Act as Form and Act as Operation: Metaphysics IX, Perfect vs. Imperfect Act, and Happiness

Orientation #

He opens: “since we found out what act is, now we’re going to talk in the second part here about the distinction of acts” (prev. lecture). He breaks off at “one more text here from the Summa,” to be continued. The previous class worked on the definition of motion and act as a common notion; the next continues Thomas’s threefold division of act from SCG III.22 and related texts.

The class, in order #

1. The plan of Aristotle’s text (“the second part here about the distinction of acts”) #

The point: Aristotle’s chapter divides into (a) act as form vs. act as motion/operation, (b) the infinite, and (c) a bracketed passage (not in Thomas’s Latin text, so uncommented by Thomas; authenticity “a little bit questionable” but “quite solid doctrine”) distinguishing energeia from kinēsis — Thomas’s operatio vs. motus, perfect vs. imperfect act.

• Thomas’s commentary on (b) notes the infinite’s kind of actuality holds also for motion and time; so (b) already touches the distinction of (c): what can be divided forever has an actuality like that of motion.
• Line 34: tēn men oun energeian legō … tēn de kinēsin: Aristotle keeps energeia for what Thomas calls operatio, kinēsis for motion.

2. In hoc vs. ad hoc (“not altogether likewise, but proportionally”) #

The point: things are said to be in act “not altogether likewise but proportionally,” and the two kinds of proportion are marked by different prepositions.

• Form vs. motion: as this form is in this matter, so that form in that matter (this shape in this wood, that in that chair); as seeing is to the eyes, so hearing to the ear. We think of the form as being in the matter, but of the ability as producing the motion, so we say motion is to (ad, pros) its power. Even English says “as seeing is to the eyes.”
• Thomas says ousia where we expect “form” — Aristotle’s peculiarity, since once he knows substantial form he calls form substance (books seven and eight), because form is “even more nature than matter.” Moderns call matter the substance and all forms accidental; modern interpreters who say Aristotle’s substance excludes matter: “kind of stupid.”
• Student: why “in hoc” first, then at line 9 pros for both (hōs kinēsis pros dynamin, ta d’ hōs ousia pros tina hylēn)? Answer: no great significance in the order; using pros for both shows it is not an absolute confinement of one preposition to each; the separate prepositions above bring out that two forms in their matters are more alike each other than form-to-matter is to operation-to-power. The likenesses are alike but not equal.

3. Digression: the eight senses of “in” (“eight senses of in and out”) #

The point: names equivocal by proportional likeness must be ordered from the most sensible meaning, and Thomas so orders Aristotle’s eight senses of “in” (Natural Hearing IV), which Aristotle leaves unordered though he orders “beginning” in the fifth book of wisdom.

1. In a place (we are in this room) — most sensible, first.
2. Part in a whole — close to place: knock out my teeth and they are in my mouth as in a place, no longer as a part.
3. Genus in species — genus is a part of the definition, so like part in whole.
4. Species in genus — a universal whole and its subject parts; but only in ability, not in act, whereas the first three are in act.
5. Form in matter — in ability too, so it follows species-in-genus (genus is like matter). Objection: shouldn’t form/matter come before species/genus, since the latter is in the mind and the former in the sensible world? Reply: in the order of meanings species-in-genus is closer to part-in-whole; and we do think species/genus first. Test: ask anyone, “clay in the shape of a sphere moulded into a cube — what changed, the clay or the shape?” They say the shape, as if a genus were changing species; falling back on the earlier sense is “a sign that Thomas has ordered them perfectly.”
6. Whole in parts — form is to matter as whole to parts (“all parts are like matter,” when Aristotle generalises the four causes); yet the reverse of part in whole.
7. “I got you in my power” — still ability, but active ability, not the passive ability of matter.
8. “I left my heart in San Francisco.”

• Aside: active ability is before passive ability in meaning (the pianist’s ability, not the piano’s; Cassius Clay’s ability, not that of Perkis [name unclear in recording] being beaten — though the beaten man is “beatable, breakable, bustable”); yet in the order of the senses of “in,” being in the ability of matter comes before being in the ability of the mover.
• Each ratio is most like its immediate neighbours; later ratios less like the first.

4. Tongue twister: senses of “before” (“we name things as we know them”) #

The point: of the four senses of before, one sense comes before another in the third sense, because we name things as we know them (the principle Thomas gives to explain Aristotle’s ordering of “beginning” in book five).

• The order of naming follows the order of knowing; knowing starts with the senses, so the most sensible meaning is first. Hence the first meaning of before/after is time, since time is the number of before and after in motion, and, as Shakespeare has Ulysses say, “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs” (handout, p. 5).

5. The infinite as a strange act (“that which is able to be divided forever”) #

The point: the continuous is defined as what is divisible forever; that ability can never be fully actualised (proved in Natural Hearing VI), so its act differs from the act of the statue or chair, which is fully arrived when made, and from seeing or understanding, whose potency can be fully actualised. Aristotle also mentions emptiness: you can never empty something out, something else always comes in.

6. Imperfect vs. perfect act (“when I am walking home, have I walked home”) #

The point: Aristotle distinguishes motion from energeia by whether the act has its end while it is.

• Walking home: so long as I am walking home I have not walked home; when I have, I am no longer walking. Whenever it exists it is incomplete — grammar’s perfect tense reflects this. Building a house likewise.
• Seeing you: when I am seeing you, I have seen you. Understanding what a square is likewise. “For the ladies”: if loving were a motion, “when I’m loving you I haven’t loved you yet, and that would be a terrible thing” — the clincher.
• Learning resembles motion: while I am learning I have not learned.
• Naming: either sensing and understanding are not motions, or “motion” is used equivocally (loose sense covering both, which Thomas notes). Thomas uses operatio “for want of a better word”; Aristotle keeps energeia; in English one might keep “act” for the perfect act and call motion the imperfect act — “what’s in a name? The idea is to see the difference.”
• Application to ethics (around line 25): happiness must consist in the perfect act.

7. Doing vs. making; happiness cannot be a making (“making is a perfection of the thing made”) #

The point: a further distinction (not made precisely here by Aristotle; Thomas says it is in the ninth book) between activity remaining in the doer and making, yielding three: doing (immanent, can be perfect), making (transitive, perfects the thing made), motion (essentially imperfect).

• Naming: doing divides into doing and making; making gets a new name because there is a product besides the activity.
• Argument: happiness is a perfection of the one who is happy; making per se (kath’ hauto) perfects the thing made; therefore happiness is not a making. Marx’s making man’s goal a kind of making is “the wrong track”; his reply (man develops himself by making) is the fallacy of the accident: we are perfected by making only while we still imperfectly possess the art (his carpenter brother-in-law: “I’m learning a lot”); flip McDonald’s hamburgers or make macaroni and cheese every day and you learn nothing yet make it well.
• Same for teaching: teachers say they learn by teaching, and with great books it may happen every time, but one teaches insofar as one knows, not learns — accidental. “The accidental deceives even the wise,” especially when it is there all the time. Teaching as such perfects the taught.
• Student: could making be excluded also as imperfect in itself? Reply: some things may be made all at once; and God is a maker and a teacher and not imperfect — God is not more perfect for having made the world, Christ not more knowing for having taught us. The key is that it is a perfecting of the thing.

8. Thomas, De Potentia q. 1 a. 1: two acts, two abilities (“act, however, is twofold”) #

The point: potency is said from act; act is first act (form) and second act (operation), and the name “act” was first given to operation, then carried over to form.

• First/second act: as in the soul’s definition (“first act of a natural body”); Aristotle’s comparison — acquiring geometry is first act, thinking geometrically by it is second act. Student: “I thought it was the reverse” — reply: a different order (order of being), which Thomas knows.
• “As can be seen from the common understanding of men,” act was first attributed to operation: ask anyone for an example of an act and they give an operation, not a form. Aristotle, as Newman said, clarifies what all know and builds from there.
• Secundo autem exinde fuit translatum ad formam, in quantum forma est principium operationis et finis. Aside on translatio / metaphora: same etymology (“carry over”), but in English translation carries over the meaning, metaphor the word — no real reason.
• Compared with Aristotle: Aristotle shows “act” equivocal by reason through likeness of ratios; Thomas here through the ratio of the second to the first (as “being” from substance to quantity, the measure of substance; “philosophy” to logic as its tool) — and by two ratios, form as source of operation and as end of generation (making). Student: wouldn’t that be a different meaning? Reply: not necessarily; two reasons for saying the name is not purely equivocal, the same matters compared. A name equivocal by likeness of ratios lends itself more to a common confused notion than this does.
• Parallel: Thomas explains “healthy” both ways — body first, complexion (sign) and exercise/diet (cause) by ratio to it; or body, complexion, exercise all by other ratios (subject, sign, cause) to one thing, health. One could likewise explain “being” as substance and accident by other ratios to existence (in another / not in another). “We have to take note of that possibility.”
• Twofold ability follows: active, corresponding to operation, to which the name ability seems first attributed; passive, corresponding to first act (form), to which it “devolved” secondarily.

9. Thomas, Sentences IV d. 17: two motions (“motus dupliciter dicitur”) #

The point: following De Anima III, motion is said in two ways.

• Actus imperfecti (as in Natural Hearing III): a going forth from potency to act, necessarily successive because it always expects something further; per the Ethics, a part of such a motion differs in species from the whole (alteration to whiteness: the part toward the middle colour, taken separately, differs in species).
• Actus perfecti, quae magis operatio dicitur: expects nothing further to complete its species, e.g. sentire; not successive but subito (his aside: the crowds yelling “subito” when the pope died — all at once). If it is in time, that is per accidens, being measured by each instant, as “to be a man” is in time and in instants. Such is a motion of free will.

10. Thomas, SCG II c. 1: immanent and transitive operation (“una quidem quae in ipso operante manet”) #

The point: Thomas distinguishes two operations (a different distinction from the two motions, and the one Aristotle makes elsewhere in Metaphysics IX), to pass from God’s immanent operations (book I) to God as maker (book II).

• Perfect knowledge of a thing requires knowing its operation: operation measures the power, power shows the nature (cf. St Paul: from things seen, God’s power and nature).
• Immanent: manet in ipso operante, est ipsius operantis perfectio — sentire, intelligere, velle. Transitive: perfection of the thing made — calefacere [ASR “to eat”; ed.: to heat], secare, aedificare.
• Both belong to God: understanding, willing, rejoicing, loving; producing, conserving, ruling things. The first is the ratio of the second and naturally precedes it, as the artist’s consideration and will are the beginning of his building.
• Naming: the first claims (vindicat) “operation” or “action”; the second “making” (factio), whence manufacta. In English, doing and making; hence foresight is right reason about doing, art right reason about making — important for distinguishing them.
• He begins “one more text here from the Summa” and the recording ends.

His words #

• fifth reading of the ninth book of wisdom — Aristotle’s chapter on act [ed.: Metaphysics IX lectio 5 / c. 6 (inferred)]
• Natural Hearing — [ed.: Physics]
• ability — [ed.: potency]; active ability before passive in meaning
• energeia / kinēsis — Aristotle’s names for perfect act (Thomas: operatio) and motion
• in hoc / ad hoc (pros) — form in matter vs. motion toward its power
• ousia — what Thomas/Aristotle say where we expect “form”
• equivocal by reason — a name said by likeness of ratios or by ratio to one [ed.: analogy, pros hen]
• translatio nominis — carrying over of a name; same etymology as metaphor
• first act / second act — form / operation
• doing vs. making — his English for immanent vs. transitive operation (actio/operatio vs. factio)
• kath’ hauto / per se vs. per accidens — making as such perfects the made; the maker’s learning is accidental
• actus imperfecti / actus perfecti — the two “motions” of the Sentences text
• subito — all at once, not successive
• foresight — [ed.: prudence], right reason about doing

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, fifth reading (lines ~6, 9, 23, 25, 34 of his text), with Thomas’s commentary
• Thomas, De Potentia q. 1 a. 1 c.
• Thomas, Commentary on the Sentences IV d. 17 q. 1 a. 5 qc. 3
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles II c. 1
• Shakespeare (Ulysses), “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs” — handout p. 5

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Natural Hearing III (motion as imperfect act), IV (eight senses of in), VI (infinite divisibility)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (“beginning”; four senses of before and after)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VII–VIII (form called substance); Ethics (part of a motion differs in species); De Anima (definition of soul; two senses of motion, book III)
• St Paul on God’s power known from things seen
• Cardinal Newman on clarifying what all know
• Marx on man’s end as making
• DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 682 (verified source)

His questions #

• He’s making the distinction between form and what? Motion (activity/operation): form is in matter; motion is to its power.
• Why does he use in for one and pros for the other, then pros for both? To show the two ratios of form-to-matter are more alike each other than form-to-matter is to motion-to-power; not an absolute confinement.
• A piece of clay, sphere moulded into cube — what changed, the clay or the shape? People say the shape; really the clay — a sign species/genus is more known than form/matter.
• In which of the four senses of before does one sense of before come before another? The third, because we name things as we know them.
• When I am walking home, have I walked home yet? When I’m seeing you, have I seen you? No / yes: motion is imperfect act, seeing perfect act.
• What kind of act must happiness consist in? The perfect act, and not a making, which perfects the thing made.
• Is it kath’ hauto that the teacher learns what he teaches? No; accidental, though it may happen most of the time.
• Is Thomas’s explanation of “act” as equivocal by reason the same as Aristotle’s? No: Aristotle by likeness of ratios, Thomas by ratio of form to operation; both can be given for one name.
• Do we have a word in English besides operation for the perfect act? Left open; he suggests keeping “act,” calling motion the imperfect act.