Metaphysics IX, Lectio Seven: Actuality is Prior to Potency in Definition, Time, and Substance

Orientation #

He refers back to “the very first” kind of ability already discussed and to the piano example “we talked before about”; he says the eighth and ninth readings will show act before ability in substance/perfection, and the later parts treat goodness and truth. He opens with the prayer to St Thomas and a joke about his cold and the choir bending over. The previous class read Book VII/VIII on denomination from proximate matter and the order of the acts of reason; the next continues Book Nine on act before potency in active powers and self-taught discovery.

The class, in order #

1. Two divisions of the third part of Book Nine (“editorial and reference division”) #

Point: the third part of “the ninth book of wisdom” is divided one way by the editor, another way by the sense.

• Editorial/reference division: five readings (lectiones), seven through eleven. “Doesn’t help you to understand anything at all.”
• Logical/understandable division: into three, not two:
  1. the order (before and after) of act and ability: readings 7, 8, 9;
  2. act and ability in regard to goodness: first half of reading 10;
  3. act and ability in terms of knowing the true and false, nobility: second half of 10 and reading 11.
• The whole third part is a comparison of act and ability; the first part is explicitly about the order.

2. Proemium of reading seven: the three befores (“it’s clear that before is said in many ways”) #

Point: since “before” is said in many ways, act may be before ability in more than one sense; he sets out the three senses Aristotle will use.

• Recall: “before” was divided in Book Five. Difference in method: the Categories distinguishes the senses of “before” from the word itself; Book Five begins from the common notion of “beginning” (first in being, becoming, knowing) and derives before/after from it, which fits the wise man, who sees everything in terms of beginnings. But this makes the Categories the one to begin with, since it needs no other word; the differences need not concern us here.
• “Ability” here includes all kinds of abilities, not just the first one discussed.
• Around line ten: act is before ability (a) in logos, i.e. in definition, in knowledge generally; (b) in substance — Aristotle’s “weird use of words”: you need Thomas to explain that he has identified substance with form and so with perfection; he could have said “in perfection”; (c) in time, with a distinction: in one way act is before ability in time, in another way ability is before act. No such distinction for perfection or definition.
• Order of treatment: time is mentioned last because of the complication, but reading seven takes up definition first, then time; readings eight and nine show act before ability in substance/perfection.
• Continuity: parts two and three (goodness; true/noble) follow on “before in perfection,” since good and true both involve perfection — as in the Summa Thomas attaches the consideration of God’s goodness to God’s perfection. True/noble has to do with perfection too, “maybe not as clearly or as closely as good at first.”

3. Act before ability in definition (“you have to say what it’s an ability for”) #

Point: to define an ability you must name its act, so the act is in the definition of the ability.

1. Ability is not known by itself, only by reference to what it is an ability for. Perkins at the employment agency: “I got ability, I got capacity” gets him nowhere; the question is how many words a minute, how many pancakes in half an hour.
2. So in the study of the soul the powers are all known through what they are abilities for: the ability to see, hear, walk.
3. Even for existence: you do not see my ability to walk — I might be paralysed for all you know; you see me walking, hear me talking, and then know the ability. “We’ll see if he can do it” is the only way.
4. Abilities are distinguished only by their acts: the ability to walk and to talk, to see and to hear, are known to differ because each is for something else.

• Conclusion (his reading of the text): “it’s necessary then that the definition of the one be before the other, and the knowledge of one before the knowledge of the other.”
• Connection forward: if ability is knowable only through act, act is more knowable than ability (part three of the third part). But if we do not know what is most actual, that shows the weakness of our ability to know: we know the least actual first and try to know the most knowable by the least knowable — “what a backward creature we are.”

4. Act before ability in time: simply vs. in some way (“no one gives what he doesn’t have”) #

Point: the thing going from ability to act is an ability before it is an act, but it goes to act only because of something already in act; so, looking at the whole picture, act is simply before ability.

• Aristotle does not use the words; Thomas, referring back to this passage, says simpliciter act is before ability, secundum quid ability is before act.
• Passive abilities are taken first here (more universal); the active powers come later, where one must actually play the piano to get the ability, so act is before ability “in a special way.”
• Reason (his own, simpler than Aristotle, who is brief because Book Seven treated it): nemo dat quod non habet — the seminarian’s professor said it whenever a student could not answer. Passive ability does not have the act it is for; if it gave itself that act it would have to have what it does not have, a contradiction. So it must be brought to act by something already in act.
• Sense of “before” involved: Aristotle presents it as before in time, but the second sense of before is before in being, to which the cause-before-effect sense is led back by likeness; so act’s priority here is not only in time but in causality.

5. The text: same in species, not in number (“man from man, musician from musician”) #

Point: Aristotle’s phrase at line seventeen means the prior act is the same in kind but not the same individual.

• What is able to be a man becomes a man through parents already actually men; the individual (arithmō) is ability before act, but another of the same kind is in act before. Same for what becomes hot, a dog, a tree. Brought out in Book Seven.
• Examples in the text: man, grain, seeing; “before all these things in time there are other beings in act from which these come to be.”
• General principle at line twenty-four: always from what is in ability something comes to be in act by something already in act — man from man, musician from musician (one man teaching another) — always back to the first mover, “for the mover is in act.”

6. Student question: knowledge and self-discovery (“if a man should be so bright”) #

Student: when someone comes to know something in act, must it be through a knower who already knows it? Answer: usually yes, through a teacher — the easy case. But if a man discovers it himself, he comes to know what he does not know from what he already actually knows, e.g. the premises; so act is before ability in a more subtle way. This goes back in each man to natural understanding, which must actually be had before there is anything to proceed from to acquire reasoned-out understanding. (Recording ends mid-sentence.)

His words #

• “the ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX]
• “editorial and reference division” vs. “logical and understandable division”: the editor’s readings vs. the division by sense
• “readings” / “lexios” [ed.: lectiones]
• “ability” [ed.: potency]; “act”
• “before in logos”: in definition, in knowledge
• “before in substance”: Aristotle’s word; Thomas explains substance = form = perfection
• “simply speaking” / “in some way”: act simply before ability, ability in some way before act [ed.: simpliciter / secundum quid]
• nemo dat quod non habet: no one gives what he does not have
• arithmō: the individual, “in number”
• “natural understanding”: what must be actually had first, from which reasoned-out understanding is acquired

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics Book Nine, reading seven (handout p. 8): proemium around line ten; “in time it is before” at line seventeen; general principle at line twenty-four (DHB Vol III, p. 663). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics Book Five: senses of “before” derived from “beginning.”
• Aristotle, Categories: senses of “before” from the word itself.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics Book Seven: something already in act brings ability to act; man from man.
• Thomas, commentary on Book Nine readings 7-11 (inferred from his references to Thomas’s explanation of “substance” and “simply / in some way”).
• Thomas, Summa: goodness of God attached to perfection of God (inferred).

His questions #

• Is the logical division of the third part into two or three? Into three: order, goodness, true/false and nobility.
• In what does act come before ability? In definition, in substance (perfection), and, with a distinction, in time.
• Is act before ability in time in only one way? No: in one way act is before, in another ability is before; simply, act.
• How do you know I have the ability to walk or talk? Only by seeing me walk, hearing me talk — through the act.
• How do you know the ability to walk and the ability to talk are not the same ability? Because each is an ability for something else.
• Why must what goes from ability to act do so by something already in act? Nemo dat quod non habet: it cannot give itself what it does not have.
• What does “same in species but not in number” mean? The prior act is another of the same kind, e.g. parents, not the individual coming to be.
• Must one who comes to know something do so through someone who already knows it? Usually; the self-discoverer proceeds from what he already actually knows, back to natural understanding.