Roads of Reasoned-Out Knowledge, the Unmoved Mover as Good Itself, and Q&A on God's Operations

Orientation #

He continues the third reading: last time’s “middle term” argument was for the upward direction (first cause); now Aristotle takes matter “in the downward direction” (prev. lecture). He announces tomorrow’s fourth reading (end and form) and hopes to reach the fifth reading (three ways of proceeding) tomorrow afternoon. The previous class worked through the anti-regress argument for all four causes; the next covers the fourth reading on end and form.

The class, in order #

1. Matter taken downward (“does this go downward, you know, forever”) #

The point: having assumed a first matter A (upward direction done), Aristotle asks whether the descending series A→B→C→D goes on forever, and answers no.

• Greeks speak of the cause as “above” the effect (the effect “hangs from” the cause, so first causes are “highest” causes, not chiefly in the sense of best); other languages speak of the “underlying” cause. Either way: does the going-down have an end?
• He is not asking here whether the first matter is formed or not; if you take it as the “pure ability” Aristotle speaks of, from it come the first formed matters (earth, air, fire, water), from them composed bodies, and so on.
• Student: if there were no first formed matter, there would be an infinite number between prime matter and any particular formed matter. He: that is a different point; the analogy is letters → words → sentences → paragraphs — does that go on forever?
• Aristotle takes Heraclitus’s position: let fire be first matter; from fire water, from water earth, and thus “always some other kind of thing comes to be.”

2. Two ways “this comes to be from that” (“as from the boy changing, there comes to be the man”) #

The point: to reason, Aristotle first uncovers a distinction (the Greek bracket: he is not talking simply about one event after another).

• A: from the boy the man; B: from the bricks the house / brick wall, from water air (in the ancient science the four elements share a common matter, one comes from another — like a clay sphere re-shaped into a cube).
• First difference. In A, from the thing coming to be comes the thing that has come to be; from the imperfect the perfect; the boy is essentially on the way to the man. Between being and non-being there is genesis; the one learning is becoming a knower (“the knower comes to be from the learner”). In B the sphere is not an imperfect stage of the cube; it is another kind of thing, and one is the corruption of the other (air corrupted as water comes to be). Butter in and out of the refrigerator: “hard” does not mean developing-into-soft, as “kitten” means developing-into-cat.
• Second difference (line 31). B turns around: soft from hard and hard from soft, a cycle. A does not: the boy does not come to be from the man (we say “second childhood,” but it is not the same thing); the learner does not come from the knower; kitten/cat, puppy/dog.

3. In both ways, no infinite series (“in both ways, is impossible to go on forever”) #

The point: amphoterōs (line 3), it is impossible to go on forever.

1. In A (boy→man) one goes from non-being to being: definite limits, so what lies between is not infinite.
2. In B (hard↔soft) one turns around and comes back: a series that goes on forever would never turn back to where it started. Like a race course you run round: it must be limited because you return to the start.

• Secondary conclusion at the end of the reading: likewise it is impossible for the first matter to be corrupted — there would have to be another matter before it.
• Student: protons → atoms → hydrogen/oxygen → water — which way is that? He: a difficult example; if hydrogen and oxygen do not remain in the water, the generation of one is the corruption of the other and it resembles hard/soft (“not as clear as you might think”). Student: could water then become something else, “grown-up water”? He: we lack an example, since you must add something; but the becoming of a plant, wherever you start, has limits (not-plant / plant), so you cannot pass through infinite steps.
• He notes Aristotle brings in something beyond the main thing to be shown (that there is a first cause); it does not seem altogether necessary — “kind of the goodness of the teaching.”

4. Preview: the three roads (“the three ways of proceeding”) #

The point: the fifth reading concerns the private road of each science; he wants to set out the three roads (Dion’s three ways of proceeding, his own “roads”), which belongs to the wise man.

• Natural road: from sensing, memory, experience toward the universal (Aristotle’s Proem). Common road of reasoned-out knowledge, “the road of reason as reason”: tied to before-and-after and the acts of reason; Thomas begins the Proem to logic with the three acts of reason and their order, and explains the parts of logic from them. Private road: because the subject/matter differs, something is unique to each science.
• Comparison: walking and running are acts of the legs, the same act on level, rocky, dry or icy ground, yet what you walk on makes something particular; so we define and reason everywhere, more quickly or more hesitantly according to the matter. Walking vs. jumping is a further distinction on the side of the acts themselves.
• Student: does the Posterior Analytics deal with a sort of common matter? He: not matter in the sense of the science’s own matter; Thomas in the fifth reading says logic teaches the common way of proceeding in all sciences, distinguished from the private road determined by its matter.
• Aristotle does not draw this explicitly here; Thomas following Avicenna distinguishes logic from the private roads; Dion put together what Thomas and Aristotle say elsewhere about the natural way (cf. Physics I: from what is more known to us to what is more known by nature, the “inborn road”). “Three is the first number about which we say all”; no other road seems possible — a reason will be seen.
• Aside: “Don’t forget the bread.”

5. After class: can the moved movers be infinite? (“it still is one grand middle”) #

The point: Aristotle’s argument only needs that what is essentially a middle has something before it; whether the middle is one, many, limited or unlimited makes no difference.

• Student: is the Summa’s “cannot proceed to infinity” a claim that there cannot be infinitely many, or that a first of another kind is needed? He: be careful — if every mover had a mover before it, all movers would be one grand moved mover with nothing before them; that is the meaning. There may be other objections to an actual infinity (from what he says elsewhere), but you do not escape the need for a first by making the middle infinite.
• Train: engine essentially beginning, caboose end, the wagon a “pulled puller”; one, three, or infinitely many wagons are one grand pulled puller, which cannot pull without something before it. Remove the engine and keep attaching wagons — it goes nowhere.

6. Extending “mover”: the end as unmoved mover (“Juliet’s beauty moved Romeo”) #

The point: the Physics reaches an unmoved mover not moved by the motion studied there (hence not a body); to reach a wholly unmoved mover one must extend “moved” to being moved by the end, as in Metaphysics XII.

• Thomas develops this in the Summa Contra Gentiles more than in the “beginners’ Summa Theologiae”; Vincent Smith wrote an article on the difference between the Physics and Book XII unmoved mover.
• The mover in the strict sense (third kind of cause) moves for the sake of something and so is “moved by the end” in an extended sense: Juliet’s beauty moved Romeo over the garden wall.
• De Anima: what moves my body to the kitchen is imagination/thought and desire; but I imagine and desire something good, so the good (the steak) is the unmoved mover, my desire a moved mover, moved by the good through the knowing power and moving muscles. This anticipates Book XII: to be altogether first God must be the good of the whole universe, the ultimate end — Alpha and Omega; beginning but not end, he would be moved by the good itself. Plato: the good itself is first, the Demiurge is not; for Aristotle and Thomas the first mover is also the good itself.
• Student: what of one who says the first mover is first only in final, not agent causality? He: that is exactly the reason for extending “mover”; if it acted for a good other than itself it would not be altogether first.
• The end as cause of the causality of the other causes: wood is cause of the table, but would not become wood-of-a-table without the carpenter; likewise the shape; the carpenter made the chair for sitting, so sitting causes the carpenter’s causing and thereby the matter’s and form’s. “It’s kind of beautiful.” Harmony: the mind knows effect before cause and cause before cause of the cause, so the end is the least known cause.

7. Substance, operation, Trinity (“Plato got to the substance but not to the operation”) #

The point: Plato reached the substance of God (the good, beautiful, one itself) but not his operation; Aristotle reached the operation; this suggests the order of study: substance before operation, operation before Trinity.

• Stop the Summa Contra Gentiles at God’s substance and you see he is the good itself but no understanding or loving of the good; the Word proceeds by God understanding himself, the Holy Spirit by God loving himself — so operations must be studied first, though the Trinity is beyond our mind.
• Aristotle, end of Book XII: as the what-it-is of things sensed or imagined is our proper object, the proper object of the divine mind must be himself, else he would be characterized by something less than himself.
• Student: is causality an extension of operation? He: if he did not create there would be no causality; both are operations, but SCG (beginning) says understanding and loving himself is immanent, creating transitive, and the immanent is by nature before the transitive, as in men — I think and want, then act outside. Augustine: because God is good, we are; add: because he knows and loves his goodness. Cf. the beginning of John’s Gospel: the Word proceeding immanently, and through the Word things made.
• Student: does God knowing himself know the Trinity? He: it is a matter of faith; Thomas’s reason why natural reason does not know it: God makes the universe through his nature, common to the three Persons, so the distinction is not seen; yet there are “footprints” of the Trinity in creatures giving a certain probability.

8. The material cause again (“a middle with nothing before it”) #

The point: today’s argument was the downward direction, not infinite divisibility of matter.

• If one wanted to argue upward for a first matter: any matter with a matter before it is a “caused cause”; if all were such, all would be one grand caused cause with nothing before — a middle that is not a middle, a contradiction. How one would traverse infinite steps is a separate difficulty, not needed for showing a first.
• Student: animals eating animals — infinite kinds would give infinite matters? He: only if every animal had only one prey and there were infinitely many; you do not go through infinite steps to get your meal.

9. Divine simplicity and the “energies” (“the first and chiefly necessary is simple”) #

The point: the Orthodox distinction of God’s essence from his “energies” (his goodness, wisdom, all creatures participate) “sounds kind of false”: it makes the attributes different things in God, admitting composition.

• Similar difficulty in the Platonists, who put subsistent being and subsistent life outside the One.
• Metaphysics V (Delta), c. 1015b, line 11: to prōton kai kyriōs anankaion is to haploun, simple, not composed; hence nothing biaion or para physin in it (that would require composition). Thomas does the same in SCG: c. 18 God is simple, c. 19 nothing violent or against nature.
• Student: the Platonists say the One cannot be being itself because good is more universal than being. He: only in a qualified way, as Thomas puts it: if “being” is limited to being in act, matter is not being but, ordered to the good, is good, so good extends further than being-in-act; but being as ability is still being. Thomas there is trying to “save” Saint Paul’s disciple.
• Aside on Dionysius: did he assume the name to claim false authority, or bear it in religion? For centuries taken as the Athenian convert, ranked next after Paul; Albert and Thomas commented on him; Thomas reads him, like Augustine, benignly (“he greatly exceeds me”).
• Why the mind falls into this: wanting to harmonize God’s transcendence and presence. God is in all things because his causality and knowledge extend to all, not as a body. Plato’s forms exist in God, but there they are him and not different from each other. Scotus posits some difference in God’s knowledge over free acts — “that’s silly; God’s causing is the cause of free will, doesn’t take it away.” Student: perfections are distinct in creatures, united only in God, so the mind judges God by creaturely standards; we do not see God, so what we know is not him. The recording ends mid-sentence.

His words #

• highest causes; the effect “hangs from” the cause, so the cause is above — not chiefly “best”
• pure ability [ed.: pure potency]; first matter as not formed
• “this comes to be from that” in two ways: as the man from the boy (imperfect → perfect, becoming → having become) vs. as air from water (the other corrupted)
• genesis between being and non-being
• amphoterōs; in both ways
• third reading, fourth reading, fifth reading [ed.: lectio]
• the three roads: natural road; common road of reasoned-out knowledge / road of reason as reason (logic); private road of each science
• inborn road (Physics I)
• grand middle; pulled puller; caused cause
• moved by the end (extended sense of “mover”)
• unmoved mover; Demiurgos; the good itself
• the end is the cause of the causality of the other causes
• immanent vs. transitive operation
• beginners’ Summa [ed.: Summa Theologiae]
• footprints of the Trinity
• energies (energeia) vs. divine essence (Orthodox)
• to prōton kai kyriōs anankaion, to haploun; biaion; para physin
• being as act vs. being as ability; matter ordered to the good is good

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics II ch. 2, third reading (line 31 on the second difference; “line 3” for amphoterōs; end of the reading on first matter not corrupted), following Thomas’s commentary
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (Delta), c. 1015b, lines c. 8-11, on the necessary and the simple

Mentioned

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae, first and second ways
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles I: beginning (immanent/transitive operation), cc. 18-19 (simplicity; nothing violent or against nature), the section on God’s substance
• Aristotle, Physics (unmoved mover; Book I beginning, the inborn road)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII (unmoved mover as end; divine mind’s object is himself)
• Aristotle, De Anima (what moves the animal: imagination/thought, desire, the good)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, Proem (sensing, memory, experience)
• Thomas, Proem to the logic (three acts of reason)
• Avicenna; Dion (three ways of proceeding); Vincent Smith (article); Plato (good itself, Demiurge, forms); Augustine; Dionysius; Scotus; Heraclitus; John’s Gospel, beginning

His questions #

• Does the series of matters in the downward direction go on forever? No: neither way of coming to be admits an infinite series.
• What is the difference between the man from the boy and a sphere from a cube? The boy is an imperfect stage on the way to the man; the sphere is another kind of thing, corrupted when the cube comes to be, and the change reverses.
• Why can’t hard→soft→… go on forever? Because it turns around and comes back, like a race course, which must be limited.
• Is hydrogen/oxygen → water like boy→man or like hard/soft? Hard to say; if hydrogen and oxygen do not remain, it resembles hard/soft; left partly open.
• Does Thomas mean there cannot be infinitely many moved movers, or that a first of another kind is needed? All moved movers, one or infinitely many, are one grand middle needing something before it; other objections to infinity are separate.
• What is the absurdity in infinitely many immaterial moved movers? Redirected: a mover for the sake of a good other than itself is moved by the end, so the wholly unmoved mover must be the good itself.
• Is God’s causality an extension of his operation? Creating is a transitive operation, proceeding by nature from the immanent operations of understanding and loving himself.
• Does God, understanding himself, know the Trinity? He would not say so; the Trinity is of faith; God makes through his nature, common to the three.
• Why is the “energies” distinction false? It makes the attributes different things in God, i.e., composition; the first and chiefly necessary is simple.
• Is good more universal than being? Only in the qualified sense that matter, not being in act, is good as ordered to the good; being as ability is still being.