Act Before Ability in Perfection: Metaphysics IX, Readings 8-9

Orientation #

He places today’s readings (the eighth and ninth) as “the third part of the first part of the third part,” where act is shown before ability in substance, meaning perfection; he refers back to “the previous reading,” where act was shown before ability simply in time, and to “the fifth reading,” where Aristotle distinguished motion as imperfect act from understanding as perfect act. The previous class dealt with orderings among the acts of reason; the next continues Theta on act as better than potency and on evil as privation.

The class, in order #

1. Three senses of “perfect” in Book V (“three meanings of the word perfect”) #

The point: before the text, he lines up Aristotle’s senses of “perfect” with the two ways Aristotle will now argue.

• Sense 1: complete, having all one’s parts. Sense 2: having all the ability of one’s kind; Homer the perfect poet (good plot, praised characters and diction, a tragic and a comic epic, the comic one lost); Dryden on Fletcher as “just a limb of Shakespeare,” an arm or leg, so Shakespeare is the complete poet; Mozart the perfect musician. Senses 1 and 2 are alike: in both, the whole is called perfect. Sense 3: what has reached its end.
• Oversimplified: perfect means (a) the whole as against the part, (b) the end.
• Thomas instead ties “perfect” to two of the four causes, form and end, as earlier the first two senses of ability were tied to matter and mover. This nearly coincides with whole/end because, after the three corollaries on the four causes, Aristotle says all parts are like matter and every kind of wholeness is like form.
• A further parallel: in the De Veritate the good is perfectivum alterius per modum finis, the true perfectivum per modum formae (“an informed student, a formed mind”); end of Book VI: truth primarily in the mind, good primarily in things; form intrinsic, end extrinsic. “There’s a lot of nice connections you can make.”
• Aside: the second sense of “beginning” in Book V will return below (end as first in intention).

2. First argument, from form (“before in form and in substance”) #

The point: what comes after in generation is before in form and substance.

1. Generation develops from the imperfect to the perfect, from matter toward form, which is act.
2. What is later in generation is more perfect (man vs. boy, man vs. seed: the man already has the form, the other does not).
3. What is later is act as compared with what goes before. Conclusion: act is more perfect than ability. “That’s a beautiful way.”

3. Second argument, from end, with its signs (“act is in fact the end of the ability”) #

The point: the end is more perfect than what is for the sake of it; so if act is the end of ability, act is more perfect.

• On the wording: “everything goes to a beginning”; in the last sense of “beginning” in Book V the end is a beginning because first in intention; telos, hou heneka. Generation comes to be for the end; the end is an act; for its sake the ability is taken.
• Signs that act is the end of ability, in his order: (i) natural abilities: animals do not see so as to have the ability to see; they have it so as to see; same for hearing. (ii) Arts and sciences: we do not build so as to have the ability to build, but the reverse; you want geometry so you can think well, even if while learning it looks the other way. (iii) Matter for the sake of form: nature is trying to form matter (developed in Book I of the “Natural Hearing,” the Physics), and form is the act. (iv) “Not so clearly in the text”: two pianists, who is more perfect? Only known when one sits down and plays well; the teacher shows the student by actually playing; the recital is the end. The Greek names: Hermes the expert, Pauson not as good; adēlos, unclear who exceeds until they perform, “and the deed is the end.”

4. Activities with a product; immanent and transitive (“the operation that remains within the doer”) #

The point: even where an ability has a product, the act is still the end, because the making is in the thing made; and only immanent activity can be the doer’s perfection.

• This must be the passage in Book IX Thomas cites for the distinction between operation remaining in the doer and operation going out to another (immanent vs. transitive). The end of house-building is a house, “but still, in a way, it is building a house, which he says is in the material”; if I kick you, my kicking is in you. Examples: building, weaving, contrasted with seeing in the seer, theoria in the one theorizing, life in the soul, “whence also happiness.”
• Recall the threefold division: motion strictly, acting upon another, activity remaining in the doer. In the fifth reading (Aristotle’s text fuller than Thomas’s) motion is imperfect act, understanding perfect act: walking home, I have not walked home; seeing, I have seen. Hence happiness cannot consist in motion but in seeing, understanding, loving, some better than others, “but it’s got to be in that genus.”
• Here the same point against transitive action: it perfects the thing made, not the doer, so the doer’s perfection cannot lie there. Christians say our last perfection is understanding and loving God, both immanent. In both places the distinction is drawn with ethics and happiness in view.
• Targets: the man in the street who wants to know “where the action is”; Karl Marx, who puts man’s end in making, mixing the as-such with the accidental: it is accidental to making that the maker is perfected (making McDonald’s hamburgers for 30 years; teaching something very easy six times a day for 40 years, you learn nothing but “got it down pretty cold”).

5. The first mover is most perfect (“act is before in substance”) #

The point: Aristotle ties the perfection argument back to the first mover.

• Around 1050b2: act is before in substance; and, as said, in time, “always taking act before all the way back to the one that is moving things first.” He reads this as anticipating: the true understanding of act and ability makes the first cause both pure act (from the previous reading, act before ability in time and causality) and most perfect (from this one).
• Contrast: for those who say matter is the beginning of all things, knowledge of the first cause would not be knowledge of the best thing; but knowledge of the best is the end of our knowledge, and so is knowledge of the first cause: a contradiction, two last ends not the same, “a split personality… you’re being torn apart.”

6. Is an accident better than its substance? Simply vs. in some way (“dignius alio secundum quid”) #

The point: an accident is the act of its substance and so more perfect in some way (secundum quid), but the substance is more perfect simply, because accidents are for the sake of substances. He confesses he was “hazy in my earlier years about this.”

• SCG III 75: accidents are for the sake of substances, that these be perfected through them; within substances, matter is for form, through which it partakes divine goodness. Substantial form to matter as act to ability: no problem there. The objection: is not substance in some way an ability toward its accident, the accident its act, its perfection, its end, hence better?
• Book V’s further distinction: perfect in its kind (Mozart) vs. perfect lacking nothing whatsoever, the sense in which God is perfect. God through his substance has all perfection (“I will show you every good”: Thomas, ipsemet, himself). Our substance does not give even the perfection a human needs, so accidents (geometry, justice, courage) remedy the incompleteness: “for the sake of making up for the lack.”
• Sentences III d.14 a.1 sol.3: nothing prevents something being dignius alio secundum quid which is indignius simpliciter: the colour of Christ’s body is dignior than his body insofar as it stands to it as act to ability, cum sit forma accidentalis ipsius; nevertheless corpus Christi est dignius simpliciter. Miss this and “we should have more respect for the colour of his body than for his body.”
• De Veritate q.20 a.1, obj.1: science is a perfection of the knower; every perfection is nobler than the perfectible (omnis perfectio nobilior est perfectibili); so if Christ has created science, something created is nobler than Christ’s soul, quod videtur inconveniens (“much stronger than the English ‘inconvenient’”). Reply: created science is secundum quid nobler than Christ’s soul as its act, as colour than his body; in general any accident to its subject as actus ad potentiam; simpliciter autem subjectum est nobilius accidente.
• Student: is not that true of anybody’s soul and body? Yes. Student: make clear what “simply” means here. His answer: partly from SCG text (accidents for substance); example: does the science in you understand what a composite or perfect number is, or do you? Geometry (“arithmetic, I should say”) is in your head so that you may understand; through being a man I do not understand a perfect number, God through being God does; the accident supplies what my substance lacks. So in some way it actualizes me, simply it is for my sake.
• De Caritate a.1 ad 22 (“not explicit”): no accident is dignius than its subject quantum ad modum essendi, substance being per se, accident in another; yet in quantum accidens est actus et forma substantiae, nihil prohibet accidens esse dignius substantia, as act to ability and perfection to perfectible; thus charity dignior than the soul, and simply the soul dignior caritate.
• Student: then the supernatural is simply less than the thing it sanctifies? Yes, “the most dramatic” case; “a very subtle thing.” I do not exist for the sake of my geometry; geometry is there so I can make a square equal to a given oblong.

7. Why this distinction matters: logic, the whole book, and life (“happiness is death”) #

The point: the simply / in-some-way distinction runs through the whole book and through human conduct.

• Teaching question: treat such distinctions in the logic of the first act, or wait for the third act where mistakes are studied? You appreciate the distinction by seeing the mistake, and vice versa; a sophism forces it: happiness is the end of human life; the end of human life is death; therefore happiness is death, which obliges you to distinguish senses of “end.”
• It runs through the book: substance is being simply, accident being in some way; to be actual is to be simply, to be in ability is to be in some way: “I am in Massachusetts in ability,” a diminished sense of being. (Student joke: you need to be on the border of Massachusetts to be able-able; “very good.”)
• Previous reading: those who make matter the beginning of all things mix up “before in some way” (ability before act) with “before simply.”
• Ethics: you cannot do what is bad unless reason takes it as good in some way, and no matter how good an act is (praying, studying) it prevents some other good, so it is always bad in some way; “people’s lives are dominated by that.” De Anima III (just taught at TAC): what seems desirable here and now vs. looking before and after in time, the delicious poison; man the animal with a sense of time who sometimes forgets it.

8. Ninth reading: comparing different things (“compare different things, namely the eternal”) #

The point: kreittōn, “in a better way”: the same conclusion shown not within one thing but by comparing eternal, incorruptible things with corruptible ones, which stand to them as act to ability; the incorruptible are admittedly better, so act is better.

• Why comparing different things makes it clearer, with ethical parallels: goods of the soul are to goods of the body as man to beast (defending Socrates against the Athenians); or as goods we share with God to goods we share with beasts; Plato’s Republic reads the soul’s parts through the city’s parts; reason is to the emotions as man to horse (the horse tries to throw him, is eventually tamed; the rider dragged by the stirrup, “bang, bang, bang,” is not how it should be); the man behind the McDonald’s counter at rush hour as reason when the concupiscible appetite is not ruled, running around after drugs and liquor.

9. The argument: nothing eternal is in ability (“nothing eternal is in ability”) #

1. Eternal things are before in ousia (perfection) than corruptible things.
2. Nothing eternal is in ability; logos: the passive ability (dunamis, like matter’s) is at once of contradictories; what is truly dunaton can be and not be. The matter in me is now a man, but if a mountain lion eats me it is able to be a lion; so I am able to be through my form and able not to be if my form is displaced: that is why the corruptible is corruptible.
3. The incorruptible is not able not to be, so it is to the corruptible simply as act. Conclusion: since the incorruptible is better, act is better than ability; “there is a proportion there.”

• Around line 16-17: nothing incorruptible is simply in ability as regards its substance, though in some other way it may be: Aristotle’s sun, moon and stars are incorruptible yet change place.

10. Consequence: the necessary, and Thomas’s arguments for pure act (“God has no passive potency”) #

The point: Aristotle’s brief extension to “the necessary, the first things, without which nothing else would be” hints at the argument Thomas develops that what can be and not be depends on what must be.

• SCG I 16 (God is pure act, no passive potency) has six arguments; the third, from necessity and contingency, gives the same argument for God’s existence as the Summa’s third way, not used earlier in the SCG but brought in so Thomas can reason that the necessary-through-itself has no ability not to be. “Just a copycat, that Thomas.”
• De Koninck, in an introduction to a second-rate book he was about to throw out: Thomas the most faithful and humble disciple of Aristotle, against moderns who see a chasm; Aristotle’s works come down contracted and concise, so someone like Thomas is needed to unfold them.
• Order in the SCG: arguments for the unmoved mover far more developed than in the Summa (first two from motion; several middle terms for a premise the Summa gives one for); ch. 14 takes God as unchangeable, ch. 15 eternal, ch. 16 no passive potency, first argument from eternity, second from first cause plus act before ability, third from necessity: both the eternal and the necessary are in today’s text.
• Posterior Analytics: necessary premises are eternally true; two is half of four is not true today and otherwise tomorrow.

11. Heavenly bodies and the criticism of Plato (“science is in potency to the act”) #

• Aristotle applies the point to the heavens: no fear of their stopping, since they have no potency to move at some times and not others, only to be here or there; “we don’t have to worry too much about that.”
• Some lesser things resemble the heavenly bodies by seeming always active; others do not.
• Against Plato: he puts science itself among the first things, but science is in potency to the act of knowing, and act is simply before ability; a misunderstanding of what eternal things are. Student: so it would have to be knowing instead of knowledge? Yes; in God science as habit or accident is not there, but as knowing the causes perfectly, as act.

His words #

• “ability”: his rendering throughout [ed.: potency, dunamis].
• “in substance, meaning in perfection”: ousia in the phrase “before in substance.”
• “perfect”: (1) complete, all parts; (2) all the ability of its kind; (3) having reached its end; later, perfect in kind vs. lacking nothing whatsoever.
• “fifth book of wisdom”, “sixth book of wisdom”, “ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V, VI, IX].
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• perfectivum alterius per modum finis / per modum formae: good vs. true as perfective.
• telos, hou heneka: end, that-for-the-sake-of-which; end as a “beginning” because first in intention.
• adēlos: unclear (who excels until they perform).
• immanent vs. transitive operation: remains within the doer vs. goes out to act on another.
• theoria: looking at things, in the one theorizing.
• motion as imperfect act, understanding as perfect act.
• simpliciter / secundum quid: simply vs. in some way; “secundum quid, that’s Latin for not simply.”
• dignius, dignior: more worthy; indignius simpliciter.
• quod videtur inconveniens: “does not fit,” stronger than “inconvenient.”
• actus ad potentiam, perfectio … perfectibili.
• quantum ad modum essendi: as to the way of being (substance per se, accident in another).
• ipsemet: God himself as “every good.”
• kreittōn: “in a better way” of showing.
• passive dunamis of contradictories; dunaton: able to be and not be.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (Theta), ch. 8 (inferred: chapter), with Thomas’s lectiones 8 and 9: the argument from generation (man/boy, man/seed); act as end of ability and its signs; immanent vs. transitive; “act is before in substance,” c. 1050b2; eternal things before in ousia, “nothing eternal is in ability,” c. line 16-17; the necessary; heavens; Plato.
• Thomas, SCG III ch. 75 (accidents for substances, matter for form).
• Thomas, Scriptum super Sententiis III, d. 14, a. 1, sol. 3 (colour of Christ’s body).
• Thomas, De Veritate q. 20, a. 1, obj. 1 and ad 1 (Christ’s created science).
• Thomas, De Caritate a. 1, ad 22 (charity and the soul).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V: senses of “perfect”; senses of “beginning.”
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI, end: truth in the mind, good in things.
• Thomas, De Veritate: definition of the good as perfectivum per modum finis (no locus given).
• Aristotle, Physics I (nature forming matter); Physics II, four causes and corollaries (parts as matter, whole as form).
• Aristotle, De Anima III (desire here and now vs. before and after).
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (necessary premises eternally true).
• Thomas, SCG I chs. 14, 15, 16; Summa Theologiae, third way.
• Plato, Republic (city and soul); Meno (simply / in some way confused).
• Dryden on Fletcher and Shakespeare; De Koninck’s introduction on Thomas as disciple of Aristotle.

His questions #

• Do animals see in order that they might have the ability to see? No; they have the ability to see in order that they might see: act is the end of ability.
• Two pianists: who is more perfect? You cannot know until they play; the deed is the end.
• How can the doer have his perfection in an activity that perfects another? He cannot; happiness must be an immanent activity such as understanding and loving.
• Is an accident, being the act of substance, better than the substance? Only secundum quid, as act to ability; simply the substance is nobler, since accidents are for its sake.
• Does the science of geometry in you understand what a perfect number is, or do you? You do; the science is there so that you may understand what your substance alone cannot.
• Then is the supernatural simply less than what it sanctifies? Yes, the most dramatic case of the distinction.
• Is the incorruptible able not to be? No; so it stands to the corruptible as act to ability, and act is the better.
• Why does Plato wrongly put science among the first things? Science is in potency to knowing; the first things would have to be knowing, not knowledge.