The Great Turnaround, the Order of the Sciences and Preview of Book Nine

Orientation #

He refers back to “the rest of book one, and book two and book three, as we mentioned before” (prev. lecture). Looking forward: “maybe tomorrow” the class will begin Thomas’s first and second lectiones on Book Nine (eleven in all), morning and afternoon sessions. The verified handout is “The Matter and Order of Wisdom”, p. 9. The previous class treated Books II–IV of the Metaphysics; the next treats the four attributes of wisdom in the proemium.

The class, in order #

1. The great turnaround (“I call that for the fun of it the great turnaround”) #

The order in which Aristotle shows what wisdom is about is exactly the reverse of the order in which he takes those things up.

• Shown: proemium of Book I, wisdom is about causes and finally the first causes (A); start of Book IV, about being as being and the one and the many (B); then about the axioms (C).
• Taken up: rest of Book IV, the axioms, especially being and non-being (C); Books V–X, being as being and the one and the many (B); Books XI–XIV, the first causes (A).
• Student: is this related to going from the most known in itself to the most unknown? No. “The whole order of the fourteen books is in our knowing”; in both movements he must go from more known to us to less known to us, or he is not proceeding as he should.
• Argument for the order of taking up: (1) the axioms, known through themselves by all men, are more known to us than the first causes; (2) being as being and the one and the many, effects of the first cause, are more known to us than the cause, but less known than the axioms; so (3) we reason from axioms to being as being, and from being as being to first causes, always from more to less known to us.
• Apparent paradox: what is most known to us is what wisdom is least known to be about, and vice versa. He answers by the introduction-to-philosophy class: asked whether wisdom comes at the beginning, middle or end of knowledge, nearly all say the end; asked whether it is about things everybody knows, they say no, things difficult and known by few. So the last thing they think wisdom is about is the axioms, which everybody knows (at least confusedly); the first is the first causes, since nobody doubts that a man who knows the first causes should be called wise.
• Supporting observation from the proemium: Aristotle gives two differences between art/science and experience (universal vs. singular; knowing why vs. knowing that), but does not argue superiority from knowing the universal—in some way experience is superior because of that—he argues it from knowing why. Likewise “wisdom is about being as being” seems at first no wisdom at all: “I’m drinking something” is surer but poorer than “I’m drinking wine or water”; like knowing that a thing is a thing, “so big deal”. Hence he reasons from wisdom’s being about first causes to its being about being as being, and from that to the axioms.

2. How tight the books are (“the end of one is the beginning of the other”) #

Book V, where Aristotle distinguishes and orders the senses of the words equivocal by reason (naming the subject, its parts, the causes, the effects), is as Thomas says the beginning of the consideration of being as being, but also completes the defence of the axioms, which cannot be defended without distinguishing the senses of their words. Likewise knowledge of being as being, especially act and ability, gives the premises for reasoning to the first cause. “If the end of one is the beginning of the other, there can’t be anything in between”—as he is the son of his father and the father of his son Paul, so nobody can get in between.

3. About each in a different way (“it’s not about them the same way”) #

• First causes: as its end or goal, what Aristotle calls the scopos. Being as being and the one and the many: as its subject. The axioms: insofar as it is not merely episteme but sophia.
• From Nicomachean Ethics VI: natural understanding, episteme (reasoned-out knowledge), and sophia, which is the head and perfection of both. Reasoned-out knowledge knows the causes of its subject; wisdom knows the causes of the causes. Natural understanding knows the axioms but not distinctly the words and their meanings, so it alone cannot defend them against sophistic objections; wisdom perfects it here.
• Tree comparison (Thomas: trees the greatest of plants): trees are the tallest of plants and also the lowest, since the taller the plant, the deeper the roots. Wisdom goes up to the first causes and down deeper than anyone into the axioms, to the meanings of their words and their distinction and order.
• Student: why aren’t the first causes part of the subject? The subject of a science is that whose causes you seek to know; the first causes are the causes of being as being, so they are known there as causes. But by the universality of being, being may in some way be said of the first causes too—“we’ll see that with act and ability.”

4. A second order: two considerations, as in the Ethics (“another order you see kind of in the work as a whole”) #

The great turnaround explains the proemium and Books IV–XIV; other reasons are needed for the rest of Book I and Books II–III.

• In the Nicomachean Ethics, happiness is considered in Book I (man’s own act according to human virtue throughout life) and again in Book X, after the many kinds of virtue have been studied, so that one can say which virtues happiness most accords with. Thomas does not do this in the Prima Secundae, where happiness is completed first; but Aristotle’s order makes sense for beginners.
• In the Metaphysics similarly: the proemium shows wisdom is about first causes; the rest of Book I, that there are four kinds of causes (more distinct); Book II, that in each kind there is a first cause—the first causes reached imperfectly (Thomas goes back to Book II in the Summa when showing God exists); then the long consideration of being as being, before the perfect knowledge of the first causes in the last books.
• The point of this “subplot”: so you don’t despair. After the proemium says wisdom is very difficult, and everyone who tried failed, the narration of opinions still confirms there are only four kinds of causes, and Book II that there are first causes in each—progress, “some hope”.

5. Order of determination in geometry (“the equal before the unequal”) #

The order of consideration in the three parts of philosophy, starting with geometry.

• Simple before composed (all he said in his Laval doctoral thesis): plane before solid geometry, square to cube; point, line, angle, then figures like triangle.
• Now, rereading Euclid “as my master”, a second thing: equal before unequal. Definitions: equilateral, isosceles, scalene; right angles before acute and obtuse; square first, trapezium last, oblong and rhombus before rhomboid. Axioms: the axioms of equality (equals to the same, equals from equals) before “the whole is more than the part”. Theorems: the Pythagorean theorem before the theorems on obtuse- and acute-angled triangles (II.12 and 13), which are even proved through it. “For the most part, I don’t think always.”

6. Order in natural philosophy (“usque ad elementa”) #

• Student suggests effects to causes; he replies that is the order of demonstration. In the proemium to natural philosophy Aristotle shows the aim and then the order: in general before in particular (with good reasons), and, hinted rather than stated, going towards matter, “usque ad elementa”. The two fit together to some extent.
• Per Thomas’s commentaries this happens twice: from the eight books of Natural Hearing to the four books of the Universe to Generation and Corruption you go towards matter; then out of matter in the three books on the soul; then down towards matter again afterwards. Aside: this is why those who work only in the latter parts of natural philosophy tend to be materialists—“that’s where their mind is going.”

7. Order in wisdom: towards the immaterial, towards the more universal (“you are going towards the immaterial”) #

• Contrary to natural philosophy: you consider what can be in matter but need not be (substance, act, ability) before what cannot be in matter (the separated substances the Christians call angels, and God). [Name of an author cited here unclear in recording.]
• Also from less universal to more universal, clearest in Book IX: first part treats ability only in reference to motion; second part, act as found in form and even in immaterial things, with more senses of ability corresponding to more universal senses of act. Books VII–VIII begin from material substances, viewed logically and naturally, and rise to substance in general, needed for the immaterial substances of the last books.
• The one and the many: Thomas distinguishes the one that is the beginning of number (limited to quantity, more known to us) from the one convertible with being (more universal). The Platonists and most thinkers after mix them up—“even Averroes, I mean Avicenna does in some way too”—attributing what belongs to one to the other.
• So wisdom is opposed to natural philosophy in two ways: towards the immaterial, and from less to more universal.

8. The division of being in Book V and the ascent to act and ability (“three groups of meanings of being as such”) #

• Book IV already knows being is said in many ways; Book V gives the most complete distinction. Fundamental division: being through itself vs. being by happening (accidental).
• Accidental being illustrated by “Christian geometer”: since both happen to the same man, in some sense there is such a thing (the Catholic Academy could hire one; affirmative action rests on accidental being; “a black magician”). But hardly being: there is something by which one is a Christian (grace) and a geometer (the science), but nothing by which one is a Christian geometer, since there is no Christian geometry; there is a way to become a Christian (baptism) or a geometer (read Euclid), but no way to become a Christian geometer. No reasoned-out knowledge is about what happens; Aristotle treats it briefly in Book VI and sets it aside.
• Being as such: (i) by the figures of predication (substance, quantity, quality, relation…, from the Categories); (ii) being as true—in a way more universal, since beings by the figures of predication are outside the mind but can also be in reason, whereas beings of reason (genus, universal and what follows on it) are only in reason; (iii) act and ability, spoken of as most universal, since found in all these kinds: in every genus something able to be and something actually (substance, having geometry, being a father), and applicable also to what is in no genus.
• So going from Books VII–VIII to IX is itself a movement towards the more universal, as within Book IX. Act and ability also illuminate the four causes in all kinds of ways, more than the figures of predication do.
• From Book IX one sees best how to reason to the nature of the first cause—why it is not matter, why it is pure act, “namely God”; it is more proximate. Aside: in his metaphysics course he goes especially to Book IX among the books on being as being for this reason.

9. God as pure act in the two Summas (“chapter sixteen … that he’s pure act”) #

• The Summa Contra Gentiles is more distinct about God being pure act: there is no article in the Summa Theologiae asking whether God is pure act (it is divided among questions like immutability; Thomas brings it out at the start of the first article on the composition of God, as he recalls); in the SCG chapter 16 is devoted to it, with six arguments—closer to what we do in wisdom.
• From a talk he gave comparing the two Summas on the order of God’s substantial attributes: both consider simplicity before perfection and side by side; both put infinity and unity after them but in reverse order (ST infinity then unity; SCG unity then infinity); the biggest difference is immutability—first of all in SCG, between infinity and unity in ST. Reason: in SCG the unmoved-mover arguments are far more developed (two of the five ways from motion vs. one in ST; three middle terms for each main premise), almost a summary of the last books of Natural Hearing; so Thomas takes God’s unchangeability as starting point, then eternity, then pure act.
• SCG chapter 17: the Leonine chapter titles (not Thomas’s) say “there is no matter in God”, but what he shows is that God is not matter—exactly what comes from Book IX. In the third part of Book IX, on the order of act and ability, act is simply speaking before ability (though in a thing going from ability to act, ability is first). If ability were first simply, the first cause would be the most potential thing, matter; if act is first, the first cause is most in act. “That’s the most fundamental disagreement about the first cause: is it pure act or is it matter?” Something to be learned in both Summas.

10. Looking ahead to Book Nine (“distinction is before order”) #

Thomas will explain that Book IX opens with a continuation linking it to the earlier books (transition from being by the figures of predication to being as act and ability), then three parts: ability, act, their order—an oversimplification, as Thomas knows, to be examined. Compared with treating marriage (man, woman, their connection) or the cowboy (cowboy, horse, connection). It corresponds to what was said about reason: distinction before order; you must understand the distinction of act and ability before their order. He begins to add that there are distinctions among kinds of ability and of act when the recording cuts off.

His words #

• the Premium: his term for the proemium of Book I [ed.: proemium]
• the great turnaround: reverse order between showing what wisdom is about and taking it up
• scopos: what wisdom finally aims at, the first causes
• natural understanding: knows the axioms confusedly [ed.: nous / intellectus]
• episteme: reasoned-out knowledge, knows the causes of its subject
• sophia: head and perfection of both natural and reasoned-out understanding
• ability: [ed.: potency]; act
• usque ad elementa: natural philosophy’s movement “towards matter”
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; the Universe [ed.: De Caelo]; Generation and Corruption
• being by happening / being by accident [ed.: per accidens] vs. being as such, being through itself
• figures of predication: the categories
• beings of reason: what has being only in reason (genus, universal)
• capitulum: a little chapter of the Summa Contra Gentiles
• Prima Secundae

Texts #

Read in class: none read verbatim; the class works from the verified handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom”, p. 9. Mentioned: Aristotle, Metaphysics I (proemium and the rest), II, III, IV, V, VI, VII–VIII, IX (three parts), XI–XIV; Nicomachean Ethics I, VI, X; Categories; Physics (proemium; eight books); De Caelo (four books); Generation and Corruption; De Anima (three books); Euclid, Elements I–II (definitions, axioms, Pythagorean theorem, II.12–13); Thomas, Commentary on Metaphysics (division of Book V; Book IX, eleven lectiones); Summa Theologiae, Prima Secundae and questions on God’s existence, simplicity, immutability, infinity, unity; Summa Contra Gentiles I, chs. 16 and 17 (Leonine edition titles); Plato/Platonists and Avicenna on the one.

His questions #

• Why is the order in which he shows what wisdom is about exactly the reverse of the order in which he takes those things up? Both go from more known to us to less known to us: axioms → being as being → first causes in inquiry; first causes → being as being → axioms in showing what wisdom is.
• Is it related to going from most known in itself towards most unknown? No; the whole order of the fourteen books is in our knowing.
• Do you think wisdom comes at the beginning, middle, or end of our knowledge? Is it about things everybody knows? Students say the end, and about difficult things few know—so the axioms are the last thing they’d think wisdom is about.
• Does knowing being as being seem to be wisdom? At first sight not at all—like “I’m drinking something” vs. “wine”; hence Aristotle reasons to it from first causes.
• Why aren’t the first causes part of the subject of the science? The subject is that whose causes you seek; first causes are causes of being as being—though being may somehow be said of them too (to be seen with act and ability).
• What order does natural philosophy proceed in? General to particular, and towards matter; wisdom goes the contrary way, towards the immaterial and the more universal.
• Is there really such a thing as a Christian geometer? In some sense yes, but hardly being: nothing by which, and no way of becoming, one.
• Why is being as act and ability the most universal? Because ability and act are found in every genus and even in what is in no genus.
• Is there an article in the Summa Theologiae on whether God is pure act? No; it is divided among other questions, whereas SCG I.16 is devoted to it.
• Is the first cause pure act or matter? Depends on whether act or ability is first simply speaking; act is, so the first cause is pure act and not matter (SCG 16–17).