Dispositions of the Will for the Philosopher, and Hope and Fear in Pursuing Truth (Metaphysics II intro)

Orientation #

He picks up “what we were talking about late last afternoon”: Thomas’s words that God is both the first cause and the first being, and the fourth way “we’re talking about yesterday” (prev. lecture). He says he “may have mentioned yesterday” the structure of Book II, and promises observations when he situates Book II. Verified sources place readings in the handouts “The Matter and Order of Wisdom” (pp. 17–40) and “Note for Word Cause” (p. 1). The previous class previewed Book II’s question whether truth is easy or difficult; the next works through the opening chapter.

The class, in order #

1. First cause and first being: two orders, intertwined but not synonyms (“both the first cause and the first being”) #

Point: Thomas’s prima causa and primum ens suggest a correspondence between the before-and-after in causes and the before-and-after in being, though “cause” and “being” are not synonyms (Book V of Wisdom has separate readings on the word cause and the word being).

• Shakespeare: using reason is “looking before and after.”
• Act and ability are likewise intertwined with the causes: the first two meanings of ability connect to mover and matter; act before ability in substance/perfection is shown one way through form, another through the end; matter is (passive) ability while form, mover and end are tied to act.
• Monsignor Dionne’s comparison: the Prior Analytics separates the form of the syllogism from its matter, but not completely (a complete separation gives “symbolic logic or some other crazy thing”); Thomas says the three books De Anima consider the soul in quodam abstractione from body — not complete, since the soul cannot be defined without the body, and the later books “on life” go further down into the body.
• Application: arguing to a first mover (order in causes) uses act and ability via the definition of motion; so the two orders can be considered in “a kind of separation, but not complete.”

2. The first four ways: causes first, then being (“the first four arguments for the existence of God”) #

Point: the Summa’s first two ways emphasize the order in causes; the third and fourth the order in being; and Thomas, like Aristotle, puts causes first.

1. First way: unmoved mover = first in the order of movers; second way: first efficient cause / “first maker” — both the order in causes.
2. Third way: contingent depends on necessary; necessary-through-another (angels) on necessary-to-itself (God) — “his being in a way”; fourth way: more and less in being/truth, a most true, most being — the order in being.
3. A student’s point (from yesterday) that the fourth way must bring in causality: he agrees, and takes it as a sign the two cannot be considered in complete separation — you cannot see that act is before ability in time without “because of,” i.e. causality.
4. Order of exposition: the two from causality come first. Aristotle likewise: four kinds of causes distinguished in Book II of Natural Hearing; the word cause in Book V adds a before-and-after within each kind; Book II of Wisdom shows this does not go on forever but reaches a first cause (Thomas goes back to it when showing a first mover or maker); the order in being comes only in Books VII–X (substance before quantity, quality, etc.), and even in Book V the order in causes precedes that in the predicaments.

• Aside: “Saint Claire,” as Monsignor Dionne would say.

3. Seven dispositions of the will needed to be a good philosopher: the first five (“dispositions of the will that are necessary”) #

Point: perhaps “the third concern of the wise man”: there are at least seven dispositions of will needed.

1. Love of wisdom for its own sake, more than anything else, as the end of one’s life.
2. Wanting to know truth.
3. Wanting to avoid error — Thomas (De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroistas, as he recalls it): as man naturally desires to know, so he naturally desires to avoid error and refute it when he can.
4. Hope/persistence to overcome the difficulties in coming to know truth (else one gives up).
5. A healthy fear of falling into mistakes.

• Reason for 4 and 5: for the most part knowing truth and avoiding error are difficult — the disagreement of thinkers is the sign. Hope and fear are not assured by nature as 2 and 3 are, and a balance between them is needed; a teacher encourages the discouraged and inculcates fear in the overconfident.
• Student: is this like the concupiscible and irascible? — “some resemblance, except it’s in the will.”

4. The Phaedo on despair, misanthropes and misologists (“the great example there is the dialogue called the Phaedo”) #

Point: Plato’s conversations show dispositions of will helping or impeding the search for truth, as a treatise does not.

• Immortality of the soul is knowable only by argument; Socrates gives about three arguments; Simmias and Cebes object, the whole thing collapses, and the company (and Echecrates, hearing Phaedo’s narration) sink toward despair: if an argument good a minute ago fails now, arguments cannot be trusted and one might as well give up. Phaedo: “I never admired Socrates more.”
• Comparison: the misanthrope became so by trusting whom he should not, or more than he should — Timon of Athens (Plutarch; Shakespeare’s play: feasts, false friends with excuses, then hatred of all mankind); the woman who marries “a no good bum” and poisons her daughter against all men. He should blame himself for not distinguishing the man you can trust completely, the one not at all (don’t trust your daughter with Don Giovanni), and the many in between. (Aside: the priest at his wedding, on the marriage bureau; the woman at the St Paul bus stop who was smart enough not to get in the car.)
• So the misologist should blame himself for lacking the “art about arguments” — Greek technē peri logous — which he says is the first explicit statement of the need for logic. Aristotle’s third, culminating part of logic has exactly Socrates’ three parts: Prior and Posterior Analytics (trust completely), Sophistic Refutations (not at all), Topics (“the book about places”) and Rhetoric (up to a point; dialectical more than rhetorical).
• Hope restored, Socrates destroys Simmias’ objection with three quick arguments; the group gets overconfident, and he warns that Cebes “is not going to be so easy” — the teacher putting on the brakes.

5. Teachers balancing hope and fear; other kinds of hope and fear (“it’s the duty of the teacher to encourage the student”) #

Point: examples of encouragement and caution in his own formation, then other spheres where the balance is needed.

• Kasurik found Dionne talking differently in the office than in class; Dionne: it is the teacher’s duty to encourage — but Kasurik needed brakes, not encouragement.
• Dionne reordered his doctoral thesis outline; once proposed it was obviously better (“the main responsibility of a thesis director is to order the thesis”).
• De Koninck’s seminar on the five ways: every modern Thomist or philosopher examined had misunderstood the very proof he discussed (his own paper: Descartes misread both major and minor); De Koninck: “I think I can prove the existence of God, but I would not be so presumptuous as to say so” — a caution against the naive idea of teaching the proofs to freshmen and going out to convince the world.
• Christian life: Thomas on the psalms where hope and fear go together — without hope in divine mercy, despair; without fear of divine justice, presumption; the spiritual director judges which the soul needs. (Aside: Anselm’s meditation to gain the fear of the Lord, “exactly what we need today.”)
• The politician must hope to win but “runs a good campaign when he runs scared”; a team that despairs loses, but overconfidence loses too (the Yankees).
• His three teachers in the right order: Kasurik pushing him to think, De Koninck more cautious, Dionne whose “predominant passion is fear” (Ward Murray) — had Dionne come first “I would have been afraid to think.”

6. Docility and humility; further dispositions (“docility or teachableness on the side of the will”) #

6. Docility on the side of the will (Thomas distinguishes docility on the side of will and of reason): willingness to read or hear carefully, frequently, and with reverence the words of those wiser than you.
7. Humility, needed for that docility and to avoid error, since “pride is the mother of error” — Thomas in the commentaries on St Paul: pride causes error in two ways, by overestimating one’s powers and applying the mind to what is above one’s power to judge, and by withdrawing one from listening to the wiser who would call one back.

• Others one might add: mildness for conversation (Thomas: the disputant must control anger) — but more a disposition of emotion than will; loving truth more than one’s friend — Socrates in the Phaedo asks not to be spared objections because he dies today; Aristotle: Plato is a friend, but truth a greater friend (Stern’s rendering: “truth is my sister”).

7. How Metaphysics I and II answer to these dispositions (“the dispositions of will necessary to be a philosopher”) #

Point: Aristotle’s way of writing shows awareness of the dispositions.

• The proemium gives reason to love wisdom: the fourth thing shown about it is that it is the best and most honourable knowledge because most divine; it opens with “all men by nature desire” — the Greek says to understand, often translated to know (Thomas recalls it in De Unitate Intellectus); it also says something of the difficulty of becoming wise.
• Rest of Book I: whether to learn wisdom from predecessors or discover it with their help; the narration and critique show none reached adequate knowledge of causes — discouraging, even toward despair, as has happened in history. But Aristotle states he also goes through them to see whether any touched a cause beyond the four — so the four kinds are confirmed: “something for hope, but maybe more for fear.”
• Hence a little caution is in order before setting off after the truth about all things and the first causes: first ask how man is toward knowing truth — Book II’s first task.
• Then that the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man (his knowledge is of the first causes, which are more true), so it belongs to him to determine how man is toward knowing truth — but this supposes first causes; so the rest of Book II (readings 2–4) shows there are first causes in each of the four genera — encouragement, hope of reaching the goal.
• Third part of Book II: how one should consider truth, actually how to determine the way (modus proprius, Thomas’s term) proper to each reasoned-out knowledge — thereby directing every such knowledge, going back to the sixth attribute of the wise man in the proemium (directed by no one, directs all). “Should or should not be determined”: same knowledge of opposites; Aristotle also shows how it usually is determined, which is how it should not be — “a beautiful reading,” in “the brevity of wisdom.”

8. There is no such thing as epistemology (“there is no such animal”) #

Point: taken from the Greek, epistēmē is knowledge through demonstration, so “epistemology” is the Prior and Posterior Analytics; questions like how man is toward knowing truth belong to the wise man, and questions about the senses to De Anima II. The modern course is a hodgepodge, “a bastard science.” (A student agrees it “starts wrong.”)

9. The opening of Book II: difficult in one way, easy in another (“In one way it’s difficult, in another way easy”) #

Point: Aristotle’s first statement answers the question whether the consideration of truth is easy or difficult for man.

• Three possible answers: easy (only a fool), difficult (most professors: “difficult, if not impossible” — the walk down “Mahogany Row” to the last door marked Aristotle), and Aristotle’s: in one way difficult, in another easy.
• He puts chalepon (difficult) before easy, as the more recognized; the surprise is the “in one way easy.” Apart from its truth (to become clear later), notice how that restores a certain balance to the pursuit of truth: stressing only difficulty leads to discouragement and despair, the agnosticism of most thinkers.
• Whittaker Chambers back at Columbia: his friends treated ideas like ping-pong balls, so he admired the communists who took ideas seriously. At Assumption, a political-science colleague reading the Poetics with two Laval-trained philosophers had “never seen anybody taking things seriously” — such men have given up and, if honest, would leave the academic world.
• Greek: men … de, “on one hand … on the other” (Latin vero): tē men chalepon, tē de rhadia.
• Note: the transcript has him calling the book “Alpha Tres”; the standard name is Alpha Elatton [ed.: likely ASR error].

His words #

• prima causa / primum ens — first cause / first being; the two orders correspond but the words are not synonyms.
• “looking before and after” — Shakespeare’s description of using reason.
• “ability” — his rendering [ed.: potency]; “act and ability.”
• “Wisdom” — his name for the Metaphysics; “readings” [ed.: lectiones].
• “Natural Hearing” — [ed.: Physics]; “books on life,” “books about the soul” [ed.: De Anima].
• in quodam abstractione — Thomas on the soul considered in a kind, not complete, abstraction.
• “first maker” — his gloss on first efficient cause.
• “necessary to itself” / “necessary to another” — the third way’s distinction.
• “dispositions of the will” — love of wisdom, wanting truth, wanting to avoid error, hope, fear, docility, humility.
• misanthrope / misologist — hater of men / hater of arguments.
• technē peri logous — “the art about arguments”; the culminating part of logic.
• “the book about places” — [ed.: Topics].
• “docility or teachableness on the side of the will” — read or hear “carefully, frequently, and with reverence.”
• “pride is the mother of error.”
• “reasoned out knowledge” — [ed.: science]; modus proprius — its proper way of proceeding.
• “proemium to wisdom” — Metaphysics I, 1–2 (inferred).
• epistēmē — knowledge from effective demonstration; “epistemology … no such animal,” “a bastard science.”
• chalepon / rhadia, men … de — difficult / easy, on one hand / on the other.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics II (Alpha Elatton), opening statement (Greek tē men chalepon, tē de rhadia); handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom” pp. 17–40 and “Note for Word Cause” p. 1 (verified sources).
• Plato, Phaedo: the collapse after Simmias’ and Cebes’ objections, the misanthrope/misologist comparison, Socrates’ request not to be spared objections (recounted at length).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, the first four ways (paraphrased).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I (proemium; survey of predecessors); V (word cause, word being, predicaments); VII–X (order in being); Physics II (four causes); Prior/Posterior Analytics, Sophistic Refutations, Topics, Rhetoric; De Anima and later books on life; Poetics.
• Thomas Aquinas, De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroistas; commentaries on St Paul; commentary on the Psalms (hope and fear); Sententia on De Anima (in quodam abstractione).
• Shakespeare, Timon of Athens; Plutarch; Hegel not mentioned here; Anselm, a meditation on the fear of the Lord; Whittaker Chambers; Descartes.

His questions #

• Are the order in causes and the order in being the same, given that God is both first cause and first being? They correspond and are intertwined, but are not synonyms and cannot be considered in complete separation.
• Which of the first four ways emphasize causes and which being? The first two the order in causes; the third and fourth the order in being; causes come first.
• Are there dispositions of the will necessary to be a good philosopher? Yes, at least seven: love of wisdom, wanting truth, wanting to avoid error, hope, fear, docility, humility.
• Why are hope and fear needed beyond wanting truth and wanting to avoid error? Because for the most part both are difficult (sign: disagreement of thinkers); and they must be balanced.
• How do men become misologists? As misanthropes do — by failing to distinguish arguments trustworthy completely, not at all, and up to a point; the remedy is the art about arguments.
• Is this like the concupiscible and irascible? Some resemblance, but it is in the will.
• Is there such a thing as epistemology? No — epistēmē belongs to the Posterior Analytics; the modern course is a hodgepodge.
• Is the consideration of truth easy or difficult for man? Aristotle: in one way difficult, in another easy — an answer that restores balance between hope and fear.