Thomas on Operation, Motion and Doing: Immanent vs. Transitive Action

Orientation #

He is adding “little additions from Thomas” to Lectio 5 of Metaphysics IX; he refers back to “the fundamental distinction we had” between motion and form, “the two senses we first met of ability”, and Aristotle’s argument “against the errors during the third reading” (house-builder, sensible, senses) (prev. lecture). He closes “That’s enough for Lectio 5” and arranges two sessions on Saturday. The previous class worked through the analogical senses of act and the perfect/imperfect act distinction applied to happiness.

The class, in order #

1. Thomas divides the non-form act into three operations (“Nam quaedam operatio”) #

Point: in SCG III.22 Thomas, using operatio broadly (as Aristotle used motus broadly in the De Anima, “tit for tat”), divides the acts that are not forms into three.

• (i) operation of a thing as moving another: calefacere, secare — the transitive, active operation; goes back to the ability to act upon another as other.
• (ii) operation of a thing as moved by another: calefieri, secari — the ability to be moved by another; this is what is most properly called motion.
• (iii) operation that is a perfection of the one operating, actu existentis, not tending in aliud transmutandum: intelligere, sentire, velle. By “existing in act” it differs from passion and motion; by “not changing another” it differs from action transforming exterior matter. He notes the “little stretch” in using operatio for all three, “particularly motion”, since in another text Thomas says operatio is most properly the immanent one and facere names the one with a product.

2. Testing “doing” as the English word (“am I doing something”) #

Point: no one word names the genus without some strain; he tries “doing” on the class.

• Understanding, loving: doing something — yes. Seeing/hearing/smelling: “seemed too forced”. Making a chair, making dinner: yes. Falling: “more being done to you”. Being warmed by the fire: forced. Running: yes.
• So “doing” is stretched no more than operatio, “maybe less”; English also tends to reserve “doing” for the immanent and gives “making” to a doing with a product — yet the average man says he’s doing something making a table and nothing when understanding a theorem.
• Three ways of speaking: every act is either a motion or a form (then three motions); or a doing or a form (three doings); or “act” in the narrow sense as distinguished from form, since it is called act first. “Action” and “activity” have the same problem, fitting two of the three better than motion.
• “None of this affects the distinction in sense, but it’s in the name.”

3. The division applied to happiness; against Marx (“Either or syllogism”) #

Point: the threefold division is “very important, as Aristotle says, for understanding happiness.”

1. You can’t be happy doing nothing (aside: “I could be happy doing nothing” — watching TV is still doing something).
2. Happiness names my end, my greatest perfection (not the degraded sense, “contentment”).
3. It cannot be making, since making is essentially a perfecting of something other than myself.
4. It cannot be motion, which is essentially imperfect act, “always incomplete when it’s there; when it’s complete, isn’t there.”
5. Therefore it must be the activity that remains in the doer and perfects the doer — like motion in being in the one doing it, unlike motion in being complete act. He need not decide whether it is understanding, sensing or loving, only the genus. Marx makes making ultimate; his reply that man transforms himself in transforming the world has “some truth”, but it is accidental to making that the maker be perfected. Directing armies or the city looks transitive too, so happiness tends to the “more speculative” ones — listening to Mozart, tasting wine.

4. Student objections: exercising the ability to make; makers who learn (“accidental to making”) #

• Student: when you make, aren’t you actualizing your own ability, so going into act yourself? Reply: yes, but the activity itself is essentially a perfecting of the one directed. Spiritual director example: St Margaret Mary’s director “becomes Christ”; it is she who is perfected, Christ the perfect director is not.
• Student: Thomas says “men desire to be causes.” Reply: they want to be like God as makers, but Thomas never makes that the ultimate perfection; that is seeing and loving God — the immanent kind. Thomas on “Be perfect as your Father in heaven” (student’s report): becoming like God, who knows and loves himself eternally. God “rested from all he’d made”; those who say God wasn’t happy until he made things make “a bit a mistake.”
• Student: is making always operation as opposed to motion, or are some makings motions? Reply: making is said of the maker, motion is in the thing moved; subtleties when you act on something already there, and in God, who needs nothing to act upon yet has something proceeding outside and something remaining within — “too subtle for us right here.”
• Student: is making then “something like” man’s perfection insofar as he becomes like God? Reply: making as such perfects the thing made; that the maker is perfected is accidental — not just because some makers are unchanged, but from what making is.
• Teacher analogy: it is accidental to the teacher that he learns while teaching, even if it happens almost always; he teaches through what he knows. “If I knew at the beginning what I know now, I would have taught it differently” shows you were not the teacher you would be. Joke about keeping ahead of the student. A carpenter is a maker through knowing how to make; if he has to get the book out, he is “not quite yet a maker.”

5. How should operatio in the above text be translated? (“doing pounded”) #

Point: he returns to his note. “Doing” works but strains for the passive: “the nail would be doing pounded”, “the chicken would be doing cooked.” “Motion” has Aristotle’s precedent in the De Anima (understanding a motion of the mind, sensing of the senses — then more carefully, not motion or equivocally so), and would stretch to making. “Act” is defensible because motion is defined as an act and act was originally used for something other than form; act is said of all three.

6. Knowing likened to rest, desiring to motion (“the act of the grasping power”) #

Point: several texts say motus belongs more properly to the desiring power than to the knowing power.

• First text: the act of the grasping (knowing) power is not as appropriately called motion as the act of the desiring power, because grasping is perfected by the thing grasped being in the grasper (Empedocles saw part of this), desiring by the desirer being inclined toward the thing; so grasping is likened to quies, desiring to motion. The English “under-stand” is not motion. Related to the sixth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics VI]: the good is in things, the true primarily in the mind.
• Sentences II d.24 q.3 a.1 sol.: motion, as the Philosopher says, est via in ens; in the soul’s parts motion is properly the inclination toward something; so acts of the desiring powers are called motion, not properly the grasping powers. Same point, “consistent from beginning to end.”
• Sentences III d.35 q.1 a.2 sol.1 (aside: his earlier references never checked out): the will moves both exterior motions opposed to rest and interior “motions” like understanding, equivocally called motion (De Anima III), for they are acts of the perfect; motion strictly is act of the imperfect; so they are more like rest.
• Psalm 20 (he first says “proverbs”, then Psalms): sicut se habet desiderium ad gaudium, sic motus ad quietem — joy is like rest, desire like motion. Compare Boethius: reasoning is to understanding as motion to rest, and his two understandings, natural (before reasoning) and reasoned-out (after). In the will: love, then desire, then joy. Is love like the rest before motion? Thomas doesn’t say here. Love defined as conformity of the heart with its object seems more like rest; when conformed but not possessing, you pursue — desire; possessing, the heart rests (“our hearts are restless until they rest in thee”). Student: love remains throughout, present in joy, as the end is potentially in the beginning of a science.

7. Immanent action is not really a middle (“est realiter medium”) #

Point: two texts he says made him think “I’ve been misunderstanding these things all my life.”

• ST I q.54 a.1 ad 3: the action that passes in aliquid extrinsecum is realiter medium between agent and the subject receiving it — my kicking you is really between me and you. The action remaining in the agent is not really a middle between agent and object, but secundum modum significandi tantum: “I kick you”, “I see you”, “I love you” are grammatically alike (a fallacy tied to this in the Sophistical Refutations). Really it follows upon the union of object with agent: the understood becomes one with the understander (De Anima: sense in act and sensible in act are one), and understanding follows “as an effect differing from both.”
• De Spiritualibus Creaturis a.4 ad 6: every operation is in some way taken as a middle, either realiter (actions changing something outside) or secundum modum intelligendi (understanding and willing, actions remaining in the agent, Metaphysics IX, yet signified as tending from one to another). He takes modum intelligendi as the same thought as modum significandi.
• What it shows: transitive action is more known to us, so we fall back on it to conceive the immanent. “You made a big impression upon her”: her impressing your heart through the eyes is her being united with your heart; liking her results. Aristotle defines sensing and understanding as an undergoing.
• Student asks him to repeat; he restates: the operation is not what unites you; it is the effect of the union. Student: love as complacency in the good (Francis de Sales) presupposes being pleased by a presented good — “I find her agreeable, then I start to like her”; wax and seal (aside: he teaches friendship with a page of Shakespeare then an article of Thomas).
• Two differences summed: first, obvious — immanent remains within, making passes to the thing made; second, subtle — making is really between you and what you act on, understanding/sensing/loving is not, the union being its source. Order: love presupposes union caused by knowledge, knowledge the union caused by sensing, sensing nearness. Kissing the girl: transitive, “getting into real trouble.”

8. Is the ability to love passive? Degrees of immanence (“more and more within”) #

• Student: passive or active ability? Reply: Thomas’s almost first article on love says it is passio, especially sensible love. Student: a hidden transitive operation from object to passive ability? The object acts on my heart through senses or reason; the sensible in Aristotle’s third-reading order (house-builder, sensible, senses) seems an active ability — so even immanent operations begin from outside. Ours are less immanent than God’s, who receives nothing; modern philosophers who deny reception are “out of touch with things.”
• Thomas on the Word (SCG): fire reproduces on something outside; the plant’s fruit comes from within then falls; the human baby is alive within, then comes out; senses more immanent still, then reason, up to the Word of God proceeding completely immanently. Angel between: not receiving from senses, ideas made in him by God (Augustine), his self-knowledge most immanent; our soul knows itself only through knowing exterior things first. Imagination more immanent than senses (geometry needs a flat surface “out here”, not “up there”).

His words #

• operation (operatio): Thomas’s broad name for the three non-form acts; most properly the immanent one.
• transitive / active operation: acting on another as other (calefacere, secare).
• immanent (he says “imminent”) operation: perfection of the one operating, existing in act.
• doing: his proposed translation of operatio; “making” for a doing with a product.
• ability [ed.: potency].
• imperfect act: motion, incomplete while present.
• either-or syllogism: his method for locating happiness.
• grasping power [ed.: apprehensive power]; “under-stand” as non-motion.
• quies: rest, to which knowing and joy are likened.
• via in ens: motion as a way into being.
• natural understanding / reasoned-out understanding: before and after reasoning.
• conformity of the heart with its object: love.
• realiter medium: really a middle; vs secundum modum significandi / intelligendi tantum.
• “sixth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics VI].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles III.22 (three operations)
• Thomas, Sentences II d.24 q.3 a.1 sol.
• Thomas, Sentences III d.35 q.1 a.2 sol.1
• Thomas, Commentary on Psalm 20 (desire:joy :: motion:rest)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I q.54 a.1 ad 3
• Thomas, De Spiritualibus Creaturis a.4 ad 6
• Thomas, text on the grasping vs desiring power (locus not stated) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (lectio 5; “third reading”); Metaphysics VI
• Aristotle, De Anima III; Sophistical Refutations
• Thomas on “Be perfect as your Father”; on love as passio; SCG on the Word
• Boethius (reasoning:understanding :: motion:rest); Augustine; Francis de Sales; St Margaret Mary; Marx; Shakespeare

His questions #

• When I’m understanding something, am I doing something? Yes; seeing seemed forced; making yes; falling is being done to.
• If you have to be doing something to be happy, what kind of doing is it? Immanent operation — not making (perfects another), not motion (imperfect act).
• How would you translate operatio? “Doing”, with some stretch; or “motion” (Aristotle’s stretch); or “act” narrowly.
• Why is the act of the grasping power less appropriately called motion than desiring? The grasped is in the grasper (rest); the desirer is inclined toward the thing (motion).
• Is love like motion, or like the rest before motion? Thomas doesn’t say here; as conformity of heart with object it seems like rest; left open.
• Is my seeing you really between me and you? No; only in the way of signifying; it follows on the union of object and eye.
• If you kiss the girl, what kind of operation is that? Transitive.
• Is the ability to love passive or active? Thomas: love is passio; the object acts on the heart through senses or reason.