason / without reason.
• “pathetic one”: the undergoer, patient [ed.: passive term].
• plēsiazōsi: are near, “neighborly.”
• “nature is determined to one”: one power productive of one thing.
• tout’ adunaton: this is impossible.
• kurion / kuriōs: the lord; chiefly — what determines which contrary is done.
• “moved mover” (“move mover”): desire, moved by the good, moving the body.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (inferred: ch. 5), lectio 4 in Thomas’s division: three kinds of powers and act before ability; the meaning of “capable”; rational vs. irrational powers; desire or choice as kurion; the parenthesis “around sixteen” on not adding “if nothing prevents”; no ability for contraries at once.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: becoming courageous by doing courageous things; book III on choice.
• Aristotle, De Anima: what moves the animal; the good as known.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII: a mind behind the natural world.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V: meanings of horos, limit.
• Anaxagoras, Hesiod, Socrates on the first mover; Shakespeare on nature determined to one (no locus).

His questions #

• How can you say that by doing the act you acquire the ability, if you can already do the act? The act is done with struggle before the habit, with ease and stability after; some ability to begin is natural, the acquired one follows the act.
• What does the employment agent say to “I got ability”? He asks what you are able to do — capability must be of something.
• Is the tree capable of producing leaves, yes or no? Not simply; you must add the time of year and nothing impeding.
• What decides whether I teach you or deceive you, whether the doctor delivers or aborts? Something other than the knowledge: desire or choice, the kurion.
• Who is right, Anaxagoras (mind) or Hesiod (love), about the first mover? Each has part of the truth; the first mover must be mind and also love or choice.
• Shouldn’t you add “if nothing interferes”? No; nothing impeding was already included in defining “capable.”
• Are you capable of playing the piano without a piano? You keep the art, but in the full sense you are capable only when the piano is there.
• Once the choice is made, is the will’s causality just like natural causality? There is a likeness (determination to one), but the will’s indeterminacy is prior to choice; why the will is free is not treated here.