Substantial vs. Accidental Form, Existence as Act, and the Transcendentals

Orientation #

He says these are “a few little additions” to what he calls “the fifth reading,” where “last time” the class distinguished “the three kinds of acts” with some texts of Thomas. (Verified source: the handout read for ten minutes is “Note for Book One, Reading Thirteen,” p. 5, on Physics I lectio 13; the transcript’s “fifth reading” may be a mis-hearing or a different numbering.) The previous class compared the orders of the two Summae and read on “prior and posterior”; the next reads Metaphysics IX.7 on when matter is in potency.

The class, in order #

1. Fragment before the prayer (“if Aristotle has defined correctly tragedy”) #

A tail of a prior conversation: if Aristotle defined tragedy correctly, he defined it “by the good of the emotions,” as “an imitation…” — cut off by the opening prayer.

2. How to understand a proportion (“four is to six as two is to three”) #

Point: substantial and accidental form, like their two matters, are alike proportionally, and a proportion is understood only when you see in what exactly the ratios are alike.

• Mathematical illustration of misunderstanding: 2:3 is even to odd, so 6 must be odd; 2 and 3 are prime, so 4 and 6 must be prime. Wrong. The likeness is that 4 is the same parts of 6 that 2 is of 3 (“for the dummies”: six as three twos, four is two of them).
• Applied: first matter is to man and dog as clay is to sphere and cube. Obvious differences (sphere and cube are accidental forms, man and dog substances; clay is an actual substance, first matter is not). The likeness: clay can be sphere or cube, not both at once; being one it keeps the ability for the other; becoming the other it ceases to be the first — and so first matter with man and dog.
• The word “form” is carried over from the accidental case (Aristotle’s first example: the statue of Mercury, “the one you’re going to worship”) to substantial form by this likeness of ratios, exactly as “matter” is.

3. Substantial and accidental form: agreement and differences (“question seventy-seven, in article six”) #

Point: as Aristotle distinguished the act called form from that called motion, one may compare substantial and accidental form; Thomas does this in ST I q.77 a.6 corpus.

• Agreement: both are an act, and by both something is in act.
• Differences as Thomas gives them:
  1. By substantial form something is simply; by accidental form only in a qualified way. By my soul I am; I am not by my health or geometry, but I am healthy, a geometer. Receiving my soul I came to be; receiving geometry I came to be a geometer.
  2. Substantial form comes to a subject that is only in ability; accidental form to a subject that is an actual substance.
  3. Hence act is found in substantial form before its subject, but in the subject before the accidental form — which is why an accidental form can be a property, an effect of the substantial form.
  4. Matter is for the sake of substantial form; but substance is not for the sake of accidental form — “just the reverse,” the accident perfects the substance. “I’m not for the sake of my geometry; my geometry is for the sake of me.” He says he was confused on this “for years” and calls it “a very subtle thing.”
• He then reads a fuller list (handout): common — the name form, act, first act, in a subject, subject “is” in some way. Differing — simply vs. qualified; subject in ability vs. actually existing; one per se vs. one per accidens (“go back to the fifth book of the wisdom”), hence “subject” said more properly of accidental form, “matter” of substantial; substantial form is in the genus of substance not as a species but as a beginning of a species, accidental form is in a genus of accident (quality) as a species; the two subjects likewise; actuality before or after; property; matter for form vs. form for subject.
• Aristotle does not spell these out in the surviving text, but touches them in Physics I, Metaphysics VII and VIII, and in the De Anima proportions (“if the eye were a natural body composed of tools, its ability to see would be its soul”).

4. Is existence a third kind of act? (“Are there the only kinds of act”) #

Point: are motion (broadly, operation) and form the only acts? A student offers “esse is the act”; he develops existence as a further act, “as act is to ability.”

• A form without matter would still be a form; a substance without form would be an act, but substances always have or are a form.
• History: Aristotle not explicit on substance vs. existence in creatures; “some people say” Al-Farabi first made it explicit, then Avicenna, then Thomas; yet Thomas thinks Aristotle reached God as “I am who am.”
• Order in SCG: first (theological order) show God’s substance and existence are the same; in book II show they differ in angels and in us, so one must distinguish substance and existence as ability and act, matter and form.
• Question put: is existence-to-substance more like form-to-matter or like understanding-to-ability-to-understand? Class: form and matter. His reasons:
  1. In SCG Thomas takes care that the substance/existence composition in angels not be confused with our matter/form composition — you separate what is closer (as one separates operation from motion, not from form).
  2. Existence is not a doing. Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” goes from doing to being and assumes the axiom that you must be before you can do; you could be without doing, not vice versa. Likewise we show the understanding soul does not depend on the body from its doing (understanding the universal) not being in the body.
  3. We come to know form from doing (kinds of soul from what the body does through them); so too we come to know something of our kind of existence through our act. Form is “a beginning of existence,” not its entire cause (“you might have something causing itself to be” [sic]).
• Texts: ST I q.7 a.1, “illud quod est maxime formale omnium est ipsum esse” — an opponent could say “formale” just means most actual, but Thomas uses “formale”; ST I q.4 a.1 ad 3, esse hominis or horse: “ipsum esse” considered “ut formale et receptum,” not as that to which being belongs — being in the thing, recalling Aristotle’s proportion that form is more said to be in matter than operation in ability.

5. Form “in” matter and the senses of in (“the fifth sense of in”) #

Point: form-in-matter is the fifth sense of “in,” right after species in genus.

• Species is not actually in the genus; form is in matter as contained in matter’s ability — “by a certain likeness they just say in.” Student: originally in ability, then actually; he agrees, adding that difference-to-genus makes actual what is potential in the genus, though the distinction is greater between form and matter.
• Plato in the Timaeus speaks of place as if matter (first sense of in): the chair he sits in — Berquist leaves, another sits, then another; in the same plane, sphere, then cube, then pyramid. Hence one of the four opinions on place is that it is matter (another, that it is form). Obvious difference: place is extrinsic, matter and form within.
• Aside: his brother Mark is puzzled that Aristotle counts this a probable opinion. “This likeness is a slippery thing, as Plato says. A very dangerous thing.”

6. Why another act beyond form? Being and thing (“The first two transcendentals are being and thing”) #

Point: a student asks why the form actually in matter doesn’t suffice; he calls the substance/existence distinction “very subtle” and approaches it from the transcendentals.

• Last four transcendentals add nothing real: one = undivided being, aliquid = distinct from others (negations); true and good arise because “the soul is in some way all things” (De Anima III) and the will is open to all good — differing in definition only.
• First two: being is named from to be, thing from what it is; “reason wants to know what is, and what it is,” not the same knowing. Hence definition is “speech making known what a thing is.” Student: so they differ in reality too? He: the distinction corresponds “to some extent” to a real distinction, though not seen at first — a “hint.”
• Posterior Analytics: “does it exist” and “what is it” are distinct questions. Only in theological works (God is “I am who am,” same in God, not in creatures) is existence recognized as a kind of act — “even another sense of act.”
• Before showing a thing exists you have only quid nominis: unicorn, flying horse; a definition of the name, not of the thing. Student: God — the definition of the name, then whether it is. He agrees: you need a quid nominis to ask whether it is, and whether it is to go on to what it is.
• Aristotle defining nature asks, “like a footnote,” whether he was out of order in not first showing nature exists; it is obvious, and to prove it is to think you don’t know what you do know — possible because, as Socrates showed, you can think you know what you don’t. His line: “most men make the mistake of thinking they know what they don’t know, and thinkers make the mistake of thinking they don’t know what they do know.” Socrates in the Apology (“I don’t know whether to die is good or bad”) leans to the second extreme; so do most thinkers today, ending by claiming to know nothing.
• Student: Thomas in the De Ente (phoenix) looks at the parts of an essence, sees existence is not among them, and concludes a real distinction. He does not recall the text precisely; takes it as about the definition of the name; adds that some names (square circle) involve a contradiction, so one cannot really understand them — “almost playing with words.” Left there.

7. Wisdom and dialectic: distinguishing senses of words (“the second tool of dialectic”) #

Point: that the distinction of kinds of things corresponds to a distinction of senses of a word is another likeness of wisdom to dialectic.

• Metaphysics III is wholly dialectical; Aristotle gives four reasons for proceeding dialectically first. Thomas, and apparently Averroes before him, say the same reasons make Aristotle proceed dialectically elsewhere, but book III is unique in gathering all the dialectic into one book (elsewhere a particular dialectic, e.g. about place); one reason is the likeness of dialectic and wisdom, dialectic being as it were a principal part of wisdom — a compliment to Plato, who put dialectic at the highest point.
• The second tool of dialectic is distinguishing the senses of a word. Aristotle does this in almost every book (senses of “in” in Physics IV), but only Metaphysics V is a whole book devoted to it — a chief part, because wisdom is about the most general things, all named equivocally by reason, and because it defends the axioms, whose words are equivocal by reason.
• Closes: “let’s look here now.”

His words #

• “three kinds of acts”: the distinction from last time (form, motion, operation).
• “ability”: his usual rendering [ed.: potency].
• “first matter”: subject of substantial form, not an actual substance.
• “simply” vs. “in some qualified sense” [ed.: simpliciter / secundum quid].
• “property”: accidental form as effect of substantial form.
• “one per se” vs. “one per accidens”: union of form with its subject.
• “beginning of a species”: how substantial form is in the genus of substance.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics]; “the wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics].
• “esse”, “ipsum esse”, “existence”, “to be”: the act of what exists.
• “maxime formale”; “formale ut receptum”: Thomas’s terms for esse.
• “quid nominis”: definition of the name, as opposed to definition of the thing.
• “aliquid”: distinct from other things (a negation added to being).
• “equivocal by reason”: how the most general things are named.
• “second tool of dialectic”: distinguishing the senses of a word.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I q.77 a.6 corpus (substantial vs. accidental form).
• Handout, “Note for Book One, Reading Thirteen,” p. 5 (list of agreements and differences; verified source).
• Thomas, ST I q.7 a.1 (“maxime formale omnium est ipsum esse”).
• Thomas, ST I q.4 a.1 ad 3 (“ipsum esse … ut formale et receptum”).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics I (form/matter, statue of Mercury); Physics IV (senses of “in”; opinions on place); Physics II on whether nature exists (inferred locus).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics III (dialectical book, four reasons), V (senses of words; one per accidens), VII, VIII.
• Aristotle, De Anima (eye/tools proportion; III, soul in some way all things).
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (does it exist / what is it).
• Thomas, SCG I and II (God’s and angels’ substance and existence).
• Plato, Timaeus (place as matter); Apology (Socrates on death).
• Thomas, De Ente et Essentia (student’s reference, phoenix).
• Descartes, “I think therefore I am.”
• Aristotle, Poetics definition of tragedy (opening fragment; inferred).

His questions #

• In what way is four to six like two is to three? Four is the same parts of six that two is of three.
• How is first matter to man and dog like clay to sphere and cube? Each can be either but not both at once, keeps ability for the other, ceases to be the one on becoming the other.
• Is substance for the sake of accidental form? No, the reverse: accidental form perfects the substance.
• Are motion and form the only kinds of act? No; a creature’s existence is another act (student: “esse is the act”).
• Is the ratio of existence to substance more like form to matter or understanding to the ability to understand? Form to matter (Thomas separates it from matter/form composition; existence is not a doing).
• Would you try to prove that you must be before you can do something? No.
• What is the difference between being and thing? Being named from to be, thing from what it is; a hint of the real distinction.
• Have I been out of order not asking whether nature exists first? (Aristotle’s footnote) No; that nature exists is obvious.
• Why does wisdom have a whole book distinguishing senses of words? Because of its likeness to dialectic and because its most general things and axioms are named equivocally by reason.