Defining Motion by Act: Imperfect Abstraction and Two Kinds of Distinction

Orientation #

He says “we got through part of … the fifth reading” of Metaphysics IX and that the distinction of kinds of act is “the second part now, we’re going to talk about this afternoon”; he refers back to “the other day” (kinds vs. meanings of a word) and to “last night” (Kant on knowing by making). Verified sources place the handout “Note on the Eight Books of Natural Hearing” p. 4 and DHB Vol III p. 401 in this session. The previous class treated act in Metaphysics IX through proportional likeness, and the next continues reading 5 on act as form vs. act as motion/operation.

The class, in order #

1. Act already separated from motion in Physics I (“motion as something kind of in between”) #

Point: the ninth book of wisdom perfects both the definition of motion and our natural understanding.

• In Physics I one sees matter and form in terms of ability and act, so act is already something other than motion; Aristotle there refers ahead to the ninth book, where the “full universal understanding of act and ability” is.
• Motion first appears as between ability and act; the middle is defined by the extremes, so one must find in what way motion is a mixture of them.
• Book IX perfects natural understanding too, because most objections to the axioms of being and non-being are based on motion: people fall into contradictions by not distinguishing act and ability well enough.

2. Why being is hard to separate from body (“whatever is must be somewhere”) #

Point: things never separated in experience are hard for reason to separate (De Anima on common sensibles).

• If I knew extension only by eye, colour would seem essential to surface; because I also know surface by touch without colour, and by sight without hardness, I can separate them. Euclid would be impossible otherwise; hence the senses are ordered to understanding.
• Likewise being or substance from body: the pre-Aristotelian Greeks said what is not somewhere does not exist; but to be in a place is a property of natural bodies. Then to be in place, in time, would belong to being as being, and wisdom (science of being as being) could never rise above that. Aristotle notes they “spoke about what is” the same way when he divides the opinions “in the second reading.”
• We can only reason to immaterial things (Physics VII–VIII, De Anima III). Aside: as a believing Catholic (God, angels) it is probably easier for him to separate being from body than for one who must first go through the eight books.

3. De Koninck, Laval, and learning by teaching (“more wonder than anybody in the whole class”) #

Point: understanding these books takes years and repeated teaching; even the masters kept finding more.

• Pace at Laval: a semester on Physics I, one on II, two on IV (place, time). De Koninck’s exam question on place: “start at the beginning.”
• De Koninck, teaching since 1935, had more wonder than anyone; he would explain the text then excursion through the moderns, who repeat the pre-Aristotelian Greeks’ mistakes (Socrates: if I didn’t listen to others I’d make their same mistakes).
• He had proofread Thomas’s commentary for Kasurik’s translation, yet De Koninck illuminated the first lectio for him; after three years teaching philosophy of nature at Saint Mary’s, Monsignor Dion showed him an obvious difficulty he had never seen. De Koninck: “Do you think you’ve understood everything?"—“That’s a sign you’ve understood nothing.”
• Kasurik: compared to Aristotle he “had the brain of an angler”; threatened to walk out of De Koninck’s class if taught as in the States, then became a devoted student; fixed the microphone at De Koninck’s fund-raising talk.

4. Is there a general sense of act? (“it would be extremely, imperfectly abstracted”) #

Point: there must be a common thought of act, but imperfectly abstracted from motion and form, since act is not said equally of them; one may call it one secundum quid. Argument from the definition of motion (Robert’s question / the Father’s question):

1. Motion is “the act of what is able, insofar as it is able to be.”
2. If “act” there means motion, one says motion is motion: true, but no definition.
3. If it means form, the definition is false, for motion is not a form.
4. So “act” must be what is common to motion and form, imperfectly abstracted; otherwise motion could not be defined. This is part of the difficulty of that definition. Parallels:

• Person: individua substantia rationalis naturae. If “substantia” means second substance the definition is false; if first, individua is superfluous. Thomas’s solution: substance imperfectly understood, common to first and second, which individua contracts. Likewise the highest genus “substance” is said of both man and Socrates, so there is a common but very imperfect notion, not a genus, because not said equally.
• Thomas distinguishes four meanings of substance, all in the Categories: logos tēs ousias (what a thing is, ch. 1), first substance, second substance, and substance common to the two.
• “Thing” said of substance and accident, equivocally by reason. In the Summa contra Gentiles, why God is not in the genus of substance: substance is res cui conveniat esse non in alio; in God being and what He is are not distinct. If res there means accident it is false; if substance, it says nothing; so “thing” must be abstracted, however confusedly, from both.
• “Can’t get something from nothing”: “something” has a common but very vague meaning. Student: in person and in res you limit the common notion to one member; is that what the definition of motion does with act? Answer: yes, but be careful—if “act” is already taken as motion you are circular, and Descartes and Locke would be right. He stresses: our mind is “characterized by this,” knowing first in a properly confused way (not confused as mistaken); “you can’t get much more confused” than thing common to substance and accident, or act.

5. Consequences of saying motion cannot be defined (“no little mistake they’re making”) #

Point: Descartes and Locke, denying the definition of motion, remove the first argument for God’s existence.

• One reasons from the definition of motion to the unmoved mover; and since nature is defined by motion, without motion we do not know nature either. So they clear away natural knowledge of God to make room for what the moderns replace God with: knowledge that gives power.
• Kant (some truth in it): in physical science we make in order to know; he seizes on Aristotle’s point (to come in the third part) that geometry needs to make things actual—extend the side or draw the parallel to know the triangle’s angles equal two rights—and generalises it. Marx agrees: we know only what we make; we are beginning and end of what we make; therefore we see ourselves as God (“we’re not atheists, we’re God”).
• Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity: the truth behind the myth is that man is God; Engels and Marx read it enthusiastically; given Kant, man is the Alpha and Omega. Aside: at Saint Mary’s the bishop permitted him to use it “but you’re responsible if anybody loses his faith.”

6. The kinds of act: five, but not by one distinction (“the rule of two or three”) #

Point: a first distinction into motion (activity) vs. form, then activity into three and form into two.

• First and broadest: motion or something like it, activity/“doing,” vs. form.
• Within activity, Aristotle distinguishes motion (walking home) from what Thomas calls operation (understanding what a triangle is, loving your wife); ultimately three, which Aristotle knows but does not play out fully here—he will bring Thomas’s text. The Greek text has a part beyond what Thomas’s text had.
• Form: substantial vs. accidental, not done here because done in books VII–VIII; he will bring Thomas’s texts (used also in the De Anima course).
• Total five distinct kinds of act, but reached by successive distinctions into two or three, since one distinction into five is not understandable.

7. Distinction of meanings vs. distinction of kinds (“both a distinction of kinds of act”) #

Point (answering “are these kinds or senses of the word?”): two different kinds of distinction that coincide at the most universal level.

• Kinds only: Euclid’s kinds of quadrilateral/parallelogram; equilateral, isosceles, scalene triangle; odd/even, prime/composite, perfect/imperfect number—the word means exactly the same of each.
• Both: (a) the four causes—Metaphysics I reviews predecessors “for two birds,” to test whether wisdom has been reached and whether any cause beyond the four has been touched (kinds in the real world); Metaphysics V distinguishes senses of the words used most in wisdom, all equivocal by reason, among them cause, first divided matter, form, mover, end (meanings). (b) Substance, quantity, quality, relation: the four kinds of things really out there (his size, his relations—grandfather, father, husband, son, brother—are not what he is), and also meanings of “being” or “thing” by the figures of predication: you and I are two things; you and your shape are not two things in the same way.
• Aristotle saw they go together—“absolutely remarkable”; others see a part. Empedocles: men see a part of the truth and boast of having seen the whole; Rhetoric: some take rhetoric for political wisdom through lack of paideia or boastfulness.
• Act likewise: motion vs. form is both a distinction of kinds of act and of meanings of the word.
• Going down (living body into animal and plant, animal into dog and cat) a distinction of things is no longer of senses; hence the Posterior Analytics says define the species before the genus—defining the very universal invites equivocation, our commonest deception. He defines Shakespearean tragedy, not tragedy.

8. How one sees the causes are not causes equally (“It’s a very strange cause, sitting”) #

Point (student’s question): it takes discourse and experience.

• Beginners name only the carpenter as cause of the table, not the wood; “the shape is the cause?”; “sitting is a cause of the chair?"—it does not exist until the chair is made (De Koninck), so the end is the last cause known.
• English “ground” for cause suggests Mother Earth, matter, first thought of as cause (Shakespeare’s Common Mother); materia from mater; nature named from birth and the mother; Hesiod quoted at the start of Physics IV on place—the rest of philosophy sorts out what is confused in Mother Earth. Student: Latin roots matter in nature, Greek hylē (wood) in artefacts—agreed.

9. Why the two distinctions coincide only at the top (“Distinction is not confusing”) #

Point: because the common thought at the most universal level is so confused.

• With quadrilateral or triangle the idea is clear, so kinds are not senses; at the top the two distinctions come together. Student: because the mind begins knowing nothing, its first knowings are indistinct and universal—yes, the mind goes from confused to distinct (Physics I beginning), so the starting point must be most confused, though one does not realise it until later reflection on the definitions.
• Students who call a distinction “confusing” commit “the sin against the Holy Spirit”: distinction is the way out of confusion; what they recognise is that they are confused. (Recording ends mid-sentence.)

His words #

• ability; his rendering [ed.: potency]
• Natural Hearing; the eight books [ed.: Physics]
• ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX]
• imperfectly abstracted / imperfectly separate; the one thought of act, thing, substance common to unequal members
• secundum quid; said of such a thought, “taken from imperfection”
• individua substantia rationalis naturae; definition of person
• logos tēs ousias; the “what a thing is” sense of substance, Categories ch. 1
• res cui conveniat esse non in alio; Thomas’s account of substance
• equivocal by reason; the words of Metaphysics V, cause, thing, act
• properly confused; not mistaken, but indistinct
• operation; Thomas’s word for the act like understanding, against motion
• rule of two or three; understandable distinctions are usually into two or three
• figures of predication; the categories as meanings of being
• paideia; from the Rhetoric
• ground; English word for cause, linked to Mother Earth and matter

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, reading 5 (in progress; the Greek text fuller than Thomas’s)
• Berquist, Note on the Eight Books of Natural Hearing, handout p. 4 (verified)
• DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 401 (verified)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics I (matter and form, act and ability; from confused to distinct); Physics IV (place, time; Hesiod); Physics VII–VIII
• Aristotle, De Anima (common sensibles); De Anima III
• Aristotle, Categories (first/second substance; logos tēs ousias)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics I (predecessors on causes), IV? “the second reading” on opinions (as he says), V (senses of words), VII–VIII (substantial form)
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (species before genus); Rhetoric (rhetoric as political wisdom)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles (God not in genus of substance); Thomas on the definition of person; Thomas on four meanings of substance
• Empedocles fragment on seeing part of the truth; Shakespeare on Common Mother (Mother Earth)
• Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity; Descartes, Locke, Kant, Marx, Engels

His questions #

• Is there a general sense of act abstracted from motion and form? Only one imperfectly abstracted, secundum quid, since act is not said equally of them.
• What does “act” mean in the definition of motion? Neither motion (circular) nor form (false), so what is common, imperfectly.
• What does “substantia” mean in the definition of person? Substance common to first and second, contracted by individua.
• What does “res” mean in “substance is a thing to which it belongs to be not in another”? Thing imperfectly abstracted from substance and accident.
• Is the distinction matter, form, mover, end a distinction of meanings of “cause” or of kinds of cause? Both.
• Is dog/cat a distinction of meanings of “animal”? No; lower down, distinction of kinds is not of senses.
• Are motion and form kinds of act or senses of the word? Both, like being and cause.
• Why do the two distinctions coincide at the most universal? Because the common thought there is most confused; the mind goes from confused to distinct.
• What do you understand when you cannot grasp a distinction? That you are confused; distinction is the way out of confusion.